The Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture Pages 389-401

        In this section of the book visual culture is taken into a broader sense and looked at on a global scale. The globalization of communication technologies over the past few decades has shown that global image flows may allow "an increased circulation of concepts, ideas, politics, and images, but this also helps to foster the growth of multinational corporations and the expansion of political influence by powerful nations over distant domains with fewer resources" (pg. 389). The idea of global scale, globalization, and images are all closely related. With things like satellites we are able to get images of the world. A global presence is thus created and the whole globe is connected. Certain images not only provide the visual pleasure of looking at an interesting image, but also provide information about current changes in environment, in historical ways, in political ways, etc. These images, especially satellite images, are great tools in the global sphere. There are so many ways to use these images to help us understand things; to understand the global movement of culture for example was have to define imperialism. Cultural imperialism "refers to how an ideology, a politics, or a way of life is exported into other territories through the export of cultural products" (pg. 397). In a sense it's like another way of broadcasting. This way of transmitting ideas, ideologies, concepts, etc. globally isn't anything new. When everyone knows what is going on in the world, increased globalization of media helps to confirm national ideologies giving people a sense of participation in the audience.