Jordanscapes: A Preliminary Analysis of the Global Popular

Abstract

Over the last decade, a voluminous debate has evolved around the concept of globalization, prompting Featherstone and Lash (1995) to identify this multifaceted phenomenon as replacing modernity and postmodernity as the central thematic within current cultural theorizing (for example, see Appadurai, 1990; McGrew, 1992; Robertson, 1995; Wallerstein, 1990). In light of this claim, the goal of this paper is to examine the interconnections and disjunctures that distinguish the complex relationship between global media and local meaning within the context of contemporary transnational sport culture. Specifically, the paper uses Michael Jordan—a vivid example of the “export to the entire world” (Kellner, 1995, p. 5) of much of America’s commodity-sign culture—as a vehicle for critically exploring the relationship between globally mediated cultural products, and the cultural contingencies of three markedly distinct localized contexts. Such a task will be realized by reconstructing Jordan’s location and significance within particular domains of contemporary New Zealand, Polish, and British cultures. In this way, we hope to provide a preliminary analysis of the global-local nexus as it pertains to the transnationally imaged and commodified expressions of American sporting culture.