Fielding Transnationalism

What are the theoretical and conceptual tools one can utilize to make sense of contemporary transnational and global social relations? Fielding Transnationalism presents a collection of original essays that explore the promises of the theory of social fields a concept advanced most prominently in the social sciences by the pioneering French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. Featuring contributions from several eminent scholars in the field, essays draw on case studies encompassing a remarkable geographic range and thematic breadth from art, religion, and journalism to human rights, the EU, colonial government, and more to reveal how transnational relations are shaped by field dynamics. Through readings ranging from the University of Lucerne s Martin Petzke writing on evangelical mission to Indian in the 19th century to Larissa Buchholz of Harvard exploring field theory beyond the nation state drawing on the case of art, this volume firmly establishes field theory as a lens through which one may inquire about patterns and institutions in the social world in a way that transcends the longstanding opposition between national order and global flows. Scholarly and thought–provoking, Fielding Transnationalism offers innovative insights into the heightened interdependency and interconnectivity that have come to define our 21st–century world.

Julian Go is Professor of Sociology at Boston University. He is the author of two award–winning monographs, Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present (2011) and American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico during U.S. Colonialism (2008). Go is also the editor of Political Power and Social Theory.

Monika Krause is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the author of The Good Project. Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (2014), which won the BSA′s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for best first book in Sociology.