Transnational Studies SOC 783

B. Nadya Jaworsky Room 3.59 Office Hours: Mondays 16.00 – 17.00 Tuesdays 14.00 – 15.00 Conditions for passing the course:

1. Short (1-page) written responses to readings (you post these to the homework vault each week by Monday 8.00)

2. Oral presentation/Discussant Leader

3. Final essay (3,000-5,000 words)

4. Written final exam (take-home)

Coursework will be evaluated as follows:

25% - reading, responses and class participation

15% - oral presentation/discussant performance

25% - written exam

35% - academic paper

WHAT’S DIFFERENT at the end of the 20th century?

• the globalization of capitalism with its destabilizing effects on less industrialized countries;

• the technological revolution in the means of transportation and communication;

• global political transformations such as decolonization and the universalization of human rights; and

• the expansion of social networks that facilitate the reproduction of transnational migration, economic organization, and politics. SOCIAL FIELDS a set of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and resources are unequally exchanged, organized, and transformed METHODOLOGICAL NATIONALISM

the tendency to accept the nation-state and its boundaries as a given in social analysis

RACE (according to Winant) • one of the central ingredients in the circular and cumulative causation of modernity.

• the key element in RACIAL FORMATION is the link between significance and structure, between what race means in a particular discursive practice and how, based upon such interpretations, social structures are racially organized.

• the task is to develop a racial formation approach in a world-historical perspective: global racial formations

• historical time as “racial long duree.”

In Mexico: From Zambahiga and Mestiza From Black and From Spaniard and Indian, Quadroon, Quinterón, Mulatto, Indian, Cambujo From Spaniard and Zambo Mestizo From Cambujo and Black, In the French colonies: From Mestizo and Mulatto, Mulatto From Griffe and Black, Spaniard, Albarazado From Spaniard and Sacatra Castizo From Albarzado and Mulatto, From Black and From Castizo and Mulatto, Quadroon, Quinterón, Mulatto Spaniard, Barcino From Spaniard and Griffe Spaniard From Barcina and Mulatto, Mulatto and Griffe, From Spaniard and Mulatto, Quinterona, Marabon Black, Coyote Requinterona White and Black, Mulatto From Coyote and From Spaniard and Mulatto From Spaniard and Indian, Mulatto, White and Mulatto, Mulatto, Chamiso Requinterona, White Quarteron Morisco From Camisa and People White and Quarteron, From Morisco and Mestizo, From Mestizo and Metif Spaniard, Coyote Indian, White and Metif, Albino From Coyote Mestizo Cholo Meamelouc From Spaniard and and Mulatto, From Mulatto and White and Meamelouc, Albina, Go no further Indian, Quarteron Look the other way Chinese White and Quarteron From Indian and Look In Peru: From Spaniard and Sang-mele the other way, From Spaniard and Chinese, Wolf Indian, Chinese Quadroon From Wolf and Indian, Mestizo From Black and Indian, Zambahiga From Spaniard and Zambo Howard Winant Paul Gilroy

PAUL GILROY

“The specificity of the modern political and cultural formation I want to call the Black Atlantic can be defined, on one level, through [a] desire to transcend both the structures of the nation state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity. These desires are relevant to understanding political organizing and cultural criticism. They have always sat uneasily alongside the strategic choices forced on black movements and individuals embedded in national and political cultures and nation-states in America, the Caribbean, and Europe.” Arjun Appadurai

Ethnoscapes - the landscape of persons who make up the shifting worlds in which we live: tourist, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers, and other moving groups and persons. They constitute an essential feature of the world and appear to affect the politics of and between nations to a hitherto unprecedented degree. Deterritorialization •a growing variety of social activities takes place irrespective of the geographical location of participants (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

•the severance of social, political, or cultural practices from their native places and populations (Oxford Pocket Dictionary of English)

•Deterritorialization is the complex movement or process by which something escapes or departs a given territory (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus)

•Deterritorialization idealistically posits the ability to be unanchored from any specific historical obligation (Deleuze and Guattari, Anti Oedipus)

India Cabaret, 1985 Appadurai’s “Scapes”

•Ethnoscapes •Mediascapes •Technoscapes •Financescapes •Ideoscapes • Is what Appadurai talking about really new? • Or is it like an extension of Anderson’s imagined communities? • Considering only the space of central Europe, with its wars, ethnic groups movings, formations and reformation of minorities as a consequence of changing borders, we experienced deterritorialization not only in 20th century, but in Middle Ages etc. Europe has always been, following assumption of philosophical transnationalism, changing so I think that deterritorialization can´t be described like something exclusively modern. • Is it possible that Appadurai’s theory is influenced by the fact that the author is a member of a strong migration stream from India to the USA and he overestimates deterritorialization?

• One example of cultural reproduction that I find interesting with these Indigenous populations is the trend of wearing Moccasins or other traditionally Indigenous attire which have become a main stream fashion trend in department store’s in North America. This appropriation of imagery I find fascinating in what it means of non-Indigenous populations to capitalize on the traditions of these populations in the City Centre’s where their bodies struggle to survive. • In conclusion, although the history and social relationship of populations is changing and being influenced on a greater Global level how does effect the populations who continue to be marginalized within their local communities? Is the example of Indigenous traditional attire becoming a fashion trend a reflection of trans- national influences? Is this a positive thing or an exploitative capitalist venture?

• What really surprised me in the reading was on the one side emphasizing of transnational studies (Chapters 1 and 5) and unreflexive overuse of terms like “civilized” (Chapter 13) and “high cultures, sophisticated” (Chapter 14)

• Is it true that the nation-state is a structure that has long been viewed as a fixed point, particularly in the areas of social security, safety and functioned as a safeguard of democracy? • Is it true that we have not found any other and better arrangement than the nation-state?

• What does mean “transnational dynamics” and what does mean that social world is inherently transnational? Maybe it would be better to say that social world does not have boundaries. Transnational means “transcending nation” and “nation” is only empirical (or analytical) bordering of social phenomenon. We should constitute trans familiar, trans ethnical (that is what Appadurai does in his article) or trans European.

READINGS – WEEK 3

• Chapter 29, pp. 333-338 in TS Reader (Bhabha) • Chapter 31, pp. 342-346 in TS Reader (Canclini) • Martiniello, Marco, and Jean-Michel Lafleur. 2008. "Ethnic Minorities‟ Cultural and Artistic Practices as Forms of Political Expression: A Review of the Literature and a Theoretical Discussion on Music." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34:1191-1215. • Sheringham, O. "A Transnational Space? Transnational Practices, Place-Based Identity and the Making of 'Home' among Brazilians in Gort, Ireland." Portuguese Studies 26:60-78. • Levitt, Peggy. 2012. “The Bog and the Beast.” Ethnologia, forthcoming (20 pp.) Syllabus

•1st Seminar: Definition of Key Terms and Broad Foundations - What is „Transnationalism‟? •3rd Seminar: Historical Perspectives •4th Seminar: Identity; Arts and Culture •5th Seminar: The Diffusion of Values, Norms and Meanings •6th Seminar: Religious Life across Borders and Transnational Islam •7th Seminar: No class – reading period •8th Seminar: Migration •9th Seminar: Corporations, Classes and Capitalism •10th Seminar: Non-state Actors, NGOs and Social Movements •11th Seminar: Security, Crime and Violence (focus on terrorism) •12th Seminar: Methodological Practices – what does it mean to use a „transnational lens‟ to study social phenomena? •13th Seminar: What is the future of „transnational studies‟?