ABSTRACT
Perhaps one day it will strain credulity that theories of imperial domination and cross-cultural exchange were once marginal to ethnomusicology. This chapter discusses post-colonial theory and the literature on globalization, two important and related bodies of thought with which ethnomusicologists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were intellectually and ethically compelled to engage. Their responses took several forms, including an interest in colonial history and capitalism, the analysis of the global circulation of technologically mediated popular musics, and attention to the musics of diasporic communities. The chapter sketches the historical context for post-colonial thought and debates about globalization, summarizes key works and concepts in these areas, and surveys recent ethnomusicological scholarship on these topics, suggesting ways in which scholars in our field have contributed to the larger, transdisciplinary conversation on cultural processes in the post-colonial, globalized world.
