Abstract
Introduction: Globalization and Ethnography
Globalization continues to be an increasingly important issue for contemporary anthropology and sociology as cross-border interconnections and the movement of peoples, capital, and culture around the world expand and intensify. Since the 1990s, an increasing number of researchers have become interested in this general topic and the literature on the subject has proliferated. Within this literature has emerged an approach of the study of globalization commonly referred to as global ethnography.
Both cultural anthropology and qualitative sociology have long been focused on ethnography as their most distinctive academic contributions (Clifford 1986; Hendry 2003, 498; Marcus and Fischer 1999; Atkinson et al. 2001). However, at first glance, ethnography and globalization do not appear to be compatible as a number of scholars have noted (Burawoy 2000, 1–5; 2001, 147; Coleman 2010, 496; Gille and Riain 2002, 273; Hendry 2003, 498). Some suggest that ethnography’s confinement to the local prevents it from accessing the global (Burawoy 2000, 1–3; Peltonen 2007, 346). Globalization is often associated with macro-social processes, deterritorialized flows and networks across national borders, and large-scale international institutions and corporations that are either detached from localities or affect many places at once (Appadurai 1996; Albrow 1995; Castells 1997; Giddens 1991). In contrast, ethnography traditionally consists of in-depth descriptions of micro-social phenomenon in a specific locality and is based on long-term research and face-to-face relations in territorially bounded places. Given such discrepancies between the global and the localized nature of ethnography, how does one do global ethnography?
Some researchers have advocated new types of ethnographic research in order to make it more appropriate for a globalized world. They include cultural studies, virtual ethnography, and multisited fieldwork among others. Although such new approaches can certainly supplement traditional ethnographic methods, we believe they are by no means necessary or even desirable ways to do global ethnography. We argue that traditional ethnography based on in-depth fieldwork in one locale is sufficient to capture the intricacies of an increasingly globalized world (see also Hendry 2003, 499). This is because globalization is ultimately grounded and instantiated in territorialized localities as specific transnational processes. In fact, most of the papers we selected for this special issue are based on such orthodox ethnographic methods while adding a global comparative approach. This Introduction reviews this intellectual justification for global ethnography and revisits the types of global ethnography that are possible.
Alternative Approaches to Global Ethnography
In the 1990s, Arjun Appadurai argued that the localizing strategies of traditional ethnography cannot capture the intricacies of a globalized, deterritorialized world of transnational flows (1996, Ch. 3). In order to study the imagined lives made possible by global mass media, he argued that ethnography must engage in cultural studies by examining mass media, film, literary fiction, and other types of public culture. Although the global circulation of mass media and popular culture is a part of globalization that global ethnographies can incorporate into their analyses, cultural studies has a different aim than ethnography. Ethnography consists of detailed descriptions of the actual lived and intimate experiences of local peoples, which is not the same as the mainly fictionalized accounts produced by film, popular literature, and other forms of mass media.
Of course, such globalized mass culture certainly has an impact on local peoples and reconfigures their imaginations. However, if such mass media are to be incorporated into global ethnography, it must consist of much more than simply the researcher’s interpretation of public cultural texts, as is often the case in cultural studies. Instead, we must do actual face-to-face fieldwork to gather information about how local peoples engage, interpret, and respond to such global mass culture from other countries and how it reshapes their subjectivities, identities, and imaginations (called audience reception studies).
Another suggested approach to global ethnography is virtual ethnography based on the Internet and online communities (Wilson and Peterson 2002; Boellstorff et al. 2002). Since the Internet is one of the primary means by which local peoples maintain social relations and communities across national borders, it is an increasingly important way to study global/transnational connections between localities. A good example of virtual ethnography is Nicole Constable’s (2003) Romance on a Global Stage, which examines the experiences of Asian mail order brides (and their American husbands) using Internet chat rooms, newsgroups, online matching services, personal webpages, and e-mail communications (with limited material from in-person meetings with a small number of men/women).
However, ethnographers should be cautious about regressing to a contemporary digital “armchair anthropology” based on secondary sources and interactions captured in cyber-communities. A rich ethnographic account of online communities would ideally explore the relationship between people’s online activities and their actual offline social lives through firsthand fieldwork (e.g., see Wilson and Peterson 2002, 450). There are also other methodological issues related to sampling and the unsystematic and anecdotal nature of Internet material as well as unresolved ethical issues about using Internet content posted by private individuals without their consent (Boellstorff et al. 2012; Murthy 2008, 839; Wilson and Peterson 2002, 461). While some fields have been more rapid than others in incorporating the study of digital media, others have been more reluctant. In the last decade however, there has been a steady increase in ethnographic studies of digital media and online communities (Boellstorff 2008; Coleman 2010, 488; Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin 2002; Wilson and Peterson 2002, 450).
Because traditional ethnographic approaches that are restricted to one locality cannot capture the essense of global flows and transborder processes, a number of scholars have urged ethnographers to engage in multisited fieldwork (Burowoy 2000; Hannerz 2003; Marcus 1995, 99; Stoller 1997). There are three reasons for global ethnographers to conduct multisited fieldwork. The first is to compare how macro global institutions and processes are impacting multiple locales in similar or different ways. A good example of this research is Michael Goldman’s (2005) work examining the transnational practices of the World Bank and its policies on environmental projects, as well as their impacts and the resistances engendered around the world. Rhacel Parreñas’ ethnography, Servants of Globalization, examines Filipina migrant domestic household workers in Los Angeles and Rome and argues that they have analogous experiences as partial citizens in both cities who are subject to similar global labor conditions. The second reason to conduct multisite fieldwork is to track the movement and flow of global commodities, migrants, cultures, ideologies, and information across national borders (see also Hendry 2003, 299; Marcus 1995, 106–8). A good example of such research is Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s (2002) multisited fieldwork tracing the global traffic of human organs. The third is to directly study the increasing transnational connections between different places and communities (Fitzgerald 2012; Hannerz 2003, 206–7; Marcus 1995, 102). 1 For instance, Ulf Hannerz’s (2004, 2007) ethnography, Foreign News, explores the lives of foreign correspondents in numerous cities and how they maintain transborder connections through their professional work.
Nonetheless, multisited fieldwork is by no means the only way to do global ethnography nor even necessary and essential since it is possible to study the impact of globalization in a specific locality through single-sited fieldwork, as will be argued below. In fact, most of the global ethnographies we cite in this Introduction are actually not multisited. Although one of the articles in our special issue (“Patriarchal Accommodations” by Andrews and Shahrokni) is based on collaborative, multisited fieldwork in Mexico and Iran, the methodology is not used to trace global flows or connections between the localities. Instead, the article is a study of two separate localities and how global political/economic forces have resulted in increased female spatial mobility in both places through patriarchal accomodations by local governments.
In addition, there are problems associated with multisited fieldwork that cannot always be easily overcome. Multisite fieldwork is logistically more difficult and time-consuming. The most significant drawback of multisited fieldwork is that researchers must often forgo traditional fieldwork based on in-depth, intensive, and long-term immersion in a specific locality because their attention and time must be scattered over multiple sites. Inevitably this leads to a broader geographical scope of analysis but a more superficial and shallow engagement in each site, a concern mentioned by numerous researchers (Falzon 2009, 7–10; Fitzgerald 2012, 1727; Hage 2005, 465–66; Hannerz 2003; Hendry 2003, 500–501; Muir 2004, 193–94). However, this issue can be somewhat resolved by collaborative teamwork, with different researchers covering different sites (Fitzgerald 2012, 1730; Stoller 1997, 91–92), as illustrated by Andrews and Shahrokni’s “Patriarchal Accomodations” article in this special issue. Their approach of “linked ethnographies” results in a collaborative effort that does not sacrifice depth for breadth.
Locating the Global
Although multisited ethnographic methodologies undoubtedly have strengths, we argue that these proposed ethnographic methods are not the only way of studying globalization. This is because traditional ethnography based on intensive and long-term fieldwork in a single location is a completely sufficient method for capturing global dynamics. As a number of scholars have noted (e.g., Riain 2000; Robertson 1995, 25–26), global flows may be large-scale, deterritorialized, and translocal but they are not simply disembodied processes that supersede localities and thus escape ethnograhic study. Instead, all global processes are manifested and embedded in specific places. This section will outline the reasons why the global is ultimately localized, and thus makes it well suited for place-based ethnographic research.
Noncontiguous and Contiguous Globalization
There is no doubt that globalization is characterized by deterritorialized social processes that apparently supersede and transcend the local places and communities that are the basis of traditional ethnography. However, this does not mean that globalization simply occurs in virtual cyberspace or some type of abstract, hybrid “third space” that is disengaged and detached from particular localities (cf. Appadurai 1996; Albrow 1995; Castells 1997; Lash and Urry 1994). It is important to remember that there are, in fact, two different types of globalization, both of which can be simultaneously experienced at the local level.
The first type can be called noncontiguous globalization—the flow of information and images across national boundaries in which the globalizing agent influences local societies over a geographical distance without being physically present. This type of globalization does not involve the transfer of actual materials or peoples, but occurs in what Manuel Castells (1989) calls the “space of flows,” the noncontiguous, virtual space of telecommunications networks, the Internet, and other types of digital media that makes the exchange and transmission of information and images possible over long distances. This enables individuals and institutions that are not in actual physical proximity to interact and communicate and therefore transcends the constraints imposed by territory. Noncontiguous globalization therefore appears as a place-less and deterritorialized macro-level force that can simultaneously influence numerous societies from a distance, or what Giddens calls “time-space distantiation” (Giddens 1991; see also Burawoy 2001, 148; Gille and Riain 2002, 277).
However, there is another type of globalization that is contiguous and involves the actual physical movement of people, goods, and capital across national borders. Examples include migration, international trade, and the transfer of production or service facilities abroad by multinational firms. This type of globalization is also deterritorialized, since it involves social processes that are no longer tied to specific places and territories, but move across national borders. However, it is different from noncontiguous globalization because the globalizing agent (whether people, goods, capital, or facilities) actually moves and relocates to other countries and is physically present in the local society. In other words, what is initially deterritorialized is reterritorialized in a specific locality. Therefore, contiguous globalization involves the movement of actual things in the contiguous “space of place” where actual human and material contact occurs in physical proximity. It is important to remember that localities are affected not just by distant and invisible global forces (action-at-a-distance) but also by forces that have actually moved across contiguous space and become physically reterritorialized in localities and specific places.
Because of this constant reterritorialization, contiguous globalization is grounded in specific localities and therefore more subject to place-based ethnographic study. Although contiguous globalization is often associated with deterritorialized mobility and movement between physical places, peoples, commodities, and capital that flow across national borders actually spend most of their time in situ within territorialized localities. For instance, even transnational migrants who are constantly on the move spend a relatively small amount of time in actual (deterritorialized) transit between different countries. Most of the time, they are territorialized in either the sending or receiving country as residents of local communities, although their sense of “belonging” in each place can be radically different. The same is true for global commodities (and other materials) that are sent to other countries. They are only briefly deterritorialized as they are shipped overseas, but quickly reterritorialized as they arrive in specific places for use and consumption.
Much globalization actually occurs in contiguous space and therefore inhabits localized places, the purview of ethnography. Therefore, it is possible for ethnographers to examine how contiguous globalization affects specific localities and communities by studying local migrant communities (e.g., Boehm 2012; Parreñas 2001; Smith 2006; Tapias and Escandell 2011; Tsuda 2003; Cruz-Manjarrez 2013), the consumption of global commodities and food by local peoples (e.g., Matejowsky 2006; Watson 2006; Wilk 2006), and the experiences of workers in the overseas factories of multinational corporations (e.g., Freeman 2000; Ong 1987).
Of course, this does not mean that ethnographers can only study contiguous globalization and that the noncontiguous globalization of telecommunications, mass media, and the Internet that occurs in deterritorialized, virtual spaces is outside their scope. Noncontiguous globalization is amenable to ethnographic inquiry because it has real impacts on local peoples and communities, who respond to, reinterpret, and appropriate global cultural influences from remote places in their own indigenous ways. Although noncontiguous globalization is not technically “reterritorialized,” since it exists in the deterritorialized and virtual “space of flows,” it is still localized since it is consumed and culturally incorporated by local peoples inhabiting specific places. Global mass media and the flow of information and communications across borders are socially significant and consequential only when utilized and appropriated by local peoples and therefore imbued with local cultural meanings. As a result, there are a number of ethnographic studies of how local and indigenous groups respond to and interpret Western television programming and films (as well as other forms of popular culture) according to their own cultural understandings and meanings, as well as how local social movements appropriate global discourses and ideologies that travel through the Internet and other types of global media (Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin 2002; Haney 2000; Kraidy 1999; Liebes and Katz 1990; Michaels 2002; Thayer 2000). Local peoples and communities are therefore given agency in such global ethnographic approaches, which examine how they react to and reshape the global at the local level instead of being victims who are subsumed by deterritorialized global processes they cannot control. 2
Therefore, despite their apparently deterritorialized nature, both contiguous and noncontiguous globalization is more compatible with localized, place-based ethnography than is commonly assumed. Global ethnography is possible because globalization is not simply a deterritorialized, external force that is disengaged from or supersedes the local. In fact, all global processes are ultimately localized since they are manifested, embedded, and re-created in local places and do not exist as a substantial social reality outside of them. As a result, traditional, in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in local societies is far from being marginal to the study of globalization. It is absolutely essential to it and perhaps the best way to study what globalization is all about. As Burawoy (2001, 149) aptly notes, “Only in the locality—the ethnographer’s hearth—can one study [the] concrete effects of globalization.”
The Global as Transnational
In addition to its apparently deterritorialized nature, the global also appears to be simply too large of a social phenomena for ethnographers to grasp, since they can only study micro-level processes in particular localities. However, when we examine the local manifestations of the global, it is not as large-scale as it initially appears. This is because all global forces manifest themselves as more geographically confined, transnational processes when instantiated in specific localities.
Globalization refers to the worldwide movement and flow of peoples, goods, information, and cultures across national borders, which causes the globe to become increasingly interconnected as a single place. In contrast, transnationalism refers to social processes/connections across national borders that simultaneously impact two or more nation-states. Because globalization involves cross-border social forces and flows that affect the entire world, it is at the macro-level and larger in geographical scope than transnational processes, which are meso-level and geographically restricted to transborder connections between local communities in certain countries (see also Kearney 1995, 548). 3
Therefore, transnationalism is more grounded in specific localities and places. In fact, oftentimes, the so-called “transnational” connections between peoples in different countries are actually translocal, since their transborder activities are not actually engaging the nation-state or the national, but are commitments and identifications with very localized communities, family and kin, or institutions. This is especially true with international migrants, who have actively maintained such translocal ties with their specific sending communities in their home countries (e.g., see Smith 2006).
When we examine the impact of globalization on local societies, it becomes quite apparent that most “global” influences are locally experienced and manifested only as specific transnational social processes and institutions. In fact, few global processes that affect localities are truly global in scope, since they do not actually encompass the entire world, but consist of more localized transnational processes that are simply part of globalization. For instance, Lapegna’s article in this special issue (“Global Ethnography and Genetically Modified Crops”) about an Argentine agricultural community’s reactions to the global expansion of genetically modified crops actually refers to a specific transnational corporation that has introduced GMOs from the United States. Other ethnographies that claim to analyze the impact of global processes on local peoples and communities are actually about more localized transnational phenomena. Likewise, Theodore Bestor’s (2004) book about how the global fish market operates locally in Tokyo’s Tsukiji market is actually about transnational trade networks and commodity chains that link specific cities with Tokyo. The “global” discourses and ideologies that influence localities (such as feminism, human rights, and environmentalism) are often those that originate from Western countries (Haney 2000; Merry 2006; Thayer 2000). Although there are, of course, institutions and corporations that are truly global, their significance at the local level is often based on their specific transnational origins as well. For example, the appeal of McDonalds in specific East Asian countries is based on the meanings of Americana and other associations with the United States (Watson 2006). Global financial institutions such as the IMF or World Bank are often locally perceived as transnational representatives of a limited number of rich, Euro-American countries.
Ultimately, all macro-level, global processes manifest themselves as specific, meso-level transnational flows and connections between local places and communities. Therefore, it is somewhat of a reification to claim that the “global” or “globalization” is actually impacting local societies when, in reality, their effects are actually represented by much more specific and geographically limited transnational forces. An awareness of the transnational nature of macro-global process at the local level prevents researchers from exaggerating the magnitude and scale of globalization and therefore portraying it as an inexorable, external hegemonic force that dominates and subjugates the local.
Not only are transnational processes and networks smaller in scale, they are more rooted and embedded in specific localities as simply part of larger global forces, making them more amenable to localized, ethnographic study. Such abstract, macro-forces such as the global economy, global corporations, global migration, or global social movements or ideologies are difficult, if not impossible, to examine ethnographically. However, the local consumption of food produced by a multinational American corporation, the impact of a local factory producing goods for transnational export to Europe, transnational migrant communities connecting Phoenix to Mexico City, or a local environmental movement empowered and funded by transnational connections to American-based NGOs all fall under the purview of ethnographers operating in specific places. A transnational perspective to globalization also leaves room for agency, since local actors and their strategic practices are ultimately what constitute transnational networks and processes.
In fact, globalization is not only instantiated at the local level as specific transnational processes; they often take on an even more localized character. The local impact of macro-global processes is mediated by various local institutions and states, which are transnationally linked to other countries and places. For instance, global capital and financial flows often operate through local and national banks and financial institutions, and locally owned and run factories and subcontractors produce commodities and provide services for global industries. Likewise, national and local governments can facilitate or regulate the global flow of peoples and commodities or foreign investment by multinational corporations, and local NGOs can represent global agencies and organizations. According to Lapegna’s article in this special issue, the introduction of genetically modified global crops to an Argentine farming community was implemented by a local company and government officials. Likewise, Andrews and Shahrokni’s article examines the local impact of the “global political economy,” which caused increased domestic and international mobility of women in two localities, was ironically facilitated by patriarchal policies enacted by local governments.
Global Ethnography
Because the deterritorialized and macro-forces of globalization manifest themselves in very localized contexts as specific transnational processes and connections, global ethnographers can continue to utilize traditional ethnographic methods characterized by in-depth and long-term fieldwork in one local community. Global ethnography does not necessarily entail new ethnographic methods based on cultural studies, the exclusive use of new digital media, or even multisited fieldwork. What differentiates global ethnography from other types of ethnography is not methodology per se, but scope of analysis. Global ethnography contextualizes local peoples, communities, and practices within larger transnational processes and connections that operate across national borders and are part of globalization. Global ethnography examines how global forces impact local communities as well as how local peoples are embedded in and create transnational linkages and networks. Ethnographic accounts that capture local people’s lived experiences of globalization therefore bring deterritorialized, macro-global processes down to earth and illuminate how they operate at the local level (see also Burawoy 2001, 157; Freeman 2001, 1011).
Therefore, ethnographic studies that do not examine the linkages between local peoples and communities and larger transborder forces are not global ethnography. Although our definition of global ethnography is not intended to be used primarily for exclusionary purposes, certain parameters need to be set since not all ethnographies are global. Even if an ethnography is based on multisited fieldwork, it is not global ethnography if it is simply a localized and isolated analysis of two or more sites that does not explore the transnational connections between these sites or how they are affected by external forces that operate across national borders. Andrews and Shahrokni’s comparative multisited study in this special issue (“Patriarchal Accommodations”) is an example of global ethnography because it compares the impact of global economic processes on female mobility and local government policies in two different communities.
Likewise, not all ethnographies about migrants are global ethnographies if they are simply analyzed in a purely localized context and their transnational connections to their sending countries or other places are not explored. Although Nguyen-Akbar’s article (“High-Wage Migrants”) about Vietnamese American ethnic return migrants examines them only in the local Vietnamese context, it does analyze the impact of these transnational migrants from the United States on their extended families in Vietnam and how it is structured by their parent’s cross-border relations to kin in Vietnam.
In fact, some of the chapters in Michael Burawoy’s seminal edited volume, Global Ethnography (2000), are not really global ethnography because they do not directly analyze the relevance of cross-border transnational forces and connections on localities. For instance, although George’s (2000) chapter examines female Indian nurses who immigrate to the United States from a multisited perspective, it simply provides separate descriptions of their pre- and postmigratory contexts without examining how these two sites are transnationally connected or placing them in a broader global context. In a couple of other cases, a highly localized phenomenon (homeless workers in San Francisco or a labor movement against the privatization of hospitals in Pittsburgh) is vaguely attributed to macro-global forces (such as “neoliberal” ideologies or global economic competition; Gowan 2000; Lopez 2000). In this globalized world, almost any local issue can somehow be linked to vague forces associated with “globalization,” but this does not make the study global ethnography. If ethnographies do not clearly analyze and articulate how local phenomena are directly affected by specific transnational connections or forces originating abroad, they are local ethnographic studies. To claim otherwise is to use the term “global ethnography” as simply a rhetorical or narrative device.
Although we caution against its somewhat indiscriminate use, there are a wide range of studies than can be considered global ethnography. Therefore, we find it useful to differentiate between different types of global ethnographies by revisiting Burawoy’s (2000) original typology. Although we utilize the same categories (Forces, Connections, Imaginations), our understanding of them is quite different.
Global Forces
The first type of global ethnographies are those that examine how external transnational forces affect local peoples and how they respond to and appropriate such influences (Burawoy 2000, 29). These transnational forces originate in other countries as part of globalization and therefore impact localities from a distance. Examples include multinational corporations, international agencies and organizations, global migrants and ideologies, and global mass media/popular culture. Ethnographies that examine global forces do not necessarily have to be based on multisited research, since they can be studies of how the global affects one locality or community. However, researchers can use multisited fieldwork in various countries to compare how global forces affect two or more communities in a different or similar manner (e.g., see Andrews and Shahrokni in this special issue).
This approach may be reminiscent of those that conceptualize globalization as an inexorable and impersonal, macro-force that dominates localities and deprives people of agency (Gille and Riain 2002, 274–75, 281). However, global ethnographies do not simply examine how such transnational forces impinge on local peoples as passive recipients or victims, but how they act as agents who react to such influences that come from abroad. Local responses to these external forces can range from resistance to accommodation, as well as various types of appropriation (see Lapegna, 2014).
Resistance involves various types of local reactions against the effects of globalization. Examples include local protests against multinational corporations, international financial organizations, free trade policies, and development projects, selective repudiation of Western discourses, ideologies, and popular culture, and local anti-immigrant sentiment toward global migrants (see e.g., Abu-Lughod 2002; Kraidy 1999; Nash 2007, 137–64; Tsing 2005). Therefore, we include under “forces” what Burawoy (2000, 31–32) calls “imagination,” that is, local social movements that use aspects of globalization or react against it.
In contrast, accommodation refers to local communities that do not respond contentiously to the effects of globalization, but simply accept, acquiesce, and adapt to them, or attempt to mitigate their effects, especially in cases where globalization has a negative impact. Examples include urban poor in developing countries who must cope with the pernicious effects of neoliberal reforms imposed by international financial institutions and local female workers who subject themselves to difficult working conditions in the factories of multinational corporations in order to improve their economic or social status or consumption power (see, e.g., Freeman 2000; Gill 2000; Ong 1987). Lapegna’s article in the special issue (“Global Ethnography and Genetically Modified Crops”) examines how local Argentine peasants engaged in collective protest against the introduction of genetically modified crops from abroad but then adopted a more accommodating stance at a later time by accepting or adapting to their negative environmental impact.
Most of the time, however, local peoples do not respond to globalization according to the simple binary of resistance or accommodation but engage in various types of appropriation by using specific transnational influences for their own purposes and projects, ultimately transforming them in the process. Such incorporation of the global by local peoples according to their own cultural understandings and institutional practices has been called localization or indigenization and is the primary reason why increasing globalization is not causing a “homogenization” of local cultures and practices. Examples include culturally specific consumption of global communities or food in different countries (Lapegna, 2014, see also Watson 2006; Wilk 2006), local cultural reinterpretations of Western mass media and television programs (Kraidy 1999; Liebes and Katz 1990; Michaels 2002), and local social movements and institutions that appropriate global discourses and ideologies originating in the West (such as feminism, environmentalism, human rights, and neoliberalism; Cunningham 2000; Haney 2000; Merry 2006; Thayer 2000).
When the global is appropriated and incorporated in this manner in various localities, it is ultimately re-created and transformed according to the sociocultural practices of specific countries and communities in ways that are quite different from its initial form in countries of origin. Therefore, McDonalds’ food is consumed as a snack and its restaurants become community centers in some East Asian countries (Watson 2006), American IT companies’ employment practices are modified to accommodate local female workers in Barbados (Freeman 2000), and Western ideologies such as feminism and environmentalism are adopted in modified form by activist organizations in Argentina or Brazil (Lapegna, 2014; Thayer 2000).
Such ethnographic approaches that emphasize appropriation and negotiation are an important way to recover agency for local people so that globalization no longer merely appears as a large-scale external force that simply subjugates them. As the global is modified in specific localities, the new patterns of consumption, production, and cultural perception introduced by local peoples can in turn influence multinational corporations and institutions, global ideologies and popular culture, and commodity or food consumption elsewhere. Clearly, the local and global are mutually constitutive. Of course, the amount of agency exercised by local peoples depends on their socioeconomic positioning and gender status. Chinese business elites have much greater power and resources to adapt to global forces and uncertainties through their transnational mobility and practices (see Ong 1999) than the urban poor in Bolivia who are subject to global neoliberal reforms (Gill 2000) or Filipina migrant household workers who are “servants of globalization” (Parreñas 2001).
The outcome of the indigenization of global foreign influences by local societies is often understood to be some kind of hybrid mixture or creolization of the global and local (e.g., Hannerz 1987; Pieterse 1994; Stoller 1997), as embodied in the concept of the glocalization (Kraidy 1999; Robertson 1995). However, such a conceptualization perpetuates an artificial global/local dichotomy, while claiming to transcend it. A hybrid or glocal condition is not possible unless there were initially two pure states, a global and a local, which then come together to produce a new synthetic form or somehow coexist in a bifocal manner, enabling people to simultaneously and selectively engage with both (see Besnier 2011; Kraidy 1999). Therefore, glocalization assumes a prior separation of the global from the local and/or their continued differentiation after their apparent mutual encounter. However, globally circulating commodities, cultures, and peoples constantly change as they move across national borders since they can exist only as they are embedded in various local cultures, which are themselves continuously subject to change. In addition, although the global is often associated with whatever is foreign to the local society, oftentimes, what appears to be of foreign origin is partly a product of indigenous cultural practices and institutions. Therefore, it is often quite difficult to disaggregate what is global from what is local.
Transnational Connections
The Global Forces perspective tends to regard the global and local as dichotomous and separate entities that impact each other depending on whether they are constituted in relations of opposition, accommodation, and appropriation. Instead, we approach globalization at the local level as a matrix of transnational interconnections and networks within which local actors and institutions are embedded. Such transnational connections are not simply between two countries, but can involve peoples living in multiple countries. These cross-border networks are therefore not unidirectional but can fan out and circulate in multiple directions (Burawoy 2000, 30) and enable local communities scattered across the globe to influence each other over considerable geographical distances. They are created and reproduced by peoples and commodities moving across national borders, as well as by deterritorialized social interactions made possible through telecommunications and the Internet. This approach again highlights the agency of local actors by emphasizing their strategic actions across borders (Gille and Riain 2002, 274–75, 281).
Examples of ethnographies that examine transnational social relations include Anna Tsing’s book (2005) about the “global connections” of capitalist investors in the Indonesian rainforest and environmental movements attempting to defend it, Robert Smith’s (2006) ethnography about how the transnational connections of first- and second-generation Mexican immigrants in New York impact their lives in the United States, and Riain’s (2000) and Upadhya’s (2008) studies about the networks IT software professionals maintain with those in other countries. Nguyen-Akbar’s article in this special issue examines the transnational relations between overseas Vietnamese and those left behind in the home country and how the expectations they produce structure the experiences that Vietnamese Americans have when they return migrate to Vietnam. There are also a number of ethnographic studies about local social movements, which utilize complex transnational social networks or even mobilize across national borders (Cunningham 2000; Riles 2000; Thayer 2000; Tsing 2005).
Ethnographic studies about transnational networks can benefit the most from multisited fieldwork. Of course, it is possible to conduct research in a single site and explore how local communities maintain connections to other countries through telecommunications, the Internet, and mass media, as well as through the circulation of peoples and commodities across national borders. However, such studies examine only one node in the network and can only provide a geographically limited understanding of how it functions. If a social network extends across two countries, it should ideally be studied from both ends, which requires fieldwork in both sites. For transnational networks that extend across more than two countries, fieldwork in multiple sites may be necessary for a comprehensive global ethnography.
In the field of transnational migration studies, a single-sited ethnographic study limited to the immigrant receiving country can examine how immigrants maintain social connections with their home country and how it impacts their lives. However, it would be a one-sided study that does not include how these transnational connections affect and change those left behind in the sending community, or how those in the sending community in turn maintain transnational relationships with migrants abroad. As a result, an increasing number of ethnographies of transnational migration are multisited (e.g., see Escandell and Tapias 2010; Cruz-Manjarrez 2013; Smith 2006; Tsuda 2003). In fact, by definition, migrant transnationalism is not only about transborder connections, but how they simultaneously impact both the migrant receiving and sending communities. Therefore, a true transnational ethnographic study must examine how immigrants’ transborder engagement in their home countries simultaneously affects their involvement in the host country and vice versa (Tsuda 2012), which requires multisited fieldwork.
Finally, as Lapegna in this special issue points out, we must remember that globalization is not simply a unilinear process that leads to increasingly greater transnational interconnectedness between various locales but can also lead to disconnection in some cases. This is true especially if local peoples react negatively to or resist the effects of globalization and actively withdraw from or reduce their connections to other places. Nation-states have sometimes cut themselves off from the global economy and global media. Local peoples can avoid migrating abroad, not associate with those from other countries, or distance themselves from foreign cultural influences that are seen as threatening. Lapegna’s article in this special issue argues that protests by local peasants in Argentina against genetically modified crops caused agribusinesses to leave the area, marginalizing and excluding the local community from global processes. Likewise, Nguyen-Akbar in this special issue examines how the transnational return migration of Vietnamese Americans led to tensions with extended kin in Vietnam, causing them to distance themselves from their relatives living in the ethnic homeland. Along these lines, Gold’s piece compares different migrant group’s processes of adaptation in the United States, emphasizing localized aspects of women’s self-employment and the way they are able or unable to draw from coethnic networks that span multiple localities.
Transnational Imaginations
In addition to being an external force and a configuration of transnational networks, globalization has also become a form of identity making. Ethnographies that focus on the imagination are those that examine how local peoples develop transnational identifications with other peoples, cultures, and societies through the lived experience of globalization. Global migration and mobility, as well as the increasing availability of mass media and the flow of information and communications across borders has enabled people to expand their imaginations and affiliations beyond their geographically confined lives. Therefore, what we mean by imaginations is different from Burawoy (2000, 31–32), who uses the term to refer to how global images inspire social movements, which we classified under Global Forces.
More work needs to be undertaken that specifically focuses on the transnational imagination. Examples include Yang’s study (2002) about how Chinese in Shanghai identify with Chinese living overseas through regional mass media, which leads them to construct a transnational and deterritorialized subjectivity, and Cunningham’s ethnographic work (2000) about how political activists in the United States assisting undocumented immigrants understand themselves in terms of globalization and develop transnational identities that transcend national affiliations. As part of the lived experience of globalization, transnational affiliations and subjectivities can also inform local lives and relationships. Hirsch (1999) analyzes how women in Mexico use U.S. soap operas to inform their own expectations about gender relations after marriage and Englund (2002) looks at migrants and locals in Malawi, Africa, whose globalist imaginations about liberal democracy and religious salvation influence their alternative vision for their local townships. Likewise, Larkin (2002) studies how Indian films enable the Hausa of northern Nigeria to imagine and engage with a parallel modernity distinct from the West.
We should not assume that globalization always broadens local people’s imaginations and leads to more expansive transnational identifications and affiliations. Although this often happens when the experience of globalization is positive, it just as often evokes negative responses and emotions. As a result, individuals can react against the effects of globalization, whether it be the experience of international migration or global mass media, exposure to foreign peoples and ideologies, or the action of multinational corporations or financial institutions. This can cause them to strengthen nationalist loyalties and other localized affiliations, leading to more insular and parochial identities (e.g., see Hage 2005; Tsuda 2003).
Future Directions
This special issue argues for the continued relevance of ethnography for an increasingly globalized world. Globalization often refers to deterritorialized and large-scale forces that appear to be beyond the scope of ethnography, which is limited to the intensive study of micro-level social processes in specific localities. However, we have argued that globalization is not simply an abstract, external force that supersedes and operates outside the purview of localities but that the global exists only as it is embedded and localized in specific places. The global and the local should not be conceptualized as opposed, dichotomous entities, which makes localized ethnographic fieldwork seem incompatible with the action of global forces (see also Gielis 2009, 277). 4
The dynamics of contiguous globalization involve a constant dialectic between brief periods of deterritorialization and longer periods of reterritorialization in specific localities, making it mainly a place-based process. Even for deterritorialized, noncontiguous globalization, the cross-border flow of digital and mass media in virtual space becomes socially meaningful only as they are consumed and incorporated by local peoples according to local cultural understandings and identity-making projects. Because all global processes are territorialized, appropriated and/or challenged, and eventually re-created in localities, it is well suited for ethnographic approaches based on specific places and local communities. In addition, at the local level, most macro-global processes operate as meso-level transnational institutional and social networks that connect specific localities. It is therefore possible to study the transnational linkages that are part of globalization in the localized contexts in which fieldworkers traditionally operate.
Instead of being marginal for the study of globalization, ethnography is essential for an in-depth understanding of its on-the-ground dynamics and its impact on subjectivities. Although globalization is often associated with movement across localities, cyberspace, and mass media, ethnographers do not necessarily have to conduct multisited fieldwork that prioritizes breadth at the expense of depth or rely on the Internet or cultural studies. Traditional fieldwork methods based on long-term immersion in one locality are sufficient for global ethnography. The essence of globalization can be captured by face-to-face, single-sited studies of how individuals in a specific locality react to and appropriate global forces, how they create transnational connections to those living in other countries, or how globalization enhances their imagination, enabling them to construct transnational identities and subjectivities.
Although global ethnographies have covered a wide range of topics, we would like to see more studies in the future that address the gendered dimensions of globalization and examine global elites (Freeman 2001). Despite a significant number of ethnographies that focus on the female experience of globalization (see Poster 2002), we need more work that examines how globalization itself is gendered and reproduces or transforms gender relations between women and men (Pyle and Ward 2003). Global ethnographers need to more explicitly and critically interrogate the apparently masculinist connotations of globalization, modernity, and mobility; the implicit association of women with localities and tradition (Freeman 2001; Poster 2002); and how it reproduces patriarchal relations in new contexts (Faier 2009; Poster 2002). Women from developing countries who work in the factories of transnational corporations are often subject to new forms of capitalist domination and patriarchy and can be valued for their apparent submissiveness and docility (see, e.g., Espiritu 1999, 638–40; Freeman 2000; Ong 1987). Although early research claimed that transnational migration led to greater egalitarian gender relations in immigrant families, more recent work has revealed the limited, uneven, and contradictory nature of such gender gains (see Hondagneu-Sotelo 2003). Transnationalized business elites can maintain quite traditional, patriarchal gender relations in the family, with women playing supportive domestic roles (Ong 1999).
Most global ethnographies have examined what can be called globalization from below, the engagement of local peoples and communities in transborder processes. However, we also need more ethnographic studies about the powerful elites and institutions that control globalization from above. Instead of simply focusing on local consumers, factory workers, labor migrants, or grassroots organizations, ethnographers need to “study up” and turn their attention to governmental officials and agencies that regulate globalization, managers of multinational corporations and financial institutions, and transnational NGOs and development organizations (see e.g., Goldman 2001; Peltonen 2007). Ethnographers can therefore further demystify and humanize globalization through a greater understanding of its social and power dynamics, instead of simply regarding it as a hegemonic and monolithic force that impinges on localities (see also Burawoy 2000, 150).
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
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