UC San Diego

"Imaginaries of Transnationalism: Media and Cultures of Consumption in El Salvador" is a study of how some peoples and narratives become transnational and global, while others are excluded from this condition. The dissertation examines the Salvadoran transnational imaginary by juxtaposing three research sites, spaces where Salvadorans come together and "make sense" of globalization: the "Departamento 15" section of the Salvadoran newspaper "La Prensa Gráfica," the growing bilingual call center sector in San Salvador, and shopping malls and cultures of consumption in San Salvador. Media, consumption, and migration practices become constitutive and central in the production of certain global subjects. Through interviews, media content analysis, and observation, I analyze these sites as emblematic of the interactions people engage in as part of daily life in a globalized world. The research sites relocate El Salvador in different ways within economic, social, and cultural dimensions of globalization. The shopping mall recreates the city even as it often turns its back on it, imagining and idealizing other times and places. The call center "exports" the voice of the Salvadoran employee, as this employee remains immobile. By retelling narratives of emigration and return to El Salvador, the newspaper re-spatializes the nation and incorporates the diaspora into the Salvadoran territory as a transnational "fifteenth department." While people can "freely" participate in these sites, however, the mall, the newspaper, and the call center are spaces of constraint and exclusion, where practices are regulated and people become particular kinds of subjects. Beyond a simple account of domination, however, this dissertation looks at these sites and practices closely, and asks how and why some media representations, work cultures, and ideas of language ability constituted in these sites have become part of the dominant narrative of globalization, while other narratives are marginalized. Ultimately this dissertation is about the implications of certain discourses of migration, commodity consumption, and media, and how these narratives become effective in the disciplinary dimensions of globalization