The transnational potentiality of transverse politics

Abstract

How can we conceive of global studies of culture and power without (i) overlooking the parameters of the nation state as a forceful axis of power, (ii) prioritising the West as the fount of energised political directives and (iii) reinforcing neo-liberal assumptions on culture and subjectivities? With a reappraisal of theories of globalisation, I elaborate on a transverse politics for transnational studies. I suggest that the national need be foregrounded in any appraisal of the power-laden axes in the co-constitution of the local and the global. Too often, the ‘national’ is all too easily contracted into the ‘local’. I also revisit earlier works to propose multi-sited, engaged and transversal studies that do not simply follow and track global flows but question and undermine their hegemonic trails.

Keywords:

• globalisation
• transverse politics
• nation state
• nuclear
• multi-sited ethnographies
• engaged anthropology

Notes

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/16/school-sport-funding-cuts

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18766547

3. See Harvey (1990), Giddens (1991), Friedman (1990), Appadurai (1990), Strathern (1995), Fardon (1995), James (1995), Miller (1995) and Moore (1996).

4. Notable exceptions are Fortun (2001), Tsing (2004), Shiva (2005), Shah (2010), Motta and Nilsen (2011) and Mukhopadhyay (2012).

5. For example, see Nadai and Maerder (2005), Falzon (2009) and Coleman and von Hellermann (2011).

6. Added to this is the assumption that multi-sited ethnographies can easily be pursued when the will and determination is there, but travel options are increasingly pitched against scholars in the south and for those non-EU citizens with employment contracts in European universities. For instance, those non-EU employees in Britain are under duress not to travel out of the country for more than 180 days in a 5-year period and these trips also have to be under 90 days if they are not to risk deportation. For these people, ethnography in countries outside of their place of residence becomes a poisoned chalice. Fortress Europe is not just pitched against those outside its environs but also against those within their defensive walls.

7. The term state is shorthand for a complex of organisational structures, personnel, discourses and practices. In Michel Foucault's words as an outcome of a quadrillage of performative processes, ‘The state is at once that which exists, but which does not yet exist enough’ (2010, p. 4).

8. http://www.udayindia.org/content_31March2012/cover-story.html [Accessed 19 July 2012].

9. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kudankulam-row-prime-minister-blames-foreign-countries/1/175007.html [Accessed 19 July 2012].

10. http://www.dianuke.org/koodankulam-letter-to-iaea-nuclear-regulators-and-human-rights-organisations/, http://www.dianuke.org/three-koodankulam-protestors-face-arrest-amnesty-action-alert/ [Accessed 19 July 2012].

11. Report of the Jury on the Public Hearing on Koodankulam and State Suppression of Democratic Rights, June 2012, Chennai Solidarity Group for Koodankulam Struggle, p. 3. http://www.dianuke.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/AP-Shah-Jury-report-Final1.pdf [Accessed 19 July 2012].

12. See also http://www.dianuke.org/koodankulam-open-letter-from-international-scholars-to-the-indian-pm/; http://www.dianuke.org/solidarity-pours-in-from-across-the-world-for-the-indian-antinuclear-protests/; http://www.dianuke.org/koodankulam-german-anti-nuclear-groups-express-solidarity-at-chernobyl-vigil-in-frankfurt/; http://www.dianuke.org/jaitapur-french-organisations-statement-areva/. Rashmi Kohli (2012) ‘Protest in London to Stop Koodankulam: Report and Pictures’, May 19, http://www.dianuke.org/protest-in-london-to-stop-koodankulam-report-and-pictures/ [Accessed 19 July 2012].

13. See http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA20/002/2009/en/79a5264e-2dd2-44f1-8c92-b2f0cd8f5c72/asa200022009en.pdf [Accessed 19 July 2012].

14. See www.foilvedanta.org/ [Accessed 5 August 2012].