The Power of Imagination in Transnational Mobilities

Abstract

At the roots of many travels to distant destinations, whether in the context of tourism or migration, are historically laden and socioculturally constructed imaginaries. People worldwide rely on such imaginaries, from the most spectacular fantasies to the most mundane reveries, to shape identities of themselves and others. These unspoken representational assemblages are powerful because they enact and construct peoples and places, implying multiple, often conflicting, representations of Otherness, and questioning several core values multicultural societies hold, by blurring as well as enforcing traditional territorial, social, and cultural boundaries. What are the contours of power, agency, and subjectivity in imaginaries of transnational mobility and the intersecting social categories those visions both reify and dissolve? Ethnographic studies of human (im)mobility provide an innovative means to grasp the complexity of the global circulation of people and the world-making images and ideas surrounding these movements. As a polymorphic concept, mobility invites us to renew our theorizing, especially regarding conventional themes such as culture, identity, and transnational relationships. This article critically analyzes some preliminary findings of an ongoing multisited research project that traces how prevalent imaginaries of transnational tourism to and migration from the “global South” are (dis)connected. I suggest anthropology has unique contributions to make to the current debate in the social sciences by ethnographically detailing how mobility is a contested ideological construct involving so much more than mere movement.

Keywords:

• Mobility
• immobility
• imagination
• ethnography

Acknowledgments

This article is based on research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0514129 and BCS-0608991), the European Commission Directorate General Research (PIRG03-GA-2008–230892), and the Research Foundation—Flanders (1.2.210.09.N). Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania kindly acted as the local institutional sponsors, while the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Permit No. 8093/SU/KS/2005) and the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (Permit No. 2007–16-NA-2006–171) gave me the necessary research clearance. I am grateful to my research assistants, Erlis Saputra and Joseph Ole Sanguyan, for all their help. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia (December 2–6, 2009). I thank the audience, the other panel members, and especially discussant Mimi Sheller for their constructive comments and suggestions. All omissions and errors are mine alone.

Notes

1. I carried out fieldwork over a period of 28 months, half of which I was in Indonesia (July–August 2003, January–December 2006) and the other half in Tanzania (June–August 2004, January–August 2007, and February–March 2009). In Indonesia the research mainly took place in the Javanese Special Province of Yogyakarta, supplemented with brief trips to Jakarta, East Nusa Tengara, Papua, West Papua, South Sulawesi, and Bali. In Tanzania, I focused on the northern Arusha Region, together with shorter periods of work in Manyara, Kilimanjaro, Tanga, Dodoma, Dar es Salaam, and Zanzibar.

2. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. While most Javanese officially profess Islam as their religion, many are followers of Javanese mysticism and engage in a syncretic amalgam of Islamic, Hindu, Christian, and local spiritual beliefs and practices.

3. Representative examples of existing imaginaries about Java include Rush's Java, A Traveller's Anthology (1996), Vatikiotis's Indonesia: Islands of the Imagination (2006), Fischer's Modern Indonesian Art (1990), Choy's Indonesia between Myth and Reality (1976), Koentjaraningrat's Javanese Culture (1985), and Pemberton's (1994) On the Subject of “Java.”

4. The qualifier “local” does not necessarily imply that tour guides are natives of the place where they operate (although they are habitually perceived as such by foreign tourists). In Yogyakarta many were born and raised in the area, but some have roots in other parts of Indonesia. Oftentimes, they migrated to the city to study or look for a job and settled.

5. Recognizing the early cultural influences from India, a “high” civilization because it is complex and literate, Java is rarely represented as primitive or tribal. The civilized image is also due to a concerted effort by national and provincial Indonesian authorities in the 1980s and early 1990s to send gamelan orchestras and traditional dance troupes around the world, advertising the country's high culture. During that time, especially Javanese intangible heritage received wide coverage in documentaries and in performances and museum exhibitions abroad.

6. In this context “the West” refers to a widespread imaginary, not to a specific geographic location with homogeneous cultural traits and historical background.

7. Majuu, literally “the things up there” in Swahili, is often used as a synonym for Europe (or the West). The “up” is explained by Tanzanians as referring to the high living standard (implying distance from the daily life of most people), the orientation on a map (in the north), or the fact that Tanzanians must fly to get to Europe. Other commonly used terms are uzunguni (the land of the white people), ng'ambo (overseas, the other or opposite side), and mtoni (at the river, referring to the oceans surrounding the African continent).

8. When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Tanzania in February 2009, a commonly heard rumour in Dar es Salaam was that it was probably not the real president visiting, but a stand-in—in analogy with the cheap Chinese products flooding the Tanzanian markets and shops that look very much like renowned expensive brands but are of a much lesser quality (another, yet negatively valued, form of mobility). People in general feel increasingly cheated and exploited by Chinese products and people. Tanzanians also find it very hard to classify the Chinese because their mobility seems to break all (imagined) barriers of the existing social hierarchy.