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    Eve of return of hk from British to mainland-chinese rule, the city was abuzz with passport stories. More than half the members of the transition preparatory committee carried foreign passports. The multiple-passport holder seems to display an elan for thriving in conditions of political insecurity.

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    Aiwwa ong

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    Eve of return of hk from British to mainland-chinese rule, the city was abuzz with passport stories. More than half the members of the transition preparatory committee carried foreign passports. The multiple-passport holder seems to display an elan for thriving in conditions of political insecurity.

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    45 views18 pages

    Aiwwa Ong

    Uploaded by

    Greymanol
    Eve of return of hk from British to mainland-chinese rule, the city was abuzz with passport stories. More than half the members of the transition preparatory committee carried foreign passports. The multiple-passport holder seems to display an elan for thriving in conditions of political insecurity.

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    Flexible Citizenship ‘The Cultural Logics of Transnationality AIHWA ONG Duke University Press Durham & London 1999 Pet Contents ‘Acknowledgments ix Introduction Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality 1 Parts Emerging Moderities 1 ‘The Geopolitics of Cultural Knowledge 29 2 A°Momentary Glow of Fraternity” 55 Part2 Regimes and Strategies 45 Fengshuiand the Limits to Cultural Accumulation §7 “| The Pacific Shuttle: Fail, Citizenship, and Capital Circuits 70 Part3 Translocal Publics 5 The Family Romance of Mandarin Capital 199 5 “A Better Tomorrow"? The Struggle for Global Visibility 158 Part4 Global Futures 7 Saying No to the West: Liberal Reasoningin Asia 185 8 Zones of New Sovereignty 214 Afterword: An Anthropology of Transnationality 240 Notes 245 Bibliography 293 Index 315 INTRODUCTION =| Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural —= Logics of Transnationality (On the eve of the return of Hong Kong from British to mainland-Chinese rule, the city was abuzz with passport stories. A favorite one concerned main land official Lu Ping, who presided over the transition. At talk to Hong Kong, business leaders (taipans) he fshed a number of passports from his pockets t0 indicate he was fully aware that the Hong Kong elite as a weakness for foreign passports. Indeed, more than half the members ofthe transition preparatory ‘committee carried foreign passports. These politicians were no different from six hundred thousand other Hong Kongers (about ten percent of the total population) who held foreign passports as insurance against mainland- Chinese rule, Taipans who had been busy doing business with Beijing openly ‘accumulated foreign passports, claiming they were merely “a matter of conve- hnience)’ but in a Freudian stip, one let on that multiple passports were also “a matter of confidence” in uncertain political times.” The multiple-passport holder seems to display an élan for thriving in conditions of political insecu- rity as well asin the turbulence of global trade. Heis willing and cager to work wwith the Chinese-communist state while conjuring up ways of escape from potential dangers to his investment and family. ‘Another example ofthe flexible subjects provided by Raymond Chin, one of the founders of the Better Hong Kong Foundation, a pro-China business group. I heard a radio interview in which he was asked about his investment in China and the future of Hong Kong under communist rule. Here, I para- phrase hin: “Freedom isa great thing, but Ithinkit should be given to people | who have earned it. We should take the long view and see the long-term 2 Flexible Citizenship Introduction 3 ‘returns on our investments in the mainland. Self censorship and other kinds secesarily a process of “win o os” whereby politcal borders become “n= of responsible behavior may be necessary to get the kind of freedom we want” dicated the nations “Toe to goal dein trms ofan This willingness to accommodate self-censorship reflects the displaced per- verte affiliations and behavior fit sje son's eagerness to hedge bets, even to the extent of risking property and life I Intend edo we Py a under different political conditions anywhere in the world. The Chinese in é jomadic subject and the soci conditions that eas ‘Hong Kong are of course a rather special kind of | refugee, haunted by me- Se eae ‘mento mori even when they seek global economic opportunities that include iam in late modemity, Indeed, our Hong Kong taipan is not ‘China. The novelist Paul Theroux notes that Hong Kong people are driven by nese ae ie re { the memory of previous Chinese disasters and shaped by ther status as colo- Tan hin bjt iy aig a a i gomranis of Gaal ade Hs ver Be || nas woot the normal colonial expecaton of independence They ee people svays in wan, wo have become “worl Practone a a dbilty in geographical and social positioning is itself an effet of novel rtic- ‘ulations between the regimes of the family, the state and capital, the kinds of sufficiency” In this, they are not much different from overseas Chinese in practca-technical adjustments that have implications for our understanding Southeast Asia, who have largely flourished in postcolonial states and yet are ofthe late modern subject considered politically alien, or alienable, when conditions take a turn for the In this book, T intervene inthe discussion of globalization, a subject here- worse. For over a century, overseas Chinese have been the forerunners of tofore dominated by the structuralist methods of sociologists and geogra- today’s multiply displaced subjects, who are always on the move both men- her. In The Condition ofPstmoderniy, David Harvey identifies exibility tally and physically the modus operandi of late capitalism. He distinguishes contemporary sj*- ‘The multiple-passport holder is an apt contemporary figure: he or she tems ofprofit making, production, distribution, and consumption as break ‘embodies the split between state-imposed identity and personal identity from the earlier, Fordist model of centralized mass-assembly production in caused by political upheavals, migration, and changing global markets In this which the workers were also the mass consumers oftheir products. In the era ‘world of high modernity, as one scholar notes, national and ethnic identities oflate capitalism, “the regime of flexible accumulation” reigns, ‘whether in the ‘become distinctly different entities, while at the same time, international realms of business philosophy and high finance or in production systems, frontiers become increasingly insignificant as such."* But are political borders labor markets, and consumption,’ What is missing from Harvey's account is becoming insignificant or is the state merely fashioning a new relationship to sgotiation of cultural meanings ‘capital mobility and to manipulations by citizens and noncitizens alike? “aithin the norivative milieus of late capitalism. More recently, writers on [Benedict Anderson suggests an answer when he argues thatthe goal ofthe “the information age” maintain that globalization—in which financial mar- | asi nation-state projet to align soil habits, culture atasheen, and ve around he word are unified by infrmatin from the deetonic-data | Political participation is being unraveled by modern communications and stream-operates according to its own logic without a class of managers oF /nomadism. As a result, passports have become “ess and less attestations of capitalists in charge | _ctizenship, let alone of loyalty toa protective nation-state, than of clas to These strategies —the decentralization of corporate activities across many Participate in labor markets.”® The truth claims of the state that are enshrined sites, the location of “runaway” factories in global peripheries, and the recon- in the passport are gradually being replaced by its counterfeit use in response figuration of banking and investment relations—introduced new regimes in tothe claims of global capitalism. Oris there another way ofloking tthe Joba production finance, and marketing, These new modes of doing obs) shifting relations between the nation-state and the global economy in late ‘business have been variously refered to as “globalization” by bankers and as modernity, one that suggests more complex adjustments and accommoda- “‘post-Fordism,’ “disorganized capitalism,” and “flexible accumulation” by tions? The realignment of political, ethnic, and personal identities is not social theorists? These terms are also significant in reflecting the new logic of 4 Flexible Citizenship capitalism whereby “nodes of capitalist development around the globe Ihave] decentered capitalism ... and abstracted capitalism forthe frst time from its Eurocentrcism."® Instead of embracing the totalizing view of globalization as economic r- ee agency, other social analysts have turned toward sudying/“the local” They are examining how particular articulations of th the 1al-often construed asthe opposition between universal ing capitalist forces and local cultares—produce “multiple modernities” in different parts of the world" Arjun Appadurai argues that such a “global production oflocality” happens because transnational flows of people, goods, and knowledge become imaginative resources fr creating communities and “virtual neighborhoods? This view is informed by a top-down model whereby the global is macro-politcal economic and the focal is situated, culturally creative, and resistant. (Buta model that analytically defines the global as political economic and thelocal as cultural doesnot quite capture the horizontaland relational nature of the contemporary economic, socal, and cultural processes that stream across space. Nor dos it expest their embeddednessin differently configured ses of over Forth to, prefer ae he erm retinal. ( Tranis denotes both moving through space or across lines, as well as changing ite nature of something. Besides suggesting new relations between nation states and capital, transnationality also alludes to the transversal, the ransae- tional, the rarslational, and the transgressive aspects of contemporary be- hhavior and imagination that are incited, enabled, and regulated by the chang- ing logics of states and capitalism. In what follows, when I use the word slobalization, 1am referring to the narrow sense of new corporate strategies, Bu analytically, {am concemed with transnationalty—or the condition of cuturalinterconnectedness and mobility across space—which has been in- tensified under late capitalism I use eransnationalis to refer to the cultural specificities of global processes, tracing the multiplicity of the uss and con- ceptions of “culture” The chapters that follow wll discuss the transnationality induced by global capital circulating in the Asia Pacific region, the trans. nationalism associated with the practices and imagination of elite Chinese subjects, and the vaied responses of Southeast Asian states to capital and mobility.'* This book places human practices and cultural logics at the center of dis lobati Jbatoation hasbeen analyzed as con- sions on lization. Whereas gl ation has be and populations, my interest is in the strategies. My goal isto teas tara) that shape migration, relocation, busines networks, state-capital rela- a ‘transnational processes that are apprehen« Susi al di- “cece by coltural eanin ‘words, I seek to bring into the same altaral meanings. In other words, 1 ‘gnaljicat framework the economic rationalities of globalization and the cul- tel dynamic that shape human and politcal responses, Asa sora scientist point tothe economic rationality that encourages fil emigration ox the pola ational hat invites foreign capa, but as an anthropologist 1 ay concerned with the cultural logics that make these ations think: Tie practicable, and desirable, which are embedded in processes of capital accumulation. ist, the chapters that follow attempt an ethnography : practi and linkage that seks to embed the theory of practice within not outside ofr agtns, politica ecnromic foes. For Shey Ores "move ory” is an apptoach that places human agency and everyday prac ele ges the litle routines and transnational Pr toner of wil naa Ores notes hat sy ete bodiment nd eactmens of ms Yes wate heme oie pc and thes od th Sy pcuendose anette nme Whee ages hac Serr shpe iin ns of damnation, owl wha on ao a ada Oner doesnot provide 2 ana Inge sere to lnded her ery of racic, which sng ose 8 ntact yen’ feral eningisdsembodied se sso td poll conden fe captal. She sens t to nin which ie anoplgitan determine eee wich Papa nrc ew or sti wt sree apron hat von pial economy a apt Gor aan ycaont becoreacbyathor of race tat ves oll ee eran xr everyday memings and aion. Ou challenge isto consider the reciprocal construction of practice, genden ethnics rss from mn Targue that an a class, and nation in processes of capital accumulatio pology of the present should analyze people's everyday actions 28 2 ae tultural politics embedded in specific power contexts. The regulatory effects of 6 Flexible Citizenship Riae Ger einai eee Tm ce a a Berea ete “Seok emt ete i or oi are eee ah ca eaes aee eee agree en eee Eafiuaen tere aeok oer trop eerie

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