NEWS
Transnational Studies Reader Published in November of 2007
In recent years, 'transnationalism' has become a key analytical concept across the social sciences. While theoretical approaches to the study of global social phenomena have traditionally focused on the nation-state as the central defining framework, transnational studies views social experience as a complex and dynamic product of multiple regional, ethnic, and institutional identities. Far from being static or bounded by national borders, social, political, and economic forces operate on supra-national, trans-regional, and trans-local scales and scopes. Transnational studies compares and contrasts these dynamics to rethink assumptions about identity, sovereignty, and citizenship. Assembling writings from some of the most important theorists in history, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, The Transnational Studies Reader explores the ways that transnational practices and processes in different domains, and at different levels of social interaction, relate to, and inform each other. It also compares the spatial organization of social life during different historical periods. Coherent in its vision and expansive in its disciplinary, geographic, and historical coverage, The Transnationalism Reader is a field-defining collection.
New Book Examines the Transnational Dynamics Which Shape and Transform Religion
God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape, by Peggy Levitt, The New Press, 2007. Immigration is at the heart of many heated national conversations. Immigrants make up one-quarter of the American public along with their American-born children. They are not only transforming cities like Houston and Atlanta, they are remaking suburban and rural America as well. One side argues that they steal jobs, overuse services, and hold values that are antithetical to the American way. Immigrant supporters counter that they do jobs the native-born don’t want to do, stimulate the economy, and enrich our cultural heritage. My study of four immigrant communities in the U.S. and their home communities in Pakistan, Ireland, Brazil, and India revealed several very fundamental ways in which these debates are out-of-sync with our national reality. They do not reflect dramatic shifts in the social landscape that are transforming the nation. They also fail to fully grasp the strong connection between changes in immigration and changes in religious life. When we talk about how religion influences American culture and politics, we still really mean Protestantism. When we think about what religion is, where we look for it, and how it works we tend to think in national terms. Today’s immigrants, however, are remaking the religious landscape by introducing new faith traditions and Asianizing and Latinoizing old ones. By doing so, they make American religion just as global as our economy and politics and fundamentally transform what it means to be American.
February and March 2007: Mixing it Up: Mapping Identity through Art
In the twenty-first century, more and more people belong to several communities in several places at one time. They are redefining the boundaries of belonging, creating new kinds of memberships and citizenships that can potentially challenge long-standing class and power inequalities.
To explore these concepts, the Transnational Studies Initiative hosted three community events to explore the creation and management of the artistic and cultural products of transnational identities and examine how they are positioned with respect to ethnic and homeland art. The series examined the artistic and cultural life of three immigrant communities in Massachusetts—Chinese, South Asians, and Latinos—and how these are connected to their communities of origin. Each event will begin with a short presentation by an artist who uses his/her medium to explore the intersection of art, identity and homeland and will be followed by a discussion led by a facilitator.
Thursday, 2/15/07, 7-9 pm
The Josiah Quincy Elementary School Auditorium, 885 Washington St., Boston
Spoken word artist Giles Li’s work revolves around themes of civil rights concerns, hate crimes, election reform and youth organizing. www.gilesli.com.
Thursday, 3/1/07, 7-9 pm
Cambridge YMCA, 820 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge
Author Samina Ali’s novel Madras on Rainy Day explores the identity conflicts confronting Layla, a second generation Indian-American Muslim. Ali received the Rona Jaffe Foundation and Barbara Deming Memorial awards for fiction.
Thursday 3/15/07 , 7-9 pm
Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center, 85 West Newton Street, Boston
Visual artist Miguel Luciano’s work addresses both playful and painful exchanges between the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Luciano resides in Brooklyn and teaches at El Puente, a Latino Cultural Center for Human Rights.
India-based Researcher Examines Grassroots Movements Around the World
This research study-cum-book project by Srilatha Batliwala examines grassroots movements that have linked up across borders, focusing on the differences and dynamics within transnational civil society. The study/book comprises five in-depth case studies of grassroots movements that have federated across national borders – slum/shack-dwellers, street vendors, home-based workers, grassroots women, and marginal farmers – and one "counter-case", that of the European Roma. The case studies are used to critique the current gamut of social movement theory, particularly as pertaining to transnational struggles. This project is being supported by the Ford Foundation.
NAFTA and the Politics of Labor Transnationalism
Tamara Kay is currently developing a book from her dissertation research which addresses the nature of transnationalism in the context of North American regional economic integration. It explores why trinational relationships developed among some Canadian, U.S., and Mexican labor unions at the precise moment when regional economic integration reached its peak, and why the same staggering changes had little, if any impact on other unions. The research is based on over one hundred forty interviews with Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. labor leaders and activists, and documents from archival collections of major North American labor unions.
New Book on Immigrant Rights
Mary Lewis's book, The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940, was published by Stanford University Press in 2007. Focusing on twenty crucial years in France's long immigration history, it "demonstrates convincingly how migrant rights depended on a combination of local, national, imperial and international developments and not just on the local implementation of Paris-based decisions or on developments in international law ... [and] brings balance and outstanding scholarship to discussions of migrant rights which, although focusing on the interwar years in France, have a contemporary ring," Frederic Royall wrote in the February 2008 issue of Modern and Contemporary France.
Research Project on Corporate Citizenship and Regulation to Result in Book in 2006
The Great Re-Transformation?: The Contested Transnational Field of Corporate Citizenship and Regulation will focus on transnationally shaped business dynamics. It investigates the contested reemergence of inter-linked templates of corporate responsibility/social investment and social regulation as opposed to those of corporate compliance/philanthropy and state regulation. The authors, Sanjeev Khagram and Suzanne Shanahan, argue that the spread of a transnational, multi-level and cross-sectoral network which legitimizes and promotes corporate responsibility and social regulation explains the uneven adoption of these policies and practices, as well as determines the future of business-state-society relations around the world.
Primer on Transnational Civil Society to Be Published Soon
Transnational Civil Society: An Introduction, co-edited by Srilatha Batliwala and Dave Brown, will serve as a much-needed primer for entry-level graduate and post-graduate students taking courses on civil society and learning about the transnational and global realm of civil society networks, coalitions, and movements. The book comprises twelve chapters, focusing on the areas of globalization, transnational civil society, globalism and transnational phenomena, and the environment, human rights, women's rights, peace, labor, and economic justice movements. The book is generously supported by the Ford Foundation and will will be published by Kumarian Press.
4th TSI Workshop held in November '04
The Transnational Studies Initiative hosted a fourth workshop called Beyond
the National and the Global: Transnational Organizations and Institutions in
November 2004 in Cambridge, MA. Generously
funded by the Rockefeller
Foundation, this workshop examined the similarities and differences between various types of transnational organizations and institutions. (Click here for more information.) Other
workshops hosted by the initiative include: Transnational Dynamics
and the Emerging Architectures of Governance, Financial and Transnational
Dynamics of Terrorism, and Rights and Responsibilities of Transnational
Citizenship. Additional workshops are planned on the topics of transnational
religion, arts and culture, and transnational America.
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