My favorite readings for this class were Michael Warner, Arjun Appadurai, Tejaswini Ganti, Particia Uberoi, the article about the use of Muszak technology in malls, and Barry Dornfeld.

I think the Warner article was the most suggestive to me because his idea about the publics has very concrete implications, he suggests that public discourse doesnt just describe the world but create it, in line with a modern ideology. This is very suggestive, it makes me think twice for instance, before saying anything because of the formative power my words may have. In the context of our college campus this suggests that student discourse about the campus as a place where "Fun Comes to Die" actually creates those conditions, in the situation of postcolonies that continue to experience infrastructural breakdowns and bureaucratic delay, it suggests that the popular habit of complaint about these issues may have a role to play in creating their reality.

To use his own example of the 'Wassup' ad, while it appeared to describe a thing that people ssaid often, it had the effect of actually creating the conditions that it seemed to describe, because people began saying 'Wassup' all the time afterwards.\

The article 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' was the first article of Arjun Appadurai's that I have read. It was extremely helpful for its brutal dismissal of old paradigms of thinking and its quick, imaginative sketching of the contours of a new way to think about social science research in the context of globalization and the kinds of multiplicities it produces.

The article about the music played in malls and its role in creating particular ways of being for the people that enetred the mall was useful for the same reason as Warner.

In general, the above articles provided paradigmatic frameworks and broad conditions to keep in mind when studying the social sciences in the time of globalization; as such they have a wide application and I will probably use them again in the future.