Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Research Methodologies for Cross-Border Studies (Routledge Research in Transnationalism) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415899628
Amazon: 0415899621
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-04-24T22:00:00+00:00

RESEARCHING TRANSLOCALIZATION

To approach the field of indigenous activism, a methodological perspective that allows us to look beyond the structural relations overcomes the images of harmonious and productive cooperation within and among existing networks and institutions within and across local and national boundaries. Such a methodological framework needs to enable the researcher to trace and depict interactions across predefined spatial entities and beyond ethnic boundaries. It helps us to show how spatial and symbolic boundaries are constituted within specific situations at different scales and societal levels.

The methodology I am using in my analysis enables me to unravel the translocal constitution of social spaces and is based on three presumptions. The first emphasizes processes and connections at different socio-spatial scales (see also Nina Glick Schiller, Chapter 2 of this volume). The concept of scaling, which “refers to the ordering of socio-spatial units within multiple hierarchies of power,” helps to grasp the ways different levels of spatial order are related to each other and how the “relationships of power between specific socio-spatial units of governance” are reorganized (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2010a: 7). Allowing one to trace the mutual constitution of the local, national and the global, the scalar perspective enables one to show how localities are constructed not only in a geographical sense, but as a space that serves people for identification and representation as well (see Pfaff-Czarnecka 2005). At the same time, the focus on scales underlines the changing relationship between localities and the state within a global framework; for example, it serves as a methodological tool to understand the ways in which indigenous movements make use of global repertoires to articulate their locally specific concerns in national arenas and how they make use of their transnational networks in order to lobby for acknowledgment of their rights in the national sphere.

The translocality approach addresses, secondly, the interrelations among and between different levels of society that are constituted through negotiation of knowledge and meaning. Tracing the ways in which individuals negotiate3 among themselves within different societal fields reflects their rationalities and knowledge repertoires, as well as power structures shap-ing these fields. The focus on negotiations also highlights the ways in which different societal levels relate to each other—for example, how individual agency shapes and is shaped by society and institutions, including the state (see Gille, Chapter 5 of this volume). In this regard, the concept of knowledge interface4 (Long and Long 1992; Long 2001) is a central methodological tool, because this is where actors with different knowledge repertoires confront each other and constitute (translocal) spaces where meaning is negotiated. If social space is conceptualized as constituted through interaction, it represents the interlocking mechanisms relating an individual actor’s agency with institutionalization and structuration at the societal level (Lachenmann 2010: 342). Transcending geographical boundaries, these processes are more or less global in scale. Tracing how knowledge interfaces at different scalar positions in actors’ restructuring of society constitutes one elementary way of understanding processes of translocalization.

The third aspect concerns the level of representation, which can be but is not necessarily located beyond the concrete situations of interaction.

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