Globalization 9780822383215

Citation preview

Globalization

a millennial quartet bo ok

a lt e r n a t i v e m o d e r n i t i e s , edited by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar g l o b a l i z a t i o n , edited by Arjun Appadurai m i l l e n n i a l c a p i ta l i s m a n d t h e c u lt u r e o f n e o l i b e r a l i s m , edited by Jean Comaroff & John L. Comaroff c o s m o p o l i ta n i s m , edited by Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, & Dipesh Chakrabarty p u b l i c c u lt u r e b o o k s

Globalization Edited by Arjun Appadurai d u k e u n i ve r s i t y p r e s s

*

d ur h a m & l o n d o n 2 0 0 1

© 2001 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Typeset in Adobe Minion by Tseng Information Systems Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. The book originally was published as vol. 12, no. 1 of Public Culture with the exception of Rekacewicz ‘‘Mapping Concepts,’’ which originally appeared in vol. 12, no. 3 of Public Culture, and Bayart ‘‘The Paradoxical Invention of Economic Modernity,’’ originally in La Reinvention du Capitalisme (Karthala, 1994). Support for this book in part came from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Division of the Arts and Humanities’ support of the special issue of Public Culture by the same name. Support is also acknowledged from the Globalization Project at the University of Chicago.

Dedicated to Neelan Tiruchelvam 31 January 1944–29 July 1999 Friend, Scholar, Political visionary, International citizen

Neelan Tiruchelvam’s violent and untimely death robbed the world of an extraordinary scholar, legislator, and political activist. He brought together scholars and activists on a global scale to discuss problems of civil society, law, and ethics. In so doing, he reminded us of the social life of theory and of the importance of placing local problems in the widest comparative perspective. He also reminded us of the importance of working on solutions to the difficult problems of ethnic terror in our midst. For this he paid with his life. Those who took Neelan’s life acted in the name of one kind of politics. Neelan lived and died in the name of another kind of politics. That was a politics of knowledge, of radical moderation, and of systematic opposition to violence. At the time of his death, he was helping produce constitutional solutions to some of Sri Lanka’s worst ethnic deadlocks. Neelan wrote tirelessly and read widely in the midst of distractions and urgencies of every kind. He wrote in Tamil as well as in English so that the debate about Sri Lanka’s future could be democratic. He made many of us welcome in Colombo’s International Centre for Ethnic Studies and in his home, with his children and his wife, Sithie, who was his tireless co-worker. His death was senseless. But his life has opened examples of thought and practice that will expand the possibilities of moral intervention for many of us whose ordinary interests he helped throw into sharper ethical light. We mourn his passing and celebrate his example. I have incurred many debts while editing this collection. The first and foremost is to Carol A. Breckenridge, who encouraged, prodded, and brainstormed throughout the process and who conceived of the Millennial Quartet book series. The contributors to this volume have been

models of serious engagement. Kaylin Goldstein, in her role at Public Culture, has been of assistance throughout, as has Robert McCarthy, who contributed in many capacities, including his copyediting of the original manuscript and his preparation of the index. Caitrin Lynch has been, once again, a most valued associate, attentive to a host of organizational and intellectual issues, most recently in the handling of the final proofs. Ken Wissoker and other staff members of Duke University Press have shown themselves to be thoughtful partners in seeing that there are many roads to a fine book. Above all, I owe a debt to another institution—the journal Public Culture and the project with which it is associated—for creating the institutional space in which this book was made possible, as part of its push toward new geographies and economies of publication and circulation—Arjun Appadurai

Contents

Arjun Appadurai Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination 1 Achille Mbembe At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa 22 Philippe Rekacewicz Andreas Huyssen

Mapping Concepts 52

Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia

Boubacar Touré Mandémory Ralf D. Hotchkiss

On Wheels

On Foot

78

81

Jérôme Bindé Toward an Ethics of the Future

90

Wu Hung A Chinese Dream by Wang Jin 114 Zhang Zhen Mediating Time: The ‘‘Rice Bowl of Youth’’ in Fin de Siècle Urban China 131 Anna Tsing

Inside the Economy of Appearances

Steven Feld A Sweet Lullaby for World Music On the Uddered Breast

217

155

189

57

Seteney Shami Prehistories of Globalization: Circassian Identity in Motion 220 Fatu Kande Senghor On the Predicament of the Sign: The Modern African Woman’s Claim to Locality 251 Néstor García Canclini From National Capital to Global Capital: Urban Change in Mexico City 253 Saskia Sassen Spatialities and Temporalities of the Global: Elements for a Theorization 260 Leo Ching Globalizing the Regional, Regionalizing the Global: Mass Culture and Asianism in the Age of Late Capital 279 Jean-François Bayart The Paradoxical Invention of Economic Modernity 307 Contributors Index

339

335

Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination Arjun Appadurai

anxieties of the global

Globalization is certainly a source of anxiety in the U.S. academic world. And the sources of this anxiety are many: Social scientists (especially economists) worry about whether markets and deregulation produce greater wealth at the price of increased inequality. Political scientists worry that their field might vanish along with their favorite object, the nation-state, if globalization truly creates a ‘‘world without borders.’’ Cultural theorists, especially cultural Marxists, worry that in spite of its conformity with everything they already knew about capital, there may be some embarrassing new possibilities for equity hidden in its workings. Historians, ever worried about the problem of the new, realize that globalization may not be a member of the familiar archive of large-scale historical shifts. And everyone in the academy is anxious to avoid seeming to be a mere publicist of the gigantic corporate machineries that celebrate globalization. Product differentiation is as important for (and within) the academy as it is for the corporations academics love to hate. This essay draws on two previous publications by the author: ‘‘The Research Ethic and the Spirit of Internationalism,’’ Items (Social Science Research Council, New York) (December 1997) 51(4), part I; and ‘‘Globalization and the Research Imagination,’’ International Social Science Journal (Blackwell/UNESCO) (June 1999) 160: 229–38. The author is grateful to the Open Society Institute (New York) as well as to the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and UNESCO for providing occasions for developing the ideas contained in this essay. Srilatha Batliwalla, Ben Lee, Achille Mbembe, Sheela Patel, Kenneth Prewitt, Toby Volkman, and my colleagues in the Regional Worlds Project at the University of Chicago may recognize their provocations. My friends in SPARC (Bombay), especially Sheela Patel, might wish to regard it as a promissory note.

Outside the academy there are quite different worries about globalization that include such questions as: What does globalization mean for labor markets and fair wages? How will it affect chances for real jobs and reliable rewards? What does it mean for the ability of nations to determine the economic futures of their populations? What is the hidden dowry of globalization? Christianity? Cyber-proletarianization? New forms of structural adjustment? Americanization disguised as human rights or as MTV? Such anxieties are to be found in many national public spheres (including that of the United States) and also in the academic debates of scholars in the poorer countries. Among the poor and their advocates the anxieties are even more specific: What are the great global agencies of aid and development up to? Is the World Bank really committed to incorporating social and cultural values into its developmental agenda? Does Northern aid really allow local communities to set their own agendas? Can large banking interests be trusted to support microcredit? Which parts of the national state are protectors of stakeholding communities and which parts are direct affiliates of global capital? Can the media ever be turned to the interests of the poor? In the public spheres of many societies there is concern that policy debates occurring around world trade, copyright, environment, science, and technology set the stage for life-and-death decisions for ordinary farmers, vendors, slum-dwellers, merchants, and urban populations. And running through these debates is the sense that social exclusion is ever more tied to epistemological exclusion and concern that the discourses of expertise that are setting the rules for global transactions, even in the progressive parts of the international system, have left ordinary people outside and behind. The discourse of globalization is itself growing dangerously dispersed, with the language of epistemic communities, the discourse of states and interstate fora, and the everyday understanding of global forces by the poor growing steadily apart. There is thus a double apartheid evolving. The academy (especially in the United States) has found in globalization an object around which to conduct its special internal quarrels about such issues as representation, recognition, the ‘‘end’’ of history, the specters of capital (and of comparison), and a host of others. These debates, which still set the standard 2

*

ar jun ap padur a i

of value for the global professoriate, nevertheless have an increasingly parochial quality. Thus the first form of this apartheid is the growing divorce between these debates and those that characterize vernacular discourses about the global, worldwide, that are typically concerned with how to plausibly protect cultural autonomy and economic survival in some local, national, or regional sphere in the era of ‘‘reform’’ and ‘‘openness.’’ The second form of apartheid is that the poor and their advocates find themselves as far from the anxieties of their own national discourses about globalization as they do from the intricacies of the debates in global fora and policy discourses surrounding trade, labor, environment, disease, and warfare. But a series of social forms has emerged to contest, interrogate, and reverse these developments and to create forms of knowledge transfer and social mobilization that proceed independently of the actions of corporate capital and the nation-state system (and its international affiliates and guarantors). These social forms rely on strategies, visions, and horizons for globalization on behalf of the poor that can be characterized as ‘‘grassroots globalization’’ or, put in a slightly different way, as ‘‘globalization from below.’’ This essay is an argument for the significance of this kind of globalization, which strives for a democratic and autonomous standing in respect to the various forms by which global power further seeks to extend its dominion. The idea of an international civil society will have no future outside of the success of these efforts to globalize from below. And in the study of these forms lies an obligation for academic research that, if honored, might make its deliberations more consequential for the poorer 80 percent of the population of the world (now totaling 6 billion) who are socially and fiscally at risk. To take up this challenge to American academic thought about globalization, this essay moves through three arguments. The first is about the peculiar optical challenges posed by the global. The second is about area studies—the largest institutional epistemology through which the academy in the United States has apprehended much of the world in the last fifty years. The third concerns the very ground from which academics typically and unwittingly speak—the category of ‘‘research’’ itself. These three steps bring me to a conclusion about the relations between pedagogy, activism, and research in the era of globalization. 3

*

grassroots globalization

the optics of globalization

Globalization is inextricably linked to the current workings of capital on a global basis; in this regard it extends the earlier logics of empire, trade, and political dominion in many parts of the world. Its most striking feature is the runaway quality of global finance, which appears remarkably independent of traditional constraints of information transfer, national regulation, industrial productivity, or ‘‘real’’ wealth in any particular society, country, or region. The worrisome implications of this chaotic, high-velocity, promiscuous movement of financial (especially speculative) capital have been noted by several astute critics (Greider 1997; Rodrik 1997; Soros 1998, among others) so I will not dwell on them here. I am among those analysts who are inclined to see globalization as a definite marker of a new crisis for the sovereignty of nation-states, even if there is no consensus on the core of this crisis or its generality and finality (Appadurai 1996; Rosenau 1997; Ruggie 1993; Sassen 1996). My concern here is with the conditions of possibility for the democratization of research about globalization in the context of certain dominant forms of critical knowledge, especially as these forms have come to be organized by the social sciences in the West. Here we need to observe some optical peculiarities. The first is that there is a growing disjuncture between the globalization of knowledge and the knowledge of globalization. The second is that there is an inherent temporal lag between the processes of globalization and our efforts to contain them conceptually. The third is that globalization as an uneven economic process creates a fragmented and uneven distribution of just those resources for learning, teaching, and cultural criticism that are most vital for the formation of democratic research communities that could produce a global view of globalization. That is, globalization resists the possibility of just those forms of collaboration that might make it easier to understand or criticize. In an earlier, more confident epoch in the history of social science —notably in the 1950s and 1960s during the zenith of modernization theory—such epistemological diffidence would have been quickly dismissed, since that was a period when there was a more secure sense of the social in the relationship between theory, method, and scholarly location. Theory and method were seen as naturally metropolitan, mod4

*

ar jun ap padur a i

ern, and Western. The rest of the world was seen in the idiom of cases, events, examples, and test sites in relation to this stable location for the production or revision of theory. Most varieties of Marxist theory, though sharply critical of the capitalist project behind modernization theory, nevertheless were equally ‘‘realist,’’ both in their picture of the architecture of the world system and in their understanding of the relationship between theory and cases. Thus much excellent work in the Marxist tradition had no special interest in problems of voice, perspective, or location in the study of global capitalism. In short, a muscular objectivism united much social science in the three decades after World War II, whatever the politics of the practitioners. Today, one does not have to be a postmodernist, relativist, or deconstructionist (key words in the culture wars of the Western academic world) to admit that political subjects are not mechanical products of their objective circumstances, that the link between events significantly separated in space and proximate in time is often hard to explain, that the kinds of comparison of social units that relied on their empirical separability cannot be secure, and that the more marginal regions of the world are not simply producers of data for the theory mills of the North. flows and disjunctures

It has now become something of a truism that we are functioning in a world fundamentally characterized by objects in motion. These objects include ideas and ideologies, people and goods, images and messages, technologies and techniques. This is a world of flows (Appadurai 1996). It is also, of course, a world of structures, organizations, and other stable social forms. But the apparent stabilities that we see are, under close examination, usually our devices for handling objects characterized by motion. The greatest of these apparently stable objects is the nationstate, which is today frequently characterized by floating populations, transnational politics within national borders, and mobile configurations of technology and expertise. But to say that globalization is about a world of things in motion somewhat understates the point. The various flows we see—of objects, persons, images, and discourses—are not coeval, convergent, isomorphic, or spatially consistent. They are in what I have elsewhere called relations of disjuncture. By this I mean that the paths or vectors taken 5

*

grassroots globalization

by these kinds of things have different speeds, axes, points of origin and termination, and varied relationships to institutional structures in different regions, nations, or societies. Further, these disjunctures themselves precipitate various kinds of problems and frictions in different local situations. Indeed, it is the disjunctures between the various vectors characterizing this world-in-motion that produce fundamental problems of livelihood, equity, suffering, justice, and governance. Examples of such disjunctures are phenomena such as the following: Media flows across national boundaries that produce images of wellbeing that cannot be satisfied by national standards of living and consumer capabilities; flows of discourses of human rights that generate demands from workforces that are repressed by state violence which is itself backed by global arms flows; ideas about gender and modernity that circulate to create large female workforces at the same time that cross-national ideologies of ‘‘culture,’’ ‘‘authenticity,’’ and national honor put increasing pressure on various communities to morally discipline just these working women who are vital to emerging markets and manufacturing sites. Such examples could be multiplied. What they have in common is the fact that globalization—in this perspective a cover term for a world of disjunctive flows—produces problems that manifest themselves in intensely local forms but have contexts that are anything but local. If globalization is characterized by disjunctive flows that generate acute problems of social well-being, one positive force that encourages an emancipatory politics of globalization is the role of the imagination in social life (Appadurai 1996). The imagination is no longer a matter of individual genius, escapism from ordinary life, or just a dimension of aesthetics. It is a faculty that informs the daily lives of ordinary people in myriad ways: It allows people to consider migration, resist state violence, seek social redress, and design new forms of civic association and collaboration, often across national boundaries. This view of the role of the imagination as a popular, social, collective fact in the era of globalization recognizes its split character. On the one hand, it is in and through the imagination that modern citizens are disciplined and controlled—by states, markets, and other powerful interests. But is it is also the faculty through which collective patterns of dissent and new designs for collective life emerge. As the imagination as a social force itself works across national lines to produce locality as a spatial fact and as a sensi6

*

ar jun ap padur a i

bility (Appadurai 1996), we see the beginnings of social forms without either the predatory mobility of unregulated capital or the predatory stability of many states. Such social forms have barely been named by current social science, and even when named their dynamic qualities are frequently lost. Thus terms like ‘‘international civil society’’ do not entirely capture the mobility and malleability of those creative forms of social life that are localized transit points for mobile global forms of civic and civil life. One task of a newly alert social science is to name and analyze these mobile civil forms and to rethink the meaning of research styles and networks appropriate to this mobility. In this effort, it is important to recall that one variety of the imagination as a force in social life—the academic imagination—is part of a wider geography of knowledge created in the dialogue between social science and area studies, particularly as it developed in the United States after World War II. This geography of knowledge invites us to rethink our picture of what ‘‘regions’’ are and to reflect on how research itself is a special practice of the academic imagination. These two tasks are taken up below. regional worlds and area studies

As scholars concerned with localities, circulation, and comparison, we need to make a decisive shift away from what we may call ‘‘trait’’ geographies to what we could call ‘‘process’’ geographies. Much traditional thinking about ‘‘areas’’ has been driven by conceptions of geographical, civilizational, and cultural coherence that rely on some sort of trait list—of values, languages, material practices, ecological adaptations, marriage patterns, and the like. However sophisticated these approaches, they all tend to see ‘‘areas’’ as relatively immobile aggregates of traits, with more or less durable historical boundaries and with a unity composed of more or less enduring properties. These assumptions have often been further telescoped backward through the lens of contemporary U.S. security-driven images of the world and, to a lesser extent, through colonial and postcolonial conceptions of national and regional identity. In contrast, we need an architecture for area studies that is based on process geographies and sees significant areas of human organization as precipitates of various kinds of action, interaction, and motion—trade, 7

*

grassroots globalization

travel, pilgrimage, warfare, proselytization, colonization, exile, and the like. These geographies are necessarily large scale and shifting, and their changes highlight variable congeries of language, history, and material life. Put more simply, the large regions that dominate our current maps for area studies are not permanent geographical facts. They are problematic heuristic devices for the study of global geographic and cultural processes. Regions are best viewed as initial contexts for themes that generate variable geographies, rather than as fixed geographies marked by pregiven themes. These themes are equally ‘‘real,’’ equally coherent, but are results of our interests and not their causes. The trouble with much of the paradigm of area studies as it now exists is that it has tended to mistake a particular configuration of apparent stabilities for permanent associations between space, territory, and cultural organization. These apparent stabilities are themselves largely artifacts of the specific trait-based idea of ‘‘culture’’ areas, a recent Western cartography of large civilizational landmasses associated with different relationships to ‘‘Europe’’ (itself a complex historical and cultural emergent), and a Cold War–based geography of fear and competition in which the study of world languages and regions in the United States was legislatively configured for security purposes into a reified map of geographical regions. As happens so often in academic inquiry, the heuristic impulse behind many of these cartographies and the contingent form of many of these spatial configurations was soon forgotten and the current maps of ‘‘areas’’ in ‘‘area studies’’ were enshrined as permanent. One key to a new architecture for area studies is to recognize that the capability to imagine regions and worlds is now itself a globalized phenomenon. That is, due to the activities of migrants, media, capital, tourism, and so forth the means for imagining areas is now itself globally widely distributed. So, as far as possible, we need to find out how others, in what we still take to be certain areas as we define them, see the rest of the world in regional terms. In short, how does the world look—as a congeries of areas—from other locations (social, cultural, national)? For example, the Pacific Rim is certainly a better way of thinking about a certain region today, rather than splitting up East Asia and the Western coast of North America. But a further question is: How do people in Taiwan, Korea, or Japan think about the Pacific Rim, if they think in those terms at all? What is their topology of Pacific traffic? 8

*

ar jun ap padur a i

To seriously build an architecture for area studies around the idea that all ‘‘areas’’ also conceive or produce their own ‘‘areas,’’ we need to recognize the centrality of this sort of recursive refraction. In fact this perspective could be infinitely regressive. But we do not have to follow it out indefinitely: One or two moves of this type would lead us a long way from the U.S. Cold War architecture with which we substantially still operate. Following this principle has a major entailment for understanding the apparatus through which areal worlds are globally produced. This production happens substantially in the public spheres of many societies and includes many kinds of intellectuals and ‘‘symbolic analysts’’ (including artists, journalists, diplomats, businessmen, and others) as well as academics. In some cases, academics may be only a small part of this world-generating optic. We need to attend to this varied set of public spheres, and the intellectuals who constitute them, to create partnerships in teaching and research so that our picture of areas does not stay confined to our own first-order, necessarily parochial, world pictures. The potential payoff is a critical dialogue between world pictures, a sort of dialectic of areas and regions, built on the axiom that areas are not facts but artifacts of our interests and our fantasies as well as of our needs to know, to remember, and to forget. But this critical dialogue between world pictures cannot emerge without one more critical act of optical reversal. We need to ask ourselves what it means to internationalize any sort of research before we can apply our understandings to the geography of areas and regions. In essence, this requires a closer look at research as a practice of the imagination. the idea of research

In much recent discussion about the internationalization of research, the problem term is taken to be ‘‘internationalization.’’ I propose that we focus first on research, before we worry about its global portability, its funding, and about training people to do it better. The questions I wish to raise here are: What do we mean when we speak today of research? Is the research ethic, whatever it may be, essentially the same thing in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities? By whatever definition, is there a sufficiently clear understanding of the research 9

*

grassroots globalization

ethic in the academic world of North America and Western Europe to justify its central role in current discussions of the internationalization of academic practices? Such a deliberately naive, anthropological reflection on the idea of research is difficult. Like other cultural keywords, it is so much part of the ground on which we stand and the air we breathe that it resists conscious scrutiny. In the case of the idea of research, there are two additional problems. First, research is virtually synonymous with our sense of what it means to be scholars and members of the academy, and thus it has the invisibility of the obvious. Second, since research is the optic through which we typically find out about something as scholars today, it is especially hard to use research to understand research. Partly because of this ubiquitous, taken-for-granted, and axiomatic quality of research, it may be useful to look at it not only historically— as we might be inclined to do—but anthropologically, as a strange and wonderful practice that transformed Western intellectual life perhaps more completely than any other single procedural idea since the Renaissance. What are the cultural presumptions of this idea and thus of its ethic? What does it seem to assume and imply? What special demands does it make on those who buy into it? Today, every branch of the university system in the West, but also many branches of government, law, medicine, journalism, marketing, and even the writing of some kinds of fiction and the work of the armed forces must demonstrate their foundation in research in order to command serious public attention or funds. To write the history of this huge transformation of our fundamental protocols about the production of reliable new knowledge is a massive undertaking, better suited to another occasion. For now, let us ask simply what this transformation in our understanding of new knowledge seems to assume and imply. Consider a naive definition. Research may be defined as the systematic pursuit of the not-yet-known. It is usually taken for granted that the machine that produces new knowledge is research. But the research ethic is obviously not about just any kind of new knowledge. It is about new knowledge that meets certain criteria. It has to plausibly emerge from some reasonably clear grasp of relevant prior knowledge. The question of whether someone has produced new knowledge, in this sense, requires a community of assessment, usually preexistent, vocational, and specialized. This community is held to be competent to 10

*

ar jun ap padur a i

assess not just whether a piece of knowledge is actually new but whether its producer has complied with the protocols of pedigree: the review of the literature, the strategic citation, the delineation of the appropriate universe—neither shapelessly large nor myopically small—of prior, usually disciplinary, knowledge. In addition, legitimate new knowledge must somehow strike its primary audience as interesting. That is, it has to strike them not only as adding something recognizably new to some predefined stock of knowledge but, ideally, as adding something interesting. Of course, boring new knowledge is widely acknowledged to be a legitimate product of research, but the search for the new-andinteresting is always present in professional systems of assessment. Reliable new knowledge, in this dispensation, cannot come directly out of intuition, revelation, rumor, or mimicry. It has to be a product of some sort of systematic procedure. This is the nub of the strangeness of the research ethic. In the history of many world traditions (including the Western one) of reflection, speculation, argumentation, and ratiocination, there has always been a place for new ideas. In several world traditions (although this is a matter of continuing debate) there has always been a place for discovery, and even for discovery grounded in empirical observations of the world. Even in those classical traditions of intellectual work, such as those of ancient India, where there is some question about whether empirical observation of the natural world was much valued, it is recognized that a high value was placed on careful observation and recording of human activity. Thus, the great grammatical works of Panini (the father of Sanskrit grammar) are filled with observations about good and bad usage that are clearly drawn from the empirical life of speech communities. Still, it would be odd to say that Panini was conducting research on Sanskrit grammar, any more than that Augustine was conducting research on the workings of the will, or Plato on tyranny, or even Aristotle on biological structures or politics. Yet these great thinkers certainly changed the way their readers thought, and their works continue to change the way we think about these important issues. They certainly produced new knowledge, and they were even systematic in the way they did it. What makes it seem anachronistic to call them researchers? The answer lies partly in the link between new knowledge, systematicity, and an organized professional community of criticism. What these great thinkers did not do was to produce new knowledge in re11

*

grassroots globalization

lation to a prior citational world and an imagined world of specialized professional readers and researchers. But there is another important difference. The great thinkers, observers, discoverers, inventors, and innovators of the pre-research era invariably had moral, religious, political, or social projects, and their exercises in the production of new knowledge were therefore, by definition, virtuoso exercises. Their protocols could not be replicated, not only for technical reasons but because their questions and frameworks were shot through with their political projects and their moral signatures. Once the age of research (and its specific modern ethic) arrives, these thinkers become necessarily confined to the protohistory of the main disciplines that now claim them or to the footnotes of the histories of the fields into which they are seen as having trespassed. But in no case are they seen as part of the history of research, as such. This is another way to view the much discussed growth of specialized fields of inquiry in the modern research university in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These considerations bring us close to the core of the modern research ethic, to something that underpins the concern with systematicity, prior citational contexts, and specialized modes of inquiry. This is the issue of replicability, or, in the aphoristic comment of my colleague George Stocking, the fact that what is involved here is not search but re-search. There is of course a vast technical literature in the history and philosophy of science about verifiability, replicability, falsifiability, and the transparency of research protocols. All of these criteria are intended to eliminate the virtuoso technique, the random flash, the generalist’s epiphany, and other private sources of confidence. All confidence in this more restricted ethic of new knowledge reposes (at least in principle) in the idea that results can be repeated, sources can be checked, citations can be verified, calculations can be confirmed by one or many other researchers. Given the vested interest in showing their peers wrong, these other researchers are a sure check against bad protocols or lazy inferences. The fact that such direct cross-checking is relatively rare in the social sciences and the humanities is testimony to the abstract moral sanctions associated with the idea of replicability. This norm of replicability gives hidden moral force to the idea, famously associated with Max Weber, of the importance of value-free research, especially in the social sciences. Once the norm of value-free research successfully moves from the natural sciences into the social and 12

*

ar jun ap padur a i

human sciences (no earlier than the late nineteenth century), we have a sharp line not just between such ‘‘ancients’’ as Aristotle, Plato, and Augustine on the one hand and modern researchers on the other, but also a line between researchers in the strict academic sense and such modern thinkers as Goethe, Kant, and Locke. The importance of value-free research in the modern research ethic assumes its full force with the subtraction of the idea of moral voice or vision and the addition of the idea of replicability. It is not difficult to see the link of these developments to the steady secularization of academic life after the seventeenth century. Given these characteristics, it follows that there can be no such thing as individual research, in the strict sense, in the modern research ethic, though of course individuals may and do conduct research. Research in the modern, Western sense, is through and through a collective activity, in which new knowledge emerges from a professionally defined field of prior knowledge and is directed toward evaluation by a specialized, usually technical, body of readers and judges who are the first sieve through which any claim to new knowledge must ideally pass. This fact has important implications for the work of ‘‘public’’ intellectuals, especially outside the West, who routinely address nonprofessional publics. I will address this question below. Being first and last defined by specific communities of reference (both prior and prospective), new knowledge in the modern research ethic has one other crucial characteristic that has rarely been explicitly discussed. For most researchers, the trick is how to choose theories, define frameworks, ask questions, and design methods that are most likely to produce research with a plausible shelf life. Too grand a framework or too large a set of questions and the research is likely not to be funded, much less to produce the ideal shelf life. Too myopic a framework, too detailed a set of questions, and the research is likely to be dismissed by funders as trivial, and even when it is funded, to sink without a bubble in the ocean of professional citations. The most elusive characteristic of the research ethos is this peculiar shelf life of any piece of reliable new knowledge. How is it to be produced? More important, how can we produce institutions that can produce this sort of new knowledge predictably, even routinely? How do you train scholars in developing this faculty for the lifelong production of pieces of new knowledge that function briskly but not for too long? Can such training be internationalized? I have already suggested that there are few walks of modern life, 13

*

grassroots globalization

both in the West and in some other advanced industrial societies, in which research is not a more or less explicit requirement of plausible policy or credible argumentation, whether the matter is child abuse or global warming, punctuated equilibrium or consumer debt, lung cancer or affirmative action. Research-produced knowledge is everywhere, doing battle with other kinds of knowledge (produced by personal testimony, opinion, revelation, or rumor) and with other pieces of researchproduced knowledge. Though there are numerous debates and differences about research style among natural scientists, policy makers, social scientists, and humanists, there is also a discernible area of consensus. This consensus is built around the view that the most serious problems are not those to be found at the level of theories or models but those involving method: data gathering, sampling bias, reliability of large numerical data sets, comparability of categories across national data archives, survey design, problems of testimony and recall, and the like. To some extent, this emphasis on method is a reaction to widespread unease about the multiplication of theoretical paradigms and normative visions, especially in the social sciences. Furthermore, in this perspective, method, translated into research design, is taken to be a reliable machine for producing ideas with the appropriate shelf life. This implicit consensus and the differences it seeks to manage take on special importance for any effort to internationalize social science research. de m o c r a c y, g l o b a l iz at i o n, a n d pe dag o gy

We can return now to a deeper consideration of the relationship between the knowledge of globalization and the globalization of knowledge. I have proposed that globalization is not simply the name for a new epoch in the history of capital or in the biography of the nationstate. It is marked by a new role for the imagination in social life. This role has many contexts: I have focused here on the sphere of knowledge production, especially knowledge associated with systematic academic inquiry. I have suggested that the principal challenge that faces the study of regions and areas is that actors in different regions now have elaborate interests and capabilities in constructing world pictures whose very interaction affects global processes. Thus the world may consist of regions (seen processually), but regions also imagine their own worlds. 14

*

ar jun ap padur a i

Area studies must deliberate on this aspect of the relationship between regions, as must any discipline that takes subjectivity and ideology as something more than ephemera in the saga of capital and empire. Such deliberation is a vital prerequisite for internationalizing academic research, especially when the objects of research themselves have acquired international, transnational, or global dimensions of vital interest to the human sciences. One aspect of such deliberation involves a recognition of the constitutive peculiarities of the idea of research, which itself has a rather unusual set of cultural diacritics. This ethic, as I have suggested, assumes a commitment to the routinized production of certain kinds of new knowledge, a special sense of the systematics for the production of such knowledge, a quite particular idea of the shelf life of good research results, a definite sense of the specialized community of experts who precede and follow any specific piece of research, and a distinct positive valuation of the need to detach morality and political interest from properly scholarly research. Such a deparochialization of the research ethic—of the idea of research itself—will require asking the following sorts of questions. Is there a principled way to close the gap between many U.S. scholars, who are suspicious of any form of applied or policy-driven research, and scholars from many other parts of the world who see themselves as profoundly involved in the social transformations sweeping their own societies? Can we retain the methodological rigor of modern social science while restoring some of the prestige and energy of earlier visions of scholarship in which moral and political concerns were central? Can we find ways to legitimately engage scholarship by public intellectuals here and overseas whose work is not primarily conditioned by professional criteria of criticism and dissemination? What are the implications of the growing gap, in many societies, between institutions for technical training in the social sciences and broader traditions of social criticism and debate? Are we prepared to move beyond a model of internationalizing academic research that is mainly concerned with improving how others practice our precepts? Is there something for us to learn from colleagues in other national and cultural settings whose work is not characterized by a sharp line between social scientific and humanistic styles of inquiry? Asking such questions with an open mind is not just a matter of ecumenism or goodwill. It is a way of enriching the answers to questions 15

*

grassroots globalization

that increasingly affect the relationship between academic research and its various constituencies here in the United States as well. If we are serious about building a genuinely international and democratic community of researchers—especially on matters that involve cross-cultural variation and intersocietal comparison—then we have two choices. One is to take the elements that constitute the hidden armature of our research ethic as given and unquestionable and proceed to look around for those who wish to join us. This is what may be called ‘‘weak internationalization.’’ The other is to imagine and invite a conversation about research in which, by asking the sorts of questions I have just described, the very elements of this ethic could be subjects of debate. Scholars from other societies and traditions of inquiry could bring to this debate their own ideas about what counts as new knowledge and what communities of judgment and accountability they might judge to be central in the pursuit of such knowledge. This latter option—which might be called strong internationalization—might be more laborious, even contentious. But it is the surer way to create communities and conventions of research in which membership does not require unquestioned prior adherence to a quite specific research ethic. In the end, the elements I have identified as belonging to our research ethic may well emerge from this dialogue all the more robust for having been exposed to a critical internationalism. In this sense, Western scholarship has nothing to fear and much to gain from principled internationalization. It may be objected that this line of reasoning fails to recognize that all research occurs in a wider world of relations characterized by growing disparities between rich and poor countries, by increased violence and terror, by domino economic crises, and by runaway traffic in drugs, arms, and toxins. In a world of such overwhelming material dependencies and distortions, can any new way of envisioning research collaboration make a difference? globalization from below

While global capital and the system of nation-states negotiate the terms of the emergent world order, a worldwide order of institutions has emerged that bears witness to what we may call ‘‘grassroots globalization,’’ or ‘‘globalization from below.’’ The most easily recognizable of these institutions are NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) 16

*

ar jun ap padur a i

concerned with mobilizing highly specific local, national, and regional groups on matters of equity, access, justice, and redistribution. These organizations have complex relations with the state, with the official public sphere, with international civil society initiatives, and with local communities. Sometimes they are uncomfortably complicit with the policies of the nation-state and sometimes they are violently opposed to these policies. Sometimes they have grown wealthy and powerful enough to constitute major political forces in their own right and sometimes they are weak in everything except their transparency and local legitimacy. NGOs have their roots in the progressive movements of the last two centuries in the areas of labor, suffrage, and civil rights. They sometimes have historical links to the socialist internationalism of an earlier era. Some of these NGOs are self-consciously global in their concerns and their strategies, and this subgroup has recently been labeled transnational advocacy networks (TANs), whose role in transnational politics has only recently become the object of serious study (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Although the sociology of these emergent social forms— part movements, part networks, part organizations—has yet to be developed, there is a considerable progressive consensus that these forms are the crucibles and institutional instruments of most serious efforts to globalize from below. There is also a growing consensus on what such grassroots efforts to globalize are up against. Globalization (understood as a particular, contemporary configuration in the relationship between capital and the nation-state) is demonstrably creating increased inequalities both within and across societies, spiraling processes of ecological degradation and crisis, and unviable relations between finance and manufacturing capital, as well as between goods and the wealth required to purchase them. The single most forceful account of this process is to be found in the work of William Greider (1997), though his alarming prognostications have not gone unchallenged (Krugman 1998; Rodrik 1997). Nevertheless, in implying that economic globalization is today a runaway horse without a rider, Greider has many distinguished allies (Garten 1997; Soros 1998). This view opens the prospect that successful TANs might offset the most volatile effects of runaway capital. Global capital in its contemporary form is characterized by strategies of predatory mobility (across both time and space) that have vastly compromised the capacities of actors in single locations even to understand, 17

*

grassroots globalization

much less to anticipate or resist, these strategies. Though states (and what we may call ‘‘state fractions’’) vary in how and whether they are mere instruments of global capital, they have certainly eroded as sites of political, economic, and cultural sovereignty. This sense of compromised sovereignty—to which I referred earlier—is the subject of intense debate among political theorists and analysts, but a significant number of these theorists concede that momentous changes in the meaning of state sovereignty are underway (Keohane 1995; Rosenau 1997; Ruggie 1993, 1998; Sassen 1998). These changes suggest that successful transnational advocacy networks might be useful players in any new architecture of global governance. But—and here is the challenge to the academy—most TANs suffer from their inability to counter global capital precisely in its global dimensions. They often lack the assets, the vision, the planning, and the brute energy of capital to globalize through the capture of markets, the hijacking of public resources, the erosion of state sovereignties, and the control of media. The current geographical mobility of capital is unique in its own history and unmatched by other political projects or interests. Again, there is some debate about whether globalization (as measured by the ratio of international trade to GDP) has really increased over the last century (see Sassen, in this volume), but a significant number of observers agree that the scale, penetration, and velocity of global capital have all grown significantly in the last few decades of this century (Castells 1996; Giddens 1996; Held 1995), especially when new information technologies are factored in as measures of integration and interconnectivity. Thus it is no surprise that most transnational advocacy networks have thus far had only limited success in self-globalization, since there is a tendency for stakeholder organizations concerned with bread-andbutter issues to oppose local interests against global alliances. Thus, their greatest comparative advantage with respect to corporations— that they do not need to compete with each other—is underutilized. There are many reasons for this underutilization, ranging from political obstacles and state concerns about sovereignty to lack of information and resources for networking. While the number of nonstate actors has grown monumentally in the last three decades, especially in the areas of human rights and environmental activism (Keck and Sikkink 1998), there is much more confusion about their relative successes in compet18

*

ar jun ap padur a i

ing with the organized global strategies of states and corporate interests (Matthews 1997). But one problem stands out. One of the biggest disadvantages faced by activists working for the poor in fora such as the World Bank, the U.N. system, the WTO, NAFTA, and GATT is their alienation from the vocabulary used by the university-policy nexus (and, in a different way, by corporate ideologues and strategists) to describe global problems, projects, and policies. A strong effort to compare, describe, and theorize ‘‘globalization from below’’ could help close this gap. The single greatest obstacle to grassroots globalization—in relation to the global power of capital—is the lack of a clear picture among their key actors of the political, economic, and pedagogic advantages of counterglobalization. Grassroots organizations that seek to create transnational networks to advance their interests have not yet seen that such counterglobalization might generate the sorts of locational, informational, and political flexibility currently monopolized by global corporations and their national-civic allies. By providing a complex picture of the relationship between globalization from above (as defined by corporations, major multilateral agencies, policy experts, and national governments) and below, collaborative research on globalization could contribute to new forms of pedagogy (in the sense of Freire 1987) that could level the theoretical playing field for grassroots activists in international fora. Such an account would belong to a broader effort to understand the variety of projects that fall under the rubric of globalization, and it would also recognize that the word globalization, and words like freedom, choice, and justice, are not inevitably the property of the statecapital nexus. To take up this sort of study involves, for the social sciences, a serious commitment to the study of globalization from below, its institutions, its horizons, and its vocabularies. For those more concerned with the work of culture, it means stepping back from those obsessions and abstractions that constitute our own professional practice to seriously consider the problems of the global everyday. In this exercise, the many existing forms of Marxist critique are a valuable starting point, but they too must be willing to suspend their inner certainty about understanding world histories in advance. In all these instances, academics from the privileged institutions of the West (and the North) must be prepared to reconsider, in the manner I have pointed to, their 19

*

grassroots globalization

conventions about world knowledge and about the protocols of inquiry (‘‘research’’) that they too often take for granted. There are two grounds for supposing that this sort of exercise is neither idle nor frivolous. The first is that all forms of critique, including the most arcane and abstract, have the potential for changing the world: Surely Marx must have believed this during his many hours in the British Museum doing ‘‘research.’’ The second argument concerns collaboration. I have already argued that those critical voices who speak for the poor, the vulnerable, the dispossessed, and the marginalized in the international fora in which global policies are made lack the means to produce a systematic grasp of the complexities of globalization. A new architecture for producing and sharing knowledge about globalization could provide the foundations of a pedagogy that closes this gap and helps democratize the flow of knowledge about globalization itself. Such a pedagogy would create new forms of dialogue between academics, public intellectuals, activists, and policymakers in different societies. The principles of this pedagogy will require significant innovations. This vision of global collaborative teaching and learning about globalization may not resolve the great antinomies of power that characterize this world, but it might help even the playing field. references Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Castells, Manuel. 1996. The rise of network society. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. Freire, Paolo. 1987. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Garten, Jeffrey E. 1997. Can the world survive the triumph of capitalism? Harvard Business Review 75: 144. Giddens, A. 1996. Globalization—A Keynote Address. UNRISD News 15: 4–5. Greider, William. 1997. One world, ready or not: The manic logic of global capitalism. New York: Simon & Schuster. Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the global order. London: Polity Press. Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Keohane, Robert O. 1995. Hobbes’s dilemma and institutional change in world politics: Sovereignty in international society. In Whose world order? edited by H. Holm and G. Sorensen. Boulder: Westview Press. Krugman, Paul R. 1998. The accidental theorist and other dispatches from the dismal science. New York: Norton Publishers. 20

*

ar jun ap padur a i

Matthews, Jessica T. 1997. Power shift. Foreign Affairs, January/February, 50–66. Rodrik, D. 1997. Has globalization gone too far? Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics. Rosenau, James. 1997. Along the domestic-foreign frontier: Exploring governance in a turbulent world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruggie, John Gerard. 1993. Territoriality and beyond: Problematizing modernity in international relations. International Organization 47: 139–74. Sassen, Saskia. 1996. Losing control? Sovereignty in an age of globalization. New York: Columbia University Press. . 1998. Globalization and its discontents. New York: The New Press. Soros, George. 1998. Toward a global open society. Atlantic Monthly, January, 20– 24, 32.

21

*

grassroots globalization

At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa Achille Mbembe Translated by Steven Rendall

From a philosophical point of view, globalization might be compared with what Heidegger called ‘‘the gigantic’’ (das Riesige). For among the characteristics of the gigantic as he understood it were both the elimination of great distances and the representation—producible at any time—of daily life in unfamiliar and distant worlds. But the gigantic was for him above all that through which the quantitative became an essential quality. From this point of view, the time of the gigantic was that in which ‘‘the world posits itself in a space beyond representation, thus allocating to the incalculable its own determination and unique historical character.’’ 1 If at the center of the discussion on globalization we place the three problems of spatiality, calculability, and temporality in their relations with representation, we find ourselves brought back to two points usually ignored in contemporary discourses, even though Fernand Braudel had called attention to them. The first of these has to do with temporal pluralities, and, we might add, with the subjectivity that makes these temporalities possible and meaningful. Braudel drew a distinction between ‘‘temporalities of long and very long duration, slowly evolving and less slowly evolving situations, rapid and virtually instantaneous deviations, the quickest being the easiest to detect.’’ 2 He went Thanks are due to Carol A. Breckenridge for ongoing discussions on several of the issues broached in this essay. I am also grateful to Sarah Nuttall, Jean Comaroff, and Mamadou Diouf for their comments. 1. Martin Heidegger, Chemins qui ne mènent nulle part, trans. W. Brokmeier (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 124–25. 2. Fernand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme (XVe–XVIIIe siècle), vol. 3, Le temps du monde (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1979); Civilization

on to emphasize—and this was the second point—the exceptional character of what he called world time (le temps du monde). For him, time experienced in the dimensions of the world had an exceptional character insofar as it governed, depending on the period and the location, certain spaces and certain realities. But other realities and other spaces escaped it and remained alien to it.3 The following notes, although they adopt the notion of long duration and relativize the airtightness of the distinctions mentioned above, nonetheless differ in several respects from Braudel’s theses. They are based on a twofold hypothesis. First, they assume that temporalities overlap and interlace. In fact, Braudel’s postulate of the plurality of temporalities does not by itself suffice to account for contemporary changes. In the case of Africa, long-term developments, more or less rapid deviations, and long-term temporalities are not necessarily either separate or merely juxtaposed. Fitted within one another, they relay each other; sometimes they cancel each other out, and sometimes their effects are multiplied. Contrary to Braudel’s conviction, it is not clear that there are any zones on which world history would have no repercussions. What really differ are the many modalities in which world time is domesticated. These modalities depend on histories and local cultures, on the interplay of interests whose determinants do not all lead in the same direction. The central thesis of this study is that in several regions considered— wrongly—to be on the margins of the world, the domestication of world time henceforth takes place by dominating space and putting it to different uses. When resources are put into circulation, the consequence is a disconnection between people and things that is more marked than it was in the past, the value of things generally surpassing that of people. That is one of the reasons why the resulting forms of violence have as their chief goal the physical destruction of people (massacres of civilians, genocides, various kinds of killing) and the primary exploitation of things. These forms of violence (of which war is only one aspect) conand Capitalism, Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, vol. 3, The Perspective of the World, trans. Siân Reynolds (New York: Harper and Row, 1984). 3. In his foreword to the above-cited volume, Braudel went so far as to assert that ‘‘there are always some areas world history does not reach, zones of silence and undisturbed ignorance’’ (Civilization and Capitalism, 18).

23

*

at the edge of the world

tribute to the establishment of sovereignty outside the state, and are based on a confusion between power and fact, between public affairs and private government.4 In this study, we are interested in a specific form of domestication and mobilization of space and resources: the form that consists in producing boundaries, whether by moving already existing ones or by doing away with them, fragmenting them, decentering or differentiating them. In dealing with these questions, we will draw a distinction between Africa as a ‘‘place’’ and Africa as a ‘‘territory.’’ In fact, a place is the order according to which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. A place, as Michel de Certeau points out, is an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies a stability. As for a territory, it is fundamentally an intersection of moving bodies. It is defined essentially by the set of movements that take place within it.5 Seen in this way, it is a set of possibilities that historically situated actors constantly resist or realize.6 boundaries and their limits

Over the past two centuries the visible, material, and symbolic boundaries of Africa have constantly expanded and contracted. The structural character of this instability has helped change the territorial body of the continent. New forms of territoriality and unexpected forms of locality have appeared. Their limits do not necessarily intersect with the official limits, norms, or language of states. New internal and external actors, organized into networks and nuclei, claim rights over these territories, often by force. Other ways of imagining space and ter4. See Achille Mbembe, Du gouvernement privé indirect (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1999); On Private Indirect Government, trans. Steven Rendall (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1999). 5. ‘‘Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities. . . . In contradistinction to the place, it has thus none of the univocity or stability of a ‘proper.’ ’’ See Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien: arts de faire (Paris: Union Générale des Éditions, 1980), 208; The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 117. 6. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

24

*

achille mbembe

ritory are developing. Paradoxically, the discourse that is supposed to account for these transformations has ended up obscuring them. Essentially, two theses ignore each other. On one hand, the prevailing idea is that the boundaries separating African states were created by colonialism, that these boundaries were arbitrarily drawn, and that they separated peoples, linguistic entities, and cultural and political communities that formed natural and homogeneous wholes before colonization. The colonial boundaries are also said to have opened the way to the Balkanization of the continent by cutting it up into a maze of microstates that were not economically viable and were linked more to Europe than to their regional environment. On this view, by adopting these distortions in 1963 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) adhered to the dogma of their intangibility and gave them a kind of legitimacy. Many of the current conflicts are said to have resulted from the imprecise nature of the boundaries inherited from colonialism. These boundaries could not be changed except in the framework of vigorous policies of regional integration that would complete the implementation of defense and collective security agreements.7 The other thesis claims that a kind of regional integration is already taking place ‘‘from below.’’ It seems to be occurring on the margins of official institutions, through sociocultural solidarities and interstate commercial networks. This process is the basis for the emergence of alternative spaces that structure the informal economy, contraband, and migratory movements. Far from being merely regional, these interstate exchanges are connected with international markets and their dynamics. The commerce for which they provide the moving force is favored by a fundamental characteristic of African states, namely, the relative lack of congruence between the territory of a state and areas of exchange.8 Powerful religious and commercial networks with multiple 7. On this subject, consider views that are apparently divergent but are in fact ultimately based on the same misunderstandings: Paul Nugent and A. J. Asiwaju, eds., African Boundaries: Barriers, Conduits, and Opportunities (London: Pinter, 1996); J. O. Igué, Le territoire de l’état en Afrique: les dimensions spatiales du développement (Paris: Karthala, 1995); J. Herbst, ‘‘The Challenges to African Boundaries,’’ Journal of International Affairs 46 (1992): 17–31; and the fantastic views of the same author in ‘‘Responding to State Failure in Africa,’’ International Security 21 (1996–97): 120–44. 8. See the contributions to ‘‘Echanges transfrontaliers et intégration régionale en

25

*

at the edge of the world

ramifications have taken advantage of complementarities between areas of production, as well as legislation and monetary zones that differ from one country to another, in order to create markets that elude the states themselves.9 These two views are based on a simplistic notion of the role of boundaries in African history, as well as on a misunderstanding regarding the nature of colonial boundaries proper. There are two reasons for this misunderstanding. First, little effort has been made to understand the imaginaires and autochthonous practices of space—which are themselves extremely varied—and the modalities through which a territory becomes the object of an appropriation or of the exercise of a power or a jurisdiction. Second, the history of boundaries in Africa is too often reduced, on one hand, to the frontier as a device in international law, and on the other, to the specific spatial marker constituted by the boundary of a state.10 In this context, the connection between a state and a territory is seen as purely instrumental, the territory making sense on the political level only as the privileged space of the exercise of sovereignty and of self-determination, and as the ideal framework of the imposition of authority.11 As a result, investigation is limited to the question whether restructuring spaces of exchange does or does not contribute to the weakening of the state and to the erosion of its sovereignty.12 In considering endogenous conceptions of space, it is important to keep in mind that before colonization, the attachment to the territory Afrique subsaharienne,’’ a special issue of Autrepart: Cahiers des sciences humaines 6 (1998). 9. E. Grégoire, ‘‘Les grands courants d’échange sahéliens: histoire et situations présentes,’’ in Sahels: diversité et dynamiques des relations société-nature, ed. Claude Raynault (Paris: Karthala, 1997), 121–41. 10. Daniel Nordman’s study, Frontières de France: de l’espace au territoire, XVIe–XIXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), shows not only that there are many different models of boundaries, the state boundary being in this respect only one variety in the immense range of limits. Nordman also emphasizes that every boundary is first of all a paradox in space. 11. See F. Kratochwil, ‘‘Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territory: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System,’’ World Politics 39 (1986): 27–52; C. Clapham, ‘‘Sovereignty and the Third World State,’’ Political Studies 47 (1999): 522–37. 12. See P. Evans, ‘‘The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization,’’ World Politics 50 (1997): 62–87; Bertrand Badie, La fin des territoires: essai sur le désordre international et sur l’utilité sociale du respect (Paris: Fayard, 1995).

26

*

achille mbembe

and to the land was entirely relative. In some cases, political entities were not delimited by boundaries in the classical sense of the term, but rather by an imbrication of multiple spaces constantly joined, disjoined, and recombined through wars, conquests, and the mobility of goods and persons.13 Very complex scales of measurement made it possible to establish productive correspondences between persons and things, the former and the latter being convertible into each other, as at the time of the slave trade.14 It might be said that operating by thrusts, detachments, and scissions, precolonial territoriality was an itinerant territoriality. In other cases, mastery over spaces was based on controlling people or localities, and sometimes both together.15 Vast areas might lie between distinct polities, veritable buffer zones not subject to direct control, exclusive domination, or close supervision. In still other cases, the spatial dynamics tending to make the boundary a genuine physical limit went hand in hand with the principle of dispersing and deterritorializing allegiances. In fact, foreigners, slaves, and subjects could be under the control of several sovereign powers at once. The multiplicity of allegiances and jurisdictions itself corresponded to the plurality of the forms of territoriality. The result was often an extraordinary superposition of rights and an interlacing of social ties that was reducible neither to family relationships, religion, nor castes alone. These rights and ties were combined with forms of locality, but at the same time they transcended them.16 Various centers of power might have authority over a single place, which might itself fall under the control of another place that was nearby, distant, or even imaginary.17 Whether the ‘‘boundary’’ was a state boundary or some other 13. Igor Kopytoff, ed., The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). 14. See Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988). 15. See the contributions to David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin, eds., History of Central Africa, vol. 1 (London: Longman, 1983); G. I. Jones, The Trading States of the Oil Rivers: A Study of Political Development in Eastern Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1963). 16. P. E. Lovejoy and D. Richardson, ‘‘Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade,’’ American Historical Review 104 (April 1999). 17. K. K. Nair, Politics and Society in Southeastern Nigeria, 1841–1906 (London: n.p., 1972).

27

*

at the edge of the world

kind, it was meaningful only through the relationships it maintained with other forms of difference and of social, jurisdictional, and cultural discrimination, the forms of contact and interpenetration at work in a given space. It was a question not of boundaries in the legal sense of the term, but rather of the borders of countries and of interlaced spaces, taken as a whole. These borders could shrink as a result of military defeats or be expanded through conquests or acquisitions. Thus, it was very often a matter of boundaries capable of infinite extension and abrupt contraction. But this incompleteness did not in any way exclude the existence of specific forms of the bipolarization of space.18 m u lt i p l e g e n e s e s

It is clear that the boundaries inherited from colonization were not defined by Africans themselves. But contrary to a common assumption, this does not necessarily mean that they were arbitrary. To a large extent, every boundary depends on a convention. With the exception of flagrant cases of arbitrary division, some of the boundaries drawn by colonization are based on natural limits—oceans, rivers, or mountain ranges, for example. Others were the result of diplomatic negotiations or treaties of cession, annexation, or exchange among the imperial powers. Others take the old kingdoms into account. Still others are neither more nor less than imagined lines, as in the case of the boundaries separating the countries along the borders of the Sahara (Mali, Niger, Algeria) or the Kalahari Deserts. All these boundaries marked out geographical territories that were then associated with names, some of which were changed when independence was won. From 1960 on, they marked the limits of sovereignty among African states. As happens everywhere in the world, these limits of sovereignty have led, for example, to concrete arrangements with regard to tariffs, commercial policy, or immigration policy. In the same perspective, boundaries have been subjected to internal and external surveillance and contribute to the stabilization of relationships between states. Moreover, to state that current African boundaries are merely a product of colonial arbitrariness is to ignore their multiple geneses. In 18. Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

28

*

achille mbembe

fact, their establishment long antedated the Congress of Berlin held in 1884, whose objective was to distribute sovereignty among the different powers engaged in dividing up the continent. Their protogenesis goes back to the period of the trading-post economy, when Europeans set up agencies on the coasts and began to trade with the natives. The establishment of this economy explains, in part, some of the physical characteristics of African states, and first of all the distinction between the littoral areas and the hinterland that so deeply marks the geographical structure of various countries, or again the enclosure of vast enclaves situated far from the oceans. Boundaries gradually crystallized during the period of ‘‘informal empire’’ (from the abolition of the slave trade up to the repression of the first resistance movements), thanks to the combined action of traders and missionaries. The rise of boundaries took a military turn with the construction of forts, the penetration of the hinterland, and the repression of local revolts. Far from being simple products of colonialism, current boundaries thus reflect commercial, religious, and military realities, the rivalries, power relationships, and alliances that prevailed among the various imperial powers and between them and Africans through the centuries preceding colonization proper. From this point of view, their constitution depends on a relatively long-term social and cultural process.19 Before the conquest, they represented spaces of encounter, negotiation, and opportunity for Europeans and Africans.20 At the time of conquest, their main function was to mark the spatial limits that separated colonial possessions from one another, taking into account not ambitions but the actual occupation of the land. Later on, physical control over the territory led to the creation of devices of discipline and command, modeled on those of chiefdoms where these did not exist. With the demarcation of districts, the levying of taxes, the spread of cash crops, a monetary economy, urbanization, and education, economic and political functionality were ultimately combined, the administrative power 19. On this cultural aspect, see J. Lonsdale, ‘‘The European Scramble and Conquest in African History,’’ in The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 6, From 1870 to 1905, ed. J. D. Fage and Roland Oliver (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 680–766. 20. See, in other contexts, the synthesis by J. Adelman and S. Aron, ‘‘From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between North American History,’’ American Historical Review 104 (1999).

29

*

at the edge of the world

and the social power weaving a fabric that was henceforth to dominate the colonial state. However, the decisive factor was the internal boundaries the colonial enterprise defined within each country. In addition, it must be noted that colonialism structured economic spaces in several ways, which were themselves associated with specific territorial mythologies. This was notably the case in the settler colonies, where the erection of internal boundaries reached tragic proportions. In the case of South Africa, for example, the massive population shifts that took place throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gradually led to the establishment, within a single country, of fourteen territorial entities of unequal status. Since membership in a race and an ethnic group served as the condition of access to land and resources, three types of territories emerged: the white provinces, where only Europeans enjoyed permanent rights (Orange Free State, Cape Province, Transvaal, Natal); the so-called independent bantustans or black homelands, composed of ethnic groups that were theoretically homogeneous (Bophuthatswana, Venda, Transkei, Ciskei); and finally the ‘‘autonomous’’ bantustans (KwaNdebele, KaNgwane, KwaZulu, Qwaqwa, Lebowa, and Gzankulu).21 The same way of carving up space was used in the area of urban management. By defining urban spaces specifically reserved for nonwhites, the system of apartheid deprived the latter of any rights in the white zones. The result of this excision was to put on the black populations themselves the financial burden of reproducing themselves and to circumscribe the phenomenon of poverty within racially associated enclaves. Apartheid’s stamp is also visible on the landscape and on the organization of rural space. The most characteristic marks of apartheid are the differentiation of systems of property (individual property in commercial zones and mixed systems in communal zones), the racial appropriation and ethnic distribution of the natural resources most favorable to agriculture, and migratory movements resulting in a multilocalization of black families. In countries such as Kenya or Zim21. See ‘‘Afrique du Sud,’’ a special issue of L’espace géographique 2 (1999); Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee, eds., The Shaping of South African Society, 1652– 1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). Taking into account this legacy of fragmentation, the goal pursued by the current authorities is to encourage the emergence of new representations of identity and territory that transcend the racial, ethnic, and linguistic identities inherited from the old divisions.

30

*

achille mbembe

babwe, the same process of dispossessing Africans of lands to the advantage of whites took place. Reservations were set up, while everywhere there prevailed legislation that sought to extend the mode of individual tenure and to limit the forms of tenant farming by blacks on whiteowned properties. Thus, reservoirs of labor were created. This colonial structuring of economic spaces was not abolished by postcolonial regimes. The latter have often prolonged it; sometimes, they have radicalized the logic of the creation of internal boundaries that was inherent in it, particularly in rural zones. To be sure, the modalities of state penetration have varied from one region to another, taking into account the influence of local elites, producers’ cooperatives, or religious orders.22 But as soon as independence was won, Africa began a vast enterprise of remodeling internal territorial entities even as it accepted the principle of the inviolability of boundaries among states. Almost everywhere, the redefinition of internal boundaries was carried out under cover of creating new administrative districts, provinces, and municipalities. These administrative divisions had both political and economic goals. But they also contributed to the crystallization of ethnic identities—in fact, whereas under colonization itself, the attribution of space sometimes preceded the organization of states or went hand in hand with it, since the beginning of the 1980s the reverse has been happening. On one hand, a reclassification of localities into large and small areas is underway. These large and small areas are cut up on the basis of supposedly common cultures and languages. On these entities associating family relationships, ethnicity, and religious and cultural proximities, the state confers the status of a federated state (as in Nigeria), a province, or an administrative district.23 This bureaucratic work is preceded (or accompanied) by the invention of imaginary family ties. It is powerfully underpinned by the recent proliferation of ideologies promoting the values of autochthony. Everywhere, the distinction between autochthonous peoples and foreigners has been accentuated, the ethnoracial principle serving increasingly as the basis for citizenship and as the condition of access to land, resources, and elective positions of responsi22. See C. Boone, ‘‘State Building in the African Countryside: Structure and Politics at the Grassroots,’’ Journal of Development Studies 34 (1998): 1–31. 23. E. E. Osaghae, ‘‘Managing Multiple Minority Problems in a Divided Society: The Nigerian Experience,’’ Journal of Modern African Studies 36 (1998): 1–24.

31

*

at the edge of the world

bility.24 As a result of the transition to a multiparty system, struggles over autochthony have taken a more conflictual turn to the extent that they go along with the establishment of new electoral districts. The repertoires on which the protagonists in these struggles draw are not simply local but also international. This is the case for discourses on minorities and on the environment. c u lt u r a l a n d s y m b o l i c t e r r i t o r i a l i t i e s

One of the main legacies of colonization has been to set in motion a process of development that is unequal, depending on the regions and countries involved. This unequal development has contributed to a distribution of space around sites that are sometimes clearly differentiated, and to the emergence of cultural vectors whose influence on the reconfiguration of the map of the continent is generally underestimated. On the scale of the continent, a first differentiation thus contrasts regions where population is dense (on plateaus and around large lakes) to those that are almost unpopulated. From the 1930s to the end of the 1970s, two main factors have contributed to the consolidation of the large population centers: the evolution of a cash crop economy and the development of the great axes of communication (particularly the railway). The collapse of the production of certain cash crops and the transition to other forms of exploitation has resulted in an accelerated—and sometimes regionwide—movement of populations toward the coasts or toward the great urban centers. Thus, cities such as Johannesburg, Cairo, Kinshasa, Casablanca, Nairobi, Lagos, Douala, Dakar, and Abidjan have become the destination points for regional migrations. They now constitute vast metropolises from which a new African urban civilization is emerging. This new urbanity, creole and cosmopolitan, is characterized by combination and mixture in clothing, music, and advertising as well as in practices of consumption in general.25 One of the most important factors regulating daily urban life is surely 24. See J. P. Dozon, ‘‘L’étranger et l’allochtone en Côte d’Ivoire,’’ in Le modèle ivoirien en questions: crises, ajustements, recompositions, ed. Bernard Contamin and Harris Memel-Fotê (Paris: Karthala, 1997), 779–98. 25. Abdumaliq Simone, Urban Processes and Change in Africa (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1997).

32

*

achille mbembe

the multiplicity and heterogeneity of religious systems. With the proliferation of churches and mosques, a veritable territorial sphere has been constituted around places of worship. It is clearly distinguished from the territorial administration of the state, not only by the services that religious institutions offer but also by the ethics they promote. Alongside the religious foundations entrusted with running hospitals and schools, a religious individualism based on the idea of God’s sovereignty is emerging. This sovereignty is exercised in all spheres of life. It is expressed in the form of grace and salvation. Grace and salvation are connected with the divine will and not with any human merit. The interiorization of grace is realized through strict moral codes, a taste for discipline and work, and concern for family life (marriage, sex) and the dead. In Muslim countries, a territoriality based on networks provides the foundation for the jurisdictional power marabouts exercise over the faithful. Spread out within a national and often international setting, these networks are connected with holy cities and figures to whom the faithful give allegiance.26 The mosque, on the other hand, became in the 1980s one of the chief symbols of the reconquest of society and city by the religious. It has sometimes served as a refuge for those who were persecuted, and sometimes as a haven for those who could go no further. The ultimate resort for the desperate, it has become the primary referent for all those whose convictions have been shaken by the changes currently taking place. In North Africa, and even in some parts of Nigeria, it has sometimes served as the point of emergence for a culture of protest, new figures of the imam coming to embody new practices of worship and preaching, and the Friday prayer becoming one of the main moments on the weekly calendar.27 In predominantly Christian countries, the proliferation of cults has given rise to a territorial logic of a capillary type. With the explosion of dogma, a plurality of meanings and institutional forms are assumed by 26. See the case of the holy city of Touba (Senegal), studied in E. Ross, ‘‘Touba: A Spiritual Metropolis in the Modern World,’’ Canadian Journal of African Studies 29 (1995): 222–59, and ‘‘Tûba: An African Eschatology in Islam’’ (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, Montreal, 1996). 27. See Urbanité arabe: hommage à Bernard Lepetit / Textes rassemblés par Jocelyne Dakhlia (Paris: Actes Sud, 1998).

33

*

at the edge of the world

preaching, the administration of the sacraments, the liturgy, and various rituals, including healing rituals. Wars, along with the volatility and hazards of everyday life, have led to reinterpretations of the narratives of the Passion and Calvary, as well as of the images of the Last Judgment, the Resurrection, and the Redemption.28 Sometimes this eschatological dimension has found a ready-made outlet in armed movements characterized by attendant ideologies of death and sacrifice.29 Re-Islamization and re-Christianization have gone hand in hand, both processes confidently recombining disparate and even contradictory elements of African paganism, of the ambient pietism, and of monotheistic patriarchalism. The other territory on which the new frontiers of urban life are marked is that of sexuality. The dimension of individual behavior, the universe of norms, and the forms of morality that are supposed to govern private practices have undergone deep transformations. The last twenty years have witnessed, in fact, a generalized loss of control over sexuality by families, churches, and the state. A new moral economy of individual pleasures has developed in the shadow of economic decadence. Everywhere, the age of marriage has, for the most part, fallen. A general crisis of masculinity is occurring, while the number of female heads of families steadily increases. So-called illegitimate births have definitely ceased to be regarded as a serious problem. Precocious and frequent sexual relations have become commonplace. In spite of the resilience of traditional family models, many prohibitions have been lifted. Ideals of fecundity are in crisis, and contraceptive practices have increased, at least among the middle classes.30 Homosexuality is becoming more visible almost everywhere.31 Access to literature and pornographic films is more widespread. Concurrently, sexually transmitted diseases have extended their domain, AIDS now serving as the main regulator of demographic growth while at the same time push28. R. Werbner, ‘‘The Suffering Body: Passion and Ritual Allegory in Christian Encounters,’’ Journal of Southern African Studies 23 (1997): 311–24. 29. See J. L. Grootaers, ed., ‘‘Mort et maladie au Zaïre,’’ Cahiers africains 31–32 (1998). 30. See A. Guillaume, ‘‘La régulation de la fécondité à Youpougon (Abidjan): une analyse des biographies contraceptives,’’ Documents de Recherche 7 (1999). 31. See ‘‘Special Issue on Masculinities in Southern Africa,’’ Journal of Southern Africa Studies 24 (1998).

34

*

achille mbembe

ing to its ultimate limits the new cultural relationship between pleasure and death.32 The other new form of polarization with regard to culture and identity is found in the refugee camps, under the combined impact of war, the collapse of state order, and the ensuing forced migrations. This phenomenon is structural to the extent that first, the map of displaced populations, in addition to being drawn over a relatively long time, constantly extends to cover new centers while the number of these displaced populations constantly increases. Second, the forced character of the migrations continually assumes new forms. Finally, although we have witnessed sometimes spectacular cases of refugees returning to their homelands, the time spent in the camps grows ever longer. As a result, the camp ceases to be a provisional place, a space of transit that is inhabited while awaiting a hypothetical return home. From the legal as well as the factual point of view, what was supposed to be an exception becomes routine and the rule within an organization of space that tends to become permanent. In these human concentrations with an extraterritorial status, veritable imaginary nations henceforth live.33 Under the burden of constraint and precariousness, new forms of socialization are emerging.34 As bits of territory located outside the legal systems of the host countries, the refugee camps represent places where the complete enjoyment of life and the rights implicit in it is suspended. A system based on a functional relationship between territorial settlement and expropriation leaves millions of people in a position in which the task of physical survival determines everything else.35 Still more important, the camp becomes a seedbed for the recruitment of soldiers and mercenaries. Within the camps, new forms of authority are also emerging. Nominally administered by international 32. C. Becker, ed., Vivre et penser le SIDA en Afrique (Paris: Karthala-CODESRIA, 1999). 33. See Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 34. See P. Nyers, ‘‘Emergency or Emerging Identities? Refugees and Transformations in World Order,’’ Millennium 28 (1999): 1–26. For a case study, see J. de Smedt, ‘‘Child Marriages in Rwandan Refugee Camps,’’ Africa 68 (1998): 211–37. 35. Compare this with what Giorgio Agamben says about the concentration camps as the nomos of modernity, in Homo Sacer: le pouvoir souverain et la vie nue, trans. M. Raiola (Paris: Le Seuil, 1997), 179–202.

35

*

at the edge of the world

humanitarian organizations, they are secretly controlled by military leaders who are either trying to retake power in their home countries or waging wars in the host country for the benefit of local factions. These armies composed of adolescents and refugees are financed in part through diasporic networks set up in other countries. Child-soldiers are used as supporting forces or as mercenaries in regional wars. Thus new social formations arise on the periphery of the refugee camps. Veritable armies without a state, they often oppose states without armies, which thus find themselves forced to recruit mercenaries as well, or else to solicit the aid of their neighbors to deal with internal rebellions. This logic, which involves disconnecting the state from war making and using substitutes and mercenaries working for the highest bidder, indicates that complex social processes are underway and that new political as well as spatial boundaries are being outlined beyond those inherited from colonization. the territories of war

The examples cited above clearly demonstrate that most African wars do not have their immediate point of origin in border disputes resulting from colonial divisions. In fact, from 1963 to the present, hardly a dozen conflicts between states can be assigned to this category. From a normative point of view, two major principles have in fact guided the conduct of relations among African states since independence. The first principle is based on the idea of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states. The second principle concerns the sacrosanct character of the boundaries inherited from colonization. Although it is evident that the principle of noninterference has been generally ignored, it is nonetheless true that the boundaries inherited from colonialism have remained essentially unaltered. Africans have accepted unchanged the territorial and state framework imposed by colonization. To be sure, there have been armed attempts to modify it. But in general they have not resulted in any redrawing of boundaries, such as the one that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. Until the middle of the 1970s, there were two types of war in which boundaries were directly at stake. First, there were the wars of secession. The two chief examples of this kind of war were the secession of Katanga in the early 1960s and that of the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra, in 36

*

achille mbembe

Nigeria, in 1967. Both the Congo and Nigeria put down these revolts and retained the integrity of their territories, whether by themselves or with the help of foreign forces. The only example of a successful secession is that of Eritrea, which did not put an end to wars between Ethiopia and its neighbors, as the current conflict shows.36 Elsewhere, the secessionist or irredentist temptation has not disappeared. Efforts to escape the central power persist in Senegal (in Casamance), in Cameroon (in the anglophone provinces), in Angola (in the enclave of Cabinda), in Namibia (in the Caprivi Strip), and in the Comoros (on the island of Anjouan). The other form of conflict involving boundaries is constituted by wars of annexation, such as the Somali attempts to conquer Ogaden in Ethiopia in 1963 and 1978. These attempts ended in failure, but they led to important changes in alliances on the regional checkerboard and ultimately to the partition of the Ethiopian state. The territorial conflict between Chad and Libya concerned Aozou, which Libya annexed in 1973. After several years of repeated wars punctuated by foreign military interventions (particularly on the part of France), the International Court of Justice ruled that the territory should be returned to Chad. This was also the case for Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony reclaimed and occupied by Morocco. The other boundary disputes represented dormant conflicts and had to do either with routes connected with the existence of natural resources (oil, iron, diamonds) or with islands, notably in the dispute between Niger and Cameroon over the Bakassi peninsula. These border wars have consisted more of skirmishes than of genuine, open conflicts. Nonetheless, at the end of the twentieth century, African countries continue to be involved in numerous border disputes, such as those between Nigeria and its neighbors on the Gulf of Guinea (Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, in particular), in the Sahel area (Mali, Niger, Algeria, etc.), and between Namibia and Botswana. Most of these disputes have their origin not in the desire to make an ethnocultural space coincide with the space of the state, but rather in the struggle to control resources considered to be vital. This is the case, for example, regarding the distribution of water. The great hydrographic basins, involving 36. J. Abbink, ‘‘Briefing: The Erythrean-Ethiopian Border Dispute,’’ African Affairs 97 (1998): 551–65.

37

*

at the edge of the world

both rivers (the Congo, the Zambezi, the Niger, the Nile, the Senegal) and lakes (Lake Chad, Lake Victoria), thus tend to become new areas of conflict. Around these basins not only economic activities but also serious contradictions have emerged. The noncoincidence of the borders of states and natural borders has opened the way to disputes over sovereignty. Since rivers and lakes generally combine distinct juridical elements (land and water), the question is how to reconcile the three requirements constituted by the freedom of use, the right of access for everyone, and sovereignty over the land through which the river flows. In this regard, the example of the Nile speaks volumes. We know that 95 percent of the water that flows through Egypt comes from outside its boundaries (from Ethiopia and Sudan in particular). Demographic pressure in the region, the necessity of exploiting increasingly less productive lands, and the rapid growth of the rate of per capita consumption are leading most of the states in the region to consider constructing dams. Thus, Ethiopia and Egypt are battling over differences regarding the distribution of water resources entailed by Ethiopia’s plans for irrigation projects to improve farmlands in Ouollo and Tigray.37 But the question of how the waters of the Nile should be distributed involves other countries, such as Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Other river basins, such as those of the Zambezi, the Chobe, and the Okavango, reveal a different set of African boundaries that are a source of tensions among the main countries concerned: Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. An increase in the consumption of the waters of the Okavango in Namibia would automatically threaten the interior delta of this watercourse. Botswana’s project to divert the River Chobe toward the River Vaal to supply South Africa immediately arouses tensions in the subregion. The same kinds of tensions are perceptible regarding the distribution of the fossil groundwaters in the Sahara, which concerns Libya, Sudan, Chad, and Niger, and to the west, Senegal, Mali, and Mauritania. Libya has already begun a project to build an artificial Great River to exploit the fossil groundwaters of the Sahara Desert, which extend under the soil of other countries. The boundaries of the continent are thus being redrawn around the question of how to regulate the use of watercourses by the countries 37. G. Lebbos, ‘‘La vallée du Nil,’’ Les Cahiers de l’Orient 44 (1996).

38

*

achille mbembe

through which they flow, and these hydropolitical conflicts exacerbate other disputes on which they are superimposed. In the framework of the strategic ghetto that Africa has become in the aftermath of the Cold War, another more basic spatial arrangement and another geopolitical situation are currently taking form. Three processes separated in time but complementary in their effects are involved in this development. First, the processes currently underway are situated within the major ongoing movements of destroying and reconstituting the nineteenth-century state. Sometimes they occur in precisely the same spaces as they did in the last century. On another level, dynamics that were introduced by colonization and essentially continued by the independent regimes are grafted onto these processes. Through the mediation of war and the collapse of projects of democratization, this interlacing of dynamics and temporalities leads to the ‘‘exit of the state.’’ It promotes the emergence of technologies of domination based on forms of private indirect government, which have as their function the constitution of new systems of property and new bases of social stratification.38 the three fissures

Three major territorial figures emerge from this interlacing. First, there are the two extremities of the continent. Their respective positions with regard to the heart of the continent (the area Hegel called ‘‘true Africa’’) are dissimilar. Let us take the case of North Africa. All through the nineteenth century, North Africa was connected with the rest of the continent by three ancient corridors. In the western corridor, Moroccan influence made itself felt as far south as the countries in the bend of the Niger River. Conquests, raids, commerce, religious upsurges, and slavery made it possible to amass fortunes and weave multiform networks of relationships (familial, commercial, religious, or military). Armed formations controlled the commercial routes and maintained clienteles.39 Linkages between the Sahel and the desert were mediated by the Moors, Tuaregs, and even the Diulas and the Bambara. 38. Mbembe, Du gouvernement privé indirect. 39. See James L. A. Webb, Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

39

*

at the edge of the world

On the religious level, a flexible and syncretic Sufism cemented the relationships between the two edges of the desert. In the central corridor, religious, commercial, and political dynamics traversed the Sahara, and thanks to the Senussi order of Sufis, connected Cyrenaica, the borders of Egypt, and Tripoli with Lake Chad, the Wadai district, and Borkou. The role played by the cities of Fez and Marrakech in the western corridor was played here by Ghadames. In these two corridors, mixed and hybrid groups were to be found where the Arab-Berber world and the Negro-African world met. Moving and fluid worlds, these boundaries were characterized by a fragmentation into clans, families, and tribes, and by cycles of alliance and rupture. This corridor linked Egypt with the countries to the south. The latter reached as far as the borders of modern-day Ubangi and included not only Lower Sudan but also part of northern Congo. In the context of the reorganization of the world, North Africa is today riven by parallel pressures. On a general level, part of North Africa is drawn toward the Mediterranean. Without necessarily espousing Europe’s cultural values, it is trying to bind its economic future to that of Western Europe. Its other side is turned toward the memorial sites of Islam in the Near East. The African nature of the Maghreb and the Mashriq is seen as problematic by other Africans as well as by the countries involved. In formulating North African autochthony solely in the register of Arabness, one ignores the role played by creoles in this region, a role that is clearly reflected in all the local histories preceding the arrival of the Arabs and Islam. South of the Sahara, North African Muslim influence has increasingly been forced to compete with Saudi and Iranian activism. The latter two countries are involved in domains as various as the training of Islamic intellectuals, the socialization of preachers, the construction of mosques, the financing of charitable services, and diverse foundations. Although it is receding, Moroccan influence still makes itself felt, particularly in Muslim West Africa (Mali, Senegal).40 The channels linking the rest of the continent with the Middle East are controlled by a Lebanese diaspora that has long been established in 40. Y. Abou El Farah, et al., La présence marocaine en Afrique de l’Ouest: cas du Sénégal, du Mali, et de la Côte d’Ivoire (Rabat: Publications de l’Institut des études africaines, Université Mohammed V, 1996).

40

*

achille mbembe

the main centers of West Africa.41 But while North Africa is disconnecting itself from the rest of the continent, a process of deterritorialization is developing around the perimeter of the Sahara Desert. In a single movement, this process is eroding sovereignties in the northern part of the continent as well as in black Africa proper. A vast frontier along variable lines marks out moving spaces on both sides of the desert. It reaches from the borders of Algeria as far as those of Borkou, Ennedi, and Tibesti, at the western gates of the Sudan. In this vast space, segmentary logics are combined with the logics of clans and logics of exchange.42 Here, indigenousness appears in the guise of itinerancy, an ancient mixture of races, and a mutual acculturation that combine several registers of identity. Those who move about in it include governmental and nongovernmental actors, nomads, merchants, and adventurers. Structured by a veritable chain of suzerainties, this space remains strongly marked by a culture of raiding and looting.43 Here, more than elsewhere, the dominant form of territoriality is itinerant and nomadic. The other extremity of the continent is constituted by South Africa, whose border extends from the Cape to Katanga. Internally, however, this diasporic and multiracial country is split into several worlds. On one hand, thanks to active economic diplomacy, it succeeded, after the end of apartheid, in intensifying its relations with Asia by means of a remarkable increase in exchange with Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India. Asia’s penetration of South African markets goes hand in hand with the strengthening of the latter’s relations with the European Union and the United States. The consolidation of financial and commercial relations with the rest of Africa is carried out in different registers. South Africa is taking advantage of the institutional weakness of its neighbors by establishing asymmetrical relations with them—to the point that the flow of investments and regional networks of exchange have put Swaziland, Lesotho, and Mozambique well on the way to becoming South African provinces.44 More41. C. Bierwirth, ‘‘The Lebanese Communities of Côte d’Ivoire,’’ African Affairs 99 (1998). 42. K. Bennafla, ‘‘Entre Afrique noire et monde arabe: nouvelles tendances des échanges ‘informels’ tchadiens,’’ Tiers-Monde 152 (1997). 43. See H. Claudot-Hawad, ‘‘Bandits, rebelles, et partisans: vision plurielle des événements touaregs, 1970–1992,’’ Politique africaine 46 (1992). 44. M. O. Blanc, ‘‘Le Corridor de Maputo,’’ Afrique contemporaine 184 (1997): 133–40.

41

*

at the edge of the world

over, South Africa’s policy of constructing transportation and maritime facilities (in the ports of Maputo, Beira, and Nacala) connected with the exportation of goods and services is transforming landlocked countries into so many captive markets.45 In the rest of Africa, the private sector invests in domains as varied as tourism, mining, transportation, electricity, banks, and breweries. But South Africa’s political, diplomatic, and cultural influence is far greater than economic power, which itself remains very relative. The country is, in fact, extremely vulnerable to international financial fluctuations. Moreover, the tension between macroeconomic choices intended to attract foreign capital and a policy of social adjustment is growing. The position of South Africa on the continent is still highly ambiguous, and the terms on which it can be reintegrated into the continent remain unclear. Its regional and commercial policies are strongly contested by the old frontline states (particularly Angola and Zimbabwe). While South African diplomacy is still based on a minimal knowledge of the rest of the continent, businesses, and particularly the mining companies, are extending their tentacles as far as Mali, Ghana, and Guinea. This also holds true for security enterprises.46 Trade in arms—both official and unofficial—is accelerating. The influx of legal and clandestine immigrants is leading to an extraordinary rise in xenophobia.47 In the hope of halting recent transregional migrations toward South Africa, expulsions have been systematized and police units charged with tracking down clandestine immigrants (particularly of African origin) have been set up.48 The second important territorial mark appears in the form of a diagonal line cutting across the war zones in the Horn of Africa, the African Great Lakes, and the Congo, and emerging at the Atlantic. In the nineteenth century, three processes structured this space. First, the 45. D. Arkwright, et al., ‘‘Spatial Development Initiatives (Development Corridors): Their Potential Contribution to Investment and Employment Creation,’’ working paper, Development Bank of Southern Africa, Midrand, 1996. 46. H. M. Howe, ‘‘Private Security Forces and African Stability,’’ Journal of Modern African Studies 36 (1998): 307–32. 47. D. K. Kadima, ‘‘Congolese Immigrants in South Africa,’’ CODESRIA Bulletin, no. 1–2 (1999): 14–23. 48. Antoine Bouillon, ed., Immigration africaine en Afrique du Sud: les migrants francophones des années 90 (Paris: Karthala, 1998).

42

*

achille mbembe

establishment, around a triangle connecting Darfur, the Bahr el-Ghazal basin, and Lower Egypt, of a vast network for trade in ivory, weapons, and slaves, which was used by the Khartoumites, Egyptians, Syrians, and, later on, Europeans. Constant wars and raiding allowed private fortunes to be made. But they also led to the destruction of social entities or their forced incorporation into larger configurations. Second, in the area around the Great Lakes (Buganda, Burundi, Ankole), small monarchies were established, based on armed force and characterized by a narrow conception of identity on one hand and by intensive stock raising on the other. Finally, primarily in the center and in the south, there emerged a patchwork of powers including slave-trading principalities, caravanstates, chiefdoms, brokering groups, and immense territories controlled by armed bands and warlords. Elephant hunting, ivory trafficking, and the slave trade supplied an interregional commerce whose outlets ran throughout the region, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Over the past twenty years, in the wake of nineteenth-century movements and behind the mask of authoritarian states inherited from colonization, a process of fragmentation has proceeded. The relationships between the central state apparatus and the subjects it administers have grown steadily weaker. Similarly, military principalities have emerged in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and, to a lesser extent, in Ethiopia and Eritrea. One of the characteristics of these regimes is the regular use of force in implementing internal and external political strategies. Having taken power through violence, and having been confronted with internal disorders, they respond to their security obsessions in two ways: first by creating ‘‘security zones’’ along their borders and, second, by extending their power into neighboring countries with the most fragile and unstable state structures, as in the case of Congo-Kinshasa.49 Incapable of colonizing a continental state whose structures are ‘‘unformalized’’ when they are not deliquescent, or even of simply conquering it, these military principalities ally themselves with their own longestablished diaspora, even though the citizenship of those involved in this diaspora is contested in their home countries. The military principalities also acquire the services of ‘‘rebels,’’ dissidents, and other men available to the highest bidder who provide a screen for their intervention. Made up of ‘‘familiar’’ foreigners (whose assimilation within the 49. D. Shearer, ‘‘The Conflict in Central Africa,’’ Survival 41 (1999): 89–106.

43

*

at the edge of the world

autochthonous populations remains incomplete, as in the case of the Tutsi in the Congo) and of natives of the country (undisciplined and fragmented by constant factional battles), these armies of adolescent mercenaries are set up as paragovernmental entities on the sites they control. This is the case in eastern Congo, where, with the implosion of the country, the security problems created by the porosity of the borders have made it possible to structure rear-line bases from which armed groups opposed to Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi undertake destabilizing missions.50 Sometimes these wars result in the victory of a faction. Such victories are almost always temporary and result in a cycle of violence whose intensity constantly increases. In other cases, these struggles have led to the disappearance of states inherited from colonialism, as in the case of Somalia. In still other cases, the situation is such that none of the parties succeeds in decisively defeating the others. War is consequently prolonged, leading to the intervention of humanitarian organizations, whose presence further obliterates the sources of sovereignty.51 Thus, we witness the appearance of social formations in which war and preparation for war tend to become regular functions. Such wars set in motion a process of reproduction-destruction, as is shown by the cycles of massacres and human butchery as well as by the effects of pillage and looting (on the model of nineteenth-century raiding).52 The third major territorial figure emerges in the context of the internationalization of exchange and the development of new ways of exploiting natural resources. Three such resources may be distinguished: oil, forests, and diamonds. Oil, in particular, is at the origin of an offshore economy whose center of gravity is now the Gulf of Guinea. In its extended definition, the Gulf of Guinea includes a long coastal area 50. R. Lemarchand, ‘‘Patterns of State Collapse and Reconstruction in Central Africa: Reflections on the Crisis in the Great Lakes Region,’’ Afrika Spectrum 32 (1997): 173–94. Also, W. Barnes, ‘‘Kivu: l’enlisement dans la violence,’’ Politique africaine 73 (1999): 123–36. 51. M. Duffield, ‘‘NGO Relief in War Zones: Towards an Analysis of the New Aid Paradigm,’’ Third World Quarterly 18 (1997): 527–42. 52. See Heike Behrend, La guerre des esprits en Ouganda, 1985–1986: le mouvement du Saint-Esprit d’Alice Lakwena (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997); or more recently, R. Doom and K. Vlassenroot, ‘‘Kony’s Message: A New Koine? The Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda,’’ African Affairs 98 (1999): 5–36.

44

*

achille mbembe

stretching from Nigeria to Angola. Behind it lies a hinterland characterized by the exploitation of two types of spaces, on one hand the proximate interior forestlands and on the other the peripheral continental zones (of which Lake Chad is the pillar). In the global geopolitics of hydrocarbons, this has become one of the zones in which transnational and local factors are interlaced, leading to important recompositions of the kind that is going on in the Caspian Basin.53 Two factors have been fundamental to this recomposition. First, during the 1980s governments of the Gulf of Guinea granted major concessions to various Western companies specializing in oil exploration. Whereas three companies (Shell, Agip, and Elf ) dominated the region until the beginning of the 1980s, more than twenty firms now have permits (including Chevron, Texaco, Total, Fina, Norsk Hydro, Statoil, Perenco, and Amoco). Major investments, such as the introduction of new technologies of extraction, have made possible the discovery and then exploitation of new oil fields, some of them enormous (as in the case of Dalia, Kuito, Landana, and Girassol in Angola; Nkossa, Kitina, and Moho in the Congo; Zafiro in Equatorial Guinea; and Bonga in Nigeria), as well as the extension of earlier limits. This is particularly true of the deep offshore fields (zones at a depth of more than two to three hundred meters). However, hydrocarbons are unequally distributed among the states of the Gulf of Guinea. The supremacy of Nigeria is increasingly being challenged by Angola, while countries such as Cameroon are about to be surpassed by Equatorial Guinea and Chad. The new oil frontier coincides, paradoxically, with one of the most clearly marked boundaries of state dissolution in Africa. In this respect, the situations of Nigeria, Angola, and Congo-Brazzaville are symptomatic. The deep movements of deterritorialization affecting Africa assume a vivid form in Nigeria. There, within a process of consolidating a federal state, a set of embedded forms of control and regulation that were encouraged by colonial indirect rule are still dominant. Localities and internal divisions, some historical and others institutional or even cultural and territorial, are superimposed on the space of the state. Each locality is subject to several jurisdictions: state jurisdiction, traditional jurisdiction, religious jurisdiction. Different orders coexist within an interlac53. S. Bolukbasi, ‘‘The Controversy over the Caspian Sea Mineral Resources: Conflicting Perceptions, Clashing Interests,’’ Europe-Asia Studies 50 (1998).

45

*

at the edge of the world

ing of ‘‘homelands’’ and ‘‘communities.’’ The coexistence of these different orders is disturbed by a multiplicity of local conflicts. Most of these conflicts are expressed in the form of an opposition between autochthonous populations and strangers. Citizenship is conceived in ethnic and territorial terms, and an individual’s enjoyment of civil rights depends on his appurtenance to an ethnic group or locality. The dissolution of the state is moving in two apparently opposed directions. On one hand, several forms of territoriality intersect, confront, and substitute for each other, thereby producing an accumulation of mutually dissipating and neutralizing forces. On the other hand, the authoritarian imagination has taken multiple forms, notably that of a paranoid military institution. The regions at the epicenter of oil production are torn apart by repeated conflicts. Without taking the form of classical warfare, these conflicts set communities against each other within a single country, in regions known for their mineral wealth and for the intensity with which one or several natural resources are exploited by multinational companies. This is the case in the region of the Delta, a labyrinth of marshes, islands, and mangroves in which, against the background of an ecological catastrophe, the Ogoni, Ijaw, Itsekiri, and Urhobo are fighting among themselves and each group is involved in conflicts with the federal state and the oil companies.54 Armed youths attack oil installations, sabotage pipelines, and block valves. Massacres regularly take place in the context of conflicts that are low in intensity but very costly in human lives.55 Nonetheless, the fact that a major part of the exploitation of oil deposits takes place offshore means that disorders and profits, far from being antithetical, mutually complement and strengthen each other.56 In the case of Angola, the dominant model is partition and dissidence. The boundaries of state sovereignty are blurred. Part of the territory is controlled by the government, while another part is under the control of armed dissidents. Each zone has its own rights and franchises 54. E. E. Osaghae, ‘‘The Ogoni Uprising: Oil Politics, Minority Nationalism, and the Future of the Nigerian State,’’ African Affairs 94 (1995): 396. 55. See Bronwen Manby, The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria’s Oil Producing Communities (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999). 56. J. G. Frynas, ‘‘Political Instability and Business: Focus on Shell in Nigeria,’’ Third World Quarterly 19 (1998): 457–78.

46

*

achille mbembe

and manages its own diplomatic, commercial, financial, and military affairs. In the model of partition, a first delimitation contrasts cities to rural regions. UNITA (Uniao Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola) dominates a major portion of the rural zones and, from time to time, some cities on the high plateaus of Andula and Bailundo, the valley of the Cuango, and the area around Lunda. One of the main tactics of the armed dissidents consists in causing the implosion of urban centers by sowing terror in the countryside, emptying it of ‘‘useless’’ populations, and causing them to flee and pile up in the cities, which are then surrounded and shelled. The exploitation of diamonds is carried out by miners recruited both locally and in neighboring Congo-Kinshasa. In 1996, there were some 100,000 miners working in the mineral deposits under UNITA’s authority in the valley of the Cuango alone. UNITA’s control extended to the Mavinga region and to certain parts of the province of South Kwanza. In the regions under the government’s control, conscription has been introduced in the cities. But the draftees are called upon to fight in rural areas. On the government side as well as on the rebel side, military service is performed in exchange for payments to the soldiers and to mercenaries. Salaries and compensations are often paid in cash that can be immediately circulated on the market, in particular among traffickers more or less specializing in supplying armies and dealing in the spoils of war. The war chest is composed of converted or convertible metals and of oil resources. The two parties to the conflict exploit gold and diamond mines or oil fields. The financial stratagems are complex. Almost all the oil fields are mortgaged. Though it shares some characteristics with the Angolan case, the de facto partition of Congo-Kinshasa is of another order. Long ago, the Congolese state was transformed into an informal satrapy that was later conquered by henchmen armed by neighboring countries. In the context of a policy of reconstructing their own national states, the regimes of Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda are attempting to change the regional balance in accord with a three-dimensional logic. The latter’s first goal is to permanently weaken the (phantom) state of the Congo by blurring its sovereignty over major parts of its territory. Next, it attempts to dismember the Congo into economically differentiated fiefs, each of which is endowed with specific resources (minerals, forests, plantations, etc.) that are exploited by way of monopolies and franchises of various 47

*

at the edge of the world

kinds. Finally, it seeks to trigger the collapse of the social order so as to establish informal domination over these regions. From then on, local and regional conflicts are interlaced, while constant wars set factions, ethnic groups, and lineages against one another within a framework that is henceforth regional in scope. Today, several African armies are facing off either directly or indirectly under the cover of pseudoautochthonous rebellions sponsored by a group of neighboring states. Équateur (a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) is under pressure from the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo, Kivu and some parts of Kasai are occupied by the Rwandans and the Ugandans, while a large part of the Lower Congo is occupied by Angola. War and plunder go hand in hand, and all these forces live off levies on minerals and other resources (timber, coffee) found in the territories they control. In contrast to three other African countries of similar size (South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan), the Congo now appears to be a large open space that includes several boundaries, none of which corresponds to its official place on the map. The territory is split between a multiplicity of forces that the central power is struggling to make cohere. Part of the territory looks toward southern Africa while the energies of the other part are dissipated by the disorders in the Great Lakes region. Still another part is sinking into the Sudan-Ubangi-Chari orbit, while the Atlantic corridor and the ancient lands of the Kongo are satellites of Angola. Against a background of armed violence and a severe depreciation of currencies, alliances are constantly made and unmade. Ephemeral coalitions are formed on the regional scale. But no force accumulates sufficient power to dominate all the others in an enduring way. Everywhere, lines emerge and vanish. Structural instability makes Congo-Kinshasa the perfect example of a process of the delocalization of boundaries. Congo-Brazzaville, on the other hand, is an example of extraterritorialization. Here, the model is not that of partition proper, but rather of a vortex. Violence is cyclical, and its epicenter is the capital. Located in the hinterland, the capital itself has its center of gravity outside itself, in the relation the state maintains with the oil companies operating offshore. The material bases of the state are essentially constituted by pledges. Outside this gelatinous structure, poorly controlled zones are dominant. Armed gangs and militias attempt to transform themselves into genuine military units. They try to control bogus fiefs and to capture 48

*

achille mbembe

what remains to be carried off (money, merchandise, and small household items), particularly when organized pillaging is involved.57 borders, c apitations, and margins

In this nascent geography, which is composed of virtual, potential, and real limits, three other configurations are emerging. First, there are whole regions that suddenly find themselves on the margins of the major territorial mappings mentioned above. This is the case with the countries in the Sudano-Sahelian region, which is composed of small states that are often based on a differentiation between forestlands and savannas. Here, throughout the nineteenth century, the hawking of goods, the propagation of the Muslim faith, and ancient migrations led to a potent mixing of populations. During the colonial period, these population movements were reignited according to different logic, with the result that cleavages between coastal societies and those in the hinterland were accentuated. At the end of the twentieth century, the area is characterized by a contraction around the major urban areas situated along the Atlantic Ocean. These urban areas dominate a hinterland whose borders are often situated beyond the national state framework (as in the case of Abidjan and Dakar). Today, the opposition between countries of the savanna and the countries on the coast is taking on new dimensions. A process of amalgamating ethnic groups under the banner of Islam has ensued. Organized into powerful networks, these communities have been able to amass fortunes on the margin of the state apparatus. Their spread in the subregion and their efforts to convert their mercantile power into political power within the framework of a multiparty system has accentuated debates concerning the relationship between citizenship and autochthony. On another level, we are witnessing the emergence of entrepôt cities or entrepôt states (as in the case of Touba in Senegal or of Gambia), on the basis of which networks are woven and trafficking is organized, with both regional and international ramifications. Finally, the region from Senegal to Liberia is full of apparently localized conflicts whose causes and consequences are connected with social 57. E. Dorier-Apprill, ‘‘Guerres des milices et fragmentation urbaine à Brazzaville,’’ Hérodote 86–87 (1997): 182–221; also, R. Bazenguissa-Ganga, ‘‘Milices politiques et bandes armées à Brazzaville,’’ Les Cahiers du CERI 13 (1996).

49

*

at the edge of the world

structures and transregional histories. This is the case in Casamance, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. These conflicts have repercussions in Guinea-Conakry, Senegal, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast. Social dynamics in the subregion are still marked by nineteenth-century developments. At that time, a migratory expansion of the Fulani from west to east, and then toward the south, touched off several maraboutic revolutions on a regional scale.58 The river countries were at that time, as they are today, occupied by a conglomerate of peoples with fragmented power structures. The Fulani drive toward the south, which aimed to control the traffic in slaves, guns, livestock, and grains, was halted by colonization. Today, the structures of power that have crystallized in the course of this long century are once again being challenged. As a result of international policies of conservation, whole territories are now outside state authority. This is not merely a matter of using the pretext of protecting rare species to impose Western spatial imaginaires.59 Managed on the capitation model by international organizations seeking to protect the environment, these territories have a de facto extraterritorial status. Moreover, almost everywhere the development of tourism is leading to the establishment of tourist parks and hunting reserves. Finally, there are the islands. Situated on the margins of the continent, they are all connected to a plurality of worlds from which they draw their basic resources. In this respect, they constitute a set of intersections. Thus Zanzibar, as a result of its history, lies at the intersection of ‘‘Africa proper’’ and the Arab world. The same can be said of Mauritius, which is situated at the confluence of several civilizations. As major centers of slavery, the islands have generally constituted highly stratified societies. They are also connected to metropolitan centers on the coasts (Durban). Within these spaces structured by familial and diasporic networks, men, women, and merchandise circulate. There, a cosmopolitan, creole African culture is being born. Three conclusions can be drawn from the observations made in this study. To conceptualize globalization adequately, the classical distinction between spatiality and temporality has to be made more relative. 58. Boubacar Barry, La Sénégambie du XVe au XIXe siècle: traite négrière, Islam, et conquête coloniale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988). 59. See R. P. Neumann, ‘‘Primitive Ideas: Protected Area Buffer Zones and the Politics of Land in Africa,’’ Development and Change 28 (1997): 559–82.

50

*

achille mbembe

Interpreted from what is wrongly considered to be the margins of the world, globalization sanctions the entry into an order where space and time, far from being opposed to one another, tend to form a single configuration. The domestication of global time proceeds by way of the material deconstruction of existing territorial frameworks, the excision of conventional boundaries, and the simultaneous creation of mobile spaces and spaces of enclosure intended to limit the mobility of populations judged to be superfluous. In the regions of the world situated on the margins of major contemporary technological transformations, the material deconstruction of existing territorial frameworks goes hand in hand with the establishment of an economy of coercion whose objective is to destroy ‘‘superfluous’’ populations and to exploit raw materials. The profitability of this kind of exploitation requires the exit of the state, its emasculation, and its replacement by fragmented forms of sovereignty. The functioning and viability of such an economy are subordinated to the manner in which the law of the distribution of weapons functions in the societies involved.60 Under such conditions, war as a general economy no longer necessarily implies that those who have weapons oppose each other. It is more likely to imply a conflict between those who have weapons and those who have none. 60. From this point of view, see Luis Martinez, La guerre civile en Algérie: 1990–1998 (Paris: Karthala, 1998).

51

*

at the edge of the world

Mapping Concepts (Cartographier la pensée) Philippe Rekacewicz Translated by Anne-Maria Boitumelo Makhulu

In the preceding essay, Achille Mbembe attempts to move beyond traditional geographic representations of Africa and proposes instead a new spatial interpretation for the ‘‘dark continent.’’ (See ‘‘At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa,’’ in this volume.) As to the old schemas—colonial boundaries, regional demarcations—he opposes an unobstructed view, identifying regions or territories not in terms of their location but rather in terms of shifts in global politics and global economics that have had an impact on these regions. Mbembe’s approach, both thought provoking and visionary, is a challenge to the cartographer. Mapping, which is a priori a compromised mode of representation of materiality, here confronts an additional challenge: to render accurately the territories of the author’s imagination. Where then, does one draw the line between these two conceptions of space? It is difficult to trace precisely these new ‘‘frontiers’’ of the African continent, for the demarcation of one region from another is never entirely straightforward. And yet one must equally guard against the tendency to oversimplify the map. One finds, for example, that in those regions labeled unstable or war torn there are certain areas that merit not being included at all. In deciphering the map at some macro level—on a continental scale —one sacrifices regional accuracy. To write, for example, that a diagonal line cuts across the war zones is one thing, but to draw it is an entirely different thing altogether. The map, which is a representation derived from the text, offers an imperfect image of the author’s ideas because the mapping must on one hand synthesize existing information and on the other hand invent boundaries—often imprecise ones—of which the text makes little or no reference. Thus the practice of cartography achieves its goal of forging a relationship between the various regions

and ensures territorial contiguity. The map’s legend is also but an interpretation, in particular when it comes to identifying things such as ‘‘pillaged territories’’ as distinct from ‘‘regions rich in mineral ores and petroleum.’’ The complexity of Mbembe’s schema did not therefore allow for comprehensive visual representation. For example, the relations or forms of exchange between different regions, crucial aspects of the analysis, could not appear on the map without making the map overburdened and thus illegible. Yet, the map would then have represented Africa as a dynamic continent opening out onto the rest of the world. It is here that the limitations of cartographic representation reside, so that once the elements of the map, in too great a number, are superimposed one on top of another they ultimately efface each other’s significance. Inclusion of only some of the information also serves to make the image form a reductionist medium: The cosmopolitan regions of Africa are certainly far more numerous than those that appear on the map. As to the difference between this map and more traditional maps, this one is a direct product of the text. The map draws its content and meaning from Mbembe’s essay. Here the text gives birth to the map, and if by happenstance the map should become orphaned from the text, it would no doubt not survive.

53

*

mapping concepts

map legend The centrifugal margins: economic and social development oriented toward the outside. Sphere of South African influence: powerful economic dependency. Regions of itinerancy: nomadic societies. States undergoing a process of implosion: a quasi-permanent state of war. Dissolute states having lost control of sections of their territory (passed into the hands of a number of autonomous armed rebel groups in the pay of other border states). Pillaged territories: internal struggles for control over mineral and petroleum resources, also significant foreign investment. Interstitial spaces: countries under competing pressures from the continental border regions (the North African region and South Africa) and extracontinental regions (such as Europe, the Near East, and the Gulf states). Regulated zones: tourist zones, zones earmarked for hunting, nature reserves, zones whose administrative control is partially extraterritorial. Access points to Africa: the location of a set of diasporic confluences; cosmopolitan spaces; the intersection of African, European, Asian, and Middle Eastern civilizations and cultures.

54

*

philippe rekacewicz

Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia Andreas Huyssen

One of the most surprising cultural and political phenomena of recent years has been the emergence of memory as a key concern in Western societies, a turning toward the past that stands in stark contrast to the privileging of the future so characteristic of earlier decades of twentieth-century modernity. From the early twentieth century’s apocalyptic myths of radical breakthrough and the emergence of the ‘‘new man’’ in Europe via the murderous phantasms of racial or class purification in National Socialism and Stalinism to the post–World War II American paradigm of modernization, modernist culture was energized by what one might call ‘‘present futures.’’ 1 Since the 1980s, it seems, the focus has shifted from present futures to present pasts, and this shift in the experience and sensibility of time needs to be explained historically and phenomenologically.2 But the contemporary focus on memory and temporality also stands in stark contrast to so much other recent innovative work on categories of space, maps, geographies, borders, trade routes, migrations, displacements, and diasporas in the context of postcolonial and cultural studies. Indeed, not so long ago there was a widespread consensus in the United States that in order to understand postmodern culture, the focus had to be shifted from the problematics of time and memory ascribed to an earlier form of high modernism to that of space as key to the postmod1. Both the title of this essay and the notion of present futures are indebted to the seminal work of Reinhart Koselleck in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985). 2. Of course, an emphatic notion of present futures still operates in the neoliberal imaginings of financial and electronic globalization, a version of the former and largely discredited modernization paradigm, updated for the post–Cold War world.

ern moment.3 But, as the work of geographers such as David Harvey has shown, we would separate time and space at great peril to a full understanding of either modern or postmodern culture.4 Time and space as fundamentally contingent categories of historically rooted perception are always bound up with each other in complex ways, and the intensity of border-crossing memory discourses that characterizes so much of contemporary culture in so many different parts of the world today proves the point. Indeed, questions of discrepant temporalities and differently paced modernities have emerged as key to new and rigorous understandings of the long-term processes of globalization, which supplant rather than merely adjust Western modernization paradigms.5 Memory discourses of a new kind first emerged in the West after the 1960s in the wake of decolonization and the new social movements and their search for alternative and revisionist histories. The search for other traditions and the tradition of ‘‘others’’ was accompanied by multiple statements about endings: the end of history, the death of the subject, the end of the work of art, the end of metanarratives.6 Such claims were frequently understood all too literally, but in their polemical thrust and replication of the ethos of avantgardism, they pointed directly to the ongoing recodification of the past after modernism. Memory discourses accelerated in Europe and the United States in the early 1980s, energized by the broadening debate about the Holocaust (triggered by the network television series Holocaust and, somewhat later, the testimony movement) and by media attention paid to the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries of events in the history of the Third 3. The case received its paradigmatic statement in Fredric Jameson’s classic essay ‘‘Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,’’ New Left Review 146 (1984): 53–92. 4. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 5. See Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), esp. chap. 4, and most recently Public Culture 11(1) (1999), a special issue on ‘‘alter/native modernities,’’ edited by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar. 6. On the complex mix of present futures and present pasts see Andreas Huyssen, ‘‘The Search for Tradition’’ and ‘‘Mapping the Postmodern,’’ in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 160–78, 179–221.

58

*

andreas huyssen

Reich: Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the infamous book burnings remembered in 1983; Kristallnacht, the organized pogrom of 1938 against Germany’s Jews publicly commemorated in 1988; the Wannsee conference of 1942 initiating the ‘‘Final Solution’’ remembered in 1992 with the opening of a museum in the Wannsee villa where the conference had taken place; the Normandy invasion of 1944 remembered with grand spectacle by the Allies but without Russian presence in 1994; the end of World War II in 1945 remembered in 1985 with a stirring speech by the German president and again in 1995 with a whole series of international events in Europe and Japan. Such mostly ‘‘German anniversaries,’’ along with the historians’ debate of 1986, the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and German national unification in 1990, received intense coverage in the international media, stirring up post–World War II codifications of national history in France, Austria, Italy, Japan, even the United States, and most recently Switzerland.7 The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, planned during the 1980s and inaugurated in 1993, gave rise to debate about the Americanization of the Holocaust.8 But the resonance of Holocaust memory did not stop there. By the end of the 1990s, one must indeed raise the question of to what extent we can now speak of a globalization of Holocaust discourse. Of course, the recurrence of genocidal politics in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo in the allegedly posthistorical 1990s has kept the Holocaust memory discourse alive, contaminating it and extending it past its original reference point. It is actually interesting to note how in the case of the organized massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia in the early 1990s, comparisons with the Holocaust were at first fiercely resisted by politicians, the media, and much of the public not because of the undeniable historical differences, but rather because of a desire to resist intervention.9 NATO’s 7. See Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988) and special issues of New German Critique on Historikerstreit (44 [1988]) and German unification (52 [1991]). 8. See Anson Rabinbach, ‘‘From Explosion to Erosion: Holocaust Memorialization in America since Bitburg,’’ History and Memory 9 (1997): 226–55. 9. Of course, the use of Holocaust memory as a prism for the events in Rwanda is highly problematic, since it cannot acknowledge the specific problems arising within a postcolonial memory politics. But that was never the issue in Western media accounts. On memory politics in various parts of Africa, see Memory and the Postcolony:

59

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

‘‘humanitarian’’ intervention in Kosovo and its legitimation has, on the other hand, largely depended on Holocaust memory. Streams of refugees across borders, women and children packed into trains for deportation, and stories of atrocities, systematic rape, and wanton destruction all mobilized a politics of guilt in Europe and the United States associated with nonintervention in the 1930s and 1940s and the failure to intervene in the Bosnian war of 1992. The Kosovo war thus confirms the increasing power of memory culture in the late 1990s, but it also raises thorny issues about using the Holocaust as a universal trope for historical trauma. The globalization of memory works as well in two other related senses that illustrate what I would call the globalization paradox. On the one hand, the Holocaust has become a cipher for the twentieth century as a whole and for the failure of the project of enlightenment. It serves as proof of Western civilization’s failure to practice anamnesis, to reflect on its constitutive inability to live in peace with difference and otherness, and to draw the consequences from the insidious relationship between enlightened modernity, racial oppression, and organized violence.10 On the other hand, this rather totalizing dimension of Holocaust discourse so prevalent in much postmodern thought is accompanied by a dimension that particularizes and localizes. It is precisely the emergence of the Holocaust as universal trope that allows Holocaust memory to latch on to specific local situations that are historically distant and politically distinct from the original event. In the transnational movement of memory discourses, the Holocaust loses its quality as index of the specific historical event and begins to function as metaphor for other traumatic histories and memories. The global circulation of the Holocaust as trope at once decenters the event of the Holocaust and certifies its use as a prism through which we may look at other instances of genocide. The global and the local of Holocaust memory have entered into new constellaAfrican Anthropology and the Critique of Power, ed. Richard Werbner (London: Zed Books, 1998). 10. This view was first articulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1972); it was taken up again and reformulated by Jean François Lyotard and others in the 1980s. On the centrality of the Holocaust for Horkheimer and Adorno’s work see Anson Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

60

*

andreas huyssen

tions that beg to be analyzed case by case; while Holocaust comparisons may rhetorically energize some discourses of traumatic memory, they may also work as screen memories or simply block insight into specific local histories. When it comes to present pasts, however, memory of the Holocaust and its place in the reassessment of Western modernity is not the whole story. There are many subplots that make up the current memory narrative in its broadest scope and that distinguish our times quite clearly from earlier decades of this century. Consider a few of the salient phenomena. Europe and the United States have, since the 1970s, witnessed the historicizing restoration of old urban centers; the development of whole museum villages and landscapes; various national heritage and patrimony enterprises; a new wave of museum architecture that shows no signs of receding; a boom in retro fashions and repro furniture; mass marketing of nostalgia; a popular obsession with ‘‘self-musealization’’ by video recorder, memoir writing, and confessional literature; the rise of autobiography and of the postmodern historical novel with its uneasy negotiation between fact and fiction; the spread of memory practices in the visual arts, often centered on photography; and the increase of historical documentaries on television, including (in the United States) a whole channel dedicated entirely to history, the History Channel. On the traumatic side of memory culture, and beside the ever more ubiquitous Holocaust discourse, there is a vast psychoanalytic literature on trauma; the controversy of recovered memory syndrome; the historical and current work related to genocide, AIDS, slavery, and sexual abuse; the ever more numerous public controversies about politically painful anniversaries, commemorations, and memorials; a plethora of apologies for the past by church leaders and politicians in France, Japan, and the United States. And, finally, bringing together memory, entertainment, and trauma, we have witnessed a worldwide obsession with the sinking of a presumably unsinkable steamship that marked the end of another gilded age. Indeed, one cannot be quite sure whether the international success of Titanic is a metaphor for memories of modernity gone awry or whether it articulates the metropolis’s own anxieties about the future displaced to the past. No doubt, the world is being musealized, and we all play our parts in it. Total recall seems to be the goal. Is this an archivist’s fantasy gone mad? Or is there perhaps something else at stake in this desire to pull all these various pasts into the present— 61

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

something that is indeed specific to the structuring of memory and temporality today and that has not been experienced in the same way in past ages? Frequently such obsessions with memory and the past are explained as a function of the fin de siècle, but I think one has to probe deeper to come to terms with what one now could call a culture of memory as it has become pervasive in North Atlantic societies since the late 1970s. What here appears by now largely as an increasingly successful marketing of memory by the Western culture industry, in the context of what German cultural sociology has called the Erlebnisgsellschaft, takes a more explicitly political inflection in other parts of the world.11 Especially since 1989, the issues of memory and forgetting have emerged as dominant concerns in postcommunist countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; they remain key politically in the Middle East; they dominate public discourse in postapartheid South Africa with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission; they are omnipresent in Rwanda and Nigeria; they energize the race debate that has erupted in Australia around the issue of the ‘‘stolen generation’’; they burden relationships between Japan and China and Korea; and they determine, to varying degrees, the cultural and political debate about the desaparecidos and their children in post-dictatura societies in Latin America, raising fundamental questions about human rights violations, justice, and collective responsibility. The geographic spread of the culture of memory is as wide as memory’s political uses are varied, ranging from a mobilization of mythic pasts to support aggressively chauvinist or fundamentalist politics (e.g., postcommunist Serbia and Hindu populism in India) to fledgling attempts, in Argentina and Chile, to create public spheres of ‘‘real’’ memory that will counter the politics of forgetting pursued by postdictator11. Gerhard Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart (Frankfurt: Campus, 1992). The term Erlebnisgesellschaft, literally ‘‘society of experience,’’ is hard to translate. It refers to a society that privileges intense but superficial experiences oriented toward instant happiness in the present and quick consumption of goods, cultural events, and mass-marketed lifestyles. Schulze’s is an empirical sociological study of contemporary German society that avoids both the restrictive parameters of Pierre Bourdieu’s class paradigm and of Walter Benjamin’s philosophically inflected opposition of Erlebnis and Erfahrung as an opposition between fleeting surface and authentic depth experience.

62

*

andreas huyssen

ship regimes either through ‘‘reconciliation’’ and official amnesties or through repressive silencing.12 But at the same time, of course, the fault line between mythic past and real past is not always that easy to draw— one of the conundrums of any politics of memory anywhere. The real can be mythologized just as the mythic may engender strong reality effects. In sum, memory has become a cultural obsession of monumental proportions across the globe. At the same time it is important to recognize that while memory discourses appear to be global in one register, in their core they remain tied to the histories of specific nations and states. As particular nations struggle to create democratic polities in the wake of histories of mass exterminations, apartheids, military dictatorships, and totalitarianism, they are faced, as Germany has been and still is since World War II, with the unprecedented task of securing the legitimacy and future of their emergent polity by finding ways to commemorate and adjudicate past wrongs. Whatever the differences may be between postwar Germany and South Africa, Argentina, or Chile, the political site of memory practices is still national, not postnational or global. This does have implications for interpretive work. While the Holocaust as universal trope of traumatic history has migrated into other, unrelated contexts, one must always ask whether and how the trope enhances or hinders local memory practices and struggles, or whether and how it may perform both functions simultaneously. It is clear that national memory debates are always shot through with the effects of global media and their focus on themes such as genocide and ethnic cleansing, migration and minority rights, victimization and accountability. However different and site-specific these causes may be, this does suggest that globalization and the strong reassessment of the respective national, regional, or local past will have to be thought together. This in turn raises the question of whether contemporary memory cultures in general can be read as reaction formations to economic globalization. This is the terrain on which some new comparative work on the mechanisms and tropes of historical trauma and national memory practices could be pursued. 12. On Chile see Nelly Richard, Residuos y metáforas: Ensayos de crítica cultural sobre el Chile de la transición (Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1998); on Argentina see Rita Arditti, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

63

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

If the time consciousness of (high) modernity in the West sought to secure the future, one could argue that the time consciousness of the late twentieth century implies the no less perilous task of taking responsibility for the past. Both attempts inevitably are haunted by failure. Thus a second point must be made immediately. The turn toward memory and the past comes with a great paradox. Ever more frequently, critics accuse this very contemporary memory culture of amnesia—anesthesia or numbing. They chide its inability and unwillingness to remember, and they lament the loss of historical consciousness. The amnesia reproach is invariably couched in a critique of the media, while it is precisely these media—from print and television to CD-ROMs and the Internet—that make ever more memory available to us day by day. But what if both observations were true, if the boom in memory were inevitably accompanied by a boom in forgetting? What if the relationship between memory and forgetting were actually being transformed under cultural pressures in which new information technologies, media politics, and fast-paced consumption are beginning to take their toll? After all, many of the mass-marketed memories we consume are ‘‘imagined memories’’ to begin with, and thus more easily forgotten than lived memories.13 But then Freud already taught us that memory and forgetting are indissolubly linked to each other, that memory is but another form of forgetting, and forgetting a form of hidden memory. What Freud described universally as the psychic processes of remembering, repression, and forgetting in an individual are writ large in contemporary consumer societies as a public phenomenon of unprecedented proportions that begs to be read historically. Wherever one looks, the contemporary obsession with memory in public debates clashes with an intense public panic of oblivion, and one may well wonder which comes first. Is it the fear of forgetting that triggers the desire to remember, or is it perhaps the other way around? Could it be that the surfeit of memory in this mediasaturated culture creates such overload that the memory system itself is 13. My use of the notion of ‘‘imagined memory’’ is indebted to Appadurai’s discussion of ‘‘imagined nostalgia’’ in his Modernity at Large, 77. The notion is problematic to the extent that all memory is imagined, and yet it allows us to distinguish memories grounded in lived experience from memories pillaged from the archive and mass-marketed for fast consumption.

64

*

andreas huyssen

in constant danger of imploding, thus triggering the fear of forgetting? Whatever the answer to such questions, it seems clear that older sociological approaches to collective memory—approaches such as Maurice Halbwachs’s that posit relatively stable formations of social and group memories—are not adequate to grasp the current dynamics of media and temporality, memory, lived time, and forgetting. The clashing and ever more fragmented memory politics of specific social and ethnic groups raise the question whether forms of collective consensual memory are even still possible today, and, if not, whether and in what form social and cultural cohesion can be guaranteed without them. Media memory alone clearly will not suffice, even though the media occupy ever larger chunks of the social and political perception of the world. The very structures of public media memory make it quite understandable that our secular culture today, obsessed with memory as it is, is also somehow in the grips of a fear, even a terror, of forgetting. This fear of forgetting articulates itself paradigmatically around issues of the Holocaust in Europe and the United States or of the desaparecidos in Latin America. Both, of course, share the absence of a proper burial site so key to the nurturing of human memory, a fact that may help explain the strong presence of the Holocaust in Argentinean debates. But the fear of oblivion and disappearance operates in a different register as well. For the more we are asked to remember in the wake of the information explosion and the marketing of memory, the more we seem to be in danger of forgetting and the stronger the need to forget. At issue is the distinction between usable pasts and disposable data. My hypothesis here is that we try to counteract this fear and danger of forgetting with survival strategies of public and private memorialization. The turn toward memory is subliminally energized by the desire to anchor ourselves in a world characterized by an increasing instability of time and the fracturing of lived space. At the same time, we know that such strategies of memorialization may in the end themselves be transitory and incomplete. So I must come back to the question: Why? And, especially, why now? Why this obsession with memory and the past, and why this fear of forgetting? Why are we building museums as if there were no tomorrow? And why is it that the Holocaust has only now become something like an ubiquitous cipher for our memories of the twentieth century, in ways quite unimaginable even twenty years ago? 65

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

memory as spectacle and commodity

Whatever the social and political causes of the memory boom may have been, one thing is certain: We cannot discuss personal, generational, or public memory separate from the enormous influence of the new media as carriers of all forms of memory. Thus it is no longer possible, for instance, to think of the Holocaust or of any other historical trauma as a serious ethical and political issue apart from the multiple ways it is now linked to commodification and spectacularization in films, museums, docudramas, Internet sites, photography books, comics, fiction, even fairy tales (Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella) and pop songs. But even if the Holocaust has been endlessly commodified, that does not mean that each and every commodification inevitably banalizes it as historical event. There is no pure space outside of commodity culture, however much we may desire such a space. Much depends, therefore, on the specific strategies of representation and commodification and on the context in which they are staged. Similarly, the presumably trivial Erlebnisgesellschaft of mass-marketed lifestyles, spectacles, and fleeting events is not devoid of a substantive lived reality that underlies its surface manifestations. My argument here is this: The problem is not solved by simply opposing serious memory to trivial memory, the way historians sometimes oppose history to memory tout court, memory as the subjective and trivial stuff out of which the historian makes the real thing. We cannot simply pit the serious Holocaust museum against some Disneyfied theme parks. For this would only reproduce the old high/low dichotomy of modernist culture in a new guise, as it did in the heated debate that pitted Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah as a proper representation (i.e., as nonrepresentation) of Holocaust memory against Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List as commercial trivialization. For once we acknowledge the constitutive gap between reality and its representation in language or image, we must in principle be open to many different possibilities of representing the real and its memories. This is not to say that anything goes. The question of quality remains one to be decided case by case. But the semiotic gap cannot be closed by the one and only correct representation. To argue that amounts to Holocaust modernism.14 Indeed, phenomena such 14. On these issues see Miriam Hansen, ‘‘Schindler’s List Is Not Shoah: The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory,’’ Critical Inquiry 22

66

*

andreas huyssen

as Schindler’s List and Spielberg’s visual archive of Holocaust survivor testimonies compel us to think traumatic memory and entertainment memory together as occupying the same public space, rather than seeing them as mutually exclusive phenomena. Key questions of contemporary culture are precisely located at the threshold between traumatic memory and the commercial media. It is too easy to argue that the fun events and spectacles of contemporary media societies exist only to provide relief to a social and political body haunted by deep memories of violence and genocide perpetrated in its name, or that they are only mounted to repress such memories. For trauma is marketed just as much as the fun is, and not even for different memory consumers. It is also too easy to suggest that the specters from the past haunting modern societies in heretofore unknown force actually articulate, by way of displacement, a growing fear of the future at a time when the belief in modernity’s progress is deeply shaken. We do know that the media do not transport public memory innocently. They shape it in their very structure and form. And here—in line with Marshall McLuhan’s well-worn point that the medium is the message—it becomes highly significant that the power of our most advanced electronics depends entirely on quantities of memory: Bill Gates may embody just the latest incarnation of the old American ideal— more is better. But ‘‘more’’ is now measured in memory bytes and in the power to recycle the past. Witness Gates’s much advertised purchase of the largest collection of original photographs ever. In the move from the photograph to its digital recycling, Walter Benjamin’s art of mechanical reproduction (photography) has regained the aura of originality. Which goes to show that Benjamin’s famous argument about the loss or decay of the aura in modernity was always only half of the story; the argument omitted that modernization itself created the auratic effect to begin with. Today, it is digitalization that makes the ‘‘original’’ photograph auratic. So let me indulge here for a moment in the old culture industry argument, as Theodor Adorno mounted it against what he believed to be Benjamin’s unwarranted optimism about technological media. If today the idea of the total archive makes the triumphalists of cyberspace em(1996): 292–312. See also my forthcoming ‘‘Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno,’’ New German Critique.

67

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

brace global fantasies à la McLuhan, the profit interests of memory’s mass marketeers seem to be more pertinent in explaining the success of the memory syndrome. Simply put, the past is selling better than the future. But for how long, one wonders. Take the headline of a spoof posted on the Internet: ‘‘U.S. Department of Retro Warns: We May Be Running out of a Past.’’ The first paragraph reads: ‘‘At a press conference Monday, U.S. Retro Secretary Anson Williams issued a strongly worded warning of an imminent ‘National retro crisis,’ cautioning that ‘if current levels of U.S. retro consumption are allowed to continue unchecked, we may run entirely out of past by as soon as 2005.’ ’’ Not to worry. We already have the marketing of pasts that never existed: Witness the recent introduction of the Aerobleu product line, 1940s and ’50s nostalgia cleverly organized around a fictional Paris jazz club that never existed, but where all the jazz greats of the bebop age are said to have performed, a product line replete with original diaries, original cuts on CDs, and original memorabilia, all available in the United States at any local Barnes and Noble.15 ‘‘Original remakes’’ are in, and as cultural theorists and critics we are obsessed with re-presentation, repetition, replication, and the culture of the copy, with or without original. With all this going on, it seems plausible to ask: Once the memory boom is history, as no doubt it will be, will anyone have remembered anything at all? If all of the past can be made over, aren’t we just creating our own illusions of the past while getting stuck in an ever shrinking present—the present of short-term recycling for profit, the present of in-time production, instant entertainment, and placebos for our sense of dread and insecurity that lies barely underneath the surface of this new gilded age at another fin de siècle? Computers, we are told, will not know the difference between the year 2000 and the year 1900—but do we? The critics of late capitalist amnesia doubt that Western media culture has anything left resembling ‘‘real’’ memory or a strong sense of history. Drawing on the standard Adornean argument that commodification equals forgetting, they argue that the marketing of memory generates nothing but amnesia. Ultimately, I do not find this argument con15. Dennis Cass, ‘‘Sacrebleu! The Jazz Era Is up for Sale: Gift Merchandisers Take License with History,’’ Harper’s Magazine, December 1997, 70–71.

68

*

andreas huyssen

vincing. It leaves too much out. It is too easy to blame the dilemma we find ourselves in on the machinations of the culture industry and the proliferation of the new media. Something else must be at stake, something that produces the desire for the past in the first place and that makes us respond so favorably to the memory markets: that something, I would suggest, is a slow but palpable transformation of temporality in our lives, centrally brought on by the complex intersections of technological change, mass media, and new patterns of consumption, work, and global mobility. There may indeed be good reasons to think that the memorializing drive has a more beneficial and generative dimension as well. However much there is a displacement of a fear of the future in our concerns with memory, and however dubious the proposition may now strike us that we can learn from history, memory culture fulfills an important function in the current transformation of temporal experience in the wake of the new media’s impact on human perception and sensibility. In the following, then, I would like to suggest some ways to think about the relationship between our privileging of memory and the past on the one hand and the potential impact of the new media on perception and temporality on the other. It is a complex story. Applying the blistering Adornean critique of the culture industry to what one could now call the memory industry would be as one-sided and unsatisfactory as relying on Benjamin’s trust in the emancipatory potential of the new media. Adorno’s critique is right as far as the mass-marketing of cultural products is concerned, but it does not help explain the rise of the memory syndrome within the culture industry. His theoretical emphasis on Marxist categories of exchange value and reification occludes issues of temporality and memory and remains oblivious to the specifics of media and their relation to structures of perception and everyday life in consumer societies. Benjamin, on the other hand, is right in attributing a cognitively enabling dimension to memory and what in the ‘‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’’ he calls the tiger’s leap into the past, but he wants to accomplish this leap through the very media of reproducibility that to him signal futurist promise and socialist political mobilization. Rather than siding with Benjamin against Adorno or vice versa, as so often happens, the stake is to make the tension between their arguments productive for an analysis of the present. Here I would like to turn to an argument first articulated by two 69

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

conservative German philosophers, Hermann Lübbe and Odo Marquard, in the early 1980s. Already then, as others were in the midst of debating the future promises of postmodernism, Hermann Lübbe described what he called ‘‘musealization’’ as central to the shifting temporal sensibility of our time.16 Lübbe showed how musealization was no longer bound to the institution of the museum, narrowly understood, but had infiltrated all areas of everyday life. His diagnosis posited an expansive historicism of our contemporary culture, a cultural present gripped with an unprecedented obsession with the past. Modernization, he argued, is inevitably accompanied by the atrophy of valid traditions, the loss of rationality, and the entropy of stable and lasting life experiences. The ever increasing speed of technical, scientific, and cultural innovation produces ever larger quantities of obsolescence, while objectively shrinking the chronological expanse of what can be considered the (cutting-edge) present at any given time. On the surface, Lübbe’s argument seems quite plausible. It reminds me of an incident of a few years ago, when I went to buy a computer in a high-tech store in New York. The purchase proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Whatever was on display was relentlessly described by the sales personnel as already obsolete, that is, museal, by comparison with the imminently expected and so much more powerful next product line. This seemed to give new meaning to the old ethic of postponing gratification. I was not persuaded, and made my purchase, a two-yearold model that had everything I needed and more and whose price had recently been cut in half. I bought ‘‘obsolete,’’ and thus was not surprised recently to see my 1995 butterfly IBM Thinkpad exhibited in the design section of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The shelf life of consumer objects has obviously been radically foreshortened, and with it the extension of the present, in Lübbe’s sense, has shrunk at the same time that computer memory and public memory discourses have swelled. What Lübbe described as musealization can now be easily mapped onto the phenomenal rise of memory discourse within the discipline 16. Hermann Lübbe, Zeit-Verhältnisse: Zur Kulturphilosophie des Fortschritts (Graz: Verlag Styria, 1983). For a more extended critique of Lübbe’s model, see my ‘‘Escape from Amnesia: The Museum as Mass Medium,’’ in Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (London: Routledge, 1995), 13–36.

70

*

andreas huyssen

of historiography itself. Historical memory research is international in scope. My hypothesis is that, in this prominence of academic ‘‘mnemohistory,’’ memory and musealization together are enlisted as bulwarks against obsolescence and disappearance, to counter our deep anxiety about the speed of change and the ever shrinking horizons of time and space. Lübbe’s argument about the shrinking extension of the present signals a great paradox: The more the present of advanced consumer capitalism prevails over past and future, sucking both into an expanding synchronous space, the weaker is its grip on itself, the less stability or identity it provides for contemporary subjects. Filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge has spoken of the attack of the present on the rest of time. There is both too much and too little present at the same time, a historically novel situation that creates agonizing tensions in our ‘‘structure of feeling,’’ as Raymond Williams would call it. In Lübbe’s theory, the museum compensates for this loss of stability. It offers traditional forms of cultural identity to a destabilized modern subject, but the theory fails to acknowledge that these cultural traditions have themselves been affected by modernization through digital and commodified recycling. Lübbe’s musealization and Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire actually share the compensatory sensibility that acknowledges a loss of national or communal identity but trusts in our ability to make up for it. The lieux de mémoire in Nora compensate for the loss of the milieux de mémoire, as musealization compensates for the loss of lived tradition in Lübbe. This conservative argument about shifts in temporal sensibility needs to be lifted from its binary framing (lieux versus milieux and entropy of the past versus compensatory musealization) and pushed in a different direction, one that does not rely on a discourse of loss and that accepts the fundamental shift in structures of feeling, experience, and perception as they characterize our simultaneously expanding and shrinking present. The conservative belief that cultural musealization can provide compensation for the ravages of accelerating modernization in the social world is just too simple and too ideological. It fails to recognize that any secure sense of the past itself is being destabilized by our musealizing culture industry and by the media that function as central players in the morality play of memory. Musealization itself is sucked into that 71

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

vortex of an ever faster circulation of images, spectacles, events, and thus is always in danger of losing its ability to guarantee cultural stability over time. the changing perception of time

It bears repeating that, as we approach the end of the twentieth century and with it the end of the millennium, the coordinates of space and time structuring our lives are increasingly subjected to new kinds of pressures. Space and time are fundamental categories of human experience and perception, but far from being immutable, they are very much subject to historical change. One of modernity’s permanent laments concerns the loss of a better past, the memory of living in a securely circumscribed place, with a sense of stable boundaries and a place-bound culture with its regular flow of time and a core of permanent relations. Perhaps such days have always been a dream rather than a reality, a phantasmagoria of loss generated by modernity itself rather than by its prehistory. But the dream does have staying power, and what I have called the culture of memory may well be, at least in part, its contemporary incarnation. The issue, however, is not the loss of some golden age of stability and permanence. The issue is rather the attempt, as we face the very real processes of time-space compression, to secure some continuity within time, to provide some extension of lived space within which we can breathe and move. For surely enough, the end of the twentieth century does not give us easy access to the trope of a golden age. Memories of the twentieth century confront us not with a better life, but with a unique history of genocide and mass destruction which, a priori, mars any attempt to glorify the past. After the experiences of World War I and the Great Depression; of Stalinism, Nazism, and genocide on an unprecedented scale; after the trials of decolonization and the histories of atrocities and repression they have brought to our consciousness, the view of Western modernity and its promises has darkened considerably within the West itself. Even the current gilded age in the United States cannot quite shake the memories of the tremors that have rattled the myth of permanent progress since the late 1960s and 1970s. Witnessing the ever widening gap between rich and poor, the barely controlled meltdown of whole regional and national economies, and the return of war to the continent 72

*

andreas huyssen

that spawned two world wars in this century has surely brought with it a significant entropy of our sense of future possibilities. In an era of ethnic cleansings and refugee crises, mass migrations and global mobility for ever more people, the experience of displacement and relocation, migration and diaspora seems no longer the exception but the rule. But such phenomena do not tell the whole story. As spatial barriers weaken and space itself is gobbled up by time ever more compressed, a new kind of malaise is taking root in the heart of the metropolis. The discontents of metropolitan civilization at the end of the century no longer seem to stem primarily from pervasive feelings of guilt and superego repression, as Freud had it in his analysis of classical Western modernity and its dominant mode of subject formation. Franz Kafka and Woody Allen belong to an earlier age. Our discontents rather flow from informational and perceptual overload combined with a cultural acceleration neither our psyche nor our senses are that well equipped to handle. The faster we are pushed into a global future that does not inspire confidence, the stronger we feel the desire to slow down, the more we turn to memory for comfort. But what comfort from memories of the twentieth century?!? And what are the alternatives? How are we to negotiate the rapid change and turnover in what Georg Simmel called ‘‘objective culture’’ while at the same time satisfying what I take to be the fundamental need of modern societies to live in extended forms of temporality and to secure a space, however permeable, from which to speak and to act? Surely, there is no one simple answer to such a question, but memory—individual, generational, public, cultural, and, still inevitably, national memory—surely is part of it. Perhaps one day there will even emerge something like a global memory as the different parts of the world are drawn ever tighter together. But any such global memory will always be prismatic and heterogeneous rather than holistic or universal. In the meantime we have to ask: How should even local, regional, or national memories be secured, structured, and represented? Of course, this is a fundamentally political question about the nature of the public sphere, about democracy and its future, about the changing shape of nationhood, citizenship, and identity. The answers will depend to a large degree on local constellations, but the global spread of memory discourses indicates that something more is at stake. Some have turned to the idea of the archive as counterweight to the 73

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

ever increasing pace of change, as a site of temporal and spatial preservation. From the point of view of the archive, of course, forgetting is the ultimate transgression. But how reliable or foolproof are our digitalized archives? Computers are barely fifty years old and already we need ‘‘data archeologists’’ to unlock the mysteries of early programming: Just think of the notorious Y2K problem that haunts our computerized bureaucracies. Billions of dollars are being spent to prevent computer networks from going into retro-mode, mistaking the year 2000 for 1900. Or consider the almost insuperable difficulties German authorities now have decoding the vast body of electronic records from the former East German state, a world that has disappeared together with its Sovietbuilt mainframe computers and its East German office systems. Reflecting on such phenomena, a senior manager charged with information technology at the Canadian archives was recently quoted as saying: ‘‘It’s one of the great ironies of the information age. If we don’t find methods for enduring preservation of electronic records, this may be the era without a memory.’’ 17 Indeed, the threat of oblivion emerges from the very technology to which we entrust the vast body of contemporary records and data, that most significant part of the cultural memory of our time. The current transformations of the temporal imaginary brought on by virtual space and time may serve to highlight the enabling dimension of memory culture. Whatever their specific occasion, cause, or context, the intense memory practices we witness in so many different parts of the world today articulate a fundamental crisis of an earlier structure of temporality that distinguished the age of high modernity—with its trust in progress and development, its celebration of the new as utopian (as radically and irreducibly other), and its unshaken belief in some telos of history. Politically, many memory practices today counteract the triumphalism of modernization theory in its latest guise of ‘‘globalization.’’ Culturally, they express the growing need for spatial and temporal anchoring in a world of increasing flux in ever denser networks of compressed time and space. As historiography has shed an earlier reliance on teleological master narratives and has grown more skeptical of 17. Gerd Meissner, ‘‘Unlocking the Secrets of the Digital Archive Left by East Germany,’’ New York Times, 2 March 1998, D5.

74

*

andreas huyssen

nationalist framings of its subject matter, today’s critical memory cultures, with their emphases on human rights, on minority and gender issues, and on reassessing various national and international pasts, go a long way to provide a welcome impetus for the writing of history in a new key and thus for guaranteeing a future of memory. In the best-case scenario, the cultures of memory are intimately linked, in many parts of the world, to processes of democratization and struggles for human rights, to the expansion and strengthening of the public spheres of civil society. Slowing down rather than speeding up, expanding the nature of public debate, trying to heal the wounds inflicted in the past, nurturing and expanding livable space rather than destroying it for the sake of some future promise, securing ‘‘quality time’’—these seem to be unmet cultural needs in a globalizing world, and local memories are intimately linked to their articulation. But, of course, the past cannot give us what the future has failed to deliver. Indeed, there is no avoiding coming back to the downside of what some would call a memory epidemic, and this brings me back to Nietzsche, whose second untimely mediation on the use and abuse of history, often quoted in contemporary memory debates, may be as untimely as ever. Clearly, the memory fever of Western media societies is not a consuming historical fever in Nietzsche’s sense, which could be cured by productive forgetting. It is rather a mnemonic fever caused by the cybervirus of amnesia that at times threatens to consume memory itself. Therefore we now need productive remembering more than productive forgetting. In retrospect we can see how the historical fever of Nietzsche’s times functioned to invent national traditions in Europe, to legitimize the imperial nation-states, and to give cultural coherence to conflictive societies in the throes of the Industrial Revolution and colonial expansion. By comparison, the mnemonic convulsions of North Atlantic culture today seem mostly chaotic, fragmentary, and free-floating across our screens. Even in places where memory practices have a very clear political focus, such as South Africa, Argentina, Chile, and most recently Guatemala, they are affected and to a degree even created by international media coverage and its memory obsessions. As I suggested earlier, securing the past is no less risky an enterprise than securing the future. Memory, after all, can be no substitute for justice, and justice itself will inevitably be entangled in the unreliability of memory. But 75

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

even where cultural memory practices lack an explicit political focus, they do express a society’s need for temporal anchoring when, in the wake of the information revolution and an ever increasing time-space compression, the relationship between past, present, and future is being transformed beyond recognition. In that sense, local and national memory practices contest the myths of cybercapitalism and globalization and their denial of time, space, and place. No doubt some new configuration of time and space will eventually emerge from this negotiation. New technologies of transportation and communication have always transformed the human perception of time and space in modernity. This was as true for the railroad and the telephone, the radio and the airplane, as it will be true for cyberspace and cybertime. New technologies and new media are also always met by anxieties and fear that later prove to have been unwarranted or even ridiculous. Our age will be no exception. At the same time, cyberspace alone is not the appropriate model to imagine the global future—its notion of memory is misleading, a false promise. Lived memory is active, alive, embodied in the social— that is, in individuals, families, groups, nations, and regions. These are the memories needed to construct differential local futures in a global world. There is no doubt that in the long run all such memories will be shaped to a significant degree by the new digital technologies and their effects, but they will not be reducible to them. To insist on a radical separation between ‘‘real’’ and virtual memory seems quixotic, if only because anything remembered—whether by lived or imagined memory— is itself virtual. Memory is always transitory, notoriously unreliable, and haunted by forgetting—in short, human and social. As public memory it is subject to change: political, generational, individual. It cannot be stored forever, nor can it be secured by monuments; nor, for that matter, can we rely on digital retrieval systems to guarantee coherence and continuity. If the sense of lived time is being renegotiated in our contemporary cultures of memory, we should not forget that time is not only the past, its preservation and transmission. If we are indeed suffering from a surfeit of memory, we do need to make the effort to distinguish usable pasts from disposable pasts.18 Discrimination and productive re18. See Charles S. Maier, ‘‘A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy, and Denial,’’ History and Memory 5 (1992): 136–51.

76

*

andreas huyssen

membering are called for, and mass culture and the virtual media are not inherently irreconcilable with that purpose. Even if amnesia were a by-product of cyberspace, we must not allow the fear of forgetting to overwhelm us. And then perhaps it is time to remember the future, rather than only worry about the future of memory.

77

*

pr e s e n t pa sts

On Foot Boubacar Touré Mandémory

Photographs copyright © 1999 by Boubacar Touré Mandémory.

On Wheels Ralf D. Hotchkiss

Four out of five people with disabilities live in less-developed countries, and an estimated 20 million of them need wheelchairs right now.

Charity’s Junkyard A typical Western hospital chair is designed for gentle use on smooth floors. Its short-lived components must be regularly replaced with expensive parts from a factory. If a hospital chair is imported into a Third World community, it can quickly become useless because replacement parts are not available. Dumped chairs can be seen rusting by the hundreds behind hospitals.

Global Networks for Appropriate Technology People with disabilities have not been sitting idly by waiting for better wheelchairs to come their way. For more than two decades, active groups of disabled people have been searching for ‘‘appropriate technology’’—a concept for which these grassroots engineers have developed their own rigorous definition: the very best methods that can be employed, using available materials at an affordable cost. They have improved on the design of imported wheelchairs and are manufacturing their own new models at a much lower cost. The formation and cooperation of an international network of builders has been vital to these successes. In the 1970s the first wheelchair-building collective comprising a large group of people with disabilities began work in the Philippines. Known as Tahanan Walang Hagdanan [House with no steps], the group designed chairs that were a vast improvement over the imported chairs upon which Filipinos with disabilities had previously depended. Since then, a network of wheelchair builders in developing countries has connected similar operations in Nicaragua, Mexico, Kenya, Zimbabwe, India, Thailand, Fiji, Cambodia, Siberia, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

Women Building Wheelchairs In January 1997 in Limuru, Kenya, Whirlwind Women, a group started by three enterprising women affiliated with Whirlwind Wheelchair International, conducted an intensive one-week course to teach six women from Kenya and Uganda basic metalworking techniques. During their initial training, the women built the side frame of a durable, lightweight, folding Whirlwind wheelchair, the state of the art in chairs designed with appropriate technology. After that, using their newly acquired skills—of measuring, welding, grinding, drilling, and bending thin-walled tubing—the women went on to construct entire Whirlwinds from raw hardware. Whirlwind Women are today collaborating with the International Network of Women with Disabilities to involve more women in every aspect of wheelchair design, production, and marketing.

The Most Legitimate Experts When equipped with workable tools and resources, disabled people often find highly inventive solutions to their own problems. Some of these people have formed teams with rehabilitation professionals and expert technicians. The result has been a profusion of new devices. Some have been highly effective, some total failures, but each one has underscored the value of working with the most legitimate experts on the needs of people who have mobility impairments and live in difficult environments—the disabled people themselves. Already some of the better Third World designs have begun to trickle up to the Western marketplace.

Photographs © Ralf D. Hotchkiss. Encyclopædia Britannica text adapted by permission from 1998 Medical and Health Annual © 1997 by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Toward an Ethics of the Future Jérôme Bindé

Modern societies suffer from a distorted relationship to time. It is as if the short term were the impassable horizon, whether it be the activities of the stock exchange, the date of the next elections, or the influence of the media. From communication to finance, transactions are now conducted at the speed of light. Real time, the absolute zero of temporal distance, is both a sign and an element of an exclusive preoccupation with the present. From the short term to what is immediate, from a restricted horizon to the absence of any horizon, such is the time scale which has underlain the closing years of the twentieth century. Our relation to time has enormous economic, social, political, and ecological consequences. All over the world, the citizens of today are claiming rights over the citizens of tomorrow, threatening their wellbeing and at times their lives, and we are beginning to realize that we are jeopardizing the exercise by future generations of their human rights. Without proper attention, future generations are in danger of becoming the prisoners of unmanageable changes such as population growth, degradation of the global environment, growing inequalities between North and South and within societies, rampant social and urban apartheid, threats to democracy, and mafia control.

This is a revised version of an essay presented at the international seminar on ‘‘The Ethics of the Future’’ (third meeting of the Agenda of the Millennium, Rio de Janeiro, 2 July 1997). The author wishes to express his thanks to Hugues de Jouvenel, editor of Futuribles, which published a French version of this essay (Futuribles, no. 226 [1997]: 19–40).

the tyranny of emergenc y

By giving precedence to the logic of ‘‘just in time’’ at the expense of any forward-looking deliberation, within a context of ever faster technological transformation and exchange, our era is opening the way for the tyranny of emergency. Emergency is a direct means of response which leaves no time for either analysis, forecasting, or prevention. It is an immediate protective reflex rather than a sober quest for long-term solutions. It neglects the fact that situations have to be put in perspective and that future events need to be anticipated. Devising any durable response to human problems such as environmental ones requires looking at a situation from a distance and thinking in terms of the future. Conversely, the logic of emergency responds to a need for immediate results and for the direct viability of the efforts made. As such, it has been set up as the quintessential paradigm of our times and an exclusive value of our societies. In a world governed by short-term efficacy, any long-term appraisal seems to bear the mark of obsolescence while any constructive gradual approach is condemned as pure speculation. Consequently, the ‘‘temporal myopia’’ of our times is not merely a sign of disruption in our relationship with time, which could be the negative but inescapable outcome of technical and scientific change. It is the symptom of a more profound dysfunctioning, which affects our ability to achieve a clear perception of the future. The keener sense of emergency stems from both the primacy of real time and the absence of any reference to a collective aim. What has to be done, therefore, is to invert the logic of emergency, which governs the self-justification of current policies; it is not the emergency of problems which prevents the formulation of long-term plans but the absence of any plan that subjects us to the tyranny of emergency. Therefore, as in the words of Zaki Laïdi, emergency is well and truly ‘‘an active negation of utopia.’’ 1 the crisis of utopia

Our era has seen the collapse of most ideologies founded on the definition of common salvation and the symbolic representation of a col1. Zaki Laïdi, Un Monde privé de sens (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 15–34.

91

*

ethics of the future

lective destiny. The destruction of the Berlin Wall was its most vivid illustration. We must, however, be wary of seeing this crisis in an ultimate goal as that of the Soviet model alone. The end of the Cold War would also seem to have tolled the knell of the ideology of Enlightenment based on the notion of progress. The disillusionment experienced by some of the Eastern bloc countries is particularly revealing in this regard. It illustrates, simultaneously, the death of utopia and the promising ideals of a great social upheaval and the emergence of an ‘‘instantaneous’’ concept of democracy seen as a due and not a reward for a particular trajectory, an itinerary pursued in time; in short, a transition. The market democracy, seen as a model of rapid gratification of needs and desires, has fascinated societies that were weary of making sacrifices in the name of a better future. Therefore, the crisis in representation resulting from the end of the Cold War derives from a divorce between ideological teleology and political authority—that is to say, between purpose and power. In parallel to this collapse of an ideological utopianism, our societies have witnessed a crisis of scientific utopianism. The devotion to the Enlightenment has died away at the same time as the myth of an all-powerful science. That does not mean that science has ceased to extend its influence. Quite to the contrary, humanity, in accordance with the Cartesian ideal, has gradually become the ‘‘master and possessor of nature.’’ However, at the very time when humanity is extending its mastery, the lack of any ‘‘mastery of mastery,’’ to quote Michel Serres, is sorely felt. In fact, knowledge today is advancing at such a pace, with such technological progress, that the scientific community has been overtaken by its own discoveries. Science is therefore lagging behind power and has discovered the existence of two combined obstacles, complexity and uncertainty. Caught up in the fever of achieving immediate satisfaction for its power, modern humanity has forgotten to reappraise its expertise. In the face of the devaluation of political and scientific messianism, a lack of interest in utopia, and the deconstructive fever of the postmodern era, the past would appear to be the only area of certitude. Withdrawal into the past makes up for the absence of any collective future; the heritage business replaces the common heritage. The transformation of tradition into an ideology, to paraphrase Daryush Shayegan, blurs and confuses temporal and symbolic points of reference. Instead of solv92

*

jérôme bindé

ing the crisis of purpose, it is both its outcome and instrument. As a transposition in politics of the physical negation of the passage of time, identification between tradition and the future prevents any discussion of foundations. What is more, it calls on diachronic mimicry by preferring the illusory repetition of what is the same to the formation of an identity that varies over time. It is as if we were bathing twice in the same river. This results in a radical and purely conceptual opposition between what is the same and what is other, a form of opposition that proves quite inappropriate as an approach to human relations, particularly between the generations. In fact, celebrating the incompatibility of transmission and transformation means banning the redefinition today of a collective goal and condemning future generations to immobility, entropy, and death. It is therefore the very structure of ‘‘living together,’’ in its synchronic and diachronic approach, that is condemned by our contemporary temporal and symbolic withdrawal. The crisis of the future is a measure of the deficiency of our societies, incapable as they are of assessing what is involved in relationships with others. This temporal myopia brings into play the same processes of denial of others as social shortsightedness. The absence of solidarity in time between generations merely reproduces selfishness in space within the same generation. In all instances, it is the link which is wanting. Beyond the future generations, it is the very notion of humanity that is threatened. By shunning responsibility for the consequences of his deeds, modern man is rejecting his status as a conscious, temporal being. By denying his fundamental finitude, he denies the definition of his very self. This denial, however, has its costs. In fact, the refusal to take risk into account because of uncertainty forms precisely the new framework for scientific progress. In the absence of knowledge, it is power that determines duty. Consequently, we are witnessing the confiscation of critical reflection on science by scientific power itself. Reflection on the aims is subject to the choice of means. The ethical imperative, born out of humanity’s essential finitude, is therefore being replaced by the imperative of technoscience, born out of the negation of such finitude. Therefore, the idea of going beyond the limits—an anthropocentric principle that lies at the heart of technical and scientific development—has led paradoxically to surpassing humanity. This process, illustrated in practice by current research aimed at mastering the processes of aging and 93

*

ethics of the future

death, is leading to the growing hegemony of practical power over the foundations and standards of ethical conscience. The logic of what is efficient is driving that of what is prescribed into a sort of humanist recess or a ‘‘circle of lost philosophers.’’ In the face of humanity’s questioning of its destiny, two contradictory attitudes have arisen, personified by two leading scientific figures of our times. Whereas Jacques Testart reminds us, in deeds as well as in words, that ‘‘ethics are not techniques,’’ 2 most of the world would seem to accept, willy-nilly, the technological imperative summarized in a shock formula by Professor Edward Teller: ‘‘Technological man should produce everything that he can, without limits.’’ Is it not revealing that the self-satisfied father of the first hydrogen bomb should be more widely listened to than the repentant father of the first test-tube baby? rehabilitating the long term

Yet what is at stake is clear enough. Professor Ethan Kapstein, director of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, summarized it in these words: ‘‘The world may be moving inexorably toward one of those tragic moments that will lead future historians to ask, why was nothing done in time? Were the economic and policy elites unaware of the profound disruption that economic and technological change were causing working men and women? What prevented them from taking the steps necessary to prevent a global social crisis?’’ 3 When the horizon of meaning shrinks, when the process of knowledge disintegrates, and when the passage of time would seem to have changed directions, modern man seeks refuge within a shell of ignorance and denial. To break this shell is what is required of us today. First, we need to devise a new concept of time. We need to open up a new path toward the future. We need to change our outlook on the future. In the face of the two pitfalls of uncertainty and denial, only a vision resolutely turned toward the future will help us pull through. The solution will therefore come, first and foremost, from a process of rehabilitation of the long term. It will necessarily (and etymologically) be of 2. J. Testart, ‘‘Ethique n’est pas technique,’’ Le Monde diplomatique, November 1995, 32. 3. Ethan B. Kapstein, ‘‘Workers and the World Economy,’’ Foreign Affairs 75 (1996): 16–37.

94

*

jérôme bindé

a forward-looking nature. This choice is vital on account of the combination of three factors: the accelerating pace of technical change, which requires the field of action to be marked out as far as possible in time; the temporal horizon of most major projects (one or two generations, often more); and the inertia of structures and patterns of behavior, whereby the implementation of any project requires a certain amount of time. At this juncture, I would like to point out that as early as 1957, Gaston Berger, the inventor of forecasting, considered it an attitude of mind that consists in viewing the future not as a hidden reality that could be discovered through the use of appropriate scientific methods, but rather as either the deliberate or the unintentional result of our actions.4 Careful thought thus has to be given to the future every time that major decisions have to be made. This farsighted approach constitutes a rational response to the fatalistic arguments of the supporters of uncertainty and of its practical correlation, flexibility. To consider what is possible actually means setting ourselves free from the yoke of chance and determinism; it means refusing adaptation to real time and, at last, adopting a constructive long-term strategic attitude. Consequently, without underestimating the virtues of flexibility, prospective research establishes a new method of solving problems—namely, anticipation. By doing so, it restores to the notion of a project its real worth. Far from being pure intellectual speculation with no practical effect, studying what is possible should lead to a choice of values and to the definition of what is desirable. In return, it therefore contributes to shedding greater light on action. The long term provides guidance to decision making and marks out the path that the decision-making process should take. As in the words of Seneca, ‘‘There can be no fair wind for he who does not know where he is going.’’ an ethics of the future is not an ethics in the future

An ethics of the future is not an ethics in the future. If tomorrow is always too late, then today is often already very late. The disparities between North and South, and increasingly between North and North and between South and South, the growing rift within the very heart 4. Gaston Berger, Les Étapes de la prospective (Paris: PUF, 1957).

95

*

ethics of the future

of societies, population growth, the threat of an ecological crisis on a planetary scale, and the way societies have lost control and surrendered to the hands of ‘‘anonymous masters’’ all call for a new paradoxical form of emergency, the emergency of the long term. To adopt, as quickly as possible, a constructive and preventive attitude means preserving future generations from the fever of immediacy, from reactive passivity, from refuge in artificial or virtual illusory paradises, and from omnipotent emergency. Through a forward-looking approach, we can be in a position to offer generations to come what we are deprived of today—a future. Institutions have the power to forecast or not to forecast. This is an awesome responsibility. By choosing not to forecast, they choose to postpone indefinitely their much needed long-term action for the sake of short-term emergency: They condemn themselves, literally, to passivity, dependency, and, ultimately, obsolescence and nonexistence. By choosing to forecast and by refusing to become purely reactive agents, they will not only preserve their institutional independence but also send a strong message to other policy makers and decision makers worldwide that the first object of policy, and its first responsibility, is the future. Max Weber justly warned that ‘‘the proper business of the politician is the future and his responsibility before the future.’’ The failure to use foresight, in other words, is not just a benign failure of intelligence: It is a culpable neglect of future generations. Is it not therefore surprising that, once foresight has been applied, once an issue has been recognized as a policy priority by all parties concerned, once international instruments have been signed that declare the commitment to act on this foresight, we should fail so miserably to take the appropriate measures? Take development aid: In 1974, developed countries solemnly agreed to dedicate 0.7 percent of their GDP to development aid; nearly a quarter of a century later, in 1997, they contribute 0.22 percent of their GDP to development aid, and one superpower dedicates only 0.09 percent to it.5 Take the issue of the global environment: Seven years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Agenda 21 remains, for the greater part, a dead letter, and the promising but timid advances made at the Kyoto Summit have since been all but for5. Development Aid Committee, Development Cooperation: 1998 Report (n.p.: OECD, 1999).

96

*

jérôme bindé

gotten. In both instances, foresight was exerted and solemn oaths taken to act on this foresight, in order to remedy pressing problems. In both instances, action has been delayed, and problems have been allowed to become more pressing. How long can we afford the luxury of inactivity? An ethics of the future, if it remains an ethics in the future, is an injustice committed against all generations, present and future. To paraphrase a common saying, the future delayed is the future denied. responsibility is now turned toward the future

The future-oriented approach therefore rests on the postulate of human freedom in the face of a diverse, uncertain, and complex future. By rehabilitating the notion of a project, the long-term strategy requires reviving ethical thought and giving back to human finitude its ontological status. Out of the divorce between unlimited power and limited knowledge emerges, according to Hans Jonas and Paul Ricoeur, a ‘‘transformation of the essence of human endeavour.’’ 6 Accordingly, an individual act, circumscribed and isolated but repeated, or the action of a limited number of actors (e.g., the use of a vehicle, an aerosol, a product that cannot be recycled, or an industrial or agricultural technology) can have collective consequences of a universal and durable, possibly irreversible, nature (e.g., pollution, desertification, global warming, water shortages, ecological disasters, and destruction of the ozone layer). The inversion of the relationship of submission between man and nature also means the inversion of the safeguarding relationship. As ‘‘the masters and owners of nature,’’ we are no longer its children but its guarantors. The extension of power is also the extension of the field of ethical responsibility. In fact, what is required of us in moral terms is to recognize, at one and the same time, power and duty, freedom and responsibility. Being able to act also means being able to answer for our actions, to be responsible. Out of this coincidence between a forward-looking approach and an ethical choice emerges the need for a temporal change in the notion of responsibility. In an attempt to go beyond the categorical Kantian imperative, Hans 6. Quoted by F. Ost, ‘‘Après nous le déluge? Réflexions sur la responsabilité écologique à l’égard des générations futures,’’ in Variations sur l’éthique: Hommage à Jacques Dabin (Brussels: Publications des facultés universitaires de St Louis, 1994), 390–411.

97

*

ethics of the future

Jonas put forward a new imperative, born out of risk and uncertainty, the conditions that now govern human endeavor: ‘‘Act in such a way that the effects of your acts are compatible with the permanence of an authentically human existence on earth.’’ This responsibility is aimed essentially, in Jonas’s words, at the ecological survival of the planet. It is therefore primarily incumbent on industrialized countries, old and new. It can, however, be interpreted more broadly. Risks correspond to the image of our contemporary world, which means they are essentially complex. The phenomena of interaction between population growth, the aggravation of poverty, food shortages, and the disintegration of the political and social domain in certain developing countries testify to this. Transition countries are another telling example. Beyond the ecological crisis alone, it is the economic and social stability of our planet as a whole that is at stake. In every case, current generations have assumed the right to delve into future wealth for the satisfaction of their immediate needs, thereby leaving to subsequent generations the task of finding solutions. As in the words of David Brower, ‘‘We do not inherit the planet from our ancestors, we merely borrow it from our children.’’ 7 We are our children’s insolvent debtors, taking advantage, either deliberately or not, of temporal distance to escape from our creditors. the evolving concept of the heritage

The adoption of a farsighted strategy and the transfer over time of responsibility highlight the need for a rational approach to the conflict between the exploitation of the heritage and resources and the perennity of potential—that is to say, between present interests and future needs. It is our duty today to preserve the future. The heritage can therefore be seen as the crystallization of ‘‘the heuristic apprenticeship of fear’’ as defined by Jonas, as the cause and subject of our responsibility. Accordingly, it is logical that the spatial and temporal expansion of human power has led to a parallel expansion of the domain falling under the concept of the heritage. From culture to nature, there has been a shift in the way the idea is perceived in ethical, scientific, and aesthetic terms. Until recently a plain reminder of 7. David Brower, Let the Mountains Speak, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth (San Francisco: Harper, 1996).

98

*

jérôme bindé

the past, the heritage now covers practically the entirety of culture and nature. It is no longer confined to stone, as it includes the intangible, the symbolic, the ethical, the ecological, and the genetic heritage. The dangers are real, however, and will remain so as long as ethical reflection is not assisted by a normative framework and the definition of values cannot rely on the law. At present, the diversification of the various forms of heritage has the merit of emphasizing that beyond the protection of cultural and natural assets, it is the perennity of the human race that is involved. The heritage becomes the element of the definition of a relationship with the Other: the Other in space, since the heritage is that of humanity as a whole; the Other in time, that is to say, future generations, since humanity is a transhistorical entity. This new vision of heritage, based on a new pluralism, will in time usher in a new humanism— conscious of its diversity, of the necessary transmission of its multiple pasts, and of the urgent necessity, as stressed by Jacques Delors, to educate citizens to live together.8 Accordingly, ‘‘the heuristic apprenticeship of fear’’ and preservation of the heritage share the same objective. As stated by Martine Rèmond-Gouilloud, ‘‘The fear that irreversible developments should affect the planet represents the reverse side of the coin, while the beatification of humanity’s common heritage is the obverse.’’ 9 The function of the heritage is ‘‘not so much to transmit and to perpetuate objects and values as to create an impulse for transmission, to establish a dynamic sense of solidarity between generations, that is to say, to give a meaning to the perpetuation of the human species, a reason to live.’’ 10 Once the principle of protection has been adopted and its scope defined, it has then to be implemented. An anticipatory evaluation of the risks involved has to be undertaken, which, in a complex and uncertain world, is no easy task. According to François Ewald, evidence suggests that the common paradigms of caution, that practical virtue central to Aristotelian thinking, do not hold well in the face of the heuristic opacity of our times.11 The notion of responsibility, which 8. Jacques Delors, ‘‘Learning: The Treasure Within,’’ working paper, International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, UNESCO, n.p., 1996. 9. M. Rèmond-Gouilloud, ‘‘A la recherche du futur: La Prise en compte du long terme pour le droit à l’environnement,’’ Revue juridique de l’environnement 1 (1992): 5–17. 10. M. Rèmond-Gouilloud, ‘‘L’Avenir du patrimoine,’’ Esprit 216 (1995): 59–72. 11. François Ewald, ‘‘Philosophie de la précaution,’’ L’Année sociologique 46 (1996): 2.

99

*

ethics of the future

emerged in the nineteenth century, seems too individual and retrospective. Solidarity, born in the twentieth century, has now been brought into question under the threefold impact of laissez-faire policies, the third industrial revolution, which has introduced into the fabric of society the divisive logic of ‘‘selective pairing,’’ 12 and the calling into question of scientific models for risk prevention. The new relationship that exists between knowledge, power, and duty at the dawn of the twenty-first century therefore requires a redefinition of the cautious attitude as well as new paradigms of responsibility and solidarity. As regards caution, we are currently witnessing the emergence in sociology and in law of a paradigm of security based on the principle of precaution, which was affirmed at the Rio Summit. This paradigm, born out of a fear of great disasters after the optimistic interlude of the years of faith in technology, rests precisely on the awareness of man’s responsibility in this return of disaster. This problem has been analyzed in three main fields: medicine, because of the risks involved in blood transfusion; the environment, because of the risks of deterioration of the planet; and industrial production, because of the risks associated with development. the emergence of the principle of precaution

The principle of precaution confirms the dissociation of power and knowledge. It modifies man’s relationship to science and knowledge. In fact, it calls for taking account of all hypotheses, even if they are questionable or harebrained. Doubt has become the driving force behind caution. Uncertainty is no longer avoided by presumptions or governed by conditional clauses but made an integral part of knowledge. In other words, probability seems to have become the only certitude in our contemporary world. In any decision taken in a context of uncertainty, we must expect the worst and reconcile the rational anticipation of predict12. Daniel Cohen, Richesse du monde, pauvretés des nations (Paris: Flammarion, 1997). The author refers to the works of Michael Kremer, ‘‘The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development,’’ Quarterly Journal of Economics 108 (1993): 551–76; Kremer and Eric Maskin, ‘‘Segregation by Skill and the Rise of Inequality,’’ working paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 1996; and to Daron Acemoglu, ‘‘Matching, Heterogeneity and the Evolution of Income,’’ working paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 1995.

100

*

jérôme bindé

able damage with the irrational fear of imagined damage. There has to be fear if there is to be doubt. The principle of precaution thereby establishes a new temporality of disaster. Far from being sudden, it belongs to the long, possibly very long term (for example, pollution, the warming of the earth’s atmosphere, and the extinction of species). What is more, expecting the worst means taking into consideration damage which requires a more advanced degree of expertise if it is to be adequately recognized. This temporal dissociation between cause and effect constitutes a decisive element of any reform in the way we think aimed at drawing up an intergenerational ethic. Rehabilitating the long term therefore rests on a transformation of causality. The emergence of the paradigm of precaution is therefore a response to the need for modifying human endeavor at a time of globalization. Precaution stems from the discrepancy between power and knowledge, between what is required of decision making and the uncertainty of its consequences. It requires inverting the relationship of substituting technology for ethics and scientific expertise for political decisions. In the face of the unknown, it requires both humility and the power of decision. The paradigm of precaution gives an ethical choice its sovereign value. It also allows us, perhaps for the first time in history, to formally declare that we have responsibilities toward future generations: This is what UNESCO did by adopting the Declaration on the Responsibilities of Present Generations toward Future Generations, and the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and on Human Rights, which has since been endorsed by the U.N. General Assembly. These pioneering steps in applied ethics not only contribute to giving substance to the principle of precaution, they reintroduce the future in the decision-making field, a field that it should never have left. They also reconcile it with democracy: The Declaration on the Human Genome has created bridges between civil society, the scientific community, industry, and decision makers. On the eve of what Jeremy Rifkin has termed the ‘‘biotech century,’’ with rampant fears of brave new worlds, such steps are of not only considerable ethical importance but also practical import: They may well contribute to saving our species. The security arrangements that surround the paradigm of precaution are part and parcel of an overall logic of preservation of the heritage for future generations. Nevertheless, the practical application of this logic raises a number of objections. In the face of the prospect of a renewed 101

*

ethics of the future

causality, we would all become responsible for not only what we should have known but also what we might have imagined or what we could or should have envisioned. It is no longer enough, then, to consider the foreseeable or the probable when we should embrace the whole range of possibilities. The actor is accountable for all the consequences of his actions, including those that are most contrary to his initial goal. It is not only science without conscience that comes into play but also science in an earlier state of consciousness. Uncertainty intervenes not only in the decision, a priori, but also in the sanction, a posteriori. In legal terms, this phenomenon involves the novel possibility of the retroactivity of the law, in contradiction of classical law. The feeling of universal guilt would therefore replace the notion of responsibility for harm or damage caused. We can easily perceive the possible consequences of such a logic to innovation in all fields of human activity. Far from channeling action, fear is likely to paralyze the actor. Contemplating the whole range of possibilities may make action impossible. This brings back to mind the words of Bergson: ‘‘Thought hampers action.’’ Within a context where discovery, exchange, and challenges are occurring at an ever faster pace, a ‘‘fundamentalist legal’’ interpretation of the principle of precaution could, instead of ensuring ‘‘sustainable development,’’ lead to the impossibility of development and, in certain instances, disastrous consequences. ‘‘Too much caution is a bad thing,’’ as the popular adage wisely suggests. The principle of precaution also involves uncertainty and an assortment of paradoxes: Devised with the aim of safeguarding the future, it can condemn it to immobility; given the task of rehabilitating the long term, it can hamper its preparation. It is likely to dissipate the horizon of expectation in a fear of its consequences, thereby thwarting any prospect of action. Taking account of the future and of alterity would then become confined within the rigid and almost terrifying prospect of unlimited responsibility in time and space. The principle of precaution should therefore be reconciled with wisdom—that sense of efficacy specific to Chinese thought which makes room for letting the consequences manifest themselves while judiciously exploiting the potential of a given situation.13

13. See François Jullien, Traité de l’efficacité (Paris: Grasset, 1997).

102

*

jérôme bindé

principle of prec aution and principle of innovation: how to protect without impeding

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we are duty-bound to find an alternative path between unawareness of danger and the phobia of risk, between practice without awareness and awareness without practice. Such an alternative is in fact the only practical and viable option, because the other two are dead ends. We must now learn to reconcile a spirit of safeguarding with a spirit of openness, preservation of the future with invention of the future. A cautious approach must go hand in hand with a constructive one, and precaution must make innovation possible. These two apparently contradictory principles stem, in fact, from a similar awareness in regard to future generations. In both cases, it is a matter of ensuring the welfare of people whose tastes and needs we have no knowledge of. In such a context of uncertainty, the strategy of preservation of capital implies the concomitant desire to preserve potential. The notion of ‘‘a common heritage’’ stems from that logic. Preserving the integrity of the universal heritage in fact means maximizing future opportunities. With such a prospect, the heritage is no longer seen as a fund of established values, handed down in identical form from generation to generation, but rather a fund of possibilities into which each generation may delve. The environmental carrying capacity should not make us overlook the social need for developing a caring capacity aimed at, first, facilitating life in the community and second, the development of individuals through health and education. As pointed out by Federico Mayor, ‘‘Scientific progress and knowledge are universal; in this regard, they should be considered as our common heritage and therefore be equally shared.’’ 14 We must discard the illusion of zero growth, of stopping the planet in its tracks. Protection should lead to an improvement in the quality of life, through the rehabilitation of development and the ethics of sharing. Preservation of the future is part and parcel of inventing the future, while the principle of responsibility hinges on the principle of hope. The practical conditions of this connection between protection and innovation have yet to be defined. In other words, how can we recon14. Federico Mayor, speech given at the opening of the second session of the International Bioethics Committee, UNESCO, 20 September 1994.

103

*

ethics of the future

cile, on a daily basis, preserving the future with inventing it, and how can we protect without preventing? What matters first and foremost is to guarantee the freedom of choice of future generations within a globally preserved world. In this perspective, a fair inheritance does not mean transferring assets in the same form from one generation to another but rather providing subsequent generations with the means of gaining access to happiness as they see it. What matters therefore is to share out resources in such a way as to maximize the real freedom of those who are most bereft of it. In this instance, justice does not stem from either preservation as such or necessary progress, but from the assurance of potential. It is therefore necessary that ‘‘the productive potential bequeathed by this generation be at least equal to that bequeathed to it by the previous generation, on the understanding that productive potential is the quantity of wealth that can be produced from a given quantity of work.’’ 15 With this aim in mind, the principle of precaution could be combined with a research strategy. The desire for action should strengthen the need for reflection. ‘‘In short, the quest in this instance is for a component of the strategy of caution, which, in terms of an uncertain risk, requires adopting measures and assessing their usefulness.’’ 16 In both instances a questioning approach is salutary. Reconciling the cautionary strategy with the strategy of innovation therefore requires that we should optimize our method of apprehending reality. In actual fact, innovation policy needs to be measured against the requirements of wisdom. Not all that is new is necessarily good. We have to make choices. To do so, we need to explore three major orientations: first, the detection and utilization of information, then the identification and reduction of obstacles, and last, the formulation of ideas and programs. Inventing the future will therefore be the result of modifying our cognitive approach. In the current context of uncertainty and complexity, as underlined by Edgar Morin in Pour une utopie réaliste, safeguarding the future ultimately depends on a reform of our ways of thinking, laying the foundations for the invention of the future.17 I referred to this point during the second meeting of the Millennium 15. Philip Van Parijs, ‘‘La Justice entre générations,’’ Wallonie 51 (1995): 7–15. 16. See Rèmond-Gouilloud, ‘‘L’Avenir du patrimoine.’’ 17. Edgar Morin, ‘‘Pour une réforme de la pensée,’’ in Pour une utopie réaliste (Paris: Arléa, 1996).

104

*

jérôme bindé

Agenda.18 In this regard, awareness of our infirmity would be a first step toward a solution. We cannot pass on ready-made strategies to future generations. This would mean condemning them to both failure and submission. We can, on the contrary, modify current intellectual structures in order to open them up to the extremely diverse and changing nature of our contemporary world. What has happened in the field of research to combat AIDS is very revealing in this regard. On the one hand, there have been contextualization and interdependence, while on the other, deviation and ramification; those are the cognitive reforms required at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Once again, it is a question of passing on to future generations the creative potential whereby they can understand—that is to say, in etymological terms, grasp the coherence of a world whose components we are, by definition, ignorant of. Beyond the scientific wager involved, we must also, in our desire to protect the interests and opportunities of future generations, provide quality, lifelong education for all. Insofar as the children of today will become the adults of tomorrow, their education will have a determining effect on the quality of life of future generations. a realistic utopianism

Modifying intellectual structures must also go hand in hand with reforming institutional structures. The legal framework aimed at protecting future generations should, as in the case of mentalities, remain open and flexible. Ensuring the adaptation of legal standards according to external needs means guaranteeing the perennity of the law. Legal standards must, however, be enforced firmly, and appropriate machinery must guarantee their implementation. How can we think in terms of the ethics of the future when no sooner are conventions adopted than their implementation is brought into question by the absence of practical commitment or through sheer neglect? Treaties must be observed: It is time that this old adage were borne in mind. When all is said and done, combining the principles of protection and innovation requires bringing into question two contradictory approaches to understanding reality: denial and withdrawal, idealistic 18. Jérôme Bindé, ‘‘Complexité et crise de la représentation,’’ in Représentation et complexité, edited by Enrique Rodriguez Larreta and Candido Mendes (Rio de Janeiro: Educam/UNESCO/ISSC, 1997).

105

*

ethics of the future

utopianism and pessimistic realism. Conversely, the ethics of the future requires us to adopt a creative outlook, to free the future from the twofold trap of idealism and pessimism. To achieve this, a third path is required, namely, that of realistic utopianism. Accordingly, the ethics of the future rests on a renewed dialogue between the present and the future. It involves neither foretelling nor prescribing the future, but preparing for it. Preparing for the future has very concrete implications. Do we wish to prepare the global information society? Then make it possible: Give access to electricity, through the development of solar and alternative energies, to the 2 billion individuals who do not have access to an electric grid; give access to basic means of telecommunications to the over 4.5 billion individuals who do not have access to them; give access to education to those who are denied it. In this way it should be possible to achieve a representation of the desired future born out of the observation of possible futures. It should also permit choices to be made on a daily basis that would give greater clarity to the present in the light of such possibilities. It also involves a simultaneously simplifying and complexifying approach. It strives to strike a balance between the rehabilitation of long-term projects and the satisfaction of current necessities, a principle that underlies the logic of sustainable development. This way has been opened up by Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas, the former in terms of the values involved and the latter as regards the prospect of better times.19 In short, what is required is to reconcile the forecast with the project, action with representation, a utopian elsewhere with reality. Elsewhere must become part of time present. This realistic utopianism should not only be translated at the macropolitical level: It has implications at the level of personal, individual, everyday behavior—which may well be the highest form of culture. It is a moral imperative to attempt what has not been attempted before and to ask questions no one has asked before. It is a daily challenge to impossibility: As Weber stated, the possible will never be reached if, around the world, one did not attempt again and again, ceaselessly, the impossible. Nevertheless, at a time when we are asserting the need to respect the choices of future generations and to leave them an open potential rather 19. Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘La Cité est fondamentalement périssable,’’ Le Monde, 29 October 1991; E. Levinas, ‘‘Il nous est indispensable, à nous occidentaux, de nous situer dans la perspective d’un temps prometteur,’’ Le Monde, 2 June 1992.

106

*

jérôme bindé

than a predetermined heritage, a fundamental question is raised. How can we ensure the perennity of ethics without imposing our own choices and without binding future generations to a moral determinism based on a paraphernalia of legal texts? the contractual obstacle and the snag of instantaneousness

The task is an arduous one. We need to be aware of a twofold obstacle identified by François Ost: the contractual obstacle and the obstacle of the instant.20 In fact, giving due consideration to future generations is difficult to combine with the founding concept of the modern moral, legal, and political contract. An ideal of reciprocity and symmetry underlies this particular logic. Accordingly, the golden rule of ethics—do not unto others that which you would not have done unto you—is conditional on fear and the need for others. In an environment dominated by the relative scarcity of wealth, the relative selfishness of individuals, and the relative equality of forces, the partial sacrifice of individual freedom allows for the security and happiness of individuals. But as for future generations, there is nothing, for the time being, to be feared or to be expected. As the absent third party of our contemporary contractual discussions, future generations are more than likely to be excluded. The contractual system ultimately rests on a definition of the human community rooted in the present. In that regard, it is fundamentally opposed to any intergenerational ethic. This means that each specific era, while entertaining the illusion of its moral and legal autonomy, denies de facto its own place in the course of history. If we establish social links on the postulate of an original synchronic position, we paradoxically condemn the very existence of these links in time. The contractual model thereby constitutes an unexpected symptom of the crisis of loss of identity in contemporary societies. Substituting a logic of simultaneity for a logic of succession reveals a withdrawal to the present, a sign of a loss of the sense of history and orientation as well as the meaning of temporal development. To borrow the terminology of Reinhart 20. François Ost, ‘‘Du contrat à la transmission: Le Simultané et le successif,’’ in L’Environnement au XXIe siècle, vol. 1, ed. Jacques Theys (Paris: Germes, 1998), 529– 46.

107

*

ethics of the future

Koselleck, we are witnessing a widening rift between the ‘‘realm of experience’’ and the ‘‘horizon of expectations.’’ 21 The past has ceased to be a fund of resources into which the present may delve in order to prepare for the future. For want of any historical link, the three temporal ecstasies—past, present, and future—therefore withdraw into the illusion of their autonomy: Values become those of regressive traditionalism, action becomes merely insignificant reaction, and any plan merely utopian idealism. In that context, it would seem to be particularly difficult to think in terms of intergenerational responsibility. With nothing to expect of either the past or the future, it is logical that each generation should endeavor to maximize its own well-being without any regard for the consequences. We would do well to remind ourselves of the words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote pointedly that ‘‘the Earth belongs in usufruct to the living’’—‘‘in usufruct,’’ he added, because we should be mindful both of our heritage and of our legacy. The current contractual system, based on reciprocity and simultaneity, does not leave any scope for a durable intellectual approach to intergenerational equity. In a world where every gift has to be made up for by a countergift, what room is there left for those who, by their position in society as well as in their times, have nothing to give? According to this outlook, those who are absent or weak are always wrong. What is more, this system is self-justified and feeds on itself. As a sign of contemporary individualism, it also serves as its pretext. When a particular era refuses to be concerned with the future, it claims to be ignorant of its desires. When pushed to the extreme, this kind of reasoning makes of the denial of future generations a mark of respect in their regard. t h e c h i l d a n d t h e fa m i ly m o d e l

That does not mean that the problem cannot be overcome. In actual fact, the autarchy claimed in such a rational way is refuted by undeniable contemporary experience, namely, that of the daily, practical coexistence of at least three generations. The presence of different age groups 21. Reinhart Koselleck, Le Futur passé: Contribution à la sémantique des temps historiques (Paris: Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1990), 334.

108

*

jérôme bindé

can serve as a model and as motivation for integrating an intergenerational ethic. Consequently, the philosopher John Rawls, in an attempt to reconcile moral and contractual requirements, appeals to a fundamental intuition of the human heart and to a universally shared feeling, namely, that of the natural benevolence of genitors toward their descendants, a benevolence which extends at least to the two subsequent generations.22 This is something that may make durably tangible the abstract idea of the succession of generations. Nevertheless, along such lines, the question of a fair inheritance is very likely to be reduced to the mere question of an equitable transfer between successive generations. Ethical considerations are then likely to be swallowed up by domestic preoccupations, the universal dimension reduced to that of family preoccupations, and consciousness of the long run and planetary solidarity confined to near lineage. The ethics of the future therefore is confronted with both the temporal myopia and political and moral deficiency of contemporary societies. Nevertheless, the family model comprises a fundamental intuition that is likely to extend the field of moral incentive. Indeed, taking account of direct descendants alone outlines a movement which must lead from the Self to the Other. What is of interest in the family model therefore stems more from the structure of the relationship envisaged than from its very nature, more from the form than from the substance. What the family model reveals is that due regard for others goes hand in hand with giving the subject its rightful place in the relationship. Concern for alterity lays the ground for a dynamic, moving identity. Feelings of love are bolstered by feelings of belonging. Whether it be the family in the strict sense or the ‘‘human family’’ referred to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the process is the same. There is no need then for temporal symmetry to ensure intergenerational exchange. It is no longer a question of the logic of reciprocity whereby anything given presupposes something to be returned, but a logic of transmission which gives the donor a particular place in the historical community. The practical implications are too many to be listed: Is it not enough to remind ourselves that two-thirds of the world population suffering from extreme poverty are under the age of fifteen? 22. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).

109

*

ethics of the future

the transmission of the heritage

When viewed in intergenerational terms, this concept reflects the ambiguity inherent in the notion of heritage. It is aimed at the perennity of the social group and, therefore, is not merely a gift but a loan, granted on the condition that it is passed on. The commutative logic of distributive justice is therefore replaced by a transitive logic. It is no longer a question of ‘‘giving in order to receive, but giving because one has already received.’’ 23 The commitment is neither one-sided and heroic as advocated by Hans Jonas, nor bilateral and utilitarian as a purely contractual system would require. In fact, the idea of reciprocity is not rejected but modified in its mechanisms. A degree of equality, deferred in time, is preserved. To whom can we return the nature and culture we have inherited from our predecessors if not to our own successors? Consequently, it is by recognizing our position in the historical process that we can envisage our responsibility with regard to future generations. The notion of passing on the heritage brings us back, ultimately, to the irreversible nature of the human condition. As we are prevented from going backward in order to return what we have been entrusted with or to make amends for any wrongdoing we may have committed, we must therefore rely on an alterity that escapes us—namely, humanity.24 The golden rule of ethics is thereby enriched by this injunction to love: ‘‘Do not do unto others that which you would not have done unto you’’ no longer invites us to imagine ourselves in a position of 23. Ost, ‘‘Du contrat à la transmission.’’ 24. I would like to underline in this instance, along with François Ost, that the concept of humanity ‘‘appears to be both indeterminate and yet final. It is indeterminate in so far as it is not linked to any specifically human essence, to any model which we might have to apply . . . and yet, the very process of humanization is not random; its path was outlined by Kant, extending from the state of nature, going through civil status whereby man draws up a constitution within the framework of the state to arrive ultimately at the Universal City governed by cosmopolitan law. Finally, within the ‘realm of the ultimate ends,’ humanity, rescued from the violence of natural relationships, accedes to its humanity’’ (Ost, ‘‘Après nous, le déluge?’’). In this regard, Kant refers to the very foundations of the ethics of the future: ‘‘The fulcrum I chose is the innate duty of every member of successive generations to ensure that posterity continues to improve and that this duty would thereby be passed on regularly from one member of a generation to another’’ (Immanuel Kant, Sur l’expression courante: Il se peut que ce soit juste en théorie, mais en pratique cela ne vaut rien, trans. L. Guillermit [Paris: J. Vrin, 1967]).

110

*

jérôme bindé

weakness but rather to assume our common humanity. In this instance, the individual interest coincides with respect for ethics. If we show respect for the humanity of others, that means that we also show respect for our own humanity. Conversely, to ignore human solidarity leads to isolation and to being excluded from the human community. Within this context, it is also possible to reinterpret the second formulation of Kant’s imperative: ‘‘Seeing humanity in one’s own self as in that of others as an aim and not as a means’’ is to rediscover the fundamental link between ourselves and others and to derive our identity from the ethical process.25 The current extension of the notion of heritage to humankind as a whole within the general context of the deprivation of meaning is not, therefore, purely fortuitous. It is a preliminary sign of an attempt to reconstruct our identity and a desire to reappropriate a particular meaning, as illustrated by Edgar Morin’s concept of the ‘‘Mother-Earth.’’ 26 By detecting the being beneath the having, intergenerational solidarity also gives us a raison d’être. Accordingly, it leads us toward the meaningful depths of duration. Thanks to the inheritance passed on to us, we thereby find ourselves thrown into the process of the passing of time. The recognized interaction between remote generations involves de facto recognition of the living link through the present between past and future. As the memory of the former or the basis of the latter, the present is entrusted with a hermeneutic role. Far from the fever of the immediate, it becomes the meaningful point for drawing up a project on the basis of the data gathered from experience and of the memory that it represents. With patrimonial identity, we are able to rediscover the founding link between the ‘‘realm of experience’’ and the ‘‘horizon of expectations.’’ The heritage has taught us that humanity merely passes through history. Along those lines, there can be no reason, as some would have us believe, to place intergenerational responsibility and intragenerational responsibility at odds. One and the other go together as two sides of the same coin. What would be the point of sustainable development if it were merely a matter of perpetuating the inequality and suffering of our 25. It is to this task of reinterpretation of the Kantian formula by comparison with the golden rule of ethics that Paul Ricoeur devoted himself in Amour et justice (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1990), 58. 26. Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern, Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 1998).

111

*

ethics of the future

contemporary world? Are not improving the health of the most impoverished and providing lifelong education to everyone means of investing in the future? Conversely, evidence shows a frequent coincidence between synchronic and diachronic egotism. Abandoning our contemporaries, whether they be close or remote, from the First, Second, Third, or Fourth World, amounts to the same rejection of universal ethics as disregard for future generations, whether close or remote. The universal nature of human rights proclaims that all human beings are born equal and enjoy these rights without distinction of class, sex, race, religion, and, it should be added, generation. As Craig Kielburger, the young president of Free the Children, put it: ‘‘It also takes a child to raise a village.’’ learning to invest in time: education and the ethics of the future

The human city represents the ideal context for civic education and the promotion of the value of alterity. But, beyond the political feat involved, the stakes, as Federico Mayor observed, are cultural. It is not merely a matter of transforming minds in order to adapt them to the requirements of our contemporary world. It is also necessary to change attitudes, customs, and lifestyles. Preparing citizens for the future is just as much about giving them the means to think as about giving them the freedom and will to do so. If devoid of the strength of will and the certainty of decision, knowledge is either suffering or sheer bliss. The ethics of the future therefore deserves to be part and parcel of an educational design. The ethics of the future must become one of the values, if not the fundamental value, of humanity’s common heritage. And values, far from being a fixed, untouchable reference, should be an evolving heritage, focused on the future. Turning toward the future also means knowing how to convey the wealth of the past. From that angle, a reform of history, as a matter of speculation and a field of experience, would appear indispensable. Our wealth of historical expertise may in fact shed light on the present and guide the future, provided our scholarly memory of the past alone gives way to a living memory, anchored in the present and focused on the future. We need, here and now, to acquire a ‘‘memory of the future.’’ In the words of Ricoeur, ‘‘we have so many unfulfilled plans behind us, 112

*

jérôme bindé

so many promises that have still not been held, that we have the means of rebuilding the future through reviving our heritage in its multiple forms.’’ 27 That, ultimately, is the condition for the emergence of the realistic utopia that we were advocating earlier. It cannot be achieved through any ideological hankering after the past or through an ideal imported from elsewhere. Instead, it can be attained by reinvesting in what is possible and by delving into the very heart of history. The key factor in our historical awareness is not the past but the future. The time of history is the time of expectation and promise, the time of destiny and coming. By bequeathing to future generations a tradition that is complex but accessible, we can give them both a temporal identity and adequate scope to exploit it, to create and to innovate. As an instrument for the improvement of the future, history must institute, without any teleological guarantee, the very possibility of human progress. With that aim in mind, UNESCO’s mission would appear to be more than ever decisive, and who could set a limit to it? The task involved is, through the dissemination of lifelong education for all, of a science and a culture of the future, to give to all the capacity to think of themselves as beings in time, as members of the human community engaged in the historical process, capable of making promises and of meeting their commitments. As in the words of Jean Jaurès, the great advocate of solidarity, ‘‘The best means for a river to be faithful to its source is to head for the sea.’’ The closing volume of Proust’s In Search of Time Lost (Remembrance of Things Past, in nonliteral English) is entitled Time Regained. Let us learn once again to identify the meaning of life and to rediscover the course of time. 27. Ricoeur, Amour et justice, 58.

113

*

ethics of the future

A Chinese Dream by Wang Jin Wu Hung

Born in 1962 and first trained in traditional Chinese painting at the prestigious Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts), Wang Jin resigned his teaching post and became a freelance artist in 1992. Since then his many performance and environmental projects have made him one of the most socially engaged experimental artists in his native country. A large group of his projects responds to the rapidly growing capitalist economy in China. Some of them comment on the clash and fusion of new and old values by staging ironic combinations of foreign and Chinese symbols. Knocking at the Door (1993) consisted of a group of old bricks from the walls of the Forbidden City, each bearing on its uneven surface a suprarealistic depiction of an American currency note. Wang Jin continued to produce such ‘‘cash bricks’’ over the following years and used them to ‘‘restore’’ damaged sections of the palace wall. Other projects in this group comment on the inflation of material desires in contemporary Chinese society. For example, a new slang expression for ‘‘making a fast buck’’ is ‘‘stirfrying’’ (chao) money. Wang Jin’s 1995 Quick Stir-Frying RMB (Chinese currency) made the verbal expression literal: He rented a space in a famous night market in central Beijing and set up a food stand. With all the aplomb of a master chef he fried a wokful of coins for his customers. A more ambitious project, Ice: Central China 96, involved building a thirty-meter-long ice wall in front of a new shopping center in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. Frozen inside this translucent wall were over a thousand sought-after commercial goods. The show ended with the audience’s spontaneous destruction of the wall to get at the goods, thus turning sheer images into material possessions. Picture 3 copyright © Leng Lin; all other photographs copyright © Wang Jin.

(For an introduction to Wang Jin’s life and works, see Wu Hung, Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century [Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art and University of Chicago, 1999], 86–87, 154–59, 189–90.) A Chinese Dream (1997–present) represents a new direction of Wang Jin’s social critique by focusing on contemporary Chinese art itself. This shift is logical because the practices of this art—its production and circulation, exhibition and collection, reproduction and publication—are all closely related to China’s new economic system and to globalization. It is relatively simple to conduct such a critique from the outside, either from outside China or by means of words. But as a visual artist working in China, Wang Jin comments on these practices through an art project first prepared for a domestic exhibition/auction. A Chinese Dream, therefore, tests the possibility of his working within the current system of contemporary Chinese art while self-consciously reflecting on this system. This internal position, however, must make the subject and object of his critique interchangeable and thereby runs the risk of being self-parodic, as Wang Jin’s ridicule of some general conditions of contemporary Chinese art can and must also be applied to himself. This may explain certain limitations of his critique. As we will see, he most consciously responds to issues of authenticity and commercialization in contemporary Chinese art but is silent about other of its aspects, such as production, reproduction, and collecting. It is worth thinking about the reason for such inconsistency. In this sense, A Chinese Dream also offers us an opportunity to reflect on a self-reflection by a Chinese artist working inside the general operating system of contemporary Chinese art. This photo essay, therefore, does not simply reiterate the artist’s view. Rather, through Wang Jin’s project I try to understand both general practices of contemporary Chinese art and the specific practices of an individual artist. In preparing for this essay I interviewed Wang Jin extensively and studied documents and images related to A Chinese Dream, including a large number of photographs taken at different times and places. The selection of the photographs for this essay has little to do with their artistic merit. Rather, the diverse photographic modes or styles of these images help define specific locations of meaning both within Wang Jin’s experiment and beyond it. 115

*

a chinese dream

picture 1: presentation

Here, as an isolated physical construct removed from any social situation or narrative context, Wang Jin’s A Chinese Dream is at its most iconic. Faithfully reproducing the dimensions and design of a Peking Opera costume, Wang has replaced the garment’s colorful silk and satin with translucent plastic sheets (PVC). He has retained the fanciful embroidery of the costume but substituted nylon filament for silk thread. The fundamental strategy of the artist is to work with an existing object, duplicating form but substituting matter. Therefore, we cannot analyze this work within an interpretive framework based on mimesis, or the relationship between reality and representation, because its method forges a new reality by appropriating an existing one. This new reality is no longer harmonious but is intentionally self-contradictory. In particular, its preindustrial design and industrial material allude to different historical moments and aesthetic sensibilities and signify simultaneous attachment to and detachment from a particular cultural tradition. Slightly bluish, the costume looks illusory and weightless. (It is actually much heavier than a real silk costume.) Translucent rather than transparent, it is both there and not there, both attracts our eye and diffuses our gaze. On a different level of observation, the composition of the photograph is analogous to a formal portrait, frontal and stable. But the human subject is omitted; the translucency of the remaining costume enhances the feeling of absence and emptiness.

Wang Jin and China Picture Studio

picture 2: production

Wang Jin designed A Chinese Dream, but he did not make it; it was embroidered in Zhuolu county, Hebei province, by peasant women famous for their fine needlework. This photo, a snapshot taken by the artist himself, shows four women silently working in a farmer’s home. None of their faces are clearly visible; their bulky winter clothes contrast with the eerily translucent fabric they work with. It took twenty women a month to embroider a single costume. The making of A Chinese Dream thus adopts a prevailing method of production in present-day China, in which an urban entrepreneur hires agricultural laborers to manufacture products according to his design. This mode of production seems again symbolized by the juxtaposition of the costume’s preindustrial form and industrial materials. This context also makes apparent that A Chinese Dream is actually not a single work by an individual artist (as the previous photograph has led us to believe) but a series of works coproduced by an employer-designer and a group of laborers. Here the employerdesigner is a cosmopolitan ‘‘avant-garde’’ artist based in China’s capital who frequently travels abroad. The laborers are folk artists in their own right; they have become ‘‘laborers’’ in this specific project because they work purely for money and because they are completely ignorant of the meaning of their work: The reason for embroidering plastic sheets with ‘‘fish threads’’ is utterly beyond their understanding of art. A Chinese Dream brings these two groups of contemporary Chinese artists into a single artistic production in which their identities as artists are negotiated and redefined in accordance with their economic relationship.

Wang Jin

picture 3: exhibition/auction

Wang Jin made his first A Chinese Dream gown for a special exhibition/auction in Beijing. Organized by the art critic Leng Lin in collaboration with the Sungari International Auction Company, the 1997 event was advertised as a joint venture of intellectuals and businessmen to test the social mobility of art in contemporary China. When invited to submit a work to the event, Wang Jin came up with the plan of making a ‘‘fake’’ Peking Opera costume. The piece sold during the auction for 82,500 RMB or $10,000. With little intended artistry, this photo announces the birth of A Chinese Dream as an art object. It shows the grand exhibition hall of the auction house, in which Wang Jin’s plastic costume is displayed in a large glass case. A poster in the foreground—‘‘ ’97 Auction of Contemporary Chinese Art and Works by Modern Western Masters’’—provides this and other works in the exhibition/auction with a global framework of art and commerce. The status of A Chinese Dream as a valuable commodity was firmly established—the impressive sale price certified its artistic and economic worth. It was admired as a work of originality, and its significance was discussed in the historical context of Chinese art. It acquired not only an international audience but also an individual authorship; its coauthored production phase retreated into a prehistorical oblivion. From now on, A Chinese Dream would be associated only with the name Wang Jin.

Leng Lin

picture 4: home sale

The 1997 exhibition/auction was a ‘‘home sale.’’ The targeted customers were foreigners traveling to China, and indeed A Chinese Dream was purchased by one of them. The Chinese and English titles that Wang Jin provided for this work were ironical, conveying a strong sense of ‘‘tourist art’’ and implying the non-Chinese identity of a potential buyer. (The Chinese title is Hongchen Zhongguo, or Material China.) This selfawareness of the work’s commercial nature explains Wang Jin’s appropriation of a Peking Opera costume. While Peking Opera has not died in China, it has been transformed into a major tourist attraction, staged in old gardens or five-star hotels. The ‘‘authentic cultural experience’’ it offers is entirely about surface: The theater is decorated with plastic flowers and garish paint; the plays are selected to meet the fascination with acrobatic-like fighting scenes and with the characters’ exotic dresses. Making a Peking Opera costume out of a modern, plastic material, Wang Jin captures this spurious notion of ‘‘cultural authenticity’’ in various contemporary China arts. Going a step further, Wang Jin brought his next version of A Chinese Dream to the Imperial Summer Palace, a must-visit spot for every tourist. This photo registers a moment when a crowd of foreign and domestic tourists approach the costume along the famous Long Corridor: Some study it as a curiosity; others walk by without noticing. None take it seriously as art.

Wang Jin and Shi Xiaobing

picture 5: going global

Wang Jin has made nine versions of A Chinese Dream; none of them can be found in China at this moment. Three pieces are touring America, five have entered private collections in Switzerland and France, and one belongs to the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan. A location such as the latter is commonly considered the most ideal by a Chinese artist, not only because it means international recognition but because it fundamentally changes the nature of the work. An exhibition, no matter how important, is temporary, while entering a private collection often means the disappearance of a work from public view. Being collected by an art museum of international stature is a different matter: The work finds a permanent global home and now belongs to humankind. On the part of the museum, an acquisition demands not only money and interest but also faith and commitment; a ‘‘notable acquisition’’ enriches its self-image and generates a sense of victory. Such a joint triumph of the artist and the museum is gloriously celebrated by a series of photographs of A Chinese Dream produced by the Fukuoka Museum after it acquired the work. The stage is set at a tranquil seashore, when the turquoise sky turns orange along the horizon. Against the setting sun the costume becomes almost transparent; only its embroidered patterns are suspended in the air like a miraculous vision. The photographer is clearly taking his cues from the title A Chinese Dream. No longer ironic, the title comes to inspire a universal appreciation of beauty.

Wang Jin and Zhenyie Shengjun

picture 6: an imaginary return

After all versions of A Chinese Dream had gone abroad, an effort was made to reconnect them with China through staged photographic images. In an imaginary return to a fictional origin, these images detached themselves from the actual object(s) to generate a visual field on their own. The photos, as arty as the Fukuoka ones, were made by Chinese photographers and situated Wang Jin’s costume(s) in typical Chinese environments. One sequence by Chen Yu takes place in Beihai Park, a former imperial garden in central Beijing. The glowing costume is hung amidst ornamental rocks in front of a lotus pond, a poetic setting endlessly depicted in traditional Chinese painting. This image comes from another sequence, shot outside the wall of the Forbidden City. With some effort, the photographer spotted a portion of this ancient wall that had escaped recent repair. The image is deliberately twodimensional and dreamlike. The dilapidated appearance of the wall further arouses a sentiment of nostalgia. Enhanced by the gentle bluish hue of the photograph, this ruined wall also supplies a mild sense of tragedy to the two beautiful costumes, one for a man and one for a woman, hanging against it. The pairing of the costumes in this environment evokes the numerous romances in traditional plays and novels. Like the Fukuoka photos, this image takes the costumes’ title A Chinese Dream literally but interprets it as a dream resurrected from China’s historic memory. Thus while such images transform the costume(s) into a different art medium, ideologically they often lead us full circle: Wang Jin created the costumes to deconstruct the ‘‘cultural authenticity’’ of contemporary Chinese art, but in these staged photographs the costumes are used to reconstruct the same ‘‘cultural authenticity.’’

Wang Jin and An Hong

picture 7: reactivating

But an imaginary return can go deeper than a supernatural reconstruction of a historical environment. In a bold move, Wang Jin abolished A Chinese Dream’s status as an independent art object when he used it in a performance he undertook in 1998 at the site of the Ming imperial tombs outside Beijing. For the first time the costume was worn, and it was the artist himself who filled this translucent shell. Shi Xiaobing’s photograph wonderfully captures the moment when Wang Jin swirled around under the tomb’s brooding gate-tower. His disheveled hair floats against the light, but his face merges into shadow: Here is an image between day and night, life and death. Stretching both arms open, he seems to be displaying the shimmering costume with its intricate embroidery. No longer holding our gazes, however, the costume focuses our eyes only on the dark body it contains. Through this performance Wang Jin is able to reclaim A Chinese Dream from its social circulation and to reactivate it in a new field of signification. Before this moment A Chinese Dream had been functioning exclusively as an art object—a material entity to be displayed and possessed. But its independent objecthood disappeared when the artist reemerged to embody it. Replying to my inquiries about his performance, therefore, Wang Jin never mentioned its intended meaning or symbolism but only talked about his feeling when he put on the costume: Suddenly the plastic material seemed to disappear and expose him, and the embroidered patterns were like brush lines painted on his skin. Vulnerable yet empowered, he began to dance, his inscribed body like a living image.

Wang Jin and Shi Xiaobing

coda: textualization

This essay has traced the metamorphosis of an art object through a series of sites: production, auction, exhibition, reproduction, and performance. At each site, A Chinese Dream assumed a different meaning and appearance, and that meaning and appearance helped define the site as a social, cultural, and economic construct. The final site to add to the map is this essay—itself an artistic/art historical endeavor that introduces its own dilemmas. An artistic project to the extent that it arranges a fresh assembly of images, this essay accomplishes an exhibition in print. As such, it supplements and counters an earlier exhibition I curated at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in 1999, which featured two of Wang’s costumes. The artful presentation and lighting of the exhibition emphasized the gowns’ beauty, distinguishing them as ‘‘original works of art’’—a distinction upon which gallery shows are heavily dependent. But while this presentation made a striking visual impression, it did so at the risk of obscuring the complexity of the work’s social content. The present essay contextualizes this manner of presentation and the conventions of gallery exhibition. In so doing it obeys a different set of conventions, those used in an art historical analysis. Such an analysis requires the transformation of an object into a print image arranged in textual space. In the seven pictures reproduced in this essay, Wang Jin’s costume(s) has lost size, volume, color, weight, and most of the other qualities that constitute its materiality. Framed on individual pages, these pictures are paired with text to compose a narrative meant to be both visual and textual. But it is also clear that the visual component is framed by the textual one. The ‘‘artistic endeavor’’ in this case, therefore, is actually a practice in art history, which not only explains images but also produces them.

Mediating Time: The ‘‘Rice Bowl of Youth’’ in Fin de Siècle Urban China Zhang Zhen

Two popular mantras perhaps best capture the fin de siècle frenzy and anxiety of the market economy and consumerist China: xiahai (plunging into the ocean), meaning going into the risky business world, and yu shijie jiegui, which literally means ‘‘linking up with the [rail] tracks of the world.’’ The expressions are ubiquitous in both official and popular Chinese discourse. From the popular press to film and television, the media are suffused with tragicomic tales of people who have fared poorly or well in the new enterprises proliferating in China. Linking up with the tracks of the world is a particularly vivid metaphor that spells out China’s desire to catch the last train of global modernity, finally overcoming a perceived time-lag between itself and the West. It suggests a sense of running out of time, of urgency, and of great risk taking—a concept that became almost obsolete during China’s insulated socialist era, a time when urban dwellers worked low-paying jobs assigned by a program popularly known as the ‘‘iron rice bowl’’ (tie fanwan). The figure of the iron rice bowl conjures visions of an austere and, at least theoretically, egalitarian lifestyle. More crucially, it evokes a distinct temporality. The image of peasants and workers, old and young men and women, holding their big rice bowls and eating to their hearts’ content at communal canteens during the 1950s’ Great Leap Forward became an icon of both the bounty and poverty of the socialist experiEarlier versions of this essay were presented at the 1995 annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington, D.C., and at the symposium on ‘‘Sex, Gender, and Public Space in Contemporary China’’ at Tufts University in 1996. I thank Zhong Xueping for organizing both the AAS panel and the symposium, which provided a forum for me to develop this essay. I am also grateful for the encouragement and generous comments from Judith Farquhar, Magnus Fiskesjö, Elizabeth McSweeney, and the editors at Public Culture.

ment.1 An image of modern folklore, the iron rice bowl exercised enormous representational power, as the most mundane of everyday objects became the pivotal figure of political and social turmoil. With the advent of the market economy, the symbolism of the rice bowl changed radically. People left the stagnant state sectors (voluntarily or involuntarily) to seek monetary and personal fulfillment in the business world—plunging into the ocean. As a side effect of social restructuring, a new importance in the marketplace and popular culture was assigned to gender, age, and class. While the iron rice bowl is now perceived as rusty and broken, a new figure, the ‘‘rice bowl of youth’’ (qingchunfan), has gained wide currency since the early 1990s. The rice bowl of youth refers to the urban trend in which a range of new, highly paid positions have opened almost exclusively to young women, as bilingual secretaries, public relations girls, and fashion models. Youth and beauty are the foremost, if not the only, prerequisites to obtaining lucrative positions, in which the new ‘‘professionals’’ often function as advertising fixtures with sex appeal. The robust image of vivacious, young female eaters of the rice bowl of youth symbolizes a fresh labor force, a model of social mobility, and the rise of a consumer culture endorsed by current official ideology—the ‘‘democracy of consumption’’ promoted to prevent social unrest since the suppression of student movements in 1989.2 The profusion of public discourse that has surrounded this socioeconomic phenomenon reflects a larger cultural anxiety about temporality. In parts of China, the structures of time are being recast by the rapid transition from socialism to a market economy and by the change of focus from production to consumption. In the practical shift from feeding the body to earning a living, different temporalities—old and new, socialist and capitalist, global and local—have collided. In a society mobilized to plunge into the ocean or to link with the tracks of the world, fear of drowning and the perils of speed have made anxiety a central feature of public discourse, and it has manifested especially in popular reactions to the rice bowl of youth.3 More than just a labor issue, the rice 1. Zhang Yimou’s film To Live (1994) contains memorable scenes of such communal meals during the Great Leap Forward campaign. 2. The term is borrowed from Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 13. 3. Here history does seem to repeat itself with a vengeance. In the early 1930s, the

132

*

zhang zhen

bowl phenomenon signals the formation of an urban mass culture and a new sexual politics. It is also the object of an underlying structural anxiety about time, in which feminine youth—fashioned as the timeless object of male desire—is simultaneously the trope and implement of modernization and globalization with Chinese characteristics. The rice bowl of youth highlights other temporal paradoxes in a changing social structure as well. Youth is when people are initiated as full members of society and made eligible to enter structures of conjugality and family. By enabling a quick escape from adolescence into high-income-earning adulthood, the rice bowl of youth converts youth from a purely social to a social and commercial category. As a category of privilege, it is one in which some people can be expected to linger, but the futility of remaining indefinitely in something as finite as youth only generates further urgency and anxiety about the (imminent) loss of golden opportunities. Lingering long in a moment of opportunity has consequences, too: Many eaters of the rice bowl of youth delay marriage and childbearing in order to enjoy and capitalize on youth to the fullest. As a result, normative family structure and sexual behaviors are challenged as youth’s enlargement thwarts conventional domestic temporalities. The rice bowl of youth is imbricated with the emergence of an urban space suffused with new venues for commodity consumption and libidinal indulgence. It is a by-product of the encroachment into China of a global style of conducting business and consuming. As my examples below will show, the rice bowl of youth phenomenon and the anxiety it generates are structured around a set of particular spatial tropes. This motion-charged space includes bars and restaurants, nightclubs, fashion stores, shopping centers, luxury hotels, high-tech office buildings, and expressways. It also extends to tennis courts, gyms, and golf and horse-riding courses, which are not so much athletic establishments as institutions of conspicuous consumption (most memberships are outrageously expensive) and of the promotion of a sexier, more marketable physical look. In tandem with the dismantling of the iron rice bowl infrastructure and mentality in major urban centers we find relentless and aggressive urban discourse on the ‘‘Modern Girl’’ also included a set of aquatic vocabulary such as ‘‘tides’’ and ‘‘drowning.’’ See, for instance, the cartoons in Xin Shanghai [New Shanghai], 2, 1933.

133

*

mediating time

leveling of century-old architectural landmarks and large blocks of vernacular housing to pave the way (literally) for new expressways, subways, and commercial centers. Shanghai is the most salient example. ‘‘Shanghai fever,’’ which began rising in the 1990s, stems largely from the city’s frenzied project of ‘‘(re)cosmopolitanism,’’ which attempts to recapture the city’s glory as the ‘‘Paris of the Orient’’ in the 1920s to 1940s.4 The east side of the Huangpu River (opposite the Bund) in Shanghai, after Deng Xiaoping’s decisive ‘‘Southern trip’’ (nanxun), became the Pudong Special Economic Zone in 1993. It is now one of the hottest spots of urbanization and global enterprise in the country, with rice paddies turned almost overnight into asphalt roads and commercial and residential compounds. Within a few years, the ‘‘Pearl of the East’’—a concrete version of the Eiffel Tower—and numerous skyscrapers have been erected, as have two bridges and two tunnels linking the banks of the Huangpu, providing the physical means of ‘‘linking up with the tracks of the world.’’ A subway line and pedestrian tunnel linking old and new Shanghai are slated to open in a few years, and a large international airport is being rapidly constructed in Pudong, near the ocean. Once-rural Pudong has become a futuristic city within less than a decade. What is underway here is an immense project of spatializing time and arresting the future. Expressways, railways, bridges, airfields, elevators, assembly lines, infrastructure pipes, and tunnels are rapidly being built or installed to speed up circulation of people and things. A perusal of Shanghai Pictorial and of pictorials from other major cities reveals an obsession with aerial panoramas of modern structures, especially the photogenic lines of suspension bridges and highways. Stretched to seeming infinity, these bold strokes of development are spatial-temporal passages (à la Benjamin) that link past and future but also inadvertently foreground the vast unevenness, or nonsynchronous simultaneity, between the old and the new, the rural and the urban, the inland and the coastal geoeconomical topographies. This essay considers the rice bowl of youth phenomenon as it manifests or is reflected in various cultural arenas—women’s magazines, films, and the streets—within the broader historical and cultural trans4. See Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, ‘‘Mass Media and Transnational Subjectivity in Shanghai: Notes on (Re)Cosmopolitanism in a Chinese Metropolis,’’ in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, ed. Aihwa Ong and Don Nonini (New York: Routledge, 1997), 287–319.

134

*

zhang zhen

formation of fin de siècle urban China. I am particularly concerned with the way in which these transformations renew the symbolic value of youth and with how the discourse and practices of the rice bowl of youth attach a specific anxiety to China’s project to link itself to ‘‘the tracks of the world.’’ Why do feminine youth and beauty matter so much to this larger project, the roots of which reach back to the vision of the late Qing and May Fourth period modernizers? How is youth deployed differently now? What do young women gain or lose by plunging into the ocean of the male-dominated business world? How do they think about the phenomenon themselves and about their future beyond the rice bowl of youth? These are the questions that structure this essay. e d ib l e t i m e , e phe m er a l be aut y, c h i n e s e wom a n

Recent visitors to China, especially to the prospering coastal cities, are often struck by the massive, sometimes pathological, craze for eating. Since the late 1980s, various newly established or redecorated expensive restaurants have significantly reordered not only urban space but also the temporal structure of daily life. More time (as well as more money) is being spent on food and drink; nightlife, which for decades was considered the quintessential emblem of capitalist decadence, has emerged as a legitimate pursuit in the social emploi du temps. The dinner table has become a favorite business battleground and a foremost arena for the display of social and economic status.5 In the sharing of food and in the practices of eating in public space, old conventions of hospitality and sociability are being redefined in consonance with the imagined global ways of doing business and consuming time.6 New ways of eating go hand in hand with new ways of serving food itself, particularly in places where decor and atmosphere are several times more costly than the food. In these locations, the shifts in the meaning of the rice bowl and in the meaning of youth converge on a different experience of time. Ubiquitous in these eating establishments 5. One woman artist related to me her shock at attending a lavish dinner in Guangzhou where dishes were sprinkled with gold powder. 6. The eating craze is not unrelated to corruption, as many use official or company funds for entertaining clients and friends alike. To some degree the recent Asian economic recession has hurt considerably the restaurant business as well as consumption as a whole.

135

*

mediating time

are pretty young women, carefully selected from large applicant pools. They range from qipao-clad door guardians to waitresses with elaborate makeup, from sprightly young supervisors to ‘‘public relations girls’’ skilled at entertaining, if not flirting. Whether they are seated at the table or not, serving or being served, all of these young women are eating the so-called rice bowl of youth. Mostly in their early and mid-twenties, they share in common the capital of youth and beauty, with which they bid for lifestyles that often produce incomes many times higher than that of average Chinese. As social arenas commercialize, these women exemplify the visibility that can be acquired by packaging and the ability to consume. While the restaurant is a synecdoche of a changing spatiotemporal urban landscape, the image of female eaters of the rice bowl of youth and the social anxiety the practice generates are more widespread. Almost by definition, the image is linked to the booming service industry and related professions where young women work in advertising, real estate, travel agencies, and modeling, or as bilingual secretaries and shop assistants in upscale domestic and international firms. Varying in skill and income, they all share the common appellation Miss—xiaojie—a term that had been purged from the social vocabulary during the puritanical socialist epoch. Urban speech is now inundated with various Misses: Miss Ceremony, Miss Public Relations, Miss Shopping Guide, and Miss Real Estate, to name only a few. As an emergent, highly visible social group, the Misses are also referred to in popular discourse as the ‘‘pink-collar class.’’ Although the rice bowl of youth is not exclusively a feminine category, pink-collar suggests femininity and carries sexual innuendo, its allusion to the traditional imagery of peach flowers linking feminine beauty with ephemerality and fragility—all invested here with new meaning. Above all, the imagery clearly opposes that of the iron rice bowl—the permanence and security of glamourless and lowpaying state sectors. For Chinese women and men alike, the rapid transition from the monochrome and desexualized iron age to a more colorful and malleable era has amounted to another Great Leap Forward, at once thrilling and unsettling.7 By the 1970s, the image of the iron maiden (tie 7. Of course, the actual choices of color and cut for women under Mao were not uniformly dictated by the state. But the concept of fashion (shimao) was purged as

136

*

zhang zhen

guniang) with her steel shoulders and desexualized look, vital to the nation builders of the 1950s and 1960s, was already fast fading from popular memory. In the 1980s, fashion and new trends discreetly but decidedly began to reshape Chinese women’s self-perception and gender awareness.8 By the early 1990s, however, flourishing media (popular magazines, television, film, video, karaoke, advertising, and so on) began to transmit on a much broader scale images of a new breed of young women, emphasizing fashion, sensuality, sexuality, social mobility, and the fast-moving tempo of a postsocialist consumerist society. TV series such as Public Relations Misses attracted a huge audience. Such representations correspond to ongoing changes in social space and encourage identification and mimetic desire. The more beauty calendars were printed and beauty contests broadcast, the more young women discovered the powerful sexual appeal of their own bodies and faces and hurriedly abandoned their iron rice bowls for glamorous and better paying, albeit often also unstable, careers in commercial and entertainment businesses. Women Who Eat the ‘‘Rice Bowl of Youth,’’ a popular book on the subject, chronicles a host of sensational tales of the rise and fall of such women in the world of ‘‘today’s fashionable female professions.’’ 9 At the top of the list of ‘‘hot’’ professions are beauty-contest winners and models (including runway, television, and magazine cover fashion models as well as nude calendar and magazine models). According to one figure quoted in the book, fourteen out of twenty television commercials a day conspicuously feature young women as ‘‘protagonists.’’ 10 Commanding less visibility but equal allure are the singing and dancing girls at nightclubs and discos and ‘‘hostesses’’ catering exclusively to the clubs’ male clients. Farther down the same list are the ‘‘Miss’’ jobs in public relations, sales, and clerical office work. essentially bourgeois, and expression through bold or sexy adornment was made a target of criticism. 8. For some accounts of the changing image, and experience, of Chinese women during the 1980s, see, for example, Elisabeth Croll, Chinese Women since Mao (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1983); Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter, Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988). 9. Dun Yun and Xin Chuan, Chi qingchunfande nülangmen: Dangjin nüxing shimao zhiye datoushi [Women who eat the ‘‘rice bowl of youth’’: A penetrating look at today’s fashionable female professions] (Jinan: Shangdong renmin, 1993). 10. Yun and Chuan, Chi qingchunfande nülangmen, 87.

137

*

mediating time

What all of the occupations share in common is the job qualification of youth. Two journalists, in a feature article entitled ‘‘Seeing through the ‘Rice Bowl of Youth’ ’’ published in the Shanghai-based and widely read evening paper Xinmin wanbao, put it concisely: ‘‘Young age is a kind of currency, youth is capital.’’ 11 Their survey of hundreds of job ads in the newspapers—ads whose complete novelty itself signaled the beginning of the end of the ‘‘iron rice bowl’’—revealed a prevalent feature: ‘‘The age requirements of employers are getting tougher and tougher; the recent age limit for skilled professionals has come down to thirtyfive while the limit for service-related jobs is even more strict. You have no chance if you are over twenty-five.’’ The obsession with age, the sense of urgency, and the dread of missing the ‘‘last train’’ that these restrictions produce resonate with another kind of temporal anxiety permeating the projects of modernization and globalization. The June 1994 issue of the mainstream and semiofficial woman’s magazine Chinese Woman carried an interview article entitled ‘‘Chinese Modernization Needs a Sociology of Time.’’ 12 The time-honored capitalist motto ‘‘time is money’’ opens the article. The professor interviewed stresses that modern time has to be partitioned to minutes and seconds, and that this partitioning must replace the more cyclic and backward-looking time of agrarian society. He calls for a twenty-first-century time consciousness, one that is by definition futuristic or ‘‘pressing’’ and ‘‘imminent.’’ He relates that Chinese visitors to Japan and the United States are shocked by the walking speed of the pedestrians: ‘‘Even the young American women in high heels walk faster than Chinese young men.’’ The article concludes with an apocalyptic prophecy rendered in boldface: ‘‘A nation which abandons time will be abandoned by time itself.’’ For this analyst, female labor and the female image are inseparable from the need to speed up the pace of modernization. If China is to catch up with the West, it is imperative that it adjust its clock, increase its speed, and synchronize with global time. In an unselfconscious echo of past undertakings to catch up to the West, 11. He Jianhua and Zhu Guoshun, ‘‘Toushi ‘qingchunfan’ ’’ [Seeing through the ‘‘rice bowl of youth’’], Xinmin wanbao, 6 November 1994, 13. 12. Bao Lei, ‘‘Zhongguode xiandaihua xuyao shijian shehuixue—fang Zhongshan Daxue He Zaofa jiaoshou’’ [Chinese modernization needs a sociology of time—An interview with Professor He Zaofa of Zhongshan University], Zhongguo funü (hereafter Chinese Woman) 6 (1994): 14–15.

138

*

zhang zhen

stretching from the nineteenth century all the way to Mao’s Great Leap Forward, time has become a space in the global arena waiting to be filled or conquered. Later in the same year, Chinese Woman published a long-running debate forum entitled ‘‘The Value of Women—The Issue of the ‘Rice Bowl of Youth.’ ’’ Editors asked readers: What is the appeal and value of feminine youth in a society dominated by the drastically expanding market economy? Over the following ten months, the magazine published a considerable portion of the hundreds of replies received from a wide spectrum of readers from all over China. The result was a hodgepodge of perspectives, often confounding preconceived discursive boundaries between socialist and capitalist values, modern and traditional worldviews, official and nonofficial attitudes, and collective and private concerns. The forum opened with the confessionals of two young women, whose decisions to publicize their existential dilemmas were reminiscent of the famous controversy triggered by Pan Xiao’s open letter (‘‘Why has the road of life become narrower and narrower?’’) to the magazine Chinese Youth in the post-Mao era.13 In both forums, both initiated by young women, at issue was the value of youth. Instead of the disillusion with revolutionary ideals felt by the children of the Cultural Revolution, however, the Chinese Woman debate addressed an anxiety born of the alienating force of the market economy.14 In the first letter Chinese Woman published, high school student Xiaoli writes that she would rather become a pop music singer in a luxury hotel than go to college—an aspiration that her parents, both university teachers, vehemently oppose.15 Xiaoli relates the story of Lanzi, a friend who works at a foreign-owned hotel. Lanzi owns two Italian handbags and lipsticks that won’t fade all day because they cost more 13. Pan Xiao, ‘‘Renshende lu a, zemo yuezou yuezhai?’’ [Why has the road of life become narrower and narrower?], Zhongguo qingnian [Chinese youth] 4 (1980): 2–5. The editors solicited a public debate with the question, ‘‘What is really the meaning of life?’’ It lasted several months, generating reactions across the country. 14. They are, however, seen by one debater as historically linked. Gao Limei, ‘‘Guanyu qingchun zhiyede jidian sikao’’ [Some reflections on young professions], Chinese Woman 5 (1994): 19. 15. Xiaoli, Chinese Woman 1 (1994): 10–11. The name Xiaoli (Little Pretty) appears to be a pseudonym. I omit the titles of letter excerpts as they tend to be exaggerated editorial inventions.

139

*

mediating time

than ten dollars each. In bold contrast to Lanzi is Xiaoli’s mother, who teaches political economy, picks pennies off the street, and conserves in a designated drawer plastic string for future reuse. Xiaomei, a former favorite student of Xiaoli’s mother, is thirty, unmarried, and working in a propaganda bureau while trying in vain to go abroad to study. Her fate seems to embody the unresolved Pan Xiao debate of the early 1980s, when going to university was seen as the best means of social mobility and self-realization for young women. Lanzi, on other hand, epitomizes the now prevalent image of women eating the rice bowl of youth, her lifestyle of glamorous attire and expensive makeup, taxis and fine restaurants, making her the object of desire of numerous male friends. Xiaoli ends her letter with a forceful question: ‘‘What’s wrong with my choice to become a singer or a beautician, and enjoy my youth to its fullest?’’ The second letter is by Wenjie, a more mature university student majoring in Chinese. Wenjie confesses that although she still has a romantic faith in literature and the aspiration to become a writer some day, she too is confused regarding the ‘‘value of femininity,’’ especially following her chance encounter with a former classmate, referred to as B.16 B withdrew from the university to plunge into the ocean by becoming a Miss Sales and Public Relations. When the two meet in a luxury hotel, Wenjie is shocked by B’s appearance—a trendy hairstyle, expensive clothes, a perfumed body complete with pager. Asked what she does to lead such a glamorous life, B emphatically tells Wenjie that an ‘‘emotional investment’’ is required. Her average workday consists of ‘‘eating, drinking, and dancing with potential clients, and then introducing products, passing out gifts.’’ B, however, has little time to talk, and the two part hastily, leaving Wenjie to wonder why employers equate appearance with competence, and how it is that young women today can live the motto genzhe dakuan zou, jinlazhu maidande shou (roughly, ‘‘Follow the nouveau riche, and hold hands with the man who picks up the check’’). The forum editors then invited readers to address two major questions: ‘‘How to eat the ‘rice bowl of youth’?’’ and ‘‘How to spend youth as a modern woman?’’ In addition to excerpts from the hundreds of responses received, the magazine printed lengthier comments from au16. Wenjie, Chinese Woman 1 (1994): 11–12. Wenjie, also a pseudonym, means ‘‘literary purity’’ or ‘‘cultural purity.’’ The editors seem to have taken pains to construct the symbolic identities of the two women.

140

*

zhang zhen

thorities in economics, ethics, and women’s and youth studies. The social and gender positions these voices represent are impressively plural and complex, and three divergent views on the phenomenon are easily discernible. First, there are the enthusiastic proponents of the rice bowl of youth, who are either qingchunfan eaters themselves or wanna-bes. Some believe that eating qingchunfan makes them more conscious and protective of their own feminine identity, as they do not have to sacrifice youth and beauty as their mothers did for revolution and family. Others see it as an avenue to gender equality, a chance to level the field with men in the tough and competitive commercial world. In one way or another, they claim, they are empowered to fulfill their desires and assert their presence in a wider public space. One part-time model considers her modeling a ‘‘pursuit of beauty,’’ though it requires her to walk gingerly along a glass catwalk in ten-centimeter heels.17 A recently demobilized female soldier contemplating the rice bowl of youth asserts that the ‘‘image of the modern woman with her lively, self-confident, and attractive face is gradually replacing the pale and haggard face that moves around the kitchen, children, and husband.’’ 18 Opponents of the rice bowl of youth react primarily against its sexual dimension, which they see as akin to the logic of prostitution. Some draw comparisons to the ‘‘flower vases’’ of old—the courtesans and concubines of precommunist China, whose value was at best decorative and pleasing to the male gaze. One critic observes that a by-product of the rice bowl of youth has been the reemergence of ‘‘parasitic’’ women—the bangnü (women who lean on the nouveau riche men).19 Another male authority flatly objects that youth is not a ‘‘rice bowl.’’ In his view, young women who capitalize on their youth bind themselves to a tragic fate, ending up ‘‘nothing but decoration’’ and impairing the ‘‘natural process of feminine maturation.’’ 20 The high stakes he describes also reflect a surplus of fantasy as well as the anxiety of impotence inflicted on some ‘‘poor’’ men as they are, in the editor’s words, overwhelmed by a sense of loss when ‘‘abandoned by their beautiful girlfriends.’’ 21 17. Bai Li, Chinese Woman 2 (1994): 7. 18. Zhang Shuguang, Chinese Woman 4 (1994): 23. 19. Shao Daoshen, Chinese Woman 3 (1994): 27. 20. Jin Zhaojun, Chinese Woman 4 (1994): 22. 21. Zhang Yunjie, ‘‘Qingchun duanzhan, qingchunde huati yongheng’’ [Youth is ephemeral, the topic of youth is eternal], Chinese Woman 10 (1994): 11.

141

*

mediating time

Readers in a larger, third group seem to occupy a less readily dichotomized position. Wavering between the pros and cons of the ‘‘rice bowl of youth,’’ they affirm the vitality and the modern, even ‘‘avantgarde,’’ outlook the young female professionals embody, viewing youth as a bargain, a wager for the future. Treating youth as an investment that earns advancement and enjoyment, they advocate a delicate compromise between ephemeral beauty and lasting grace, superficiality and depth, taking and giving, hedonism and sacrifice. Believing that the future can be mortgaged and social graces deferred, their perspective preserves the assumption that youthful femininity is somehow naturally decorative and marketable. Preoccupied with the contemporary urgency of the issue, hardly anyone has attempted to think of youth and femininity as representational constructs, carrying historical meanings and globally implicated. The editors concluded this rather lengthy collective therapy with a happy, but by no means settled, ending. Wenjie joins an advertising company, although she keeps alive her dream of becoming a writer. Xiaoli, however, has completely given up on the singer or beautician career; having successfully passed the university entrance examination, she has become a law student, aspiring to a job in business law. the f emale fac e s of modernit y

The apotheosis of feminine youth is hardly a Chinese invention. A globally celebrated trope, it is a centerpiece of modern consciousness and body culture. The profusion of discourse surrounding youth and beauty in contemporary Chinese media also resonates with earlier Chinese yearnings to arrest modernity. Radical Chinese intellectuals from the late Qing period to the May Fourth movement, galvanized by the defeat of China in the Opium Wars and the Sino-Japanese War, eagerly embraced newly translated modern Western knowledge, including the teleological conception of history. The desire to put China on the track of future-oriented modernization and enfranchise it as a powerful member of the international community motivated the print media to produce an array of discourses extolling modernity. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, countless newspapers and magazines were baptized with the designation ‘‘new’’ (xin) or with other words 142

*

zhang zhen

connoting a new age, a new beginning: New Citizen Journal, New Youth, New Tide, New Education, Young China, and so on. ‘‘Spring,’’ a long prose-poem by Li Dazhao, China’s first Marxist ideologue, published in the second issue of New Youth, foregrounds temporality, in particular the seasonal nature of ephemeral but repeating renewal, as the quintessential metaphor for revolution and modernity.22 The female body received critical attention from these early modernizers, too. ‘‘Unbinding the bound feet’’ of women became a central metaphor for national rejuvenation during the late Qing reform and the May Fourth movement. It is hardly surprising that the image of an educated young woman with natural-sized feet and short hair became the icon of modern life and social progress. For the late Qing reformist Kang Youwei, to ban the binding of women’s feet was vital to the production and reproduction of a racially superior army and nation.23 Women in general, and feminine youth in particular, have been figuratively invested with sacrificial and political meanings throughout modern Chinese history. After 1949, an incipient women’s movement was compelled to subordinate its agency and aspiration to the ‘‘greater cause’’ of class struggle and nation building in New China, becoming a perpetually ‘‘postponed revolution.’’ 24 The architects of New China wanted to race the world on their own separate track, and woman’s sexuality and feminine youth were to be sacrificed for this cause. Two important texts with the word youth in their titles, both by women, illustrate contrasting images of young women in two distinct moments in modern China. Yang Mo’s widely influential novel, Song of Youth, was made into a film in 1959, and Zhang Nuanxin’s film, Sacrificed Youth [Qingchun ji], was released in 1985.25 Yang’s novel, which 22. See Claudia Pozzana’s perceptive reading in ‘‘Spring, Temporality, and History in Li Da Zhao,’’ Positions 3 (Fall 1995): 283–305. 23. Kazuko Ono, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850–1950 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), 33. 24. A number of studies in English, though heavily informed by Western feminist assumptions, have attempted to address this structural time-lag. See for instance, Margery Wolf, Revolution Postponed (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985) and Phyllis Andors, The Unfinished Liberation of Chinese Women 1949–1980 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). 25. Other notable films that are explicitly about young women and the value of youth made in different periods since 1949 include Qingchunde jiaobu [Footsteps of youth]

143

*

mediating time

enthralled two generations of young women under Mao, portrays Lin Daojin, a female university student of the 1930s, who commits herself to national salvation after overcoming her petit bourgeois sentiments and suppressing altogether her sexual desire. At the novel’s conclusion, during the turmoil of a mass demonstration protesting Japan’s invasion and the defeatist government, Lin Daojin loses sight of her comrade, Jiang Hua, for whom she had harbored romantic feelings. Amid the sound of gunshots, she worries for his safety. But sentimentality is quickly shouldered out of the picture: ‘‘In such an intense struggle, anything personal seemed so trivial and meaningless. Daojin’s worry for Jiang Hua flashed only fleetingly in her mind before it vanished. She joined the crowd of thousands of people, more strenuously shouting out [as] the voice of the entire Chinese nation.’’ 26 When Fourth Generation woman director Zhang Nuanxin (who died an untimely death in 1995) made the critically acclaimed Sacrificed Youth in 1985, Chinese women had already begun to reflect on the sacrifices they had made for more than half a century.27 Using a lyrical and sensuous visual style, the film offers an empathic and nostalgic ethnography of a Southern Dai village seen through the eyes of a Han Chinese woman named Li Chun. True to the title of the original novella, Such a Beautiful Place, by the woman writer Zhang Manling, the film focuses on the question of beauty and the awakening of sexuality in Li Chun. After arriving at a village during the Cultural Revolution as a puritanical, drably dressed Han teenager, Li gradually emerges as a beautiful woman wrapped in colorful ethnic clothing. Her enjoyment and experience of feminine beauty turn out to be ephemeral and tragic, however. She is attracted to a local youth, a handsome and virile hunter, but is unable to accept his passionate courting. Although she admires the way in which other local youths express their love and sexual yearning for each other openly, as a Han young woman brought up in a puritanical society in which romantic love and sex were taboo subjects, she is also fright(1957), Qingchun [Youth] (1973), Qingchun wansui [Long live youth] (1983). Along with those mentioned above, these films portray diverse images of women and the value of beauty, depending on the changing political and social conditions. 26. Yang Mo, Qingchun zhi ge [Song of youth] (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue, 1958), 668. 27. The Fourth Generation of Chinese film directors refers to those who studied at or graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in the 1960s before the Cultural Revolution, but were not able to make their own films until the late 1970s.

144

*

zhang zhen

ened by the young man’s interest. Eventually fleeing him and the village, she parts with a beautiful ethnic dress that has taught her the meaning of youth and beauty. Years later, when she returns to the village from Beijing, where she attends university, the village has been obliterated by a mudslide. The hunter, along with the rest of the villagers, disappeared in the disaster. The film ends with a poignant bird’s-eye view of the barren valley, evocative also of the calamity of the Cultural Revolution and the loss of a generation. In the face of the immense destruction, Li Chun cries uncontrollably, a tiny figure in the ruined landscape, mourning buried love and lost youth.28 Only several years after the release of the film, changes in the social landscape of youth, beauty, and female sexuality in China had escalated to a degree already far beyond the cultural critique that Zhang Nuanxin intended. Large-scale economic and technological transformations and the emergence of a consumer culture ushered in a vast and radically uneven reordering of perceptions, values, and gender relations in China, all at a head-spinning pace. If Sacrificed Youth, through staging a mourning ritual, marked the passing of an era that deprived a generation of Chinese women of female consciousness, the craze for the rice bowl of youth, with its implied hedonism, came almost as historical revenge. The urban scene in China today is crowded with fashion stores. Young, sexily dressed women proudly stroll the street. Refusing the sacrifice and austerity that characterized the repressed youth of Lin Daojin and Li Chun, they have opted to ride the tide of reform, reaping its rewards of money and pleasure, while their youth lasts. At the same time, the image of feminine youth has become a protean site of media manipulation, which in turn intensifies the anxiety over the changing value of youth. Within a short time, consciousness has been redirected from the figure of youth as revolutionary to the competing modernist vision of youth as the emblem and consumer of pleasure in the market economy. The revolutionary obsession with teleological time and progress, however, is not lost in this process but reinforced, although expressed in different terms. In light of the national desire to link with the tracks of the world, eating the rice bowl of youth becomes an at once patri28. For a critical analysis of images of non-Han people in films such as Sacrificed Youth, see Esther Yau, ‘‘Is China the End of Hermeneutics? Or, Political and Cultural Usage of Non-Han Women in Mainland Chinese Films,’’ Discourse 11 (1989): 115–36.

145

*

mediating time

otic and risky pastime. If feminine youth was once the metaphor for progress, for permanent revolution and its puritanical sexual ideology, it now stands as the figure of a consumer revolution, and perhaps also a sexual revolution. s c r e e n in g t h e a nx ie t y o f ‘‘ yo u t h - va l u e ’’

Contemporary Chinese cinema was quick to document and engage in the discourse on youth and the new appraisals of the female image. Since the release of Sacrificed Youth, set in rural Southwest Yunnan, a number of explicitly youth-centered urban films have been made by young male directors in China. They include Zhou Xiaowen’s The Impulse of Youth [Qingchun chongdong] (1989) and No Regrets about Youth [Qingchun wuhui] (1991), and Hu Xueyang’s The Annihilated Youth [Yanmiede qingchun] (1994). Unlike other Fifth Generation directors, such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, who made their first internationally acclaimed films with rural and historical subjects (e.g., Yellow Earth, Red Sorghum), Zhou is among those known for reviving urban drama and the youth film genre during the 1980s.29 The Impulse of Youth, for instance, tells the story of a young fashion shop assistant turned pop singer. Emphasizing the ordeal that her pursuit of fame and wealth causes her boyfriend, the story concludes with the anguished and guiltwracked protagonist abandoning a glamorous urban career to rejoin her boyfriend at a labor camp in a remote province. The tempo and color scheme of The Impulse of Youth are designed to accentuate youthful passion, the dreams and anxieties of an urban youth culture enmeshed with pop music, money, violence, and sexual desire. The characters in the lettering of the film’s title that represent ‘‘impulse’’ (chongdong) are (cali)graphically rendered in a pulsing 29. The Fifth Generation commonly refers to the young filmmakers who entered the Beijing Film Academy after the resumption of university entrance examinations in 1977 and graduated in 1982. Unlike the Fourth Generation, this generation was able to make films as soon as they finished school and quickly gained international recognition. Hu Xueyang loosely belongs to the so-called Sixth Generation, whose members consisted of those who attended the Academy after 1982 as well as marginal or underground filmmakers like Zhang Yuan and Hou Jianjun. These generational categories are, however, more arbitrary than accurate descriptions of the complex political and artistic orientations of individual filmmakers and films.

146

*

zhang zhen

blood red. Before the film begins the audience is told that its script is based on a true story and retains the actual names of the people involved. Aspiring to social documentary, the film nevertheless has the look of MTV, sprinkled with musical numbers staged in karaoke bars, recording studios, discos, and open-air rock concerts. Ai Fei, the female protagonist, appears to be a rootless, modern girl living alone in a trailer-like home and earning a living as a Miss Shopping Guide at a fancy fashion store. (An accessory to her elegant professional wardrobe is a sash of red ribbon worn across her chest, with the foreign-sounding store name printed on it.) Her boyfriend, Gao Dalong, a muscular and impulsive young man, drives a red taxi on Beijing’s new highways and daily escorts Ai Fei to and from the shopping center. After she is ‘‘discovered’’ by a young songwriter in a karaoke bar, where Dalong has urged her to show off her voice, Ai Fei ascends quickly to the role of a pop singer in an upscale nightclub. Dalong continues to support her by organizing a rigorous program of voice and body training. Moved by his devotion, Ai Fei offers to sleep with Dalong, and the string of events concludes with a premarital sex scene that would have been impermissible only a few years ago. It is significant here that Ai Fei’s sexuality is shown to awaken as a result of her acceptance of a lucrative ‘‘rice bowl of youth’’ position as a singer. Dalong’s sexual gratification, however, is the most ephemeral reward distributed in the film. As he soon realizes, Ai Fei is drawn to the charismatic songwriter. Hearing her sing, ‘‘It’s not necessary to swear eternal love, it’s enough to have once owned,’’ Dalong breaks down. Later, anguished and lonely, he accidentally kills a man in defending Ai Fei and is sentenced to five years in a labor camp. The rest of the film centers around Ai Fei’s self-imposed redemption, a redemption that signifies the extent to which she has internalized the normative codes of chastity, repudiating the ‘‘femme fatale’’ within her. At the end of the film, in a soft-filtered, slow-motion shot, Ai Fei steps off of a bus and runs toward Dalong, now one of the shaven-headed, drably clothed inmates working a field. The accompanying theme song narrates a painful awareness of the passage of time as a lesson of life: ‘‘I have melted into you, every minute, every second . . . / Our meeting is both very short and very long / just as the path of life is both very short and very long.’’ The stress, speed, and violence of the city that feeds on youth here give way to a slow-paced life—the moment of their reunion 147

*

mediating time

is shot in slow motion—in the remoteness of a rural labor camp where time stands still or runs according to the cyclical lunar calendar, and where labor earns relief of moral debts, not material profit. At the conclusion of the film, a postscript reports that Ai Fei took work at a nearby restaurant and that after serving his sentence Gao Dalong remained at the farm, where he married Ai Fei. With this melodramatic happy ending culminating in matrimony, the film palliates somewhat the social and libidinal anxiety aroused by the sweet-sour lures of the rice bowl of youth. The young couple pay a five-year price for a moment of glamour and wealth that they hardly had the time to enjoy. By the film’s end, it seems to be advocating pastoral retreat, a life in slow motion in which a traditional coding of sexuality emphasizing devotion and duration can alleviate the pressures that beset the modern-life world of urban youth. The Annihilated Youth, by Sixth Generation director Hu Xueyang, presents another and more sullen version of the rice bowl of youth, addressing the sensitive issue of ‘‘golden sparrows’’ ( jinsique), concubines or mistresses of rich businessmen, especially those from overseas. The film’s male protagonist, played by the director himself, works as a tennis partner paid to lose to a golden sparrow who lives idly in a South China hotel while her keeper is overseas. Trapped by her indulgence in leisure and glamour, the girl suffers from boredom and worries about the uncertainty of her future, represented by the permanently temporary hotel residence. Inevitably, the tennis partners fall for each other and begin an affair. When the businessman returns, he arranges a confrontation over dinner in the hotel restaurant, at which time the mistress pretends not to know the tennis player and breaks his heart. Publicly humiliated, he flees the hotel to his hut by the seaside and at the close of the film is seen walking a beach washed by agitated waves in twilight, dejectedly brooding over his ‘‘annihilated’’ love and youth. The fetishization of appearance and ephemerality characteristic of the rice bowl of youth reveals a widening dichotomy between form and content, surface and depth, charged with sexual tensions. In both of these films, women who seek glamour and wealth, sometimes involuntarily, are linked to the visible superficiality of urban surfaces and sexualized bodies. Their traumatized male counterparts, however, are endowed with psychological interiority and show moral depth in confronting a society sinking deeper into a money-driven value system. 148

*

zhang zhen

Danger and violence lurk ominously in urban settings suffused with stimuli and desire. Even scenic seasides are urbanized, swept up in a tide of commercialization, as the whole nation seems to plunge into the ocean of business. From ‘‘impulse’’ to ‘‘annihilation,’’ from material and libidinal surplus to disenchantment or even exile and nihilism, the ordeal of youth is heavily marked by the imbalance between different sexes and classes, between the city and the countryside.30 The anxiety over the loss and redefinition of ‘‘youth value’’ in these films is intimately linked to the commodification of social relations and to the disintegration of the family and the breakup of accepted sexual norms. In both films, the young protagonists seem rootless, adrift in a modern wasteland. Like the young people in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel without a Cause (1955) and Oshima’s The Cruel Story of Youth (1960), the couple in The Impulse of Youth form an illicit family on the margins of the society (in a trailer and later in a labor camp); they practice premarital sex, something almost criminal in the puritanism of the earlier era. In Hu Xueyang’s film, the family as such has simply become a question mark. The young woman is trapped in an extramarital ‘‘home’’ arranged by an overseas Chinese businessman, whose figure subtly invokes the global implication of new sexual and gender relations, and thereby adds another layer of meaning to the youth trouble portrayed in the film. The woman’s sexual freedom is only apparent, ironically turned on its head by her very occupation as a caged bird, a simultaneously glamorous and degrading version of the rice bowl of youth. beyond the rice bowl of youth

How do we make sense of the pervasive transformation in the perception of time, youth, and sociality, as it has been embodied in the phenomenon of the rice bowl of youth and mapped onto the physiognomy of urban space undergoing a large-scale face-lift? What do these significantly superficial urban trends suggest about larger historical and global undercurrents? What happens to women’s agency and to feminism? Any attempt to answer these questions has to take into consider30. Tellingly, the movie theater (Huguang) where I saw Annihilated Youth was literally ‘‘annihilated’’ in 1996. The entire stretch of the central Shanghai street where the theater was located has been turned into an elevated expressway.

149

*

mediating time

ation the complexity and ambiguity of the rice bowl of youth and its multifaceted articulations. As a whole, the rice bowl of youth has brought greater, and sometimes empowering, opportunities to young Chinese women, conferring on them a subjectivity previously unimaginable. The young women of the 1990s, neither marked by early revolutionary ordeals nor burdened by the baggage of the Cultural Revolution, are learning to want, to gratify desire rather than to sacrifice. To many, this will seem a liberation. The inflation of the image of feminine youth, however, has also triggered alarming signals about the nature of women’s liberation in an increasingly commodified society. The desire to be modern and financially independent is often mediated (and mediatized) by the compulsion to identify with stars and with mingmo (famous models—as opposed to the laomo, or model workers, of the socialist era), who display the triad of youth, glamour, and wealth. Frequently, women’s independence is trivialized or even reinscribed within traditional parameters. A visible surge of cultural conservatism appears to seep through the transient surface fashion of the rice bowl of youth. The contemporary Chinese urban scene is filled with Misses Ceremony and Misses Guest Greeter in tight-fitting qipao with highly slit skirts. The desire to reproduce and complete the phantasmagoric prerevolutionary past is partly translated into images of feminine youth in archaic packaging with the feminine demeanor associated with that past.31 The exploitation of the sexual appeal of young women, to be sure, is common to burgeoning capitalist economies and may be said to be a global phenomenon.32 The particular social and political context that 31. For an informative and perceptive discussion on the history and the reemergence of qipao as a nationalist iconography, see Antonia Finnane, ‘‘What Should Chinese Women Wear? A National Problem,’’ Modern China 22 (April 1996): 99–131. As Finnane points out, qipao was actually not that ‘‘archaic’’: It was invented in the 1920s, partly as an androgynous modern dress modeled after a man’s robe. In the 1930s the more angular, straight one-piece dress was turned into an urban fashion that accentuated female body curves and served as a formal ceremonial dress. The comeback of qipao in post-Mao China, I think, points partly to an effort to bridge the present with a more general past prior to the Cultural Revolution. 32. The examples of the ‘‘Office Lady’’ and bar hostesses in Japan quickly come to my mind. For an insightful ethnography of bar hostess work, see Anne Allison, Night-

150

*

zhang zhen

gave rise to the rice bowl of youth in today’s China demands a careful tracing of its historical mutations and contemporary manifestations. It is through such historically specific formations that youth and femininity as universal markers of global capitalism receive local articulations and not just exemplification. The specific manifestation of the commodification of time revealed in the emergence of the rice bowl of youth is an important index of the ascent of the market economy and of money-driven values in Chinese society today. It is inextricably linked with the drive to link up with the tracks of the world—of globalization— and this drive has produced profound anxieties. These anxieties are twofold, operative on both the psychosocial level and the level of national ideology, and the two levels do not always overlap. For the state, linking up with the tracks of the world is part of a national policy for completing the transition from a productionoriented socialism to a consumption-centered postsocialism without yielding the power of the communist party, which is no longer itself the old vanguard of the revolutionary era. It is a great leap forward from the ‘‘open door’’ policy of the 1980s, which came to an abrupt halt in 1989 with the eruption of student movements on Tian’anmen. The rice bowl of youth may be an unexpected excess of this move, but that excess has been quickly seized by the official or semiofficial media—it is probably not yet possible to speak of a public sphere in China—as a useful rhetorical vehicle with which to pacify anxieties over the loss of the iron rice bowl. Instead of having to deal with the angry youth on hunger strike in Tian’anmen, the status quo regards the hedonistic young people who devour the rice bowl of youth more or less as model citizens and the rice bowl of youth as a legitimate component of the project of linking up with the tracks of the world. In the process, the political meaning of youth is surreptitiously evacuated, and in its place the valorization of ephemerality transfigures youth into a disposable fashion object.33 On the psychosocial level, the anxiety in question here is not so much work: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 33. For an instructive analysis of the crucial relationship between the valorization of ephemerality and modern consumer culture, and indeed, between time and consumption as a whole, see Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1996), especially chap. 4.

151

*

mediating time

a pathological one as an urgent historical form of gender trouble.34 Refigured as an object of consumption, the rice bowl of youth is loaded with material and sexual meanings. As a consumer, one can endlessly consume youth; but as a producer, one produces one’s own youth only once—a circumstance that makes youth an interesting symbol of the shift from production to consumption. In most instances, including the examples cited in this paper, those who consume youth are men (often older men with consumer power) whereas women produce their youth as a special kind of commodity, one that expires quickly, like bottled milk. But the producers here are also a special kind of consumer, an autoconsumer exchanging its youth for more tangible commodities such as brand-name fashion, cars, and housing (in the case of many a golden sparrow) and acquiring an ambivalent sense of self-worth in the bargain. Agency, however, is not erased altogether. The flow of female individuals in and out of particular locales of the rice bowl of youth appears constantly to erode any stable symbolization. Many women are busily devising strategies of post-youth survival (such as attending night school). One feature of eaters of the rice bowl of youth that has exasperated economists and sociologists is their radical mobility. Young women, the best equipped to eat the rice bowl of youth and grasp the rules of the market, constantly ‘‘fire their bosses’’ (chao laoban) and ‘‘jump’’ from one bowl to another.35 This rapid voluntary transfer of human resources (or capital) inadvertently disrupts the growth of profit, and in some instances also the male desire that has sought personally to possess the fresh energy of young women. This agency of mobility may be seen as a positive part of an immanently dynamic ‘‘dialectic of labor and time’’ such as that put forward by Moishe Postone in his rereading of Marx. Postone examines the significance of the distinction between concrete labor and abstract labor (the two dimensions of the commodity form) in light of the dialectic of their respective temporal features (the historical versus the abstract time). He argues that ‘‘historical time’’ is the ‘‘movement of time, as opposed to the movement 34. On the recent spread of anxiety disorders in China, see Chen Zhongshun, ‘‘Jiaolüzheng: Shidaide tongbin’’ [Anxiety: A prevalent disease of the epoch], Nüxing yuekan [Woman’s monthly] 12 (1998): 16–17. 35. See ‘‘Huangpu tantou chao liangnü’’ [The craze of pretty girls on the Bund], Fa yuan [Legal realm] 1 (1994): 52.

152

*

zhang zhen

in time.’’ 36 By frequently and unexpectedly firing their ‘‘masters,’’ some young female professionals literally ‘‘jump’’ out of the confinement (or tiaozao in popular saying) of contractual time and in doing so foreground their control, however limited and temporary, over their own bodies and desire. With the steady enlargement of the rice bowl of youth into a media event, the kind of debate carried out in Chinese Woman has allowed a vast array of voices to enter the public space, which, to be sure, remains largely under official control and manipulation. These voices have brought into the discourse of labor and production a spectrum of experience that it has normally excluded, including pregnancy, pressures on the family form, and consumer pleasures. The public response has been sufficiently voluble to inspire some businesses to revise hiring policies. In the airline industry, for example, the job of flight attendant is a typical rice-bowl-of-youth profession, especially with the rapid expansion of international and domestic aviation networks. Responding to public unease over the rice-bowl controversy, however, Shanghai Airline announced in 1994 that it would select fourteen ‘‘Auntie Air’’ (kongsao)—as opposed to Miss Air (kongjie)—flight attendants from a pool of women textile workers aged twenty-eight to thirty-six, married, with one child and a high school education.37 Many such employees had lost iron-rice-bowl jobs at bankrupt state enterprises and cherished the prospect of what seemed a new lease on life.38 When thousands rushed to apply, other industries followed suit, in particular a sector of new department stores that target primarily mid- to lower-class female consumers. The figure of the rice bowl of youth still dominates popular imagination and governs the job market in China, but the explosion of dis36. Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 294–95 (Postone’s emphasis). 37. Yao Dongmei, ‘‘Shanghang kaishi zhao ‘Kongsau’ ’’ [Shanghai Air begins hiring ‘‘Auntie Air’’], Xinmin wanbao, 13 December 1994, n.p. 38. The closing or downsizing of many state enterprises has produced many so-called xiagang renyuan (people who left their positions), a euphemism for the unemployed. The rechanneling of the unemployed female workers to commercial establishments reflects in part the state policy of solving the mounting problem of unemployment in the cities.

153

*

mediating time

cursive agitation manifested in the public debate in Chinese Woman and other media has visibly abated in the past two years. Does this mean that the rice bowl of youth has simply and inescapably become internalized and even normalized within the current socioeconomic structure? Or is there perhaps still a historical opportunity to be seized upon by Chinese women caught up in the forces of mass-mediated consumer culture and the reconfiguration of gender politics at the threshold of a new century? This remains to be seen.

154

*

zhang zhen

Inside the Economy of Appearances Anna Tsing

Indonesia’s profile in the international imagination has completely changed. From the top of what was called a ‘‘miracle,’’ Indonesia fell to the bottom of a ‘‘crisis.’’ In the middle of what was portrayed as a timeless political regime, students demonstrated, and, suddenly, the regime was gone. So recently an exemplar of the promise of globalization, overnight Indonesia became the case study of globalization’s failures. The speed of these changes takes one’s breath away—and raises important questions about globalization. Under what circumstances are boom and bust intimately related to each other? If the same economic policies can produce both in quick succession, might deregulation and cronyism sometimes name the same thing—but from different moments of investor confidence? Such questions run against the grain of economic expertise about globalization, with its discrimination between good and bad kinds of capitalism and policy. Yet the whiggish acrobatics necessary to show how those very economies celebrated as miracles were simultaneously lurking crises hardly seem to tell the whole story. A less pious attitude toward the market may be necessary to consider the specificities of those political economies, like that of Suharto’s Indonesia, brought into being together with international finance.1 This essay was first presented as a talk at the Society for Cultural Anthropology meetings in San Francisco in May 1999. A number of colleagues have generously encouraged me to write about Bre-X. Rheana Parrenas offered invaluable research assistance. Steven Feld and Tania Li contributed their newspaper clippings on the Bre-X saga. Arjun Appadurai, Kathryn Chetkovich, Paulla A. Ebron, Celia Lowe, and Lisa Rofel offered their comments on earlier drafts. 1. As much as any place in the world, Indonesia rode high on the wave of enthusiasm for mobile, finance-driven international investment in the 1980s and early 1990s. Between the late 1980s and 1997, economic growth averaged about 8 percent annu-

This essay brings us back to the months just before Indonesia so drastically changed, to canoe at the running edge of what turned out to be a waterfall, and thus to think about a set of incidents that can be imagined as a rehearsal for the Asian financial crisis as well as a minor participant in the international disillusion that led to the Suharto regime’s downfall. In 1994 a small Canadian gold prospecting company announced a major find in the forests of Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Over the months, the find got bigger and bigger, until it was the biggest gold strike in the world, conjuring memories of the Alaskan Klondike and South Africa’s Witwatersrand. Thousands of North American investors put their savings in the company, called Bre-X. First-time investors and retired people joined financial wizards. Whole towns in western Canada invested.2 The new world of Internet investment blossomed with Bre-X. Meanwhile, Bre-X received continuous coverage in North American newspapers, especially after huge Canadian mining companies and Indonesian officials entered the fray, fighting over the rights to mine Busang, Bre-X’s find.3 The scandal of Indonesian businessally, and in early 1997 economists saw ‘‘little sign of the turmoil that was to emerge’’ when the economy crashed later that year and the Suharto regime followed in 1998 (Ross McLeod, ‘‘Indonesia’s Crisis and Future Prospects,’’ in Asian Contagion: The Causes and Consequences of a Financial Crisis, ed. Karl Jackson [Boulder: Westview Press, 1999], 209). Looking back, many once enthusiastic analysts blamed the crisis on ‘‘cronyism,’’ residual protectionism, and bad national regulatory practices. See, for example, Karl Jackson, ‘‘Introduction: The Roots of the Crisis,’’ in Asian Contagion, 1–27. 2. Dale Eisler, ‘‘Sorrow in St. Paul,’’ Maclean’s, 7 April 1997, 100(14): 55. 3. From the first, the Bre-X story caught the popular imagination in Canada, and thousands of articles have been written about it. Most major Canadian newspapers covered the story in detail; the Calgary Sun, Calgary Herald, and Ottawa Citizen have had many installments of Bre-X news. Only rather late in the game did U.S. newspapers cover the Bre-X story regularly, but at the height of its fame and infamy much of the media across North America covered the story. Indonesian newspapers and news magazines also offered considerable coverage. Indonesian nongovernmental organizations added their distinctive perspectives in flyers and newsletters. Several books have been published about Bre-X, mainly by journalists. Diane Francis, Bre-X: The Inside Story (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1997) and Douglas Goold and Andrew Willis, The Bre-X Fraud (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Inc., 1997) tell the story with lively excitement. Vivian Danielson and James Whyte (editor and staff writer for the Northern Miner, respectively) offer their expertise on the people and politics of the mining scene in Bre-X: Gold Today, Gone Tomorrow (Toronto: The Northern

156

*

anna tsing

as-usual, opened to public scrutiny as corruption, heightened international attention and garnered support for Bre-X. But, in 1997, just when expectation had reached a fevered pitch, Busang was exposed as barren: There was nothing there. Gasps, cries, and lawsuits rose from every corner. Even now, as I write two years later, the drama rumbles on. The Toronto Stock Exchange is changing its rules to avoid more Bre-Xs.4 Bre-X lawsuits set new international standards.5 Bre-X investors still hope and complain across the Internet, as they peddle the remains of their experiences: jokes, songs, and stock certificates (as wallpaper, historical document, or irreplaceable art, ready to hang).6 Meanwhile, Indonesian mining officials and copycat prospecting companies scramble to free themselves from the Bre-X story, even as they endlessly reenact its scenes, hoping to rekindle investor enthusiasm.7 Miner, 1997). Bondan Winarno’s Bre-X: Sebungkah emas di kaki pelangi (Jakarta: Inspirasi Indonesia, 1997) includes useful detail on Indonesian politics and texts of a number of Bre-X documents. Jennifer Wells’s coverage for the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s and John McBeth’s coverage for the Far Eastern Economic Review have also been very informative. John Behar’s ‘‘Jungle Fever,’’ (Fortune, 9 June 1997, 116– 28) offers a useful description of Bre-X’s operations. Internet investor chat lines with Bre-X ‘‘threads’’ offer a wealth of both technical information and personal views on the drama. 4. ‘‘TSE Raises Listing Standards for Mining and Exploration Companies,’’ and ‘‘TSE Tightens Rules for Junior Miners,’’ CFRA News Talk Radio web site, 20 August 1998. 5. Bre-X lawsuits have their own web site: the Bre-X/Bresea Shareholder Class Action Information web site. Key issues have involved the liability of stock exchanges as well as Bre-X officials (Diane Francis, ‘‘Brokers Must Pay for Their Role in Bre-X,’’ National Post Online, 20 May 1999); the ability of Canadians to participate in U.S. class-action lawsuits (‘‘Will Canadians Be Allowed in American Bre-X Suit?’’ Daily Mining News, 31 March 1999 [on-line version]); and the nationwide (vs. provincial) scope of Canadian class-action lawsuits (Sandra Rubin, ‘‘Let All Canadian Bre-X Shareholders in Class-Action Suit, Court Urged,’’ Financial Post, 11 February 1999 [on-line version]). 6. Thus, for example, the Bre-Xscam.com web site peddled jokes, news, and art about the Bre-X saga on their ‘‘Bungle in the Jungle’’ web page. A Canadian stockholder named Ross Graham recorded a song called ‘‘The Bre-X Blues’’ and made the CD available for sale on the Red Deer Advocate web page. He claims to have made back his losses on Bre-X investment through selling these CDs (‘‘Bre-X Investor Gets Last Laugh with Song,’’ Breaking News, 22 December 1998, CANOE on-line version.) 7. ‘‘Indonesia Trying to Recover Reputation after Bre-X, Says Specialist,’’ CFRA News Talk Radio web site, 20 March 1999. Junior companies prospecting for gold in Kalimantan with ‘‘post–Bre-X’’ advertising of their claims include Kalimantan Gold Cor-

157

*

the economy of appearances

Hope’s ashes are inflamed even by ridiculous claims; recently the Bre-X chief geologist, named in many lawsuits, says there is gold at Busang. Who is to prove him wrong? 8 The Bre-X story exemplifies popular thinking about the pleasures and dangers of international finance and associated dreams of globalization. The story dramatizes North-South inequalities in the new capitalisms; it celebrates the North’s excitement about international investment, and the blight of the South’s so-called crony capitalisms: business imagined not quite/not white. Painting Southern leaders as rats fighting for garbage, the story also promises new genres of justice for the Northern investor who dares to sue. Finance looks like democracy: The Internet, they say, opens foreign investment to the North American everyman. But the Bre-X story also narrates the perils of the downsized, overcompetitive economy: the sad entrepreneurship of selling worthless stock certificates on-line. As one writer put it, mixing metaphors, ‘‘The Bre-X saga will come to be known as the demarcation of the Internet as the weapon of choice for investors.’’ 9 Most salient to my concerns about the specificity of global economic promises is the genre convention with which Bre-X started its own story, and by which it was finished off. Bre-X was always a performance, a drama, a conjuring trick, an illusion, regardless of whether real gold or only dreams of gold ever existed at Busang. Journalists compared Busang, with its lines of false drilling samples, to a Hollywood set.10 But it was not just Busang; it was the whole investment process. No one would ever have invested in Bre-X if it had not created a performance, a dramatic exposition of the possibilities of gold. Performance here is simultaneously economic performance and dramatic performance. The ‘‘economy of appearances’’ I describe depends on the relevance of this pun; the self-conscious making of a spectacle is a necessary aid to gathering investment funds. The dependence on spectacle is not peculiar to Bre-X and other mining scams: It is a regular feaporation (Vancouver); Twin Gold Corporation (Toronto); and Nevada Manhattan Mining Inc. (Calabasas, California). 8. ‘‘Felderhof Still Insists Bre-X Site Has Gold,’’ Financial Post on CANOE Web site, March 1999. 9. David Zgodzinski, ‘‘Bre-X: The Battle Between Bulls and Bears on SI,’’ Silicon Investor Web site, 1997. 10. Behar, ‘‘Jungle Fever,’’ 121.

158

*

anna tsing

ture of the search for financial capital. Start-up companies must dramatize their dreams in order to attract the capital they need to operate and expand. Junior prospecting companies must exaggerate the possibilities of their mineral finds in order to attract investors so that they might, at some point, find something. This is a requirement of investmentoriented entrepreneurship, and it takes the limelight in those historical moments when capital seeks creativity rather than stable reproduction. In speculative enterprises, profit must be imagined before it can be extracted; the possibility of economic performance must be conjured like a spirit to draw an audience of potential investors. The more spectacular the conjuring, the more possible an investment frenzy. Drama itself can be worth summoning forth.11 Nor are companies alone in the conjuring business in these times. In order to attract companies, countries, regions, and towns must dramatize their potential as places for investment. Dramatic performance is the prerequisite of their economic performance. Yet conjuring is always culturally specific, creating a magic show of peculiar meanings, symbols, and practices. The conjuring aspect of finance interrupts our expectations that finance can and has spread everywhere, for it can only spread as far as its own magic. In its dramatic performances, circulating finance reveals itself as both empowered and limited by its cultural specificity. Contemporary masters of finance claim not only universal appeal but also a global scale of deployment. What are we to make of these globalist claims, with their millennial whispers of a more total and hegemonic world-making than we have ever known? Neither false ideology nor obvious truth, it seems to me that the globalist claims of finance are also a kind of conjuring of a dramatic performance. In these times of heightened attention to the space and scale of human undertakings, economic projects cannot limit themselves to conjuring at different scales —they must conjure the scales themselves. In this sense, a project that makes us imagine globality in order to see how it might succeed is one 11. To ‘‘conjure’’ is both to call forth spirits and to perform magical tricks; in each case, the term highlights the intentionality of the performance, the studied charisma of the performer, and the hope of moving the audience beyond the limits of rational calculation. These features characterize the economic strategies I discuss here, in which everyday performance requirements—for contracts, marketing, investor reports, and the like—are made into dramatic shows of potential.

159

*

the economy of appearances

kind of ‘‘scale-making project’’; similarly, projects that make us imagine locality, or the space of regions or nations, in order to see their success are also scale-making projects. The scales they conjure come into being in part through the contingent articulations into which they are pushed or stumble. In a world of multiple divergent claims about scales, including multiple divergent globalisms, those global worlds that most affect us are those that manage tentatively productive linkages with other scale-making projects. Social scientists have been thrilled to discover the excitement about the global that has taken corporate planners, bureaucrats, and political activists by storm over the last decade. Anthropologists have hoped that by attaching ourselves to this excitement we might propel our discipline beyond a heritage of studying obscure villages to reposition it in the middle of all kinds of world-making projects, big and small. Yet our tools for thinking about the big picture are still rudimentary. Holding on, as I think we should, to a disciplinary heritage of attention to upclose detail, we find ourselves with data about how a few people somewhere react, resist, translate, and consume. From here it is an easy step to invoke distinctions between local reactions and global forces, local consumption and global circulation, local resistance and global structures of capitalism, local translation and the global imagination. I find myself doing it. Yet we know that these dichotomies are unhelpful. They draw us into an imagery in which the global is homogeneous precisely because we oppose it to the heterogeneity we identify as locality. By letting the global appear homogeneous, we open the door to its predictability and evolutionary status as the latest stage in macronarratives. We know the dichotomy between the global blob and local detail isn’t helping us. We long to find cultural specificity and contingency within the blob, but we can’t figure out how to find it without, once again, picking out locality. A number of scholars are making important suggestions about how to find the specificity and contingency of the global by attention to spreading ‘‘scapes,’’ shifting ‘‘routes,’’ cosmopolitanisms, transnationalisms, and the like.12 This essay suggests further that we pay attention 12. For example, Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); James Clifford, Routes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, eds., Cosmopolitics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Roger Rouse, ‘‘Thinking through Transnational-

160

*

anna tsing

to the making of scale. Scale is the spatial dimensionality necessary for a particular kind of view, whether up close or from a distance, microscopic or planetary. I argue that scale is not just a neutral frame for viewing the world; scale must be brought into being: proposed, practiced, and evaded, as well as taken for granted. Scales are claimed and contested in cultural and political projects. A ‘‘globalism’’ is a commitment to the global, and there are multiple, overlapping, and somewhat contradictory globalisms; a ‘‘regionalism’’ is a commitment to the region, and so on. Not all claims and commitments about scale are particularly effective. Links among varied scale-making projects can bring each project vitality and power. The specificity of these articulations and collaborations also limits the spread and play of scale-making projects, promising them only a tentative moment in a particular history. Neoliberalism, as an economic doctrine promoting the free circulation of goods, currencies, labor, and more across national and regional borders, is a set of scale-making projects. These are powerful projects, and some of us have begun to imagine a world remade entirely according to neoliberalism’s dreams. Before conceding the hegemony of their global claims, however, it seems useful to take a look at the limitations of their reach. The performative dramas of financial conjuring offer one perspective from which to appreciate the specificity and contingency of particular niches within the neoliberal project. One of the chief puzzles of globalist financial conjuring is why it works. We’ve all seen advertisements for hamburgers, express mail, or computers bridging cultures across the globe. But it’s one thing to offer a stylish picture of diversity, and another thing to figure out how entrepreneurial projects actually manage to affect people who may not pay them any mind. Conjuring is supposed to call up a world more dreamlike and sweeter than anything that exists; magic, rather than strict description, calls capital. The puzzle seems deeper the more the material and social worlds to be reshaped and exploited are geographically, culturally, and politically remote from financial conjuring centers. How do the self-consciously glossy and exaggerated virtual worlds conjured by eager collectors of finance become shapers of radically different peoples and places? My frame highlights contingent articulaism: Notes on the Cultural Politics of Class Relations in the Contemporary United States,’’ Public Culture 7 (1995): 353–402.

161

*

the economy of appearances

Figure 1. F-C Articulations in the Economy of Appearances. This diagram is both serious and a joke.

tions in which globalist financial conjuring links itself with regional and national scale-making projects, making each succeed wildly—if also partially and tentatively. It seems likely that successfully conjuring the globe is possible, at least now, only in thick collaboration with regional and national conjurings; certainly financial conjuring has been deeply implicated in promises of making regional and national dreams come true. Often, globalist financial conjuring supports the most bizarre and terrible of national and regional dreams. Certainly this was the case in the Bre-X story. Finance capital became linked with greedy elite dreams of an authoritarian nation-state supported by foreign funds and enterprises; this is a nation-making project I call franchise cronyism to mark the interdependence of corruption and foreign investment. These in turn became linked with migrant dreams of a regional frontier culture in which the rights of previous rural residents could be wiped out entirely to create a Wild West scene of rapid and lawless resource extraction: quick profits, quick exits. To present this rather complicated set of links, I offer a diagram (fig. 1). Diagrams by their nature are oversimplifications, and this one is certainly no exception. Indeed, I have named each of the three scale-making projects I discuss in a selfconsciously joking manner. Yet the playfulness is also a serious attempt to focus attention on the specificity and process of articulation. Finance capital is a program for global hegemony; franchise cronyism is one particular nation-making project; frontier culture is an articulation of a region. Each is a scale-making project with its sights set on a different scale: global, national, and regional. The links among them cross scales 162

*

anna tsing

and strengthen each project’s ability to remake the world. At the same time, not one of these three projects is predictable or ubiquitous in the world. Coming together as they did for a moment in Suharto’s Indonesia, they created a great fire.13 Looking back, we see that they didn’t create an evolutionary ladder to the stars. Isn’t this sense of specificity and contingency in globalist claims what scholars and social commentators need most to bring into view? ‘‘ ye s , we a r e s t i l l in b u s in e s s ’’

Bre-X was the brainchild of a Canadian stock promoter named David Walsh. Walsh dropped out of high school at the end of tenth grade and soon joined a Montreal trust company, rising quickly to become the head of the investment department. After thirteen years, he left to try to form his own trust company. Three unsuccessful years later, he agreed to start an office in Calgary for another firm, only to quit the next year. From then on, Walsh worked to set up his own companies: first, the oiloriented Bresea Resources Ltd. (named after his sons Brett and Sean) and then, in 1985, Bre-X Minerals Ltd., which from the first aimed to find gold.14 Gold mining had become a profitable industry in the 1970s when the United States ended the gold standard, and the price of gold, which had been held constant at $35 per ounce for many years, skyrocketed, hitting $850 per ounce in 1980. Canadian companies rushed to take advantage of the new gold prices by exploring not only in the Canadian West but around the world. Junior mining exploration companies, whose goal is 13. It is hard to forget that the capitalist development of the late Suharto regime did, literally, create a great fire. Government subsidies supported the conversion of ‘‘degraded forest’’ into oil palm and pulp and paper plantations; eager plantation managers used the 1997 droughts to burn their way into plantation conversions, sometimes burning local residents out of farms, orchards, and homes. The fires created a regional smoke haze so great as to provoke transnational alarm. Many accounts, however, refused to discuss the alliance of government and business in this kind of environmentally destructive entrepreneurship. Indeed, some fires were still smoldering in 1998 when the IMF demanded that Indonesia expand the making of plantations by admitting a greater range of foreign investors. See WALHI/Redaksi, ‘‘Ramai-ramai bakar hutan dan lahan perkebunan,’’ Tanah Air 18(5) (1998): 2–14. 14. This version of the much told story is taken from Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud.’’

163

*

the economy of appearances

to find the minerals that can be exploited by major companies, sprouted by the dozens. Toronto became the world’s mining finance capital. In 1997 there were 1,225 publicly traded mining companies in Canada, and mining stocks represented 21.5 percent of all trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange.15 In this industry, the line between various kinds of expertise is thin: Geologists (with salaries supplemented by stock options) must be promoters to raise the money to finance their mineral finds, market analysts must be geologists to evaluate those finds, and stock promoters must explain their offerings in geologically convincing terms. Canadian preeminence in mining depended on both its mining history and its position as a center of mining finance. For a stock promoter like David Walsh to become president of a gold exploration company was not unusual in this climate. Consider the trajectory of the president of Barrick Gold, Canada’s biggest goldmining company. Peter Munk is a high-flying but not always successful entrepreneur. In the 1950s, he founded a television and hi-fi company that crashed, leaving the government of Nova Scotia in deep debt; he went on to build hotels on South Sea islands funded by Saudi Arabian princes. Nothing in his background gave him expertise in minerals. In 1986, however, he bought a worked-over mine in Nevada. It turned out to be the most profitable gold mine in the world, pushing Munk’s company into a leading position.16 Peter Munk was ‘‘a dreamer who became a king.’’ 17 In this context, David Walsh’s little enterprise made sense. In 1988 Walsh listed Bre-X on the Alberta Stock Exchange at 30 Canadian cents per share. His wife, Jeanette, supported the household by working as a secretary. The family bought on credit, and, over C$200,000 in debt, both David and Jeanette Walsh declared personal bankruptcy in 1992. Bre-X shares sometimes fell as low as 2 cents; in his 1991 annual report, David Walsh wrote, ‘‘Yes, we are still in business.’’ In 1993, however, Walsh pulled together some money for a trip to Indonesia. There he met with Dutch-born geologist John Felderhof, who had achieved some fame in identifying the Ok Tedi copper and gold 15. Francis, Bre-X: The Inside Story, 24. The $850/ounce price is from the Privateer Gold Pages, which reviews the recent history of government, interstate, and private uses and prices of gold. 16. Jennifer Wells, ‘‘King of Gold,’’ Maclean’s, 9 December 1996, 32–40. 17. Peter Newman, ‘‘Peter Munk: A Dreamer Who Became a King,’’ Maclean’s, 9 December 1996, 42.

164

*

anna tsing

mine in Papua New Guinea in 1967 but had suffered hard times in the 1980s. Felderhof agreed to help Walsh find gold in Kalimantan and contacted Filipino geologist Michael de Guzman for the project. Filipino geologists had been in much demand in Indonesia because of their experience, education, and regional savvy.18 De Guzman brought several Filipino associates to the team.19 Mining properties were cheap and available in Indonesia in the early 1990s because the Australians, who had come in some ten years before in their own wave of national mining speculation, were trying to get out. Felderhof had worked for some Australian companies and had witnessed the financial boom and bust in which mineral exploration was begun and then abandoned, promising or not. He convinced Walsh to form a partnership with an Indonesian entrepreneur to buy an old Australian claim around the creek called Busang in East Kalimantan, and Walsh raised the money to drill some holes. The results were disappointing, and by December 1993 they were about to close the property. Then, early in 1994, de Guzman struck gold. Walsh was quick and effective in informing investor newsletters and brokerage firms. Felderhof ’s estimates grew bigger and bigger. In 1993, Bre-X was trading at 51 Canadian cents a share; by May 1996, stocks were trading at C$286.50, accounting for a ten-to-one split. In April, Bre-X had been listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange; in August, the stock was listed in the United States on NASDAQ; in September, it was also listed on the Montreal Stock Exchange. By then the company’s market capitalization was over 6 billion Canadian dollars.20 Awards started to roll in: Mining Man of the Year for Bre-X president David Walsh; Explorer of the Year for chief geologist John Felderhof. On 9 and 10 March 1997, Bre-X officers and geologists 18. The importance of Filipino geologists in Indonesian mining highlights the national and regional cultural demands of the industry which, like other industries, operates through stereotypes about the appropriate cultural specifications of labor power. Goold and Willis (‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 170) write, ‘‘The Filipinos have their own culture in the mining world. They are well-educated and often trained at big U.S.-owned mines in the Philippines. They are fun-loving, attuned to Western tastes and sensibilities, yet Asian.’’ Meanwhile, the resentment of Indonesian professionals toward the access of Filipinos to Indonesian projects (Bondan Winarno says Indonesian geologists use the term ‘‘Filipino Mafiosi’’ [Bre-X: Sebungkah emas di kaki pelangi, 164]) makes them easy scapegoats when things go wrong. 19. This version comes from Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud.’’ 20. Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 64–65.

165

*

the economy of appearances

were feted in awards dinners and ceremonies at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada meetings. They were at the height of their success. conjuring

On 19 March 1997, Michael de Guzman fell 800 feet from a helicopter into the rain forests of Kalimantan. Although up to that point he had been considered little more than the Filipino sidekick, at the moment of his death de Guzman became the company, his face displayed everywhere in the news media over charts of the company’s finds and stock prices. If Bre-X had been a big story before, it was truly dramatic now. Mysteries abounded. A suicide note was found in which de Guzman wrote that he couldn’t stand the pain of hepatitis. But he was an optimistic man and in quite good health. What happened to the third man the other Filipino geologists had seen enter the helicopter? Rumors circulated like wildfire. One Philippines scholar confided to me, ‘‘When I heard about the watch found in the helicopter, I had to find out what kind it was. When they said ‘Rolex,’ I knew he was murdered. No Filipino gangster would dispose of his victim without first removing his Rolex.’’ A sign, a trophy. The trouble was, the scene was cluttered with signs, clues, false leads. Wives of de Guzman who knew nothing of each other’s existence cropped up everywhere: in Manila, Jakarta, Manado, Samarinda.21 Rumors circulated that de Guzman had parachuted into Zurich.22 When a corpse was finally found, the face and much of the body had been devoured by wild pigs. Multiple autopsies failed to establish the identity of the body beyond controversy: Could Bre-X have changed the fingerprint on his employee identity card? Did the dental records match? And where were his geologist friends when it was time for the funeral? 23 21. Peter Waldman and Jay Solomon, ‘‘Geologist’s Death May Lie at Heart of Busang Mystery,’’ Wall Street Journal, 9 April 1997, A10. 22. ‘‘Rumors Swirl around Bre-X,’’ Ottawa Citizen, 25 March 1997, on-line version. 23. The autopsy results are discussed in the following news items: ‘‘Buried Body Not Geologist: Report,’’ Ottawa Citizen, 10 April 1997, on-line version; Michael Platt, ‘‘Dead or Alive?’’ Calgary Sun, 11 April 1997, CANOE on-line version; ‘‘Foul Play Fears Haunt Geologist,’’ Calgary Sun, 19 April 1997, CANOE on-line version; ‘‘Family

166

*

anna tsing

It was at this point, too, that the gold deposit at Busang came to seem just as mysterious. Bre-X had been drilling core samples at Busang since 1993; by 1997 some sites looked like ‘‘Swiss cheese.’’ 24 As Busang became famous, industry professionals came to visit. Bre-X president Walsh later complained, ‘‘Virtually every mining geologist, analyst went to the site, but I never received one letter or phone call during that whole period that something was amiss over in Indonesia.’’ 25 The ‘‘analysts’’ Walsh refers to were mining stock analysts, and, indeed, dozens visited the site, each fueling investors’ attraction with more glowing reports. But in March 1997 the American company Freeport-McMoRan sent their assayers as the ‘‘due diligence’’ element of their agreement to become partners with Bre-X at Busang. Freeport found nothing. Furthermore, they claimed that the kind of gold in Bre-X’s samples was inappropriate for the site: It was stream-rounded alluvial gold instead of igneous gold. Bre-X’s assay methods were now open to question. Rumors flew of plots and cover-ups, and the price of Bre-X stocks rollercoastered. Perhaps Freeport was making false claims to take over the property. Perhaps Bob Hasan, an Indonesian partner, was buying up cheap stocks at a bargain-basement price. Why else had he taken out a bank loan to log just in this area, just at this time? 26 Perhaps New York investors were trying to beat out Canadians.27 The gamble drew stock speculators into the fray, and on 2 April trading was so intense that it closed down the computer system at the Toronto Stock Exchange.28 On Accepts Autopsy,’’ Calgary Sun, 21 April 1997, CANOE on-line version; ‘‘ID Challenged,’’ 5 August 1997, Calgary Sun, CANOE on-line version; ‘‘Print Identified as De Guzman’s,’’ 24 April 1997, Calgary Sun, CANOE on-line version. Bondan Winarno (Bre-X: Sebungkah emas di kaki pelangi, 134–35) discusses the theory that although de Guzman wore false teeth, the corpse had natural teeth. 24. Nisid Hajari, ‘‘Is the Pot at the End of the Rainbow Empty?’’ Time, 7 April 1997, 149(14), on-line version. 25. ‘‘Ultimate Betrayal: Bre-X Boss Says Pair Ruined Dream,’’ Calgary Sun, 12 October 1997, CANOE on-line version. 26. Joe Warmington, ‘‘Bre-X Takeover Claim,’’ 6 April 1997, and ‘‘Bank on More Intrigue,’’ 8 April 1997, Calgary Sun, CANOE on-line version. 27. Joe Warmington, ‘‘Yanks Waiting: Americans Ready to Gobble up Bre-X Shares,’’ Calgary Sun, 13 April 1997, CANOE on-line version. 28. David Jala, ‘‘Frenzy Stuns Market,’’ Calgary Sun, 2 April 1997, CANOE on-line version.

167

*

the economy of appearances

3 May, however, the independent test report arrived. Its finding: no economic gold deposit. The ballooning stock swap immediately deflated; Bre-X stocks were officially worthless.29 Yet what are we to make of the mysteries? I am not a journalist, and my concern does not involve just which gold miners and which Indonesian government officials and which stock market participants knew about or participated in various conjuring acts. I’m more interested in the art of conjuring itself, as practiced not only by Bre-X officers and employees but also by the analysts, reporters, investors, and regulators who formed their retinue. I am struck by two counterintuitive observations. First, mystery, rumor, and drama did not come to Bre-X just at the tail end of its ride; these qualities marked the Bre-X story from its beginnings. Rather than closing Bre-X down, mystery and drama kept Bre-X alive and growing; it was only when an official report stopped the show that the company died. Second, Bre-X is not the only company that has required spectacle to grow. Bre-X seems typical of the ‘‘junior’’ Canadian mineral exploration companies that it has helped usher into the international spotlight—except, of course, it was more successful at first and later more despised. Junior companies don’t have the equipment or capital to take their mining ventures very far. They must make a big splash, first, to attract enough investors to keep prospecting and, second, to bring in big mining companies to buy out their finds. One can draw the net wider. The mystery and spectacle Bre-X cultivated is representative of many kinds of companies in which finance 29. Strathcona Mineral Services conducted the independent technical audit. In the words of the report: We very much regret having to express the firm opinion that an economic gold deposit has not been identified in the Southeast zone of the Busang property, and is unlikely to be. We realize that the conclusions reached in this interim report will be a great disappointment to the many investors, employees, suppliers, and the joint-venture partners associated with Bre-X, to the Government of Indonesia, and to the mining industry elsewhere. However, the magnitude of the tampering with core samples that we believe has occurred and the resulting falsification of assay values at Busang, is of a scale and over a period of time and with a precision that, to our knowledge, is without precedent in the history of mining anywhere in the world. (Graham Farquarson [Strathcona Mineral Services], ‘‘Busang Technical Audit: Interim Report,’’ reproduced in Gatra, 17 May 1997: 27)

168

*

anna tsing

capital is the ruling edge of accumulation. Such companies draw investments through drama. And the importance of drama guarantees that it is very difficult to discern companies that have long-term production potential from those that are merely good at being on stage. The charismatic and dramatic attraction of international finance capital was a key feature of Southeast Asian development strategies during the so-called economic miracle. After the 1997 financial crisis, we were told to distinguish between the real and the fake, but does not the whole design of these accumulation strategies work against our ability to draw this line? As in a beauty contest, artistry and drama are necessary to compete; spectacle and mystery, playing equally across the line of the real and the fake, establish the winning reality of performance.30 Bre-X initially attracted investors because of the excitement of the reports coming out about Busang. From the very first, Bre-X was in the news, and journalists constantly wrote about Busang. The success with which Bre-X attracted investors depended on these reports and particularly on the ways they used and elaborated tropes that brought the Bre-X find into other circulating stories of wealth, power, and fulfillment. Some of these stories were colonial adventure tales: the search for hidden, uncounted riches in remote places. Maclean’s, a Canadian magazine, wrote: ‘‘Two, four, and then maybe six million ounces will be pulled from Busang annually. There has never been an El Dorado like this.’’ 31 Other stories told of frontier independence and the promise of wealth ‘‘at the end of a miner’s rainbow,’’ as the New York Times put it, where ‘‘independent-mindedness’’ led miners to ‘‘forbidding jungles’’ in search of the ‘‘century’s greatest gold strike.’’ 32 There were stories 30. McLeod gives considerable weight to the Bre-X affair in bringing on the Indonesian financial crisis by undermining investor confidence. He writes, ‘‘Perhaps the most significant recent event to crystallize attitudes on the part of the general public, the intellectual and business elite, and the foreign investment community regarding the direction in which government had been heading was the so-called Busang saga’’ (‘‘Indonesia’s Crisis and Future Prospects,’’ 215). In my view, although the Bre-X saga did not in itself shake the Indonesian economy very much, it dramatized issues of what came to be called, following Philippine precedent from the 1980s, ‘‘crony capitalism.’’ 31. Jennifer Wells, ‘‘Greed, Graft, Gold,’’ Maclean’s, 3 March 1997, 40. 32. Anthony DePalma, ‘‘At End of a Miner’s Rainbow, A Cloud of Confusion Lingers,’’ New York Times, 31 March 1997, A1.

169

*

the economy of appearances

of science in the service of human innovation. There were stories of war and conquest—‘‘the battle for Busang’’—recalling the French and the United States in Vietnam, and Bre-X became, repeatedly, a ‘‘rumble in the jungle,’’ and then, eventually, a ‘‘bungle’’ or a ‘‘jumble’’ in the jungle.33 There were also pervasive stories of underdog charisma. After announcing the Busang find, Bre-X had to fight for the rights to mine it. The story of little Bre-X up against the big North American mining companies and the big Indonesian establishment gathered an overwhelming response, ushering in Bre-X’s greatest period of popular investment. When U.S. ex-president George Bush and Canadian ex-prime minister Brian Mulroney put pressure on Jakarta at the request of a big company, Bre-X’s David Walsh, with his high school education, his beer belly, and his ineptness, looked like David up against Goliath. He made such a convincing ‘‘little guy’’ that after the scam was exposed many refused to believe him responsible. As Fortune magazine’s reporter wrote, ‘‘Even now I have trouble believing that Walsh participated. . . . Walsh looked more like some poor schlemiel who had just won the lottery and couldn’t locate his ticket.’’ 34 Stockholders, too, contributed to the stories swirling around Bre35 X. Bre-X established an Internet presence early on, with stories posted on their web site; meanwhile, investors’ chat lines buzzed with Bre-X news.36 The more controversy swirled around Bre-X, the more investors talked and exchanged rumors, extending, too, dreams of wealth, conspiracy theories, reinterpretations of the mining geology and engineering, and romances of unexpected underdog advantage. On the Internet, 33. Jennifer Wells, ‘‘Rumble in the Jungle,’’ Maclean’s, 3 February 1997, 38–39; BreXscam.com web site, ‘‘The Bungle in the Jungle’’; Michael Platt, ‘‘Rush Hour in the Jungle,’’ Calgary Sun, 23 May 1997. 34. Behar, ‘‘Jungle Fever,’’ 123. 35. Goold and Willis (‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 207) write about the Canadian scene: ‘‘Because so many small investors held Bre-X stock, virtually everyone knew someone who had won or lost money. Their stories, often exaggerated, played out across the country. In this environment, any rumour had legs.’’ 36. ‘‘On Silicon’s popular net forum Techstox, Bre-X dominated for months. More than 4,000 new people a day were searching for Bre-X information, and more than 700 items were being posted about the company for all to read’’ (Francis, Bre-X: The Inside Story, 153).

170

*

anna tsing

dramatic presentation was often clearly the point. As one Silicon Investor contributor wrote about the Bre-X Internet thread, ‘‘The theater is open. The stage is set 24 hrs. a day. There is always an audience.’’ 37 One Internet contributor signed herself ‘‘Ole49er,’’ reminding readers that the Wild West is never far from discussion of Bre-X. A Canadian shareholder with whom I spoke explained that Canadians were excited about the chance to invest in minerals in Indonesia because of the symbolic importance of mining in Canada as well as a national anxiety about the closing of the frontier. Environmental regulations in Canada, he explained, made it difficult to mine profitably in the last wide open spaces of the Canadian West. Yet those open spaces might be pursued abroad in foreign lands. As a substitute frontier, Bre-X’s Kalimantan continued the excitement of the frontier story of Canada’s development. But what of Kalimantan in this story? In the moment of frontier making, financial conjuring runs up against the landscape, but not quite as in its dreams. At this trick in the magic show, an opportunity presents itself to ask about how the magic works, and how it doesn’t. frontiers

Let me return to the beginning of the Bre-X story, or at least one beginning, in Kalimantan. A brave man is hacking his way through the jungle, alone and surrounded by disease and danger. There is nothing there but mud, malaria, leeches, hepatitis, and the pervasive loneliness of the jungle trek. But one day . . . he discovers gold! This is an old story, told not only about Borneo but about many a jungle or lonely rock cliff. But it is also what the Bre-X miners told the press. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review: The story of how Felderhof and de Guzman unearthed Busang’s golden secret is the stuff that fables are made of. Mostly it is a human saga—about two quiet, very ordinary men from opposite sides of the world who persevered for years in the face of tropical illnesses and some of the harshest terrain in the world. . . . 37. David Zgodzinski, ‘‘Bre-X: The Battle between Bulls and Bears on SI,’’ Silicon Investor, 4 May 1997.

171

*

the economy of appearances

Felderhof first landed in Indonesia in 1980. . . . he worked his way from west to east across the centre of the vast Borneo island. . . . Those were hard times. He lived in jungle villages, eating whatever was available, carrying what he needed on his back, and hacking his way through some of the remotest rain forest in Asia. De Guzman has gone through similar hardships. . . . He’s had malaria 14 times since he met up with Felderhof in 1986. . . . Travelling alone, de Guzman took a seven-hour boat ride up the Mahakam River, then trekked 32 kilometers. . . . During a week of old-fashioned prospecting, he recognized a geological setting he had come to know well in the Philippines.38 The story has come close to the moment of discovery. The New York Times tells that moment succinctly: ‘‘1994. Michael de Guzman, a mining geologist, is trekking through the Busang site doing work for Bre-X when a bit of yellow rock on a river bank catches his eye. ‘Check it out,’ he writes on a plastic strip and tacks it to the rock. His assistant follows with a more detailed analysis and writes: ‘Checkmate.’ ’’ 39 One might be suspicious of this sudden appearance from nowhere of an assistant, but let’s let that pass and move on to the second act in the discovery, the scientific theory that lets the miners know that a glitter of gold might be the tip of an underground hoard. Without science, de Guzman is just a Filipino guy playing with rocks; with science, he is the translator between nature and North American industry. The Far Eastern Economic Review story continues: ‘‘Working alone at 3 o’clock one morning, it suddenly became crystal clear [to de Guzman]. Bounding upstairs, he woke Puspos [the assistant] and explained his theory: that Busang, with its dome-like geological structure, lay at a fault-line crossroads. Together on that January morning, the two spent eight hours in ‘nonstop technical brainstorming.’ ’’ 40 It’s a lovely story, but it bears a very odd relationship to everything else one might want to say about mining in Kalimantan. By the time de Guzman arrived at Busang, foreign prospectors, migrant miners, 38. John McBeth, ‘‘The Golden Boys,’’ Far Eastern Economic Review 10, 6 March 1997, 42–43. 39. DePalma, ‘‘At End of a Miner’s Rainbow,’’ C10. 40. McBeth, ‘‘The Golden Boys,’’ 44.

172

*

anna tsing

and local residents had all combed the landscape for gold. Yet his ‘‘discovery’’ story does not reflect the interdependence of his knowledge with that of other miners. Local residents, government regulations, mining camps, churches, markets, bus schedules, army officers, village heads, property disputes: All are missing. The frontier story requires that de Guzman wander alone on an empty landscape. The story of lonely prospectors making independent discoveries in a remote jungle moved North American investors and stimulated the capital flow that made Bre-X rich. These images are repeated in the portfolio of every North American prospecting company working in Kalimantan. Consider the exploration of a Canadian prospecting company called International Pursuit, as reported in Gold Newsletter’s Mining Share Focus. International Pursuit was prospecting in the wake of the Bre-X drama and needed to distance itself from Bre-X. Yet the frontier story is precisely the same. The company has sent its prospectors to the empty, wild landscape of Kalimantan, where, through a combination of luck and science, they stumble on precious metals. They are in particular luck, because in late 1997 the devastation brought about by El Niño drought and forest fires had given the landscape some of the wild loneliness of which they dreamed. El Niño, they say, was a godsend because the streams dried up, revealing hidden minerals. ‘‘It was as if Mother Nature had lifted a curtain, exposing the secrets below,’’ the industry reporter wrote. Ignoring local residents’ hunger, fire damage, smoke inhalation, and displacement, he bragged, ‘‘International Pursuit’s exploration teams were among the relative few left on the ground.’’ 41 I first began to think about gold mining because of the spread of desolation and wildness across large swaths of the Kalimantan landscape. I had been working with people in this area for some time and knew them not so long ago when traditional resource claims were strong.42 Suddenly, a new landscape began to develop, and I couldn’t help but think of it as a ‘‘frontier,’’ because so many themes and images of frontiers, from the U.S. Wild West to the Brazilian Amazon, were selfconsciously overlaid on the Kalimantan landscape. The mad rush for 41. Brien Lundin, ‘‘International Pursuit: Turning World-Class Potential into WorldClass Reality,’’ Gold Newsletter’s Mining Share Focus 2(1) (1998): 4. 42. Anna Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-theWay Place (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).

173

*

the economy of appearances

gold joined and stimulated mad rushes for logs, birds’ nests, incense woods, marble, and even sand, to transform the landscape in the 1990s from a quiet scene of forests, fields, and houses to a wild terrain of danger, urgency, and destruction.43 Three developments seemed essential to the transformation of the terrain. First, big and small entrepreneurs were interdependent. Transnational companies and transregional migrants from all over Indonesia complemented each other. In mining, big companies have official permits; small-time miners are illegal. Small miners lead company prospectors to the best spots. The companies displace them but then employ them for prospecting. The companies complain about the illegals, blaming them for environmental problems, thus protecting their own reputations. The illegals supply the everyday services for the companies. The companies follow the small miners and the small miners cluster around the companies; they are codependents living off common loot. Second, nature had to be made into loot, free for all. In the 1980s, logging companies worked hard to extinguish local rights to resources. ‘‘This place belongs to Indonesia, not to you,’’ the logging bosses said when residents complained. The military followed and supported their claims, creating an authoritarian lawlessness that made resources free to those who could take them. By the mid-1990s, local residents told me, ‘‘We still know our customary legal rights, but no one cares about them.’’ The roads invited migrants, violence became key to ownership, and swarming miners escalated the terror, the risk, and the urgency of taking everything out, right away. Third, frontier migrants arrived at the end of long chains of cul43. In the early 1990s, the first small-time migrant gold miners came to my research areas in South Kalimantan; in other parts of Kalimantan, they arrived somewhat earlier. They came together with two technical innovations: the extension into the forest of logging roads, which opened the terrain to motor transport; and the introduction of a hand-held hydraulic pump, small enough to carry, yet powerful enough to hose away a hillside to expose its gold-bearing gravel. Each of these technologies carried social and political conventions and practices and dreams, as described in the text below. I have written elsewhere in more detail about the self-conscious making of a ‘‘frontier’’ in Kalimantan. See Anna Tsing, ‘‘A Logging Road Has Got to Be,’’ in Histories of the Future, ed. Susan Harding and Daniel Rosenberg, forthcoming. The importance of logging roads for the mining industry in Kalimantan is discussed in Danielson and Whyte, Bre-X: Gold Today, Gone Tomorrow, 43.

174

*

anna tsing

ture and capital. Small miners rarely own the hydraulic pumps with which they remove topsoil; they contract them from urban entrepreneurs in profit-sharing arrangements. Often, they subcontract with local residents, dividing imagined profits even further. Migrants and local residents learn to share cultural practices of entrepreneurship that reach from distant cities deep into the forest. Local residents bring mining activities up the rivers, through their familiar forests, close to home, spreading frontier standards of rapid resource extraction. They are drawn into the competition and violence of frontier relationships, taking on even the superficial trappings of migrant-oriented subsistence, marked with flimsy plastic tents and a diet of coffee and canned sardines. In these entrepreneurial chains, a spreading frontier culture is created. It is a culture dedicated to the obliteration of local places, local land and resource rights, local knowledges of flora and fauna. The makeshift camps of the miners proliferate across the landscape, mixing migrants and local residents in an antilocal regionality in which commitment to the local landscape is as useless as the gravel residue left after gold has been picked out and taken away. Frontier culture is a conjuring act because it creates the wild and spreading regionality of its imagination. It conjures a self-conscious translocalism, committed to the obliteration of local places. Such commitments are themselves distinctive and limited—and thus ‘‘local’’ from another perspective. Yet they break with past localisms in self-conscious regionalism. This is a conjuring of scale, and frontier resource extraction relies on it. A distinctive feature of this frontier regionality is its magical vision; it asks participants to see a landscape that doesn’t exist, at least not yet. It must continually erase old residents’ rights to create its wild and empty spaces where discovering resources, not stealing them, is possible. To do so, too, it must cover up the conditions of its own production. Consider the contrasts between the features of the story of the frontier that must be told and the frontier conditions I observed: The lone prospector replaces swarming migrants and residents, searching the landscape. The excitement of scientific discovery replaces the violence of expropriation as local resource rights are extinguished and armed gangs enforce their preeminence. The autonomy of the prospector’s find replaces the interdependent negotiations of big companies and illegal miners, each lead175

*

the economy of appearances

ing each other to new sites and trading political and material assets as they form complementary players.44 Why does the frontier story have any power at all, considering what it erases? How can it imagine the Kalimantan landscape so wrongly? These trompe l’oeils are possible only because of national discipline: the violence of the military, which spreads a regional lawlessness; the legal regulations that privilege company rights and profits yet allow illegal migrants to accumulate in the spreading wildness; the confusion between private entrepreneurship and public office that forged the national government. This is not the only kind of nation-making that can exist. To explore its specificity, it is useful to turn our attention to CoWs. cows

CoWs are Contracts of Work. No mining company can extract minerals in Indonesia without one. Like animals, CoWs come in generations. The first CoW was a much revered and singular ancestor, granted to Louisiana’s Freeport-McMoRan to mine in Irian Jaya.45 Succeeding 44. Narratives of frontier gold discovery often give more clues to the interdependence of company miners and independent gold seekers than they admit in their official ‘‘discovery tales.’’ Bre-X geologists were quite willing to admit, informally, that they chose their prospecting sites through the advice of small-scale Kalimantan miners, who led them to gold-rich sites. Consider, for example, the narrative Bre-X chief geologist Felderhof told reporters about how he first found Busang: ‘‘Felderhof had first heard of Busang in the early 1980s, when he and his Australian colleague Mike Bird were exploring the logging roads of Borneo on rented motorcycles. They roared from village to village, asking the locals to point out where they had found gold nuggets in stream beds’’ (Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 36). Indeed, one of the earliest clouds of suspicion about the rich ‘‘southeast zone’’ of Busang was generated by the fact that small-scale miners did not pan for gold in this area (Danielson and Whyte, Bre-X: Gold Today, Gone Tomorrow, 197). Despite acknowledging this interdependence, it never occurred to the geologists that it might interfere with their personal rights—or their official stories—of ‘‘discovery.’’ 45. In April 1967, Freeport Indonesia was granted a tax holiday, concessions on normal levies, exemption from royalties, freedom in the use of foreign personnel and goods, and exemption from the requirement for Indonesian equity. The terms were changed slightly in 1976, canceling the remaining eighteen months of the tax holiday and allowing the Indonesian government to purchase an 8.5 percent share (Hadi Soesastro and Budi Sudarsono, ‘‘Mineral and Energy Development in Indonesia,’’ in

176

*

anna tsing

generations of CoWs have become more differentiated, more limited, more finely detailed.46 Yet as they develop, they continue to be icons, even fetishes, held up to show the relationship between the Indonesian nation and the world. Ideally, they guarantee that resource extraction activities work in the interests of the Indonesian nation as well as the mining company. They specify the conditions that create mutual benefits shared between the nation and its foreign investors. CoWs are magical tools of the national elite. Although merely paper and ink, they conjure a regular income for the Indonesian nation-state. Their terms must be secure and attractive by international standards, or they will not draw capital. But if they meet these standards, they can also conjure the funds that allow the nation-state to produce itself as what one might call a ‘‘miracle nation’’: a nation in which foreign funds support the authoritarian rule that keeps the funds safe. I earlier called this ‘‘franchise cronyism.’’ In exchange for supplying the money to support the national leaders who can make the state secure, investors are offered the certainties of the contract, which ensures title to mineral deposits, fixes taxation rates, and permits export of profit. The CoW guarantees that investors are not working with ‘‘dictators.’’ As one Canadian Bre-X investor explained to me, in investing his modest funds he always avoided the countries of dictators. This was the reason the Bre-X investment seemed reasonable. I was confused: What is a dictator? As we talked, I realized that a dictator is a foreign ruler who The Minerals Industries of ASEAN and Australia: Problems and Prospects, ed. Bruce McKern and Praipol Koomsup [Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988], 161–208). 46. More restrictive second-generation and less restrictive third-generation CoWs were introduced in 1968 and 1976, respectively. 1986–87 marked the Australian ‘‘gold rush’’ in Indonesia and introduced fourth-generation CoWs, with ‘‘one year of general survey ending with 25% relinquishment of concession area; three years of exploration with 75% relinquishment by the end of the fourth year; an Indonesian partner in the CoW; and equity divestment after five years of operation so that ideally after 10 years of production the local partner holds 51%’’ (Carolyn Marr, Digging Deep: The Hidden Costs of Mining in Indonesia [London: Down to Earth, 1988], 16). Fifthgeneration contracts began in 1990, with tax incentives and low tariff property taxes. A 1992 law required foreign investors in frontier areas to reduce their equity shares to a maximum of 95 percent within five years and to 80 percent within twenty years (Marr, Digging Deep, 17). Sixth-generation CoWs, requiring environmental impact assessments, were offered in 1997 (Bondan Winarno, Bre-X: Sebungkah emas di kaki pelangi, 28).

177

*

the economy of appearances

interferes with Canadian investment. Indonesia’s President Suharto was not a dictator, at least before Bre-X. As Bre-X president David Walsh put it, his company—like other Australian and Canadian mining companies in the 1980s and 1990s—targeted Indonesia ‘‘by virtue of its geological setting, favorable investment climate and political stability.’’ 47 Other nations could be and were imagined in Indonesia. Suharto’s New Order regime emerged violently in 1966 from an earlier scene of diverse and competitive programs for making the nation, and from the start the regime depended on the repression of other Indonesian national visions through censorship and militarization. Political quietude was nurtured, too, through internationally sponsored ‘‘development,’’ which came to refer to programs of state expansion dedicated to convincing diverse local people of the unified national standards of state power. Through ‘‘development,’’ the state conceived a legal framework to claim the nation’s resources and make them available for foreign expropriation, thus amassing the materials through which its version of the nation could prosper. When investment capital began to circulate wildly across national boundaries in the 1980s, the Indonesian elite was ready for it. They beckoned to the mining sector, saying: ‘‘There are still vast tracts of unexplored land in Indonesia. For those who dare to venture, Indonesia offers immense possibilities.’’ 48 The Australians came. One Indonesian ex-mining official candidly admitted that these were ‘‘irresponsible investments’’ with ‘‘rubbish technology.’’ When the Canadian companies followed in the 1990s, it was more of the same: ‘‘It’s a repetition of history. It’s not really a gold rush. It’s rather a stock market rush.’’ 49 Yet the government transformed the stock market rush into a gold rush by offering it regional frontiers in the making. The regime gave the companies Contracts of Work, despite their irresponsibility. The CoWs wrote away local rights. Military men deployed to enforce CoWs felt encouraged to start their own entrepreneurial schemes, creating a model of government in which administrators by definition doubled as entrepreneurs who, supported by kickbacks, freed up resources for inves47. Wells, ‘‘Greed, Graft, Gold,’’ 42. 48. Dr. Soetaryo Sigit, ex-Director General of Mines, ‘‘Current Mining Developments in Indonesia,’’ quoted in Marr, Digging Deep, 26. 49. Rachman Wiriosudarmo, quoted by Wells, ‘‘Greed, Graft, Gold,’’ 41.

178

*

anna tsing

tors, including themselves. Civil servants became franchise entrepreneurs, too, learning to conjure the miracle nation locally. It was they who sanctioned the mass migration of illegal small loggers and miners that kept the regional economy afloat while bigger investors took out bigger resources and profits. In this escalating mobility and lawlessness, the mysteries of the search for buried treasure became possible. Whether gold was there or not, the economy could grow, spurred on by fabulous dreams. By the 1990s the Suharto regime began to take for granted its domestic stability and international support. The work of disguising official kickbacks as sound investment policy seemed already complete. Perhaps this is how to understand how the set performance of the miracle nation could have been allowed to deteriorate into dramatic excess. Drama ultimately embarrassed the Suharto regime, allowing investors to label it corrupt. At the same time, it provided a moment of opportunity for investors, who could maneuver within the new embarrassments of national performance to gain a better position for themselves. No investors did better than Bre-X and its rivals in opening up those dramatic cracks and making them visible on international news screens. However unselfconscious the manipulation, it seems clear that the over-the-top drama of franchise cronyism set off around Bre-X allowed the Bre-X investment bubble to last far longer than it could have otherwise, drawing out the drama from the 1994 announcement of gold to the 1997 death of de Guzman. This drama popularized the Bre-X story, vastly enlarging investment. In January 1994 Barrick Gold offered to buy a stake in Bre-X. Barrick was conducting an aggressive campaign of acquisitions in an attempt to become the world’s biggest gold-mining company.50 As mentioned above, Barrick’s CEO, Peter Munk, was a risk taker who made his fortune by a chance buy of a Nevada mine, which turned out to be a fabulous mother lode. Barrick had targeted Indonesia as a possible site for high-profit, low-cost mining, and Bre-X’s Busang was just Barrick’s kind of buy. When Bre-X turned the offer down, Barrick moved into the cracks of the Indonesian regime, working the connection between greed and vulnerability that their nation-making performances had produced. The 50. Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 99–100.

179

*

the economy of appearances

high-powered politicians on Barrick’s advisory board pressured the minister of mines and energy, and even President Suharto.51 Barrick then approached the president’s daughter, Tutut, a tycoon in road construction contracts. Barrick offered her Busang’s construction contracts, and she pushed the minister of mines to negotiate a Barrick–Bre-X split in which the government would control 10 percent of the mine, Barrick 70 percent, and Bre-X 20 percent. Bre-X was vulnerable because they had begun drilling without a CoW; now the ministry pulled out even their temporary exploration permit to clinch the deal.52 Bre-X stockholders went wild with anger. In the glare of their dissatisfaction, the drama escalated. Placer Dome, another Canadian company, made a better bid.53 Meanwhile, Bre-X made a spectacular play by approaching the president’s son, Sigit, and offering him 10 percent of the mine plus an eye-catching one million dollars per month to push their case. Whether naive, as read at the time, or unimaginably clever, this move took the performance of franchise cronyism to its extreme limits, offering the investment drama a new life. Now Suharto’s children were pitted against each other publicly. Barrick continued to have government support until it gained a new opponent: Indonesian entrepreneur Bob Hasan, the longtime friend and golfing buddy of the president, and the man who best knew how to mimic foreign investors’ ploys to enlarge his own empire. Hasan played the patriot of the miracle nation, arguing passionately that the enrichment and empowerment of national elites is the first principle of national interest. Barrick irritated him by sending in North American politicians, and he railed against their ‘‘cowboyisms,’’ which made Indonesia look helpless under the American thumb.54 Mean51. U.S. ex-president Bush wrote Suharto to express his ‘‘highly favorable’’ impression of Barrick (Wells, ‘‘Rumble in the Jungle’’). 52. Wells, ‘‘Greed, Graft, and Gold.’’ 53. By this time, it was clear to all the players that the Indonesian government was calling the shots. Placer Dome sent their bid directly to the president (John McBeth and Jay Solomon, ‘‘First Friend,’’ Far Eastern Economic Review 8, 20 February 1997: 52–54). 54. Hasan’s perspective was developed in a context in which other Indonesians were calling for greater national control of Busang. Islamic leader Amien Rais, for example, argued that the gold ‘‘should be kept for our grandchildren in the 21st century’’ (cited

180

*

anna tsing

while, he managed to acquire a 50 percent share in Bre-X’s Indonesian partner.55 The game was almost over when President Suharto asked Bob Hasan to work out what to do with Bre-X, and yet this, too, was a moment of momentous drama. Bre-X stockholders were at the edge of their seats. Activist stockholder George Chorny wrote a public letter to Hasan, reminding him that it was Bre-X that had discovered the gold. ‘‘It’s not any of the guys at Barrick or Placer. It’s not the Indonesian government. All the Indonesian government did was to welcome the people of Bre-X to come into their country with open arms to explore this jungle, this desolate jungle in the middle of nowhere.’’ 56 For Chorny, the frontier is always already empty. But Hasan had a different perspective; making the frontier was a national responsibility. Hasan dismissed both Barrick and Placer Dome and brought in the regime’s favorite company, FreeportMcMoRan. In Hasan’s solution, Freeport-McMoRan would take 15 percent of the mine and become sole operator; the Indonesian government would take 10 percent; Hasan’s companies would take 30 percent; and the remaining 45 percent would remain with Bre-X. Backed to the wall, Bre-X signed gracefully.57 Freeport, unlike Bre-X and even Barrick, was not in the business of spectacular accumulation, the economy of appearances. Freeport worked with its own cultural logic of investment and development, which, at least at this period, differed from that of Bre-X. Freeport was no mining ‘‘junior,’’ amassing capital to finance further exploration. Instead, it had established itself as a big, solid outpost of ‘‘American civilization’’ in Indonesia. As CEO Jim Bob Moffett put it, ‘‘We are thrusting a spear of economic development into the heartland of Irian Jaya.’’ 58 in Francis, Bre-X: The Inside Story, 130). Bondan Winarno (Bre-X: Sebungkah emas di kaki pelangi, 84–94) details nationalist claims. 55. Hasan’s investments during this period are detailed in McBeth and Solomon, ‘‘First Friend.’’ 56. Quoted in Jennifer Wells, ‘‘Gunning for Gold,’’ Maclean’s, 17 February 1997, 52. 57. Bre-X president David Walsh said he was settling with an arrangement that reflected ‘‘Indonesia’s political, economic, and social environment’’ (Richard Borsuk, ‘‘Bre-X Minerals Defends Pact with Indonesia,’’ Wall Street Journal, 2 February 1997, B3a). 58. Cited in Marr, Digging Deep, 71.

181

*

the economy of appearances

Freeport built residential neighborhoods in Irian Jaya reminiscent of U.S. suburbs; Moffett performed Elvis Presley imitations during Christmas visits. Freeport’s culture of business, then, offered Americanization rather than ‘‘frontier discovery’’ as a model of profitability. Freeport had long since gained its miracle deal from the Suharto regime. Its personal Contract of Work far exceeded the benefits of all other investors. In turn, Freeport was the largest source of investor tax revenue for the Indonesian government. It had spent an enormous amount of money developing its Grasberg mine in Irian Jaya, where it depended on the support of the army to keep local residents properly behaved. In 1995, however, riots closed the mine; in 1996, Irian tribal leaders sued the company for environmental destruction and human rights abuses, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (an agency of the U.S. government) canceled the company’s risk insurance because of its environmental policies. In 1997, then, Freeport was busy living down international accusations of environmental and social irresponsibility in Irian Jaya. It needed a green profile and solid production results, not an economic miracle.59 In this spirit, Freeport sent in a sober team to assess the gold at Busang. There was nothing there. ‘‘It makes me sick every time I think about it,’’ said Jim Bob Moffett.60 Following a few impressive last gasps, the spectacle wound down and collapsed. Said Bre-X president David Walsh, ‘‘Four and a half years of hard work and the pot at the end of the rainbow is a bucket of slop.’’ 61

59. The history of Freeport-McMoRan is the subject of a forthcoming book tentatively titled Corporate Power and Civil Society: The Story of Freeport-McMoRan at Home and Abroad by journalist Robert Bryce and anthropologist Steven Feld. For Freeport’s arrangements with the Indonesian government, see n. 45; Francis, Bre-X: The Inside Story, 129; and Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 113–14. Marr, Digging Deep, details Freeport’s Irian operations, with special attention to the mine’s history of environmental problems and human rights abuses. 60. Quoted in Behar, ‘‘Jungle Fever,’’ 128. 61. ‘‘Ultimate Betrayal: Bre-X Boss Says Pair Ruined Dream,’’ Calgary Sun, 12 October 1997, CANOE on-line version. David Walsh died of a stroke on 4 June 1998. He spent the last months of his life fighting class-action suits and trying to clear his name (Sandra Rubin, ‘‘Obituary: David Walsh,’’ Financial Post, 5 June 1998, CANOE on-line version).

182

*

anna tsing

on spectacul ar accumul ation

What does this story tell us about transnational finance and its globalist aspirations? In the midst of their dramatic roles, the major players usefully remind us of the stage they have laid. Like Bob Hasan, I am struck by the North American character of the dreams and schemes of investment that swirled around Bre-X. With Bre-X stockholders, I marvel at the ability of Indonesian nation makers to usurp an economic process that has been imagined as fiercely independent from national controls. And as for the Kalimantan landscape, it is hard not to mourn: The pot at the end of the rainbow is a bucket of eroding mud, damaged forests, and mercury-poisoned rivers. Slop indeed. It was the Canadian imagination of the combined frontier of investment and mining that made this drama possible. The mining industry has been historically important to Canada’s economy and identity. By the 1980s, its locus had shifted from mining in Canada to mining for Canada. It represented opportunity, potential prosperity, and the sense of initiative in national character. Bre-X’s run from the bottom of the Alberta stock exchange to the top of the Toronto exchange and into the world was a source of pride for many Canadians. As much as for profit, Canadians invested for reasons of national pride.62 Yet the national specificity of attraction to investments disappears in the excitement of commitments to globalism in the financial world. When one thinks about finance in the Bre-X case, there was nothing worldwide about it at all; it was Canadian and U.S. investment in Indonesia. Yet it is easy to assimilate this specific trajectory of investment to an imagined globalism to the extent that the global is defined as the opening-up process in which remote places submit to foreign finance. Every time finance finds a new site of engagement, we think the world 62. The importance of small, popular investment in Bre-X highlights the importance of this national agenda. ‘‘At its peak in May 1996, 70 percent of Bre-X’s 240 million shares were in the hands of individual investors’’ (Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 239). This contrasts with a more ordinary Canadian company, which might have 30 percent of its shares owned by individuals. According to Goold and Willis (105), in 1996 Bre-X had 13,000 shareholders, including pension funds and insurance companies. According to Francis (Bre-X: The Inside Story, 199), about 5 percent of Bre-X trading was from outside Canada and 90 percent of all Bre-X trading was conducted on the Toronto Stock Exchange (197).

183

*

the economy of appearances

is getting more global. In this act of conjuring, global becomes the process of finding new sites. In the force field of this particular globalism, Canadian national dreams are reimagined as transcendent, circulating, beyond culture. Despite the enormous coercions and seductions of financiers, which aim to make the whole world ready for investment, there is great particularity not only in the reasons a Canadian might want to invest but also in the places where he or she can invest. In the 1990s, when the dreams of the Indonesian elite linked with those of Canadians to jointly conjure the promise of gold, Indonesia became one of those places. Images of remote wild places that could make independent-minded Canadians rich and free touched Indonesian visions of a miracle nation, a nation that could come into being in the arms of foreign finance. Flying in the face of financiers’ fantasies of making the nation disappear before the greater mobility of capital, the magic of the miracle nation, waving its CoWs, asserted itself as the only door to North American investment. CoWs, as I have argued, are not merely mechanical adjustments of economic affairs. They are fetish objects, charged with conjuring the miracle nation in the face of competing, threatening alternative visions that unless warded off might come to control the apparatus of the state. From investors’ perspectives, they are charged, too, with the security of profit and property. As a gift, they remake the identities of both giver and receiver, vitalizing the miracle nation and its globalist speculators. For the aspirations of international investors and national elites to emerge as more than a moment’s daydream, however, they must be made tangible on a regional landscape. They must engage people, places, and environments. The antilocal culture of Kalimantan frontier regionalism nurtured and raised up both the miracle nation and Canadian speculation. Here is a truly cosmopolitan scene, where varied dreams are jumbled together, naming and renaming creeks, valleys, routes, and towns. The dreamers jostle, fight bitterly, and patronize each other. As they make their own new places, these, too, are knocked away. Even old residents become aliens, as the familiar landscape is transfigured by trauma, danger, and the anxiety of the unknown. Here mystery can flourish, and unexpected discoveries can be made. Unimagined riches can be found because the layout of wealth and poverty is unsettled, un-imagined. Impossible promises cannot be ignored. On 184

*

anna tsing

this landscape, the economy of appearances seems so real that it must be true. When the spectacle passes on, what is left is rubble and mud, the residues of success and failure. People with other stakes and stories will have to pick up the pieces. At the intersection of projects for making globes, nations, and regions, new kinds of economies can emerge. In the Bre-X drama, globalist commitments to opening up fresh sites for Canadian mining investments enabled Indonesian visions of a miracle nation at the same time as they stimulated the search for mining frontiers. The program of the miracle nation offered speculators security as it forced potential frontier regions into lawless violence and abolished customary tenure. When Kalimantan responded by developing a wild frontier, its regional reformation confirmed the proprietary rights of the miracle nation. The Kalimantan frontier could then appeal to globalist speculation, offering a landscape where both discovery and loss were possible. Three scalemaking projects came together here: the globe-making aspirations of finance capital, the nation-making coercions of franchise cronyism, and the region-making claims of frontier culture (refer to fig. 1). Globalist, nationalist, and regionalist dreams linked to enunciate a distinctive economic program, the program of spectacular accumulation. Spectacular accumulation occurs when investors speculate on a product that may or may not exist. Investors are looking for the appearance of success. They cannot afford to find out if the product is solid; by then their chances for profit will be gone. To invest in software development requires this kind of leap: Software developers sell their potential, not their product. Biotechnology requires a related if distinctive leap of faith to trust the processes of innovation and patenting to yield asyet-unknown property rights and royalties. Real estate development requires an assessment of desirability and growth, not demonstrated occupancy; it sells investors attractiveness. In each of these cases, economic performance is conjured dramatically.63 63. It is important to remember that it is possible to make a great deal of money out of speculation even if the product comes to nothing. Bre-X shareholders made money merely by selling their shares while the price was still high. The outspoken investors Greg and Kathy Chorny, for example, sold two-thirds of their stock for C$40 million and lost a comparatively minor sum on remaining shares (Francis, Bre-X: The

185

*

the economy of appearances

I use the term spectacular accumulation mainly to argue with evolutionary assumptions in popular theories of the ever changing world economy. According to regulation theorists, ‘‘flexible accumulation’’ is the latest stage of capitalism. Flexible accumulation follows Fordist production as barbarism follows savagery, that is, up a singular politicaleconomic ladder. David Harvey’s writing has made this conceptualization influential among anthropologists, who suggest correlated changes in culture, spatiality, and scale to go along with this evolutionary progression.64 Thus, too, we imagine evolutionary changes in the making of space and time. With Harvey, anthropologists have begun to imagine a worldwide condensation of space and time in which spaces grow smaller and times more instantaneous and effortless. Consider, however, the space-time requirements of Bre-X’s spectacular accumulation: Space is hugely enlarged; far from miniature and easy, it becomes expansive, labored, and wild, spreading muddy, malarial frontiers. Time is quickened, but into the rush of acceleration, not the efficiency of quick transfers. It is not effortless; if you can’t feel the rush and the intensity, you are missing the point, and you’ll keep your money at home. Moreover, this spectacular accumulation does not call out to be imagined as new. It is self-consciously old, drawing us back to the South Sea bubble and every gold rush in history. In contrast with flexible accumulation, its power is not its rejection of the past but its ability to keep this old legacy untarnished. I have no desire to add yet another classificatory device to the annals of capitalism. Instead, my point is to show the heterogeneity of capitalism at every moment in time. Capitalist forms and processes are continually made and unmade; if we offer singular predictions we allow ourselves to be caught by them as ideologies. This seems especially pressing when considering the analysis of scale. At the end of this cenInside Story, 196). At the end, smart investors made money by ‘‘short selling,’’ that is, borrowing Bre-X shares from brokers, selling them, and returning them by buying them back at a lower price. Goold and Willis (‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 221) report that 5.5 million Bre-X shares were sold short. Francis (Bre-X: The Inside Story, 203) reports that the investment bank Oppenheimer and Co. made C$100 million shorting Bre-X stock. Meanwhile, other firms and individuals, including Quebec’s public pension fund and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board, lost major amounts of money (Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 248). 64. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989).

186

*

anna tsing

Globalist projects come into being as APHIDS APHIDS = Articulations among Partially Hegemonic Imagined Different Scales Figure 2. APHIDS. This acronym is both serious and a joke.

tury, every ambitious world-making project wants to show itself able to forge new scales. NGOs, ethnic groups and coalitions, initiatives for human rights and social justice: We all want to be creative and selfconscious about our scale-making. We want to claim the globe as ours. In this context, rather than ally myself with globalist financiers to tell of their globe, I want to trace how that globe comes into being both as a culturally specific set of commitments and as a set of practices. The investment drama of the Bre-X story shows how articulations among globalist, nationalist, and regionalist projects bring each project to life. In the spirit of serious but joking diagrams, I offer an acronym to refocus your attention (fig. 2). The particularity of globalist projects, I am arguing, is best seen in the contingent articulations that make them possible and bring them to life: These are APHIDS, Articulations among Partially Hegemonic Imagined Different Scales. Often we turn to capitalism to understand how what seem to be surface developments form part of an underlying pattern of exploitation and class formation. Yet before we succumb to the capitalist monolith called up in these analyses, it is useful to look at the continual emergence of new capitalist niches, cultures, and forms of agency. For this task, Stuart Hall’s idea about the role of articulation in the formation of new political subjects is helpful. New political subjects form, he argues, as preexisting groups link and, through linking, enunciate new identities and interests.65 Social processes and categories also can develop in this way. I have used this insight to trace the spectacular accumulation brought into being by the articulation of finance capital, franchise cronyism, and frontier culture. While each of these linked projects achieved only a moment of partial hegemony, this was also a moment of dramatic success. Soon after the events I have narrated, Indonesia’s 65. Stuart Hall, ‘‘On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall,’’ edited by Lawrence Grossberg, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1996), 131–50.

187

*

the economy of appearances

economy precipitously collapsed; the miracle nation was discredited as a site for investment, and the articulation fell apart. Afterward, analysts scrambled to describe the difference between good and bad investments. They recognized that the Busang saga had contributed in a small way to the Indonesian crash. But they ignored or refused its allegorical quality: Bre-X offered a dramatic rendition of the promises and perils of the economic miracle attributed, in Indonesia and beyond, to globalization.66 As the century turns, the field of anthropology has taken on the challenge of freeing critical imaginations from the specter of neoliberal conquest—singular, universal, global. Attention to contingency and articulation can help us describe both the cultural specificity and the fragility of capitalist—and globalist—success stories. In this shifting heterogeneity there are new sources of hope, and, of course, new nightmares. 66. Other Bre-X allegories have been suggested—for example, that greed blinds everyone’s eyes (Goold and Willis, ‘‘The Bre-X Fraud,’’ 267), or that the international flow of money means business must deal with ‘‘exotic and troublesome regimes’’ (Francis, Bre-X: The Inside Story, 232). Outside of Canada, the allegorical reading arose that this was just the way of Canadian business, where stock exchanges are a ‘‘regulatory Wild West’’ (quotation attributed to the U.S. mass media in Bondan Winarno, Bre-X: Sebungkah emas di kaki pelangi, 208). My reading refuses the distinction between the seeing and the blind to point to the money being made even in a scam. I also emphasize the exotic and troublesome nature of capitalism itself— both in and beyond Canada and Indonesia.

188

*

anna tsing

A Sweet Lullaby for World Music Steven Feld

To begin, the music globalization commonplaces that are most broadly circulating in Western intellectual discourse as actualities or immediate predictions at the end of the twentieth century: 1. Music’s deep connection to social identities has been distinctively intensified by globalization. This intensification is due to the ways cultural separation and social exchange are mutually accelerated by transnational flows of technology, media, and popular culture. The result is that musical identities and styles are more visibly transient, more audibly in states of constant fission and fusion than ever before. 2. Our era is increasingly dominated by fantasies and realizations of sonic virtuality. Not only does contemporary technology make all musical worlds actually or potentially transportable and hearable in all others, but this transportability is something fewer and fewer people take in any way to be remarkable. As sonic virtuality is increasingly naturalized, everyone’s musical world will be felt and experienced as both more definite and more vague, specific yet blurred, particular but general, in place and in motion. 3. It has taken only one hundred years for sound recording technoloThanks to Afunakwa, Deep Forest, and Jan Garbarek for the unending mix of celebration and anxiety in their recordings of Rorogwela; to Marit Lie, Odd Are Berkaak, and Hugo Zemp for their friendship, comments, and provision of documents; to Arjun Appadurai, Veit Erlmann, Lisa Henderson, Alison Leitch, David Samuels, Tim Taylor, and Public Culture’s readers for suggestions; and to Spring 1999 colloquia audiences at Mt. Holyoke College, Amherst College, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Wesleyan University. As I drafted this essay, my grandmother, Anna Ross Feld, died halfway through her 102nd year. I dedicate this to her, remembering how she initiated me into my own music world with ‘‘Rozinkes mit Mandlen,’’ a very sweet Yiddish lullaby.

gies to amplify sonic exchange to a point that overwhelms prior and contiguous histories of travel, migration, contact, colonization, diaspora, and dispersal. It is therefore the recorded form, as it circulates commercially, that defines the authenticity of music globalization. The hero and villain of this situation, the music industry, has triumphed through continuous vertical and horizontal merger and consolidation. By aligning technologies of recording and reproduction with the dissemination capacities of other entertainment and publication media, the industry has accomplished the key capitalist goal of unending marketplace expansion. 4. Musical globalization is experienced and narrated as equally celebratory and contentious because everyone can hear equally omnipresent signs of augmented and diminished musical diversity. Tensions around the meanings of sonic heterogeneity and homogeneity precisely parallel other tensions that characterize global processes of separation and mixing, with an emphasis on stylistic genericization, hybridization, and revitalization. So, like everything else called globalization these days, this version is clearly about increasingly complicated pluralities, uneven experiences, and consolidated powers. But is there anything distinctive about how this is happening in the world of music? One way to answer is by denaturalizing the now ubiquitous phrase world music, today’s dominant signifier of a triumphant industrialization of global sonic representation. Until little more than a decade ago this phrase was considerably more obscure. How did it become so thoroughly and rapidly naturalized in public spheres? How has it participated in ways we have come to imagine, interpret, or contest the notion of globalization? How might a sketch genealogy of world music help make more critically visible the ways a modernity is tensely mirrored in the kinds of commonplaces with which I began? world music

Circulated first by academics in the early 1960s to celebrate and promote the study of musical diversity, the phrase world music began largely as a benign and hopeful term. In those days, nostalgically remembered by many for their innocence and optimism, the phrase world music 190

*

steven feld

had a clear populist ring. It was a friendly phrase, a less cumbersome alternative to ethnomusicology, the more strikingly academic term that emerged in the mid-1950s to refer to the study of non-Western musics and musics of ethnic minorities. Like ethnomusicology, world music had an academically liberal mission, to oppose the dominant tendency of music institutions and publics to assume the synonymy of music with Western European art music. And in practical terms, the world music idea was meant to have a pluralizing effect on Western conservatories, by promoting the hiring of non-Western performers and the study of non-Western performance practices and repertories. Whatever the success of these aims, the terminological dualism that distinguished world music from music helped reproduce a tense division in the academy, where musics understood as non-Western or ethnically other continued to be routinely partitioned from those of the West. The binary reproduced by the world music concept thus participated in reinscribing the separation of musicology, constructed as the historical and analytic study of Western European art musics, from ethnomusicology, constructed by default as the cultural and contextual study of musics of non-Europeans, European peasants, and marginalized ethnic or racial minorities. The relationship of the colonizing and the colonized thus remained generally intact in distinguishing music from world music. This musicology/ethnomusicology split reproduced the disciplinary divide so common in the academy, where unmarked ‘‘-ologies’’ announced studies of normative Western subjects, and ‘‘ethno-’’ fields were created to accommodate the West’s ethnic others. Even if little of this was terribly contentious in the academy of the 1960s and 1970s, it is nonetheless remarkable that the valorized labels ethnomusicology and world music survive with so little challenge at century’s end. The obvious question remains: In whose interests and in what kind of academy must ethno and world remain distinct from a discipline of music, a discipline where all practices, histories, and identities could assert equal claims to value, study, and performance? Interestingly, the situation would have been little different had world music been more bluntly termed third world music. And outside of the academy, in the world of commerce, that is exactly what happened. For even though commercial recordings were increasingly made in every world location from the beginning of this century, following the invention of the phonograph, the development of a highly visible commercial 191

*

lull aby for world music

documentary music recording industry solidified considerably later, in the 1950s and 1960s. This took place when the phrase third world made new marketing sense of the diverse set of previous categories loosely conjoining academic and commercial enterprise, namely, recordings variously labeled and sold as primitive, exotic, tribal, ethnic, folk, traditional, or international. If these recordings had much in common it was often their politics of representation. They were frequently depictions of a world where the audibility of intercultural influences was mixed down or muted. Academics were particularly complicit with commerce here, becoming guarantors of a musical authenticity meant equally to signify authoritative documentary realism and cultural uniqueness. Ironically it was the turbulence of independence movements, anticolonial demonstrations, and the powerful nationalist struggles of the late 1950s and early 1960s in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that fueled this marketplace creation of and commercial desire for authentic (and often nostalgic) musical elsewheres. Soundprints of those political struggles would not be widely hearable on popular recordings or celebrated in the commercial music marketplace for their own stunningly powerful authenticity for another decade. And complexly intercultural musics, like the ones indexing histories of motion in and through numerous cities and multiethnic or trade regions, were likewise more commercially muffled, as if waiting for the label international to be market tested for multiculturalist, migrant, and middle-class ethnic buyers. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the rise of token forms of musical pluralism through the academic proliferation of ethnomusicology courses and their world music shadow versions. But this was in many ways overwhelmed in the 1980s by the rise of popular music studies, whose international prominence was quickly marked by the emergence of a professional journal (Popular Music in 1981) and society (IASPM, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, also 1981) and a succession of influential theoretical texts (for example, Frith 1983; Chambers 1985; Middleton 1990; Shepherd 1991; McClary 1991). Even though much of the early emphasis was on studying Western popular musical forms, particularly rock music, popular music studies’ concern to theorize the global dominance of mediated musics in the twentieth century signaled to ethnomusicology that its uncritical naturalization of ‘‘authentic traditions’’ was in trouble. Increasingly, ethnomusi192

*

steven feld

cology incorporated insights from popular music studies to effect a shift from studying bounded and discrete musical worlds to ones created out of contact histories and colonial legacies, out of diaspora and hybridity, out of migration, urbanization, and mass media. Reflecting on this moment in an introduction to a collection of early IASPM conference papers, Simon Frith (1989, 5) writes: ‘‘Perhaps it is not a coincidence that IASPM has grown as an academic organization just as ‘world music,’ the sounds of countries other than North America or Western Europe, has begun to be recorded, packaged, and sold as a successful new pop genre.’’ This commercial potential of world music began developing rapidly in the 1980s, as did the discursive shift in the term from academic designation to distinct marketing category. Reprising an earlier trend, signaled commercially in the promotional relationship of the Beatles to Ravi Shankar, pop star collaboration and curation became the central world music marketplace signifier for the mid-1980s. This was made possible by the ability of Western pop music elite and their record companies to finance artistic forays into a world that would quickly come to be experienced as geographically expansive and aesthetically familiar. The key examples were Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986) with South African musicians, and David Byrne’s Rei Momo (1989) with Latin musicians. Academics greeted these productions with critical inquiries into how they mixed pleasure and imperiousness (for example, Feld 1988; Hamm 1989; Goodwin and Gore 1990; Meintjes 1990; Lipsitz 1994), and popular culture itself threw an occasional ironic glance at Simon’s and Byrne’s adventures, for example in Drew Friedman’s cartoon (fig. 1), which dresses their curatorial voyages in colonial safari gear. Into and through the 1990s, pop star curation continued to lead the marketplace expansion of world music. But in each case distinct models of the inspiration and collaboration mix also emerged, revealing more of the political and aesthetic possibilities for promoting both artistic equity and wealth distribution. The key examples were Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD (World of Music and Dance) festivals and Real World label, and his collaboration with artists as diverse as Youssou N’Dour and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Mickey Hart’s World Series on the Rykodisc label, his projects with Tibetan monks and African and Indian percussionists, and his Endangered Musics Project in collaboration with the U.S. Library of Congress; Ry Cooder’s collaborations with Hawaiian, 193

*

lull aby for world music

Figure 1. The curator’s adventure of discovery. Reproduced with permission of Lawrence Rose for Spy Magazine.

Mexican American, African, and Indian guitarists and his promotion of Cuban music and musicians; Henry Kaiser and David Lindley’s Madagascar collaborations and promotions; and David Bridie’s Not Drowning, Waving collaboration with musicians from Papua New Guinea and his productions of Aboriginal, Islander, and Melanesian musicians like Archie Roach, Christine Anu, and George Telek. But, significantly, the 1990s music industry was no longer dependent on pop stars to sell the world; the marketplace success of world music was building more on rapid product expansion and the promotional support of both the recording and aligned entertainment industries. In 1990 Billboard magazine reinvented world music as a sales tracking category and began charting its commercial impact. In 1991, the American National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences invented a world music Grammy award category out of its former ‘‘ethnic and traditional’’ one. The magazine Rhythm Music: Global Sounds and Ideas started at the same time, followed by World Music in the mid-1990s, and, in 1999, Songlines. Additionally, world music news and review sections spread through numerous consumer recording, entertainment, and audio technology magazines over the decade. The same pattern emerged with listener guides. The Virgin Directory of World Music (Sweeney 1991) appeared in 1991, followed by World Beat (Spencer 1992) the next year. By 1994 there was an almost seven194

*

steven feld

hundred-page World Music: The Rough Guide (Broughton et al. 1994); its popularity led to an expanded two-volume second edition in 1999 and 2000. Even for those seeking something more pocket-sized, Billboard’s world music pocket guide manages to include the top-selling nine hundred CDs by the top-selling one hundred and fifty artists (Blumenthal 1998). World music airplay proliferated likewise in the 1990s and, with tremendous record industry and fan support, expanded into new venues, like airline world music channels, video and television series, and thousands of Internet Web sites. The 1990s also brought a development of stores, mail-order catalogs, and Web sites either merchandising world music or devoting special sections to it. Upon purchase of world music products, one could become the recipient of regular e-mail ‘‘infotisements,’’ best-seller lists, critic’s hot picks, downloadable samples, and other promotional fare. Likewise there was a proliferation of recording labels devoted to world music and even distinct marketing plans specifically devoted to the genre—for example, the Putamayo compilations, now ubiquitous in Starbucks and other chains (Zwerin 1993). So if the 1990s created a world of consumers increasingly familiar with musical groups as diverse in history, region, and style as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and The Mysterious Bulgarian Voices, or The Chieftans and Zap Mama, or Carlos Nakai and The Gipsy Kings, or Apache Indian and Yothu Yindi, or Ofra Haza and Manu Dibango, it was due to a major reconfiguration of how the musical globe was being curated, recorded, marketed, advertised, and promoted. World music was no longer dominated by academic documentation and promotion of traditions. Rather, the phrase swept through the public sphere first and foremost signifying a global industry, one focused on marketing danceable ethnicity and exotic alterity on the world pleasure and commodity map. By century’s end, world music had come to signify ‘‘a small world with a huge number of possibilities: sonic excursions as close as a CD player,’’ in the memorable phrasing of the New York Times’ ‘‘Pop View’’ columnist Jon Pareles (1999, E1). anxiety and celebration

That any and every hybrid or traditional style could so successfully be lumped together by the single market label world music signified 195

*

lull aby for world music

the commercial triumph of global musical industrialization (Chanan 1995). But the same process signified something more critical to scholars in ethnomusicology and cultural studies of music, namely, the relative ease with which the music industry could, in Jocelyne’s Guilbault’s (1993, 40) phrase, ‘‘banalize difference.’’ Correspondingly, the first decade of academic investigation of the making of world music focuses on how difference has fared in this world music industry (for example, Erlmann 1993, 1996a, 1996b; Feld 1988, 1994, 1996; Garofalo 1993; Goodwin and Gore 1990; Guilbault 1993, 1997; Hayward 1998; Lipsitz 1994; Mitchell 1996; Neuenfeldt 1997; Sharma, Hutnyk, and Sharma 1996; Taylor 1997). These works ask how musical difference has been represented, exalted, and fetishized; how its market shares have risen and fallen, where they have been depreciated and mortgaged; how they have been traded, merged, and cashed out. These stories first and foremost are about the uneven rewards, the unsettling representations, and the complexly entangled desires that lie underneath the commercial rhetoric of global connection, that is, the rhetoric of ‘‘free’’ flow and ‘‘greater’’ access. They present stories of how music’s forms of local, regional, and social distinction are more and more tensely poised, living the contradictions encountered through embracing and resisting dominant hegemonic trends in the global popular music industry. Witnessing and chronicling these stories has produced a new discourse on authenticity, a discourse forged out of narratives equally anxious and celebratory about the world—and the music—of world music. Anxious narratives sometimes start from the suspicion that capitalist concentration and competition in the recording industry is always productive of a lesser artistry, a more commercial, diluted, and sellable version of a world once more ‘‘pure,’’ ‘‘real,’’ or less commodified. This suspicion fuels a kind of policing of the locations of musical authenticity and traditions. It questions whether world music does more to incite or erase musical diversity, asking why and how musical loss is countered by the proliferation of new musics. In response, celebratory narratives counter these anxieties by stressing the reappropriation of Western pop, emphasizing fusion forms as rejections of bounded, fixed, or essentialized identities. That is, celebratory narratives of world music often focus on the production of hybrid musics. They place a positive emphasis on fluid identities, sometimes 196

*

steven feld

edging toward romantic equations of hybridity with overt resistance. Celebratory narratives tend toward hopeful scenarios for cultural and financial equity in the entertainment industries. Here the designation global can replace the previous label international as a positive valence term for modern practices and institutions. This can have the effect of downplaying hegemonic managerial and capital relations in the music industry, focusing instead on the ways larger segments of the world of music now get somewhat larger returns in financial and cultural capital to match their greater visibility. Celebratory narratives of world music tend to normalize and naturalize globalization, not unlike ways ‘‘modernization’’ narratives once naturalized other grand and sweeping currents that transformed and refigured intercultural histories. As with these predecessors addressing the questions of what has been brought and what has been taken, celebratory narratives stress the costs to ‘‘tradition’’ as rather surface ones, ones that will, in the larger sweep of things, be overcome by creativity, invention, and resilience. ‘‘Sure, the world’s developing and no tradition will stay the same,’’ writes philosopher-musician David Rothenberg in a Chronicle of Higher Education commentary on music’s place in college courses about technology and global development. ‘‘But,’’ he continues, ‘‘diverse musical strains need not fade away into one global monotone. If there is such a thing as development, it will include a joyful and chaotic mix of many sounds, a music that plays on while no one knows how it’s going to end’’ (1998, B8). Celebratory narratives then imagine a natural tenacity of the past resounding in possibilities for an amplified present, one that Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre characterize in their celebratory book AfroPop! as an ‘‘endlessly creative conversation’’ between ‘‘local roots and international pop culture’’ (1995, vii). On the anxious side we read narratives that insist on the complicity of world music in commodifying ethnicity, locating it in the ‘‘finanscapes’’ and ‘‘mediascapes’’ of global popular culture (Appadurai 1996) and the ‘‘noise’’ or ‘‘channelized violence’’ of music’s industrial economy (Attali 1985). Anxious narratives see little possibility for resisting commodifications of ethnicity and focus, instead, on understanding the hegemonic location they occupy within globalization practices and institutions. In Veit Erlmann’s (1993, 130) phrasing: ‘‘The global musical pastiche is more an attempt at coating the sounds of the fully commodified present 197

*

lull aby for world music

with the patina of use value in some other time and place.’’ In particular, it is the production and dissemination of world music in cosmopolitan and metropolitan centers that clearly underscores the character of the exotic labor it imports and sells. Ashwani Sharma (1996, 22) locates it this way in Dis-Orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music, an exemplary collection of anxious essays: ‘‘instances of ‘musical and cultural conversation’ validated under the sign of World Music too easily mask the exploitative labour relationship of the very powerful transnational corporations with the ‘Third World’ musicians, let alone with those of the Third World with only their photogenic poverty to sell.’’ At the same time, anxious narratives also chronicle indigenization as a response to globalization, a response that is resistant either to trends in cultural imperialism or to increased cultural homogeneity. Likewise, anxious narratives also insist on world music’s abilities to reassert place and locale against globalization. Indeed, in some anxious narratives, the very term global comes to be synonymous with displaced. In other words, displacement metaphorizes globalization as a simultaneity of alienation and dispersal. Anxious narratives then want to discover a cost of globalization, want to calculate the kinds of loss and diminution of musical heterogeneity that proceed from its practices. At the same time anxious narratives want to claim the potential and hope that every loss opens up for resistance, for reassertion, for reclamation, for response. The broad picture then, is that today’s world music, like globalization discourse more generally, is equally routed through the public sphere via tropes of anxiety and celebration. While sometimes quite distinct, these narrative positions on anxiety and celebration seem increasingly more intertwined, seamlessly indexing the status of world music as a tensely modern category. Where anxious and celebratory narratives typically merge is in the space of a guarded optimism for musical futures. Recognizing how, in a remarkably short time, the diversity of world music—its promise—has come to be consistently suspended in the specter of one world music—its antithesis—the anxious and celebratory both embrace musical plurality as a dialectical necessity in a world where world music circulation is increasingly dominated by predictable musical commodities. 198

*

steven feld

Figure 2. The underlying persistence of primitivism. © Willi Kerr. The Works, London.

sweet lull aby

I shift now from world music as a discourse to world music as a contact zone of activities and representations. I particularly want to explore some of the experiential effects of world music, asking how its routes, circuits, and traffic—the now familiar motional and transport metaphors of transnational flow—involve intersubjective clashes for musicians, recordists, industry players, journalists, and academics. The particular case I review is one that begins with the unabashed reproduction of primitivism in world music. This is a theme that has already produced considerable critical commentary, yet its persistence continues to expose significant issues in understanding musical power and difference. The question I’ll pose concerns how the notion of being ‘‘into world music’’ in Willi Kerr’s recent postcard (fig. 2) has something to do with the reproduction of primitivist representation and desire. In 1973 the UNESCO Musical Sources collection released an LP titled Solomon Islands: Fateleka and Baegu Music from Malaita, recorded in 1969 and 1970 by Hugo Zemp of the Ethnomusicology Department of the Musée de l’Homme and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. The LP was rereleased as a CD in 1990, in the reorganized UNESCO series Musics and Musicians of the World, distributed by Auvidis. Among the selections on the LP and CD is a Baegu lullaby from Northern Malaita. Titled ‘‘Rorogwela,’’ it is an unaccompanied vocal 199

*

lull aby for world music

sung by a woman named Afunakwa. While this recording is well known to ethnomusicologists of the Pacific Islands, it received little airplay, limited distribution, and minimal sales. All of this changed in 1992 when ‘‘Rorogwela’’ began a career as a popular hit song in the world music marketplace. This took place when Zemp’s recording of Afunakwa was digitally sampled by Eric Moquet and Michel Sanchez for Deep Forest, a CD produced by Dan Lacksman for Celine Music and marketed by 550 Music/Epic, a division of Sony Music. The song appeared under the title ‘‘Sweet Lullaby’’ and includes Afunakwa’s voice singing ‘‘Rorogwela’’ to a dance beat provided by a drum machine. The recording also includes synthesizer accompaniments and interludes of digital samples from Central African forest water-splashing games and vocal yodels. On the first chorus Afunakwa’s voice is solo; on the second chorus she is backed by digital voice multiplication and a studio chorus, creating a dense ‘‘We Are the World’’ vocal effect; on the third chorus Afunakwa’s voice disappears into the linguistic indistinction of an ensemble singing her lullaby. Through this progression one hears how what was once distinctly Afunakwa’s world is now up for a new sharing, becoming, ultimately, a world where her voice is no longer necessary to her imagined presence. In the liner notes to Boheme, their 1995 Grammy award–winning CD, Deep Forest refer to the sampling of ‘‘native melodies’’ as the use of ‘‘raw material, an opportunity to cross and blend.’’ Of their relation to these ‘‘native melodies’’ on their first recording, their liner notes say: ‘‘Deep Forest is the respect of this tradition which humanity should cherish as a treasure which marries world harmony, a harmony often compromised today. That’s why the musical creation of Deep Forest has received the support of UNESCO and of two musicologists, Hugo Zempe [sic] and Shima [sic] Aron [sic], who collected the original documents.’’ The second reference here is to Simha Arom, another CNRS ethnomusicologist, whose recordings of Central African pygmy music are sampled on many of Deep Forest’s tracks. In fact much of the music on Deep Forest involves pygmy references, and the theme of the African rain forest and its peoples is announced strongly in the CD’s music and packaging. Indeed, the introductory song, also titled ‘‘Deep Forest,’’ begins with a very deep and resonant voice that announces (in English): ‘‘Somewhere deep in the jungle are living some little men and women. They are your past. Maybe they are your future.’’ 200

*

steven feld

Figure 3. The ‘‘maybe . . . your future’’ of primitive and spiritual modernism

This particular mix of respectful reverence and primitivist caricature creates the celebratory ambience of Deep Forest, and it struck a financially responsive chord. The recording has attracted a huge audience worldwide, selling approximately four million copies and appearing in several editions and remixes. Several songs, including ‘‘Sweet Lullaby,’’ appeared in video form; several, again including ‘‘Sweet Lullaby,’’ were also licensed as background music for TV commercials by, among others, Neutrogena, Coca-Cola, Porsche, Sony, and The Body Shop (fig. 3). In 1996 Hugo Zemp wrote an article in the Yearbook for Traditional Music, ethnomusicology’s main international journal; his piece was one of four on the theme of ethnomusicology and the politics of global sound recording (Zemp 1996; Feld 1996; Mills 1996; Seeger 1996). In this article Zemp (1996, 44–49) spoke out about his presumed ‘‘support’’ for Deep Forest—indeed, he sharply challenged the legal and moral circumstances of UNESCO’s contractual relationship to the recording. His protest contains the following key narrative points: Noriko Aikawa, UNESCO’s Chief of Cultural Heritage, from the division in charge of their recording series, contacted Zemp in 1992 to seek his permission to license to Deep Forest samples from a UNESCO recording he had made in West Africa. Zemp was told that Deep Forest wished to sample several UNESCO recordings for a project in honor of Earth Day; UNESCO was willing to grant license for the samples as long as Zemp and the other recordists agreed, and if the source musicians and recordings were properly credited. Zemp listened to a Deep Forest 201

*

lull aby for world music

Figures 4 and 5. Rorogwela’s ethnomusicological aura

extract over the phone and refused to give his permission; in opposition he encouraged Aikawa and UNESCO to support projects that more directly benefit indigenous musics and musicians. Sometime later Francis Bebey called Zemp, urging him to reconsider his refusal. Of this episode Zemp (1996, 45) writes: ‘‘Since Bebey, a well known African composer and musician (who wrote also a book on traditional African music), gave his personal support to the matter, I reconsidered my point of view, and out of respect to him, I said O.K. on the telephone to him. After all, I thought, it was for a justifiable aim: preserving and protecting tropical rain forests in the world.’’ Zemp’s next encounter with the recording was unrelated. After Deep Forest was released, Le Chant du Monde, the publisher of the ethnomusicological record series Zemp directs at the Musée de l’Homme, informed him that Deep Forest had, without license, sampled material from an African recording in the museum series. Le Chant du Monde pursued the case, eventually winning an out-of-court financial settlement from Celine Music. Only after this episode, plus press reports of the CD’s mounting marketplace success and two letters from overseas colleagues inquiring about his advertised complicity in Deep Forest, did Zemp actually receive and listen to a copy of the CD. While he heard no samples taken from his West African UNESCO recording, he was quite surprised by the sampling of Afunakwa’s ‘‘Rorogwela’’ for ‘‘Sweet Lullaby.’’ He had never been asked for his consent to use any material from his Solomon Islands recording (figs. 4 and 5). Then, moved by hearing ‘‘Sweet Lul202

*

steven feld

laby’’ as background music for a shampoo commercial on French TV, Zemp requested meetings with both Francis Bebey and Noriko Aikawa. Francis Bebey confirmed that he had been enlisted by the producer at Celine Music to persuade Zemp to reconsider. Bebey’s subsequent letter to Celine Music, quoted by Zemp (1996, 47), put it this way: ‘‘Mr. Zemp, after making sure that I really believed in the value of using his recordings in the context of a modern musical creation as yours, was remarkably courteous and understanding. At the end of our telephone conversation, he consented to let you use forty seconds of music taken from his disc . . . I hope that this allows you to finish your project for The Day of the Earth successfully.’’ Based on this letter and their meeting Zemp decided that Celine Music had misled Bebey to believe that the recording was a limited release for a noncommercial purpose, comparable to other UNESCO recordings. In his meeting with Noriko Aikawa, Zemp reviewed three items in the UNESCO correspondence file. First was Aikawa’s letter to Auvidis (the company that holds licensing rights on UNESCO’s behalf ) indicating that Zemp had denied permission for his West African recording to be sampled. Second, there was a letter from Celine Music to Auvidis asking for confirmation that Zemp had reconsidered. Finally, there was a subsequent letter from Auvidis to Aikawa, asking UNESCO to confirm the authorization and to state whether rights should be given freely or to specify the required payment. What Zemp then discovered was that Aikawa never answered the letter from Auvidis, and that Auvidis never answered the contingent letter from Celine Music. In other words, Zemp discovered that UNESCO authorized no sampling of his recordings to Auvidis or to Celine Music. This would indicate that Celine Music and Deep Forest acted solely on the basis of Francis Bebey’s letter, treating it as a legally binding document. None of this addressed why UNESCO contacted Zemp only about his West African recording and not the Solomon Islands one. Zemp (1996, 48–49) wrote to Deep Forest in July 1996, denouncing their usurpation of his name and requesting compensation to the Baegu community for the use of ‘‘Rorogwela.’’ They answered two months later, insisting that their project had the full authorization of Auvidis (Sanchez and Mouquet 1996). But in the meantime Zemp had already received a contrary letter, from Auvidis’s director, Louis Bricard, asserting that no such permission had ever been authorized. Bricard’s let203

*

lull aby for world music

ter also confirms that Celine Music’s lawyer had, in February 1992, requested authorizations for sampling from UNESCO discs, including the ones Zemp recorded in West Africa and the Solomon Islands. But he indicated that Auvidis, hearing from UNESCO of Zemp’s initial refusal, signed no agreement and informed Celine Music’s lawyer of the impasse in March 1992 (Bricard 1996). Faced with reconciling Deep Forest’s claim that their project had legal license, and Auvidis’s claim that no such authorization was signed, Zemp wrote a postscript to his Yearbook for Traditional Music article, concluding: ‘‘somebody (Deep Forest or Auvidis) is lying.’’ This statement was never printed. It was cut by the journal’s editor, who informed Zemp that neither the journal nor its parent academic organization, the International Council for Traditional Music (both, ironically, sponsored by UNESCO), could afford the risk of possible legal action from either the combination of Deep Forest, Celine Music, and Sony, or from UNESCO and Auvidis. In the three years since there has been no other resolution. Zemp’s further requests for clarification from all parties have gone largely unanswered. For their part, Deep Forest has successfully used the music press to present themselves as guardians of respect; when pressed on questions of sampling ethics they have made themselves out as would-be victims of academic purists (for example, Goldman 1995; Prior 1996). pygmy (sic) lull aby

Aside from Zemp’s chilling article, something else important happened to Afunakwa’s lullaby in 1996. An acoustic and instrumental adaptation of ‘‘Rorogwela’’ was recorded by Jan Garbarek, a Norwegian saxophonist, on his ECM CD titled Visible World. Garbarek didn’t encounter ‘‘Rorogwela’’ though Zemp’s UNESCO recording but rather through Deep Forest. Since Deep Forest gave no source for ‘‘Sweet Lullaby,’’ Garbarek assumed that the song originated in Central Africa, at the site of many of the CD’s sources. So on Visible World his adaptation is titled ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby,’’ and the liner notes credit the composition as ‘‘an African traditional melody, arranged by Jan Garbarek.’’ On Deep Forest, the use of synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines take ‘‘Rorogwela’’ from ethnomusicological aura (the primitive ‘‘your past’’) to global forest groove (the modernist ‘‘maybe . . . your 204

*

steven feld

Figure 6. Ethno-techno sound clock as acoustic and spiritual soundscape

future’’). But on Visible World this ethno-techno sound clock is transformed into an acoustic and spiritual soundscape. With stark reverb, new age arpeggios, and suggestion of plagal cadence, Garbarek harmonizes Afunakwa’s ‘‘Rorogwela’’ to the modal style of Protestant hymnody and sweetly delivers the melody on soprano saxophone in the romantic ‘‘smooth jazz’’ radio format style associated with Kenny G (fig. 6). This prayer-like ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ was on my mind when I went to a music globalization seminar in Norway in June 1998 to discuss my research on ‘‘pygmy pop,’’ the history of jazz, rock, and avant-garde appropriations and extensions of musics from Central Africa’s rain forest peoples (Feld 1996). While not Africa-derived, Garbarek’s ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ nonetheless bore an interesting relationship to trends in the genre. It seemed an example of the kind of second-generation schizophonic mimesis that was becoming popular in the softer, kinder, and gentler (also often ethnically whiter) mid- to late-1990s world music scene. Where global pop’s first generation of sampled electronic versions of indigenous musics was becoming old news, the marketplace was now greeting many examples of refashioned acoustic versions of the same or similar material, following on the tremendous commercial success of ‘‘unplugged’’ recordings, a trend MTV initiated for rock in 1989. One of the seminar participants was Marit Lie of Norway’s NRK radio. Having presented programs of Garbarek’s music, she volunteered to contact him about the ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ story. When she did Garbarek acknowledged Deep Forest’s ‘‘Sweet Lullaby’’ as his source and 205

*

lull aby for world music

registered surprise and some dismay about his miscredit. But, comparing himself to Edvard Grieg, Garbarek claimed folk music to be an important source of inspiration for him and not a scholarly preoccupation, where attention to source origins might matter more. He told her that he could not do anything about the printed attribution on Visible World, but that he would correct the title if he performed the song in concert. While Garbarek’s response indicated concern, it didn’t address the underlying legal and financial relationship, or rather lack of it, that he and ECM have to the original composer and performer. By law, of course, Garbarek and ECM owe nothing to the Baegu community and to Afunakwa. The historical accident that makes this possible is that her ‘‘Rorogwela’’ was created within and circulates through what is called oral tradition. Academically that means that her song typically circulates in an aural and oral economy, without an underlying written or notated form. Legally, however, the term oral tradition can easily be manipulated, from signifying that which is vocally communal to signifying that which belongs to no one in particular. When that happens, the notion of oral tradition can mask both the existence of local canons of ownership and the existence of local consequences for taking without asking. Consequently, in the hands of a Western music lawyer, oral tradition is a concept that might more easily protect those who wish to cheaply acquire indigenous cultural property, and rather less to protect indigenous cultural property or its originators. The phrase arranged by (as in ‘‘arranged by Jan Garbarek’’) further naturalizes this power relationship, separating and distancing the creative work of musicians and recording companies from the ‘‘traditions’’ of their muses (on the moral and legal complexities of these matters, see Frith 1993; Mills 1996; Seeger 1992; Ziff and Rao 1998). The local Norwegian dimension of this minor world music saga would have ended there, save for the fact that it played out just as ECM was about to release a major Garbarek double CD project, titled Rites. Indeed, Rites includes a booklet documenting the acclaimed relationship between Garbarek and ECM. Over the twenty-eight-year period from 1970–98 Garbarek was featured as a leader on twenty-three ECM recordings and as a participant on another twenty-seven. Rites both celebrates and extends this history, again indicating how Garbarek’s compositions and performances link and blur the genres usually called jazz, classical, and folk. They involve numerous crossings of acoustic 206

*

steven feld

and electronic, improvised and written, vocal and instrumental, art and popular, Western European and non–Western European musical styles. Garbarek’s ECM recordings feature a veritable who’s who of global contemporary jazz, indigenous, and avant-pop worlds. He has also worked with distinguished European art orchestras, string and brass groups, and vocalists—for example, with the medieval-music specialist Hilliard Ensemble, collaborating on Officium, one of ECM’s best-selling recordings (Griffiths 1999). So just when, or maybe just because, Garbarek’s music and accomplishments were, with the release of Rites, once again news in the Norwegian music world, one of Marit Lie’s NRK colleagues seemed particularly interested that someone might be asking a few atypical questions about Garbarek’s repertory. NRK’s Per Kristian Olsen then called me to discuss the ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ story, and I suggested that he also contact Hugo Zemp. These interviews were edited into a short broadcast on NRK’s 15 September edition of Kulturnytt (Culture News). In the opening to the program Per Kristian Olsen indicates that Garbarek has been criticized for his use of indigenous music on Visible World. He then plays some of Garbarek’s ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby,’’ misidentifying the song’s source as the Samoa (not Solomon) Islands. Olsen says that Deep Forest and Garbarek ‘‘earned millions’’ from the song but that the recordist and performer didn’t get ‘‘a penny.’’ My voice follows, and is translated, to say that Western copyright law is not comprehensive enough to equitably include indigenous cultures, creating a new kind of imperialism, one that musicians and record companies must engage rather than avoid. Olsen then says that Garbarek was interviewed by Kulturnytt and that he repudiated these notions. But, he says, Garbarek called an hour later to withdraw his interview, refusing further comment. Olsen then indicates that Zemp, who made the recording in Samoa (sic), is disillusioned by these events. The piece closes with Zemp’s voice (in English), addressing Garbarek: ‘‘So I would ask you, would you accept to correct this on the next reissue? Would you also accept to send part of the royalties you get from this record to the Solomon Islands, where it can be used for promotion and preservation of cultural heritage?’’ A few weeks later Marit Lie called me to say that Jan Garbarek was extremely upset by Per Kristian Olsen’s program. Indeed, Garbarek had written to the NRK accusing Olsen, Zemp, and me of lies that tarnished 207

*

lull aby for world music

his reputation. She said she would get me an audio copy of the radio program and generously offered to translate it. But before these arrived I received a surprise phone call, on 12 October, from Jan Garbarek. He wasted no time asking if I had branded him a thief to the NRK. He said that he did not hear me say this but that it was implied in the program’s introduction. I explained that my concern was not to attack him personally but to raise the issue of ownership inequities in intellectual and cultural property. He said he was relieved to hear that my concerns were structural and not specific to him. Nonetheless he said he wanted NRK to issue an apology because Per Kristian Olsen’s statements were misleading. He said that the program singled him out, giving listeners the impression that he hadn’t paid for songs he recorded. On this point Garbarek stressed, repeatedly, that he had indeed paid for ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ because in Norway, TONO, the national collecting agency, splits the revenues from songs attributed to oral tradition between the performer and a fund to promote ‘‘folk music.’’ TONO judges, on a percentage basis, what portion of a recorded song is a uniquely new arrangement and performance and what portion is the source material. In the case of ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ TONO considered 50 percent of the song to be Garbarek’s original work. From his point of view the 50 percent of withheld royalties (whether or not they went to the song’s original source) constituted compensation for the use of oral tradition material. After this call I sent Garbarek a letter reviewing my concerns, enclosing copies of the articles Zemp and I had written for the 1996 Yearbook for Traditional Music. Crossing with this in the mail, I was surprised to receive a gift of Rites, inscribed ‘‘I’m glad you didn’t say what NRK quoted!’’ Meanwhile, I continued to hear from Norway that Garbarek felt accused by NRK of not paying royalties. Arguing that he had handled all of his TONO obligations precisely as required, he insisted that his case against Kulturnytt be reviewed by the highest broadcasting review board. The review that followed upheld Kulturnytt’s integrity. The report stated that culture journalism in Norway was once typically less critical in style and that Kulturnytt’s current approach was welcome, although it could be accomplished with more accuracy. This comment was not a reference to Per Kristian Olsen’s confusion of Samoa with 208

*

steven feld

the Solomon Islands; rather it was a reference to the inaccurate statement that Garbarek was ‘‘earning millions from Third World musics.’’ The decision also stated some sympathy for Garbarek’s predicament, reminding the NRK that the effect of criticism may be hurtful, even if the content is technically correct. The matter didn’t end there. Unsatisfied by NRK’s response, Garbarek then asked the Norwegian Press Council, the highest journalism body in the country, to review the case, documenting his grievances in a 17 November letter of over 2,500 words. The Norwegian Press Council agreed to review the case, even though they more typically deal with social and political complaints involving censorship and free speech. First among Garbarek’s grievances was that NRK personalized the story. In this context he cited our phone conversation as evidence that Per Kristian Olsen had overstated my concerns. Then, insisting that he adequately paid through TONO for the use of any unoriginal material, he argued that he could hardly be held accountable for a prior error that was made by Deep Forest. He said that he was open to correcting the song title, if and when it was proven to him that he was in fact in error (thereby refusing to take NRK and its ‘‘experts’’ at their word). But most critically, Garbarek insisted that NRK’s program insinuated that he generally gave wrong information or ignored the ownership of indigenous property. In this way he said that NRK had manipulated the feelings of its listeners, making him into ‘‘the one who shot the Bambi.’’ In short, Garbarek built a lengthy and emotional case that he was the victim of zealous journalism founded on misinformation. The Norwegian Press Council was convinced by this appeal, indicating, in February 1999, that they sided with Garbarek and against the vindication of Kulturnytt by the prior broadcasting board review (Lie 1999). Of the many twists and turns of the ‘‘Rorogwela’’ variations, this Norwegian phase plays out in a distinctively national mediated space, focused around radio journalism and the stakes in critical discourse. As the events unfolded around Garbarek’s protests, anthropologist Odd Are Berkaak responded to their shape by seeing how the Norwegian media were staging a distinct nationalist drama. He read it as ‘‘a morality play where the central issue in the Royal Norwegian ethos is being threatened, that of being the Global Samaritan. Jan Garbarek is the national moral icon who is now falling from grace like the tragic heroes 209

*

lull aby for world music

of the melodrama. On next week’s episode of JanWatch: will he be thrown into the dungeon forever or will he be restored to the throne?’’ (Berkaak 1998). At the same time, from an engaged position in Norwegian music journalism, the irony of what transpired pleased Marit Lie. She felt that owing to Jan Garbarek’s high profile, the issue of copyright and ownership inequities for indigenous musics was thrust more substantially into the Norwegian public arena than ever before, writing, ‘‘If he was a nobody, there would never have been any discussion around it’’ (Lie 1998). Ultimately, it may be less significant that Garbarek prevailed with the Norwegian Press Council than that the resulting publicity moved UNESCO’s Norway branch to seek a meeting with Noriko Aikawa. whose master(’s) voice?

Much more could be detailed about these versions of ‘‘Rorogwela,’’ and the sonic, aesthetic, and political issues they raise. Much too could be added about why nobody knows whether ‘‘Sweet Lullaby’’ or ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ have had a hearing or response from Afunakwa or the Baegu community. But even this introductory accounting begins to make clear how companies, performers, recordists, organizations, and media can now find their identities embroiled in complex multilocal song histories. These histories can be reviewed as signs of anxious and celebratory contradictions in world music and as signs of globalization’s uneven naturalization. First, the world music story has something to say about power under globalization, specifically the fraught politics of the copy, as revealed by chains of schizophonic mimesis. In Mimesis and Alterity, Michael Taussig writes: ‘‘Once the mimetic has sprung into being, a terrifically ambiguous power is established; there is born the power to represent the world, yet that same power is a power to falsify, mask and pose. The two powers are inseparable’’ (1993, 42–43). Here those two inseparable powers are productive of the anxiety and celebration that links aura to authenticity, creativity to caricature, difference to dominance. Critically, the musicians who made ‘‘Sweet Lullaby’’ and ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ didn’t need to know the name Afunakwa, the name ‘‘Rorogwela,’’ or the song’s actual geographic location. From the initial standpoint of the sampler, Afunakwa is not a person but a sound; from the subsequent 210

*

steven feld

standpoint of the arranger that sound is a melody and not a distinct performance. Thus, when it comes to mimetic power, it is the detachability of their underlying acoustic material that takes precedence over hearing ‘‘Rorogwela,’’ ‘‘Sweet Lullaby,’’ and ‘‘Pygmy Lullaby’’ as the same song. These representational politics call out for more historical contextualization, which can in part be accomplished by juxtaposing today’s world music with a moment in its prehistory, one hundred years ago, at the close of the nineteenth century. Consider then John Comfort Fillmore, a pianist and pioneer field recordist of Native North America active at that time. In 1895 and 1899 he wrote articles in the Journal of American Folklore and American Anthropologist to argue that natural and universal acoustic laws underlie the latent harmonic logic of Native American vocal melodies. Accordingly, he produced transcriptions of early wax cylinder field recordings in the form of harmonized piano arrangements, and presented them as revelations of what American Indians really meant to sing, but couldn’t realize. This work initially suckered the most prominent ethnomusicologist (Frances Densmore) and anthropologist (Franz Boas) of the day, although both later repudiated Fillmore’s methods, recognizing them as reflective more of the romantic nationalism of his compositions (for example, Indian Fantasia Number One for Full Orchestra, 1890) than a scholarly inquiry into acoustic universalism. One hundred years later, Deep Forest take to their samplers, synthesizers, and drum machines. Listening to old recordings, they search for the natural rhythms; then, in virtual collaborations with the indigenes, they amplify the latent beat they hear inside difference. Listening to that amplification, Jan Garbarek hears yet more; arranging the inner harmonies, he suggests their underlying spirituality. These strains of ‘‘world music,’’ like their primitivist and romantic nationalist antecedents, then, are deeply about exploration, about the power and privilege to contact and know, to take away and use. That these blends and mixings are celebrated as liberatory and inspiring, that they unquestionably bring pleasure and stimulation to many, retells a story of the affinities of moderns and primitives. Like varieties of primitivism well chronicled in other domains (for example, Rubin 1984; Clifford 1988, 189–214; Torgovnick 1990; Barkan and Bush 1995), world music creates a voyage of discovery, a sonic experience of contact, an auditory deflowering that penetrates the harmony of difference. And like other sites of discovery, 211

*

lull aby for world music

this one provokes the same anxious question: Is world music a form of artistic humiliation, the price primitives pay for attracting the attention of moderns, for gaining entry into their world of representation? (On development and humiliation, see Sahlins 1992.) For recordists or ethnomusicologists, these power and representation themes can be productive of a different humiliation: complicity. The despair of seeing documentary projects transform from icons of musical diversity to ‘‘raw material’’ for industrialized neocolonialism surely marks the end of all ethnomusicological innocence. The lesson for researchers is that community trust, academic recognition, and institutional prestige mean little when you are up against international entertainment law, major record companies, the media and marketing world, music collecting agencies, and highly paid, highly protected pop stars. Here they are globalization, and you are a dinosaur. And your action on behalf of local ‘‘oral tradition’’ or ‘‘heritage’’ can become more of a struggle, not less, when your allies, like professional academic societies and their journals, or famous indigenous composer-performers, or even UNESCO, are revealed to be even weaker or more complicit in the whole affair. But these occasional pains of ethnomusicology seem vastly overwritten by the pleasures of musical participation, and that is still the world music location where celebration rules most. Musicians are having a great time, and they are very invested in reminding everyone that for them, world music means the joy of playing any kind of music, anywhere in the world, with anyone (live or virtual) they choose. The opportunities are numerous for crossing what were once physical and aesthetic boundaries. Industry has the ability to take big risks in technological and promotional support of those crossings, and musicians are eager to do the exploring, to be identified as voyagers. Audiences are happy; there is plenty to listen to, plenty to buy, plenty to dance to. The marketplace is flooded, with five or six times as many titles as ten years ago. For many consumers this overwhelming amount of product choice is imagined as some kind of sign that democracy prevails, that every voice can be heard, every style can be purchased, everything will be available to everybody. The desire to advertise a democratic vision of world music is central to its industrial success in the West. For example, the world music page in a recent HMV (His Master’s Voice) catalog circulated in my Sunday newspaper begins: ‘‘The best World Music 212

*

steven feld

reminds us of our global community. Great music knows no national boundaries. Much of this year’s list has elements of more than one influence with a celebration of sharing.’’ The advertisement of this democratic and liberal vision for world music embodies an idealism about free-flows, sharing, and choice. But it masks the reality that visibility in product choice is directly related to sales volume, profitability, and stardom. Successful musicians don’t just get ‘‘royalties,’’ they become ‘‘royalty,’’ the princes and princesses of an aesthetic and technological kingdom guarded by sales (Keil and Feld 1994, 321). How else could one read Deep Forest and Jan Garbarek presenting themselves as the victims in a history where they are guaranteed vastly disproportionate gain to their muses? The inability of pop music ‘‘royalty’’ to examine their privilege (Lipsitz 1994, 63), and their lack of reflexivity about how those being curated might see and hear it all quite differently, is a stunning act of narcissism for an industry so invested in a democratic image of collaboration. In the end, no matter how inspiring the musical creation, no matter how affirming its participatory dimension, the existence and success of world music returns to one of globalization’s basic economic clichés: the drive for more and more markets and market niches (Harvey 1989; Kumar 1995). In the cases here, we see how the worlds of small (UNESCO and Auvidis) and large (Sony) and major independent (ECM) music owners and distributors can come into unexpected interaction. We see how production can proceed from the acquisition of a faraway cheap inspiration and labor. We see how exotic Euromorphs can be marketed through newly layered tropes, like green enviroprimitivism, or spiritual new age avant-garde romanticism. We see how what is produced has a place in a larger industrial music zone of commodity intensification, in this case artistic encounters with indigeneity, as made over in popular Western styles. In all, we see how world music participates in shaping a kind of consumer-friendly multiculturalism, one that follows the market logic of expansion and consolidation. This is the place where a ‘‘sweet lullaby’’ might resonate most as a fitting musical trope for globalization’s capital project. Drifting off, the dream desires of technological and artistic elites are jolted by market cycles of agitated wakefulness. Then, blanketed in promotion, they are once more cradled and lulled on a firm mattress of stark inequities and padded mergers, and nurtured at the corporate breast. 213

*

lull aby for world music

works cited Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Attali, Jacques. 1985. Noise: The political economy of music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Barkan, Elazar, and Ronald Bush, eds. 1995. Prehistories of the future: The primitivist project and the culture of modernism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Barlow, Sean, and Banning Eyre. 1995. AfroPop! An illustrated guide to contemporary African music. Edison, N.J.: Chartwell Books. Berkaak, Odd Are. 1988. Conversation with author, 14 October. Blumenthal, Howard J. 1998. The world music CD listener’s guide. New York: Billboard Books. Bricard, Louis. 1996. Letter to Hugo Zemp, 10 October. Broughton, Simon, et al. 1994. World music: The rough guide. London: The Rough Guides/Penguin. Chambers, Iain. 1985. Urban rhythms: Pop music and popular culture. London: Macmillan. Chanan, Michael. 1995. Global corporations and ‘‘world music.’’ In Repeated takes: A short history of recording and its effects on music. New York: Verso. Clifford, James. 1988. The predicament of culture: Twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Erlmann, Veit. 1993. The politics and aesthetics of transnational musics. World of Music 35(2): 3–15. . 1996a. The aesthetics of the global imagination: Reflections on world music in the 1990s. Public Culture 8: 467–87. . 1996b. Nightsong: Performance, power and practice in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Feld, Steven. 1988. Notes on world beat. Public Culture 1: 31–37; rev. ed. in Keil and Feld 1994. . 1994. From schizophonia to schismogenesis: The discourses of world music and world beat. In Keil and Feld 1994. . 1996. pygmy POP: A genealogy of schizophonic mimesis. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 1–35. Fillmore, John Comfort. 1895. What do Indians mean to do when they sing, and how far do they succeed? Journal of American Folklore 8: 139–41. . 1899. The harmonic structure of Indian music. American Anthropologist 1: 297–318. Frith, Simon. 1983. Sound effects: Youth, leisure, and the politics of rock. London: Constable. , ed. 1989. World music, politics, and social change. Manchester: Manchester University Press. , ed. 1993. Music and copyright. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Garofalo, Reebe. 1993. Whose world, what beat: The transnational music industry, identity and cultural imperialism. World of Music 35(2): 16–32. 214

*

steven feld

Goldman, Erik. 1995. In depth with Deep Forest. Rhythm Music 4(8): 36–39, 53. Goodwin, Andrew, and Joe Gore. 1990. World beat and the cultural imperialism debate. Socialist Review 20(3): 63–80. Griffiths, Paul. 1999. When a saxophone can offer a prayer. New York Times, 23 March, E3. Guilbault, Jocelyne. 1993. On redefining the ‘‘local’’ through world music. World of Music 35(2): 33–47. . 1997. Interpreting world music: A challenge in theory and practice. Popular Music 16: 31–44. Hamm, Charles. 1989. Graceland revisited. Popular Music 8: 299–303. Harvey, David. 1989. The condition of postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hayward, Philip. 1998. Music at the borders: Not Drowning, Waving and their engagement with Papua New Guinean culture. London: John Libby. Keil, Charles, and Steven Feld. 1994. Commodified grooves. In Music grooves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kumar, Krishan. 1995. From post-industrial to post-modern society: New theories of the contemporary world. Cambridge: Blackwell. Lie, Marit. 1998. Conversation with author, 26 October. . 1999. Conversation with author, 9 February. Lipsitz, George. 1994. Dangerous crossroads: Popular music, postmodernism and the poetics of place. New York: Verso. McClary, Susan. 1991. Feminine endings: Music, gender and sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Meintjes, Louise. 1990. Paul Simon’s Graceland, South Africa, and the mediation of musical meaning. Ethnomusicology 34(1): 37–73. Middleton, Richard. 1990. Studying popular music. Philadelphia, Penn.: Open University Press. Mills, Sherylle. 1996. Indigenous music and the law: An analysis of national and international legislation. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 57–86. Mitchell, Tony. 1996. Popular music and local identity: Rock, pop, and rap in Europe and Oceania. London: Leicester University Press. Neuenfeldt, Karl, ed. 1997. The didjeridu: From Arnhem Land to Internet. London: John Libby. Pareles, Jon. 1998. A global heartbeat on CDs. New York Times, 29 January, E1, 26. Prior, Sian. 1996. Deep Forest interview. Arts Today, ABC Radio Australia, October 18. Rothenberg, David. 1998. The sounds of global change: Different beats, new ideas. Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 June, B8. Rubin, William, ed. 1984. ‘‘Primitivism’’ in twentieth-century art: Affinity of the tribal and the modern. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Sahlins, Marshall. 1992. The economics of develop-man in the Pacific. RES 21: 13–25. Sanchez, Michel, and Eric Mouquet. 1996. Letter to Hugo Zemp, 1 October. Seeger, Anthony. 1992. Ethnomusicology and music law. Ethnomusicology 36: 345–59. . 1996. Ethnomusicologists, archives, professional organizations, and the shifting ethics of intellectual property. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 87–105.

215

*

lull aby for world music

Sharma, Ashwani. 1996. Sounds oriental: The (im)possibility of theorizing Asian musical cultures. In Sharma, Hutnyk, and Sharma 1996. Sharma, Sanjay, John Hutnyk, and Ashwani Sharma, eds., 1996. Dis-orienting rhythms: The politics of the new Asian dance music. London: Zed Books. Shepherd, John. 1991. Music as social text. Cambridge, England: Polity. Spencer, Peter. 1992. World beat: A listener’s guide to contemporary world music on CD. Chicago: A Capella Books. Sweeney, Philip. 1991. The Virgin directory of world music. New York: Henry Holt. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and alterity: A particular history of the senses. New York: Routledge. Taylor, Timothy. 1997. Global pop: World music, world markets. New York: Routledge. Torgovnick, Marianna. 1990. Gone primitive: Savage intellects, modern lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zemp, Hugo. 1996. The/An ethnomusicologist and the music business. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 36–56. . 1999. Conversation with author, 8 March. Ziff, Bruce, and Pratima V. Rao, eds. 1997. Borrowed power: Essays on cultural appropriation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Zwerin, Mike. 1998. Putamayo and the secrets of world music. International Herald Tribune, 24 February, np.

figure credits Figure 3—Deep Forest. © 1992 Celine Music/Synsound  1992 Celine Music/Synsound/ 550 Music–Epic (Sony Music, Inc.). Produced by Dan Lacksman, arranged by Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez. Design and photos: F.A.W. Figure 4—UNESCO Collection Musical Sources. Fataleka and Baegu Music, Malaita, Solomon Islands. The Primeval Cultures I–1, 1973. (LP) Edited for the International Music Council by the International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation. General editor: Alain Daniélou. Recordings, Notes, and Photographs by Hugo Zemp. LP ©  1973 Philips/UNESCO. Figure 5—UNESCO Collection Musiques et Musiciens du Monde/Musics and Musicians of the World. Solomon Islands/Iles Salomon: Fataleka and Baegu Music from Malaita. Recordings, Notes, and Photographs by Hugo Zemp. (CD) Reissue with the support of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication for the International Music Council/Conseil International de la Musique. © Auvidis/IIMSD/UNESCO 1990  Auvidis–UNESCO 1973/1990. Design: Jacques Blanpain. Figure 6—Jan Garbarek, Visible World. Produced by Manfred Eicher. ©  1996 ECM Records. ‘‘All compositions by Jan Garbarek except Pygmy Lullaby, an African traditional melody, arranged by Jan Garbarek.’’ Cover photo: Jan Jedlička; cover design: Barbara Wojirsch.

216

*

steven feld

On the Uddered Breast

Mothers’ milk from Cows! Poster art from the Netherlands (circa 1990) following media coverage of Herman, the genetically modified bull. A human gene was spliced into Herman to make cow’s milk more digestible by human babies.

RAFI Communiqué, March/April, 1996, Page 11

Drawing Blood in Papua New Guinea Targeted and Sampled Indigenous Peoples (from www.rafi.org/misc/mapkey.html)

Indigenous Peoples Populations: The number of indigenous people, by region

Cultural Diversity: Dark red dots show unique living languages

Biodiversity: Orange areas show biodiversity hotspots

Human Tissue Trade: Collection and movement of indigenous peoples’ blood and tissue samples

Agriculture: Green tinted areas show Vavilov Centres

Patent Power & Gene Banks: Shows where biodiversity is being patented and locates major public, private, national, and international ex-situ collections

Gene Pirates and Prospectors: Dots depict projects to collect biodiversity and human tissues

Creators and Conservers of Diversity, Detailed View (from www.rafi.org/communique/pngsamp.gif )

Prehistories of Globalization: Circassian Identity in Motion Seteney Shami

However undisciplined the term globalization might still be, there is increasing agreement as to the kinds of processes that it points to in the world. Whether interpreting alternative modernities, cultural hybridities, commodity circulations, transnational migrations, or identity politics, globalization theory largely looks to the future, attempting to prefigure the new millennium while eschewing notions of linearity, teleology, and predictability. Concomitantly, the notion of modernity has acquired remarkable fluidity, indicating that it has become plural, uneven, contested, and ‘‘at large’’ (Appadurai 1996). Building on ideas of the past as constructed, invented, and produced, globalization presents itself as a theory of the present moment. Powerfully expressing that ‘‘we now live in an almost/not yet world’’ (Thrift 1996, 257), it captures the in-betweenness of a world always on the brink of newness. Modernization theory has also been concerned with process, innovation, and rupture, but it is differently invested in notions of the past. In its earlier, more concrete, more confident era, modernity invented an array of pasts. There is the past as Tradition, a timeless, static past whose value lies not in explanation but in revealing the alter ego either as the anachronistic self or the distant other. A different past is History. In one variant, this focuses on the rise of European hegemony, producing a causal narrative of how, why, and when modernity started. Quite different again is the past as Evolution, an indexical, ascending past that naturalizes the present. A fourth type of past, Antiquity, is indispensable This essay was written while I was a fellow in residence at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Uppsala. An earlier version was presented at the SCASSS seminar and benefited greatly from discussion and comments. Very special thanks are due to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Katherine Young.

to modernity’s prime embodiment, the nation-state, which it territorializes. A fifth is the past as Civilization, a foundation myth featuring the migrations of the spirit of the West from Ancient Greece to presentday democracies. One could go on enumerating pasts, following the lines of Fabian’s (1983) discussion of the different notions of Time that, among other things, served the anthropological production of self and other. Anthropology, history, archaeology, and other disciplines jostle one another to lay authoritative claims to the pasts of modernity: alternative pasts characterized by fixed temporalities, marked epochs, and bracketed periods, which work together to define, explain, enhance, and anchor the notion of modernity. Will pasts be invented by globalization? What kinds of pasts will they be? How will globality trace its genealogies? These are the questions with which this paper grapples at its most general level. They are questions that speak to ongoing theoretical and ideological deliberations: Does globalization represent rupture or continuity? postmodernity or late modernity? Americanization or ‘‘glocalization’’? I do not presume to give answers, and typologies or classifications would clearly not be the route to follow given the critical differences between the premises of globalization theory and modernization theory (Appadurai 1996). I will instead explore the issue through a closer look at an emergent notion that might be called the prehistory of globalization. Further, I will focus on how the pasts of one small diasporic group, the Circassians, act on their present engagements with globality and the ways in which they experience a newly accessible homeland in the North Caucasus. In looking at the linkages between Circassian pasts and presents, mobility and migration emerge clearly as a constitutive element of Circassian identity. To explore the relationship between motion and identity I will juxtapose two texts from different time-spaces. The first is an ethnographic text narrating a journey undertaken by a Circassian woman in 1993 from diaspora to homeland, from Turkey to the Caucasus. The second is a historical text dating from 1854 and documenting the journey of a Circassian woman from homeland to slavery, from the Caucasus to Egypt. The unexpected divergences, convergences, and counterintuitive insights illuminated by the juxtaposition illustrate the changing trajectories of migration, memory, and imagination. They help assess the 221

*

prehistories of globalization

utility of prehistory as a conceptual link between past and present and reveal the profoundly gendered nature of globalization and its pasts. circassian migrations and the diasporic imagination

Migration and imagination are historically linked processes that produce memorable moments in the pasts of peoples, nations, communities, and individuals. Each sustains the other, expanding circumscribed experiences and elaborating localized meanings. How do new forms of mobility and transgressions of boundaries invoke new imaginations? How are experiences, acts, utterances, and thoughts made meaningful given changing relations of mobility and incarceration? Situated at the nexus of such transformations, diaspora populations hold special promise for insights into cultural dimensions of globalization. They constitute ‘‘crucibles of a postnational political order’’ (Appadurai 1996, 22) generative of hopes for ‘‘nonabsolutist forms of citizenship’’ (Clifford 1997, 9). Diaspora identities are constructed in motion and along different lines than nation-states. They affirm multiple attachments, deterritorialization, and cultural hybridity. The Adygei, better known by outsiders as Circassians (or Çerkez, Sharkass, Tcherkess), are an example of identity in motion. Circassians trace their origins to the Northwest Caucasus, which was historically part of the interconnected regions of the Black and Mediterranean Seas, as chronicled by the voyages and tribulations of Odysseus, Jason, and Prometheus. The Caucasus was also a source of warriors and slaves for various empires in the area (Toledano 1982). One example is the Circassian Mameluk slave dynasties in thirteenth- to sixteenth-century Egypt, whose descendants, augmented by later individual and group migrations, came to form a Turco-Circassian elite. The history of the Caucasus in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is largely framed by the conflicts between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in which local peoples were pawns, partisans, and victims (Berkok 1958). Mass migrations of Circassians and other Muslim Caucasian peoples to the Ottoman Empire started in the 1850s, and the earliest immigrants were settled by the state in the Balkans. There they were immediately embroiled in the ongoing conflicts that resulted in the withdrawal of the Ottomans from the region. Within a few decades of settlement, therefore, they became part of the inflow of Muslim populations from the Balkans into the Ana222

*

seteney shami

tolian and Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Together with the continuing flows from the Caucasus, the number of Circassian settlers by the beginning of the twentieth century reached an estimated total of 1.5 million (Karpat 1985). Within a few decades, Circassians found themselves not Ottoman subjects but citizens of the newly formed states of Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine (soon to become Israel). In the Soviet Caucasus, Circassians were allocated the three small administrative units of KabardinoBalkaria, Cherkessk-Karachaevo, and Adygeia, parts of Russia’s ‘‘ethnic fringe.’’ Although Circassians were not among the ‘‘punished peoples,’’ many were resettled and exiled during the Stalinist period, especially to Central Asia. During the first and second world wars, there were migrations out of the Caucasus to Europe and the United States. Middle Eastern wars produced further displacement, such as from Galilee in Palestine and from the Golan Heights in Syria. More recently, rural to urban relocation has drawn Circassian migrants from Anatolian villages to Ankara and Istanbul, and labor markets have drawn others to Germany, Holland, and the United States (especially New Jersey and California). Throughout this long history of displacement, Circassian identity has been formed and transformed. The particularities and symbols of distinctiveness in each locality articulated with translocal ethnic connections and collective sensibilities. From the vantage point of Circassians living outside the Caucasus at the present moment, two particular migrations stand out: the first as a starting point of Circassian history in the diaspora and the second as a possible exit into a different future. At one end is the historical rupture with the homeland: the emigration into the Ottoman Empire that reached its peak in 1864. At the other end are the post-1989 ‘‘return’’ migrations. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the sudden access to territories behind the Iron Curtain was momentous for Circassians, many of whom have now traveled to the Caucasus, some intending to settle permanently.1 About two hundred families, mainly from Turkey and Syria but also from Jordan and the United States, have since settled in the cities of Nalchik (capital of Kabardino-Balkaria) and Maikop (capital 1. This is true of Abkhasians, Armenians, Azerbeyjanians, Chechnians, Ingush, Georgians, Daghestanian groups, Ossettes, Kalmuks, Karachais, Balqars, and Lesghians to name but a few of the groups dispersed from the Caucasus.

223

*

prehistories of globalization

of Adygeia). Increasing numbers of young people are going as university students and staying on. There are also short-term and seasonal migrations, with many Circassians spending the summer months in the Caucasus, some buying houses and flats and participating in business ventures. For the scattered descendants of those who left the Caucasus, the prospects of return and of nationhood are appealing, even compelling (Shami 1998). However, unease, cultural dissonance, and mutual misunderstandings surround relations between Circassians of the Caucasus and those coming from abroad. Despite friendships and business partnerships with local Circassians, returnees tend to be critical of lifestyles, moral values, and social relations in the Caucasus (Shami 1995). Now a central node in the formation of a Circassian diaspora, the Caucasus is the terrain where transnational encounters occur and economic and political organizations are formed. Still, notions of homeland remain fluid and unstable. Visions of nation and diaspora coexist and contest each other in Circassian discourses and political practices (Shami 2000b). Motivations to return, and the journeys that ensue, are experienced and articulated differently by different people. Some explain their decision as reflecting the national necessity of building a homeland, others stress the opportunities of building social and economic bridges between countries of origin and settlement. Through these journeys, some are seeking kin and community; others are seeking faith in themselves. Some find home, others frustration; some find new livelihoods, others have lost their lives. In all these ways Circassians are situating themselves in a global context. That identity and the future are simultaneously viewed from both ‘‘elsewhere’’ and the ‘‘homeland’’ demonstrates a diasporic imagination employing temporal and spatial strategies: those of remembering and forgetting, inscription and erasure. migrations in the 1990s: shengul

How does diasporic memory link past and present and construct futures? Such linkages were often present in the narratives I solicited about why and how individuals made the journey to the homeland, as in the one that follows. When I met her in the Caucasus in August 1993, Shengul was thirty-seven years old, a single woman who had mi224

*

seteney shami

grated from Turkey eighteen months before. This is how she related her journey: We came by boat from Istanbul to Novorossiysk. Due to bad weather the boat could not leave the port in Istanbul for four days and we had to stay on it. We could only go on the landing stage and get tea from the fire station. We were all in such bad shape and hungry. I had given up wearing a skirt and was in sweat pants. At that time, I had just had my hair permed and dyed blonde, and so people on the boat thought that I was Russian. Anyway, finally we set off, but it was still very rough, and it took several days. I spent most of the time in my cabin, but close to when we were about to arrive, I decided to go out on the deck and look out. I went to the balcony on the side of the boat. The sefalet (misery, degradation) of the past few days, the waves and the motion suddenly were too much for me. I became dizzy and fainted. I remember there was some water on the deck and I might have slipped. The water may have revived me a little because I remember being carried and then nothing. I woke up to find a very handsome white-haired man bending over me. My first thought was: ‘‘Bütün bu senelerce taşıdıg˘ım şeyi böyle mi kaybedeceg˘em?’’ (Is this how I will lose this thing that I have carried [cherished] all these years?) Imagine that this is what I thought, I must have been in very bad shape. It turned out that the man was a doctor from Azerbeyjan who was on the ship. The next thing I knew he was asking me: ‘‘Nereni beg˘enmiyorsun? ’’ (What part [of your body] do you not like?) Of course in their language this means ‘‘where does it hurt?’’ 2 But when I heard this I fainted again. Finally, I revived and was resting when my [male] cousin came, angry and shouting: ‘‘We looked for you all over the boat, where have you been?’’ I cried back, ‘‘Yahu, baygındım! ’’ (Hey, I was passed out!) Soon after, we arrived at the port of Novorossiysk. We got off the boat, and the city seemed to be full of churches and crosses, those old ancient buildings were loaded down with crosses. I said, ‘‘What is this Christian place that I have come to?’’ I felt scared. However much I had said that I was an atheist, this was the feeling I had when I saw all these crosses. First impressions are so strong, and yet later it all becomes rou2. Azerbeyjanian Turkish differs significantly from that spoken in Turkey.

225

*

prehistories of globalization

tine and you stop noticing things. You should interview people when they first come, because people like me don’t remember anymore. The overwhelming tone of Shengul’s narrative is that of loss: loss of self, loss of consciousness, loss of honor, and loss of religion. Paradoxically, on a journey ‘‘back’’ to the ‘‘homeland’’ that is meant to be about the recovery of identity and the redemption of history, she starts out by being mistaken for a Russian and ends the journey feeling that she is in an alien and foreign land, two instances of loss. The anxieties evoked by her crossing the Black Sea threaten fundamental aspects of her individual and collective identity. She vacillates in a space of inbetweenness, pulled in two directions at once, between a past that is interior and familiar (Turkey, family, her cabin on the ship) and a future that is exterior and strange (Caucasus, aloneness, the ship’s deck). Interiority, or being inside, signifies both bondage and safety, while the outside is perceived alternately as freedom and as exile. The dilemma is embodied in the two male figures of her cousin, representing home, and the doctor, representing the Caucasus (Azerbeyjan). Her cousin is familiar, but irritated that she has escaped surveillance. The doctor is a threatening stranger, but offering release from pain. The two figures are condensed symbols of Circassianness as she has experienced it in Turkey and Circassianness as she imagines it in the Caucasus. There is no recourse in family; her cousin’s voice is an angry one. As for strangers, their kindness only reminds her of all that is at stake. Literally and metaphorically, she succumbs to motion sickness and defends herself against her predicament through fainting and oblivion. Why was Shengul making this journey to the Caucasus? At first, her reasons echo those of others from Turkey who describe themselves as dönüşcü (literally, returnists). These are activists linked to Circassian associations who, since the late 1970s, have advocated that the only way to save Circassian culture from extinction is to return to the Caucasus and build a nation (see Emine’s narrative in Shami 1998). While dönüşcü ideology attempts to reverse history, Shengul’s account is more complex. It is saturated with, and reproduces, cultural memories of displacement. Her narrative recalls the original migrations away from the Caucasus: danger-filled sea crossings, unsafe boats, hunger, and misery (sefalet). Even though Shengul’s is a journey ‘‘home,’’ it is marked by loss and arrival in the unknown. Her reference to atheism reflects the 226

*

seteney shami

radical, secularist politics of the dönüşcü, but it also echoes narratives that stress Islam and escape from life under Russian and Christian rule as the main reason for seeking refuge in the Ottoman domain. Shengul experiences the return to the Caucasus as a threat to her Muslim identity, even though as a dönüşcü she had conceived herself as an atheist. The reversal of history is also a journey back in time. Threats that had earlier compelled migration are still present in the Caucasus. Shengul’s narrative resonates with that of an elderly woman I interviewed in 1979, who spoke of her memories of the turn-of-the-century journey that brought her at the age of nine from the Caucasus to what eventually became Jordan. A big boat, it was full on top and below. Some went to Turkey, some Syria, some Baghdad, some Amman. They were not from the same places [in the Caucasus], some [groups] were twenty families, some thirty families. . . . There was no Russian pressure on the villages but the reason [for the emigration] was that they were going to make a school—Russia—and they were going to take their children [sons] to the army.3 But I am not sure—this is what we heard—I did not see it. A Russian ship to Sebastopol, then usually they would change and take a Turkish boat in Iskilu, but ours went directly. They would not let us get off in Istanbul. People from the government took the passports—they said to us, those who want to go back, go back. And those who don’t want to, give us the passport. They let us off in another faraway port. They pulled back the gangway quickly. A day and night by boat, then we got off. People from the government came and they gave each family seven mejidiyes [an Ottoman coin] and some food, but they would not let us off. After the boat, we came to a beautiful large land. People from the government, they distributed us [from] there. In the Caucasus, they were farmers far from the cities. They were friends with the Russians, made bazaars with them. They don’t want the school. They don’t want to become Christians again.4 We were 3. The migration being described was among the last waves out of the Caucasus. By 1900 the Russians may not have been using direct means of deportation. 4. Islam spread late in the northwest Caucasus (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries), only partially replacing Greek Orthodox Christianity and indigenous belief systems.

227

*

prehistories of globalization

backward (mutakhallifin). They would have become people (bani admeen) and educated and more advanced (arqa) [she put her finger to her head and shook it to indicate how stupid they were].5 The main reason for the emigration was that they would take their sons to the army and they would fight the Muslims. The boat journey is again the central image, the link between there and here. While the boat is the vehicle for escape from Russia, it becomes itself a sort of prison, from which the immigrants are not allowed to disembark until they have been divested of their former identity. While the moments that punctuate the narrative are similar to Shengul’s—embarkation, ship deck, arrival—there are clear differences. Most noticeable, perhaps, is that there is no particular trauma associated with the travel, although the drama of the experience is apparent in the pulling back of gangways, the giving up of passports, and the dispersal to different destinations. Unexpectedly, however, the arrival is a hopeful one in a beautiful land, in sharp contrast with the threatening landscape portrayed by Shengul. This could be taken as a sign for the often-mentioned desire of Circassians to come to the land of Islam.6 Still, the original motives for the emigration are questioned. The whole narrative is remarkably free of nostalgia and contrasts the quest for religious freedom with that of modernity and progress. Also noticeable is the heavy presence of the state, forbidding and permitting movement. In Shengul’s narrative, on the other hand, nature (the storm at sea) and individuals (the cousin, the doctor) play this role. Antinostalgia in this second narrative is accompanied by a clear and precise memory, a meticulous attention to what was experienced, what was seen as opposed to what was heard. There is no recourse to oblivion, as with Shengul. In the Caucasus there are Christian Circassians living in and around the town of Mezdok in the republic of North Ossetia. 5. This elderly woman, who had no formal education, had absorbed both the spirit and the language of Jordanian modernity. Mutekhallif connotes reactionary/traditional as well as backward. To become a bani adam (plural bani admeen), literally a son of Adam, is to become fully human, to realize your full potential, and arqa means refined/evolved as well as advanced. 6. Narratives of the migration among Circassians in Jordan invariably mention that the first immigrants took off their shoes when arriving in Syria because they were on ‘‘holy land.’’

228

*

seteney shami

With these kinds of narratives still alive and circulating in diasporic memory, it is perhaps not surprising that Shengul and others would anticipate the return to the homeland as the reversal of both history and time. The actual experience of the Caucasus, however, though mediated by this expectation, is of a different order. As Shengul elaborates her story, past and present are brought together to reveal multiple layers of meaning. Shengul came from a family living in one of the many small Circassian villages in central Turkey. Before the migration from the Caucasus, her great-grandfather had been ‘‘a Kulak for the Pshi of the village’’ as she described him, using newly found words and freely juxtaposing cultural categories.7 When he came to Turkey, the family was well off, but their situation deteriorated when he became disabled. Shengul’s father worked hard to secure livelihood for the family and was exhausted in the process. When it became possible to travel to the Caucasus, the family decided that it would be good to have a foothold there—for nationalistic reasons, but also for economic ones, and as a safeguard for the future—for no one knows what will happen in Turkey or the region. But who was to go and establish the foothold? The sons were all working and married with children in school. Shengul, on the other hand, was unmarried and hence ‘‘free.’’ And so it was decided. She made the trip with a cousin, who returned to Turkey after lodging Shengul with newly found relatives.8 The idea was that she would begin the process of obtaining residence permits and buy a flat, since at the time prices were cheap. She established residency, but the family did not send the money in time, and flat prices went up.9 After renting a flat on her own for a while, Shengul was forced to move back with her relatives. I did not discuss with Shengul my feeling that a rather large sacrifice had been demanded of her. However, I did once comment to another 7. Kulak is the Russian term for a well-off landowning peasant, while Pshi is the Circassian term for prince or ruler. 8. People trace their kin in the Caucasus through the family name or the village of origin. The kin links that are forged sometimes hold and sometimes collapse under the burden of the expectations placed on them (Shami 1995). 9. Those who came in 1990 could buy a three-room flat for about $2,000 from ethnic Germans whose return to Germany was being facilitated at the time. By 1993 prices had gone up to $5,000 or more.

229

*

prehistories of globalization

returnee, Emine, that I found it surprising that families who had been so protective of their daughters in Turkey would send them off to the Caucasus, to an unknown and turbulent society with whose lifestyle they felt such unease. Emine herself was in a similar position and had introduced me to Shengul by saying, ‘‘She came here alone, like me.’’ Emine’s dönüşcü rhetoric was stronger than Shengul’s, and she made it clear that coming to the Caucasus had been her own decision, over her mother’s objections. But she also emphasized that her brothers had encouraged her and that they would ‘‘one day’’ join her. When I met another woman from Syria who related a similar story, it seemed clear that these women, in their thirties and hence with no more expectations of marriage, were the expendable members of the family who could be sent off to stake out the future homeland.10 Trying to find a way to ask Emine about this, I said, ‘‘It seems to me that, for families, this is a new . . . ,’’ and as I searched for the appropriate word Emine completed the sentence for me. ‘‘Tactic?’’ she said. Unfolding the narrative of Shengul’s journey reinforces the trope of loss, even of exile, but also discloses hidden hopes. In Turkey, Shengul had finished high school but had neither worked nor continued her education. Her brothers had not allowed her, she said. Now she had a job. Significantly, she was working at the city museum and had put together an exhibition about the returnees. She was thinking of enrolling in the university. People had been very kind and had spoken to the officials of the university, even the president, to make it possible for her to be admitted. Her journey, therefore, can be seen in a different light. Her permed and dyed hair, her immodest sweat pants, and her being mistaken for Russian may suggest anticipations of social and corporeal trespasses, rather than (or in addition to) loss of ethnic identity.11 Per10. Ferhunde Özbay informs me (in a personal communication) that it is a pattern in labor migration in Turkey that women are sent to, or left behind in, the place that is considered a ‘‘secondary’’ economic location. If the village of origin is the secondary source of livelihood, then women are left behind. If the city provides lesser economic resources, then women are sent there. 11. In Turkey and other countries receiving tourists and suitcase traders, people from the former Soviet Union all tend to be indiscriminately called ‘‘Russian.’’ Diaspora Circassians coming to the Caucasus also sometimes slip into calling the local Circassians ‘‘Russian.’’

230

*

seteney shami

haps Shengul’s sudden recall of her Muslim identity was a rejection of the restrictions of dönüşcü ideology? Perhaps that ‘‘thing’’ that she had ‘‘carried’’ all these years was a burden she would have liked to be rid of ? Shengul’s journey is not only a migration but also a transmutation. This came through in her criticisms of the lifestyles of local women, which had more than a touch of ambivalence about them. She said that it was difficult for her to get used to the idea that women had extramarital sexual relations, dressed immodestly, and even had illegitimate children. But she immediately followed this by saying that she had become friendly with some of the same women and had accepted that she should not compare them with girls in Circassian villages of Turkey but with those in Istanbul or European cities. This acceptance was quite radical given the near uniform disapproval of such matters by Circassians coming from the diaspora.12 In another turnaround, however, Shengul mentioned that some women with whom she had become friends now, under her influence, dressed more modestly. Ambiguity pervaded all of Shengul’s statements about life in the Caucasus. On one hand, there was the possibility of independence, work, and education. On the other hand, the society she was flung into was alien in all aspects of everyday life. For example, among Circassians in the diaspora, cleanliness is a prized value that is spoken of in identical idioms in households throughout various countries. At every appropriate and inappropriate moment, Shengul lamented the lack of cleanliness in houses, shops, and roadside stands and compared them constantly with what she knew in Turkey. ‘‘Where,’’ she asked, ‘‘is that cleanliness of the Circassian house? The way we wash dishes? Here they just pass hot water over the plate, and that is all.’’ 13 Still, she said that she had become used to it all, even to the way they used each other’s utensils. ‘‘After all,’’ she said, ‘‘if a person drinks from my cup and doesn’t get sick even though I must have some microbes, then why would I get 12. Such freedoms seem much rarer in the Caucasus than ‘‘in Istanbul and European cities.’’ Also they are met with disapproval by most local Circassians and read as signs of ‘‘Russification.’’ For the valorization of the domestic sphere as a site of resistance to Sovietization, see Shami (2000a). 13. To my eye, the variations in the cleanliness of both private and public spaces in the Caucasus and Turkey make it difficult to unequivocally rank one above the other in this regard.

231

*

prehistories of globalization

sick from drinking from her cup?’’ Immediately afterward, however, in a style that was becoming familiar, she went on to say that they might still be influenced and taught to be cleaner. Perhaps more poignant, and more challenging to ‘‘incorporated practices’’ (Connerton 1991, 90), were manners of deportment. In Shengul’s household in Turkey, they had strictly observed Circassian etiquette of decorum, formality, and authoritarianism between generations and age groups. Family members neither sat nor spoke in the presence of elders and never saw each other in a state of undress. Upon arriving in the Caucasus, Shengul stayed in a house that was crowded and not very clean. They queued up to use the bathroom every day, each carrying a towel. ‘‘Imagine this,’’ Shengul said, ‘‘when in all my life, my brothers had never ever seen me even with wet hair. I was so ashamed.’’ ‘‘But,’’ she added, ‘‘I got used to it. What could I do?’’ Shengul’s memories and commentaries express a preoccupation with her bodily integrity but also acknowledge constant transformation of her external and internal self. She inaugurates her journey by altering her own appearance. But when this threatens to transform her beyond recognition (from a Circassian to a Russian) she retreats into the safety of the cabin or unconsciousness. Loss of honor is threatened by a range of experiences from seasickness to indecency in the homes of strangers. Shengul experiences herself as exposed, penetrated, and polluted by what she perceives to be improper ideas, behaviors, and hygiene. Still, in all of my conversations with her, Shengul maintained that she had grown so used to things in the Caucasus that she no longer noticed anything about the place. Within five months she felt like she had lived there all her life. ‘‘They are so warm and so nice that it makes up for everything.’’ Making friends with women in the Caucasus opens up the possibility of interpenetration and exchange, even if, at the moment, Shengul will only extend this mutuality to the microbes in the shared utensils. The intensity with which she insists that ‘‘I have become just like them,’’ that she no longer notices anything, emphasizes both her hopes of a new life and her lack of fit. She is still in her in-between state, still suffering from cognitive motion sickness. It was not coincidental that she ended the detail-filled narrative of her journey to the Caucasus by insisting that she should not be interviewed, because she no longer remembers. 232

*

seteney shami

memory and prehistory

Implicated in the migrations of Circassians to and from the Caucasus are processes that configure the past in new ways. An emergent notion that helps conceptualize such processes is that the era of globalization has a prehistory. Buell, for example, argues that ‘‘globalization thus traces prehistories to our current hyperawareness of the interrelationship between local and global interactions, histories that, for some, date back to the expansion of the West, for others the Middle Ages, and for still others early civilizations and before’’ (1998, 259). Similarly, Clifford employs the phrase ‘‘prehistory of post-colonialism’’ (1997, 9, 277) in his proposition that diasporic relations preexisting the colonial state become the kinds of transnational networks, or at least provide the grounds, so to speak, on which postcoloniality and even perhaps postnationality can be built. In this sense, the concept appears to be deployed descriptively, simply to refer to a period before modernity that informs the present. However, Clifford assigns the concept more power when he suggests that it is ‘‘about recovering non-Western, or not-onlyWestern, models for cosmopolitan life, nonaligned transnationalities struggling within and against nation-states, global technologies, and markets—resources for a fraught coexistence’’ (1997, 277). How is the recovery of such models to be achieved? The term prehistory is deployed by various authors as both a concept and a metaphor. As a concept it is an example of ‘‘typological time’’ (Fabian 1983), referring to a time before history, before writing, before the state, before humanity in the full sense of the term; a time of the subordination of culture to nature, which merges in popular memory with mythological time. But prehistory is also a historical device—more a way of thinking about the past than a fixed reality. In consequence, it is a mobile concept, referring to 10,000 B.C. in one place and A.D. 1000 in another. Prehistory as metaphor makes use of the attributes associated with the concept but applies them paradoxically to conjure new meanings. A powerful use of the term is Walter Benjamin’s. As Susan Buck-Morss (1999, 64) explains, Benjamin described bourgeois capitalist society as existing in a ‘‘prehistoric state’’ due to its being subject to the ‘‘natural laws’’ of capitalism. In spite of the promises of early modernity, for Benjamin, ‘‘so long as people were held under the power of these blind forces, the promise of a universal human history could not 233

*

prehistories of globalization

come into its own’’ (Buck-Morss 1999, 64). In this way, the notion of prehistory can mobilize the collective imagination ‘‘for a revolutionary break from the recent past by evoking a cultural memory reservoir of myths and utopian symbols from a more distant ur-past’’ (Buck-Morss 1999, 116). There is promise in such a strategy. A prehistory of globalization seeks pasts characterized by mobility, cosmopolitanism, and vertical and horizontal linkages that displace a notion of the past as stagnant and bound by empire and tradition. It excavates beneath the nationstate and decenters it from the narrative of the present. In such a usage, prehistory denotes a past prefigurative of a nonnational future. The use of the term does not aim to fix the characteristics of a certain age, but to enable the mobilization of alternative pasts in order to challenge the teleological certainty of the present. Clifford affirms that ‘‘counterhistories can support strategies for nontotalizing ‘globalization from below’ ’’ (1997, 276). This is true only if they do not replicate modernist fascinations with the order of things and do not become as totalitarian as the national imaginary, simply silencing different voices along their way. If the notion of prehistory is to be deployed to reveal, rather than to gloss, ways of seeing, then I would suggest that it has to be reconceptualized in three ways: First, a new use of the term should reveal the predisposition of history to categorize, objectify, and impose fixedness through the construction of ‘‘periods.’’ It should question history as ‘‘the rise of the West’’ and its (inevitable?) protagonist, the nation-state. Thus the first deployment of the term should be to see through categorizations of time that produce the past as a foreign country. Second, the notion of prehistory should alert us to strategies of territorializing identity. It should question the way nationalism reaches beyond empire, beyond recorded history (which often does not represent its past but that of the other) for the scientific recovery of the nation’s origins and boundaries from the archaeological record buried ‘‘in time.’’ As Anderson asks rhetorically, ‘‘Supposing ‘antiquity’ were, at a certain historical juncture, the necessary consequence of ‘novelty’ ’’ (1991, xiv, Anderson’s emphasis). A new notion of prehistory has to deterritorialize identity and capture it while ‘‘in motion.’’ Reinterpreting the archaeological connotation of prehistory as metaphor means recogniz234

*

seteney shami

ing that ‘‘the archaeological object, in its widest sense, acquires another and new stratigraphic level each time it enters into the perceptual order of the present’’ (Seremetakis 1994b, 140–41, Seremetakis’s emphasis). Third, the teleological necessity of prehistory unfolding into ‘‘real’’ history should be interrogated. Deconstructing the national imaginary has shown that the past is used, reinterpreted, and subjugated to the politics of the present, highlighting the contingency of social formations and cultural meanings. Modernity constructs a continuum through the idea of progress, employing the tools of inattention, distraction, erasure, and silencing (Klein 1997). Yet it is not enough to read the past as the politics of the present. The genealogical and archaeological links to the world ‘‘before European hegemony’’ (Abu-Lughod 1991) are yet to be discovered through memory/imagination. Prehistory, therefore, has to ‘‘map erasures’’ (Klein 1997, 9). In sum, a prehistory of globalization has to reinforce the break with modernization theory in the ways identified by Appadurai (1996, 9). It has to help discard teleology, focus on everyday cultural practice, leave open the question of prognosis, and highlight the transnational. Further, it has to reveal the practices of modernization as freezing the potential of transformation while presenting itself as newness. It has to emphasize mobility as a contemporary ‘‘structure of feeling [that] is able to capture the importance and ‘thisness’ and liminality of much new experience’’ (Thrift 1996, 284, Thrift’s emphasis). In all of this, the ‘‘work of the imagination’’ which is so central to globalization processes (Appadurai 1996, 3) involves equally the ethnographer and the traveling subject. An exemplary text in this vein is Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land (1993), on which Clifford relies in developing his argument. Ghosh’s work is simultaneously a contemporary narrative of an Indian doing ethnography in Egypt and a history of linkages between Egypt, North Africa, India, and South Asia in the twelfth century. Ghosh describes, with acuity and humor, how he and his interlocutors continuously fall into the hegemonic divide of East and West. In contrast, it is a slave in the twelfth century who represents a superceded world of interconnections. The archaeological object (‘‘in its widest sense’’) of Ghosh’s excavation is the slave who enters the ‘‘perceptual order of the present’’ not through national memory but through a manuscript (number 235

*

prehistories of globalization

H.6) from the forgotten Jewish Geniza archive. Ghosh’s story of how these documents are scattered from their historic depository in Cairo implicates missionaries, scholars, universities, travelers, and religious institutions. The gradual awakening to the ‘‘value’’ of the Geniza documents uncovers the story without which the past would be unknowable and unimaginable. Ghosh’s journey in search of paper fragments, sales deeds, letters, and jottings on waste paper gives the slave of MS H.6 a name (Bomma), a home and family, a lineage and life. In return Bomma provides a prehistory for Nabeel, a migrant worker from an Egyptian village and a figure of Ghosh’s contemporary narrative who is lost in Iraq during the Gulf War of 1990–91. Searching for him on the TV screen broadcasting the exodus of millions from Iraq, Ghosh and the Egyptian villagers realize that ‘‘there was nothing to be seen except crowds: Nabeel had vanished into the anonymity of History’’ (1992, 353). I have read Shengul’s narrative against the history of Circassian mass emigration out of the Caucasus. This represents her journey as one of going back, of return, of recovering pure identity. While her narrative includes moments of resistance, it is framed by the dönüşcü discourse, which conceives of the past as dispossession and the future as national. Yet the possibilities offered by the transnational encounters of the present can be explored in light of different pasts, such as pasts that foreground interconnections, histories of movement that complicate notions of home and exile, of self and other. The possibilities of transcending the discursive space of the national imaginary present themselves when Shengul’s narrative is set against a different migration— against the story of Shemsigul. migrations in the 1850s: shemsigul

Although the diasporic imagination of the Circassians finds its ‘‘beginning’’ with the mass migrations of the late nineteenth century, complex economic and political relations between the Caucasus and the adjacent empires long precede 1864. Human traffic was continuous through wars, trade routes, and pilgrimages. One particular type of trade made for particularly complex interpenetrations: the slave trade. Extracted from the anonymity of history we find the story of ‘‘Shem236

*

seteney shami

sigul: A Circassian Slave in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cairo’’ (Toledano 1993). There, in the old pages of a police register at the Egyptian National Archives, in Ottoman Turkish, unravels a troubled chapter of a woman’s life that began in a Circassian village in the Caucasus, continued in Istanbul, and ended in Ottoman Cairo. . . . (60) Born into a poor Circassian family, Shemsigul was brought to Istanbul by a relative or a slave dealer, who offered her for sale in the Ottoman capital, where the slave dealer Deli Mehmet 14 purchased her . . . (61) During the police interrogation on 30 June 1854, Shemsigul recounts her journey to Egypt two years previously and her sale to the household of Mehmet Ali Pasha, the governor general of Egypt, by Deli Mehmet. Five months after this transaction Deli Mehmet removes her from the governor’s house because it is discovered that she is pregnant. question: By whom did you become pregnant? shemsigul: I became pregnant by Deli Mehmet. questions: You state that you became pregnant by Deli Mehmet. Where, then, did he have sexual relations with you? And, since you became pregnant, how come he sold you [this being illegal]? shemsigul: In the boat, on the way here, he forced me to have sexual relations with him; he continued to sleep with me until he sold me. Before the sale, I told him: ‘‘Now you want to sell me, but I have missed my period, and I think that I am pregnant by you.’’ When I asked him later what would happen, he did not listen, but went away, brought back some medicines, and made me drink them [to induce an abortion]. Finally, he sold me to the palace. (62) Shemsigul describes how Deli Mehmet returns with her to his house, and his wife hires a midwife to perform an abortion. The pregnancy, however, is too advanced, and when the midwife refuses, Deli Mehmet’s wife beats Shemsigul on the stomach and back with a clothespress and a mincing rod. A neighbor woman who witnesses the beating reports it

14. Meaning ‘‘Mad Mehmet.’’ Mehmet is the Turkish pronunciation of Mohammed.

237

*

prehistories of globalization

to a dignitary, Selim bey, whose wife takes pity on Shemsigul and takes her into her house. shemsigul: When the child was expected to come into the world, Deli Mehmet’s wife came and stood at the bedside. As he was born, she took the child to another room and passed him through her shirt to mark that she was adopting him. To me she said that he died. Later she went to her house, brought in a wet nurse for the child, and gave [the baby] to her [care]. One day, Selim bey’s wife brought the baby [home] secretly and showed him to me. (63) Deli Mehmet then gives Shemsigul to one slave trader after the other, but none are able to sell her, in part because Deli Mehmet has stipulated that her buyer not live in Egypt. Finally she is sold to Timur, another slave dealer. questions: Did you at any stage from the beginning [of the story], inform the slave dealer Timur, or anyone else, that you had been pregnant and that you were badly beaten? If you did not, why? shemsigul: As a slave, I was afraid to say anything about my suffering so I did not tell Timur [or anyone else]. (64) A woman’s life is determined by another journey across the Black Sea— this time from the Caucasus to Turkey and onward to Egypt—and a rape while on board. Toledano estimates Shemsigul’s age at the time of this interrogation as being around fourteen or sixteen years old.15 He explains that, ‘‘from a legal perspective, the slave dealer Deli Mehmet was the owner of Shemsigul and, as such, was allowed to have sexual relations with her. The law did not require the slave’s consent, thereby allowing rape in case of the woman’s resistance. The dealer was aware, of course, that when the slave lost her virginity, her market value automatically declined. Moreover, if the slave became pregnant, as indeed happened to Shemsigul, the law forbade her sale’’ (67). Furthermore, the children of such a union were legally free, and the woman is freed upon her owner’s death. Clearly, for these reasons Deli Mehmet’s wife

15. Toledano does not explain whether her age is mentioned in the document, or whether he is making an assumption. He states in the introduction that the majority of slave girls from the Caucasus were sold in their early teens.

238

*

seteney shami

was anxious to get rid of Shemsigul who would, in effect, be her co-wife. Deli Mehmet himself was anxious to sell Shemsigul outside Egypt so that his breach of the law could not be exposed. The child that Shemsigul bears from Deli Mehmet is ritually adopted by his wife and made to disappear. All is revealed, however, when someone informs Timur that Shemsigul had borne Deli Mehmet a son. Timur complains to the head of the slave dealers’ guild, who investigates the case and then turns over the matter to the police. After their investigation, and despite Deli Mehmet’s prevarication, the police department accepts Shemsigul’s version of the story and passes its recommendation to that effect to the court. At this point the document ends. ‘‘What happened to Shemsigul afterwards must be left to the imagination,’’ Toledano writes, speculating that, as a result of the court ruling, Shemsigul probably obtained manumission (72). But then where would she go? Toledano suggests that she perhaps sought patronage from Selim bey, whose kindly wife had helped Shemsigul. If so, she would have worked in his household, and he would have had the responsibility for marrying her off well. Toledano stresses that ‘‘while concubinage was hardly an ideal arrangement for women like Shemsigul, it was socially respectable and, if a child was born, also legally binding on the man. However, especially for women, but for men too, freedom had its own disadvantages, limited choices, deprivation, and oppression’’ (72). By the nineteenth century, changes in the internal structure of the Ottoman Empire meant that slavery had become largely domestic rather than military, agricultural, or industrial (Erdem 1993). Furthermore, British antislavery pressures on the Ottoman Empire had drastically decreased the black slave trade through North Africa. The remaining trade was largely in women, among whom Circassians were in high demand.16 Why would Shemsigul’s family sell their daughter into slavery? Toledano gives various reasons: that a special class of agricultural slaves had existed among Circassians for centuries; that extreme poverty among Circassian slave families as well as the free lower classes forced them to 16. It should be noted that ‘‘Circassian’’ as an outsider term was often applied indiscriminately to the peoples of the North Caucasus. Given the complex mixture of peoples and languages, individuals referred to as Circassian in historical sources could belong to any one of a number of groups.

239

*

prehistories of globalization

sell their young children; that parents believed that they were improving the chances of their offspring for better living conditions through an entry into the Ottoman harems and consequently into elite society. He goes on to say, ‘‘As we consider how they ultimately fared, we should weigh the loss of family and legal freedom (for those who had not been born slaves) against the possibility that they might thereby have gained access to a better life’’ (61). In giving these reasons for the Circassian slave trade, Toledano echoes a number of sources contemporary to these events. Erdem (1993) documents in detail the opinions of both Ottoman and European authorities and observers that ‘‘Circassians came to Istanbul willingly ‘to become the wives of the Sultan and of the Pachas, and the young men to become Beys and Pachas’ ’’ (1993, 236 n. 39). An Ottoman document explains that the slave trade did not need to be forbidden since, through slavery, Circassians were being taken from ‘‘primitivism to civilization, from poverty and need to prosperity and happiness’’ (quoted in Sen 1994, 175 and Erdem 1993, 209). There is evidence enough that there were bondsmen among the Circassians in the Caucasus; however, the nature of this status or of the stratification system is hardly clear.17 Travelogues from the nineteenth century describe slaves as comprising an admixture of Circassian prisoners from intergroup raiding and non-Circassian war prisoners (mainly Russians, Cossacks, and Poles). There were also practices, such as exile and contracting disobedient sons into the service of another family as punishment, that added individuals to this rank. All these types of bondage seem to have been temporary and surrounded by complex sets of rights and reciprocity. However, the sale of offspring to overseas slavery must be seen as a distinct practice and as an outcome of historical relations with imperial systems rather than a result of an indigenous system of slavery. Would poverty drive slave parents and poor free parents to sell their children? This assumes that slave parents are allowed to sell their children, who would presumably belong to the parent’s owners. Furthermore, why was poverty so rife among Circassians? Shemsigul’s story 17. Stratification among Circassians included the following: Pshi (princes), Werk (nobles), Thfoqotl (freemen), Pshitl (slaves, literally the prince’s man). There were also various degrees within each rank.

240

*

seteney shami

takes place in 1852–54; the mass emigration of Circassians and other Caucasian peoples had already begun and would peak some years later. At its highest volume, the sale of young women and male children by Circassians was prevalent enough to cause Ottoman authorities a great deal of anxiety.18 The Ottoman documents take pains to make it clear that the sales were necessitated by the need of immigrants to defray the costs of passage to Ottoman ports and the costs of settlement.19 The economic necessity thus emerges from a society in a state of massive dislocation. The mid-nineteenth century recorded sharp increases in the supplies of women and children slaves and lower prices in the markets. New practices emerged, such as ‘‘mortgaging’’ children to slave traders to be repossessed by their parents if they found the money within a stipulated time period (Sen 1994). The state forbade the Circassian slave trade in 1862 and again in 1871, but trade continued and new markets appeared. At the same time, however, large numbers of women sold into slavery were appealing to the courts for their freedom. The extent of the problem is evident in this communication dated 4 June 1873. To the Exalted Ministry of Justice and the Most Excellent Directorate of Immigrants: Being slaves of Circassian immigrants and being sold by their owners to buyers in Istanbul, most slave women, after being sold, are applying to the government with claims of freedom, and until their trials are ended and their freedom or slavery is established, they have been, with the knowledge of the Coordination Committee of the Ministry of Justice, placed as guests in the house of Duaci Salih Aga, and 18. Erdem (1993) points out that Ottoman anxiety was partly due to the pressure being exerted by the British to abolish the slave trade if not slavery itself. However, it was also due to the fact that the authorities were increasingly faced with illegal sales, where the persons sold were not of slave origin, or had not been enslaved legally according to Muslim Shari’a law. The documents state that about 150,000 slaves came with the Circassian migration. Clearly this mass phenomenon was of a different order than the earlier slave trade with the Caucasus. 19. The Ottoman discourse is extremely interesting. On one hand, slavery is a religiously sanctioned status, though governed by strict laws regarding sales, manumission, and treatment. On the other hand, enlightenment terms such as liberty, freedom, and humanity saturate the documents.

241

*

prehistories of globalization

for each soul, six kuruş daily is being given to the mentioned Aga. Yet even so, in order to settle the disputes of these [women] and [for them] to be safeguarded and ordered [protected] in a more suitable manner as required and because they must be taken into a more acceptable order,20 from now on such slaves as apply to the government with the claim of freedom will not be given by the Coordination Committee to the house of the said Salih Aga. [Rather] the old laissez-passez [internal travel document] office, which belongs to the property of the police department, and is an abandoned place, for its repair will be allocated seven-hundred-odd kuruş and assigned as a residence for them. And for the slaves to be [placed] under the supervision of Sadika Hanım, the employee of the police station’s women’s detention center, and another woman of good morals to be with the slaves on a constant basis, and this woman be given five kuruş every day and the mentioned Sadika Hanım be given eight and a half kuruş daily, and for such sundries as candles and soap a hundred kuruş a month to be allocated, and for each one of the slaves, five kuruş daily to be given to their own hands. Thereby having been placed in a proper manner, [given] the expenses that were incurred over the past three years, [through] the manner described here the expenses that will be incurred by the treasury will be up to nine thousand kuruş less, and in addition there will be improvement in every way. . . . ([dated] 7 Rebıülahır 1290) 21 The fact that ‘‘most women’’ were protesting their slavery leads the Ottoman state to institute a special system and budget for processing their cases. Clearly not all Circassian girls saw slavery as a route to ‘‘prosperity and happiness.’’ Even through the dry language of official documents, the pathos of these women comes through. Used and abused by the likes of ‘‘Prayerful’’ Salih and ‘‘Mad’’ Mehmet, one wonders how many were able to resort to state protection and how many remained silent. Shemsigul says, ‘‘As a slave, I was afraid to say anything about my suffering.’’ The ‘‘willingness’’ of Circassian girls to be sold into slavery, 20. The implication appears to be that Duaci (‘‘Prayerful’’) Salih Aga was improperly availing himself of the opportunity of having young slave women in his house. 21. The directive continues with a paragraph on the details of the implementation. Başbakanlık Archives, Ayniyat Defteri, No. 1141. My translation.

242

*

seteney shami

therefore, should be weighed against not life in the Ottoman imperial harem but life in an Ottoman detention center. m u lt i p ly a u t h o r e d h i s t o r i e s a n d s i l e n c e s

Shemsigul’s story can be read in three ways, each of which evokes different time-spaces. First, it can be read, as Toledano does, as a story of premodern empires and slave-based societies. The pathos of her story is then mitigated by the perception of that time-space as one where bondage was preferable to freedom for the likes of Shemsigul. The assumption is that premodern sensibilities would not interpret experiences and notions of freedom and bondage in modern terms. A second reading, which I present above, sees Shemsigul’s particular experience of slavery as an outcome of the mass migration of Circassians. The negotiations within Ottoman society over the meanings of slavery and slave trading, the struggles between the Ottomans and the British over antislavery measures, and the judicial system for dealing with legal transgressions all point to a modernizing society and state. In general, the resettlement of the Circassians played into Ottoman policies of political and economic consolidation, centralization, and modernization, especially in the Syrian province (Rogan 1991, Shami 1992). These processes determined the nature of the nation-states that emerged from the breakup of the empire after World War I. Shemsigul then becomes one of the resources that are used up and spit out by modernization, an example of the many ways by which the nation is constituted through women’s bodies. A third reading of Shemsigul’s story would see it as a prehistory of Shengul’s story. The coincidences between the two experiences are remarkable. In both narratives a sea voyage constitutes a turning point (a sea change?) in the protagonist’s life. It is a journey from home to exile, but at the same time it is touched with shades of a homecoming. For Shengul, it is a ‘‘return’’ to the homeland, her place of origin and natural domicile, in a sense. For Shemsigul, her journey from the periphery to the center of empire is supposed to deliver her to an elite household, in which she would enjoy ‘‘welfare and happiness.’’ Instead, both women are left exposed and alone by the decisions of their families. Shemsigul’s vulnerability is forcibly brought home to her through rape, while for 243

*

prehistories of globalization

Shengul the realization awakens in a fear of rape. Both women’s unstable status in the liminal space of the boat is not resolved at their destination. Both continue to inhabit an ambivalent space that constantly shifts between bondage and freedom. If Shemsigul is manumitted, she will have only the freedom of destitution and perhaps outright prostitution. For Shengul, she may escape the stifling family context, but to partake fully in the freedom of her new context would cast her out of her own values, out of her own society. For both, religion appears as a protection, although at different levels. In Shemsigul’s case, Shari’a-based law offers her recourse and some justice. For Shengul, its apparent loss invokes her deeper, ‘‘true’’ beliefs. But ultimately both women may end up trying to integrate into a family not their own, to recreate a situation of bondage, rather than remain in the world on their own. Having set out, or been sent out, on this journey, they find that at its end there is no arrival. Each of these texts exists in its particular time-space. The motivations for the journeys they narrate are different and the trajectories lead in opposite directions. The women in them, however, mirror one another and meld with one another. Each reveals hidden meanings in the other. Shemsigul’s story comes to us in the form of a police document, an official interrogation with little room for emotion. Shengul provides Shemsigul’s sensibility, her sensory memory of the disequilibrium wrought by the sea journey, in the transmutation involved in the migration. Shemsigul, in turn, illuminates Shengul’s unspoken nightmare, revealing the equivocal nature of ‘‘freedom’’ in a patriarchal world. Even the divergences in the two stories reinforce the parallels. Shemsigul is sixteen while Shengul is thirty-seven, but in both cases it is their age that selects them for their journeys. In their very names, the contrapuntal relation between these two lives comes through. Shemsigul (Şemsigül) means sun-flower and Shengul (Şengül) means happyflower, an irony compounded by Shengul being the real name of the protagonist 22 while Shemsigul is likely not a real name, since names of slaves were routinely changed after they were sold. The parallels between the stories extend further, from narrated experience into context. Both women’s lives are subordinated not only for the sake of the family’s economic survival but also for the sake of the 22. I thank and admire Shengul more than I can say for her generosity in allowing me to share her story and for her discerning understanding of my task as an ethnographer.

244

*

seteney shami

reproduction of the ethnic group. Women like Shemsigul were sold to enable families to survive and to settle in their new country. Women like Shengul are sent ahead to pave a way for resettlement in the homeland, to create an alternative to insecure livelihood. Group identity is safeguarded at the expense of notions of self-identity and accepted gender roles. Shengul is sent off at the last moment when she could have possibly found a marriage partner, to a place where marriage may be inevitably foreclosed. The perception of local Circassians as dissolute and irresponsible enables male returnees to marry local women (to redeem them in a sense), but makes it unacceptable for female returnees to marry local men. As for Shemsigul, it is not her marriage potential but her sexual function that determines her value as a commodity. Furthermore, if she marries it will not be into her ethnic group. If she bears a child as a concubine it does not belong to her, as was made manifestly clear to her by Deli Mehmet’s wife, and her child does not perpetuate her own, her family’s, or her group’s identity. In this aspect, thousands of Circassian girls share in Shemsigul’s fate, for out-marriage of girls has been a clear strategy (a ‘‘tactic’’ in Emine’s words) in Circassian communities of the diaspora, cementing alliances and securing patronage. As an elderly woman in Turkey once commented to me, ‘‘We have given away our girls to everybody.’’ Thousands of girls also share Shengul’s fate, not able to marry into the group, for a variety of reasons, and yet not allowed to marry out. On one hand, Shengul and Shemsigul give up central values of their ethnic identity, namely, marriage and reproduction for the group. On the other hand, they ensure the reproduction of the group not through their own reproductive functions but paradoxically by giving up (or rather being denied) this function, or reproducing for ‘‘the other.’’ It is perhaps due to the subordination of the individual to the collective that both narratives end with an insistence on silence. Shemsigul says that as a slave she does not have the right to complain of her suffering, to speak. Shengul, in a manner not so different, insists that she simply doesn’t remember. Globalization has produced new flows that open up the potential for new imaginations and memories. Without Shengul’s journey, Shemsigul’s story could not have been recovered and redeemed; it would have remained the story of premodern practice and sensibility, something to be transcended and looked back at with understanding and pity for the 245

*

prehistories of globalization

archaic other inhabiting a foreign country. Without Shemsigul, Shengul’s story could not be layered in quite the same way. Shemsigul is not part of Shengul’s cultural repertoire or of her memory, and yet they become part of the same diasporic imaginary in which ‘‘the word ‘unfolding’ has a double meaning. A bud unfolds into a blossom, but the boat which one teaches children to make by folding paper unfolds into a flat sheet of paper’’ (Benjamin 1992, 118). The boats on which Shengul and Shemsigul travel appear to contain clear meanings once they have been unfolded into flat sheets of paper. They tell of empire and nation, exile and homeland, loss and redemption. On the other hand, the stories of Shengul and Shemsigul, Happy-flower and Sun-flower, unfold like buds, revealing their layers but receding into oblivion just when the heart of the blossom is glimpsed. Reflecting the heart of the matter is the image of a woman on a boat. This image is truly a Benjaminian ‘‘dialectical image’’ which ‘‘ ‘interrupts the context into which it is inserted’ and thus ‘counteracts illusion’ ’’ (Buck-Morss 1999, 67).23 Juxtaposing the two texts interrupts a linear history of Circassian migrations and identity. It shows that ‘‘it isn’t that the past casts its light on what is present or that what is present casts its light on what is past; rather an image is that in which the Then [and There] and the [Here and] Now come together into a constellation like a flash of lightning’’ (Benjamin, in Pred 1995). It is the possibility of juxtaposing the two narratives, the bifocality that it entails, that brings into a different light the mediating story of migration and documentation through which these two lives, the past and present, are linked. The juxtaposition produces a past that reveals both the continuities and the new promises contained in processes and discourses of globalization. The strategies for recovering this past are the work of the imagination and make use of various resources: narratives, texts, objects. These are not fixed in particular ‘‘periods’’ but shift depending on the vantage point of the present. Is it a coincidence that Ghosh’s excavations and mine both yield slaves and slavery? At the very least, this opens up a link with the world of ‘‘the black Atlantic,’’ which has generated much of the inspiration for 23. See Benjamin’s discussion of Bertolt Brecht’s dramatic strategy where ‘‘the discovery (alienation) of conditions takes place through the interruption of happenings’’ and the notion of the ‘‘quotable gesture’’ where ‘‘interruption is one of the fundamental devices of all structuring’’ (Benjamin 1992, 147–48).

246

*

seteney shami

postcolonial possibilities. The Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Black Sea offer new and appropriately agitated spaces in/on/under/through which ‘‘we can map the postcolonial by charting its submarine flows,’’ generate ‘‘a liquid vocabulary that identifies diaspora cultures and identities as flow dynamics,’’ and discover ‘‘a self which manifests itself not as an essence but as a meandering’’ (Baucom 1997, para. 17, 7). In mapping these flows, however, gender differences should not be submerged. Wolff (1993) has shown how metaphors of travel may reproduce androcentrism by not acknowledging the differential access of men and women to travel and their different experiences of it. Both Shemsigul’s and Shengul’s journeys are enmeshed in the patriarchal and dominant structures of their day. Marginality and interstitial status, thus, are not attributes only of fixed places. Incarceration can be, and often is, mobile, as in slave ships and migrant households. Rather than ‘‘the middle-class idea of the chosen and leisured journey’’ (Wolff 1993, 225), these Circassian journeys are better compared with other more or less forced migrations of single women, as from Britain to Southern Africa in the past (Swaisland 1993) and with present refugee flows (Buijs 1993). Still, Wolff ’s point that ‘‘destabilizing has to be situated, if the critic is not to self-destruct in the process’’ is an important one (1993, 235, Wolff ’s emphasis). If the past is described through metaphors of liquidity and the present is characterized by ‘‘a nauseatingly decentered global interactiveness’’ (Buell 1998, 577), then Shengul’s motion sickness may be, after all, an appropriate reaction to how identity, self, and gender are situated in a globalizing world. postscript 1999

In Circassian oral history, there are narratives of sea crossings and dispersal, but silences about the means and costs of resettlement. Left unspoken is the story of Shemsigul. It is an imagination, that of the ethnographer, that brings together texts that are not linked and that do not ‘‘belong’’ together in any necessary way. However, it is that contrapuntal juxtaposition, the attempt at uncovering a multiply authored history, that produces Benjamin’s ‘‘flash.’’ The flash, and the image that is generated, illuminate Circassian memories but also reveal the silences and the erasures within them. It was not my intention to give Shengul’s story a happy ending. In 247

*

prehistories of globalization

1993, as I listened to her struggle with her ambivalent feelings it was clear that there was no resolution or closure. Since then things have changed. Shengul has obtained a university degree. She continues to work in the museum, prepare radio shows about the diaspora, and read the radio news in Turkish twice a week. She lives in her own apartment, having left the house of her relatives. ‘‘I don’t know why I am happy here,’’ she says. ‘‘Maybe it is because I came from that small village, all the restrictions that I lived with there, the way I was somewhere between being and not-being. I have found myself here.’’ It is not Shengul’s reconciliation with her personal past, however, but a phone conversation in 1999 that leads me to a different ending. I called Shengul from Uppsala to explain exactly how I was framing her story and the narrative of her journey to the Caucasus. As I began to tell her about Shemsigul, she interrupted. ‘‘You mean the story of the girl who is sold to Egypt, raped by the slave trader, and beaten by his wife?’’ Over my astonished silence, she explained. A synopsis of Toledano’s article had appeared in a volume entitled Circassians in Print (Güven 1993), put out by one of the Circassian youth associations in Turkey just a few months after our first conversations. ‘‘I felt very sad for the girl when I read the story,’’ Shengul said. ‘‘I thought of translating the article into Circassian and publishing it here. Then I thought that I should not give the Russians any more ammunition. They sold us in the past. I should not give them more power in the present.’’ Shemsigul has now become part of Shengul’s repertoire. Hers is not a forgotten story any more. Circassians in Print contains a whole section on slaves and slavery. Still Shengul wishes to silence this memory or at least to limit its circulation. Fear in the present continues to censor the past. Since the silence has been broken, however, can it be replaced by nostalgia/nostalghia in its transformative sense? Nostalghia is the desire or longing with burning pain to journey [to the homeland]. It also evokes the sensory dimension of memory in exile and estrangement; it mixes bodily and emotional pain and ties painful experiences of spiritual and somatic exile to the notion of maturation and ripening. . . . Nostalgia, in the American sense, freezes the past in such a manner as to preclude it from any capacity for social transformation in the present, preventing the present from establishing a dynamic perceptual relationship to its history. 248

*

seteney shami

Whereas the Greek etymology evokes the transformative impact of the past as unreconciled historical experience. (Seremetakis 1994a, 4) works cited Abu-Lughod, Janet. 1989. Before European hegemony: The world system, A.D. 1250– 1350. New York: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baucom, Ian. 1997. Charting the ‘‘Black Atlantic.’’ Postmodern Culture 8(1) (http:// muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodernculture/v009/8.1baucom.html). Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Illuminations: Essays and reflections, edited by Hannah Arendt and translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken. Berkok, I˙smail. 1958. Tarihte Kafkasya [The Caucasus in history]. Istanbul: I˙stanbul Matbaasi. Buck-Morss, Susan. 1999. The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the arcades project. Cambridge: MIT Press. Buell, Frederick. 1998. Nationalist postnationalism: Globalist discourse in contemporary American culture. American Quarterly 50(3): 548–91. Buijs, Gina, ed. 1993. Migrant women: Crossing boundaries and changing identities. Oxford: Berg. Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Connerton, Paul. 1991. How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Erdem, Y. Hakan. 1993. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its demise, 1800–1909. Ph.D. diss., Oxford University. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object. New York: Columbia University Press. Ghosh, Amitav. 1993. In an antique land. London: Granta Books. Güven, Yaşar, ed. 1993. Basında Çerkezler [Circassians in print]. Istanbul: Bag˘larbaşı Gençlik Kurumu (Eylül/September). Karpat, K. 1985. Ottoman population 1830–1914: Demographic and social characteristics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Klein, Norman M. 1998. The history of forgetting: Los Angeles and the erasure of memory. London: Verso. Pred, Allan. 1995. Recognizing European modernities: A montage of the present. London: Routledge. Rogan, Eugene. 1991. Incorporating the periphery: The Ottoman extension of direct rule over southeastern Syria (TransJordan), 1867–1914. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Şen, Ömer. 1994. 19 Yüzyılda Osmanlı Devletindeki Köle Ticaretinde Kafkasya Göçmenlerinin Rolü [The role of the Caucasian immigrants in the slave trade of the 249

*

prehistories of globalization

nineteenth-century Ottoman state]. Toplum ve Ekonomi, Sayi 6, Mayıs (Istanbul): 171–83. Seremetakis, C. Nadia. 1994a. The memory of the senses, part I: Marks of the transitory. In The senses still: Perception and memory as material culture in modernity, edited by C. Nadia Seremetakis. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. . 1994b. Implications. In The senses still: Perception and memory as material culture in modernity, edited by C. Nadia Seremetakis. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Shami, Seteney. 1992. Nineteenth century Circassian settlements in Jordan. In Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan IV, edited by Adnan Hadidi. Amman, Jordan: Department of Antiquities. . 1995. Disjuncture in ethnicity: Negotiating Circassian identity in Jordan, Turkey, and the Caucasus. New Perspectives on Turkey 12 (Spring): 79–95. . 1998. Circassian encounters: The self as other and the production of the homeland in the North Caucasus. Development and Change 29: 617–46. . 2000a. Engendering social memory: Domestic rituals, resistance and identity in the North Caucasus. In Gender and identity construction: Women of central Asia, the Caucasus, and Turkey, edited by Feride Acar and Ayse Güneş-Ayata. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill. . 2000b. The little nation: Minorities and majorities in the context of shifting geographies. In Nationalism and internationalism in the post–Cold War era, edited by Kjell Goldmann, Ulf Hannerz, and Charles Westin. London: Routledge. Swaisland, Cecillie. 1993. Servants and gentlewomen to the golden land: The emigration of single women from Britain to southern Africa 1820–1939. Oxford: Berg and University of Natal Press. Thrift, Nigel. 1996. Spatial formations. London: Sage Publications. Toledano, Ehud R. 1982. The Ottoman slave trade and its suppression, 1840–1890. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. . 1993. Shemsigul: A Circassian slave in mid-nineteenth-century Cairo. In Struggle and survival in the modern Middle East, edited by Edmund Burke III. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wolff, Janet. 1993. On the road again: Metaphors of travel in cultural criticism. Cultural Studies 7(2): 224–39.

250

*

seteney shami

On the Predicament of the Sign: The Modern African Woman’s Claim to Locality Fatu Kande Senghor

Photographs copyright © 1999 by Fatu Kande Senghor.

From National Capital to Global Capital: Urban Change in Mexico City Néstor García Canclini Translated by Paul Liffman

The critical study of modern cities, such as Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, has contributed greatly to the project to rethink modernity. If it is agreed that a definitive component of globalization is the global city, a similar focus on the city should serve the study of globalization equally well. Some scholars have begun to set out the criteria of what qualifies global cities as such (Borja and Castells 1997, Hannerz 1996, Sassen 1991). Mexico City would seem to meet these requirements, combining as it does the strong presence of international enterprise with a multicultural (national and foreign) population, a high concentration of artistic and scientific elite, and a large volume of international tourism. My concern in this essay is to explore what dynamics of globalization are illuminated by a consideration of the urban transformations that have distinguished Mexico City, as well as other cities in Latin America, as a global city. During its colonial period, Mexico City was traversed by economic and cultural movements that stretched well beyond what we today call the country of Mexico. Like Buenos Aires, Lima, and other colonial cities of Latin America, it functioned as a regional capital and as an articulator of links with Spain. Latin capitals of the day were characterized by these supranational functions, which persisted through the transformations of independence and the formation of the modern Latin nation-states. Until well into the middle of the twentieth century, however, urban structures and life worlds in these cities were primarily conditioned by their roles as national centers of economics, politics, and culture. This work is part of the study ‘‘Ciudad de México: Lo público y lo privado en una ciudad multicultural,’’ which is being carried out in the Urban Culture Studies Program of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, with support from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT).

For Mexico City, even the physical geometry of its urban development remained unchanged, and this despite a population increase from 185,000 at the middle of the nineteenth century to over 3 million by the middle of the twentieth. Throughout this growth, the city retained the same quadrangular design set by Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century, and, until fifty years ago, the life of Mexico City was largely encompassed by this clearly delimited territory. The Centro Histórico, a district characterized by nineteenth-century colonial architecture and archaeological sites evocative of a pre-Hispanic past, was the geographical, political, and cultural nucleus of this urban design; it remained Mexico City’s principal ‘‘reference at the symbolic and political level’’— home to its ‘‘monumental and ultramodern Legislative Palace’’ and its national museums—until the 1980s (Monnet 1995, 14). During the period of the Centro Histórico’s prominence, the principal actor in national and urban life in Mexico was the state, occupied as it was with consolidating the nation from fifty-six indigenous ethnic groups and disparate regional forms of development. State organs undertook to accomplish this integration with the familiar technologies of railroads, a national economic market, an educational system based on Hispanization, the advocacy of political unity under a single party and labor board, and a campaign to synthesize a cultural patrimony and national iconography from artisan production, modern plastic arts, and cinema. The visual repertory assembled by this state-driven project to build cultural patrimony circulated in national museums and world’s fairs, in a gigantic public murals project, and in films that tied peasant memory to a new urban sentimental education (Monsiváis 1984). Mexico’s population during this period concentrated ever more in its cities: From 1900 to 1970, the percentage of Mexicans living in cities grew from 10 to 70 percent. Mexican state cultural policies responded by concentrating educational centers, museums, monuments, and archaeological preservation efforts in its cities, especially the capital. While patterns of population migration validated the state practice of centralizing cultural capital, the high rates of illiteracy that prevailed during the period fortified state resolve to develop a national patrimony founded on the imagery of visual culture rather than print. This gave the Mexican public sphere a broader communicative power than that which operated in other nations, where the predominance of written media reserved 254

*

néstor garcía canclini

knowledge of ‘‘legitimate’’ cultural memory and symbolism for the literate. In 1950 Mexico City occupied basically what are now its most centrally located districts: Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, and Coyoacán. The capital featured streetcars, 22,000 horse-drawn carts, 60,000 cars, and about 1,700 buses that carried 1 million passengers daily (Hoy 1943). Any inhabitant could get to the Centro Histórico from their neighborhood by walking or riding no more than five kilometers. A small part of the population informed itself through the press and a somewhat greater part had access to radio. People went to the movies, dance halls, and parks, while the university, bookstores, and theaters drew residents to the city’s core. Industrial development similarly centered on the capital, attracting migrants from diverse regions of the country. This influx of labor expanded the city outward from the original downtown districts to the sixteen that now form the Distrito Federal, finally merging them with the twenty-seven municipios of the State of Mexico. As population swelled and districts proliferated, the 9.1 square kilometers that the city occupied at the beginning of the twentieth century spread to the current megalopolis’s 1,500. But this demographic and spatial expansion did not elicit a proportionate adjustment in the distribution of state cultural offerings in the city. Public spending on culture remained restricted to the major state venues of the arts, literature, history, and museums; further, these national cultural institutions remained not only concentrated in the capital but confined to the buildings of the national museums of history, anthropology, and art, all of which lie along an axis connecting the Centro Histórico to Chapultepec Park. Mexican state cultural policy has made its greatest investments of the last half century in these museums, along with some theaters and cinemas, thereby concentrating the majority of its overall investments in the downtown of the city.1 In the poor settlements to the north and east of the capital, industrial development has not led to the creation of museums and auditoriums, and there are few parks and recreation sites. Only radio, television, bullfights, a few public libraries, and, since 1985, video stores, 1. Exceptions include the University City, some cultural institutes and libraries, the Cineteca Nacional, and the National Center for the Arts, which expanded the installation of public culture southward.

255

*

urban change in mexico city

afford the many residents of these areas something to do in their free time. Where national cultural works have not been undertaken, cultural products have been imported through multinational entertainment industry. In consequence, the public cultural space available to Mexico City’s spreading population is not the nationally sponsored public spaces of theaters and monuments but that of the media of mass communications. Although Mexico City’s rapid growth in the last half century was due to industrialization and the resulting attraction of domestic migrants, since the country’s economic opening to the outside world in the early 1980s the most dynamic development areas in the capital have been those linked to the installation of transnational investments and the transnationalization of Mexican businesses. The Distrito Federal and its metropolitan surroundings have been transformed into one of the twenty urban megacenters where the means of finance, innovation, and commercialization are articulated on a global scale. This change is most obvious in the 650 hectares of the Santa Fe area dedicated to shopping centers, upscale residential development, and buildings for HewlettPackard, Mercedes-Benz, Chubb Insurance, Televisa, and the like (Mercado Moraga 1997). This is the most radical transformation of land use and urban topography to affect the capital in recent decades: Where there had been precarious immigrant neighborhoods surrounded by garbage dumps, in less than a decade there has emerged a postmodern architecture of residential and consumer structures built to upscale First World standards. Something similar is visible in the architectural renovation of the Paseo de la Reforma and in parts of Polanco, Insurgentes, and Periférico Sur. Macroshopping centers and transnational hotel chains have concentrated in these areas, bringing with them satellite telecommunications and information and entertainment services including cable and digital television and multiplex cinemas. While this form of development radically alters cultural and communicational offerings, it simultaneously reorders the meaning of urban life and traditional modes of using space. Perhaps most visible is that the state has ceded its role as the leading cultural agent to private business and transnational corporations. Economic and communicational globalization typically fosters cosmopolitan urban development, but this does not happen evenly in all areas. 256

*

néstor garcía canclini

In the academy and other regions of intellectual life in principal Latin American cities, international visits and information flows have multiplied. However, in some cities that were very cosmopolitan, shrinking states and scarce private financing have reduced the diffusion of foreign art, as demonstrated by impoverished visual art expositions in Mexico City and by the Montevideo and Bogotá Theater. In the few Latin American countries with a national cinema industry (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico), production has decayed and theaters have shut down. Although moviegoing has revived with the proliferation of ultramodern multiplex cinemas, the distribution of theaters and multimedia systems generally is ever more controlled by international producers and distributors. At the same time, it must be pointed out that in almost all of these fields, new urban administrations are promoting the improvement and diversification of cultural offerings. Not only the metropolises of the First World but also large Latin American cities are central to this work. Sometimes this happens because of state initiatives, such as intercity festivals or international film and theater cycles; at other times it happens through the association of private businessmen or independent producers, from Televisa to Caribbean music festivals that link regional cities to New York and Miami, to the Mercosur Cultural Network and other movements like it. It is not a mere word game to ask with what cultural capital Latin American capitals face these tasks. To what extent does this project mobilize a local patrimony (historical, musical, filmic, or videorecorded) and to what degree does it depend on importation and commercialized tours—and therefore the mobilization of massive quantities of delocalized capital, usually governed by ‘‘lite’’ aesthetics, quick profits, and ephemeral passages? What are the possibilities for speaking in the name of the city and communicating with other cities when so many domains of local production have shrunk? Presses are bankrupted or bought up by transnationals; there is scant filming capacity; and the little cinema that is produced gets subordinated to the commercial criteria of international coproductions. Certainly these market tendencies are counterbalanced to some degree by the regional adaptation of transnational forms, such as the branches of MTV and major label record producers that have established themselves in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Also, these changes must be correlated with new tendencies in cultural con257

*

urban change in mexico city

sumption, more cosmopolitan tastes, and the predominance of communications industries over local culture. Linked with these developments are regional integrations like NAFTA and the Mercosur. Also linked with them is the significant displacement in cosmopolitan Latin American culture of European referents by North American referents. While this does not occur in the same way in all countries or in all economic and educational sectors, the prevailing tendency is this: What Paris, Madrid, or London signified in another era is today represented for elites by New York and for middle-class consumers by Miami or Los Angeles. Fluid communication between First World Latin American communities and Latin American cities, increasing international visibility of Latin American artists and intellectuals, and large Latin American populations (and therefore Spanish-speaking publics and markets) in many First World cities make it necessary to think of those cities as a form of Latin American cultural capital rather than merely import culture or foreign chic. For example, what does it mean that, in terms of population, Los Angeles is the third-largest Mexican city, Miami the second city of Cuba, and Buenos Aires the third city of Bolivia? How can transurban cultural policies contribute to intercultural knowledge and understanding? Various recent programs, like the Buenos Aires–Porto Alegre art weeks and the United States–Mexican Cultural Commission, along with the declaration of Mexico City as a ‘‘city of refuge’’ for persecuted writers, are initiatives that stimulate this line of development. These tendencies, which do not all lead in the same direction and sometimes are inspired by contradictory interests, reconfigure the Latin American cultural landscape. What can Mexico City offer today to equal what it achieved with attractions like the Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor in another period? Except for the Mexico City Festival, which was held in the early 1990s and later was canceled, there have been no regular activities of international importance in the capital as there have been in other regions of the country—for example, the Cervantes Festival in Guanajuato and the Guadalajara Book Fair. These events gave these cities a new international profile while revitalizing their economies and local cultures. The territorial expansion of the metropolis and the predominance of electronic media as the location of the urban periphery’s public cultural 258

*

néstor garcía canclini

space has meant, at the very least, the demotion of the Centro Histórico as the chief showcase of cultural production in Mexico City. As residents of a polycentric city of commuters, Mexico City’s inhabitants today tend to satisfy their consumer and entertainment needs in the areas where they live; in consequence, a different relationship to national culture develops. Media circuits support the bulk of weight once shouldered in Mexico City by traditional central spaces of congregation, and these circuits convey information and imaginaries of urban life no longer responsive solely to national projects. In some cases these circuits offer new modalities of encounter and recognition. New cultural venues link large sectors of the population, segment by segment, with macrourban experiences and other countries. As these media favor fluid interaction with the capital and national life as well as with transnational goods and messages, this has meant changes to both the form and the cultural content of urban life in Mexico City. works cited Borja, Jordi, and Manuel Castells. 1997. Local y global: La gestión de las ciudades en la era de la información. Madrid: Taurus. Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational connections. London: Routledge. Hoy. 1943. La ciudad de México: Cómo era y cómo es; la transformación de la metrópoli y de sus alrededores. Hoy (Mexico City), 23 January, 52–62. Mercado Moraga, Angel. 1997. Reservas territoriales para usos urbanos en el Distrito Federal. In Bases para la planeación del desarrollo urbano en la Ciudad de México, edited by Roberto Eibenschutz. Vol. 2. Mexico City: Porrúa-UAM. Monnet, Jerome. 1995. Usos e imágenes del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México. Mexico City: Departamento del Distrito Federal—Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos. Monsiváis, Carlos. 1984. Notas sobre el Estado, la cultura nacional, y las culturas populares. In Cuadernos Políticos, Mexico City, no. 30. Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The global city. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

259

*

urban change in mexico city

Spatialities and Temporalities of the Global: Elements for a Theorization Saskia Sassen

The multiple processes that constitute economic globalization inhabit and shape specific structurations of the economic, the political, the cultural, and the subjective. Among the most vital of their effects is the production of new spatialities and temporalities. These belong to both the global and the national, if only to each in part. This ‘‘in part’’ is an especially important qualification, as in my reading the global is itself partial, albeit strategic. The global does not (yet) fully encompass the lived experience of actors or the domain of institutional orders and cultural formations; it persists as a partial condition. This, however, should not suggest that the global and the national are discrete conditions that mutually exclude each other. To the contrary, they significantly overlap and interact in ways that distinguish our contemporary moment. These overlaps and interactions have consequences for the work of theorization and research. Much of social science has operated with the assumption of the nation-state as a container, representing a unified spatiotemporality. Much of history, however, has failed to confirm this assumption. Modern nation-states themselves never achieved spatiotemporal unity, and the global restructurings of today threaten to erode the usefulness of this proposition for what is an expanding arena of sociological reality. The spatiotemporality of the national, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be composed of multiple spatialities and temporalities that are at best organizable into something approximating a spatiotemporal order—one, for instance, that can now be distinguished from the global. This essay is a revised version of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology’s Distinguished Lecture, ‘‘The State and the New Geography of Power,’’ delivered at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Philadelphia, 5 November 1998.

Crucial to the project of this essay will be its conception of the dynamics of interaction and overlap that operate both within the global and the national and between them. Each sphere, global and national, describes a spatiotemporal order with considerable internal differentiation and growing mutual imbrication with the other. Their internal differences interpenetrate in ways that are variously conflictive, disjunctive, and neutralizing. The theoretical and methodological task of this essay will be one of detecting/constructing the social thickness and specificity of these dimensions with the aim of developing a suitably textured understanding of dynamic spaces of overlap and interaction. Given the complexity and specificity of both the global and the national, their interlacing suggests the existence of frontier zones—from the perspective of research and theorization, these analytic borderlands are sure to require independent theoretical and methodological specificity. Given the historically constructed meaning of the national as a dominant condition that mutually excludes both other nationals and the nonnational, these frontier zones are likely to be marked by operations of power and domination. A possible outcome of these dynamics of interaction between the global and the national, I suggest, is an incipient and partial denationalization of domains once understood and/or constructed as national. Theoretically and operationally, these processes seem thus far to have favored certain kinds of subjects and topics as strategic and capable of illuminating the issues at hand. In the domain of the global economic, transnational corporations, financial markets, and (in my analysis at least [Sassen 1998, chap. 4]) immigrant workers are emblematic subjects. At a greater level of complexity, so are the question of sovereignty in the context of globalization and the formation of border-crossing networks of global cities.1 These are the elements I begin to explore in this essay. I will focus especially on analytic operations that I have found to be helpful, if not necessary, to explaining the dynamics of national-global overlap and interaction. As my past research has made me more familiar with the global than the national, the global will provide my angle of entry into these issues. 1. Many more such subjects and topics have already been identified and conceptualized in other domains. See, for example, Appadurai 1996 and Palumbo-Liu 1999.

261

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

a n a ly t i c o pe r at i o n s

There is a specificity to the conditions and contents of the global. Two elements that are key to its formulation are the degree of economic globalization’s embeddedness in the national and the specificity and social thickness of the global.2 The global economy cannot be taken simply as given, whether what is given is a set of markets or a function of the power of multinational corporations. To the contrary, the global economy is something that has to be actively implemented, reproduced, serviced, and financed. It requires that a vast array of highly specialized functions be carried out, that infrastructures be secured, that legislative environments be made and kept hospitable. These requirements need to be produced or secured, even in the case of what we might consider merely the cross-border spread or imposition of particular national forms, whether Anglo-American accounting standards or U.S. styles of food and entertainment. Not everyone would agree with this assessment, however. Much scholarship on economic globalization has either rejected what I am calling its specificity—some reject even its reality—or confined its conceptualization to cross-border trade and capital flows, thereby denuding it of most of its social thickness.3 Among those who do grant it a specific presence, the tendency has been to understand economic globalization in terms of the technological achievements of hypermobility and the neutralization of distance (Ohmae 1996). Arguments about the compression of time—real-time simultaneity and instantaneous integration—have become the predictable commentaries on such descriptions. What both of these mainstream accounts tend to leave out of the analysis is that global-economic features like hypermobility and timespace compression are not self-generative. They need to be produced, and such a feat of production requires capital fixity (Harvey 1982), vast concentrations of very material and not so mobile facilities and infrastructures. As such, the spatiotemporality of economic globalization 2. William Sewell has developed the notion of ‘‘thickening the social.’’ In a slight play on the terms I argue here that we need to bring social thickness to our analysis of globalization. This can be particularly helpful in identifying sites that allow for complexity in an inquiry about economic globalization. 3. See Smith et al. 1999 for a fairly broad range of positions.

262

*

saskia sassen

itself can already be seen to contain dynamics of both mobility and fixity (Sassen 1998, chap. 10; Brenner 1998). While mobility and fixity may easily be classified as two distinct types of dynamic from the perspective of mainstream categories, they in fact enjoy no such distinction. Each presupposes the other, thereby raising empirical, theoretical, and political questions that defy the explanatory power of unified theories of hypermobility and time-space compression. The global city is emblematic here, with its vast capacities for controlling hypermobile dematerialized financial instruments and its enormous concentrations of those material and human, mostly place-bound, resources that make such capacities possible. Cities demonstrate one way in which economic globalization can be said to be nationally embedded, in this instance institutionally and locationally so.4 If the global is indeed rich in content and characterized by a diversity of conditions, then its insertion in an institutional world that has been historically constructed as overwhelmingly national is eventful. Indeed, it is what gives meaning to the notion of overlap and interaction among the multiple spatialities and temporalities of the national and the global. These insertions remain in process, continuously producing new specificity, which already differs greatly today from what it was only fifteen years ago. The extent to which global conditions today resemble the conditions of earlier eras is a subject of much debate (Arrighi 1994; Political Power and Social Theory 1999). Of interest here is Fernand Braudel’s (1984) examination of the times and spaces of fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury Europe. His treatment of the distinctiveness of the period’s major cities—the ‘‘supervilles’’—highlights a coexistence of several spatialities and temporalities. But these tended to define mutually exclusive zones; for the most part, only cores and peripheries were articulated to each other, and then by relations of hierarchy. What I am positing is different from Braudel’s mutually exclusive zones. For instance, within global cities today, the capital fixity that makes possible hypermobility instantiates a spatiality and temporality that is distinct from that of the circulation of hypermobile dematerialized financial instruments. The 4. In a different domain, I read Appadurai’s (1996) account of global cultural disjunctures as a conceptualization of the spatialities and temporalities of the global that captures this specificity of conditions and contents, so that disjunctures internal to the global are revealed.

263

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

two coexist without either fully containing the global economic, which overlaps both.5 Global processes are often strategically located/constituted in national spaces, where they are implemented usually with the help of legal measures taken by state institutions. The material and legal infrastructure that makes possible the global circulation of financial capital, for example, is often produced as ‘‘national’’ infrastructure—even though increasingly shaped by global agendas. This insertion into the national of global projects, originating both domestically and externally, begins a partial unbundling of national space. It is only partial, as the geography of economic globalization is strategic rather than diffuse,6 as well as for the reason that national space was never unitary or fully integrated to begin with, despite its institutional construction as such.7 These developments signal a transformation in the particular form of the articulation of sovereignty and territory that has marked the recent history of the modern state and interstate system, beginning with World War I and culminating in the Pax Americana period.8 I suggest that one way to conceptualize these insertions of the global into the 5. On the other hand, what Appadurai identifies as disjunctural in global cultural flows has a global economic parallel in the disjuncture between financial market deregulation and the compensation of investor losses that result from financial crises that (we now know) are a regular outcome of deregulation. 6. There is disagreement in the literature on this point. Some authors see globalization as a universal and universalizing condition, especially when it comes to the sphere of consumption. In my research I have tended to focus on the operations necessary to the management and coordination of the global economy as well as those that organize the appropriation and control of profit. From this angle, the geography of globalization is partial and not all-encompassing, though it is strategic. These two different angles can be interpreted as instantiations of different spatialities within the global. 7. The doctrine of extraterritoriality was developed precisely to accommodate the nonunitary condition of the national and to secure the extension of state authority beyond the geographic boundaries of national territory (Mattingly 1988). 8. There is considerable disagreement as to the impact of economic globalization on the national state (see for instance Smith et al. 1999; Olds et al. 1999). Simplifying, one could say that on one side are those who argue that not much has changed for the state (Krasner 1999) and on the other are those who argue that the state is losing much of its significance (Ohmae 1996). Both of these positions share assumptions that I reject, in particular that the national and the global are two mutually exclusive zones for theorization, empirical specification, and politics.

264

*

saskia sassen

fabric of the national is as a partial and incipient denationalization of that which historically has been constructed as the national or, rather, of certain properties of the national (Sassen 1996b, chap. 1).9 Whether the combined embeddedness and specificity of the global actually achieves these temporal and spatial unbundlings and whether particular constructions of the national have greater capacities for resistance or accommodation than others are the concerns of the second half of this essay. I first consider the specificity and complexity of those frontier zones born of the interactive overlapping of global and national orders. a n a ly t i c b o r d e r l a n d s

Specifying such borderlands has its own particular challenges: What are the activities that distinguish borderlands? How are their contents produced? What theoretical tools are needed to resist the collapse of these zones into thinly linear demarcations of difference? 10 Far more work on this issue has been done in fields other than those dealing with the global economy. For instance, Homi Bhabha’s (1994) explorations and theorizations of spaces of intersection and ‘‘inbetween’’ forms of difference make a large contribution to our under9. Further, insofar as the global is constitutive of as well as constituted through a distinct spatiotemporal order, and insofar as the dominant, though not exclusive, spatiotemporal order over the last several decades has been the national, we can conceptualize the global as a denationalized spatiotemporal order—both in the sense of the denationalizing of elements of the national and in the sense of a novel order distinct from the national. The national here is to a large extent linked to the territorial state and those of its organizational capacities necessary for the territorializing of capital. See also Harvey 1982; Brenner 1998. 10. I have developed the concept of analytic borderlands in Sassen 1996a. It entails opening up a line (represented or experienced as dividing two mutually exclusive zones) into a border zone that demands its own theorization and empirical specification and that can accommodate its own distinct practices. My notion of the global city is one instantiation, clearly one on a rather macro level. The work I am doing currently on the state (Sassen 1999) concentrates on another, particularly the notion of incipiently denationalized (highly specialized) institutional orders that negotiate between the world of the exclusive sovereign authority of national states over their national territories and the implantation of global operations in those same territories and institutional orders.

265

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

standing of borderlands. I also read such an effort in an extraordinary book by David Palumbo-Liu (1999, 1) in which he posits that his construction ‘‘Asian/American,’’ at once implying both exclusion and inclusion, ‘‘marks both the distinction installed between ‘Asian’ and ‘American’ and a dynamic, unsettled, and inclusive movement.’’ For a political economist, the analytics and the contents of such borderlands are of course quite different. Most of my effort has focused on the intersection between systems of representation that are sufficiently diverse as to render their interaction analytically inconsequential for mainstream analysts. For instance, I have argued that globalization has contributed to a series of economic activities that take place in national contexts but that are sufficiently novel in some of their features (organizational or locational) so that while they do not appear to violate existing regulatory frameworks, they cannot be said to comply with them either. I describe the in-between spaces these practices bring into being as ‘‘regulatory fractures.’’ Such fractures include, for example, financial operations that, without violating regulations, destabilize national governments—as speculative attacks by foreign hedge funds on the Thai currency did in mid-1997: No regulations were violated, yet this was war. Another example is the informal economies growing in major cities of the highly developed world. Frequently, these are represented as having little to do with the global economy; instead, they are construed as remnant economic practices imported by immigrants from developing countries to global cities. In my research, I have found such economies largely to be an outcome of the new types of organizational, spatial, and temporal requirements that are in fact entailed by the growth of those cities’ global sectors (Sassen 1998, chap. 8).11 Replete with such regulatory fractures, global cities include dense and 11. The deregulation of leading sectors in the context of economic globalization requires significant legislative changes and enormous resources. Because of the high stakes and the power of those involved, a growing number of countries have been willing to do this, often at significant cost to the national treasuries and to the taxpayers that finance them. At the bottom of the economic system the work of deregulation has been a low-cost operation in samizdat. Where the will to deploy these resources is lacking, as it frequently is, costs are absorbed by the workers, families, and communities involved. What we describe as deregulation at the top of the system is informalization at the bottom. See Sassen 1998, chap. 8.

266

*

saskia sassen

complex borderlands marked by the intersection of multiple spatiotemporal (dis)orders. Interactions and Overlaps A vital concern for research into these borderlands is the discernment and preservation of the complexity produced of the combined thickness and specificity of the national and the global. An important contribution in this area is Arjun Appadurai’s thesis of global cultural disjunctures (1996, chap. 2), in particular his insistence that disjunctures themselves interact dynamically and uncertainly. The relationship between cultural and economic levels, Appadurai argues, is irreducible to a one-way process ‘‘set wholly by, or confined wholly within, the vicissitudes of international flows of technology, labor, and finance.’’ In consequence, analysis of these circumstances cannot be accomplished merely by ‘‘modest modification of existing neo-Marxist models of uneven development and state formation.’’ Today social actors are likely to live, and entities likely to operate, in overlapping domains of the national and the global. The distinct formations produced of these dynamics require empirical specification and theorization on their own terms. In my own research on the global economy I have increasingly come to see that much of what we think of as a new economic dynamic—for example, that the global is dominated by finance—in fact emerges from the juxtaposition of the national and the global. This is especially so, perhaps, when it comes to the discrepant temporalities that distinguish institutional and organizational settings associated with the national as constructed in developed countries during the post–World War II era from those associated with the global as constructed during the last decade. Juxtaposed Temporalities and New Economies The question of temporality in the economy raises the familiar issue of how technology has altered the duration of a variety of economic practices. Accounts of how technology has accelerated economic practice abound, but acceleration is not the whole story. Discrepancies between the rates of acceleration affecting different economic activities can engender differing temporalities, and it is these differences that should be of the greater interest to us. The ascendancy of finance and the dematerialization of many eco267

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

nomic activities assume their full meaning only when we juxtapose the uneven temporalities they foster—juxtapositions that illustrate, for example, the disjuncture of digital and material temporalities. Such a disjuncture can be seen through a comparison of the different forms of capital mobilized in, for example, the production of a car versus the provision of a financial service. Profit is realized from automobile manufacture in about nine months; the duration of a financial service transaction could be a day or less.12 These are produced temporal orders each embedded in a complex institutional world belonging, I would argue, to a distinct spatiotemporal configuration. In the gap between the two orders lies a world of business opportunities. This is not necessarily a new event (see Arrighi 1994 for a discussion of Marx’s cycles of capital), but the divergence between the organizations of manufacturing capital and financial capital is part of the specificity that characterizes the overlap of the national with the global today. The sharper the differentiation between these two temporalities grows (with dematerialization/digitalization), the more abundant the business opportunities become. This is one way in which economic globalization today is constituted: Temporal features of finance capital empower it to subject other forms of capital to its rhythms. The emergence of new profit opportunities at these interfaces of discrepant temporalities in advanced economies occasions new questions for theory and research. Insofar as much of this activity happens in cities, enriching them with new sources of growth and hierarchies of profitability, much new critical and analytic effort is directed at the city. As new ventures stake claims in cities’ borderzones—spaces belonging to none of the sectors whose converging unevenness creates their profitability—borderzones have become the sites of analytic interest and complexity.

12. I should add that through the manufacturing of products such as cars or airplanes, etc., an enormous amount of capital gets concentrated under one form of management. Market economies always face the challenge of securing the concentration of sufficiently large amounts of money so that they may function as investment capital. In the case of Volkswagen, for instance, the manufacturing of cars secured vast amounts of capital that was not continuously used at a similar level of intensity over the nine-month production cycle and hence allowed its financial services division to use that capital for shorter-term operations.

268

*

saskia sassen

exc avating the temporalit y of the national

I would like now to focus on one aspect of the foregoing discussion, the temporality of the national. As a master image of globalization, accelerated time has already become a distinct object of study. If the temporality of the national has, by contrast, remained submerged, an unnamed condition, it is partly because it is our given condition, the assumed temporality of much social scientific practice. If the institutional orders that embed the national are traversed by the global, however, the national may well be said to contain a deteriorating temporality.13 The time of the national is elusive; it needs excavating. It is constructed of a past filled with the nation’s founding myths and a future set to inherit the state as the necessary consequence of the nation—that is, the national is a time that looks to the past and inherits a future. As such, work that interrogates the past and locates it in the present is especially compelling. Jean and John Comaroff (1997) situate their work against a broader set of conceptual and historiographic practices in a way that instructs us in the temporality of the national: ‘‘While, at least in one obvious sense, the making of the modern world has run its course, its grand narrative has been rendered all the more enigmatic by the sheer unexpectedness of its closing scenes . . . the jury is still very much out on some of the enduring issues of social theory’’ (xiv). Theirs is ‘‘an account of a colonial past that reaches into the present—each chapter carries forward into this century—and contemplates the fashioning of the future’’ (xvi). What I take from this volume, pace the matter that it is a colonial past, is the notion that the past is unsettled, not in the sense that it yields only imperfect knowledge or data but in the sense that it lives. The past is not a linear sequence that can be retraced and left behind. Nor is it present simply in the sense of having fostered pathdependence—that is, of having established the constraints of what will be possible in future. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot has observed, often ‘‘the legacy of the past’’ in fact is not given to us by the past at all. Building on Trouillot’s observation, I would add that the temporality of the national is organized by ‘‘the assumption that history requires a linear and cumulative sense of time that allows the observer to isolate the past as a distinct entity’’ (Trouillot 1995, 7). Along a similar line, David 13. This is ongoing, unfinished research; see Sassen 1999.

269

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

Palumbo-Liu’s (1999) work examines how the term American in the hyphenated identity marker Asian-American is construed as settled and preceding Asian in what is constructed as lineal time. Asian is made to seem belated and unsettled. In fact, Liu argues, the relation is not lineal but mutually constitutive. By examining a similar tension between global and national, we discover that the dynamics contributing to the formation of global economic systems provide clues to the temporality of the national as well. For instance, the privatization of resources and regulatory functions that distinguishes the current global economic era also accomplishes a shift in temporalities that globalization scholars often overlook. When a firm moves from the public sector to the private sector much more happens than a mere shift in ownership. Insofar as the shift happens through foreign investment, the norm in much of the world, it is likely to entail entry into global economic circuits—that is to say, an institutional world that operates under different conditions of velocity and territoriality. There is also a shift in the location of regulatory functions, from a public bureaucracy to a corporate office. This means a shift from a bureaucratic temporal order, in principle subject to the slow moving and rule-bound public accountability of governmental processes, to the accelerated dynamic of private ‘‘regulatory’’ functions and markets (Sassen 1999). The same growth of private or self-regulation also signals a shift in institutional orders. Scholarship on public settlement mechanisms, such as courts, has given us good insight into how public institutional orders function. Although guided by a set of questions not directly concerned with temporality, this research nonetheless often yields a sense of the temporal organization of public institutions, suggesting the degree to which privatization ushers firms into different temporal orders. Private international commercial arbitration provides a good example. In past work I have emphasized the privatizing of ‘‘justice’’ that takes place through this type of arbitration (Sassen 1996b). Reconsidering this issue in the terms under discussion here brings to the fore the fact that different forms of arbitration entail discrepant temporal orders, as can be immediately seen in the way in which the avoidance of national court systems ensures quick adjudications and settlements.

270

*

saskia sassen

c r o ss - b o r der s pat ia l it ie s

A specific kind of materiality underlies the world of new business activities, including those that have been digitalized. Even the most globalized and dematerialized business sectors, such as global finance, inhabit both physical and digital space. Such firms’ activities are simultaneously partly deterritorialized and partly deeply territorialized; they span the globe, yet they are strategically concentrated in specific places.14 The strategic geography of this distribution fluidly traverses borders and spaces while installing itself in key cities. It is a geography that explodes conventional notions of context and traditional hierarchies of scale. It does so, in part, through the unbundling of national territory. We can therefore understand the global economy as materializing in a worldwide grid of strategic places, uppermost among which are major international business and financial centers. This global grid can further be understood to constitute a new economic geography of centrality, one that cuts across national borders and across the old North-South divide.15 The most powerful of these new geographies of centrality is the interurban geography that joins major international financial and business centers: New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Sydney, Hong Kong. Recent expansions of the network have incorporated São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bombay, Bangkok, 14. The space economy of leading information industries raises a very specific question of control and governance. In these industries, more so than in many others, a significant volume of transactions and markets operates in electronic space that is not subject to conventional jurisdictions. The questions of control and regulation raised by the electronic and telecommunications side of this new space economy lie beyond much of the current discussion about the shrinking role of the state in a global economy. Once transactions begin to happen within these new technologies, speed alone creates problems of control that are new and can be handled through either conventional state-centered or nonstate forms of authority. The most familiar case is that of the foreign currency markets where volumes made possible by multiple transactions in a single day have left the existing institutional apparatus, notably central banks, impotent to affect outcomes in these markets the way they once expected to. There are other, empowering sides to this story (see, for example, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 1996). 15. For concrete applications of these propositions, see, for instance, Knox and Taylor 1995; Short and Kim 1999. A key aspect of the spatialization of global economic processes, which I cannot develop here, is digital space (but see Sassen 1998, chap. 9).

271

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

Taipei, and Mexico City. As the magnitude and intensity of transactions among these cities—particularly in financial services, markets, and investing—have increased, economic inequalities between nodal cities and others in their own countries have also increased. The growth of global markets for finance and specialized services, the increasing need for international investment services, the reduced role of government in the regulation of international economic activity, and the corresponding ascendance of other arenas and institutional organs, notably global markets and corporate headquarters—all these signal the abundance of energetic economic processes that routinely travel a transnational urban system (Sassen 2001). The cities that compose the interurban system are not simply in a relation of competition to each other. Elements of a division of labor exist among them as well. In earlier research I found that there was far less competition and far more specialized and strategic collaboration among New York, London, and Tokyo, especially in the financial sectors, than is usually recognized (Sassen 2001). By the late 1990s, it has become evident that a cross-border system defines relations among these cities. In some cases the system is becoming formalized, as with the strategic alliance between London’s and Frankfurt’s financial markets and the current effort to create an alliance among eight of the leading stock markets in continental Europe. Hierarchy also characterizes the network. New York and London are, doubtless, the world’s leading international business and finance centers, while Tokyo remains the main exporter of capital, though other centers surpass it in the provision of services. These features of the global economy underline the need to rethink the distinction between the global and the local, notably the assumption about the necessity of territorial proximity to the constitution of the local. This means rethinking spatial hierarchies that are usually taken as given, such as local < national < global. For example, both international professionals and immigrant workers operate in contexts that are at the same time local and global, disrupting conventional hierarchies of scale. The new professionals of finance belong to a cross-border culture in many ways embedded in a global network of local places—particular international financial centers among which people, information, and capital circulate regularly. Further, as financial centers, London, New York, Zurich, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt—to mention just a few—are 272

*

saskia sassen

all part of an international yet highly localized work subculture. We see here a relation of intercity proximity operating without shared territory: Proximity is deterritorialized. Similarly, many immigrants belong to cross-border networks connecting specific work locales with their home communities (Basch et al. 1994; Mahler 1996). Though in a manner different from that of financiers, these immigrants nonetheless also experience a deterritorialized local culture, a proximity relation not predicated on geography. This type of analysis signals a spatial configuration of major new transnational economic processes diverging in significant ways from the duality of global-national presupposed in much analysis of the global economy. Economic globalization does indeed extend the economy beyond the boundaries of the nation-state and hence reduces the state’s sovereignty over its economy. But these boundaries are not simply geographic; they are also institutional and located inside the national rather than at its geographic borders. Global cities and their transnationally oriented markets and firms mediate relations between nation-states, as well as the relations of those nation-states to the global economy. They destabilize a hierarchy that we have tended to accept as given: one enlarging from the subnational to the national and from the national to the international.16 In so doing, these cities instantiate denationalized spatialities and temporalities. a partial unbundling of the national?

National state authority has long been represented as territorially exclusive and absolute. When global actors, whether firms or markets, overlap and interact with the national, they produce a frontier zone in the territory of the nation. Not merely a dividing line between the national and the global, this is a zone of politico-economic interaction where new institutional forms take shape and old forms are altered. It would be mistaken to say that such zones are characterized simply by 16. Of interest here is the new scholarship on space, particularly the effort to spatialize/rescale social processes, which began with David Harvey’s pathbreaking work. See Soja 1989; Taylor 1996; Brenner 1998. One of the challenging but possibly more fruitful venues is to engage the scholarship on subnational or regional supranational areas, and what generally is referred to as ‘‘area studies,’’ and to renegotiate its area focus with scales not contemplated in many of these studies. See Appadurai 1997.

273

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

the reduction of regulation or less government. For instance, in many countries, the need for autonomous central banks in the current global economic system has required a thickening of regulations in order to delink central banks from the influence of the executive branch of government. The highly charged interactions of frontier zones make for epochal change. But not only global firms and markets shape these interactions, as is implied in much of the literature on the declining significance of the nation-state under globalization. States themselves shape these interactions, and not merely by resisting them (Mittelman 1996). Moreover, this exercise reconfigures states (Sassen 1996b, chap. 1; Sassen 1999). This reconfiguration may be guided by global standardization, as in the case of the growing convergence of central banks, or by national idiosyncrasies, as in the case of the different responses of Argentina, Indonesia, and Malaysia to the financial crisis of 1997–98.17 In addition to the inadequacy of simple theses of the declining significance of the state, research on economic globalization is sometimes troubled by its problematic acceptance of a merely quantitative measure of globalization. Simply counting the share of foreign inputs in national economies to establish whether globalization is or is not significant overlooks distinguishing features of the current phase of the global economy. It is indeed the case that in most developed countries the share of foreign in total investment, the share of international in total trade, and the share of foreign in total stock market value are all very small. However, to infer from this that economic globalization is not really a significant issue misses at least three crucial features. First is that economic globalization is strategic rather than all-encompassing: It does not require majorities to succeed. Second is that most global processes materialize in national territories and do so to a considerable extent through national institutional arrangements, from legislative actions to corporate agendas, and are thereby not necessarily counted as foreign. Third, in theoretical terms, such an inference denies the possibility that the global economic may be enacted through a specific spatiality, which while imbricated with the national has its own sociological reality. Economic globalization entails sets of practices that destabilize 17. For an elaboration, see Sassen 1996b and Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 1996.

274

*

saskia sassen

other sets of practices, such as some of the practices by which national state sovereignty has been constituted. By their enactment, global practices produce distinctive and complex spatialities that cannot simply be subsumed or measured under the national. Thinking about the global in terms of distinct spatialities embedded in the territory of the national yet retaining their own specificity helps us analytically apprehend that a global dynamic or process may partly operate through a national institution. Thus we cannot simply assume that because a transaction takes place in national territory and in a national institutional setting it is ipso facto intelligible in the terms of the national. In my reading, the imbrication of global actors and national institutions is far too complex for that. For example, the case of central banks today illustrates a key aspect of the process whereby national economies accommodate a global economic system. A country’s central bank can be a key institution for implementing—in its national economy—some of the new rules of the global game, notably the standards of IMF conditionality. This means that national institutions can become home to some of the operational rules of the global economic system. They become part of the spatiality of the global, raising interesting research questions as to how this is distinguished from the idea of national institutions becoming tools of global capital as, for instance, in Marxist conceptions of neocolonialism or the comprador bourgeoisie.18 Another distinctive feature of the global economy today is the intermixture of laws securing the exclusive territoriality of national states —and this to an extent not seen in the nineteenth century (Ruggie 1993; Kratochwil 1986)—with laws institutionalizing the rights of foreign firms and legalizing a growing array of cross-border transactions. The combination of these sets of laws facilitates a growing and increasingly institutionalized participation by supranational organizations in national matters, while engaging nation-states in the implementation of processes of globalization. We can see here the overlapping and intersecting dimensions of the global and the national at work. My argument is that the tension between (1) the necessary, though partial, location of globalization in national territories and institutions and (2) an elaborate system of law 18. I thank Arjun Appadurai for this observation.

275

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

and administration that has constructed the exclusive national territorial authority of sovereign states has been partly negotiated through (1) processes of institutional denationalization inside the national state and national economy and (2) the formation of privatized intermediary institutional arrangements that are only partly encompassed by the inter-state system and are, in fact, evolving into a parallel institutional world for the handling of cross-border operations.19 The imperative for research is to identify precisely what remains national today in what has historically been constructed as national, to decode what national means today, and to ascertain the new territorial and institutional conditionalities of national states. conclusion

Specifying the processes that constitute economic globalization through this particular type of conceptualization brings to the fore how strategic economic projects have emerged in the play between two master/monster temporalities and spatialities. One of these—that of the national state as a historic institution, a master temporality often thought of as historic time—is a deteriorating spatiotemporality. Another, the global, is a spatiotemporal (dis)order in the making. Conceiving of globalization along these lines confronts theory and research with fresh challenges. The transnational processes that compose economic globalization, in tandem with the partial localization of the global in national territories, undermine a key duality running through conceptual frameworks and methods prevalent in the social sciences: that the national and the nonnational are mutually exclusive conditions. As we observe the global economy transcend the authority of the national state even as it roots itself into national territories and institutions, we see more clearly that ‘‘national economy’’ is only a particular territorialization of capital—a particular spatiotemporal order.

19. There are parallels here, in my reading, with a totally different sphere of state activity and transnational processes; that is, the role of national courts in implementing instruments of the international human rights regime and the incorporation in several new national constitutions of provisions that limit the national state’s presumption to represent all its people in international forums. See Franck 1992 on the constitutional issue and Henkin 1990 on human rights.

276

*

saskia sassen

works cited Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. . 1997. The research ethic and the spirit of internationalism. Items/SSRC 51(4): 55–60. Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The long twentieth century: Money, power, and the origins of our times. London: Verso. Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations unbound: Transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments, and deterritorialized nationstates. New York: Gordon and Breach. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The location of culture. London: Routledge. Braudel, Fernand. 1984. Capitalism and material life, vol. 3, The perspective of the world. London: Collins. Brenner, Neil. 1998. Global cities, glocal states: Global city formation and state territorial restructuring in contemporary Europe. Review of International Political Economy 5: 1–37. Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. 1997. Of revelation and revolution, vol. 2, The dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Franck, Thomas M. 1992. The emerging right to democratic governance. American Journal of International Law 86: 46–91. Harvey, David. 1982. The limits to capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Henkin, Louis. 1990. The age of rights. New York: Columbia University Press. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies. 1996. Special Issue, Feminism and globalization: The impact of the global economy on women and feminist theory 4(1). Knox, Paul, and Peter J. Taylor, eds., 1995. World cities in a world system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Globalization and sovereignty. In State and sovereignty in the global economy, edited by David Smith, Dorothy J. Solinger, and Steven Topik. London: Routledge. Kratochwil, Friedrich. 1986. Of systems, boundaries, and territoriality. World Politics 34 (October): 27–52. Mahler, Sarah. 1996. American dreaming: Immigrant life on the margins. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mattingly, Garret. 1988. Renaissance diplomacy. New York: Dover. Mittelman, James, H., ed. 1996. Globalization: Critical reflections. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reinner. Ohmae, Kenichi. 1996. The end of the nation state: The rise of regional economies. London: HarperCollins. Olds, Kris, Peter Dicken, Philip F. Kelly, Lilly Kong, and Henry Wai-Chung Yeung, eds. 1999. Globalisation and the Asia Pacific: Contested territories. London: Routledge. Palumbo-Liu, David. 1999. Asian/American: Historical crossings of a racial frontier. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 277

*

spat ialitie s and temporalitie s of the g lobal

Political Power and Social Theory. 1999. ‘‘Scholarly Controversy: Chaos and Governance,’’ part IV, 13. Ruggie, John Gerard. 1993. Territoriality and beyond: Problematizing modernity in international relations. International Organization 47: 139–74. Sassen, Saskia. 1996a. Analytic borderlands: Race, gender, and representation in the new city. In Re-presenting the city: Ethnicity, capital, and culture in the twentyfirst-century metropolis, edited by Anthony D. King. New York: New York University Press. . 1996b. Losing control? Sovereignty in an age of globalization. New York: Columbia University Press. . 1998. Globalization and its discontents: Essays on the new mobility of people and money. New York: The New Press. .1999. Denationalized state agendas and privatised norm-making. Inaugural lecture, Division of the Social Sciences, The University of Chicago, 28 April. . 2001. The global city. Rev. ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Short, John Rennie, and Yeong-Hyun Kim. 1999. Globalization and the city. Essex, England: Addison Wesley Longman. Smith, David, Dorothy J. Solinger, and Steven Topik, eds. 1999. State and sovereignty in the global economy. London: Routledge. Soja, Edward W. 1989. Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London: Verso. Taylor, P. J. 1996. On the nation-state, the global, and social science. Environmental and Urban Planning A 28: 1917–28. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Beacon Press.

278

*

saskia sassen

Globalizing the Regional, Regionalizing the Global: Mass Culture and Asianism in the Age of Late Capital Leo Ching

Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and the Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life. . . . Arab chivalry, Persian poetry, Chinese ethics, and Indian thought, all speak of a single ancient Asiatic peace, in which there grew up a common life, bearing in different regions different characteristic blossoms, but nowhere capable of a hard and fast dividing-line.—Okakura Kakuzô, The Ideals of the East (1904) From a few years ago, as I traveled to the countries in Southeast Asia, I began to hear increasingly a unique rock rhythm here and there. It is a rhythm distinct from the American beat, clearly a Japanese-made or indigenous rhythm. That is to say, although it is the same eight-beat, it is a somewhat different rock music with different feelings than that of the Euro-American. . . . It is estimated that two million people watched [the melodrama] Oshin in China. It was also tremendously popular in Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam. . . . the children’s animated serial Doraemon is popularized throughout Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and China. . . . What can be gleaned from these phenomena is the invisible and yet unmistakable commonality flowing within the blood of the same Asians.—Ishihara Shintarô, ‘‘No’’ to ieru ajia [The Asia That Can Say ‘‘No’’] (1994)

Although nearly a century separates these two accounts of what could be called a supranational regionalist imaginary, there are similarities

between them. Both describe a regionalist unity (Asia), and in each case it is a unity accomplished through the play of identity and difference. The putative unity of Asia is imaginable only through its distinction from some other putative unity (the Mediterranean, the Baltic, EuroAmerica). That is to say, difference is identity’s constitutive limit, or, Asia is not the West. Both of the above accounts are also deeply embedded within a Japanese nationalist ideology and share subtextually a celebration of the Japanese nation as the historical agent responsible for rejecting Western universalism, asserting Eastern particularism, and thwarting an expansionist modernity. Such an ideology, however, is endemic not to Japanese national monology but to a larger interrelational structure that ambiguously situates Japan with the West and within Asia, a relationality that arguably has persisted since the late nineteenth century. The parallels between the discursive contents of these Asianisms, however, should not distract us from the different historical forms of their respective conditions of possibility.1 Okakura’s historical moment —one of emerging nationalism and nascent capitalism—generated and was generated by the specific aesthetico-cultural formations of diverging religions, philosophies, and high arts. These ‘‘ideals of the East’’ must be revitalized, restored, and reinforced, he argues, ‘‘for the scorching drought of modern vulgarity is parching the throat of life and art [in Asia].’’ 2 If so-called high culture girded the unity of Asia in the era of high imperialism, it is mass culture in its intraregional formation, according to Ishihara, that substantiates Asianism in the postcolonial present: The popularity of ‘‘Japanese’’ mass culture (melodrama, animation, pop music, etc.) signals ‘‘commonality’’ and ‘‘resonance’’ within Asia today. This shift from high culture to mass culture is salient to mapping the continuities and ruptures between the changing geopolitical configurations of Asia, and it is vital to delineating the organizational and conceptual frameworks that make the regionalist imaginary think1. For historical perspectives on Asianism, see J. Victor Koschmann, ‘‘Asianism’s Ambivalent Legacy,’’ in Network Power: Japan and Asia, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 83–110; and the seminal article published in 1963 by Takeuchi Yoshimi, collected in Nihon to ajia [Japan and Asia] (Tokyo: Chikuma shobô, 1993). 2. Kakuzo Okakura, The Ideals of the East: With Special Reference to the Art of Japan (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1970), 244.

280

*

leo ching

able in the first place. In fact, I would like to suggest that, instead of construing this shift as reflecting an evolution in the material base of production, it should be understood as an ideological formation that in the last instance signals the impossibility of the thing (the Asia of Asianism) itself. That is to say, as soon as the commodity-image-sound of mass culture becomes the fundamental form in which the putative unity of Asia is imagined and regulated, the internal contradictions of Asianism are suppressed for the sake of commensurability and compatibility within the global distribution of cultural power. This is not to suggest that, in contrast, high culture articulates a more genuine Asianism; the articulation of high culture itself relies on the operation of the very binary structure (artistic sensibility versus scientific rationality, spirituality versus materiality) that a regionalist deployment of high culture seeks to dismantle. Nonetheless, as long as Asia is defined through its shared experience of exploitation and colonization, this aesthetics—situated as it is within the specific geopolitical condition that marked the global extension of Western imperialism— remains a powerful trope for regional solidarity. Furthermore, as long as high culture is defined in the forms of cultural mutation and hybridization that preceded the consolidation of national culture, it remains a conceptual means by which to momentarily transcend the historical predicament of Western imperialism. However, from the moment Japan establishes itself as the only non-Western colonial power (an identification process that I have elsewhere termed ‘‘not-white, not-quite, yet alike’’), the radical discourse of emancipation is inverted and reorganized as a justification for Japanese imperialism in Asia.3 In what follows, I am concerned with the tendency to ‘‘regionalist thinking’’ in both economic production and symbolic reproduction under global capitalism. Why does the increasingly globalized world engender multiple regionalist associations? Are regionalisms the effects of or responses to global capitalism? How is a regionalist culture, or the conceptualization of such a culture, possible in the circuit of global culture? As a preliminary attempt to answer some of these questions, I heuristically employ the concepts of globalization and regionalization as tropes with which to articulate the cultural-economic contradictions 3. See my ‘‘Yellow Skin White Mask: Class and Identification in Japanese Colonial Discourse,’’ in Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, ed. Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1998).

281

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

of late capitalism. The body of the essay is thus composed of two halves that illustrate how each term modifies the other (‘‘Globalizing Regional Economy’’ and ‘‘Regionalizing Global Culture’’), the purpose of this organization being to convey the notion that the categories of the economic and the cultural are best apprehended not as mechanically determinate of each other but as dialectically constituted and complementary in form. It is my contention that, first of all, regionalism represents a mediatory attempt to come to terms with the immanent transnationalization of capital and the historical territorialization of national economies. Rather than being a corrective to global capitalism, regionalist reterritorializations underscore an invariable contradiction within capitalism itself. Second, I argue that mass cultural Asianism is a symptom of deeper structural and historical changes in the ways Asia is perceived as both a mode of production and a regime of discursive practice in the Japanese imaginary. If the earlier Asianism was conditioned on the unequivocal difference between Asia and the West, where Asia existed as the absolute other to the increasingly colonized world system—its exterior—in today’s Asianism that difference itself exists only as a commodity, a spectacle to be consumed in a globalized capitalist system precisely at the moment when exteriority is no longer imaginable. theorizing l ate c apitalism: globalizing regional economy

The latest phase of capitalist development has been theorized in two seemingly contradictory ways. On the one hand, it is argued that capitalism has attained its globalized stage, as signaled by a number of events, such as the arrival of a social and technical international division of labor, the dematerialization of commodity production by spatial extension and temporal reduction, the rise of an international debt economy, the modulation of capital into the structures of transnational enterprise, the growth of decentralized and informal economies, the internationalization of commodities and financial markets, and the spread of standardized markets and consumption patterns. Many agree that capitalism is now a globalized algorithm or an operational axiomatic that functions like an immense machine, a machine that, in Marx’s words, ‘‘creates a world after its own image.’’ It is speculated that under these 282

*

leo ching

conditions traditional binary models of social analysis and political struggle—simple models of colonizer/colonized, First/Third Worlds, metropolitan/periphery, center/margin—are inapplicable to a spatial economy of power irreducible to geographical dichotomies. On the other hand, it is also argued that the late-capitalist world system is the product of a spatial displacement of capitalist epicenters. From Western Europe since the sixteenth century to North America in the twentieth century, to East Asia as we approach the next millennium, this ‘‘developmentalist’’ scheme takes on a pseudo-Hegelian movement from west to east, unlike the model of a totalized and dispersed globality. As Giovanni Arrighi has suggested, following Fernand Braudel, each change of command in the capitalist world economy reflects the ‘‘victory’’ of a ‘‘new’’ region over an ‘‘old’’ region. Whether a fresh change of command and a new stage of capitalist development are imminent remains unclear, but the displacement of an ‘‘old’’ region (North America) by a ‘‘new’’ region (East Asia) as the most dynamic concentration of processes of capital accumulation is already a reality.4 Rather than bifurcating globalism and regionalism as separate explanations for the late-capitalist world condition, Arif Dirlik has argued that unprecedented unity (homogenization) and fragmentation (differentiation) are by-products of the transnationalization of production. In other words, one of the most significant consequences of the transnationalization of capital is that ‘‘for the first time in the history of capitalism, the capitalist mode of production appears as an authentically global abstraction, divorced from its historically specific origins in Europe. . . . The narrative of capitalism is no longer a narrative of the history of Europe.’’ 5 While I will not speculate at this point on the relationship between the diffusionist (globalizing) and the developmentalist (regionalizing) theories of late capitalism, I will concur with Dirlik and add that regionalism is an essential constituent of globalization rather than a systemic effect. Although regionalism may at times appear to oppose globalism, the regionalist imaginary is fundamentally complicit with the globalist project. More specifically, regionalism in the late twentieth century—in both its sub- and supranational manifestations— 4. Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (New York: Verso, 1994), 322. 5. Arif Dirlik, After the Revolution: Waking to Global Capitalism (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 51.

283

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

emphasizes the inescapable contradiction between the immanent logic of capital and the historical formation of nationalized economies. The constitutive relationship between globalization and regionalization may seem self-evident, but it begs a number of questions: Why does globalization necessarily entail regionalist formations? Or, put differently, Why is regionalism essential to globalism? Even if it seems intuitive that the erosion of nation-states and national identities should stimulate cravings for fixity and locality within the transience of globalization, how is the regionalist formation to be understood? If globalization is to be taken as a process in space, and localization is to be understood as a specificity in place, the regional appears to be a terrain ‘‘in between,’’ a geographic reality and a constructed discursivity that is both spatialized in its transnational deterritorialization and yet reterritorialized in a specific configuration bounded by historically invented geography. In an edited volume on the recent development of regional economic blocs in the world economy, Andrew Gamble and Anthony Payne argue against the ‘‘hegemonic stability thesis,’’ which suggests that in the absence of an effective hegemon to keep order, the world will degenerate into conflict, which in the present era is most likely to be manifested between regional blocs of states.6 Gamble and Payne instead conceive regionalism as a state-led or states-led project designed to reorganize a particular regional space along defined economic and political lines. Their argument rests against a specific background that highlights the economic and political pressures that increasingly induce globalization, unifying the world by dismantling barriers to trade and financial and cultural flows. For Gamble and Payne, these two apparently competing tendencies in the contemporary world political economy—regionalism as a statist project and globalization as a set of social processes— appear still to be in balance; indeed there seems no reason to assume that one must eventually triumph over the other. Gamble and Payne go on to situate the emergence of the new regionalist projects in North America, Western Europe, and East and Southeast Asia against the decline of U.S. hegemony and the recession of the world economy since the 1970s. The turn to regionalism at the end of the 1980s, they argue, 6. Andrew Gamble and Anthony Payne, eds., Regionalism and World Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).

284

*

leo ching

coincided with the collapse of the preceding regionalist division of the global economy—that is, the division of capitalist and socialist alliances that followed the Russian Revolution. While I agree with Gamble and Payne’s theorization of regionalism within the political economy of the post–Cold War, their indifference to cultural and ideological forces crucial to constructing regional identities and associations prevents their accounting for the globalization of symbolic flows and exchanges and the diversity of regionalist projects. If the new global phase of capitalism (or the postmodern) is distinguished, as some theorists have argued, by the elevation of the significance of space over that of time, then it is arguable that it is symbolic exchanges, rather than economic or political exchanges, that are more elemental to the process of globalization—a process that some have called ‘‘the culturalization of economic life’’ or the ‘‘cultural economy.’’ 7 Whereas material exchanges tend to foster ties to localities, and political exchanges tend to foster ties to territory, symbolic exchanges liberate relationships from spatial referents. Symbols can be produced anywhere at any time, and their production and reproduction entail comparatively few material requirements. In today’s media society, these images and ideologemes are powerful objective political and economic forces that demand to be addressed rather than neglected as merely cultural or derivative.8 To conceive regionalist projects as ideological formations is to understand regionalism as a set of contending discourses. In other words, regionalist discourse does not operate independently; it is always directed against another territorial discourse (the world system, nationalism, or other regionalisms). Without distinguishing the ideological implications of the regionalist project, it is difficult to ascertain why people opt to think regionally in the first place and what the social contradictions are that regionalist thinking tries to resolve. In consequence, conceiving regionalism as a discursive construct instead of an empirical 7. Malcolm Waters, Globalization (London: Routledge, 1995). 8. Fredric Jameson, for instance, has identified the increasingly interpenetrating relationship between the economic and the cultural—what he calls ‘‘the becoming cultural of the economic, and the becoming economic of the cultural’’—as the primary features that characterize what is now widely known as postmodernity. See Fredric Jameson, ‘‘Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue,’’ in The Cultures of Globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), 54–77.

285

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

reality serves better to explain the differing constructions of regionalist projects within late capitalism. Political and economic rationalism alone cannot explain why Asian regionalism has been, more often than not, articulated on cultural grounds rather than on grounds that are economic (as in North America) or political (as in Western Europe).9 In an attempt to understand the relationship between transnational capitalism and regionalism, the Japanese critic Karatani Kôjin suggests that transnational capitalism is ‘‘borderless,’’ but precisely because of its borderlessness, it produces other kinds of borders. The European Community may abolish borders within, but as a regional entity, it creates borders without, in relation to other bounded entities.10 In other words, even as transnationalism disrupts, if not eliminates, the nation form, it perpetuates a new ‘‘imagined community,’’ or what Karatani calls an ‘‘imagined transnational community.’’ So why does the transnational process, by superseding the nation-state, produce a regionalist reconfiguration such as the European Union? Because, Karatani argues, the modern nation-state took shape as a means of separating from the Western European empire. Furthermore, European imperialism fomented the division (and formation) of modern nation-states within other empires of the world, such as the Chinese sphere of influence. Today, Europe, the precursor of modern nation-states, has culminated in a ‘‘community’’ spread over the very ground (chi) of the erstwhile Western European empire; this exposes the grounds of other ex-empires in other regions. Thus, according to Karatani, we are witnessing a strange reversal here: In apparently moving beyond the nation-state, new blocs 9. The resort to ‘‘culturalist’’ explanations for the rise of Asia is, needless to say, the working of both Eurocentrism and self-Orientalism, which are two sides of the same essentialist coin. The various ‘‘miracles’’ attributed to the Asian ‘‘tigers,’’ ‘‘dragons,’’ and ‘‘flying geese’’ only serve to accentuate the ‘‘natural’’ development of capitalism in the West. The recent collapse of some Asian economies is explained as the fall of ‘‘crony capitalisms’’ that are merely bad copies of the original Euro-American model. Interestingly, the various revivals of Confucianism that have explained the rise of Asian economies on cultural and philosophical grounds are, in the midst of the worsening economic condition, completely silent. Here, ‘‘Eurocentrism’’ and ‘‘self-Orientalism’’ are understood as intellectual positions and not ontological or geographical entities. 10. Karatani Kôjin, ‘‘Senzen’’ no shikô [Considering ‘‘prewar’’] (Tokyo: Bungei shunshû, 1994), 14.

286

*

leo ching

are approximating—seemingly reverting into—the empires of the prenation-states. Karatani, however, is quick to distinguish the pre-nation-states empire (teikoku) from the modern imperialism (teikokushugi) that inaugurated the nation-form. This subtle distinction between teikoku and teikokushugi is crucial to avoiding readings of regional bloc scenarios that today stoke fears of interbloc trade wars leading to real war through alarmist allusions to the 1930s, when regionalist clusterings climaxed in world war. In other words, today’s regionalist formations may resemble those of the 1930s in form, but their content is radically different in the sense that it is no longer imperialistic but imperial, with each nation maintaining its own identity while striving for some loose regional unity. This uncanny historical ‘‘reversal’’ is echoed in economist Iwai Katsuhiko’s theory of the latest phase of capitalism.11 Iwai attempts to distinguish ‘‘old’’ principles of capitalism in the ‘‘newness’’ attributed to today’s global capitalism. In seeking out the old within the new, or the ‘‘universal’’ principles within the ‘‘specific’’ forms of capitalism, Iwai begins by analyzing the workings of the premodern form of capitalism, that of mercantile capitalism. Whereas the later industrial capital extracts profit (relative surplus value) temporally, by an incessant differentiation of the value system organized by technology, merchant capital gained surplus value spatially, extracting it from the discrepancies between various systems of values.12 In short, as evidenced by the carrying trade conducted by the Venetians, Genoans, Dutch, and others, merchant capital develops ‘‘in between’’ communities, mediated and fertilized by the differences between various systems of values. It is this ‘‘principle of difference’’ between two spatially separated communities that constitutes the fundamental form of mercantile capitalism. Iwai argues that, ironically, it is on the erasure of this ‘‘principle of 11. Iwai Katsuhiko, Shihonshugi wo kataru [Talking about capitalism] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994). 12. Marx writes: ‘‘The trading peoples of old existed like the gods of Epicurus in the intermundia, or like the Jews in the pores of Polish society. The trade of the first independent and highly developed trading cities and peoples, as a pure carrying trade, rested on the barbarism of the producing peoples between whom they acted as intermediaries.’’ Capital, vol. 3 (New York: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1981), 447–48.

287

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

difference’’ that the modern discipline of economics was established. From Adam Smith onward, the wealth of nations is not determined by the gold or silver stored in the treasury, but derives from the production of consumable and vendible commodities. Labor, as the primary agent of production, becomes not only the measure but also the source of value of these commodities. Iwai writes: ‘‘This is to say, it is here [that] the thought that human labor constitutes the ultimate source for national wealth has been proclaimed. It inaugurates the appearance of the ‘human.’ As the science of national wealth, [the discipline of ] economics started by eliminating the principle of difference and placed the laboring human in the center of capitalist society.’’ 13 Writing under the glare of the ensuing industrial revolution, both David Ricardo and Marx, although of very different political persuasions, have substantiated Smith’s thesis with the labor theory of value, which further consolidated the notion of ‘‘human-centrism’’ (ningen chûshinshugi) in thinking about the source of value in capitalism. In the so-called postindustrial stage of capitalism, however, the increasing dematerialization of production and the commodification of symbolic reproduction have made it increasingly difficult to recognize the ‘‘human’’ as the sole constituent of the wealth of nations. Instead, the principle of difference that characterized the workings of mercantile capitalism has reemerged as the operational axiomatic of the latest phase of capitalism. This reversal, however, as with Karatani’s, is one with a profound difference. Iwai writes: ‘‘In the case of mercantile capitalism, profit was extracted through the difference between two or more systems of values (a difference in exchange ratio). In postindustrial capitalism, however, profit is gained through the commodification of difference itself and the conscious production of that difference. But they are similar in structure in the sense it is ‘difference’ rather than ‘human,’ that constitutes the pivotal form [of their operations].’’ 14 Both Karatani’s recollection of the empires of the pre-nation-states and Iwai’s reclamation of the principle of difference in contemporary capitalism are instructive to thinking about the various regionalist tendencies of our historical present. On one level, a particular regionalism could be interpreted as a defense against other regional integra13. Iwai, Shihonshugi wo kataru, 20. 14. Iwai, Shihonshugi wo kataru, 29.

288

*

leo ching

tions. One can easily make the argument that the fortress integrations of Europe and North America are responses to rapid economic growth in East and South Asia. Yet alongside these major regional associations are other transregional or subregional attempts at economic integration: APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, comprising the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, the Pacific Islands, and the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] countries), the Southern China Economic Zone (Kanankeizaiken, with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southern China), and the Japan Sea Economic Cooperative Initiative (Siberia, North Korea, and Hokkaido and Niigata of Japan) are just a few examples. Thus, regionalism as a counterforce against other regionalisms remains trapped in its own tautology: Regionalism begets regionalism. But how do we account for the diversity of regionalisms? And why did regionalism materialize in the first place? Karatani and Iwai’s ‘‘reversions’’ point to a fundamental aporia within capitalist modernity that, in the present moment, has grown more pronounced. Examined from their perspective, the prevalence of regionalist discourse is intelligible as a temporary mediation of an ineluctable contradiction within capitalist development: the contradiction between the transnational nature of capital and its historical formation within a nationalized economy; in short, the contradiction between the immanent logic of capital and its historical manifestations that, because of the processes of imperialism, colonialism, and decolonization, circumscribed it within the nation form. In Marx’s formulation (M-C-M', where M' = M + ÆM), capital is a process of the expansion of value, a ‘‘self-expanding value’’ or ‘‘self-valorization [Selbstverwertung] of value.’’ 15 And as Marx emphasizes, capital is the objective movement of value expansion rather than a subjective motion for profit. It is in this sense that regardless of the particular form capital assumes, all capitals are identical, or what Marx calls ‘‘capital in general.’’ We are so accustomed to associate capital with nationality (Chinese capital invading southern California, the export of American capital, etc.) that we forget that capital itself is, or has always been, potentially transnational. As long as surplus value can be extracted, theoretically there is no reason 15. See Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), chap. 4, ‘‘The General Formula for Capital.’’

289

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

why capital needs to remain national or even multinational. Historically, however, capitalist development, especially that of industrial capitalism in conjunction with imperialism, colonialism, and the formation of nation-states, had to take root in a nationalized economy. The relationship between capitalist development and its appearance in the nation form is a historically contingent one. As Etienne Balibar has suggested, it is ‘‘quite impossible to ‘deduce’ the nation form from capitalist relations of production.’’ 16 Not only do monetary circulation and the exploitation of wage labor not logically entail a single determinate form of state, the spatial realization of capitalist accumulation ‘‘has within it an intrinsic tendency to transcend any national limitations that might be instituted by determinate fractions of social capital or imposed by ‘extra-economic’ means.’’ 17 Instead, Balibar, following Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, sees ‘‘the constitutions of nations as being bound up not with the abstraction of the capitalist market, but with its concrete historical form: that of a ‘worldeconomy’ which is always already hierarchically organized into a ‘core’ and a ‘periphery,’ each of which have different methods of accumulation and exploitation of labour power, and between which relations of unequal exchange and domination are established.’’ 18 It is now more glaringly clear than at any previous moment of capitalist development that regionalisms constitute a temporary mediation between the abstract logic of capital and the work of nation-states in the world economy, and that this mediation suggests a means by which nationalist/capitalist ideologues may reposition themselves in the transnational economic arena. In the present historical juncture, regionalisms intercede between the eroding of national autonomy and the deterritorializing of capitalism to reterritorialize transnational capital. However, due precisely to the temporary and mediatory status of regionalisms, they must establish relationships to the larger international system of which they are a part and to the different national systems that constitute them. Within this intermediary relationality, regionalism can neither conceive nor con16. Etienne Balibar, ‘‘The Nation Form: History and Ideology,’’ in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, by Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 89. 17. Balibar, ‘‘The Nation Form,’’ 89. 18. Balibar, ‘‘The Nation Form,’’ 89.

290

*

leo ching

solidate itself as a dominant discourse within the economic and political coordinates of the world system, as globalism and nationalism have. Instead, regionalisms articulate themselves as ‘‘emergent’’ or ‘‘residual’’ formations (to borrow Raymond Williams’s analytic categories) of contingent affiliations and shifting associations.19 Any attempt to empirically ground and define regionalism would only confirm the changeable and indefinable nature of regionalism as an organizing concept. The Asia-Pacific region, for instance, is given its form by the current euphoria over the rapid growth of the ‘‘Pacific Rim’’ as an economic region and political concept that by its inclusivity is made more open and conducive to global forces. The region is lauded as a convergence of new relationships and cooperation presaging the dawning of a ‘‘Pacific Century.’’ 20 The more exclusively circumscribed East Asian regionalism attributes its recent economic ‘‘miracles’’ to versions of traditional and indigenous communitarianism and Confucianism that amplify inherent cultural differences between the East and the West.21 What is important in thinking about these two seemingly antagonistic visions of regionalist identities is neither the arbitrary ways in which regionalist categories are constructed nor their differing ideological underpinnings. Rather, the effectiveness of regionalist imaginaries lies precisely in the coexistence and overlap of supposedly distinct regional designations. It goes without saying that regional units are discursively constructed and politically contested categories embedded in the history of changing power relationships. It is also a truism that different nations involved in regionalist projects enact divergent and at times conflicting agendas in formulating their regional identity. But the overt emphasis on the particularities of different regionalist subsystems and the varying national interests underlying them serve only to obfuscate, rather than clarify, the specific historicity of the regionalist form under global capitalism. Globalization and regionalization are complementary processes. As 19. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 121–27. 20. For a cogent analysis and critique of the Asia-Pacific idea see Arif Dirlik, ed., What Is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993). 21. Ironically, once deemed inconsistent with capitalist modernization, Confucianism has been recast as a prime mover of capitalist development.

291

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

I have suggested, regions are important sites where the contending forces of global integration and local autonomy converge. Therefore, despite their antagonistic posturing and combative rhetoric, different regionalizations are essentially similar processes of integration and collaboration. For example, despite Japan’s growing economic presence in Asia and the region’s increasing integration, alarmist fears of regionalist conflict between Asia, Europe, and the Americas are misguided given the integratedness and interdependence of the world economy. Bruce Cumings writes specifically about Asia: All this regional activity is grist for the mill of those who find a developing tendency toward regional economic blocs. But this is unlikely short of a major world depression; a trilateral regime of cooperation and free trade linking Europe with East Asia and the Americas is much more likely, with the three great markets of each region underpinning and stabilizing intercapitalist rivalry in the world system, and encouraging interdependence rather than go-it-alone strategies that would be deleterious to all. Japan’s regional investment hedges against exclusion from the European Community after 1992, but it has other hedges in the form of direct investment in manufacturing in Great Britain and East Europe. The United States is strongly pressuring its European allies not to exclude Japan from the post-1992 arrangements, in favor of trilateral cooperation.22 The true conflict, then, resides not so much within what Samir Amin has called ‘‘trilateralization’’—the new interpenetration of the center economies: the United States, Japan, and the Europe of the European Economic Community—but rather between these economies and the ‘‘differentiations within the periphery,’’ that is, the emergence of the semi-industrialized countries at one pole and the destitute countries that comprise the Fourth World at the other.23 Despite the very real tendencies toward regional crystallization in the world system, peripheral nations are still exposed and vulnerable to competition among the central economies vying for a place for their goods and financial markets.

22. Bruce Cumings, ‘‘Rimspeak; or, The Discourse of the ‘Pacific Rim,’ ’’ in Dirlik, What Is in a Rim? 42. 23. Samir Amin, Empire of Chaos (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1992).

292

*

leo ching

t h e o r i z i n g m a s s c u lt u r e : r e g i o n a l i z i n g g l o b a l c u lt u r e

It is widely agreed that while there is no such thing as a global culture, there is indeed a globalization of culture. Theorists regard the latter to signify the simultaneous ‘‘cultural integration and cultural disintegration processes which take place not only on an inter-state level but . . . which transcend the state-society unit and can therefore be held to occur on a trans-national or trans-societal level.’’ 24 The globalization of culture is obviously part of the immense expansion and extension of global communications and world markets. In fact, one can make the argument that globalization proceeds most rapidly and visibly in contexts where relationships are mediated through symbols instead of material products. Yet, despite the intrinsic (and dialectic) relationship between the economic and the cultural under globalization, the theoretical underpinning of the cultural process, at first glance, seems to be at odds with the spatialization of economic development. As we have seen earlier, one theory of economic globalization (or the deterritorialization of capital) narrates a shift of capitalist centers, first from Europe to America, and then to Asia. The contemporary transnationalization of capitalism, by creating nodes of capitalist development around the globe, has decentered capitalism, put an end to Euro-American economic domination of the world, and for the first time abstracted capitalism from its Eurocentrism.25 However, while Euro-American hegemony may have declined relatively in the economic realm, it is far from evident that its cultural influence, especially that of American mass culture, is diminishing. Analogously, despite the extraordinary economic growth (at least up until the recent ‘‘crisis’’) in Asia, there is no corresponding extension of Asian culture on a global scale. Fredric Jameson puts this incongruity between economic prowess and cultural dominance explicitly: It does seem to me that fresh cultural production and innovation— and this means in the area of mass-consumed culture—are the cru24. Mike Featherstone, ‘‘Global Culture: An Introduction,’’ in Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization, and Modernity, ed. Mike Featherstone (London: Sage Publications, 1990), 1. 25. Dirlik, After the Revolution, 62.

293

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

cial index of the centrality of a given area and not its wealth or productive power. This is why it was extraordinarily significant when the ultimate Japanese moves to incorporate the U.S. entertainment industry—Sony’s acquisition of Columbia Pictures and Matsushita’s buyout of MCA—both failed: it meant that despite immense wealth and technological and industrial production, even despite ownership itself and private property, the Japanese were unable to master the essentially cultural productivity required to secure the globalization process for any given competitor. Whoever says the production of culture says the production of everyday life—and without that, your economic system can scarcely continue to expand and implant itself.26 Japan is not alone in its inability to generate its own forms of globalized cultural production. Neither Europe nor the former socialist countries present alternatives to the global dominance of Americanization. If Japan, despite its economic ascendancy, remains unable to articulate a system of cultural capital on a global scale, how do we account for its prevailing ‘‘soft power’’ in the Asian region? 27 Today, four in five comic books sold in South Korea are Japanese, and in early April 1999, six of the top ten music singles in Taiwan were by Japanese artists. Could Japan’s regionalist cultural productivity be explained intrinsically in terms of geographic proximity and cultural affinity? Or can it be translated back into materialist terms as an extension of Japan’s regional economic domination? Furthermore, what is the specificity of ‘‘Japanese’’ mass culture in relation to present-day Asianism? In short, what imparts to today’s Asianism its form? The specifically regionalist manifestation of Japanese cultural imperialism seems to demand a kind of economic-cultural analysis sensitive to the decentered, the polymorphous, and the antisystemic. In his seminal essay ‘‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,’’ Arjun Appadurai theorizes a comprehensive and complex global interactive system that is by definition untotalizable and nondeterministic, one that is bewilderingly heterogeneous and heterogenizing at a 26. Jameson, ‘‘Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue,’’ 67. 27. The phrase is taken from Saya S. Shiraishi, ‘‘Japan’s Soft Power: Doraemon Goes Overseas,’’ in Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Network Power: Japan and Asia, 234–72.

294

*

leo ching

multitude of sites.28 Appadurai proposes to explore the fundamental disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics in the relationships among five dimensions of global cultural flows: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes. Under globalization, these flows are anything but centered or unified. For Appadurai, arguments about Americanization and commodification in terms of a singular and all-encompassing cultural homogenization have failed to account for the dynamics of local indigenizations of metropolitan forces. More importantly for the discussion at hand, Appadurai argues that the polycentric dispersion of the contemporary world has progressed so much that Americanization cannot be the only embodiment and carrier of cultural power. The articulation of cultural domination is site- and region-specific: ‘‘For the people of Irian Jaya, Indonesianization may be more worrisome than Americanization, as Japanization may be for Koreans, Indianization for Sri Lankans, Vietnamization for the Cambodians, and Russianization for the people of Soviet Armenia and the Baltic republics.’’ 29 Therefore, ‘‘the new global cultural economy’’ has to be seen as ‘‘a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order,’’ defying analysis by existing center-periphery models (even those that might account for multiple centers and peripheries), the migration theory of push and pull, the consumer and producer relationships in neo-Marxist theories of development, and the flexible theories of global development. Appadurai’s decentered and fragmented global cultural system goes a long way in particularizing the universalistic pretension of Americanization and revealing the pluralistic, distinct, and disjunct disunities of cultural formations. Once Americanization is relativized, Japanization or Russianization, despite their spatially circumscribed spheres of influence, can also be apprehended and analyzed as integral parts of a fundamentally nonobjective and fractal world. However, this radical emphasis on dispersion and decenteredness relativizes domination and masks the persisting geopolitical inequalities between and across regions, nations, and localities.30 While we should obviously be wary of the totalizing for28. Collected in Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 27–47. 29. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 32. 30. See, for example, Paul Smith, Millennial Dreams: Contemporary Culture and Capital in the North (New York: Verso, 1997).

295

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

mulation of the globalization of culture, we should also not be content with simply displacing the process of homogenization onto a differentiation of cultural power. The problem with the latter proposition is that, in flatly diffusing cultural hegemony onto different sites, it fails to recognize that there can be structural similarities and strategic alliances among the various operations of cultural power. For instance, it would be an insult to the intelligence of an average Korean to say that Japanization has replaced Americanization as the primary threat to the sociocultural fabric of her country. In fact, American hegemony is still the predominant constitutive force in Asia despite the growing influence of Japan and, more recently, China. Bruce Cumings writes, ‘‘If today it were a Japanese Prime Minister bailing out the Mexican peso or choosing the new head of the World Bank or holding a summit in Moscow instead of Bill Clinton, we would know that U.S. Hegemony had ended. Of course it hasn’t: Japan is still a piker in the system of states and the regime of resources, a comer in the regime of technology, and a cipher in the global regime of culture.’’ 31 But if Japan is truly a ‘‘cipher in the global regime of culture,’’ how, again, do we account for its recent dominance in the specific region of Asia? And what is its relationship to the globally and universally successful American system? In suggesting that certain Japanese mass cultural forms generate or produce the concept of a regionalism, or in this case Asianism, I am not positing Japanese cultural productions as merely a specific ensemble of material practices in a particular region of the capitalist world system. As Kenneth Surin has suggested, a theory of culture is something which is produced or created no less than its putative object. It is a practice, just as cultures are multilinear ensembles of practices. A theory of culture, in this case regional culture, is not ‘‘about’’ culture/regional culture per se, but about the concepts that culture generates, concepts that are themselves related in more or less complex ways to other concepts associated with other practices.32 Put differently, what I am interested in here is not an ethnographic analysis of the presence of Japanese mass culture in Asia; rather, I am concerned with the discursive construction 31. Bruce Cumings, ‘‘Japan and Northeast Asia,’’ in Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Network Power: Japan and Asia, 138. 32. For a discussion of the theory of culture in late capitalism see Kenneth Surin, ‘‘On Producing the Concept of a Global Culture,’’ South Atlantic Quarterly 94 (1995): 1179–99.

296

*

leo ching

of the relationship between the concept of mass culture and regional identity. That is, I am interested in how and why certain Japanese mass cultural forms generate the possibility of imagining a regional identity or make this imagined regional community thinkable. Let me cite two well-known examples: the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) morning drama Oshin and the children-oriented animated series Doraemon.33 The tremendous popularity in Asia of both programs has been attributed to a certain commonality, a certain structure of feeling that has rearticulated something that is invariably ‘‘Japanese’’ (as far as the site of production and the manifested cultural codes are concerned) into something that one might call an ‘‘Asian consciousness’’ or ‘‘Asiatic imaginary.’’ This culturalist regionalism sets itself against the background of a specific regional economic development under late capitalism. Oshin chronicles the life of its eponymous heroine, born into a poor family of tenant farmers at the turn of the century. At the age of seven, Oshin was sent by her father to work as a servant girl. Upon returning to her family at the age of eighteen, she discovers that her father wants her to work as a barmaid. This time, Oshin defies her father and sets out alone for Tokyo. The drama follows Oshin through the years up to the present (1983), detailing her life and struggles: her marriage, her daughter’s death, her husband’s deep commitment to Japan’s war effort and his suicide at the end of the war. By the drama’s end, Oshin is the successful founder and owner of a supermarket chain. It is has been argued that Oshin’s life/work cycle itself embodies the ethics and cultural traits of an earlier moment of Japanese capitalist de33. Oshin was first aired in Japan from April 1983 to March 1984 and commanded a staggering 60 percent of the daytime television audience. It was first broadcast in Singapore in 1984, again with tremendous success. Over the subsequent ten years, it was shown in more than forty countries, including Belgium, Australia, and Mexico. In Indonesia, it is estimated that 65 percent of the population watched the broadcast of Oshin, and it garnered astonishing 89.9 and 82 percent audience ratings in Beijing and Iran, respectively. In Taiwan, with the removal of the ban on Japanese music and television programming in 1994, Oshin became an instant hit. Doraemon was created as a children’s comic book character in 1970 by Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko, who shared the pen name Fujio Fujiko. The comic was animated for television in 1978 and began broadcasting outside of Japan in the 1980s, mainly in Asian countries but also in Italy, Spain, Russia, Brazil and other Latin American countries, and in the Middle East.

297

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

velopment, that Oshin’s story is the allegory of a growing Japan with the corresponding work ethics and cultural values of perseverance and industriousness. Through the drama’s regional distribution, this national allegory is then narrated into a regional story that dramatizes the parallel but belated economic development of Asian countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, and more lately, China and Vietnam. As one of the advocates of Asianism put it recently, Oshin has gained tremendous popularity in Asia because it reflects the many attributes of ‘‘Asian’’ values (perseverance, diligence, stick-to-it-ness, patriotism, etc.) that bind the various nations together on a developmentalist progression in the postcolonial, post–Cold War world order.34 If Oshin is a melodrama that enables a psychic investment in rendering visible a regional economic story, Doraemon is an animated fantasy that makes the painfulness of economic success more bearable, at least for the children of Asia. The popularity of Doraemon among Asian youth has been attributed to a similar allegorization from the national to the regional. Sakurai Tetsuo, for instance, argues that Doraemon has provided for children a haven from the increasing ‘‘storm of [the] controlled education and examination system,’’ a storm that has engulfed even the youngest of Japanese children since the 1970s.35 The narrative of the serial requires Doraemon, a bear-cat robot with a magic pocket, to solve the numerous daily problems and conflicts of Nobita, the unintelligent and clumsy, yet good-natured protagonist. Sakurai argues that Doraemon, which he erroneously claims is shown only in Asia, has tremendous appeal to children in Asia precisely because these countries are going through rapid economic industrialization and facing immense social competition reminiscent of conditions prevalent in Japan two decades ago. Thus Doraemon as a sociocultural allegory is not relevant only to Japan, but applies well throughout the Asian region, providing a refuge for children who feel buffeted by the educational demands of accelerated Asian economies. Their different politics notwithstanding, these two interpretations of Japanese popular culture in Asia share two underlying assumptions. First, despite the radical heterogeneity within the discursive space called 34. Tsubouchi Takahiko, ‘‘Look East Policy and Oshin,’’ http://www.iijnet.or.jp/asia/ database/mw 9510 1txt (1997). 35. Sakurai Tetsuo, ‘‘Doraemon toiu ‘hinanjô’ ’’ [Doraemon as ‘‘refuge’’], Ryûkyû Shimpô, 29 September 1996, 17.

298

*

leo ching

Asia (in terms of religion, ethnicity, daily practices, etc.), both explanations insist on a nebulous association or identification common to all the countries in Asia, whether deriving from similar phases of economic development or cultural embeddedness. Second, despite their articulations of Asianness, both seem to insist that Japan be recognized as the forerunner in a developmentalist scheme of social and economic progress and that all other Asian countries are ‘‘alike, but not quite.’’ This interpretation of the popularity of Japanese mass culture has its economic counterpart in the so-called flying geese model, initially advanced in the 1930s and revived in the 1970s. In this model, Japan is the lead goose heading a flying-V pattern of Asian economic geese. The other Asian countries, maintaining their respective and relative positions in the formation, are to follow and replicate the developmental experience of the Japanese and other ‘‘geese’’ in front of them. Over time, the Asian nations would proceed collectively toward mutually beneficial advances in industrialization and manufacturing and eventually achieve prosperity, with Japan remaining the undisputed development leader in the region. This seemingly contradictory interpretive arrangement, on the one hand assuming commonality within a heterogeneous region, and on the other asserting an advanced, if not unique, position for Japan within the overall configuration, appears to have its historical precedent in the discourse of Asianism, especially with its wartime colonial vision of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, despite this apparent similarity with wartime Asianism, especially in its most nationalistic and colonialist guises, I would like to suggest that today’s Asiatic imaginary necessarily embodies different rhetorical and ideological strategies, particularly due to the global reach of capitalism in the contemporary moment. Especially given the common and facile equation of today’s Japanese mass cultural imperialism with wartime colonization, it is important to recall the operation of colonialism in its specific historical context. The Japanese empire was consolidated through two related but distinguishable colonial ideologies of ‘‘assimilation’’ (dôka) and ‘‘imperialization’’ (kôminka) that, to varying degrees of intensity, functioned to incorporate the colonized into the Japanese empire. In the 1920s the ideology of dôka replaced colonial particularism as the dominant cultural policy. Whereas the earlier colonial regime had shunned extreme inter299

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

vention into the sociocultural fabric of the colonized, dôka described the responsibility of the colonial regime and the possibility of integrating the colonized into Japanese national and cultural polity. The second shift of Japanese colonial ideology is visible in the amplification of dôka into kôminka, or the making of an imperial subject, in the late 1930s. Under the directives of kôminka, the colonized were to transform themselves from servile colonial people into loyal imperial subjects through a process of total ‘‘Japanization,’’ which included speaking the national (Japanese) language, assuming Japanese names, living in Japanese-styled houses, dressing in Japanese kimonos, and most important, worshipping the emperor as the highest authority of the empire. The ideology of equality under dôka and kôminka only served to conceal the hypocrisy that Ozaki Hotsuki has properly phrased as ‘‘to live not as Japanese, but to die as Japanese,’’ especially when those colonized were mobilized for Japan’s entry into the Pacific war.36 In terms of colonial coercion and its explicit inscription of nationalist ideology, today’s mass culture–mediated Asianism is not exactly the same as the colonial version of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Rather, there is a sense in today’s culture of Asianism of ‘‘reversion’’ to the amorphous and overlapping regionalist imaginary of earlier advocates of Asianism, a move similar to the ‘‘reversions’’ in political and economic spheres that we have noted earlier. This reversion to high culture Asianism, like other reversions, is a reversion with a difference. The apparent continuity in geopolitical configuration conceals a radical rupture in the way cultural Asianism has positioned itself in the so-called postcolonial present. Further consideration of Okakura’s ‘‘high culture’’ and its contrast with today’s mass cultural Asianism will reveal the different historical positionalities of regionalist thinking vis-à-vis Japan and the West. It is crude but perhaps instructive preliminarily to characterize and differentiate Asianism during the period of high imperialism and during the postcolonial era as prenational and postnational, respectively. For Okakura, the ‘‘ideals of the East’’ offer the only counterattack against what was perceived as an onslaught of ‘‘Western’’ material forces and scientific rationality. ‘‘The single mighty web’’ of Asian consciousness formed through the historical and geographical inter36. Ozaki Hotsuki, Kindai bungaku no shôkôn [The scar of modern literature] (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991), 139.

300

*

leo ching

course among the peoples of Asia before specific national communities were imaginable. ‘‘Civilizations’’ rather than particular ‘‘nations’’ informed and characterized Okakura’s Asiatic imaginary. One should remember also that Okakura wrote The Ideals of the East in English for an exclusively Western audience, and that it was not intended to incite the Japanese. As long as it was directed externally and not internally, ‘‘Okakura’s beauty/spirit/Asia existed as an absolute transcendent exteriority’’ within Japan.37 With the advent of Japanese imperialism, however, Okakura’s regionalist vision was directed internally, at Asia, and Japan’s privileging role was taken quite literally.38 The Ideals of the East was translated into Japanese in the early 1930s, and ‘‘Asia is one’’ became the shibboleth for Japanese aggression toward Asia. Similarly, novelist Natsume Sôseki’s Theory of Literature was premised on the radical difference between Eastern literature and Western literature, not the difference between Japanese and Western literatures. Following the Taishô period, however, ‘‘these two were completely reversed; as Japan and the West began to be seen on the same level, the differences between them were emphasized. The West became only an image, as did the East.’’ 39 It is in this sense that Asiatic aesthetics, a self-contained and interdependent multiplicity of cultural forms, can ‘‘resist’’ Western imperialism, because it is a radical alterity that is unrepresentable in the Japanese consciousness. This Asiatic imaginary maintained both a practical identity and an irreducible tension between anti-imperialism and Japanese nationalism. Asianism’s radical otherness, however, was soon subsumed under the single representation of the Japanese nation. Given this contradiction between its absolute unrepresentability to the Japanese and its actual representability through only the Japanese nation, the radical possibility of prenational Asianism became its own impossibility. If Asianism in the period of high imperialism was ultimately domesticated and internalized within the nation-form, Asianism in the era of mass culture appears to have been generated out of, and outside of, 37. Karatani, ‘‘The Discursive Space of Modern Japan,’’ in Japan in the World, ed. Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian, a special issue of boundary 2, 18(3): 204. 38. Okakura writes of Japan’s privileged status: ‘‘The history of Japanese art becomes thus the history of Asiatic ideals—the beach where each successive wave of Eastern thought has left its sand-ripple as it beat against the national consciousness’’ (The Ideals of the East, 8). 39. Karatani, ‘‘The Discursive Space of Modern Japan,’’ 204.

301

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

the formation of the nation-state. Whereas high culture represented an absolute exteriority of Asianness to the Japanese nation, the direct export of mass culture outside of the Japanese nation characterizes today’s cultural Asianism. If Japan has been the ‘‘repository of Asiatic thought and culture,’’ and the ‘‘museum of Asiatic civilization,’’ it has now become the factory where alternative (Asian) capitalist development can be reproduced, as well as the amusement park where developmentalist ills are rehabilitated through comic relief. The allegorization from the national to the regional has the potential of challenging the delimitation and the vanity of the nationalist formation: ‘‘Miracles’’ are no longer the achievement of a particular economy; cultural practices are no longer ‘‘unique.’’ The regionalism constructed here, however, is different from the prenation form of Asianism in the sense that it is a regionalism constituted at the moment when the notion of national formation, of a national economy, which could be represented through a national cultural identity, is under pressures of which regionalization is only a symptom. It is worth noting that despite the empirical evidence of the popularity beyond the Asian region of both Oshin and Doraemon (not to mention other assorted mass cultural commodities like Japanese animation and karaoke), there is a persistent desire not only to Japanize Asia but also to Asianize Japan, a desire both to see Japan as the embodiment of Asia and to construct Asia as a reflection of Japan’s past—in short, to place Asian countries along a spatial continuum, but at the same time to deny them temporal coevalness. The concomitant processes of regional homogenization and temporal distantiation reflect a structural and historical shift in Japan’s position in the global capitalist system and its specific relationship to Asia. I believe we can get at this from two different but dialectically related perspectives. On the one hand, we can quite easily make the argument that this represents a new kind of Japanese hegemony in the region made possible by the deterritorialization of capitalist centers and the transnationalization of capital itself. The regional hierarchy prescribed here may not be the same as the colonial designation of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, but it is not entirely different either. On the other hand, we may understand this imperialist other as an anxiety about national formations in the development of Japanese capitalism in the world system. The allegorization of the national to the regional in today’s Asianism is also embedded in the Japanese desire for Asia. As Iwabuchi Kôichi 302

*

leo ching

has argued in his analysis of ‘‘pop Asianism’’ in Japan, there are two contradictory desires for Asia in Japan today: a nostalgia for the premodern Asia and a nostalgia for a modern Asia that reminds Japan of its immediate past. The rapidly developing Asian countries thus represent the kind of vibrant and modernizing vigor reminiscent of Japan’s rise to industrial power in the 1950s and ’60s.40 Japan’s ‘‘nostalgia for a modern Asia’’ must be apprehended in the context and pattern of economic development in the region since 1945. With the defeat of Japan in World War II and the subsequent American occupation, demilitarization and economic reconstruction replaced and dispelled Asia from the consciousness of postwar Japan.41 For most of the three decades following the war, Japan was linked primarily to the United States and only secondarily to Asia. Even as Japan emerged as an economic power in the 1950s and ’60s, Asia was principally a source of raw material for Japan and of markets for manufactured goods. In the 1970s, with the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system and the subsequent oil crisis, along with mounting trade surpluses against the United States and Western Europe, Japanese capitalism began to redirect Asian economic strategies, mostly in terms of foreign direct investment. Japanese investment in Asia surged following the Plaza Accord of 1985, as the Japanese established plants in Asian countries to produce manufactured goods for export to Japan and elsewhere. Subsequently Japan, previously a provider of capital and intermediate goods, emerged as a leading market for manufactured goods from Asian countries as intraregional trade began to surpass regional trade with the United States. With Japan following the dictates of capital and moving from an industrializing and manufacturing economy to a more service-oriented and consumerist society, the optimism and energy of ascendant industrialization—now diminished and felt as a ‘‘loss’’—is reconfigured and replayed in the mass images of today’s Asianism. The bursting of the ‘‘bubble’’ economy and a worsening recession have the Japanese questioning both the merits of unchecked economic growth and the problem 40. Iwabuchi Kôichi, ‘‘In Dialogue with ‘Pop Asia’: Japan’s Consumption of ‘Asian’ Popular Culture’’ (paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Boston, 1999). 41. Yoon Keun-cha, Nihon kokuminron: kindai nihon no aidentiti [On Japan and citizenship: The identity of modern Japan] (Tokyo: Chikuma shobô, 1997).

303

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

of national identity itself. The regionalization of Asia as an image of its past performs a strategy of containment through which Japan can come to terms with the uncertain future of its economic development. In this sense mass cultural Asianism mediates between the process of the globalization of capital and the anxiety over the erosion of the nation form. Another way to think about the regionalist imaginary as a symptom of rather than a corrective to the contradiction between globalization and nationalism is to explore the disseminating mechanism of its mass cultural form. It is important to note that this postnational Asianism is mediated through the image-commodity-sound of mass culture, a transnational form of cultural production and consumption very different from cultural forms heretofore associated with nation-states. Stuart Hall characterizes this new form of globalization as follows: Global mass culture is dominated by the modern means of cultural production, dominated by the image which crosses and re-crosses linguistic frontiers much more rapidly and more easily, and which speaks across languages in a much more immediate way. It is dominated by all the ways in which the visual and graphic arts have entered directly into the reconstitution of popular life, of entertainment and of leisure. It is dominated by television and by film, and by the image, imagery, and styles of mass advertising.42 Hall, however, describes this ‘‘global mass culture’’ as primarily ‘‘American’’ and ‘‘Western,’’ obviously indifferent to the regional and, to a different extent, global extension of ‘‘Japanese’’ mass culture. One of the ways in which we might consider the dissemination of a Japanese-produced commodity-image-sound is to conceive it as a regionalist project that is not merely an effect but a very necessary constituent of global capitalist culture. By global culture here I mean the site where capital organizes and distributes the kind of generative desire or fantasy that enables production and accumulation to take place. One of the major disseminators of Japanese-produced mass-images in Asia is STAR TV (Satellite Television Asian Region), which broadcasts from Hong Kong using a satellite launched from China. From Japan in the east to Israel in the west, from Mongolia in the north to Papua New 42. Stuart Hall, ‘‘The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity,’’ in Culture, Globalization, and the World System, ed. Anthony D. King (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 27.

304

*

leo ching

Guinea in the south, STAR TV broadcasts to thirty-eight countries in Asia with a potential audience of 2.7 billion, the largest regional television market in the world. More important, STAR TV has made possible for the first time in the region’s history a synchronic dissemination, and thus reception, of images in Asia. It is not clear whether STAR TV has the capability of generating an imagined regional identity, but it is clear that various notions of ‘‘Asianness’’ have been constructed through this media regionalism, whether it is Japanese melodrama allegorized as a regionalist economic development or MTV Asia introducing rock bands from South Korea and India. These integrated assemblages, which make possible the grouping of whole ranges of events, processes, peoples, and identities within Asia, despite the latter’s purported heterogeneity in relation to other imagined cultures, express the same space of capitalist accumulation. MTV Asia is broadcast alongside MTV Europe; newspaper columns of Japanese aidoru (idol) celebrity news reports run next to the latest gossip from Hollywood, and Mandarin soap operas from Taiwan follow the never-ending episodes of Beverly Hills 90210. In other words, what were once rendered incompatible or incommensurable now, within the workings of late capitalism, harmonize into compatible and commensurable zones of accumulation and production. Ironically, it is this possibility of a regional mode of cultural dissemination that renders any coherent notion of ‘‘Asia’’ an impossibility. Such notions of Asian generality are constantly fragmented by STAR TV’s ‘‘culturally specific programming.’’ From Cantonese soap opera to Japanese films, from music videos featuring Indian, Mandarin, and Korean performers to sporting events ranging from cricket to soccer to sumo, the consistent differentiation of mass cultural forms continues to deny a formative regionalist identity as it simultaneously works to standardize media products. It is in this sense that Asianism in its mass cultural formulation emerges at the very moment when regionalist association is no longer imaginable. The critical valence of Asianism that the Japanese critic Takeuchi Yoshimi didn’t want to abandon because its common colonial legacy and anti-Eurocentrism held a radical potential for resistance is today nowhere to be found. Asianism no longer represents the kind of transcendental otherness required to produce a practical identity and tension between the East and the West. Today, ‘‘Asia’’ itself is neither a misrepresentation of the Orientalist nor the collective representation of the 305

*

asianism in the age of l ate c apital

anti-imperialists. ‘‘Asia’’ has become a market, and ‘‘Asianness’’ has become a commodity circulating globally through late capitalism. Perhaps this constitutive relationality between the regional and the global is audible in the Asian and perhaps global ambitions recently articulated by Japan’s biggest pop star, Komuro Tetsuya (whose techno group is ambitiously named Globe): ‘‘I want to create an entertainment complex for Asians. It will be a place not just for Japanese or Chinese, but for Asians as a whole. I foresee music as a way to hold the continent together.’’ 43 43. Quoted in Hannah Beech, ‘‘Will Japan’s Top Hit Maker Become Asia’s Too?’’ Time, 3 May 1999, 33.

306

*

leo ching

The Paradoxical Invention of Economic Modernity Jean-François Bayart Translated by Janet Roitman

The collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989 apparently established the triumph of capitalism in what seemed to be a knock-out victory, an unleashing of forces on the world. Closer inspection of this event reveals, however, that it is no doubt more complicated than that. On the one hand, the discredit and quasi-disappearance of the socialist referent with respect to economics is only one aspect, albeit a late one, of a more general process of the extension of capitalism to a global scale. Since the 1960s, a certain number of ‘‘success stories’’ have contributed to the refutation of eminent specialists’ pessimistic prognostics on ‘‘Third World’’ topics—they had predicted an appalling fate for Asia. Of course, several of these ‘‘successes’’ have since proved to be nothing more than mirages. But generally, the take-off of the four ‘‘newly industrialized countries’’ of East Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) is today widely accepted as fact. Economists contemplate the possibility that these front runners will soon be joined, or at least closely followed, by other states of the region in spite of the recent Asian crisis. In Asia, the case of Japan—the comparison of which to Western Europe has long been an obligatory exercise of historical sociology—is no longer a Sonderfall. From this, is it possible to say that a regional singularity has been substituted for a national singularity? That other ‘‘Third World’’ economies have entered the capitalist arena and have achieved significant and often unexpected successes cannot be overlooked. The problem, for now, is not whether these results are durable and whether they irreversibly modify the respective positions of these countries in the internaThis chapter is based on the introductory chapter of Jean-François Bayart, ed., La réinvention du capitalisme (Paris, 1994) by kind permission of Karthala.

tional division of labor. Such a transformation is often dubious when it comes, for example, to countries such as Chile or Turkey. Nor is the important question one of debating the macroeconomic policies that were actually followed despite the discourse of the major multilateral institutions and neoclassical economists. Nonetheless, this distortion between liberal legends and macroeconomic realities merits reflection in and of itself. It is, in fact, a very manifestation of the monopoly that capitalism seems to have fashioned even before the defeat of its old adversary. Neoclassical theses imposed their hegemony in most Third World countries during the 1970s and 1980s.1 And other sources of economic legitimacy dried up one after the other. In October 1988, the riots in Alger tolled the bell of the nationalist and voluntarist development model that the failure of Nasserism had already damaged. In August 1989, the prime minister of the Islamic republic of Iran, Mir Moussavi, who had put his name on a socialist— or, in any case, state-managed—economic line, saw his post suppressed, his dismissal sanctioning the incapacity of Islamism to inspire an original economic path.2 In February 1990, the liberation of Nelson Mandela marked the abandonment of support for the ‘‘separate development’’ of an autosufficient war economy that had proved unable to contain the arrival of blacks to the cities and to overcome the desertion of Western finance. In June 1991, the prime minister of India, P. V. Narasimha Rao, turned his back on forty years of ‘‘Nehruvian socialism.’’ And China has experienced ‘‘reform’’ since 1978. On the other hand, the extension of capitalism to a world scale cannot be taken for granted. The triumphalism of the Western press immediately following the fall of the Berlin wall reminds us that our observations apply to a ridiculously short period of time with respect to the pace of history. And it was not long, in fact, before numerous symptoms of the abortive nature of this hypothetical process of globalization became evident. The transplant of a market economy to Eastern Europe and, even more, to the former Soviet empire appeared to be, 1. T. J. Biersteker, ‘‘The ‘Triumph’ of Neoclassical Economics in the Developing World: Policy Convergence and Bases of Governance in the International Economic Order,’’ in Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, ed. J. N. Rosenau and E. O. Czempiel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 102–31. 2. O. Roy, L’échec de l’islam politique (Paris: Le Seuil, 1992).

308

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

over time, an increasingly impossible enterprise. Even the most optimistic commentators came to doubt that Guangdong is able to drag the entire mass of China into the capitalist adventure; the hypothesis of a two-track economy, which would leave most of the hinterland at the margins of the world system, is now often evoked. And even if Vietnam were to overcome its political class, its bureaucacy, the trauma of war, and its institutionalized practices to espouse the destiny of the neighboring ‘‘dragons,’’ could we imagine similar destinies for Cambodia or Laos? And if, contrary to much evidence, the futures of Thailand and Malaysia were assured, once again, would that of Indonesia, no less Burma, be as well? In Latin America, the landscape is just as full of contrast. Mexico, Chile, and even Argentina are reestablishing themselves, and yet present indicators of economic growth for Colombia and Brazil accompany the reproduction of forms of accumulation and exploitation (or underexploitation) that exhibit ambiguous relationships to capitalism: Either they are quite simply allied to predation and criminality or they emerge from a neoserfdom or social marginalization significantly removed from the modern configuration of capitalist production. The argument, to be sure, is not decisive since ‘‘capitalism does not overlay the entire economy and all of working society,’’ 3 even in advanced industrial societies. In any case, it is clear that the question is not even posed in these terms for some countries of the Andes or Central America. Likewise, sub-Saharan Africa has distinguished itself, until now, by its age-old refusal to integrate into the capitalist economy.4 It is of course helpful, in this case as well, to differentiate between the various trajectories of the subcontinent. Nonetheless, the success of structural adjustment programs, to which the most promising of these countries have had to submit, remains improbable for the time being. Finally, in the Middle East and Pakistan, the failure of ‘‘political Islam’’ in defining a specific and viable economic orientation created the space for rentier and speculative forms of enrichment. These hardly differ from the forms prospering in the shadows of diverse Arab so3. F. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 112. 4. F. Cooper, ‘‘Africa and the World Economy,’’ African Studies Review 24(2–3) (1981): 1–86.

309

*

economic modernity

cialisms, and which have little to do—apart from finance capital—with capitalism. t h e e x pa n s i o n o f c a p i ta l i s m a n d ‘‘ w o r l d t i m e ’’

Thus, the upcoming decades may be distinguished by the rejection of the capitalist transplant to a significant part of the world, as well as by its apotheosis. There are many ways of debating this. There is a lot of talk about ‘‘globalization’’ and a new configuration of the ‘‘world order.’’ However, it must be recognized that the arguments are not as novel as postmodernist jargon—nor that of its adversaries! Hence, the historian can take this now dated statement by Fernand Braudel as his point of departure: ‘‘Capitalism is still based upon exploiting international resources and opportunities; in other words, it exists on a world-wide scale, or at least it reaches out toward the entire world. Its current major concern is to reconstitute this universalism.’’ 5 From this, he would ask whether the eventual absorption of the worldeconomy 6 by the capitalist economy would lead to the extension of its own ‘‘geographical space’’ to certain once resolutely resistant spaces. ‘‘Imagine the sort of break that would occur in the West as we know it today were a free, total, and definitive opening of the Soviet and Chinese economies to occur,’’ dreamed Braudel—in 1977.7 At the same time, the historian would wonder whether the geographical extension of the capitalist world economy is accompanied by the displacement of its center— Tokyo being substituted for New York, for example, just as Antwerp and Amsterdam supplanted Venice and Genoa, respectively, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and he would seek to delimit the ‘‘successive zones,’’ more or less close to this pole, that would constitute this economy.8 In so doing, he would discover the preoccupations 5. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization, 111. 6. [Translator’s note] Braudel makes a distinction between economy of the world and world-economy: ‘‘By economy of the world I mean the world economy as a whole. . . . By world-economy . . . I mean the economy of only one portion of our planet, to the degree that it forms an economic whole’’ (Afterthoughts on Material Civilization, 80–81, emphasis in original; see 81 ff. for detailed explanation). These observations are also clarified in F. Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme (Xve–XVIIIe siècle), vol. 3, Le temps du monde (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1979). 7. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization, 81. 8. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization, 81–89.

310

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

particular to international relations theorists in their apprehension of power on a planetary scale and of the emergence of a multicentered and decentralized system of transnational exchange in the crevices of the state-centered system: The end of the twentieth century brings us to the era of ‘‘post international politics’’ (James Rosenau) or of ‘‘world society’’ (Bertrand Badie and Marie-Claude Smouts).9 The economists, it goes without saying, claim a large part of the answer when the problem is formulated in that manner—even if the Gulf crisis, the conflicts in Yugoslavia and the Caucasus, or the interventions of the United Nations in Cambodia and Somalia (and their nonintervention in Rwanda) compel us to remember that the old specter of war continues to preside over the destinies of the international system. In this sense, the problem might be better apprehended according to another register: at the crossroads of political, sociological, and anthropological analyses of social change. From this point of view as well, the terms of reflection were early on appropriated by social science theory; that is, essentially by Max Weber in his rendering of capitalism as an historical specificity of Western societies. ‘‘A product of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history, is bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having universal significance and value,’’ stated Weber in the opening to his famous work in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.10 We know that he postulated a ‘‘chain of circumstances’’ in the domain of the religious, without having made it an exclusive explanatory factor. But he never deals explicitly with the conditions of the eventual diffusion of Western capitalism to other societies as abetted by, for example, European imperialism or the increasing internationalization of the economy. He limits himself to reiterating that ‘‘the question of the motive forces in the expansion of modern capitalism is not in the first instance a question of the origin of capital sums which were 9. J. N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); B. Badie and M.-C. Smouts, Le retournement du monde: Sociologie de la scène internationale (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1992). 10. M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 13.

311

*

economic modernity

available for capitalistic uses, but, above all, of the development of the spirit of capitalism,’’ 11 thus making the comparative approach possible by reasoning in the transhistorical terms of ideal types. The Weberian problématique is, then, essential to the effort to better determine the conditions of the transplant of capitalism—or its rejection—to African, Asian, or Eastern European societies. There is little support, in fact, for the idea that the process can be reduced to the standardization of the world system. This is so because, first, the logics of ‘‘globalization’’ are multiple from one domain to another. And the effects of the disjuncture between these logics are probably more important than the effects of homogenization. From this point of view, Arjun Appadurai distinguishes between several imaginary landscapes around which global flows organize—or disorganize: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes.12 And, second, postmodern anthropologists are essentially right when they insist that ‘‘globalization’’ is indissociable from a ‘‘reinvention of difference.’’ 13 One can acknowledge this point without embracing their vision of the world in its utmost details or pushing the problématique of enunciation to its absurd.14 In his everyday language, Braudel noted that ‘‘ ‘industrial civilization’ exported by the West is only one feature of its civilization as a whole’’: By accepting it, the world is not taking on Western civilization lock, stock and barrel: far from it. The history of civilizations, in fact, is the history of continual mutual borrowings over many centuries, despite which each civilization has kept its own original character. It must be admitted, however, that now is the first time when one decisive aspect of a particular civilization has been adopted willingly by all the civilizations in the world, and the first time when the speed of modern communications has so much assisted its rapid and effective distribution. That simply means that what we call ‘‘industrial civilization’’ is in the process of joining the collective civilization of the world. . . . 11. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 68. 12. A. Appadurai, ‘‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,’’ Public Culture 2 (2) (1990): 6–7. 13. J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 15. 14. On this point, cf. U. Eco, Les limites de l’interprétation (Paris: Grasset, 1992).

312

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

Still, even supposing that all the world’s civilizations sooner or later adopt similar technology, and thereby partly similar ways of life, we shall nevertheless for a long time yet face what are really very different civilizations. For a long time yet, the word civilization will continue to be used in both singular and plural.15 This reinvention of difference is verifiable in the very core of the capitalist mode of production, in the methods and spirit of industrial management, for example.16 It also affects consumption of even the most emblematic goods of this mode of production, such as Coca-Cola. Marcio M. Moreira, the creative team leader and director for Coca-Cola International Advertising at McCann-Erickson International, has good reason to dismiss the reproach for ‘‘coca colonization,’’ as this 1988 interview with anthropologist William M. O’Barr suggests: mm: It’s wrong because all the thing wants to do is to refresh you, and it is willing to understand your culture, to be meaningful to you and to be relevant to you. Why is that called Coca-colonization? wmo: Because values are being imposed from somewhere external . . . mm: I don’t think they are. I don’t think that’s true. I think that friendship was there, is there, and will be there forever. It was there before Coke. If Coke disappears, friendship will always be there. What Coke does is it treats friendship accordingly. In Japan, that means one kind of thing, and in Brazil, another. And Coke acknowledges those differences, but Coke stands for friendship. So, what’s wrong with that? I mean, I don’t think that that’s an imposition of a value. I don’t think that Coca-Cola projects. I think that Coca-Cola reflects.17 15. F. Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. R. Mayne (London: Allen Lane and Penguin Press, 1994), 8. 16. P. d’Iribarne, La logique de l’honneur: Gestion des entreprises et traditions nationales (Paris: Seuil, 1989). For a Maghrebian example, cf. P. N. Denieuil, Les entrepreneurs du développement: L’ethno-industrialisation en Tunisie. La dynamique de Sfax (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992) (including from the point of view of technological innovation). 17. Marcio M. Moreira, ‘‘The Airbrushing of Culture: An Insider Looks at Global Advertising,’’ interview by W. M. O’Barr, Public Culture 2 (1) (1989): 15.

313

*

economic modernity

And anthropologists also work to capture the ‘‘social life of things’’ by, for example, establishing their ‘‘cultural biography’’: The history of a Mercedes is not the same in Germany, Africa, or Iran.18 The reinvention of difference is realized, in part, at the local level, being the inevitable reverse side of the process of ‘‘globalization’’ (as noted even by specialists of international relations).19 Kemalism, the most globalizing of movements, only saw civilization in the West and took the consequences to their extreme to liberate Turkey from ‘‘universal ridicule,’’ as Ataturk himself put it. But he simultaneously assured the political victory of the depths of Anatolia over cosmopolitan Rumelia; the Westernization of the country thus went hand in hand with the rehabilitation, or reconstruction, of ‘‘Turkic’’ culture, seen as the depository of the specificity and spirit of the ‘‘folk’’ in the face of Ottoman civilization.20 Some, then, are quite justified in their anxiety over the exacerbation of the particularisms that accompany the internationalization of the economy.21 The identity strategies of the conquest of power and the management of space unfolding in Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, South Asia, or sub-Saharan Africa are all part of the same historical moment as the propagation of neoclassical economics—notwithstanding the lack of an obvious link between the two phenomena. At most, this involves two very different manners of responding to similar types of problems. Under these circumstances, the notion of ‘‘world time,’’ to which the extension of capitalism is often reduced, should inspire a sense of caution. While fully aware that ‘‘the two explanations (internal and external) are . . . inextricably intertwined,’’ 22 Braudel accorded a large place 18. A. Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), in particular, chaps. 1 and 2 by Appadurai and Kopytoff, respectively. 19. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics, 143. See also A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). 20. B. Lewis, ‘‘Islam et laïcité,’’ in La naissance de la Turquie moderne (Paris: Fayard, 1988), esp. 233 ff. and 425–26; and D. Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876– 1908 (London: Franck Cass, 1977). 21. D. Harvey, The Condition of Post modernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1990), 305–6. 22. F. Braudel, La dynamique du capitalisme (Paris: Arthaud, 1985), 114.

314

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

to le temps du monde, the title of the third volume of his Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme. And accounting for this variable was part of the project of the historical sociology of the state that was developed after the 1960s. Reinhard Bendix and Perry Anderson, in particular, resort to it implicitly.23 And Theda Skocpol directly refers to ‘‘the transnational aspects of modernization,’’ which correspond to ‘‘unique processes affecting the world as a whole,’’ and asks about ‘‘changes and transmissions in ‘world time.’ ’’ 24 However, Wolfram Eberhard, to whom one owes, it seems, the very expression ‘‘world time,’’ takes care to couple it with the idea of ‘‘multiple society.’’ 25 This precision is essential. The diffusion of political, cultural, or economic models that carry universal pretensions is filtered by the spaces and temporalities of the field, whose complexity should not be underestimated. It is not simply a question of telescoping ‘‘world time’’ with autonomized national, regional, or transregional times (‘‘Islamic time,’’ for example).26 It is rather the straddling of a multiplicity of spaces/times that characterizes most of the situations that we are to decipher. Their baroque dimensions are fairly well represented by this Iranian joke: Inquiring as to the signification of the lamentations that punctuate the celebration of the month of Moharram, and upon hearing the faithful cry for Husein, killed at the battle of Kerbela in the year 680, a British traveler of the early twentieth century retorts phlegmatically to his Persian interlocutors that ‘‘the news is late in coming to you.’’ A history or anthropology of time necessarily allows one to recognize the plurality of this moment, not to mention that of industrial societies: ‘‘not . . . an apparent plurality behind which one must always discover a supposedly true time but . . . 23. R. Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); P. Anderson, L’Etat absolutiste (Paris: Maspero, 1978). 24. T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 23–24. 25. W. Eberhard, Conquerors and Rulers: Social Forces in Medieval China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965), 1–17 (or W. Eberhard, ‘‘Problems of Historical Sociology,’’ in State and Society, ed. R. Bendix [Boston: Little Brown, 1968], 16–28). On all of these theoretical points, Louis Bélanger proposes a very useful synthesis in Relations internationales et paradigmes politiques (Quebec: Centre québecois de relations internationales, 1992). 26. Z. Laïdi, ‘‘Sens et puissance dans le système international,’’ in L’ordre mondial relâché: Sense et puissance après la guerre froide, ed. Z. Laïdi (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1992), 42–43.

315

*

economic modernity

a real and irreducible plurality, which one must accept as such.’’ 27 The progression of ‘‘quantitative time’’ in Western societies is inseparable from its partner in struggle, ‘‘qualitative time.’’ The latter’s opposition is etched in the detour made, for example—and following Michel de Certeau—by ‘‘the art of doing’’ (les arts de faire), in which the everyday is invented. In the same way, the projection of the ‘‘world time’’ of the capitalist economy into its periphery is by no means a linear process. It is grounded in specific temporalities generally attached to precise places, to historical regions (terroirs). Capitalism must come to terms with the restless memories of neighborhoods, bazaars, chiefdoms, shantytowns, countrysides, and lands. It follows that the rapport between ‘‘world time’’ and particular times is often paradoxical. In the Turkish village of Kestaneci, where, in 1829, the coal that nourished the prosperity of the region of Zonguldak was discovered, the principal decipherer of the social changes accompanying economic modernization was, in 1970, the imam, who was eightyfour years old. A refugee from Crimea, having traveled through the then Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire, he was ‘‘the man who knew the most about what goes on in the world,’’ who taught peasants and workers history and geography and furthered the acceptance and accommodation of Kemalist reforms, which, by the way, did not prevent him from exercising his supernatural, therapeutic talents.28 This observation does not diminish the importance of ‘‘time-space compression’’ in the genesis of economic modernity at a global scale.29 The increasing complexity and speed of the financial system and money markets, which now function permanently and in ‘‘real time’’ from Tokyo to New York, are manifestations of globalization; their profound impact on the ‘‘new’’ capitalist economy is evident. Specific temporalities that persist here and there—in Teheran, for example, where the Muslim week disconnects the business milieu from ‘‘world time’’ three days out of seven, and where the exchange market, in consonance with national considerations, did not register the dollar’s fluctuations on the world market— are definitively secondary with respect to ‘‘time-space compression.’’ At 27. K. Pomian, L’ordre du temps (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 349. 28. N. Vergin, Industrialisation et changement social: Etude comparative dans trois villages d’Eregli (Turquie) (Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi, 1978), 220 ff. 29. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity.

316

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

the same time, the media’s construction of the slaughter at Timisoara in 1989, the 1990–1991 Gulf War, or the intervention in Somalia in 1992 proved the weight now carried by the simultaneity factor in the world order. But these two types of phenomena, which the tenants of ‘‘globalization’’ underline with glee, perhaps also indicate that ‘‘world time’’ is less an overdetermining factor of social change than an element modifying the situational perspective that one has of such change. It is provisionally true that ‘‘market democracy’’ now constitutes the matrix of the world; it is the ‘‘legitimate problématique of the international system,’’ in the words of Zaki Laïdi, or ‘‘a reputedly necessary state of the world,’’ according to Guy Hermet.30 However, the transplant of capitalism to societies outside of the West beats to a more troubling rhythm: that of the historical long term (longue durée). economic imaginaries and operative misunderstandings

It is from this point of view that the reflection set out by the works of Weber remains relevant. Notwithstanding standard interpretations, Weber prevents us from aggrandizing the West as the great, rational dispenser of capitalism. Capitalism is an imaginary (un imaginaire) resulting not from an immanent necessity—as for Marx—but rather from a ‘‘chain of circumstances.’’ As for the ‘‘universal’’ significance and value of the cultural phenomena that provided the matrix, Weber held a reservation that is often omitted from citation: ‘‘As we like to think’’ [that they take on universal significance and value].31 He goes so far as to underline how ‘‘irrational . . . this sort of life [is], where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse.’’ 32 And he scoffs: ‘‘When the imagination of a whole people has once been turned toward purely quantitative bigness, as in the United States, this romanticism of numbers exercises an irresistible appeal to the poets among business men.’’ 33 More important, the capitalist entrepreneur ‘‘gets nothing out of his wealth for himself, except the irrational sense of having done 30. Laïdi, ‘‘Sens et puissance,’’ 38, 39 for the citation by Guy Hermet. 31. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 13. 32. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 70, my emphasis. 33. Weber, The Protestent Ethic, 71.

317

*

economic modernity

his job well’’ (Berufserfüllung).34 Even with respect to postmodern preoccupations, the intellectual project of the theorist from Heidelberg has aged well: Rationalism is an historical concept which covers a whole world of different things. It will be our task to find out whose intellectual child the particular concrete form of rational thought was, from which the idea of a calling [Berufs-Gedanke] and the devotion to labour in the calling [Berufsarbeit] has grown, which is, as we have seen, so irrational from the standpoint of purely eudaemonistic self-interest, but which has been and still is one of the most characteristic elements of our capitalistic culture. We are here particularly interested in the origin of precisely the irrational element which lies in this, as in every conception of a calling [Beruf ].35 Such is, in fact, the best contemporary manner of reading Adam Smith. The transplant of capitalism to societies outside of the West is also part of an imaginary (un imaginaire) and of its social practices. Furthermore, this process inevitably participates in the remodeling of these practices according to the social forces of any given historical context. This is also the case for the marker of the agenda of ‘‘world time’’: ‘‘market democracy.’’ After the fashion of Roman autarky,36 it is, above all, a myth that proffers enchantment and reassures symbolically; but it hardly corresponds to the mechanisms and functioning of contemporary capitalism. And, as soon as this is admitted, the problématique of the eventual reinvention of capitalism in Russia, China, or India is no longer reducible to the study of the dysfunctionalities of the market, the progress of privatization, or the standardization of exchange rates—unless we take these questions as well to be snatches of an imaginary (un imaginaire). All imaginaries, however, are not equal; and one of the weaknesses of postmodern approaches is to have failed to recognize this. There is no imaginary (imaginaire) without materiality.37 Time and space, for example—and thus their ‘‘compression’’—cannot have any significance 34. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 71. 35. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 78. 36. P. Veyne, La société romaine (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 144 ff. 37. J.-F. Bayart, L’illusion identitaire (Paris: Fayard, 1996).

318

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

independent of material processes; and they can only be apprehended via the latter. ‘‘The imaginary is not the unreal, but rather indiscernibility between the real and the irreal,’’ comments Gilles Deleuze.38 An imaginary (un imaginaire) must be operative if it is to survive, reassure, and enchant, and this depends to some extent on its rapport with a given materiality. The bankruptcy of ‘‘the radiant future’’ of the Soviet Union or of the dream of ‘‘industrializing industry’’ in Algeria are also, and perhaps primarily, problems of overpopulated lodging and driedup plumbing. Contrary to received ideas, Weber would not deny this. He refused to abstract out factors of materiality from those of the religious ethic to explain the genesis of capitalism: ‘‘We have no intention whatever of maintaining such a foolish and doctrinaire thesis as that the spirit of capitalism (in the provisional sense of the term explained above) could only have arisen as the result of certain effects of the Reformation, or even that capitalism as an economic system is a creation of the Reformation.’’ 39 He speaks of ‘‘the tremendous confusion of interdependent influences between the material basis, the forms of social and political organization, and the ideas current in the time of the Reformation.’’ 40 And he concludes by bringing into focus this point, which should have definitively settled a bad quarrel: ‘‘It is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. Each is equally possible, but each, if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth.’’ 41 Debates over economic representations and strategies in the ‘‘Third World’’ have much to gain by observing the discipline of this methodology. Take, for example, the current theses of the ‘‘moral economy.’’ James Scott refused to see, in the conception that he attributed— wrongly or rightly, it is not for me to judge—to the Southeast Asian peasants, an ethereal traditional culture supposed to express a romantic idea of social equality. Their notion of economic justice involved a 38. G. Deleuze, Pourparlers, 1972–1990 (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1990), 93. 39. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 91. 40. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 91. 41. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 183.

319

*

economic modernity

‘‘subsistence ethic’’ that translated risk-averse reasoning. These peasants could afford no mistakes by engaging in a strategy of maximizing profit. They were, in fact, instructed by experience because the commercialization of agriculture had, on the whole, damaged the interests of the most destitute farmers. According to this historical experience, the increasing value put on reciprocity, the defense of obligations and traditional rights, the revindication of a restoration of statu quo ante—in brief, the ‘‘moral economy’’ of these peasants—attested less to the resistance of passive communitarian representations in the face of progress than to the unfolding of social struggles.42 On the other side, Samuel Popkin’s critique of Scott’s approach, as interesting and often well founded as it may be—for example, in the relativization of the coherence of village strategies and rehabilitation of the importance of individual strategies—often falls into the traps of neoclassical phantasmagoria ( fantasmagorie), as when he depicts the Southeast Asian peasant as a pure ‘‘rational problem-solver,’’ preoccupied solely by the maximization of his earnings.43 Again, we confront the difficulty of delimiting the respective parts of the instrumental and the imaginary when we examine, as do Fariba Adelkhah and Mattison Mines, religious acts of charity or goodwill ( pratiques évergétiques): Is the gift above all the result of an intentioned calculation or rather that of a ‘‘lifestyle’’ (style de vie)? 44 Faced with this dilemma, the most convincing procedure consists in showing that different types of social relations and cultural values play an active role in the formation of markets by instituting different modes of exchange, production, and distribution.45 But this model of ‘‘multiple markets,’’ which implies an understanding of the reciprocal effects of economic, cultural, and structural factors,46 does not resolve the entire problem. The dialectical relationship 42. J. C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). 43. S. L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). 44. F. Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); M. Mines, Public Faces, Private Voices: Community and Individuality in South India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 45. V. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 46. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child.

320

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

maintained between capitalism and the societies of Eastern Europe, Asia, or Africa is easily posited from within a binary mode: from ‘‘us’’ to ‘‘them.’’ Yet the production of a complete or seamless image of ‘‘them,’’ which would do justice to both ‘‘their’’ materiality and ‘‘their’’ imaginary (imaginaire), would not suffice. For, ‘‘they’’ must very well exist, too: those Russians, those Chinese, those Africans who drive our capitalism up the wall (unless it is in fact the reverse?); or those Japanese, those Koreans, those Thai, who have made off with our economic growth. In this sense, contemporary economic thought is reminiscent of colonialists or missionaries: It tends, if not to exaggerate, at least to congeal alterity in stereotypes, whether it be to stigmatize it, marvel at it, or take fright in it. And such thought tends also to overestimate the internal coherence of this alterity, which it apprehends as a totality. Two topics that are presently in vogue are very revealing in this respect. The debate on the ‘‘moral economy’’ resurged during the 1980s in research and discussion devoted to sub-Saharan Africa. A specialist of Tanzanian society and socialist sympathizer, Goran Hyden, claimed that the state not only failed to ‘‘capture’’ the peasantry but also that it allowed itself to be absorbed by the latter’s ‘‘economy of affection.’’ 47 However, in a second work, he finally came to political conclusions —after having been taken on by Marxist anthropologists 48—that are not so far from those put forth by Popkin: There are no ‘‘shortcuts to progress’’; the capitalist mode of production is not to be avoided, thus justifying recourse to coercion to ensure its passage; ‘‘good governance’’ must be brought to sub-Saharan Africa to facilitate this transition.49 The interesting aspect of this position lies less in its intrinsic value than in its adoption by the World Bank. The problématique of ‘‘good governance’’—which, as an aside, shares with Weber’s work the same kind of relationship that Catholic catechism has with the Scriptures—has become an essential element of structural adjustment programs that aim to reintegrate sub-Saharan African into the capitalist world economy. This supposes that the subcontinent has a particular problem with ‘‘gover47. G. Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry (London: Heinemann, 1980). 48. P. Geschiere, ‘‘La paysannerie africaine est-elle captive? Sur la thèse de Goran Hyden, et pour une réponse plus nuancée,’’ Politique africaine 14 (1984): 13–33. 49. G. Hyden, No Shortcuts to Progress: African Development Management in Perspective (London: Heinemann, 1983).

321

*

economic modernity

nance,’’ the principal symptom being ‘‘corruption.’’ And, in conformity with the imagery of the Protestant missions at the end of the last century, this requires the moral reform of the natives, who are decidedly ‘‘unruly’’ (indocile).50 This position does not afford for the point that corruption is not a specifically African disease and that it has not prevented economic growth in Japan or the newly industrialized countries. Where Hyden presumes that capitalism’s enemy is kinship and its cultural or economic representations, another current—also now well represented within the walls of the World Bank—swears by ‘‘tradition.’’ Japan is put forth as exemplifying the idea that culture, far from being a handicap to overcome, can serve as the wellspring of economic transformation. Even in those countries that were the first to undergo industrialization, capitalist management carries the mark of history and national traditions.51 The art of ‘‘developing’’ is therefore a matter of profiting from this cultural capital and adapting it to the modes of organization of enterprise.52 Varied examples of ‘‘ethno-development’’ are supposed to support this point of view: They include Indian and Chinese diasporas, the Bamileke of Cameroon, the Sfaxians in Tunisia, and so on. The limits of this sort of act of faith are quite clear. It implies that it suffices to look ‘‘one’s culture’’ straight in the eyes to ‘‘develop.’’ Apart from the fact that things are unfortunately not so simple from a macroeconomic point of view, the real difficulty lies in locating this so-called culture. The problématique of ethno-development does not always escape the trap of culturalism. It runs the risk of reconstituting cultures as relatively stable totalities in time and space, the economic effects of which would be, in addition, univocal and determining. Weber refuted this tendancy very clearly in the last pages of The Protestant Ethic: The above sketch has deliberately taken up only the relations in which an influence of religious ideas on the material culture is really beyond doubt. It would have been easy to proceed beyond that to a 50. A. Mbembe, Afriques indociles: Christianisme, pouvoir et Etat en société postcoloniale (Paris: Karthala, 1988). 51. d’Iribarne, La logique de l’honneur. 52. Cf. the works of Alain Henry at the Caisse française de développement, particularly Tontines et banques au Cameroun: Les principes de les Société des amis (Paris: Karthala, 1991), in collaboration with G. H. Tchente and P. Guillerme-Dieumegard.

322

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

regular construction which logically deduced everything characteristic of modern culture from Protestant rationalism. But that sort of thing may be left to the type of dilettante who believes in the unity of the group mind and its reducibility to a single formula. Let it be remarked only that the period of capitalistic development lying before that which we have studied was everywhere in part determined by religious influences, both hindering and helping.53 In fact, the culturalist interpretation quickly becomes a Byzantine discussion, regardless of the erudite qualities of its adherents. The coherence of the Confucian model, which underlies the newly industrialized countries’ successes, is not all that clear. And recourse to the psychology of individuals to account for social behavior, political trajectories, or macroeconomic developments is hardly convincing: Whatever the position of Lucian Pye, an understanding of economic transformation in Thailand, as well as the economic slump in Burma, evidently comes through the exploration of variables other than the authoritarian model cherished by these two ‘‘cultures,’’ which are otherwise so ‘‘similar.’’ 54 In any case, culture is not a given. It is invented, including by borrowing. And so much so that it is generally futile to attempt to circumscribe the authentic, autochthonous, or traditional. Adelkhah offers an example with reference to the ethic of fotowwat in Iran.55 And in India, gift-giving strategies are exercised in the context of the political redefinition of Hindu identity and owe perhaps less to religious charity than to the philanthropic Victorian model imported by England. The merchants of Surat had long been practicing this type of gift exchange at the end of the nineteenth century to ensure their reputations in their own communities as well as to gain the political recognition of the colonizer by adopting the latter’s own repertory of charity.56 As for the famous ‘‘family enterprise’’ in Japan—so often put forward by the tenants of economic culturalism—this category is precisely a pure ‘‘invention of tradition,’’ to use the expression of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. 53. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 283–84n.118. 54. L. W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), 95 ff. 55. Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran. 56. D. E. Haynes, ‘‘From Tribute to Philanthropy: The Politics of Gift Giving in a Western Indian City,’’ Journal of Asian Studies 46 (2) (1987): 339–60.

323

*

economic modernity

Instead of being a manifestation of eternal Nippon-ness (nipponitude), it is rather a facet of the strong-armed construction, during the 1930s, of a family-state (Etat-famille). Here, the emperor is represented as father, and his ideology is elaborated at a moment when industrialization was not yet led, as in the Meiji era, by individual owners in patrimonial style, but by bureaucratic managers from the University of Tokyo.57 Plastic in time, culture is likewise in space. Always plausible in terms of good old common sense, as in the everyday experience of the expatriate engineer—Germans are hard workers, the Japanese resemble an ant colony, Italians are resourceful manipulators, and Africans . . . —the identification of an economic ethos corresponding to a national or ethnic community proves enormously perilous. Can one speak of an African economic culture? This would confound economic histories, and even perhaps civilizations, that are, in fact, very different. To confine ourselves to the ‘‘success stories,’’ what lies in common between the Islamic merchant dynasties of northern Nigeria, the austere Kikuyu farmers of Kenya, the buxom businesswomen of Togo (referred to as ‘‘Nana-Benz,’’ in double homage to their prosperity and taste for the Mercedes sedan)? Can one speak of a Cameroonian economic culture? This would deny the heterogeneity of behavior that differs greatly even between the lineage societies of the south and the meta-lineage societies of the west, for example. Would one then speak of a Bamileke economic ethos on the simple pretense of their legendary ‘‘dynamism’’ and the fears that it inspires? This would take at face value a political discourse that has become rather explosive and renounce the possibility of understanding, as Jean-Pierre Warnier has shown, the differentiation of itineraries of accumulation (or disaccumulation), based on social categories and differing generations of entrepreneurs, that are played out in the very interior of the Bamileke group.58 From this, one begins, perhaps, to gain a sense of what the expansion of capitalism beyond the Western societies wherein it originated cannot be: neither the dissolution of social and historical imaginaries (imagi57. K. van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), particularly 29 and 184 ff.; H. Yoichi and C. Sautter, eds., L’Etat et l’individu au Japon (Paris: Editions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1990); H. Ooms, ‘‘Les capitalistes confucéens,’’ Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 80 (1989): 81–86. 58. J.-P. Warnier, L’esprit d’entreprise au Cameroun (Paris: Karthala, 1993).

324

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

naires) under the hegemony of ‘‘world time’’ (even though the latter is not an exclusive production of the West), nor placid fidelity to miragelike cultures expected to suddenly generate growth and prosperity. As oft-repeated over the last few years: Culture—and thus an economic ethos—is an invention, and often a makeshift one at that. From this perspective, confrontation between such disparate societies and the consequent meeting of actors issuing from very different historical horizons in the arena of the capitalist world economy can only take place in an incomplete manner, riddled with misunderstandings, not to mention lies and fraud. The same financial and industrial procedures, the same work and consumption practices do not always entail the same imaginary social significations, despite their interaction. However, as Warnier indicates, the point is to know whether these misunderstandings are operative or not. That is, to determine whether they engage a process of primitive accumulation and the intensification of exchanges, following the example of East Asia and the West, or a spiral of stagnation and divergence comparable to that which has recently emerged between the West and sub-Saharan Africa. t h e pa r a d ox i c a l pat h s o f ‘‘ t h e s p i r i t o f c a p i ta l i s m ’’

To untangle the web, it would be helpful to take up the very project of Weber: ‘‘In view of the tremendous confusion of interdependent influences between the material basis, the forms of social and political organization, and the ideas current in the time of the Reformation, we can only proceed by investigating whether and at what points certain correlations between forms of religious belief and practical ethics can be worked out.’’ 59 This approach would surely not lack of interest when applied to societies that are, for the most part, racked by intense religious mobilization. But—setting aside its having already inspired numerous essays, and that Weber’s hypotheses 60 in this regard have been criticized so quickly and caustically that they are no longer taken entirely seriously 61—a quite literal reading of the works of the theorist of 59. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 91. 60. Cf. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, and Economy and Society, 2 volumes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 61. Apart from the work of Sombart, cf. most notably R. H. Tawney, La religion et l’essor du capitalisme (Paris: Librairie Marcel Rivière, 1951); E. Troeltsch, Protestantism

325

*

economic modernity

Heidelberg would be overly simplifying. Two of his major contributions would remain obscure. On the one hand, Weber reasoned in terms of historical experience or, even better, a historical matrix: ‘‘The nature of historical concepts . . . attempt for their methodological purposes not to grasp historical reality in abstract general formulae, but in concrete genetic sets of relations which are inevitably of a specific unique and individual character.’’ 62 Of course, he also speaks of ‘‘the permanent intrinsic character of . . . religious beliefs,’’ gives priority to the study of ‘‘dogmatic foundations’’ and ‘‘ethical theory,’’ and refuses to limit himself to the analysis of ‘‘moral practice.’’ 63 This, however, only concerns one aspect of his reasoning: the elaboration of ‘‘ideal types’’ that ‘‘could at best but seldom be found in history.’’ 64 And this step in no way excludes, on the other hand, an analysis of historical dynamics—an analysis that is for Weber, do not forget, a global idea—that highlights the paradoxical character of the rationalization process; its economic expression being the expansion of capitalism, and its religious expression being the ‘‘systematic rational ordering of the whole of moral life as a whole.’’ 65 We know that Ernest Troeltsch, the friendly devil’s advocate to Weber, went much farther than the latter in his study of the paradoxical invention of modernity by underscoring that it is evident that the significance of Protestantism . . . is far from being of a quite simple nature. There is no direct road leading from Protestant Church-civilisation to . . . modern civilisation. . . . Its significance . . . must in many cases be an indirect, or even an involuntary one, and the common element which, for all that, unites the two must lie very far down in the hidden depths below the surface of its conscious thought. There can, of course, be no question of modern civilisation’s having been produced simply and solely by Protestantism. All that comes into question is the latter’s share therein. But even this share is nothing simple and homogeneous. It differs in different and Progress (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986); R. Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 62. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 48. 63. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 40, 97. 64. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 98. 65. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 126.

326

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

departments of civilisation, and in them all is something more or less complex and elusive.66 It makes sense, then, to inquire as to ‘‘its influence at first not in a universal regeneration or reconstruction of life as a whole, but mainly in indirect and unconsciously produced effects, nay, even in accidental side-influences, or again in influences produced against its will.’’ 67 Troeltsch concludes in that inimitable style typical of the German social sciences of the early twentieth century: It is only by resigning the attempt to construe everything on the basis of a single leading idea which ex hypothesi itself produces and shapes everything, and by taking account of the multitude of different parallel and independent—indeed, sometimes contradictory— influences, that we can arrive at an understanding of the real causal connexion. The influence of accident, that is, the combination of several independent causal series, should never be underestimated in such matters. To allow for it is not to abolish or deny the existence of the great main line of direct development of ideas, but only to protect it from confusions and disturbances. If such a development be present at all, this cautious procedure will only serve to emphasise it.68 This theme of the paradoxical invention of modernity runs through the work of Weber as well, albeit alongside the construction of ‘‘ideal types.’’ For example, when he admits that ‘‘the cultural consequences of the Reformation were to a great extent, perhaps in the particular aspects with which we are dealing predominantly, unforeseen and even unwished-for results of the labours of the reformers.’’ 69 Or when he speaks of ‘‘modes of the economic orientation of action’’: Economic orientation may be a matter of tradition or of goaloriented rationality. Even in cases where there is a high degree of rationalization of action, the element of traditional orientation remains considerable. . . . A high degree of traditionalism in habits of life, such as characterized the laboring classes in early modern times, 66. Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 41. 67. Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 52. 68. Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 52–53, my emphasis. 69. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 90.

327

*

economic modernity

has not prevented a great increase in the rationalization of economic enterprise under capitalistic direction. . . . Nevertheless, this traditionalistic attitude had to be at least partly overcome in the Western World before the further development to the specifically modern type of rational capitalistic economy could take place.70 A problématique of this inspiration should be of great help for the reformulation of the question of the expansion of capitalism and its reinvention. It permits the identification of very different vectors that contribute—often in spite of themselves and without knowing it, to offer a pastiche of Troeltsch—to this process of geographic extension and cultural accommodation of the capitalist mode of production. It can help us better ascertain the respective parts of the global and the local in the creation of economic modernity. In so doing, we move away from various vulgates and big ‘‘guiding ideas’’ peddled by development specialists and neoclassical economists. The field is, it goes without saying, already partly cleared. Not only, as we have seen, by the interrogations of some of the founding fathers of the social sciences—among whom we should not forget Alexis de Tocqueville—but also by a whole series of contemporary works. We are now conscious that the counter-Reformation in Western Europe contributed as much as the Reformation to the advent of modernity; that the Catholic mobilization played a crucial role in the social change and often spectacular development of Ireland, Brittany, Bavaria, and Flanders; that these same Catholics finally consolidated the parliamentary institutionalization of the democratic idea despite its consistent rejection by their own church; and that Islamic fundamentalism extended access to the public sphere to women.71 By elaborating these heterodox illuminations, we hope to displace 70. Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, 69, 71. 71. Cf. notably Weber, Economy and Society; E. R. Wolf, ed., Religious Regimes and State-Formation: Perspectives from European Ethnology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); M. Lagrée, Religion et cultures en Bretagne: 1850–1950 (Paris: Fayard, 1992); Y. Lambert, ‘‘Developpement agricole et action catholique,’’ Sociologia ruralis XVIII (4) (1978): 245–53; L.-M. Barbarit and L.-M. Clénet, La nouvelle Vendée: Voyage dans la Vendée industrielle (Paris: Ed. France-Empire, 1990); G. Hermet, Le peuple contre la démocratie (Paris: Fayard, 1989) and Aux frontières de la démocratie (Paris: PUF, 1983); F. Adelkhah, La révolution sous le voile: Femmes islamiques d’Iran (Paris: Karthala, 1991).

328

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

the debate on contemporary capitalism. It seems that, to start with, two guiding ideas have to be submitted to scrutiny: 1. On the one hand, the idea of the market as universal and as a strict principle of economic rationality, in the sense defined by Weber—as a formal rationality of the calculation of profit, the main procedure of which is the ‘‘capital account’’—taking into account, of course, that the theorist of Heidelberg does not share the utilitarian assumptions common to the epigones of Adam Smith.72 2. On the other hand, the idea of virtue as a vector of this rationality. A virtue for which, once again, Weber provided an ideal-type, in the context of the historical experience of the West, with his notion of Beruf (vocation) and his representation of the ‘‘systematic rational ordering of the whole of moral life as a whole.’’ 73 fal se pretender s to the market and virtue

Under the pressure of multilateral institutions and neoclassical economists, the expansion of capitalism has taken the form, over the last years, of a vast rehabilitation of the notion of the market and the ‘‘privatization’’ of enterprises belonging to very disparate systems, where the public sector and state regulation predominate. Nonetheless, it has become increasingly clear that this process of economic liberalization is not necessarily the antithesis of the statism being combatted. Neoclassical authors are mute on the subject of the relationship between these economic phenomena (the market, privatization) and social and political ambiguities. Political ambiguity is at play here because the ‘‘statization’’ (étatisation) of the economy can conceal a privatization of the state. State privatization involves much more than the liberalization of certain economic sectors; it also entails the transposition of certain state functions (fiscal, customs, security) to private entities.74 Conversely, Weber thought that the expansion of capitalism had as its 72. P. Raynaud, Max Weber et les dilemmes de la raison moderne (Paris: PUF, 1987); H. Lubasz, ‘‘Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand—of the Market?’’ in Contesting Markets: Analyses of Ideology, Discourse, and Practice, ed. R. Dilley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992). 73. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 126. 74. On this process, see the essays edited by Béatrice Hibou in Critique interna-

329

*

economic modernity

corollary that of the bureaucracy—the only vector of the rationalization of domination—in the form of the systematization of law and the weakening of traditional solidarities; he insisted on the similarities between the organization of public administrations and those of private enterprises; and, finally, he considered that ‘‘socialism is an extension of the spirit of capitalism,’’ more so than the negation thereof.75 We are left with social ambivalence because the modification of the juridical status of the property of enterprises does not necessarily alter the scenario of accumulation or lines of inequality. Social ambivalence results, as well, because privatizations within the sphere of the economy are inseparable from the evolution of relations between both the public and private spheres, in the anthropological sense of that distinction. In this sense, it is striking that most movements for economic reform in the societies we have considered seem to involve the renegotiation of the very relations that articulate these two spheres, like in China or Iran.76 All this confirms that social structures and cultural representations inherited from a history foreign to capitalism are not necessarily hostile to it. From this point of view, several of Weber’s hypotheses merit reconsideration in light of recent conclusions made by anthropologists. It is not certain, for example, that ‘‘the dominance of magic outside the sphere in which Christianity has prevailed is one of the most serious obstructions to the rationalization of economic life’’ that ‘‘involves a stereotyping of technology and economic relations.’’ 77 It is also not certain that a ‘‘withdrawal from life’’—the infamous Entzauberung der Welt, the ‘‘disenchantment of the world’’—is a prerequisite condition for capitalism.78 In sub-Saharan Africa, sorcery practices (sorcellerie)—which Weber would have no doubt assimilated to magic—can be a way of conceptualizing the market in a more or less critical manner. And, furthermore, it coexists with the revelation of the ‘‘great rational prophecies,’’ tionale 1 (October 1998) and her edited volume, La privatisation des États (Paris: Karthala, 1999). 75. Raynaud, Max Weber et les dilemmes de la raison moderne, 194–96. 76. Jean-Luc Domenach and Hua Chang-Ming, Le mariage en Chine (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1987); Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran. 77. M. Weber, General Economic History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987), 378. 78. Weber, General Economic History, 362.

330

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

including Christianity.79 Here, it seems that the pages of Economy and Society on the incompatibility between the caste ethic and the spirit of capitalism have not aged very well.80 In fact, the capitalist transformation of the economy can take place by traditional modes of action, however irrational they may be. That is notably the case for the least universal of identifications, such as kinship or neighborhood ties, or those of the body (corps de espirit, asabiyya). But it would be erroneous to render this association between the particular (‘‘kinship’’ or neokinship), and the universal (‘‘market’’) a specificity of the limes (boundaries) of capitalism. The extension of Indian and Chinese diasporas into the core of industrial societies, both new and old; the dramatic success of direct selling organizations in the United States; or the growth of private space to the detriment of public space in Japan suggest that it is nothing of the sort.81 This is in no way surprising when one considers the long work of accumulation undertaken in the West by family lineages: ‘‘Individual successes . . . must always be credited to the assets amassed by vigilant, attentive families striving to increase their fortune and their influence bit by bit,’’ wrote Braudel.82 Departing from the interpretation put forth by Weber in The Protestant Ethic, Braudel saw in the very stability of these accumulating lineages a distinctively Western feature that he recognized in the merchant dynasties of Japan, but neither in China nor the Ottoman Empire. And to conclude with a pretty turn of phrase: ‘‘Capitalism does not invent hierarchies, any more than it invented the market, or production, or consumption; it merely uses them. In the long procession of history, capitalism is the late-comer. It arrives when everything is ready.’’ 83 ‘‘The visitor in the night,’’ capitalism is also a visitor who knows from 79. Warnier, L’esprit d’entreprise; P. Geschiere, ‘‘Kinship, Witchcraft, and ‘The Market’: Hybrid Patterns in Cameroonian Societies,’’ in Contesting Markets, ed. R. Dilley, 159–79; E. de Rosny, Les yeux de ma chèvre (Paris: Plon, 1981) and L’Afrique des guérisons (Paris: Karthala, 1992). 80. M. Weber, Economy and Society, 481 ff. 81. Y. Sinichi, ‘‘Le concept de public-privé,’’ in L’Etat et l’individu au Japon, ed. H. Yoichi and C. Sautter (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 1990), 23–43; N. W. Biggart, Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 82. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization, 68–69. 83. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization, 75.

331

*

economic modernity

time to time how to be somewhat criminal. And it is often with respect to family affairs and those of the body that it becomes so, eventually in the paroxystic form of the kleptocratic, or mafioso, state that has developed in some countries of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, or in Russia and the Ukraine. The angelic aspirations of the social sciences would have liked the association between capitalism and both crime and violence to be contingent. May we be permitted to doubt this. The work of Richard Rapp has shown how the countries of the North Atlantic used, from the sixteenth century on, the most questionable and often brutal of commercial practices in order to supplant Venice and Genoa.84 Without even mentioning the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, the famous narrative of a Portuguese navigator, Fernao Mendes Pinto, confirms that the commercial expansion of Europe in Asia was no different, to the detriment of Muslim and Chinese operators.85 The youthful sins of capitalism? Not exactly. Moreover, the relationships forged in Japan between the liberal democratic party, the business world, and the underworld of the yakuza; the seizure of the economy of Mezzogiorno by the Italian mafia; and the activities of the Triads in Hong Kong all indicate that the problem is not circumscribed to the ‘‘periphery’’ of capitalism. Even sober Germany discovered that it has become somewhat of a sanctuary for criminal organizations of the CIS and Italy. No doubt, one would like to say that ‘‘market democracy’’ washes ‘‘whiter’’ without evoking the special sense that world time has now imparted to this expression. Alas! During the 1980s and 1990s, the restoration of competitive electoral procedures in India, the Philippines, or sub-Saharan Africa has been accompanied by an increase in the criminalization of politics.86 Having said this, a double clarification is now necessary. First, one 84. R. T. Rapp, ‘‘The Unmaking of the Mediterranean Trade Hegemony: International Trade Rivalry and the Commercial Revolution,’’ Journal of Economic History 35 (3) (1975): 499–525. F. Braudel recalls the links that existed between the city-states and pirates (and between lords and bandits) in La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966), vol. 2, 88–89; and Frederic Lane notes the contribution made by war and piracy to economic protection for the case of Venice in Venice: Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). 85. F. Mendes Pinto, Pérégrination (Paris: La Différence, 1991). 86. J.-F. Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London: Longman, 1992),

332

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

must remember that the moral appreciation of what is economically licit or not is a relative question. What one labels as corruption issues out of this ambivalence. The private appropriation of public goods—as shocking as it may be to the Weberian ethos of bureaucracy—responds to the moral necessity to serve kinship or the body to which one belongs while, at the same time, satiating personal cupidity; and it is not easy to untangle the respective parts of these motivations. However—and this is the second point—crime, whatever its moral ambivalence, must be the object of a ‘‘capital account,’’ to use Weber’s terminology. If it can be—as much as virtue—a vector of capitalism, it obviously (or unfortunately) is not sufficient for the realization of the latter. To be a good capitalist, it does not suffice to be a good criminal, just as a virtuous man is not necessarily a noteworthy manager.87 And at the macroeconomic level, the decay of a society is also not a token of its growth. For every Thailand and Colombia, countries that extracted nonnegligible resources from the drug trade—and, in the first case, prostitution—for productive ends, how many Burmas and Perus resorted to these activities only to become steeped in a process of disaccumulation? In the same way, corruption seems to have hindered capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa to the extent that it is merely a particular form of a rent of dependency (rente de la dépendence) that has closed off the entire continent. Corruption does not seem to stand in the way of capitalism when it is associated with productive conceptions of the economy, as in Japan or the newly industrialized countries of East Asia. Regardless of the opinions of the catechists of the World Bank, one suspects that the above-stated difference has little to do with morality, culture, or ‘‘good governance,’’ if the latter are taken as disincarnated registers. This difference owes more to the weight of the global history of regimes of accumulation, in the historical long term (longue durée), and to the skill of macroeconomic strategies enacted by all private or public agents.

and J.-F. Bayart, S. Ellis, and B. Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa, trans. S. Ellis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 87. On the contradictions of the mafia as capitalist entrepreneur, see P. Arlacchi, Mafia et compagnies: L’éthique mafieuse et l’esprit du capitalisme (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1986).

333

*

economic modernity

epilogue

Consider, then, with Weber, that capitalism is, above all, an ethos linked to the rational state; a ‘‘mode of life,’’ as he finally wrote in his General Economic History 88; or, with Karl Polanyi and Louis Dumont, that it presupposes the differentiation of an economic field distinct from the religious and political fields; or still, with Michel Foucault, that it calls for the emergence of a Polizeiwissenschaft as facilitating the management of the ‘‘population-wealth problem.’’ The study of concrete historical situations shows that these changes are most often produced in an oblique, involuntary, or unconscious manner, generally according to the rhythm of the historical long or medium term. It is the Islamists who introduced intellectual categories of the economy into the Muslim world.89 It is the healers, sorcerers, and kin who speak the market in Central Africa.90 It is the families of the Chinese diaspora who unify the economic space of East Asia. But it is the liberals of the nineteenth century who are responsible for the destruction of the internal market and the regression of the monetary economy in Bolivia.91 On this subject, hell is paved with good intentions, and the voluntarist approaches to development or the passage to a market economy easily lead to disaster. Conversely, many events that seem to counter the expansion of capitalism and somehow frighten the West can, over time, prove to accommodate this mode of production and thought in societies for which it was once foreign. No guiding idea, to recall Troeltsch, comes out of this kaleidoscope. But, in their contingency, these images can be described and interpreted. This essay has no other ambition than such an attempt. It suggests that Weber was wrong on at least one point: The universalization of the ‘‘capitalist mode of thought’’ does not really amount to a loss of sense in social relations, a ‘‘disenchanted world.’’ 88. Weber, General Economic History, 365 ff. 89. Roy, L’échec de l’islam politique, 167–68. 90. Geschiere, ‘‘Kinship, Witchcraft, and ‘The Market,’ ’’ 159–79. 91. T. Platt, ‘‘Divine Protection and Liberal Damnation: Exchanging Metaphors in Nineteenth-Century Potosi (Bolivia),’’ in Contesting Markets, ed. R. Dilley, 131–58.

334

*

je a n - f r a n ç o i s b ayart

Contributors Arjun Appadurai is Samuel N. Harper Professor of Anthropology and also of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, where he is also director of the Globalization Project. He is the author of Modernity of Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996). Jean-François Bayart is a research fellow at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales in Paris. His publications include The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (1992), Lâ illusion identitaire (1996), which won the Jean-Jacques Rousseau prize in 1997, and is forthcoming in English. Jérôme Bindé is Director of the Analysis and Forecasting Office of UNESCO (Paris). He is principal author and coeditor with Federico Mayor of The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making (1999). Néstor García Canclini teaches anthropology and urban culture at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. Among his many works is the recent Ciudad de los viajeros (1996). Leo Ching teaches Japanese at Duke University. His book on Japanese colonialism, entitled Becoming ‘‘Japanese’’: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation, is forthcoming. Steven Feld teaches anthropology at New York University. His work as a sound recordist includes the CD Voices of the Rainforest. As a musician he has played with Bonefield, TG3, Leadbelly Legacy, and Live Action Brass Band. His ‘‘Notes on World Beat’’ appeared in the first issue of Public Culture. Ralf D. Hotchkiss is technical director of Whirlwind Wheelchair International (WWI), which coordinates and assists a network of independent wheelchair builders around the world. Hotchkiss, who was named a MacArthur Fellow for his work, is an active spokesperson for WWI. He is the author of ‘‘Ground Swell on Wheels: Appropriate Technology Could Bring Cheap, Sturdy Wheelchairs to Twenty Million Disabled

People’’ (The Sciences, July/August 1993). Information on WWI is available on-line at whirlwind.sfsu.edu/. Wu Hung is Harrie H. Vandersteppen Distinguished Service Professor in Art History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His publications include The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting (1996) and ‘‘The Hong Kong Clock—Public Time-Telling and Political Time/Space’’ (Public Culture, spring 1997). Andreas Huyssen is the Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature and the Director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. His publications include Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (1995), ‘‘Monumental Seduction’’ (New German Critique, fall 1996), and ‘‘The Voids of Berlin’’ (Critical Inquiry, fall 1997). Boubacar Touré Mandémory is a self-taught photographer whose work includes 1998 coverage of the African Football Cup in Burkina Faso for Liberation and a 1999 exhibition on African comedians at the Francophone Film Festival in Namur, Belgium, and at FESPACO (Pan-African Film Festival). Achille Mbembe lives in Africa. His publications include Du gouvernement privé indirect (1999) and Provisional Notes on the Postcolony (forthcoming). Philippe Rekacewicz is a geographer cartographer at Le Monde diplomatique in Paris and works for the United Nations Environmental Program in Norway. Saskia Sassen is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Her two most recent books are Guests and Aliens (1999) and Globalization and Its Discontents (1998). Her forthcoming books include an updated edition of The Global City and an edited volume, Cities and Their Crossborder Networks. 336

*

contributors

Fatu Kande Senghor is a Senegalese video maker, writer, and photographer who is a consultant in advertising and public relations at Suffolk University, Dakar campus (Senegal). She is the author of a documentary film about a trip from Goree Island to Timbuktu entitled Tara the Path of the Word. Currently she is working on the concept of urban spaces and urban species and is launching a cultural cable television show called Urbana. Seteney Shami is program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York. She is the editor of Population Displacement and Resettlement (1994) and the coauthor of Women in Arab Society (1990). She taught from 1982 to 1995 at Yarmouk University in Jordan. Anna Tsing teaches anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. Her publications include In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place (1993) and, with Paul Greenough, the forthcoming coedited volume Imagination and Distress in Southern Environmental Projects. Zhang Zhen teaches cinema studies at New York University. Her publications include ‘‘The World Map of Haunting Dreams: Reading Post1989 Chinese Women’s Diaspora Writings’’ (in Mayfair Yang, ed., Spaces of Their Own [1999]) and ‘‘Teahouse, Shadowplay, Bricolage: Laborer’s Love and the Question of Early Chinese Cinema’’ (in Yingjin Zhang, ed., Cinema and Urban Culture in China, 1922–1943 [1999]).

337

*

contributors

Index Adelkhah, Fariba, 320, 323 Adorno, Theodor, 67–69 Adygei. See Circassions Africa, 24; apartheid in, 30; autochthony and politics in, 31–32, 49; borders and boundaries within, 24–31, 36, 45; islands of, 50; map of, 54–55; military principalities in, 43; oil politics in, 44– 45; refugee camps and mercenaries in, 35–36; regional integration in, 25; religion and territory in, 33; sexuality and territory in, 34; space in, 26, 27; state sovereignty, erosion of, 26, 28, 46; temporalities of, 23; territory in, 26; unequal development in, 32; urban spaces in, 30; war and boundaries in, 36–37, 44, 48; water politics in, 38 Afunakwa (vocalist), 200, 202, 204, 205, 206, 210 Aikawa, Noriko, 201, 203, 210 Americanization, 295–96 Amin, Samir, 292 Analytic borderlands, 265 Anderson, Perry, 315 Annihilated Youth, The, 148–49 Appadurai, Arjun, 264 n.5, 267, 294–95, 312 Appropriate technology, 84 Area studies: and the Cold War, 8; a new architecture for, 7–9, 15. See also Geography Arom, Simha, 200 Arrighi, Giovanni, 283 Asianism, 280–82; and commodification of difference, 282; and high culture, 280–81, 300; as ideological formation, 281, 285; and Japanese cultural forms, 280–81, 296–302; and Japanese imperialism, 281; as mediation of transnational capital and nation, 290, 304; and nation-state form, 301–2; and nos-

talgia, 302; and prenational empires, 287; prenational versus postnational forms of, 300; and wartime colonization, 299; and Western imperialism, 281. See also Regionalism; STAR TV Badie, Bertrand, 311 Balibar, Etienne, 290 Barlow, Sean, 197 Barrick Gold, 164, 179, 180–81 Bebey, Francis, 202–3 Bendix, Reinhard, 315 Benjamin, Walter, 66, 68, 233, 237, 246–47 Berger, Gaston, 95 Bergson, Henri, 102 Berkaak, Odd Are, 209 Boas, Franz, 211 Braudel, Fernand, 22–23, 263, 283, 310, 313–15, 331 Bre-X, 156–58, 163–73, 176–80, 182–83, 185 n.63, 187–88; and the Internet, 170–71 Brower, David, 98 Buck-Morss, Susan, 233–34 Buell, Frederick, 233 Canada: and mining finance, 164, 183 Capitalism: and bureaucratic expansion, 330; and criminalization of state politics, 332–33; economic rationality, 329; as ethos of the rational state, 334; expansion or transplant of, 308–12, 318, 324; as global algorithm, 282; as an imaginary, 317; and market democracy, 318; mercantile, 287–88; and national culture, 322; and the nation form, 290; postindustrial, 288; privatization and statization, 329; and traditional practices, 331; transnationalization of, 283; and virtue, 329 Cartography, 52–53 Chen Kaige, 146

China: age and employability in, 138; consumer culture in, 145; consumptioncentered postsocialism in, 150–51; ‘‘democracy of consumption,’’ 132; eating practices in, 135; golden sparrows (jinsique), 148–49; the iron rice bowl (tie fanwan), 131–32; and modernization, 142; narratives of youth and gender in, 143–48; photography in, 114– 30; pink-collar class, 136–37; qipao, 150 n.31; the rice bowl of youth (qingchun fan), 132–42, 148–53; Tian’anmen, 151; time consciousness and anxiety in, 132, 138–41, 149, 151; urban space in, 133; youth and gender in, 133, 142–43, 146, 152 Chinese Woman, 138–42 Chorny, George, 181 Circassians, 221–23; analysis of diaspora narratives, 243–47; body and identity, 232; in Caucasus, 223, 230; in diaspora, 224; displacement and identity, 223– 27, 231, 245; enslavement of, 239–42; marriage practices of, 245; migration narratives of, 224–32, 243–45; migrations of, 222–24, 236; and the Ottoman Empire, 239; slave trade narratives of, 236–43; and Soviet Union breakup, 223; in Turkey, 229, 232 Circulation: and forms of violence, 23 Clifford, James, 233 Cold War: end of, 92 Comaroff, Jean, 269 Comaroff, John, 269 Congo, the, 47–48 Congress of Berlin, 29 Cumings, Bruce, 292, 296 de Certeau, Michel, 24, 316 Deep Forest (band), 200–205, 207, 209, 211, 213 Deep Forest (musical recording), 200–202, 204, 205

340

*

index

de Guzman, Michael, 165–66, 171–72 Deleuze, Gilles, 319 Delors, Jacques, 99 Densmore, Frances, 211 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 328 Dirlik, Arif, 283 Dumont, Louis, 334 Eberhard, Wolfram, 315 Emergency: logic of, 91; and temporal myopia, 91 Enlightenment ideology, 92 Erlebnisgsellschaft, 61, 65 Erlmann, Veit, 197 Ethics: and caution, 99–100; contractual model of, 107–8; family model of, 109; of the future, 106, 109, 112–13; and heritage, 98–103, 111; and the Other, 99; principle of precaution, 100–102, 104; principle of protection, 99, 112 Ethno-development, 322 Ewald, François, 99 Extraterritoriality, 264 n.7 Eyre, Banning, 197 Fabian, Johannes, 221 Felderhof, John, 164–65, 171–72, 176 n.44 Fillmore, John Comfort, 211 Forecasting, 95–96 Foucault, Michel, 334 Freeport-McMoRan (corporation), 167, 176, 181–82 Freud, Sigmund, 63 Frith, Simon, 193 Gamble, Andrew, 284–85 Garbarek, Jan, 204–13 Gene harvesting, 218–19 Genetic engineering, 217 Geography: areas, 7, 8; Cold War-defined, 8; regions, 8, 14–15; trait vs. process geographies, 7, 8 Ghosh, Amitav, 235–36

Global capital/finance, 17, 18, 158–59, 183; flexible accumulation, 186; and franchise cronyism, 162, 177, 179; and frontier culture, 173–76, 185; performative or conjuring aspects of, 158–63, 168–71, 175, 177, 184–85; and scale, 159– 61, 185, 187; spectacular accumulation, 185–86 Global cities, 253, 263, 273; interurban networks, 271–73; and spatiotemporal denationalization, 273 Globalization, 1, 4, 14, 18, 22, 220, 260; and American mass culture, 293; anxieties about, 1–2; and arbitration, 270; and capital fixity and mobility, 262– 63; and central banks, 275; and cultural domination, 295; of culture, 293–94; and denationalization, 261, 265; and deregulation, 266 n.11, 270; as displacement of capitalist epicenters, 283; and ‘‘double apartheid,’’ 2–3; emancipatory politics of, 6; embeddedness in national spaces and institutions, 262–66, 275–76; geography of, 264, 271; and global cultural flows, 5, 295, 312; as global mass culture, 304; and hypermobility, 262; and imagination, 6; as implementation of global economy, 262; and increased inequalities, 17; and informal economies, 266; of knowledge, 4; multiple logics of, 312; and nation-state sovereignty, 4, 18, 264 n.8, 273–74; prehistory of, 221, 234–35; and privatization, 270; and regulatory fractures, 266; as the reinvention of difference, 312–14; research about, 4, 274, 276; and symbolic exchange, 284–85, 293; theory of economic globalization, 295; as trope of late capitalism, 281– 82. See also Global capital/finance; Grassroots globalization Grassroots globalization, 3, 16, 19; and counterglobalization, 19

341

*

index

Greider, William, 17 Guilbault, Jocelyne, 196 Halbwach, Maurice, 64 Hall, Stuart, 187, 304 Harvey, David, 57, 186 Hasan, Bob, 167, 180–81, 183 Heidegger, Martin, 23 Hermet, Guy, 317 Hobsbawm, Eric, 324 Holocaust: Americanization of, 59; as commodity, 65; and memory, 57–59; as universal trope for historical trauma, 60–62, 63 Holocaust modernism, 66 Hu Xueyang, 146, 148–49 Hyden, Goran, 321–22 Imaginaries, 318–19, 324 Imagination: in academic research, 7, 14–15; in social life, 6, 8, 14 Impulse of Youth, The, 146–49 Indonesia, 155; CoWs, 176, 177, 178, 184; gold mining, 163, 174–75, 183; New Order regime, 178–79; President Suharto and family, 180–81 International civil society, 3, 7 International finance. See Global capital/ finance International Pursuit (company), 173 Ishihara Shintarô, 278 Iwai Katsuhito, 287–89 Jameson, Fredric, 293 Japanese imperialism: as allegorization of the national to the regional, 302; and assimilation, 299–300; and capital deterritorialization, 302; colonial ideologies of, 300; and culture, 294; and nostalgia, 303; and wartime colonization, 299. See also Asianism; Regionalism Japanization, 295–96, 300, 302

Jaurès, Jean, 113 Jefferson, Thomas, 108 Jonas, Hans, 97, 98, 110 Kapstein, Ethan, 94 Karatani Kôjin, 286–89 Kemalism, 314, 316 Kielburger, Craig, 112 Kluge, Alexander, 70 Kôichi Iwabuchi, 302–3 Komuro Tetsuya, 306 Koselleck, Reinhart, 107–8 Lacksman, Dan, 200 Laïdi, Zaki, 91, 317 Latin America: cultural patrimony in, 257; and transnationalism, 258 Levinas, Emmanuel, 106 Lie, Marit, 205, 207, 210 Lübbe, Hermann, 69–70 Marquard, Odo, 69 Marx, Karl, 20, 288–89 Mayor, Federico, 103, 112 Mbembe, Achille, 52–53 McLuhan, Marshall, 66–67 Memory: the archive, 73; cultural amnesia, 63; culture of, 60–61; and cyberspace, 75–76; and democratization, 74; discourses of, 57, 62; and fear of the future, 68; and forgetting, 63–64; globalization of, 59; global memory, 72; imagined memories, 63, 67; marketing of, 61, 66; media memory, 64; mnemohistory, 68; practices of, 60, 74–75. See also Holocaust Mexico: cultural patrimony in, 254, 258; state formation of, 254 Mexico City: Centro Histórico district, 255; cultural patrimony in, 258; as global city, 253; industrial development in, 255; media circulation and consumption in, 259; physical geometry of,

342

*

index

254–56; public spending on culture in, 255–56; as regional capital, 253; transnational investment in, 256–57; urban development in, 256–57 Mines, Mattison, 320 Mobility: and physical disability, 81–88 Modernity, 220; invention of, 326–28; and notions of the past, 220–21; and prehistory, 235 Moffett, Jim Bob, 181–82 Moquet, Eric, 200 Moreira, Marcio M., 313 Morin, Edgar, 104, 111 Munk, Peter, 164, 179 Musealization, 69–70 Music: and globalization, 189–90, 197; recording technology, 189–90; and social identity, 189. See also World music Natsume Sôseki, 301 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), 16–17 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 74 Nora, Pierre, 70 North Africa, 39–41 Nostalgia/nostalghia, 248 O’Barr, William M., 313 Okakura Kakuzô, 279, 300–301 Olsen, Per Kristian, 207–9 Oral tradition, 206 Organization of African Unity, 25 Oshin, 297–98 Ost, François, 107 Pacific Rim, 8 Palumbo-Liu, David, 266, 269–70 Panini, 11 Payne, Anthony, 284–85 Pinto, Fernao Mendes, 332 Placer Dome (company), 180–81 Polanyi, Karl, 334

Popkin, Samuel, 320–21 Postone, Moishe, 152 Prehistory, 222, 233–35; as metaphor, 233–35 Proust, Marcel, 113 Pye, Lucian, 323 Ranger, Terence, 323 Rapp, Richard, 332 Rawls, John, 109 Regionalism, 280: as counterforce to other regionalisms, 285–89; in Europe, 286; and globalization, 281, 283–84; as mediation of transnationalism and national forms, 282, 289–90; as state-led project, 284; as trope of late capitalism, 282 Rèmond-Gouilloud, Martine, 99 Research, 10, 14: internationalization of, 9–10, 14–16; Marxist paradigm of, 5, 19; and pedagogy, 19, 20; protocols of new knowledge, 11–14; shelf life of, 13– 14; virtuosity and protocol, 12. See also Globalization: research about; Research ethic Research ethic, 10, 12, 15; and public intellectuals, 15 Ricardo, David, 288 Ricoeur, Paul, 97, 106, 112 Rifkin, Jeremy, 101 Rosenau, James, 311 Rothenberg, David, 197 Sacrificed Youth, 143–45 Sanchez, Michael, 200 Seneca, 95 Serres, Michel, 92 Shanghai: recosmopolitanism, 134 Sharma, Ashwani, 198 Shayegan, Daryush, 92 Simmel, Georg, 72 Skocpol, Theda, 315 Smith, Adam, 288, 318, 329

343

*

index

Smouts, Marie-Claude, 311 Song of Youth, 143–44 South Africa, 41–42 Spatiotemporalities: of the national and global, 260–61, 263, 265 n.9, 270, 275–76 STAR TV, 304–5 Stocking, George, 12 Such a Beautiful Place, 144 Surin, Kenneth, 296 TANs (transnational advocacy networks), 17, 18 Taussig, Michael, 210 Teller, Edward, 94 Temporality, 23, 68; and finance capital, 268; of the national, 269; and profit opportunity, 267–68 Territory: definition of, 24 Testart, Jacques, 94 Time, 90; anthropology of, 315; domestication of world time, 23, 24, 51; and material processes, 319; rehabilitation of the long term, 94–95; time-space compression, 316–17, 318; world time, 314–18 Troeltsch, Ernest, 326–28, 334 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 269 UNESCO, 101, 113, 199–204, 210 Utopianism: crisis of, 92; realistic utopianism, 106, 113 Walsh, David, 163–65, 170, 178, 182 Wang Jin, 114–30 Weber, Max, 12, 96, 106, 311–12, 317–19, 323–31, 333 Williams, Raymond, 70, 291 Wolf, Janet, 247 World music, 190–94, 196, 198; anxious narratives of, 196–98; celebratory narratives of, 196–97; commercial development of, 193–95; as commodification

World music (continued ) of ethnicity, 196–97, 213; and ethnomusicology, 191–93; as hybridization, 196–97; and indigenization, 198; industry of, 212–13; as labor exploitation, 198, 213; marketing of, 195, 212–13; and reproduction of primitivism, 199, 211; and Western pop musicians, 193–94 World War II, 58

344

*

index

Yang Mo, 143 Zemp, Hugo, 199–204, 207 Zhang Manling, 144 Zhang Nuanxin, 143–45 Zhang Yimou, 146 Zhou Xiaowen, 146

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Globalization / edited by Arjun Appadurai. p. cm. ‘‘Public culture books.’’ Parts of the text of this book were originally published in vol. 12, no. 1 and 3 of Public culture. isbn 0-8223-2725-2 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 0-8223-2723-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Globalization. 2. International relations. I. Appadurai, Arjun

II. Public culture (Durham, N.C.)

jz1318 .g5787

303.48'2—dc21

2001

2001023877