Transnationalism

The article is an introductory paper to a Special Issue in Moderna Språk that collects eight contributions focusing on demythologizations of cultural politics. Using Deleuzian concepts of minorization and delirium, the paper attempts to frame cultural difference in a new open terrain where all forms of localisms and regimes of identifications are seen as frames of capture that subjugate rather than emancipate difference. The measure of a culture’s health, I argue, does not reside in atrophy of its self-identity but in its dispersion of atoms everywhere, its schizoid states of intensities and deterritorializations where thresholds of self-consistency are surpassed and zones of indiscernibility entered. In this context, cultural difference could be seen as a permanent disjunction of territoriality, body or code, that which escapes capture to disrupt the self-valorizing forces of its enunciation, a kind of counter-pressure of synchrony in diachrony, a black body within the white imaginary that produces lesions and lines of escape in airtight regimes of definition and multiplies narrative ruptures in every narrative of constitution. With this mind, the paper then proceeds to introduce and analyze eight contributions to the volume that articulate cultural difference in a variety of contexts including translation, cuisine, media, water writing, punk literature, history, urban studies and protest art as well as more theoretically focused deconstructions of territorial fictions that cultural imaginaries rely on.

On the Shoulders of Grandmothers won the 2020 Mirra Komavrsky Book Award from the Eastern Sociological Society (ESS). Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic work with migrant grandmothers caring for the elderly in Italy and California and their adult children in Ukraine, On the Shoulders of Grandmothers investigates how migrant grandmothers built the “new” Ukraine from the outside in through transnational networks. By comparing the experiences of individual migrants in two different migration patterns—one a post-Soviet “exile” of individual women to Italy and the other an “exodus” of families to the United States—Dr. Solari exposes the production of new gendered capitalist economics and nationalisms that precariously place Ukraine between Europe and Russia with implications for the global world order. This global ethnography explains the larger context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Considering the African presence in China from an ethnographic and cultural studies perspective, this book offers a new way to theorise contemporary and future forms of transnational mobilities while expanding our understandings around the transformations happening in both China and Africa. The book develops an original argument and new theoretical insights about the significance of the African presence in Guangzhou, and presents an invaluable case study for understanding particular modes of transnational mobility. More broadly, it challenges forms of (re)presenting and producing knowledge about subjects on the move; and it transforms existing theorisations and critical understandings of mobility and its shaping power. Through an ethnographic approach, the volume brings us closer to a number of practices, features and objects that, while characterising the lives of Africans in Guangzhou, are also evidence of the interplay between individual aspirations, and the structural constraints embedded in contemporary regimes of transnational mobility. Raising critical questions about ways of (un)belonging in the precarious settings of neoliberal modernity and the future of African mobilities, this book will be of interest to scholars of transnational, African and Chinese Studies.

The recent literature on immigrant transnationalism points to an alternative form of economic adaptation of foreign minorities in advanced societies that is based on the mobilization of their cross-country social networks. Case studies have noted the phenomenon's potential significance for immigrant integration into receiving countries and for the economic development in countries of origin. Despite their suggestive character, these studies consistently sample on the dependent variable (transnationalism), failing to establish the empirical existence of these activities beyond a few descriptive examples and their possible determinants. These issues are addressed using a survey designed explicitly for this purpose and conducted among selected Latin immigrant groups in the United States. Although immigrant transnationalism has received little attention in the mainstream sociological literature so far, it has the potential of altering the character of the new ethnic communities spawned by contemporary immigration. The empirical existence of transnationalism is examined on the basis of discriminant functions of migrant characteristics, and the relative probabilities of engaging in these kinds of activities is established based on hypotheses drawn from the literature. Implications for the sociology of immigration as well as for broader sociological theories of the economy are discussed.

Current discourses about migrants and diaspora communities in Europe are often informed by a social worker's perspective and haunted by residual notions of supposedly pure and authentic cultures of origin. Between national entrenchment and transnational globalization, ethnic minorities are "imagined" as outsiders on a subnational level. The consequent othering of so-called "third" or "substate" cinemas by cultural producers, critics and policymakers is highly problematic. I therefore propose to reframe the discussion about such "minor" cinemas within a broader consideration of traveling cultures and global flows, of mobility between margin and center, between independent and mainstream productions, as well as crossovers between different genres and their reception across national boundaries.

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

With an emphasis on mobility, exchanges and interaction, performance art has often been situated beyond the borders of national art histories. Yet, despite its seemingly 'transnational' nature, performance art practices often draw upon nationally-rooted notions of community, site, history, participation and presence. This presentation reflects upon two research projects which I have developed; my doctoral research on performance art histories through the lens of British South Asian diasporic identities in Britain since the 1960s, and my ongoing postdoctoral research on the post-World War II histories of 'performativity' in contemporary art of Southeast Asia. It compares and contrasts the methodologies used in these two research projects. In doing so, it hones in on several ensuing questions: where do the 'transnational' elements of performance art reside - in the works themselves or the biographies of the artists? To what ends have the notions of mobility, migration and exchange been privileged in the study of performance art? What are some of the idiosyncratic ways in which artists consciously deploy performance to position themselves across international and national aesthetics, as well as socio-political practices?

NEW BOOK SERIES: Maritime Literature and Culture offers alternative rubrics for literary and cultural studies to those of nation, continent and area, which inter-articulate with current debates on comparative and world literatures, globalization and planetary or Anthropocene thought in illuminating ways. The humanities have paid increasing attention to oceans, islands and shores as sites of cultural production, while the maritime imagination in contemporary literatures and other cultural forms has presented ways of responding to human migration, global neoliberalism and climate change. This series provides a forum for discussion of these and other maritime expressions, including enquiries that engage maritime and coastal zones as spaces that enable reflection on labour and leisure; racial terror and performances of freedom; environmental wonder and degradation; metaphor and materiality; and the various implications of globe, world and planet.

This paper examines the idea that commercial law has the capacity to evolve spontaneously in the absence of a clear state authority because of its unique nature. I argue that the manner of interaction implied by commerce plays a crucial role in this ability as it involves a high degree of overall engagement. This I term “high engagement,” which I divide into two elements: repetition and the creation of clear cycles of interaction. Together they produce identifiable legal norms and subsequent compliance. Game theorists have long recognized the importance of repeated interaction in inducing cooperation; however, how the manner of commercial interaction itself facilitates this process has been left largely unexamined. Part I presents a brief overview of the concept of reciprocity and spontaneous law theory. In Part II, a more detailed explanation of the notion of high engagement is offered. Here I set out exactly how high engagement is instrumental in the emergence of legal norms. Finally, the paper concludes that the element of high engagement indeed plays a decisive role in commercial law’s ability to evolve and function in a decentralized, spontaneous fashion—an important insight in terms of the future international development of the modern law merchant as it emerges in the absence of a single legislative authority.

This volume contributes to an emerging field of German Asian studies by bringing together cutting-edge scholarship from international scholars in a variety of fields. The chapters survey the history of German-Japanese relations from 1860 to 2000, examining many facets of their dynamic, ever-evolving relationship. While the focus is on transnational encounters between Germany and Japan, the volume also acknowledges in some instances the usefulness of comparative studies. Moreover, by rejecting traditional dichotomies between the East and the West, the chapters gathered here highlight the rather intimate ways in which Germans and Japanese cooperated and negotiated the challenges of modernity in a range of topics that include culture, diplomacy, geography, history, law, literature, philosophy, politics, and sports.

This article claims that the emergence of television in the 1950s must be interpreted as a conservative media revolution. It aims at revisiting some of the popular narratives about the emergence of television as a revolutionary moment in media history and questions the newness of television in the European mass media ensemble. Focusing on a set of privileged sites of negotiation where the tensions between the conservative and modernising agencies of the medium became most visible or explicit, the article emphasizes the ambiguous and contested nature of television as a new medium. Finally, the author pleas for an integral approach to media history that studies the intermedial relationships and interdependencies between television and other mass media.

While still fragmented, we are witnessing the emergence of a global commercial legal order independent of any one national legal system. This process is unfolding both on the macro-level of state actors as well as that of private individuals and organizations. On the macro-level, the sources of this legal order are complex international agreements; on the micro-level, private contracts employing commercial customary practices and arbitration are driving this process forward. Yet there is no comparable evolution occurring (in any substantial sense) in non-commercial areas of law such as criminal, tort, or family law. There is an overall asymmetry in the development of transnational legal order. But why is this happening? This paper argues that the emergence of a global commercial legal order may be partially attributed to the unique structural nature of trade. The paper gives a structuralist account, positing that unlike legal order of a non-commercial nature, commercial legal order has built-in mechanisms that make it particularly suited to evolve in a transnational context—i.e. to evolve and sustain itself in the absence of a central legislative or coercive authority. The paper identifies and explores these built-in mechanisms. The paper concludes that because commercial legal order is uniquely predisposed to emerge without the State, we should expect this asymmetry to not only continue, but likely grow even more extreme.

This paper traces the life narrative of Cemal Bey, a Turkish-American entrepreneur who walks us through processes of institutionalization among Turkish immigrants in North America, and introduces us to an emergent Islamic network known as hizmet. Cemal Bey’s coming to the U.S over thirty year ago follows him joining an already existing community center in town and leading it, and later on becoming member of the regional Chamber of Commerce. In early 1990s, he gets introduced to a transnational religious movement, which facilitates his subsequent switch to a new community center in which he argues to have found like-minded individuals pursuing a common goal (dava). This network, which provides a narrative that embraces neo-liberalism, secularism, radical social movements, minority politics and interfaith dialogue, as well as Islam, also represents a mélange that becomes highly sought after in American politics after the September 11 attacks. Hence, hizmet becomes a well-marketed and rapidly consumed commodity by Turkish and American publics in North America.

However, hizmet’s emergence also comes at the expense of other institutions representative of Turkey in North America. The rise of hizmet affiliated institutions engender vocal resistance among those whose capacity to control the narrative is limited by the introduction of competitive actors. Cemal Bey’s story, therefore presents a window to analyze the ongoing clash over the semantic space of religion and the homeland between old and new actors. My research, which is based on ethnographic research conducted on two Turkish American institutions in a Midwest/North American town, provides snapshots from this clash.

This essay examines the historiography of international exhibitions, seen as geopolitical phenomena of modernity to which are associated the rise of middle classes, nationalist and colonialist movements, as well as an exhibitionary network connecting distinct spaces and times. Most of the recent studies analyses the repertoire and the pattern associated to these expositions, and their relationship with political, economic, social and cultural issues. This study stresses, among ongoing approaches, the Latin American work – still barely visible or integrated into a field which is already consolidated –, and suggests how its visibility can be improved.

In the aftermath of Eurozone crisis many politicians, scholars and EU leaders openly called for enhanced institutional reform and further EU integration in order to solve outstanding problems of the union. In that light the EU created the Europe 2020 Strategy with an aim to deliver smart and sustainable growths. The EU’s Digital Agenda for Europe is a flagship initiative of Europe 2020 strategy and it defines 7 priority areas as obstacles which will be tackled by the action plan in order to create unified digital Europe. One of the 7 priority areas is Digital Single Market (DSM) which aims to update the European Single Market for the digital era.
This thesis aims to examine how does the EU’s Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) advance EU integration.  Connectedly, it examines the effect of DAE on European integration based on the neofunctionalist theoretical framework. Accordingly, major focus of this thesis is devoted to investigation, conceptualization and operationalization, of multiple spill-over effects, namely: functional, institutional and political spill-over as core integrative mechanism behind the EU integration. In order to achieve the purpose of the thesis and examine the integrative mechanism behind the DAE this thesis utilizes theory testing process-tracing as main methodological approach. 
The significance of this thesis resides in highlighting the contemporary enhancement of EU integration within a specific sector in the modern, digital environment. Consequently, it emphasizes the functional EU integration in sectoral and vertical dimensions hence also reinvigorating the neofunctionalist theoretical framework of EU integration. Additionally, this thesis presents the defined goals and priorities of DAE which by implementing planned actions aims to significantly change the socio-economic environment of Europe and greatly impact ordinary citizen lives.

This paper begins to build a comparative framework for understanding the intersections and possibilities of Buddhism and the environment across sectarian and national borders. Even as groups like the International Network of Engaged Buddhists are attempting to frame a unified Buddhist position on environmental issues, Buddhists in different places are interpreting and adapting Buddhist teachings in ways specific to and meaningful in each society. Can the efforts of Buddhists to develop and implement an environmental ethic or activism in one location be translated into other Buddhist societies? Through two case studies – of the adaptation of a Buddhist environmental training manual in Theravāda Southeast Asia and the use of pilgrimage walks or Dhammayeitra to promote environmental awareness – this paper will critically examine the process involved in translating Buddhist environmentalism across sectarian, social, political, and economic borders.

This is a poignant moment to contemplate the sea, and mankind's relationship to it. The pressures of climate change and human activity—from large-­scale aquaculture to container shipping, from mineral extraction to deep-­sea exploration—have affected the oceans and the marine life on which we depend, usually not for the better. As Lincoln Paine conclusively demonstrates in this magisterial work, the seas are also a crucial, perhaps even central, point of focus in the story of human civilization. Paine opens the book by declaring that he wants to change the way we see the world--by re-orienting our attention to the three-quarters of the planet that is blue, and composing a longue durée history that places water, not land, at the center of global development and transformation. ...

The Popularization of Belly Dance in Toronto, Canada (1950-1990): Hybridization and Uneven Exchange Anne Vermeyden Advisors: University of Guelph, 2016 Dr. Femi Kolapo and Dr. Renée Worringer Belly dance was first performed publicly in Toronto during the late nineteenth century. While immigrants to Canada from the Middle East faced discrimination, white audiences could not get enough of stereotypical portrayals of danse du ventre. Hollywood further popularized the Orientalist image of the belly dancer, and beginning in the 1950s, star Middle Eastern dancers like Samia Gamal and Nejla Ateş were making appearances on Toronto stages. By the 1960s, American, Middle Eastern, and Canadian dancers were performing belly dance in Toronto’s hotel nightclubs and restaurants. During belly dance’s peak popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, multiple venues were running two belly dance shows a night, six days a week, and belly dance classes were so popular they were often waitlisted. Why and how did ...

This outline of the theoretical and historical parameters of my recently published Famine Irish and the American Racial State synthesizes the work of Nicos Poulantzas, Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and David Theo Goldberg, among others. In so doing, it advances a model of the nineteenth-century US state-in-formation that demonstrates how the legal status of the transatlantic Famine Irish took on greater significance than any cultural differences with White Anglo Saxon Protestant America. Key concepts are explored, such as citizenship, nationality, race, ethnicity, the fractional state, the racial state, and the Black and Green Atlantic. Introduced, moreover, is one of the most important yet most overlooked American patriots of the nineteenth century, Irish-born Archbishop John Hughes of New York, whose efforts helped to mold the corporate Catholic Church into a major ideological apparatus of the US state.

[Paper in Italian]
The discovery of an ancient borrowing from Arabic in the domain of religion (FAKRU, the "name" of the she-camel of prophet Saleh, derived from "FA-‘AQARU..." i.e. the starting words of the quranic verses containing this story) suggests that the oldest relations with Arabs were not limited to secular, commercial ties, but included religious instruction.

Videol-Link:
https://lisa.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/naturgemaelde_kulturforschung_kolonialprogramm_die_reisen_der_brueder_schlagintweit_in_indien_und_dem_himalaya?nav_id=8409

Die Forschungsreisen der drei Gebrüder Schlagintweit nach Indien und Hochasien während der 1850er Jahre im Dienste des preußischen Königs und der britischen Ostindienkompanie gehören zu den wichtigsten und zugleich kontroversesten Explorationsvorhaben in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Ihre Expedition führte zu einer einzigartigen Sammlung von Aufzeichnungen und Artefakten aus Süd-und Zentralasien-insgesamt über 40.000 Objekte der Natur-und Kulturgeschichte aus den bereisten Gebieten. Die Brüder gründeten mit den Sammlungen ein heutzutage vergessenes "Indisches Museum" im Schloss Monbijou in Berlin, das nach ihrer Rückkehr 1857 für einige Jahre fortbestand. In seinem Buch über die Reisen der Brüder Schlagintweit behandelt Moritz von Brescius neben der Rolle deutscher Forscher im kolonialen Indien insbesondere das soziale und wissenschaftliche ‚Innenleben' der heterogenen Expeditionsgruppe und arbeitet die eminente Bedeutung indischer Partner, Wegführer und Übersetzer für die Realisierung der Mission heraus. Sein Vortrag schließt mit Reflexionen über das enge Verhältnis der Schlagintweits zu Alexander von Humboldt, ihrem wichtigsten Förderer, und zum Konzept des Humboldt Forums.

Based on documents recently declassified by the Brazilian Truth Commission, this article investigates the economic and diplomatic relations between Brazil and Chile during the last years of Salvador Allende’s government and the first days of the Chilean military dictatorship. Despite the common sense notion that the United Stated was the one and only supporter of the Chilean September 11, the Brazilian influence was also instrumental to the overthrowing of Allende and to the confirmation of a military dictatorship in Chile. This article looks at two central figures of this process : the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Roberto Campos, and the Brazilian Ambassador in Santiago, Antonio da Câmara Canto. One of the most influential Brazilian economists, Campos disagreed with the state-based policies that characterized the Brazilian military regime. Instead of nationalization and price control, Campos believed in the strength of the free market and private institutions, a perspective similar to the one implemented by the Chicago Boys in Chile. Câmara Canto’s anti-communist ideas were central to his fight against the Allende regime and support to the dictatorship. These two figures are part of a much larger influence that, 40 years after the Chilean coup, begins to be investigated.

This paper looks at Bruno Nettl's analysis of comparison and the idea of a comparative method in ethnomusicology.  Drawing on research into alliances and affiliations between Indigenous artists and activists in Australia and PNG and their counterparts in the African Diaspora, it argues that historical ethnomusicology--or, a world music history--can be play an important role in the future of ethnomusicology and in decolonizing musicology at large.  Research for this world music history is of necessity multi-sited and comparative, though not in the ways that older structural-functionalist and structuralist projects were.

Evoking the painful failure of overcoming the fallout of centuries of slavery in the United States and conjuring up the specter of state-enforced apartheid in South Africa, “segregation” nowadays appears to be almost ubiquitously condemned, but at the same time seemingly impossible to eradicate. Looking at (primarily urban, spatial, ethnic) segregation from a global angle, this seminar will reveal that the phenomenon has indeed plagued a great many societies since 1500, albeit in varying degrees and changing forms. Starting from recent arguments by historians (esp. Nightingale 2012) that segregation was primarily the result of state action, this seminar looks beyond the classic cases of the U.S. and South Africa in order to ask to what extent we should understand segregation as a side effect of the history of increasing global connectedness. Moving from rarely studied examples, such as 17th-century Ayutthaya, to better-known cases of late 19th-century Atlantic immigration cities, such as Buenos Aires, the seminar thus seeks to tease out the reasons and consequences of urban ethnic unmixing through wide-ranging comparisons.