Transnational social capital: the socio‐spatialities of civil society

Civil society remains a contested concept, but one that is widely embedded in global development processes. Transnationalism within civil society scholarship is often described dichotomously, either through hierarchical dependency relations or as a more amorphous networked global civil society. These two contrasting spatial imaginaries produce very particular ideas about how transnational relations contribute to civil society. Drawing on empirical material from research with civil society organizations in Barbados and Grenada, in this article I contend that civil society groups use forms of transnational social capital in their work. This does not, however, resonate with the horizontal relations associated with grassroots globalization or vertical chains of dependence. These social relations are imbued with power and agency and are entangled in situated historical, geographical and personal contexts. I conclude that the diverse transnational social relations that are part of civil society activity offer hope and possibilities for continued civil society action in these unexpected spatial arrangements.     

Transnational political action and ‘global civil society’ in practice: the case of Oxfam

The term ‘global civil society’ has taken on increasing significance within scholarly debate over the past decade. In this article we seek to understand transnational political agency via the study of a particular transnational actor, Oxfam. We argue that various schools of thought surrounding the global civil society concept, in particular the prevailing liberal‐cosmopolitan approach, are unable to conceptualize transnational political action in practice – due largely, in the case of liberal‐cosmopolitanism, to a shared normative agenda. We also assess what contribution literature on development and civil society has made to the analysis of groups such as Oxfam. In investigating Oxfam's own perceptions of its context and the meanings of its agency, we discover an anti‐political perspective derived from an encounter between Oxfam's longstanding commitment to liberal internationalism and globalization discourse. Existing scholarship has insufficiently identified the local or parochial nature of the identities of global civil society actors.     

Antagonistic governance in South African fruit global production networks: a neo‐Gramscian perspective

Governance is a core focus of the global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) literatures. Recent research claims ‘complementary’ or ‘synergistic’ governance, achieved through the confluence of private, public and civil society actors, is required for sustainable social gains. While moving beyond a narrow focus on economic coordination, such analysis lacks a sufficiently nuanced examination of power relations. In this article, I draw on neo‐Gramscian perspectives to account for ongoing contestation, positing that governance needs to be understood in the context of a broader hegemonic project. ‘Antagonistic governance’ is proposed to conceptualize contestation within and across diverse initiatives, which forge, challenge and transform hegemonic stability in GVC/GPNs. I explore this through the South African fruit sector, in particular, a labour crisis in 2012/13. I argue that we need to move beyond apolitical readings of governance to account for the material and discursive practices through which contestation gets played out, compromises are forged, and hegemonic order is maintained.     

Power,capital, and immigration detention rights: making networked markets in global detention governance at UNHCR

With the expanded use of immigration detention and migration management practices worldwide, detention has emerged as a key issue for United Nations and international human rights institutions. A growing international rights movement seeks to make the practice fairer and more humane, leading to the dominance of a mainstream detention rights agenda and counter‐hegemonic system of governance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Geneva and elsewhere, this article examines the capital, knowledge, and technological expertise that went into the construction of UNHCR's Global Detention Strategy. I highlight the rational calculation undergirding this global detention rights agenda, including the transnational policy networks of NGOs, INGOs, and academics that facilitate the movement's moral authority and capitalist growth. Their practices have become powerful neoliberal development tools, which give veracity to human rights agendas and attract oppositionally‐figured abolitionist praxis.     

Social upgrading and cooperative corporate social responsibility in global value chains: the case of Fairphone in China

In this article, we explore how a lead firm's strategy for corporate social responsibility influences the social upgrading of a supplier in a global value chain. Based on a single case study approach, we investigate the interaction between Dutch smartphone producer Fairphone and its Chinese supplier Guohong. On the one hand, the case illustrates how a cooperative approach to corporate social responsibility can lead to progress in suppliers' social upgrading. In particular, we highlight the role of a so‐called workers' welfare fund as a mechanism not only for improving measurable labour standards but also for enabling rights. On the other hand, the case demonstrates how the limited production and technological capabilities of the suppliers, a competitive market environment and lead firms' limited strategic access to the supply chain might constrain the extent of social upgrading through a cooperative approach towards corporate social responsibility in a global value chain.     

Transnational social movements and changing organizational fields in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries

Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the global political arena, including shifts in geopolitical arrangements, increases in popular mobilization and contestation over the direction of globalization, and efforts by elites to channel or curb popular opposition. We explore how these factors affect changes in global politics. Organizational populations are shaped by ongoing interactions among civil‐society, corporate and governmental actors operating at multiple levels. During the 1990s and 2000s, corporate and government actors promoted the ‘neoliberalization of civil society’ and the appropriation of movement concepts and practices to support elite interests. Not all movement actors have been passive witnesses to this process: they have engaged in intense internal debates, and they have adapted their organizational strategies to advance social transformation. This article draws from quantitative research on the population of transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) and on qualitative research on contemporary transnational activism to describe changes in transnational organizing at a time of growing contention in world politics. We show how interactions among global actors have shaped new, hybrid organizational forms and spaces that include actors other than states in influential roles.     

Governing transnational social problems: public health politics on the US–Mexico border

Governance research suggests that transnational networks are the key to developing and implementing cooperative public policy across borders. I examine this claim through analysing how the US–Mexico Border Health Commission, a policy instrument designed to enhance transnational public health cooperation, developed from idea to law in Mexico and the United States. Despite a long‐standing transnational network, the policy process took over ten years and was contentious, politicized by domestic policymaking in the United States. I show how transnational networked governance intersects with domestic politics and find that the structure of overlap between the two are places where actors promoting state and transnational interests struggle with each other to define public problems in an attempt to shape policy outcomes.     

The global corporate elite after the financial crisis: evidence from the transnational network of interlocking directorates

What impact did the recent financial crisis have on the corporate elite's international network? Has corporate governance taken on an essentially national structure or have transnational networks remained robust? We investigate this issue by comparing the networks of interlocking directorates among the 176 largest corporations in the world economy in 1976, 1996, 2006 and 2013. We find that corporate elites have not retrenched into their national business communities: the transnational network increased in relative importance and remained largely intact during the crisis lasting from 2006 to 2013. However, this network does not depend – as it used to do – on a small number of big linkers but on a growing number of single linkers. The network has become less hierarchical. As a group, the corporate elite has become more transnational in character. We see this as indicative of a recomposition of the corporate elite from a national to a transnational orientation.     

The democratic deficit of transnational environmental activism: a case study of e‐waste governance in India

The literature on transnational activism often associates environmental NGOs with democratic legitimacy, grassroots representation and environmental justice. Authors employ case studies to demonstrate how engaging in transnational networks increases the political agency of environmental NGOs. Yet, there is a tendency mostly to select successful cases. In this article, I investigate the political activities of the environmental NGO, Toxics Link, surrounding the recycling of electronic waste in India. Based on qualitative research, this study shows how the political incorporation of Toxics Link in transnational advocacy networks and domestic governance networks constrains their political agency. The structural exclusion of e‐waste labourers from Indian policy negotiations negates the discursive claims of legitimacy, representation and justice. These incorporation processes create a democratic deficit. I use the insights gained from this case study to provide a critical assessment of theories of transnational environmental activism.     

A post‐socialist legacy in transnational families: Russian and Polish women in Finland

In this article, we bridge the analytical gap between transnational anthropology and the anthropology of post‐socialism to explore the transnational family lives of Russian and Polish women in Finland. We point to three interrelated aspects of the post‐socialist legacy – (1) an inclusive understanding and practice of family that involves the interactions of immediate and extended family configurations; (2) intergenerational solidarity among women; and (3) feminine subjectivity built on the socialist ideal of a working mother. Our ethnographies illustrate that Russian and Polish women maintain their transnational families through networks of transnationally dispersed extended families. In women's lives and selves, traditional gendered motherhood and the liberal idea of a working woman are combined and supported by women's intergenerational companionship across borders. Our case studies show that such concrete, informal relations of affection and care provide women with a sense of security and self‐worth amid transnational change.     

The new geography of global civil society: NGOs in the world city network

Recent research on the geography of NGOs in Global Civil Society yearbooks has emphasized a north-west European bias. This has been taken to imply that global civil society is but a pale geographical shadow of the power concentrations in global economy and governance. Using an interlocking network model and data on 74 global NGOs with offices across 178 cities, NGO connectivity values for cities show that there is a ‘global South’, especially sub-Saharan African, geographical bias. Nairobi is the most connected world city with respect to NGO activities. This marked contrast to recent received wisdom implies a diffuse network power relationship. To the extent that global NGOs reveal the new geography of global civil society in a space of flows, these results support a positive interpretation for NGOs contributing to an emancipatory global agenda.     

Post‐maritime transnationalization: Malay seafarers in Liverpool

The lives of seafarers may provide examples of transnational connections prior to the globally interconnected era in which ‘transnationalism’ has risen to prominence. In this article, I examine the long‐distance connections of seafarers from Southeast Asia who settled in Liverpool, UK. Drawing on oral history/life story interviews with Malay pakcik‐pakcik (elders) in Liverpool, I examine the ways in which connections with Southeast Asia have changed over the course of their lives. Much of this concerns political geography, which is often overlooked in the literature on transnationalism. During the period of Liverpool's pre‐eminence as a seaport, irrespective of the depth or intensity of maritime linkages with Southeast Asia, connections did not involve the crossing of ‘national’ borders. Ironically, transnational connections are being forged in the post‐maritime stages of the lives of pakcik‐pakcik in Liverpool. I also show how Malay ‘transnationalization’ has resulted from expanded technological possibilities for long‐distance travel and communications. Post‐maritime transnationalization takes place in a ‘community’ clubhouse in Toxteth where the lives, emotional attachments and memories of pakcik‐pakcik are intertwined with those of people with diverse connections to contemporary Malaysia and Singapore.     

The global footballer and the local war‐zone: George Weah and transnational networks in Liberia,West Africa

Abstract Elite sport is the vehicle for global interactions via both its shared practices and the relations engendered by its governing bodies and its global tournaments. This capability has attracted the attentions of those seeking both nation‐building and reconciliation in war‐damaged nations. The narrative that follows has global implications, telling as it does the story of George Weah, a Liberian‐born footballer who became a humanitarian ambassador, and later aspired to become his country's president. Weah's story informs debates on globalization, illustrating the transnational career of a man who developed a keen understanding of institutional politics and patronage and who allowed himself to be courted by various global figures. These scenarios took place in Liberia, a war‐devastated African nation. This tale thus provides for reflection on how sport can encourage and undermine practises of nationhood. As a former World Footballer of the Year, Weah was a Liberian success story and well aware of his populist appeal. However, the issue of who a people are and who is to be their national political representative has proven to be a very fraught issue in the Liberian context. Whether global sporting networks have made the world smaller and the people more knowing in the Liberian context is an issue this article raises in considering its most famous citizen.     

Evidence of a transnational capitalist class‐for‐itself: the determinants of PAC activity among foreign firms in the Global Fortune 500, 2000–2006

Transnational capitalist class (TCC) theory is rooted in the claim that the globalization of the economy has led to a globalization of economic interests and of class formation. However, systematic evidence linking the indicators of transnational class formation with political behaviour is largely missing. In this article, I combine data on board of director interlocks among the 500 largest business firms in the world between 2000 and 2006 with data on the political donations to US elections of foreign corporations via the corporate political action committees (PACs) of their subsidiaries, divisions or affiliates. Controlling for the various interests of individual firms, I find that foreign firms that are highly central in the transnational intercorporate network contribute more money to US elections than do the less central foreign firms. Given prior research on board of director interlocks, this finding suggests that a segment of the transnational business community has emerged as a class‐for‐itself.     

Bias Avoidance: Cross‐cultural Differences in the US and Australian Academies

Bias avoidance behaviour arises when individuals minimize or hide family commitments to achieve career success. Bias avoidance behaviour can be divided into productive types of behaviour that free up more time and energy for a career and unproductive ones types that involve hiding or covering up caregiving commitments. This article compares reports of bias avoidance from chemistry and English faculty in US and Australian colleges and universities. The analyses reveal behaviour in Australia that is similar to that in the USA together with some evidence of higher levels of bias avoidance among women and higher levels of unproductive bias avoidance in the Australian sample. It is concluded from this cross‐national study that bias avoidance is both pervasive and gendered across the two countries. However, cultural differences are also important and strategies to reduce bias avoidance behaviour should account for these differences.     

Between the state and global civil society: non‐official experts and their network in the Asia‐Pacific, 1925–45

This article stresses the need for a more rigorous scrutiny of the power structure in which an expert network produces its ‘expert knowledge’. It defines a pioneering multinational expert network in the Asia‐Pacific region in the interwar years as a prototype of an epistemic community, and examines how far it challenged the state‐centred and North Atlantic‐centred dominant structure of international politics, and became ‘global’. In this article I argue that this particular network largely reinforced the dominant structure. This meant that it remained inter‐national and colonial, and served the interests of the state/empire, neither becoming global nor advancing a universalist cause for the global civil society. The failure owes a lot to historical circumstances. Yet this case study also demonstrates that the structure in which the expert network produced specific knowledge is still dominant and that a constant scrutiny of the role of an expert network remains critical.     

Crowding‐in: how Indian civil society organizations began mobilizing around climate change

This paper argues that periodic waves of crowding‐in to ‘hot’ issue fields are a recurring feature of how globally networked civil society organizations operate, especially in countries of the Global South. We elaborate on this argument through a study of Indian civil society mobilization around climate change. Five key mechanisms contribute to crowding‐in processes: (1) the expansion of discursive opportunities; (2) the event effects of global climate change conferences; (3) the network effects created by expanding global civil society networks; (4) the adoption and innovation of action repertoires; and (5) global pressure effects creating new opportunities for civil society. Our findings contribute to the world society literature, with an account of the social mechanisms through which global institutions and political events affect national civil societies, and to the social movements literature by showing that developments in world society are essential contributors to national mobilization processes.     

Cross‐border,cross‐ethnic,and transnational networks of a trapped minority: Israeli Arab citizens in Tel Aviv‐Jaffa

In this article, I provide a framework for studying the transnational networks of minority members as a political phenomenon. I make two claims. First, it is necessary to take into account the state and its capacity to limit transnational networks if one is to capture, analytically, the full range of such networks. Second, it is important to extend the theoretical framework of transnationalism to include populations other than migrants and to account for networks established by national minority members whose loyalty to the state can be challanged. I offer a typology of networks organized along two major axes – the state in‐border–cross‐border axis and the ethnic or religious identity axis. These two axes yield different types of in‐border and cross‐border, intranational and transnational networks. I base these claims on an analysis of four case studies of cross‐border and cross‐ethnic networks maintained by Israeli Palestinian citizens in Tel Aviv‐Jaffa.     

The potential for international and transnational public service advertising in public spaces in American and Chinese global cities: Conclusions from a 2010 survey of advertisements in subways in Beijing,New York,Shanghai and Washington,DC

Can we construct transnational or international public service advertising to counterbalance the proliferation of transnational commercial advertising? As an important first step in exploring the possibility of such an application of shared media public diplomacy among nations, this paper describes a complete survey of commercial and public service advertisements collected from the public spaces of subway systems in American and Chinese cities in 2010 – New York, Washington, DC, Shanghai and Beijing – to reveal the range of themes of commercial and public service ads in these spaces. The study reveals first that analogous commercial and public service ads are ubiquitous in the public spaces of both Chinese and American cities. Second, many of the themes that might appear in international or transnational public service ads are already being portrayed in ads created by local or national governments or NGOs, although these themes are portrayed in ads created by different sets of actors in China and in the US: government actors and a few international NGOs in Chinese cities, and governments, corporations and non-profit organizations in the case of American cities. Finally, the survey reveals that in all four cities there are many commercial advertisements that appeal to the identity of a transnational consumer, but that there are almost no public service ads that appeal to the identity of a transnational citizen: merely local or national ones who can solve such public problems as global warming, education, and health issues.