In Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies, Paul Jay refers to many previous works on transnationalism in order to compare and contrast them as a means of laying out his own definition and theory on the topic. He boils others’ theories regarding the history of transnationalism and globalization and what is behind them down to conclude within his first few chapters that, “the process we call globalization is characterized by the conflation of cultural and economic forms” (34). What he means by this is that, rather than being driven by the globalization of economic relations or cultural globalization, the transnationalist “trend” is driven by both, that the two are to a certain degree actually inseparable, and that one can therefore not consider globalization as being just “economic” or just “cultural”.
The question of whether culture and material economy should be considered separately or as connected seems largely dependent on the question of what constitutes “culture” to begin with. Can culture be commoditized, and therefore contribute to the “material” globalization referred to? When we think of culture we may think of language, traditions, belief systems, etc., and these things are difficult to count as material. But what about art? Literature? Film? If a painting for example is produced within one culture and then sold in another part of the world into a different culture, can it not be said to be cultural? And in fact, Jay goes so far as to say that material and cultural forms of exchange “are becoming increasingly indistinguishable” (56). I wouldn’t say that they overlap completely, but I do agree with Jay that the cultural can definitely be material and play a role in economy, and therefore the globalization that may arise from that.
Matters are further complicated when we take into account that globalization, or at least the movement or exchange of cultures and/or economies can be said to have been happening for a long time. “It is hard to find a place on the globe where what we might want to celebrate as local or indigenous culture is either local or indigenous,” Jay notes (50). Because culture is not tied down to particular nation-states or even general regions, but is instead free to be transported anywhere on the globe (whether as material goods or as traditions immigrants continue to practice or some other form), cultures may move, shift or merge with other cultures, and this isn’t necessarily a negative thing. I found particularly interesting the idea described by David Harvey in Jay’s book that time and space are linked the way they once were – as technology has progressed, transportation has become much faster and easier, which understandably can aid globalization and the alteration of borders (37).
Reading Jay’s reasoning for saying cultural and economic forms are conflated within globalization, I was reminded of a quote from Laura Briggs, et al.’s “Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis”. In discussing the work of Aihwa Ong, they write, “If you theorize too far away from empirical work…you wander into a fantasy that is logical but wrong” (635). This is also related to the reference Jay makes to feminist critic Caren Kaplan, who criticizes works on globalization for not including enough concrete evidence while including too much theory (69). If, as Jay says, culture and material influences on globalization are closely linked and even overlap, then to consider one in one’s definitions of globalization would likely be inaccurate, because it would disregard the influence of the other. “My argument here is that both culturalist and materialist positions, when they are articulated too narrowly, are mistaken,” Jay says. “Culture is a set of material practices linked to economies, and economic and material relations are always mediated by cultural factors and forms” (45). I completely agree with this viewpoint, because I don’t believe it is possible to have economies or material relations that are not in any way related to some form of culture.
Laura Briggs, Gladys McCormick and J. T. Way. American Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 3, Nation and Migration: Past and Future (Sep., 2008), pp. 625-648
I appreciate your reference to Briggs, because it really emphasizes the type of charge that is really being made here. (It’s a charge that I live in fear of having launched in my direction!). I *also* agree with Jay’s call to break down the false distinction between “materialist” and “cultural” perspectives on globalization, as well as his argument that globalization has been long in process.
I was, however, somewhat…I don’t know…uncomfortable? with the way Jay so easily posits multiple views as being reductive or one-sided. As a newcomer to this discourse, I have no choice but to digest Jay’s accounts of the theories he is, to say it too casually, shooting holes through. But when he comes to discuss Appadurai–finally someone I have read!!–I am somewhat bothered by his analysis, which then makes me suspicious of everything else. Is/was Appadurai *really* insisting that we understand globalization as an “absolute break with the past”? Or is/was he merely opting to discuss ‘the now’ because it was what he was trying to work through, specifically? In a similar way, I wonder if the theorists Jay discusses are really insisting that we keep “strictly” to one thing or the other (there are only a few against whom Jay develops a seemingly solid argument), or, due to time-, subject-, and relevancy-constraints, have they simply been focusing on one more than the other?
I am not saying that Jay isn’t serving a crucial function of problematizing narrowly focused ideas, and therefore opening us to new, more inclusive, possibilities of approach. BUT, is it necessary to be so heavy handed? Can’t his approach be more of an *extension* and *revision* of previous work? A, ‘thanks for getting us this far, now this is where we maybe need to go’? If he is so convinced of the “evolution of globalization,” why is he so silent about the evolution of ideas within his field? I suppose what I’m getting at, here, which may not be so helpful.. is a question of discourse ethics.
New wine in old wine skins?
To what extent is Transnationalism a recapitulation or in Jay’s words – a mish-mash of other literary discourses? Theorists of the Frankfurter School like Adorno, for example, have already taken Marx’s idea that economic forces create and commodify culture. Transnational studies is about geography, culture, economics, feminism, masculinity, multidirectional forces, hybridization, deterritorialization, globalization. Like a heavy fog, transnational studies seems all-encompassing but can neither be grasped or self-contained.
I appreciate how Paul Jay suggests an elitist assumption on the part of Appadurai, stating “well-off secular youth in Dubai, Kingston, Mumbai or Nairobi may have the privilege of exercising this power through cultural consumption and appropriation, but the poor in such cities and in rural populations do not” (66). I don’t know if the most important question to ask is whether economics shape culture or if there is a multidirectional influence between the two. Rather I think the more important question is to what extent are individuals excluded economically from accessing culture?