There exists a widely-shared opinion among anthropologists today that globalization is first and foremost a creative process that allows new cultural forms to emerge through cultural contact, hybridization, diasporas, transnational networks, travel and so on (Inda and Rosaldo 2002). Many ethnographies emphasize the fact that the so-called traditional communities are negotiating, challenging, appropriating and contesting Western cultural products in diverse and meaningful ways (such as Aboriginal peoples watching Hollywood videos). At the same time, it is argued that non-Western societies are establishing new links and connections that skip the West altogether (such as Indian movies consumed in Nigeria). Instead of a gloomy picture of homogenization, culture loss and Euro-American hegemony, sociologists, anthropologists and material culture specialists insist in the bright side of globalism and argue that there is nothing to be worried about in the encounters propitiated by the new means of communication and transportation. After all, cultural contact has been around for a few millennia already and cultures have always been changing under different pressures, influences and sources of inspiration. In the case of material culture studies, the prevailing paradigm has it that there is large room for negotiating and reinscribing in manifold ways apparently homogeneous industrial products (i.e. Coke), as opposed to the dark perspective on modern technology defended by late 19th and early 20th century philosophers – both to the right (Heidegger) and to the left (Benjamin) of the political spectrum (Miller 1987).
With other critics (Graeber 2002), we argue that this is a sanction of neo-liberalism and late capitalism – the forces under globalization. With LiPuma (2002), we think that it is still the West that is imposing itself everywhere and not the other way round (Hernando 2006; González-Ruibal 2006). That under the misguiding appearances of creativity and cultural negotiation, there is a very real process of destruction fostered by the Western world. Neocolonialism (we call it for what it is, rather than superficially ameliorating past transgressions with the prefix ‘post’) is not more natural, creative or acceptable than colonialism. Many anthropologists, sociologists and material culture specialists that have chosen to understand globalization from a cultural point of view seem to have forgotten macro-politics and long-term processes. Archaeology, in our opinion, can offer an alternative view – but also from within, starting from details and fragments. Archaeology focuses on ruin, the abandoned, the decaying, the abject. It exposes genealogies, it is concerned with ‘origins,’ accentuates links, flushes out processes. It excavates beyond the surface, both metaphorically and literally.
In what follows, we study a well-known fact – how consumption in the West translates into a destructive bane in the Third World – from an archaeological perspective. By tracing the genealogies of a piece of furniture or a building material, we uncover the violence that lurks behind everyday, seemingly mundane ‘objects,’ “creatively” consumed by the privileged citizens of the (first) world.
