Week 16 : Sanjeev Khagram "Transnational struggles for water and power" and " Dams, Democracy, and Development in Transnational Perspective"

The decline of hydropower big dam building and increasing concerns about the contribution of fossil fuel energy generation to global warming, present 

increasingly potent transnational political changes. - p.149

According to the article, the construction of the dam has emerged once during 1940s because of the decolonization makes each new state thinking producing energy. However, the dam building need lots of money so the newly state or the state that wanted to build the dam, particularly big dam need the aids from other countries. There also the emergence of the international organization working on collecting information and coordinate the knowledge among many countries and also the national organization working on bureaucratic building, all together cooperate and try to make the best out of it.

     

However, it is not always increase. When it come to the dramatic decrease of the dam building, there is four main reasons.

Technical factors about the availability of sites for dam building are decreased. The oil price crisis during 1970s made changes in the dam building too. Financial and economic factors like shortages of the funding, conventional alternatives for the services according to the bug dam which was affected by the crisis. - One more thing, the political- economic dynamic also make a rocket decreased in the cost-benefits calculations as the dam buildings.

The decline of those factors in the dam building bring more corporation among the aids giver and recipient, particularly on the transnational corporations.

The core idea of the article is that the big dam building and the international dam regime have affected mostly on the environmental issue and human rights issue. To be more focus, in order to build the dam sometimes it is needed to destroy some parts of the forest and there might be some indigenous people have to move out from their home or location. There always the argument about the dam building and relationship with the development. Some group of people, particularly in the developed area see the dam building as the development project, but on the other hand there also some other groups like grassroots, social movements and nongovernmental organization who concern and thinks that dam building dam is the threats.

There are two way to look at the transnational on the dam building issue. - First, transnational coalition which are the links among the actors across borders. All of the actors coordinate particularly about the specific campaign and the strategy to deal with the dams building. Secondly, transnational networks which more focus on information exchanges and services. In the end, both of the transnational works would put effort to get the effective outcome dealing with the dam. However, the most famous actors working on this might be the multilateral organization and transnational corporation. In addition, connection between the first world and third world might be put in this category too, altogether with the more effective transnational communication, transportation and economic exchanges.

Transnationally allied nongovernmental organizations, grassroots groups, and social movement have unexpectedly altered the political economy of development. p.158

 

📢 Dam is the transnational issue by nature nowadays as the best example of the new transnationalism. - consisted the actors from local level to the global level together with the decisions or movements from below make the issue become more transnational. - constructivism transnational.   

Week 15 : Gringolandia : The Construction of the New Tourist Space in Mexico (Torres and Momsen)

The article focuses on how economic globalization leads to the notion of transnational tourism and migration in Cancun, Mexico. In the past, Quintana Roo has been the exile areas and the place for the refugees in Mexico. But after the WTO submit in 2003', the Cancun was transferred to the

"Gringolandia"  which means circus-like

spectacle of the overbuilt resort, embedded in region deeply divided by uneven development and the ensuring inequitable power relations. - p.314

 In my understanding when it turns to the nigh change on the particular spaces, it becomes the hybrid-space. The notion of space consisted with the social relations, similar to the Gringolandia which consists the relations of several kinds of scales, actors, institutions and so forth as the author stated,

the spatial "can be seen as constructed out of the multiplicity of social relations across all spatial scales, from the global reach of finance and telecommunications through the geography of the tentacles of national political power, to the social relations within the town, the settlement, the household and the workplace". - p.314

The transnational tourism happened after the establishment of the Gringolandia. There become such an investment of the foreigners particularly in hotel business and migrant workers to travel to find jobs. For Torres and Momsen, transnationalism is the multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states. The role of transnational companies enhance more capital flows and migrations. However, most migrants settled down and blended themselves with the locality, in that sense most of them started rearranging the identities, nationality, racial and so forth. For travelers, the mobility of travelers is seen as the temporary linkage of social spaces, locales, stations and networks. It creates the sense of host and guest, by the way it is not in the same sense with migration.

In addition, the social sphere that are interconnected are divided into three level altogether. First in the international sphere, focusing on direct foreign investment, franchise, management contract and products. Secondly, the Mexican Urban Sphere which talks a lots on the domestic investment, and also goods and services. Lastly, the Quintana Roo rural periphery which takes care of labors, payment and jobs. To conceptualize, it is the phenomena of the tourism, transnational economic land-space, short-term migrants and labors migrants. 

Intersection between the global and local ; the complex web of actors and social relations in multiple scales which leads to the transnationalism in space which affect the locality, community, regions and nations. - p.323

Linked the case on Gringolandia with the case of ASEANs Economic Community or AEC which will become true in 2015, I am thinking about the tourism industries in the countries in ASEANs because most countries rely on this and moreover we need to concern on the labor issue because Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar always have labors who might have more skills but needed to be paid less than Thai people. The flows of capital, investment and labors will be all around ASEANs.   

Week 14 : Refugees and humanitarian intervention in transnational aspects.

Speechless emissaries : humanitarianism and dehistoriczation

Transnationally shared aspects of humanitarian intervention is refugee issues ; the importance of the moral, ethical and political motivations are the core of humanitarian interventions.

Displacement of people happens more recent because of the political violence and uprising in the country. The feeling of displacement spread out more wider due to the advance of technology and communication make media emerge more. Liisa H Malkki talked about different views on humanitarian intervention particularly in Rwanda and Tanzania through social construction and institution. In addition, historical condition has been seen as the reason produces political subjectivity focusing on the identities of the people or refugees.

Humanitarian intervention itself dehistoricize or depoliticize.. transnationally shared aspect of humanitarian intervention in refugees issues has the core which are importance of moral, ethical and political motivations.

The core that emphasis on the morality, ethical and political motive have given stronger sense of voice of people or refugees that has always been suppressed. It is important in human community to take care of this issue. According to Malkki, each social construction or circumstance has given different definition or view on the status of refugees. She gave two differences, one in the Mishamo camp refugees and another one is in Kigamo which is called as a town refugees. Camp refugees has a stronger sense of refugeesness because they live together in the particular place and they also have shared history, faced same situation, "If I am refugee here, of course my child is a refugee also - so it is his child, and his child until we go back to our native country".  While the town refugees see themselves getting further from the refugeeness because most of them settle down, and become richer. The elaboration of the refugees also different in the sense that they are not living in the similar circumstances.

Another idea in the article, focusing on transnational mobile representatives who have been shared across nation borders. The institution that locate in order to administrate and fund on refugees, suppress the refugee under their frame. The international institution try to object and control the refugees. The narrative through pictures also affect the understanding of the refugeeness, 'sea of humanity' implies the speechlessness and helplessness of the people. - we are human after all.

In the end, "historicizing humanism" emphasis on human suffering, and also focus on the authority, historical and political memory that affect on defining and understanding of the humanitarian intervention. Moreover, this important to the recent issue on the human security and international justice.

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According to Giorgio Agamben's the bilopolitics and rights of man, there also some related keywords to the Malkki's article which are right of man, right of nation-state, human rights, nation-state, citizens and some others. These keywords has become important after the rise of nation-state, and also the period of the declaration of rights, particularly in France. First mentioned of the human right concept was that it is assumed existence of a human being as such, broke down at  the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships. Later on, the declaration of 1789 mentioned about the right of the men the all born equal and free in rights, there comes to the notion of the citizens that all are preserved. The declaration of rights had given the authority to the royal sovereignty, hence after that it is transfer to the citizens and has been seen as the subject or sovereign subject. The concerning of the identification of citizenship also come when there was the first thought of who is French, who is German? What is French and What is German during the period of the revolution.

Giorgio also talked about the separation between humanitarianism and politics, separation between the right of human from the right of citizens which is the most important issue. In my understanding, the humanitarianism make itself more difficult to define the citizens and the man because basically people have right to be preserved as the citizen within one state, but hence there still some threats from state itself. In that sense, humanitarianism which aimed to protect the right of man is important to stop state violence and intra-violence. In my opinion, what is the most important thing to be concerned now is that, whether we categorized refugees as the citizens or not, so we can take the right care of them or have a actual solution on them. 

Week13 : Immigrants and threat to security issue

 Immigrants and threat to security issue

        According to our first half of the class, migration of people is one of the forces
that under-mind the state boundaries. In Gary Gerstle's The immigrants as threat to
American Security, immigrants have always been around through out the American
history and create fears to the American citizens in the sense of liberties, personal
safety and some rights.

            📌 "Immigrant groups associated through nationality, race, or religions with American's enemy have been especially vulnerable to government overreach. Marked as different, they are easily constructed as dangerous." -p.105

       There are four main threats in behaviors and identities that affects American in
the past which are religious, political, economic and racial. Gerstle has argued that all
subversions are related and directly affect to the Americans. The difference between
Protestant and Catholic which most likely to be Protestant linked to the demand of
republic regimes in political system. Republic is basically rule by people, in that sense
people come to US and settle down could also rule the state. In that sense, it shake the
security of the States. Moreover, the invasion of people from other place, different races
could also affect on employment rate. More people in the particular areas make seats of
work inadequate. Immigrant bring more unemployment rate and depressing wages.
        Racial about belonging to inferior groups is also unsuitable for American life. There
must be the naturalization of black immigrants, not only focusing on the white.
In addition, trend has changed to focus more on the war against terror because
we cannot identify where those people come from so it is not easy to trace back and
find their homeland.
 

           Ong's Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making : Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States talked about the cultural citizenship, as the subject-making. It is the result of migration into the United States.
           Cultural citizenship has been seen as the self-making process and
being-made in the transnational processes because they focused on the cultural
fundamentalism that defines 'who' belongs to the group and 'who' does not belongs. It
is so complex for the locality in order to divide the people actually from the local and
people migrates to the States. Subjects locate within the nation-state and within the
global conditions the construction of their citizenship, it consists with the power
relations, that produce consent through schemes of surveillance, discipline, control and
administration.

          📌 "State as a cultural formation, speak of "governmentality" by which mean the state's project of moral regulation aimed at giving "unitary and unifying expression to are in reality multifaceted and differential experiences of groups with in society" Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer (1985) :p.738

Week 12 ; The Concept of Political.

The concept of political.

We have always studied about state and politics. Our basic understanding is that state is consisted with four elements which are territory, population, sovereignty and state. 

State is my perception is where political activities happen, but Carl Schmitt has given a different point of view on the relation of state and political. 

The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political. - p.19

              The relationship between state and political always unclear. State has always been perceived as the space of specific entity of people, where there is the organism, institution, society and so forth within the particular space. While political has been defined as the utilized concept of power as the decisive factor, this power appear most as state power. ( p.20 ) However, Schmitt talked about the equation state which means politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each others.  He believes that social matters like religion, culture and education do matter in the notion of state which all together should be neutral. The concept of democracy was talked in the sense that it should not involve with distinction and politicization.

               Schmitt has also argued that boundaries of state and society has blurred due to the instability of state's demand to control of individuals. My understanding of this point is that whether or not the elements of state combine with social matter, it always changes due to the uncontrollable of individuals in one state. So far as we have studied in the first half of the class about the transnational, mobility and migration. There are four main forces that move across border, which are people, capital, culture and ideas. It relates to the statement of Schmitt that ' The state is thus, on one hand, the realization and expression of the cultural ideas..to participate in the exercise of its power.." - p.24

    

               Friends and enemy relation; comes with the economic issues in political mostly in liberalism as stated 

'Liberalism in one of its typical dilemmas of intellect and economics has attempted to transform the enemy from the viewpoint of economics into a competitor..' - p.28

               In my view, friend and enemy relations create the feeling of otherness when one state has thoughts such rejection, acceptance of others, it is linked to the issue of nation, the group that belongs to each others and so forth. However, the perception of the enemy is not always be the competitor but they can be only the partner in the particular conflict. Friend also..

               Political sphere need not always be hated or loved each others but states basically try to protect themselves and protect their own existence. It is easy to see that people basically come together for collective purpose, so the nation continue to group themselves according to friend and enemy. In the past each state fight against each other by using war as the equipment to distinguish friends and enemies, but for now we can also separate it in the sense of economy.

Week 11; Ethnography of Global Connecting, Scale Making

The Economic of Appearances

          Globalization brought the world to become one, connected and everything could happen through the eyes blinks. Most people only see the advantages of the globalization process. As we studied in the first half of the class, globalization consisted with basic two aspects which are capitalization and technologization. Technologization are the communication and transportation advancement which bring about the network through out the whole wide world. Networks provide the ability to access to the resources and information. While capitalization is connected with the economic issue and international financial issue which the article give a critical analysis focuses on the scale-making and economic. 

           The writer talked about the conjuring, finance and scale-making; similar in the sense of 'creating a magic show of peculiar meanings, symbols and practices.' (p.57) - financial conjuring happens everywhere like the scale-making/making-scale which is defined as

           'spatial dimensional necessary for a particular kind of view, whether up-close or from distances.. - scale must be brought into being: proposed, practiced and evaded, as well as taken for granted." (p.58) 
        
             It is necessary to take care of the notion of space and scale of human undertaking - economic projects; "scale-making" = projects which make us concern of locality, region or nations in order to understand the global. The writer gave three sense of scale-making project which all are linked together.

Process of articulation

1. Financial capital
2. Franchise cronyism
3. Frontier culture

The writer look through three scale differently, the financial capital is the global hegemony which assists in the development and the franchise cronyism is like the nation-making process. And lastly, Frontier culture is the story of region, which is the most conjuring because it provides the widespread of region in its imagination and it looks at locality in the different perspectives. 

           After read this article, I got main ideas about scale-making process that it is a particular way looking or viewing the world which can be different depending on what particular issue we are viewing or who is viewing what at that time due to the changing world economy. We somehow call the scale-making process as the flexible accumulation. However, space, time, scale are always important to view the world. 

         

Week 10; Nation-state and Transnationalism

              Akhil Gupta's the story of Transnational identities and the reinscripition of space in late capitalism mentioned that nation is the organized space which basically talks about everyday life, culture and society. The identities of each nation has changed in after the era of capitalism and colonialism; the capitalism emerged the flow of capitals and the widely spread of information and ideas and the colonialism also brought around cultures, traditions and so forth. These factors have shaken the notion of place and identity that identities go further beyond the field and also affect on local. The identities go over places and try to adjust to its environment. In other hands, people in the particular spaces themselves have to also adjust themselves with the forces that go beyond the territories. However, the problematic of nationalism is related to space, place and identities in the sense that nationalism focuses on the sense of belonging of the people in the geography units or spaces, but it is more likely talking about the sense nation. The writer rose up the example from the postcolonial and late capitalism periods, generally non-aligned world. Non-aligned as the example of transnational imagined community, focusing on their movement and the different locations.

The affect from the colonialism linked to nationalism in my view is kind of like.. the colonized countries are influenced politically, economically especially culturally, so called 'cultural imperialism' and definitely people got those effects. At the same time, the sense of nationalism happened in both side, the major powers try to spread their national identities, which they believed that it is the best and politically powerful, the colonies also tried to gain independence so they need to re-unite themselves as a whole in order to make significant narratives of resistances.

Non-alignment focusing on the capitalism see the new type of global economy; affecting the division of labour and needed a concern of unequal exchanges. Generally, the world become smaller, more connected and people's demand need to serve everyone needs and rights and so forth. So it affects directly to the nationalism because things, resources need to be shared with others and it goes beyond to territories or boundaries. You have trading system, exchange system and so on. All together with the available of transportation and communication which even make the world become smaller and shaken the notion of nation, things keep going around and all are spread around too.

In the almost the end of the article, the writer concluded that there are three major thing from nationalism in the transnational world which are the modern form of nation, which I think the writer means that the strong sense of nation is shaken but the second point; that is the formal equality from the new independent countries that gain independence and try to bring themselves to be out of the inequality during capitalism  period. Lastly, the writer also pointed out about the ambiguous of sovereignty in an unequal world. Greater competition between states over all resources, labors and so on made the world having more gap between the non-aligned and others, between trading relationship.

Sovereignty not only depends on the protection of spatial borders, but it is above all the ability of state elites to regulate activities that flows across borders, such as crossing of commodities and surpluses, the passage of people in form of labor  tourist and etc.. including the movement of cultural products and ideas.

In conclusion, transnational in any kind, from any factor whether the colonization or capitalism affected to nationalism practices. The citizens need to consider about the proper amount of goods, images,ideas and so on let it go beyond the border of the nation statehood; otherwise it will shake more on the space and identities.

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Thongchai Winichakul's Siam mapped basically talked about the historical of Thailand and the way we perceive the real world and the map which it believed to be one type of sign. But in fact, I think the map is not only, there somehow really related to the reality because it is the boundary, border lines that cover where the territories of the state is. But in that sense map, geographical map is not really important nowadays, hence people move beyond the boundaries and the flows of things, capitals and so on have happened more common.

Linked to last week reading on Benedict's The specter of comparisons, main idea on transnational and nationalism. The story of Mary Rowlandson, that she is  American women who has been critiqued about English Path. In short, Mary's story embarked the view on capitalism which provided transportation that enable people to travel over the water miles and the printed-capitalist and communication; emphasized the nationalist movement.

...In the end..

Does capitalism and colonialism make the notion of nation stronger ? Or actually it is weaker by sharing more struggle or other intentions like inequality and so forth.