The international airport: the hub‐and‐spoke pedagogy of the American empire

Abstract Airport hubs and the networks linking them have an important bearing on the formation of modern identities in world politics. The argument is that an airport connects individual experience—movement through the hub‐and‐spoke structure—and the world order's transformation towards progressively more imperial forms. It can be hypothesized that airports teach people the central rituals of acknowledgement that are needed to navigate in the Byzantine structures of the modern hierarchical world order. The aviopolis provides places where appropriate imperial categories are produced—such as Westerner, Third‐Worlder and terrorist—where modern virtues are measured and constant vigilance is directed to the political totality of the imagined imperial community. The striking reminders—suspicious strangers, auditory and visual warnings, memories of past terror attacks, metal detectors and security checks—placed throughout the airport frame are meant to drive home the fact that the survival is at stake in the post‐September 11th world. The affirmation of political health takes place against the declinist images of weakening imperial hierarchies and the failure to follow their central norms.