Mazzarella and the Media of Self-Representation

Mazzarella asserts that mediation is a constitutive process of social life. It is ubiquitous, informing the ways in which we interpret and understand each other and ourselves. Mazzarella is interested in the relationship between mediation and globalization. How does one culture portray itself when it contact with another? Do differences and similarities become exacerbated or reduced? Does Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities ring true? This question must be asked with forces of globalization constantly entangling cultures. Specifically, Mazzarella looks at the affects of literature and cinema, as well as internet and newer technologies.

Commonly, in academia concerns regarding the affects of globalization on culture are discussed. Mazzarella on the other hand believes that globalization has the potential to revitalize the discipline of anthropology, because mediations of representations emerge in informants’ lives and work. For example, in Anthropology 200 I watched a documentary about the Kayapo. When anthropologists were working with the Kayapo to create an ethnographic film, they started to notice that the subjects were controlling the ways in which they were being portrayed. Through mediation, they were able to construct the individuals in such a way that they believed reflected positively upon their tribe. Once anthropologists recognized the ways in which the Kayapo were actively participating in mediation, they decided to try an experiment; they gave film equipment the Kayapo to they could film self-documentaries. The Kayapo were then able to fully control the process of mediation and portrayal of their social life, in a way best suited to them.

Globalization creates a constant struggle between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization; something cultural anthropologists cannot seem to agree upon. Is globalization in fact, causing cultures to become more similar or are new cultural lines being drawn to divide groups? Mazzarella argues that the process of globalization is revealing conceptual problems at the core of our assumptions about what a “culture” actually is. A culture is not bound. Rather, a culture comes into contact and interacts with other cultures, causing the culture to further constitute itself. As Mazzarella puts it, mediation involves a dual relation; simultaneous self distancing and self-recognition. The way in which a culture is mediated enables and constrains the control and dissemination of information in particular and specific ways.