This dress is being sold from Maehongsorn, Thailand.
Esty seems to bridge the gap between old and new styles of commodities, as well as cultural boundaries that exist between different continents. The Internet allows the idea of Cosmopolitanism in which, “diverse and remote cultures have become accessible, as signs and commodities, via our televisions, radios, supermarkets, and shopping centres” (158) to expand and become even more available to the masses. Perhaps with the emergence of online spaces like this, the world can begin to create a type of global culture, in which everyone has the opportunity to decide which cultural place they want to embrace that day. However, one can’t help but wonder what the implications of such a popular, global marketplace would be.
A global marketplace, in theory, sounds like a welcoming attempt at a world version of the American melting pot. However, the chances that every culture involved would be accepting of blending together in order to create a dynamic that fostered a worldwide consumer society, is unlikely. Perhaps it would become “a series of overlapping, overdetermined, complex and chaotic conditions which, at best, cluster around key ‘nodal points’” (159), better able to produce an atmosphere of competition and angst rather than community and global culture.
If a global marketplace and universal culture seem to be based on “metaphors of uncertainty, contingency, and chaos” (159), then the idea of cultural homogenization and fragmentation must come into question. Could the success of Etsy create a future in which diversity is absent? Could the above-pictured dress from Thailand and owl from Belgium come together to represent a single type of people? Perhaps it already has. If one understands that “the current direction of global consumer capitalism is such that it encourages limitless needs/wants… thus [realizing that] the global and the local are relative terms” (162), then the only type of culture any Belgian of Thai needs is that of consumerism. In the end, maybe regardless of if someone buys a DVD box set from America, or a vintage doll from Brazil, the simple fact that currency is being transferred from one person to another, creates a common bond that cannot be broken.
This very bond is the issue that Anthony Giddens presents when he “explores the generation of meaninglessness as an aspect of what he calls ‘the sequestration of experience…’ [which] involved the separation of day-to-day life from contact of sickness, madness, criminality, sexuality, and death that raise potentially disturbing existential questions” (165). Through opening up an immense amount of Internet space dedicated solely to shopping, and making that available to the entire world population, the amount of time spent in front of a computer can reach an all-time high.
So, sure, Etsy gives people the opportunity to sample what the world has to offer, without even having to take a step out of the bedroom. In some ways, that can prove to be quite beneficial. However, if everyone begins secluding themselves perhaps it could be the beginning of a global financial and emotional breakdown. Tourism could slow to a stop, the need to frequent shopping malls and restaurants might dwindle, and people would forget how to communicate verbally… and then how would people cope? Maybe a balance between global Internet markets and actual experience is what everyone needs. Having E Bay, Amazon and Etsy, among other Internet shopping sites could be making things, simply put, too easy.
Word Count: 786
Works Cited
Barker, Chris. "A New World Disorder." Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage, 2008. 152+. Print.
