The Rumor of Globalization: Globalism, Counterworks and the Location of Commodity

Abstract. This article seeks to document the vernacular perceptions of ‘globalization' in rural Bengal (India) and, in that connection, seeks to rethink some long-held western
notions concerning commodity, consumption, representation, the nature of sociality and the politics of democratic empowerment in the third-world. In the subaltern imaginary, images seem to play a crucial role conductive to empowerment. Also, far from resisting globalization and consumption, the rural poor seems to have assimilated these into their vernacular cosmology.

Keywords: Globalization, local/global, ‘commodity fetishism’, consumption, spectacle, simulacrum, gift, democracy, governance, ‘Subaltern Studies’, community, personhood.