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Constructing Transnational Studies
By
Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College and Harvard University)
Sanjeev Khagram (University of Washington) 1
Introductory Chapter from The Transnational Studies Reader,
New York: Routledge Press, 2007.
Social life crosses, transcends and sometimes transforms borders and boundaries in many
different ways. Social movements mobilize constituencies around the globe on issues such as
human rights, gender justice, and family values campaigns. Many adherents of pan-Muslim,
Hindu, Christian, and other faith-based movements value their religious membership more than
their national or ethnic allegiances. Economies are organized around trans-continental
investment, manufacturing, and consumption chains. Associations set common standards for
professionals working around the world. Hip-hop “heads” in Gugulettu and Rio draw inspiration
from their Los Angeles counterparts. And Tandoori chicken has become one of London’s snack
food of choice.
The destruction of the World Trade, one of the most potent symbols of global capitalism,
by members of the cross-border Al Qaeda terrorist network is a striking example of the
“transnational” nature of the world.2
While the U.S. government’s response was to re-assert the
primacy of the nation-state, even a superficial analysis reveals that various transnational
phenomena and dynamics -- money laundering and criminal networks, trans-governmental police
coalitions, dispersed but linked diasporic communities, humanitarian civil society
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nongovernmental organizations, and multinational business initiatives – were at work pre- and
post-September 11th
.
These ostensibly novel transnational phenomena have clear historical analogues. One
need only think of colonialism and imperialism, missionary campaigns, anti-slavery and
workers’ movements, pirating networks, and jazz. Indeed, human social formations and
processes have always been trans-border and trans-boundary to varying degrees. Even
contemporary nation-states and the nation-state system have been transnationally constituted and
shaped over time and space in powerful ways.
Studying contemporary social dynamics by comparing experiences within or across
presumably bounded or closed societies or social units, whether they are localities, regions,
nation-states, empires, or world systems, necessarily comes up short. Cross-border forms and
processes are the focus of a burgeoning yet fragmented body of scholarship undertaken across the
social sciences.3
But the researchers working in these areas do not generally see themselves as
part of the same conversation. They study transnational corporations, religions, or social
movements in isolation from each other, without bringing to light the forms and patterns these
domains share. Because, as it turns out, transnational economic forms and processes have a lot in
common with their transnational political and religious counterparts, and these arrangements
challenge deeply held notions about citizenship, democracy, and identity, we believe a new optic,
which asks a different set of questions based on different epistemological assumptions, is called
for. Not all of the scholars we include in Transnational Studies (TS) would identify with or agree
with our intellectual agenda and, if they do, they are likely to disagree over its intellectual
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foundations. These differences, however, are as important to the vitality and prospects for
transnational scholarship as are the areas of overlap and agreement.
Based on an ongoing in-depth survey of scholarship to date, Transnational Studies
includes at least five intellectual foundations:
1. Empirical Transnationalism focuses on describing, mapping, classifying and quantifying
novel and/or potentially important transnational phenomena and dynamics. These
transnational processes are understood to be derivative of or stand in contrast to bounded
and bordered units, actors, structures and processes that are generally associated with the
local, regional, global or the nation-state system. TS uses comparative-historical and
ethnographic strategies to identify and explain similarities, differences, linkages and
interactions among different transnational phenomena. It looks at the social spaces in
which these emerge, what flows within them, and the mechanisms of transmission. It also
examines the differences between transnational and bounded forms and processes across
space and over time.
2. Methodological Transnationalism involves, at a minimum, reclassifying existing data,
evidence, and historical and ethnographic accounts that are based on bounded or
bordered units so that transnational forms and processes are revealed. Even more so, it
requires creating and implementing novel research designs and methodologies generating
new types of data, evidence and observations that more accurately and rigorously capture
transnational realities. This often requires utilizing non-traditional or multiple units of
inquiry, levels of analysis, and time frames. It means paying close attention to the
interaction between the levels of social experience rather than giving greater analytical
weight to one over the other.
3. Theoretical Transnationalism formulates explanations and crafts interpretations that
either parallel, complement, supplement or are integrated into existing theoretical
frameworks and accounts. In some cases, theories generated by TS complement
conventional theories by identifying and explaining previously obscured kinds of
phenomena and dynamics. In others, transnational theories elucidate some aspects of
these forms and processes better than traditional theories. Transnational theories may also
compete with explanations of phenomena and dynamics previously theorized in local,
national, international or global terms. Finally, transnational accounts might be
integrated with conventional explanations, which combined, produce more compelling
theoretical accounts.
4. Philosophical Transnationalism starts from the metaphysical assumption that social
worlds and lives are inherently transnational. In other words, transnational phenomena
and dynamics are the rule rather than the exception, the underlying reality rather than a
derivative by-product. Such a view requires an epistemological lens or way of
researching, theorizing, and understanding social relations that allows analysts to
uncover and explain the transnational dynamics in which bounded and bordered entities
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are embedded and by which the latter are constituted. Any explanation or interpretation
that does not inquire about, identify and explicate the proximate or deeper transnational
forms and processes involved would be incomplete. This does not mean that TS does not
enter into conversation with other philosophies of knowledge. Nor does it mean that
every questions evokes a transnational answer or that cross border forces and factors are
always at play. On the contrary, TS is purposefully framed to encourage encounters and
exchanges with other perspectives from the positivist to the interpretivist to the
constructivist. Its goal is to bring into sharp focus the interaction between different levels
and sites of social experience.
5. Public Transnationalism creates space to imagine and legitimate options for social
change and transformation that are normally obscured, by purposefully abandoning the
expectation that most social processes are bounded and bordered. By letting go of this
assumption, questions and problems can be reframed and innovative approaches may
come to light that are obscured when we assume that the national is the primary
organizing axis.
The first three pillars of TS are fairly common in the scholarly literature. The last two are less
well represented because they challenge conventional paradigms and praxis more fundamentally,
moving beyond dominant forms of scholarship, philosophical assumptions, and prescriptive
orientations.
In the next section, we begin to differentiate transnational scholarship from existing
perspectives and paradigms, distinctions we develop further throughout this article. We then lay
out Transnational Studies’ five intellectual foundations. We conclude by summarizing our
central arguments and proposing ways to create a social science community that is itself
transnational to achieve these intellectual goals.
Distinguishing Transnational Scholarship
Transnational scholarship is not entirely new nor does it argue for jettisoning completely
related research paradigms and perspectives. But, as Hannerz (1996) notes, it is a response to
both strengths and weaknesses in contemporary scholarship:
I am rather uncomfortable with the rather prodigious use of the
term globalization to describe just about any process or
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relationship that somehow crosses state boundaries. In themselves,
many such processes and relationships obviously do not at all
extend across the world. The term ‘transnational’ is in a way more
humble, and often a more adequate label for phenomena which can
be of quite variable scale and distribution, even when they do share
the characteristic of not being contained within a state. It also
makes the point that many of the linkages in question are not
‘international,’ in the strict sense of (only) involving nations –
actually, states – as corporate actors. In the transnational arena, the
actors may now be individuals, groups, movements, business
enterprises, and in no small part it is this diversity of organization
we need to consider. (At the same time, there is a certain irony in
the tendency of the term transnational to draw attention to what it
negates – that is, to the continued significance of the national.)
(Hannerz, 1996, p.6)
This view, which we associate largely with empirical transnationalism, and thus only a step in
the direction we wish to pursue, nonetheless provides an entry point into the potential
distinctiveness of transnational scholarship.
World systems and world society research, as well as more recent forays into
globalization or global studies, have much to say about aspects of transnational forms and
processes –particularly those that are transplanetary or at least transcontinental in scope. Few
can deny the World System’s Perspective’s role in intellectually de-centering the nation-state as
the predominant organizing principle of social experience. Building on this premise, World
Society scholars have compellingly argued that nation-states are constituted and conditioned by
worldwide cognitive and ideational scripts accounting for a range of formal institutions and
organizations otherwise poorly explained 4
But this “worldist” scholarship tends to equate all trans-border and trans-boundary
phenomena with planetary integration and worldwide isomorphism. Structures and processes
that are really quite different are depicted as comparable in strength and character wherever they
occur. Variations in scale and scope and the multi-directionality of flows and interactions is often
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overlooked. Even David Held who, with his colleagues, has developed some of the most
nuanced theoretical ideas and empirical analysis in this field, conceptualizes globalization as “a
process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of
social relations and transactions . . . generating transcontinental or interregional flows and
networks of activity, interaction, and the exercise of power” (Held et al, 1999, p.1).5
Globalist scholarship then, is often not fine-tuned enough to capture cross-border agents,
structures, and interactions that are not all worldwide in scope. It often assumes a level of
convergence and homogenization that does not occur. Furthermore, actors tend to be depicted as
so heavily constrained that they cannot possibly react against these universalistic systemic
forces. As Beverly Silver (2003) points out, for World Systems and World Society perspectives,
“local attributes and behavior are seen as the product of a unit’s location in the system. The
larger system has a steamroller-like quality, transforming social relations at the local level along
a theoretically expected path” (Silver, 2003, pp.25-26). Perhaps most importantly, much
worldist and globalist scholarship takes for granted the very existence of bounded or bordered
social units – particularly the “world” or the “nation-state” - and the structures and processes
associated within them.6
Research focusing on the local, that equates micro-territorial units with micro-cultural
communities, also contributes a great deal to the elucidation of transnational phenomena and
dynamics. Especially in this period of globalization frenzy, this scholarship reminds us of the
potential autonomy and enduring importance of other, personalized life-spaces. It drives home
the importance of the socio-historical context and the danger of making universalistic
generalizations that wash out critical shades of difference. It also demonstrates the continuing
importance of individual agency, local knowledge and cultural practices.7
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But while these studies produce richly detailed accounts of local territorial and cultural
spaces, they frequently overlook how broader social processes influence these localities. A great
deal is learned about a particular site and a particular time but not enough about how the “local”
is historically situated and connected to other levels and sites of social interaction. In contrast, a
transnationally-oriented problematic, answers the question so cogently framed by Arjun
Appadurai (1996), “What can locality mean in a world where spatial localization, quotidian
interaction, and social scale are not always isomorphic?” (Appadurai, 1996, p.167).8
Moreover,
a transnational lens opens up the possibility of conceptualizing the local or the micro in nonterritorial
terms such as an economic development project, the ‘cell’ of a broader criminal
network, the multi-sited patron saint day celebration, or a link in a larger commodity chain.
A transnational perspective does not assume away the importance of the global and local,
or the nation-state system form.9 10
It invites us to think about how these categories change when
we don’t assume that they are automatically linked to particular types of territory or space. It
pushes us to confront how taken for granted categories, such as citizenship and identity, change
when they are constituted across space.
Because the social sciences came of age in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during
an intense period of ‘national-state’ growth and legitimation, terms like “society”, “government,”
“democracy”, and “culture” carry with them embedded nationalist assumptions that impair our
capacity to grasp transnational forms and processes.11
Research on twentieth century business
development almost always uses comparative approaches that take the nation-state for granted
instead of conceptualizing firms and markets as parts of cross border networks of investment,
production, distribution, and exchange.12
Studies of religion and politics have been similarly
hampered, despite abundant evidence that movements as diverse as evangelical Protestantism,
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Roman Catholicism, freemasonry, trade unionism, and political progressivism ignore national
boundaries and create powerful transnational communities and identities.13
A number of scholars have called into question the widespread view that the social is
automatically organized into neat, nation-state containers (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997a; Sparke,
2003; Braithwaite and Drahos, 2000). Such a view obscures the many processes, relations, and
institutions that pre-date, cross, and transform borders and boundaries. It also gives too much
credence to the historically recent, uneven and incomplete articulation of the nation-state
system.14
Transnational Studies goes even farther by advancing the claim that the global, regional,
national, and the local can be analyzed through transnational methodological, theoretical, and
epistemological lenses. That is, in contrast to traditional perspectives, which see transnational
phenomena and dynamics as a subset of those occurring somewhere between the national and the
global, TS includes another, in some cases, more productive option. What are assumed to be
bounded and bordered social units are understood as transnationally constituted, embedded and
influenced social arenas that interact with one another.15
From this perspective, the world
consists of multiple sets of dynamically overlapping and interacting transnational social fields
that create and shape seemingly bordered and bounded structures, actors, and processes.
Thus, the terms “transnational” or “transnationalism” or “transnationality” are partly
misnomers, in that they imply that the only things we are interested in are dynamics across or
beyond nations, states, or within the (nation-) state system. We also mean something else. By
transnational, we propose an optic or gaze that begins with a world without borders, empirically
examines the boundaries and borders that emerge at particular historical moments, and explores
their relationship to unbounded arenas and processes. It does not take the existence of or
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appropriateness of a the spatial unit of analysis for granted. A transnational perspective is also,
therefore, a way of understanding the world, a shared set of questions and puzzles, and a
different expectation about what constitutes an acceptable answer. In some cases, cross border
factors figure only peripherally into the dynamics we are trying to explain. A key component of
a transnational approach, however, is to interrogate the territorial breadth and scope of any social
phenomena without prior assumptions.
At present, everyday and scholarly language does a poor job capturing transnational
dynamics. Nevertheless, a heuristically powerful set of ideas and options is emerging that helps
to clarify TS both conceptually and analytically. These intellectual foundations call into question
fundamental assumptions about a range of sociological concerns. In the following section, we
elaborate the components of a transnational perspective in greater detail.
Empirical Transnationalism
A first foundation of TS involves the identification, description, mapping,
quantification, and categorization of transnational phenomena and dynamics. Much of the
scholarship on transnationalism to date addresses these tasks. Transnational economic processes
and corporations, transnational social movements and nongovernmental organizations, and
transnational migration and communities have received the bulk of attention.16
There are also
growing empirical literatures on transnational misconduct and governance but less work on
subjects such as transnational religion, art and culture, and social stratification.17
Identification and description of a broad range of forms and processes, including ethnic
communities, religions, professional associations, and terrorist groups, are two essential tasks of
Empirical Transnationalism.18
TS also encompasses discourses, material flows, cultural
interactions, and artistic genres that are produced and exchanged across borders. It is concerned
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about what circulates, how it moves, and with explaining why certains ideas and practices take
root while others are ignored. For example, according to Leslie Sklar, a novel transnational
capitalist class has emerged which includes executives of multinational corporations, globalizing
bureaucrats and politicians, professionals, merchants and media that promote the globalization of
capitalism and an associated consumer culture.19
Mary Kaldor maps the transnational dynamics
of “new wars” waged by a range of non-state actors and processes including ethnic militias,
hawala financing, and U.N. peace-keepers.20
Jackie Smith and colleagues identified transnational
social movements while Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink described transnational advocacy
networks as sets of activists across at least three countries linked by shared principled ideas and
dense exchanges of information.21
Peggy Levitt and Sally Merry compared the translation of
global ideas about women’s rights in different local contexts.22
This descriptive work has generated useful generative classification systems. Consider
the following typology of transnational collective actors categorized by their central motivation.
Transnational corporations are organized around profit, social movements around moral values,
epistemic communities around scientific ideas, professions around technical expertise and shared
standards, and trans-governmental networks around common mandates.23
These groups can then
be sorted according to whether they employ physical violence. Like corporations, transnational
criminal organizations are motivated by material gain but unlike their profit-seeking
counterparts, they often use physical violence to achieve their goals.24
Like cross-border social
movements, transnational terrorists are likely to be motivated by powerful principled ideas, but
unlike their social movement counterparts, they often use violence to pursue them.
These analyses also point to the ways in which actors embedded in transnational social
fields occupy similar positions and fulfill similar kinds of roles regardless of whether they are
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involved in economic, religious, or political activism. In social movement organizations,
criminal networks, or firms, some people function as transporters and transmitters of new ideas
and practices, while others act as translators or transformers.25
They also bring to light patterns in
organizational form. Migrant and religious networks share many structural features with the
many money transfer networks that also operate across space. Bounded solidarity and
enforceable trust are at work in these very different social groups.
Methodological Transnationalism
To empirically map and categorize transnational phenomena and dynamics as we have
outlined requires new kinds of observations and new kinds of methods for collecting them. A
second intellectual foundation of TS – Methodological Transnationalism -- reformulates
existing data and accounts, invents new kinds of information and evidence, applies existing
investigative approaches in novel ways, and designs novel research tools and approaches
with which to analyze, explain and interpret transnational phenomena and dynamics.
Most existing data sets, historiographies, and ethnographies make transnational analyses
difficult if not impossible. They suffer from what is called “methodological nationalism” or the
tendency to accept the nation-state form, and even its contemporary borders as given. Many
surveys are based on national-state units and are designed to make comparisons between
countries. They were not designed to capture flows, linkages, or identities that cross or
supersede other spatial units or the phenomena and dynamics within them. Understanding the
regional identities generated in response to environmental crises, the trans-territorial
underpinnings of organized crime, or the existence of transnational stratification systems are
difficult because so few data lend themselves to these kinds of analyses. The researcher can only
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make inferences based on information from national (or other bounded) data sets that are
unlikely to reveal transnational dynamics easily or cleanly.
Transnational scholarship requires that data be collected on multiple units, scales and scopes
of analysis.26
Saskia Sassen’s identification of the global city, Paul Gilroy’s conceptualization of the
Black Atlantic, Arjun Appadurai’s notion of scapes are all examples of this kind of research. While
multi-sited and multi-level research is ideal for studying these interactions, transnational dynamics
can also be investigated by asking interviewees about the cross-border aspects of their identities,
beliefs, and activities, and those they are connected to, in a single setting.27
TS thus reorients
researchers away from traditional geographies of inquiry toward queries about the actual topography
of social life.
Transnational scholarship also requires methods that can capture the complex temporalities in
which particular dynamics or relations occur. Postmodern insights about time/space compression
challenge expectations about the relationship between geography and history.28
Transnational
scholarship builds upon these by employing life-cycle, cross-generational, long duree,
epiphenomenal, and cyclical types of temporal analyses.29
Transnational dynamics cannot be studied at one point in time because they involve multiple,
interacting processes rather than single, bounded events. For example, because transnational
migrants’ practices ebb and flow over long periods, a one-time snap shot misses how people
periodically engage with their home countries during election cycles, family or ritual events, or
climatic catastrophes --- their attention and energies shifting in response to a particular goal or
challenge. Studying migrant practices longitudinally reveals that in moments of crisis or opportunity,
even those who have never identified or participated transnationally, but who are embedded in
transnational social fields, may be mobilized into action.30
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Moreover, what makes the outsourcing of many high-tech service jobs to Bangalore and
other “high-tech” cities possible today is that when people are asleep in Silicon Valley, it is the
workday in South Asia and visa versa. The fact that, over the last fifty years, more and more South
Asians have been educated and lead professional lives that cross borders has also contributed to these
changing economic arrangements. Finally, even a brief foray into history drives home the necessity
of taking the long duree. Most of the contemporary territorially demarcated states did not even exist
at the turn of the 19th
century.31
In contrast to the current state of affairs in Iraq, for instance,
Baghdad was the center of a transcontinental regional political-economic field that existed in the 9th
century.
Beverly Silver’s research strategy for her book, Forces of Labor, on workers’
movements provides an exciting example of transnational methodological innovation. She
begins by engaging both the “encompassing comparison” utilized in world historical work and
long-standing comparative-historical methods for cross-national research. But, Silver argues,
these methods are inherently limited. They impede the analysis of relations between and among
allegedly separate units, they obscure local agency, and they are based on assumptions about the
type, if not characteristics, of the bounded units of analysis even though how these units are
constructed and transformed is a critical piece of the analysis. In response, Silver uses a
combined “incorporating comparison” research methodology and modified “narrative mode” of
causal analysis to capture how relational processes in space unfold in and through time.32
Theoretical Transnationalism
Methodologically innovative research contributes to and is shaped by theory and theory
building. A third intellectual foundation for the field of TS is to construct and test
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explanations and craft interpretations that either parallel, complement, replace or
transform existing theoretical accounts.
Many scholars recognize transnational phenomena and have proposed theoretical
accounts to explain them. Transnational theories interact with conventional theories in several
ways. In some cases, they are parallel exercises because they interpret or explain different
phenomena and dynamics. In other complementary cases, they do a better job at explaining
some aspects of the phenomena under study while traditional theories are better at explaining
others. Transnational theories also compete with accounts and models that are already well
developed in local, national, international or global terms. Finally, transnational scholarship is
sometimes used in combination with conventional conceptual frameworks to generate hybrid
theoretical accounts.
The academic enterprise is often about which theory wins. There is no question that
competitive hypothesis testing plays a vital role in the development of knowledge. In the 1970s,
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye introduced a “transnational relations” framework for mapping
world politics that highlighted the role of cross-border actors and interactions.33
Theirs was not a
theory of transnational relations but a pointing exercise which concluded that there were so many
anomalies in the dominant state-centric realist paradigm that conceptual revisiting was required.
They later elaborated a theoretical framework, in Power and Interdependence, that combined
realist and transnational ideas to develop testable hypotheses.34
Certainly, scholarly debates about the rise and fall of nation-states and inter-state
relations with other actors, structures and processes across time and space will continue for the
foreseeable future. Indeed, Arjun Appadurai in Modernity at Large argues that not only have
nation-states weakened but that the nation-state system itself is in crisis due to the influence of
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transnational phenomena and dynamics. Saskia Sassen writes of “denationalization” or the idea
that power, authority, and identity formation will migrate away from the nation state upwards
towards inter-state and even supra-state institutions and agencies and downwards to “global
cities” that are the geographical loci of dominant nodes of cross-border forms and processes.35
But, she also writes, that the “global” is transnationally, albeit variably, reproduced ideationally
and materially in the “national” and the “local,” meaning that the nation-state is qualitatively
transformed not just quantitatively weakened.
Thus, a transnational perspective involves multiple different types and forms of
theorizing and processes of theory development. Its goal is not to arrive at a single paradigm or
master narrative but to find ways to hold these different theoretical accounts and approaches in
productive conversation with one another. The world is too broad, deep, and complex to be
captured by just one theoretical apparatus. Instead, TS abandons that expectation, creating a
broad enough tent to tolerate the productive tension between, possible co-existence of, and
potential cross-fertilization among different theoretical frames.
Philosophical Transnationalism
The fourth jumping off point for the field of Transnational Studies is to adopt an
alternative set of ontological and epistemological assumptions about the nature of the world and
what knowledge consists of. Philosophical transnationalism is based on the metaphysical view
that social life is transnational to begin with --- transnational phenomena and dynamics are
the rule rather than the exception, the central tendency rather than the outlier.
Philosophical transnationalism rejects the notion that social life is automatically or
primarily organized within or between nations, states, or other types of bordered or bounded
social system containers. Unlike traditional social science, with its dominant “unit-ism” or
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“system-ism,” the ontological premise of TS is that social worlds are fundamentally crossboundary
and cross-border. A second premise is that social processes we assume to be bounded
and bordered are, as a rule, embedded in and influenced by cross-border and cross-boundary
phenomena and dynamics. Thus, scholarship should focus on the production of social difference
and differentiation rather than investigating or comparing nations, societies, or cultures that are
assumed to be whole.36
Philosophical transnationalism does not deny the importance of bounded or bordered
social groups. Rather, one of the central meta-theoretical puzzles it attempts to solve is why
certain boundaries arise to begin with and how are they reproduced and perpetuated. A
transnational ontology assumes, for example, that the emergence of the nation-state system is
historically idiosyncratic -- a set of social facts that needs to be explained and interpreted.37
It
takes a similar approach to allegedly national religions and the transnational religious
communities to which they belong. The local, regional, national, and global are not automatic,
taken-for-granted social arenas but categories to be investigated as constructed and oftencontested
social facts. Rather than privileging one analytical layer over another, a central focus is
to excavate the interaction between them.
Furthermore, a transnational ontology is based on the assumption that social phenomena
and dynamics take place within (and across) transnational fields. Pierre Bourdieu used the
concept of fields to call attention to the ways in which relations of power and meaning structure
social interactions.38
Sociological institutionalists theorize and examine organizational fields of
various kinds.39
Most recently economic sociologists and social movement theorists have
proposed the notion of “strategic action fields.”40
While this work does not rule out the
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possibility that these fields are transnational, it does not directly and systematically address that
possibility either.
The Manchester School proposed a notion of social field similar to Bourdieu which
acknowledged that the migrants they studied belonged to tribal-rural localities and colonialindustrial
cities at the same time. Migrant networks stretching between these two (or more) sites
constituted a single social field created by a network of networks. By understanding social
relations in this way, these researchers introduced levels of analysis underneath, across, and
beyond the study of the individual, the community, the colony, and even the empire.41
Building on Bourdieu and the Manchester School, some transnational migration scholars
define social fields as a set of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships through which
ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and transformed. Social fields are
multi-dimensional, encompassing interactions of differing forms, depth, and breadth, such as
organizations, institutions, and movements. National boundaries are not necessarily contiguous with
the boundaries of social fields. National social fields are those that stay within national boundaries
while transnational social fields involve direct and indirect relations and dynamics across borders and
boundaries that may or may not be national.42
A transnational ontology goes hand and hand with a transnational epistemology. In order to
describe, explain, interpret, theorize, and alter assumptions about the nature of social worlds,
expectations about how social worlds can be known and understood must be rethought.
Philosophical transnational scholarship, building on ontological transnationalism, probes the extent to
which cross-border dynamics are at work and attempts to explain variations in their strength and
scope. Any analysis that does not take the possibility of transnational processes into account, while
potentially useful and even illuminating, is likely to come up short. For example, Tamara Kay’s
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work demonstrates that changes in transnational rather than national political systems and institutions
stimulated alliances among workers in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.43
Howard Winant’s
work on the dynamics of race relations over time highlights the analytical purchase gained by using a
transnational lens and William Julius Wilson explains the decline of African-American inner-city
communities with an implicitly transnational explanation.44
Public Transnationalism
A fifth entry point into Transnational Studies is a more open ethical and prescriptive
approach to scholarship. Public transnationalism creates a space to imagine options for
social transformation that are obscured when borders, boundaries and the structures,
processes and actors within them are taken as given. By calling into question borders and
boundaries, and the assumption that the nation-state is the automatic container within which
social life occurs, TS opens up a range of possibilities for political positions and praxis that
might otherwise be obscured.
TS fits squarely within the social science’s renewed commitment to forging stronger links
between theory and praxis and academics and practitioners because it tries to go beyond
description, analysis, and understanding to practice.45
It rejects the false neutrality characterizing
much scholarship. Rather than ignoring the hard set of ethical and practical questions that
research poses, it embraces them. At the same time, TS does not begin from a prescribed
political position nor does it assume that transnational solutions are automatically best. Rather,
an integral part of TS is to go beyond description, analysis, and explanation and specify the
range of policy choices indicated by research findings. Ann Marie Slaughter’s work on
transgovernmental networks, which argues that a critical element in producing stability in world
affairs are the links that bureaucratic agencies form across disaggregated and decentralized
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states, is an excellent examples of this kind of scholarship. 46
Luis Guarnizo’s work on the
macro-economic impacts of migrants’ micro-level transnational economic activities is another
case in point.47
Nikos Passas’s work on the unintended negative consequences of nation-state
and inter-state regulation of informal money transfer systems, like Hawala, is another example.48
Toward this end, TS is deeply concerned about the power dynamics underlying social
relations. It pays careful attention to ways in which explicit ideological and methodological
assumptions skew the questions that get asked, the answers that are proposed, and the practices
that are pursued. It does not assume, for example, that everything originates and flows from the
west and north but that the direction, intensity, and effects of global cultural flows is an empirical
question. There are innumerable examples of various kinds of “brokers,” “gatekeepers,”
“travelers,” “bridgers,” and “diffusers” contributing to the transnational spread and
transformation of norms and practices, as well as promotion of greater cross-cultural
understandings.49
The resources, skills, and mobilization generated in one setting can be
successfully applied to another. The often purposeful and targeted transnational diffusion of
ideas and practices under the rubrics of good governance, accountability, and democracy are
increasingly utilized tools. But these transfers are by no means one way. Ideas about microcredit,
participatory budgeting, or good water use can be and have been systematically spread
from South to North and East to West. Thus, public transnationalism does not equate
transnationality or transnationalization with global westernization or Americanization. It does
not assume that everything originates and flows to the rest of the world from the west and north.
Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King and Ceasar Chavez in the United States, for
example, were clearly inspired by the strategies Gandhi used in South Africa and India.
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Rather than clinging to or trying to re-coup a world in which the nation prevails, TS
wants to understand how citizenship, governance, human security, and cultural diversity, among
others, change when we assume a world that is transnationally constituted. Moreover,
transnational forces are clearly not a factor in every case. If we find, for example, that centralized
states are better at alleviating human suffering and at promoting sustainable and equitable
development, then scholarship and praxis should pursue that route. If research reveals, however,
that novel, multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral forms of transnational governance are more
effective, then it is our responsibility to embrace that perspective.
Towards a Transnational Studies Perspective
Taken together, the five interacting components of TS offer an exciting set of intellectual
foundations for this field. They provide grist for rethinking taken for granted categories like
identity and membership. While not every scholar will work across all five, we believe they
constitute a rich menu for research, theory, and action. We do not wish to imply there is a value
hierarchy between these five elements. Rather, each can be understood as one point that, when
connected, represent a pentagonal field of possibilities. Furthermore, we believe that productive
research programs can be formulated within this intellectual space.
The task of Transnational Studies is to uncover, analyze and conceptualize similarities,
differences, and interactions among trans-societal and trans-organizational realities,
including the ways in which they shape bordered and bounded phenomena and dynamics
across time and space.
This research can take several possible directions. We elucidate some exciting
possibilities here. Ongoing research by Federico Besserer and Michael Kearney provides one
excellent example. They began by studying indigenous migrant communities across different
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parts of Mexico and the United States. Their respondents are transnational because they live
across various cultural and territorial borders and because they have always been at the
interstices of symbolic and political boundaries (as subaltern citizens of Mexico, for example).
They are neither global nor national nor local.
Besserer and Kearney soon realized that the discourses and practices they uncovered
could not be understood without taking into account trans-regional economic dynamics and the
political relations between local, state, and federal-level actors in all three countries. In addition,
the human rights campaigns in the communities they studied borrowed heavily from the
transnational nongovernmental advocacy networks these groups worked with. Moreover, their
pre-Mexican indigenous governance systems had been extended across territories.50
Thus, a first type of inquiry arising from a transnational perspective involves analyzing a
particular type of transnational form or process across space. There is already some evidence
that we find similar types of transnational migrant community dynamics in Europe and the
United States but would we also find them in South Africa or Brazil? How do the
transnationally-constituted experiences of people who migrate internally within a country and
those who move across close or even contiguous borders within regions like Africa, Eastern
Europe or the Caribbean compare to those who move from “south” to “north”?51
How do
transnational religious practices vary across social contexts? Why is a much greater share of
remittances from overseas Chinese directed towards business investment compared with that of
non-resident South Asian Indian groups?
A second type of research examines a particular type of transnational form or process
across time. How do contemporary human rights or environmental movements compare to the
anti-slavery and labor movements of the past?52
How do historical state responses to pirating
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networks compare to governmental attempts at controlling transnational terrorism?53
Why do
transnational infectious diseases and invasive species seem so prevalent in some historical eras
and contexts but not in others? Scholarly exchange on the differences between transnational
migration of the late 19th
century with that of the late 20th
century is a particularly productive
example of this type of scholarship.
A third type investigates different kinds of transnational activities. Transnational
business, crime, professional, social movement, religious and migration networks all cross
borders but to what degree are their forms and activities like one another? Why do individuals
join profit-making transnational corporations as opposed to violent transnational terrorist groups?
What explains why different transnational groups interpret universal discourses, norms and
strategies cast in universalistic terms in distinct ways (Hall and Biersteker, 2002; Josselin and
Wallace, 2001)? Are the factors that lead to “local” adoption of transnational fashion the same
as that of transnational professional practices?
A fourth type examines interactions among transnationalisms. Some transnational forms
and relations operate in isolation while others complement or subvert each other. Under what
conditions do transnational epistemic communities alter the activities of transgovernmental
networks? The social and financial organization of Al Qaeda provides another striking example.
Its legitimacy and capacity depend, in part, on its social embeddedness in transnational extended
family, kinship and religious communities. Its complex financial organization combines legal
philanthropic and commercial concerns and illicit and criminal activities on a trans-continental
scale.
A fifth type compares and contrasts transnational phenomena and dynamics with those
that are ostensibly tightly bounded and bordered. How, for example, do the forms and
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consequences of internal migration from the Peruvian highlands to the capital, Lima, compare to
those resulting from international migration from Lima to Barcelona, Spain? What difference
does it make for people’s everyday lives when they identify primarily with domestic unions
rather than transnational labor federations? How does the way in which local small firms think
about business responsibility compare to the ways in which multinational corporations approach
these issues?54
A related and sixth type of analysis explores transnational phenomena and dynamics that
allegedly compete with or supplant local, national, state, and global entities, with those that
complement, interact with or transform them. Trans-continentally organized economic activities
often replace nationally organized production arrangements while transnational civil society
organizations are more likely to engage, influence and be shaped by domestic social movement
organizations. Commodity chains relegating aspects of the production process to the far corners
of Southeast Asia replaced the factories that produced entire shoes in Lynn, Massachusetts. In
contrast, Indonesian or Argentine human rights organizations often link up to transnational
advocacy networks. Their domestic activities complement and are complemented by these crossborder
partnerships. Similarly, some argue that the Mexican government’s program to issue
consular identity cards to Mexican migrants in the United States (so they can obtain driver’s
licenses and open bank accounts) is a transnationally-organized political intervention that
disrupts the sovereignty of the U.S. state. Others see this as a logical manifestation of the
Mexican governments’ continuing responsibility for emigrants.
A seventh set of questions shifts the focus to the ideas, behaviors, symbols, and material
culture that circulate through the networks and organizations embedded in transnational social
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fields. These researchers are concerned with what travels and how it changes throughout its
journey, the mechanisms and actors involved in transmission, and the determinants of impact.
How are transnational values and meanings articulated so that they make sense to local actors?
What are the channels through which these cultural products flow? How do the ways in which
issues are framed and the topographies through which they travel affect their portability and
adoption? N. Rajaram and Vaishali Zararia found differences in how Indian women’s groups
translated the same global discourses. One used moral/ethical language or, what they called a
Gandhian-approach, because it resonated powerfully with the Gujarati context. The other
stressed women’s rights discourse’s international roots and connections precisely because they
provided resources and tools not available locally.55
What is the comparative advantage of
framing particular issues in particular ways?
A Map of this Volume
Transnational Studies is clearly driven by a different set of assumptions about the world and
expectations about knowledge than most traditional scholarship. Since a central premise is that not all
theories can do all things, and that more productive insights come from combining or contrasting
different theoretical explanations and interpretations, its goal is to uncover the heuristic power of
these theoretical interactions. One of its primary concerns, in fact, is to understand the intersection
and collision of the many layers of relations, perspectives, and cosmologies.
A transnational perspective, therefore, allows for a creative interaction between different
philosophies of knowledge -- from positivism to post-modernism and from interpretivism to
constructivism – in contrast to the all-too-common polarized and un-productive stalemates that arise
when producing a single type of theoretical explanation is the goal. Those interested in formulating
testable and potentially falsifiable hypotheses will find ample room within this optic. But there is also
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support and encouragement for post-modern critiques of “regimes of truth” that mask unequal power
relations. Both this expectation about the nature of social worlds, of reality, and what we expect of
scholarship that sheds light on it, reflect a set of beliefs about what academic interaction is capable of
and responsible for doing. Instead of trying to artificially contain or clean-up complexity and
constructive conflict, a transnational perspective embraces, encourages, and facilitates it.
The success of this approach ultimately depends on the transnationalization of the social
sciences. Clearly, there is already a good deal of scholarly exchange between and among
scholars across borders and boundaries. But, in many ways, just as field building is constrained
by rigid disciplinary boundaries, so U.S. and European scholarship is hindered because they
build selective bridges to particular times and places. For one thing, a select group of primarily
western scholars are usually the ones who participate. When people from the South or the East
are included, they often do so as junior partners. Access to resources and opportunities among
non-Western scholars is limited, and the legitimation process unequal because the English
language predominates. The community of scholars within TS will be much more productive
and successful to the extent that it becomes transnational itself. This requires casting a broader
net and encouraging a wider range of collaborative partnerships structured on more equal terms.
Indeed, we may learn how to do this through our studies of the transnational phenomena that
concern us.
The goal of this book is to lay out the intellectual foundations for this optic, to start a
conversation between scholars who have not always seen themselves as talking about the same
things, and to begin bringing to light relationships and patterns that make us understand social
life differently by bringing together all of these voices and topics. It is also to highlight an
alterative set of ontological and epistemological expectations that drive our inquiry and guide our
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understanding of the relationship between research and praxis. Our selections are admittedly
idiosyncratic. These are the pieces that influenced each of us independently to see the world in
very similar ways, despite our very different positions as a migration and religion researcher and
a scholar of politics and social movements. They are written by scholars from across the
disciplines. They concern a wide range of topics. They employ all kinds of social science
methods. And, taken together, they suggest a different way of seeing the world and of changing
it.
1
This is a co-authored paper, jointly conceived and written by both contributors. Support has
been generously provided by the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations, The John F.
Kennedy School of Government, The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, The
Wellesley College Faculty Research Fund, Atlantic Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, The
Rockefeller Foundation, The National Science Foundation, and The Stanford Institute of
International Studies. Earlier versions were presented at the Hauser Center, University of
California Davis Sociology Colloquium, Brown University Seminar on Anthropology and
Demography, and the Princeton University Center for Migration and Development. We would
like to thank the following people for their comments: John Meyer, Suzanne Shanahan, David
Kyle, Joseph Nye, Jonathan Fox, Peter Dobkin Hall, Xavier Briggs, Viviana Selizer, Gabriele
Bammer, Sally Merry, Nadya Jaworksky, and Josh DeWind. Correspondence should be sent to
plevitt@wellesley.edu.
2
The hearings and conclusions of the 9-11 Independent Commission appointed by President
George Bush have been particularly fascinating in this regard. One of the most revealing
N ot for Citatio n
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sentiments conveyed was that what happened on 9-11 was “completely beyond our imagination”.
Perhaps if those officials had a set of conceptual and analytical tools which brought transnational
dynamics to light, these events would not have been so inconceivable.
3
See among others: John Angnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space, Territory and
Political Economy, (New York: Routledge, 1995); Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and
Christina Szanton-Blanc, eds., Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class,
Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1992);
Michael Peter Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, eds., Transnationalism from Below (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1998); Peggy Levitt, Transnational Villagers (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001); Peggy Levitt and Mary Waters, eds., The Changing Face
of Home (New York: Russell Sage Publications, 2002); David Kyle, Transnational Peasants:
Migrations, Networks, and Ethnicity in Andean Ecuador (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2000), Aiwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationality (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1999); Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Moser, eds., New Approaches to
Migration: Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home (London: Routledge,
2001); Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and
Transnational Feminist Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Nancy
Abelmann and John Lie, Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections:
Cultures, People, Places (London: Routledge, 1996); Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph and James
Piscatori, eds., Transnational Religion and Fading States (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997);
Thomas Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back in: Non-State Actors,
Domestic Structures, and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
N ot for Citatio n
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1995); Daphne Josselin and William Wallace, eds., Non-State Actors in World Politics (New
York: Palgrave, 2001); Jackie Smith, Charles Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco., eds., Transnational
Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse
University Press, 1997); Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders ( Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1999); Ann Florini, ed., The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational
Civil Society (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000); Sanjeev
Khagram, James V. Rikker, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., Restructuring World Politics:
Transnational Social Movements, Networks and Norms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2002); Sanjeev Khagram, Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water
and Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist
Class (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001); various issues of the journal: Transnational
Organized Crime (London: Frank Cass, 1995-); Nikos Passas, Transnational Crime (Brookfield,
VT Ashgate, 1999); Ann Marie Slaughter, “The Real New World Order,” Foreign Affairs 76, no.
5 ( September/October 1997); Alejandro Portes, Luis Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt,
“Introduction: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field,” Ethnic and Racial Studies
22 (1999): 463-478; Alejandro Portes, William J. Haller, and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo,
“Transnational Entrepreneurs: An Alternative Form of Immigrant Economic Adaptation,”
American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 278-98; Luis Guarnizo, Alejandro Portes, and William
J. Haller, “Assimilation and Transnationalism: Determinants of Transnational Political Action
among Contemporary Migrants,” American Journal of Sociology 108 (2003): 1211-48; Christian
Joppke and Ewa Morawska, eds., Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal
Nation-States (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Peggy Levitt, Josh DeWind, and
Steven Vertovec, “Transnational Migration: International Perspectives,” A Special Issue of
N ot for Citatio n
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International Migration Review 37, (2003): 566-75; Nina Glick Schiller and Georges Fouron.
Georges Woke Up Laughing (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). Kivisto, Peter, “Theorizing
Transnational Migration: A Critical Review of Current Efforts,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24
(2001): 549-577. Brenda Yeoh, Katie Willis, and S.M. Abdul Khader Fakhri, “Introduction:
Transnationalism and its edges,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26 (2003): 207-217; Roger
Waldinger and David Fitzgerald, “Transnationalism in Question,” American Journal of
Sociology 109 (2004): 1177-95; Paul T. Kennedy and Victor Roudometof, Communities Across
Borders: New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures, (London & New York: Routledge, 2003);
and Katharyne Mitchell, “Cultural Geographies of Transnationality,” in The Handbook of
Cultural Geography, eds. Kay Anderson, Mona Domosh and Steven Pile (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 2003).
4
For world systems, a key source is Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) and the classic reference for world society
studies is George M. Thomas, John W. Meyer, Francisco Ramirez and John Boli, Institutional
Structure: Constituting State, Society and the Individual (Newbury Park: Sage, 1987). For an
early volume that includes both approaches, see Albert Bergesson, ed., Studies of the Modern
World System, (New York: Academic Press, 1980). Of course, much more has been produced in
these scholarly traditions over the last quarter century. It is important to note that a great deal of
the “dependency” scholarship of the 1970s departed from an overly rigid adoption of world
unitism or systemism. We would consider much of the latter work to be firmly part of the field
of TS and highly recommend Alain de Janvry’s, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin
America, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), chapters 1 and 2, for an
excellent intellectual review of the world systems and dependency literatures.
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5
Of the vast literature of variable quality on globalization, see also Frank J. Lechner and John
Boli The Globalization Reader (Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), as
well as Federick Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, The Cultures of Globalization, (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1998).
6
It is revealing to note that a portion of the scholarship that uses the language of globalization,
globality or globalism does in fact take cognizance of multi-directionality, crossborder/boundary
phenomena and dynamics that are not necessarily transcontinental or planetary,
as well as agency and variation across levels, scales and scopes. Unfortunately, the language that
is utilized tends to either obscure these factors and facets or inadequately theorizes them. For
two of the better, albeit not fully successful attempts of linking ideas of globalization and
transnationality, see Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), and Saskia Sassen
Globalization and It Discontents (New York: The New Press, 1998).
7
The list of localist scholarship that includes village studies, community studies, neighborhood
studies and so on is voluminous, making it virtually impossible to cite here.
8
Some “localist” scholars certainly do a better job at taking transnationalisms into account. In
particular, see the selections in Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds., Culture, Power, Place:
Explorations in Critical Anthropology,” Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, in particular.
See also, Sarah J. Mahler, American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1995); Luin Goldring, “The Mexican State and Transmigrant
Organizations: Negotiating the Boundaries of Membership and Participation,” Latin American
Research Review 37, no. 3 (2002): 55-99; Raquel Parrenas, “Mothering From a Distance:
N ot for Citatio n
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Emotions, Gender, and Intergenerational Relations in Filipino Transnational Families,” Feminist
Studies 27, no. 2, (2001): 361-391.
9
By no means does this imply that other units such as regions are unimportant – indeed, the
growing scholarship on various forms and kinds of regionalism is particularly useful in
explicating transnational phenomena and dynamics.
10
In addition to the voluminous work on regional (especially European) integration in sociology
and political science see, for example, John Angnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space,
Territory and Political Economy; Matthew Sparke, “Between Post-Colonialism and CrossBorder
Regionalism,” Space and Polity, 6(2), 2002, 203-213; and T. Courchene, “Globalization:
The Regional/International Interface,” Canadian Journal of Regional Science, XVIII, 1995, 1-
20.
11
This linking of knowledge and institutional orders around the “national-state” has had a
profound impact on scholarship. See James Scott, Seeing Like a State, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998) and John Lie, Modern Peoplehood, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2004).
12
Virtually the entire sub-field of economic sociology has explicitly or implicitly taken the
nation-state form and even more so contemporary countries for granted as the obvious units of
analysis if not objects of study. See Harrison C. White, Markets from networks: socioeconomic
models of production, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Neil Fligstein, The
architecture of markets: an economic sociology of twenty-first-century capitalist societies,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Mauro F. Guillén, The new economic
sociology: developments in an emerging field, (New York: Russell sage Foundation: 2002); and
N ot for Citatio n
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Mark S. Granovetter and Richard Swedberg, The sociology of economic life, (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1992).
13
The key social movement texts until recently are all domestic or comparative-national in
orientation, for example: Sidney F. Tarrow, Power in movement : social movements, collective
action, and politics, (Cambridge: University Press, 1994); Doug McAdam, Sidney G Tarrow and
Charles Tilly, Towards an integrated perspective on social movements and revolution, (New
York: Lazarsfeld Center at Columbia U, 1996); and Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and
Mayer N. Zald, Comparative perspectives on social movements: political opportunities,
mobilizing structures, and cultural framings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Although there is an ample body of work on religion and globalization (see, for example, Peter
Beyer, Religion and Globalization (Thousand Oaks and London: Sage Publications, 1994) and
Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage, 1992)),
scholars have only recently begun to formulate a transnational perspective on religion and there
is little agreement about what that perspective actually entails. See, for example, Rudolph and
Piscatori, Transnational Religion; Anna Lisa Peterson, Manuel A. Vásquez, and Phillip J.
Williams, eds., Christianity, Social Change and Globalization in the Americas (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 2001); Manuel A. Vasquez and Marie F. Marquardt, Globalizing the
sacred: religion across the Americas (New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, 2003);
Peter Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (London: Routledge,
2001); Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, Migration, diasporas, and transnationalism
(Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA : Edward Elgar, 1999); Cecilia Menjivar, “Religious
Institutions and Transnationalism: A Case Study of Catholic and Evangelica; Salvadoran
Immigrants,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 12 (1999): 589-612;
N ot for Citatio n
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Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Genelle Gaudinez, Hector Lara and Billie Ortiz “There’s a Spirit
that Transcends the Border”: Faith, Ritual, and Post-national Protest at the U.S.-Mexico Border.”
Sociological Perspectives 47 (2004): 133-160; Jeremy Stolow, “Transnationalism and the New
Religio-Politics: Reflections on a Jewish Orthodox Case.” Theory, Culture, and Society 21, no. 2
(2004): 109-137; and Willfried Spohn, “Multiple Modernity, Nationalism, and Religion: A
Global Perspective,” Current Sociology 51, no. 3/4 (2003): 265-286.
14
For perhaps the best work along these lines that could be considered transnational scholarship,
see Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1975), and his, Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-
1990, (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990). See the growing literatures on sovereignty, for
example, Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, State sovereignty as social construct
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Stephen D. Krasner’s Problematic
sovereignty:: contested rules and political possibilities (New York: Columbia University Press,
2001) as well as Sovereignty: organized hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999).
15
There is thus an interesting set of overlaps between the Sociology of Transnationalism and
Cultural Studies, particularly with regard to borderland and post-colonial studies. See, for
example, Gloria Anzaldua and Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, “Goddess across the Taiwan Strait:
Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints. Public Culture 16,
no. 2 (2003): 209-238; Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, “Toward New Imaginaries: An
Introduction,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 1-19; Inderpal Grewel, “Traveling Barbie: Indian
Transnationality and New Consumer Subjects” Positions 7 no. 3 (Winter 1999): 799-826. Partha
Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation? Or Within? Social Text 56 (Autumn 1998): 57-69; Hilary
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Cunningham and Josiah McC. Heyman, “Introduction: Mobilities and Enclosures at Borders,”
Identities 11 (2004): 289-302. 2004; and Edward Soja. Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities
and regions (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000).
16
The literature on transnational corporations has a very long history indeed. For an important
contribution, see George Modelski, ed., Transnational Corporations and World Order: Readings
in International Political Economy (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979). For
two key books from the dependency tradition, see Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto,
Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)
and Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local
Capital in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). More recently, see Susan
Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class.
17
For transnational popular cultural production, see Juan Flores, From Bomba and Hip Hop:
Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Doris
Sommer, Bilingual Aesthetics: a New Sentimental Education (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2004); Deborah Pacini Hernández, Héctor D. Fernández-L’Hoeste and Eric Zolov, eds.
Rockin’ Las Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America (Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004); Helena Simonett, Banda: Mexican Musical life across
Borders (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001); Lisa Parks and Shanti Kumar,
eds., A Global Television Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Peter
Hitchcock, Imaginary States: Studies in Cultural Transnationalism (Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2003); Ulf Hedetoft and Mette Hjort, eds., The Postnational Self.
(Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Neil Lazarus, Nationalism and
N ot for Citatio n
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Cultural Practice in the PostColonial World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
and Walter D. Mignolo, Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
18
Some of the early transnational scholarship focused on social forms and processes that
were initially seen as novel or particularly important in the contemporary period. Data were
assembled to demonstrate the dramatic rise in transnational corporations, their expanding share
of economic activity, and their growing capacity to shape social reality in various parts of the
world. It was “discovered” that revolutionary and “ethnic” violent conflicts (most of which
actually cross country borders or are “transnational” in other ways) far outnumbered inter-state
wars between 1946-1999. Differences between transnational coalitions, networks and social
movements constituted largely by nongovernmental or social movement organizations were
identified. Transnational migrants’ identities and memberships were examined and documented.
But as Roger Waldinger and David Fitzgerald (2004) rightfully note, transnational scholarship
must be careful not to reproduce, “the familiar antinomies of social science, most notably that of
a ‘closed’ past and ‘open’ present…” Moreover, much of the work of empirical transnationalism
has focused to date on phenomena that are or are understood to be by-products of the nation-state
system which unnecessarily limits Transnational Studies’ potential analytical reach.
19
Sklair, Transnational Capitalist Class, pg. 22. Of course, work in the dependency tradition
long ago posited the existence of transnational classes and class alliances.
20
Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2001).
21
Smith et al, Transnational Social Movements; Keck and Sikkink, Activist Beyond Borders.
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22
Levitt, Peggy and Sally Merry. “Translating the Global into the Local: The Case of Women’s
Rights.” Paper Presented at Wellesley College Conference, August 2006.
23
See Sanjeev Khagram and Sarah Alvord, “Locating Contemporary Progressive Civic
Transntional Advocacy,” in L. David Brown and Srilatha Batliawala, eds., Claiming Global
Power: The Transnational Civil Society Reader, Westport, CT: Kumarian Press, forthcoming.
24
Of course, many firms do use physical and other forms of violence so the difference between
transnational corporate citizenship and corporate criminality is often a fine line…
25
Peggy Levitt and B. Nadya Jaworsky, “Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments
and Future Trends.” Annual Review of Sociology (2007).
26
Systems thinking, when not rigidly applied, might be particularly usefully utilized.
27
Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: Theorizing Society from
a Transnational Social Field Perspective,” International Migration Review (2004).
28
See David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers,
1989).
29
See Fernand Braudel, On History (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), as well as Susan
Eckstein and L. Barberia, “Grounding Immigrant Generations in History: Cuban Americans and
Their Transnational Ties,” International Migration Review 36, no 3 (2002): 799-838.
30
Levitt and Glick Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity.”
31
Enrique Dussel, “Globalization, civilization processes, and the relocation of languages and
cultures,” In Jameson and Miyoshi, Cultures of globalization.
32
Sliver, Forces of Labor, especially pgs. 25-40.
33
See Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., eds., Transnational Relations and World
Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
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34
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in
Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).
35
This is very similar to Strange, The Retreat of the State, as well as numerous others.
36
Gupta and Ferguson, Culture, Place, Power.
37
Tilley, The Formation of National States in Western Europe.
38
See Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).
39
See Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational
Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), and Richard W. Scott, Institutions and
Organizations (Denver, CO: Sage Publications, 2001).
40
See Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam, “Politics, Culture and Action: An Essay on Collective
Strategic Action,” unpublished manuscript.
41
Morawska, “Immigrant Transnationalism.”
42
See also Khagram, Dams and Development on transnational fields.
43
Tamara Kay, “Labor Transnationalism and Global Governance: The Impact of NAFTA on
Transnational Labor Relationships in North America,” American Journal of Sociology,
forthcoming.
44
Howard Winant, The World Is a Ghetto (New York: BasicBooks, 2001) and William Julius
Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books,
1997).
45
See for example, Michael Burawoy, “Public Sociologies: Contradictions, Dilemmas, and
Possibilities.” Social Forces 82, no. 4 (2004): 1603-18 and Craig Calhoun. “Word from the
President: Toward a More Public Social Science.” Items and Issues 5 (Social Science Research
Council Quarterly), no 1-2 (Spring/Summer 2004).
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46
Ann Marie Slaughter, “Real New World Order.” See also Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S.
Nye, Jr., “Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations,” World Politics 27: 39-
62.
47
Luis Guarnizo, “The Economics of Transnational Living,” International Migration Review 37,
(2003): 666-700.
48
Nikos Passas, Informal Value Transfer Systems and Criminal Organizations; a study into socalled
underground banking networks, Onderzoeksnotities, The Hague, WODC, no. 1999/4.
49
See Joe Brandy and Jackie Smith (eds.), Coalitions Across Borders: Transnational Protest and
the Neoliberal Order (Lahman: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), especially pp. 240-243.
50
Among their many individual and joint publications, see Federico Besserer and Michael
Kearny, Mixtepec: Ethnografia Multilocal de una Communidad Transnacional Mixteca (Mexico
City: Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, 2001).
51
See, for example, Mika Toyota, “Contested Chinese Identities Among Ethnic Minorities in the
China, Burma, and Thai Borderlands,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26, no. 2 (2003): 301-320.
52
See Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Khagram et al, Restructuring World
Politics; Silver, Forces of Labor, and Kay, Labor Transnationalism among many, many others.
53
It is interesting to note that indigenous peoples and pirating networks of the 18th
and 19th
century were the only other non-state entities besides contemporary transnational terrorists
against which federal governments declared war since U.S. independence in 1776. Of course,
governments of many countries (such as the Tamil/Sinhalese conflicts in Sri Lanka) have been in
long and protracted violent conflicts with transnational non-state groups (revolutionary,
liberation, ethnic, etc.) of various kinds. For a more general perspective, see Thomas W. Gallant,
“Brigandage, Piracy, Capitalism and State-Formation: Transnational Crime from a Historical
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World Systems Perspective,” in Josiah McC. Heyman, ed., States and Illegal Practices, (Oxford:
Berg, 1999), 25-61.
54
It has been argued that local businesses, because they are socially embedded in communities,
are likely to act with greater responsibility and that transnational corporations that are
comparatively disembedded are more likely to fit the ideal-typical profit-maximizing firm, in a
Polyani-esque way.
55
Rajaram, N. and Vaishali Zararia. “Reducing gender injustice in a globalizing world:
challenges in translation of women’s human rights in Baroda, India.” Paper presented at
Wellesley College conference, August 2006.