The story of the ship-in-a-bottle: Encountering strangeness and familiarity through a globalised object

Research output: Contribution to Book/ReportChapterpeer-review

Abstract

This chapter speaks to Chris Rumford’s thought on globalisation and strangeness, as well as to the colonial encounter and its presence in the current day. It also reflects his influence and encouragement to use storytelling as a mode of drawing out analysis, especially that of objects. The ‘story’ of the ship-in-a-bottle will unfurl via ethnographic vignettes – a seaside town resident who longs for the days before immigrants arrived, and a Chinese manufacturer keen to gain the best profit margin from sales to the West. These will ground a discussion of the place of strangeness and familiarity in the current globalised and globalising era. Specifically, this discussion will focus on the multiple experiences of globalization embodied by one single object, thus challenging the ‘one-world’ hypothesis by allowing a view from China in to the (typically) Eurocentric debates on globalisation. It will also question what best to do with experiences of strangeness, and to what extent the comfort of familiar things is acceptable in a globalised world.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPolitical Sociologies of the Cultural Encounter
Subtitle of host publicationEssays on Borders, Cosmopolitanism, and Globalisation
EditorsBarrie Axford, Alistair Brisbourne, Sandra Halperin, Claudia Lueders
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter6
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9780429345029
ISBN (Print)9780367347314
Publication statusPublished - 11 Sept 2020

Publication series

NameRoutledge Studies in Global and Transnational Politics
PublisherRoutledge

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