Week 7

Guillermo Gomez-Pena's article, with its discussion of North/South vs. East/West and the nature of border culture, made me wonder about the role that globalization plays in defining cultural geography. For example, he describes the shift from an East/West mindset to one of North/South and how there are "hundreds of types of Latino American art in the United States. Each is aesthetically, socially, and politically specific" (21). This idea of how we define and categorize our views of the world and its cultures made me think about the idea of globalization, something we discussed in the first week. Many subscribe to the idea that new information and technology are "shrinking" the world, allowing a diverse range of people to communicate more closely than ever before. However, I wonder how this idea fits in with Gomez-Pena's ideas of geography. What does globalization do to borders? Shift them? Decrease their significance? Increase it? Similarly, how does it affect culture? Do cultures become more similar to each other, or do we get a wider range of subcultures like the ones that exist within Latino art?