SPECTACULAR CITIES

Plenty has been written on globalization to understand what it is. However scholarship on globalization tends to segment it into either economic globalization in the form of flows of capital investment and goods; cultural globalization in the form of fast food Barbie dolls and migrant landscapes; or political globalization in the form of erosion of the nation state. This book explores spectacular landscapes of the Akshardham temples in Gandhinagar and Delhi in India and Atlanta Dallas Houston in the U.S.to understand globalization as it unfolds in a culture-economy synthesis. Adopting Marxian dialectical method this book explores how culture economy and spectacular urban landscapes work in tandem to produce globalization through migrant narratives migrant temple complexes Vedic boat rides and theme park religious complexes. The book therefore is as much an exploration of the dialectical stance in social theory and geography as it is a Marxist feminist critique of the spectacular commodification of the urban form.