Roger Rouse_Cult Pols of Class Rels

7/25/2019 Roger Rouse_Cult Pols of Class Rels

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Think ing th rough

Transnationalism:

Notes

on

the

Cultural

Pol i t ics

o f Class Relat ions in t h e

Contemporary

Uni ted

States

Roger Rouse

25

YEARS AGO, WE TOOK ON THE LARGEST COMPANY ON EARTH.

TODAY, W E TAKE ON SPACE AN D TIME.

This time the monopoly is the map and the clock. And MCI has an as-

Today, we inaugurate the nation5 first transcontinental In ormution

tonishing plan of liberation from them.

Superhighway-part of an overriding vision for the next century that

bears the name networkMCI.

The roadbed for this highway is SONETfiber optic technology, with

the power to move information 15 times faster than any SONET network

available today. Coupled with SONET will be ATM switching technol-

ogy, giving the network self-healing capabilities within a sub-second.

thing from broadcast quality videophones, to long distance medical im-

aging, to universal access to information, to worldwide Personal Corn-

munications Services.

The first traveler on the New York-to-L.A. portion of this superhigh-

way will be the Internet. MCI, in one of telecommunicationsbest-kept

secrets, has been providing Internet connections or the last half de-

Together, they will shrink the distances between humanity with every-

I

would like to thank Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge and, above all, Lauren Berlant

for their considerable help.

Public Culture 1995, 7: 353 402

995 by

The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0899-2363/95/0702-02 01

OO

353


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354

Public

Culture

cade. It now empowers 20 million people to conduct a worldwide con-

versation with each other via computers.

What networkMCI will do is unite the human voice and data and video

image and interactive multimedia

or

the entire nation and beyond.

MCI,

together with its partners, will invest more than 20 billion

over the next six years to create a veritable brain trust fo r the Informa-

tion Age.

nication is changed forever. All the information in the universe will

soon be accessible

to

everyone at every moment.

and a vision known as networkMCI.

The space-time continuum

is

being challenged. The notion

of

commu-

And all because

of

a dream known as the Information Superhighway

(advertisement)

ounded in

1968,

MCI has becom e widely known ov er the last decade in th

F

nited States as a major provider of long-distance telephone services, th

principal rival to

AT&T

in the competitive arena created by the dissolution of th

government-supported monop oly long enjoyed by Bell. W ith this advertisemen

published in early January 1994, however, the company launched an energet

campaign to amplify its profile and extend its rang e

of influence.

MCIs

immediate goal was to persuade existing and potential customers, bus

ness partners and investors that it wou ld be a major play er, indeed a catalyst

in what its

4

million-a-year

CEO,

Bert Roberts, called the new emerging ma

kets currently being opened up by the conv ergence of telephony, entertainme

and th e c ~ m p u t e r . ~

o

this end, the company told a story that seemed to la

out clearly its achievements, plans and aspirations. At the same time, how eve

1

The advertisement appeared in the 5 January 1994editions of USA Today Wall Street Journ

and Washington Post and in the 17 January 1994 edition of U.S. News and World

Report.

It w

accom panied by a striking series of television commercials featuring Anna Paquin, the New Z eala

child actress from the film R e P ian o 1993). The commercials, which ran until the end of Ma

and the advertisement, which went through only one round of publication, differed significantly

tone but they told the same basic story and used many

of

the same images. Both were created

MCI by the advertising agency, Messner Vetere Berger McNamee SchmetteredEuro RSCG.

2.

MCI Communications Corporation, 1993 Annual Report, 17.

3. MCI Unveils Long-Range Vision: networkMCI, Press R elease, MC I Telecommunicatio

Corporation (Washington, D.C., 4 January 1994),

1

Robertss compensation is listed in the Disclosu

on-line service.


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it also sought to address what it took to be a widespread nervousness and fear

about the dizzying speed of technological change and the dramatic w ays in wh ich

such change was altering both the character of daily life in the U nited States and

the nation s p lace within the wider So, as it told a story about itself, it

also told a m ore general story about the nature of these developments.

W e are, the company suggested, in the midst of an extraordinary transition.

An old w orld, characterized by limited commun ications, government-supported

monopolies, large, unwieldy corporations and rigid spatial divisions has steadily

been eroded. The age of industry has been superceded by the ag e of information

and, in the process, new dreams have been developed. Organized around the

image of the Information Superhighway, these dreams hold out the promise of

dramatic liberation -the translation of local knowledges into the single currency

of information, universal access to this information for everyon e at every mo ment

and , as a result, the ultimate collapse of long-existing barriers b ased on difference,

distance and delay. To realize this promise, h owev er, it is not enough to dream .

It is also necessary to make major technological advances, to replace vast, mono-

lithic companies w ith flexible, adaptive partnerships, an d, in

so

doing, to tran-

scend the limits of the national. M ore fully, it is necessary to adopt a different

kind of sensibility, to replace the rigidifying logics of the map and the clock with

a way of thinking that moves fluidly through space and time to make transient

connections among d istant, distinct and o ften disparate materials.

This is, in many ways, a remarkable advertisement. Even by the generous

standards of the genre, its hyperbole is striking. And even in a medium saturated

with citation and pastiche, the range of its allusions and its capacity to blend

ostensibly divergent images and ideas stand out. Through its references to univer-

sal access, it brings the Clinton rhetoric of corporate responsibility within an

otherwise quite Reaganesque promotion of deregulated competition. Through its

references to an information democracy and the collapse of space and time, it

seems at once to echo and recode the w ork of Jean-Francois Lyotard 1984) and

David Harvey (1989), wo of the most prominent critic s of the project it promotes.

And , more g enerally, through its double emphasis on story-telling and the tran-

scendence of the map and clock, it swings wildly back and forth between the

clarities of narrative coherence and the constant blurring of its central terms.

Matters of timing and location, identity and interest seem at once qu ite obvious

and totally elusive.

3

T h ink ing t h rou

Transnat ional is

4.

From discussions with sources at

MCI

and Messner Vetere. See also, Anthony Ramirez,

Advertising, New York Times 21 January 1994.


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356

Public Culture

Yet, however remarkable the advertisement might be, it is also, and mor

importantly, quite typical. In recent years, dominant sou rces of discursive infl

ence in the United States rom politicians and establishment academics to go

ernment agencies and private corporations -have increasingly emphasized th

idea that the nation is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Many h ave argue

that a shift is taking place from industry to information; images of the postmoder

have migrated rapidly from scholarly analyses into a multitude of mass-mediate

settings; and , w ithin the last year,

Time

magazine has devoted an entire speci

issue to outlining-and largely embracing -the idea that the United States is

the process of becoming the worlds first multicultural ~ o c ie ty . ~ountless a

peals have been m ade to the notion of a new w orld order and, more recentl

considerable emphasis has been given to th e concept of the new global economy

Meanwhile, the same sources have circulated a wide variety of images an

narratives suggesting how this new emerging world should be organized an

addressed. While some, like

Time

have sought to reconfigure models of

U.

citizenship within the framework of a corporate-liberal multiculturalism, othe

have tried to reinvigorate im ages ofa co re national culture that allow fo r hierarch

cal distinctions among different categories of perso n. Numerous Hollywood m o

ies have focused on encoding the changing landscape

of U.S.

class relations an

suggesting how this landscape should be traversed. Workers h ave been encou

aged to take on flexible subjectivities and consum ers to see borrowing as a w a

of earning and saving. While some sources have emphasized new images o

entrepreneurialism and the metaphors and practices of gambling, the Clinto

administration has sought to revitalize the A merican Dream by harnessing it

the glittering promise

of

high technology development. And finally, just lik

MCI, many corporations have stressed the importance of developing a flui

mobile globalism, which is responsive to the growing opportunities m ade possib

by the Information Superhighway.

What should we make of these images and narratives and the analyses th

frame them? Why have they become so prominent in recent years? And wh

do they tell us about contemporary conditions? More importantly, how shou

we understand their politics? What kinds of project do they support and wh

kinds of work do they do in serving them? In an attempt to answer these question

I shall develop an argument that unfolds in two broad stage s. First, I shall sugge

that the significant transformation w hich has indeed been taking place over t

last two and a half decades in the United States and in its relation to the wid

5 . Cover, Time Special Issue, T h e New Face of Am erica, Fall

1993.


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world is best understood not as a move from modernity to postmodernity, from

industry to information, or from a national to a global orientation but rather

as a shift from multinational processes of capital accumulation to the growing

dominance of processes organized along transnational lines. Against the b ack-

ground of these developments, I shall then suggest how the discourses I have

mentioned- and others like them epresent improvised attempts by different

sectors of the bourgeoisie to deal with the challenges to their hegemon ic influence

that this shift has generated.

In elucidating the merits of a transnational perspective on the specificities of

the Contemporary United States and its relation to the w ider w orld, I draw heavily

on recent wo rk that has brought this concep t to the fore within the field of cultural

critique. Yet, I shall modify and expand on this work in a variety of ways. To

indicate more clearly both the basic principles that will guide my narrative and

the specific nature of my contribution to these efforts, I shall therefore begin by

commenting broadly on existing work on the transnational and indicating how

I would like to extend it.

An Overr iding Vision

This essay is scarcely the first attempt to develop a critical overview of the

contemporary United States. Over the last fifteen years, radical scholars have

produced a wide variety of analyses devoted to identifying the specificity of

current conditions and, in

so

doing, they have both countered the content of

dominant narratives and called critical attention to the changing modes of power

articulated through them. During the

1980s,

the range of critical alternatives was

largely framed by two approaches, the postmodernist perspectives laid out by

Baudrillard

(1983)

and Lyotard

(1984)

that gave primary emphasis to the new

forms of knowledge/power created by the growing salience of images and infor-

mation, and the marxist counter-narratives of people such as Jameson

(1984)

and Harvey

(1989)

hat argued for the need to situate these changes within broad er

transformations in the character

of

global capitalism. More recently, however,

numerous analyses have been developed that both mediate and move beyond

these two contending views.6 Among the most significant has been a series of

accounts that give primacy to the concept of the transnational.

This concept has been deployed in many different ways. Som e have used it

to challenge an analytical fixation on the nation-state in any context. Noting that

3

Th ink ing t h rou

Transnat ional i

6 . See , for exam ple, Friedm an(1 988,19 92,19 93); Guptaand Ferguson (1992); Haraway (1991);

and Taussig (1992).


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Public Culture

nation-states have always existed in dialectical tension with broader process

and connections operating beyond and across their borders, they have used a

emphasis on the latter to throw more fully into relief both the active, politicall

charged efforts required to produce and reproduce the lineaments of the territoria

ized nation and those forms of experience such as migration and diaspora le

shadowy and blurred by an optic fixed too firmly on the state (e. g., Gilroy

199

Tololyan 1991). Many m ore, how ever, have used the concept primarily to illum

nate the specificities of the contemporary m omen t, arguing th at, in recent year

the dialectic between the national and the transnational has shifted significantly

favor of the latter. Most notable for my present purposes are the anthropological

informed accounts that focus on the implications of a transnational perspectiv

for understanding the current situation in the United States.g Even within th

narrower corpus , one finds considerable variation in app roach. B ut, amidst t

differences, it is possible to d etect a shared narrative frame that simultaneous

parallels and challenges the story told by MCI.

According to these accounts, the m ajor changes currently affecting the Unit

States and its relationship to the w ider w orld should be understood primarily b

reference to a growing crisis in the influence and authority of the nation-stat

a crisis occasioned by bo th the significant increase in the speed and frequency wi

which people, go ods, m oney, information and ideas move across the boundaries

the state and the related increase in the prevalence and salience of forms

organization that span these boundaries and help organize the flows. These a

rangements, produced partly by the activities of corporate capital but also by t

practices of ordinary m igrants, their families and their friends, have undermine

both the political dominance exerted by the state and its cultural authority. Caug

up in transnational fields of action, m any people have developed notions of affil

tion, identity and loyalty that run counter to established ideologies of citizensh

and national allegiance. A nd, influence d increasingly by m ass-mediated texts li

television shows, magazines and m ovies that emanate from sources well beyon

the boundaries of the local and well beyond the control of established pedagog

apparatuses such as families, schools and churches, they have grow n more like

to develop ideas and aspirations that diverge from those given primacy with

7 . See , for example,Annuls

of

he New YorkAcademy

of

Sciences Volume

645

(1992); Appadu

(1990, 1991, 1993 ); Basch, Glick Sch iller and Szanton Blanc (1993); M iyoshi (1993 ); and Skl

(199 1). For a recent critique of aspects of this work , se e Verdery (199 4).

8.

The principal accounts

I

have in mind are Appadurai (1990, 1991, and especially, 199

Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc (1 99 3); Glick Schiller , Basch and Blanc-Szanton (199

Glick Schiller and Fouron (1990); and Nagengast and Kearney (1990).


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state-orchestrated forms of knowledge/power . Yet, according to these accounts,

states have not simply surrendered to the challenges but instead, have striven

actively to reestablish their authority and influence, partly by coopting transna-

tional organizations and diverting transnational flows to their advantage, partly

by using their ow n, still powerful forms of pedagogy to reinvigorate and perhaps

recast old ideas about identity and national attachment, and partly by making

growing use of violence. Seen from this perspective, then, the present is a moment

marked by unresolved tensions between oppressive, ev er more reactionary states

and the largely liberatory possibilities opened up by transnational forces and

arrangements.

In the process

of

elaborating this basic narrat ive, the accounts I have mentioned

have extended the work of both the critical postmodernists and their early marxist

challengers in a number of ways. They not only have situated developments

internal to the United States in the context of broader processes and relations,

but also have traced the specific connections that extend beyond the bound aries

of the state. At the same time, they have brought together analyses of class

relations and of other forms of inequality and, more importantly, have looked

carefully at how these different kinds of differences have been linked. They h ave

also stressed the contingent nature of the relationship between the cultural logics

manifest in mass-mediated texts and those that organize quotidian experience

and, in so doing, they have opened up the space for a careful analysis of the

ways in which these different logics interact. And, finally, they have treated the

texts less as sym ptoms of contemporary conditions than a s crucial vehicles through

which individual and collective actors pursue specific strategies and projects.

These moves are crucial to an effective understanding of the contemporary

situation in the United S tates, and

I

shall draw on all of them. At the sam e time,

however, some central features of this work seem more pr~ b le m at ic al .~ hile

there is indeed a crisis in the contemporary U nited States, it is a mistake to define

this crisis narrowly as one concerning the political domination and hegemonic

influence of the state, o r as one in wh ich the state has been brought increasingly

into conflict with transnationally organ ized forms of corp orate capital and migrant

labor. In the first place, the crisis has concerned not only domination and hege-

monic control but also processes of exploitation or, more fully, the complex

3

Think ing throu

Transnat ional i

9.

The remarks that follow and, indeed, many of the ideas that inform the essay as a whole,

are based on a series of extrapolations from Marx's arguments in Zhe

Eighteenth

Brumaire of

Louis

Bonuparte (196 3), Gramsci's elaboration of these arguments in his writings on Italian history ( 197 1),

and recent attempts to develop and exten d this tradition in the work o f schola rs from the Centre for

Contemporary Cultural Studies, in particular, Hall, Lumley and McLennan (1977); Hall (1986,

1990); and Hebdige (1988).


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Public

Culture

relationship among all three. A s a corollary, it has been a crisis not just for th

state but for the bourgeoisie in general. And, correspondingly, the state an

corporations, as institutions dom inated though not totally controlled by the capita

ist class, have tended overall to expe rience the crisis in similar ways and to wor

in tandem to resolve it.

While it is important to see contemporary conditions as both the frame an

product of collective forms of agency in struggle, there are problems with definin

the key collective actors as states, their populations and the corporations th

operate within and across their boundaries. It is better to begin by reference

class positions and, in this regard, the opposition between the bourgeoisie an

the proletariat is clearly fundam ental. o In co ncrete situations, how ever, the fie

of relevant distinctions is invariably m ore complex. O ther positions coexist alon

side the basic pair, most notably those

of

the reserve army (people without fu

time or regular employment, whom em ployers can draw on during upsw ings

the economy and release during downswings) and, today, the professiona

managerial class.* At the sam e time, most positions are internally divisible alon

10. It is, of course, impossible to resolve the complexities of class relations and processes w

simple definitions of distinct positions. As a provisional point of entry into these complexiti

however, I use the term bourgeo isie to refer to the ow ners and controllers of capital and the te

proletariat to refer to those who sell their labor powe r as a carefully c alibrated comm odity

exchange for wages. The latter definition applies as much to people in remunerated service a

support activities as to those in manufacturing but it does not apply to people such as managers a

professionals who sell a more generalized disposition to perform task-oriented labor, normally

exchange for a salary or fee. Useful discussions of the issues underlying these definitions can

found in Bottomore and Brym, ed s. (1989); Giddens and H eld, eds. (1982); Scase (1992); and Wrig

et al. (1989). See also Bottomore et a l., eds. (1983), s.v ., bourgeoisie, class,and working clas

1 1

Following Marx

(1977: 781-794),

I see the creation and m aintenance of a reserve army

integral to the process by w hich the bourgeoisie constitutes and reproduce s itself through the creati

and maintenan ce of a proletariat. The ex istence of this pool of surplus workers enables the bourgeoi

not only to cope with fluctuations in its need for lab or but also to discipline those already in wo

by holding out the threat of their replacement. For a fuller definition, see Bottomore et al., ed

(1983),

s.v., reserve army of labour.

12. The concept was first outlined in Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich (1979) and has been used

good effect in analyzing the cultural politics of the contemporary moment by Pfeil (1990).

I

use

somewhat more narrowly than these authors to refer

to

those professional, technical and manager

workers, normally distinguished by the possession of high levels of formal training, who provi

administrative, legal and research services to the bourgeoisie on a task-oriented basis. It is a gro

that has grown markedly over the course of the present century as both business and governm

have become increasingly reliant on these services but it is still much smaller than the various seg me

of the proletariat and the reserve army. For analyses that characterize the same developments a

the same kind of class position in slightly different terms, see Davis

(1986: 206-211)

and Sc

(1992: 15-18).


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lines laid dow n by the logic of production and the dynamics of work relations, the

most pertinent contemporary example being the distinction within the proletariat

between positions in the primary sector, where workers have been relatively

well paid and securely employed, and those in the secondary sector, where

they have been poorly paid and more v ulnerable to layoffs. 3 And, finally, these

divisions between and within classes are invariably crosscut by others organized

along culturally and politically constructed lines of difference, the most pertinent

in the contemporary United States being those of gender, race an d national origin.

How might we m ove from delineating the formal outlines of a class structure

to conceptualizing the concrete collectivities through which people act in the

spheres of politics and culture? One can not assume that each position gives rise

directly to a concrete collectivity, for example, the bourgeoisie as monolithic

ruler or the proletariat as the revolutionary subject of history. The very idea of

first identifying fully formed, already given actors f whatever kind- and then

seeing the world as a product of their actions is misleading. Collective political

actors (even more than individual ones) constitute and sustain themselves only

in and through their (inter)actions and it is this process as a whole that should

be made the focus of attention. Moreover, the concrete collectivities that are

created in this way are rarely if ever stable and homogeneous. What com monly

emerge, instead, are more or less contingent coalitions, hyb rid vehicles

of

collec-

tive agency that, w hile often dom inated by segments of a single class, link people

from a variety of positions.

These considerations suggest that it is a mistake to focus analyses of the

hegemonic process on the states relation to issues of affiliation and identity. As

I

have already suggested, hegemonic influence is exerted not simply by the state

13. This distinction became significant in the United States in the years after World War Two

as a result of processes I shall describe more fully below. Put succinctly, a primary sector emerged

in industries where employers were reliant on skilled and semi-skilled workers who could not easily

be replaced, whe re, larg ely as a result, unions had gradually gained significant leverage, and where

the dominance

of

a few firms and the consequent limitations on competition meant that increased

costs could easily be passed on to consumers. To ensure a dependable supply of labor, employers

in these industries made an accommodation with their workers, providing them with relatively high

wages , good benefits and guarantees ofjob s ecurity in return for their acceptance of a tightly regulated

system of industrial relations. In

so

doing, they increasingly distinguished their employees from a

secondary sector in other industries w here the high levels of competition meant that there was constant

pressure to keep labor costs to a minimum

or

where the low levels of the skills required meant that

workers could easily be replaced and, correspondingly, that unions rarely gained much influence.

For a fuller and more complex reading of this distinction and the processes behind it, see Gordon,

Edwards and Reich

(1982).

3

Think ing throu

Transnat ional i


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Publ ic

Culture

but by bourgeois-dominated coalitions o r ruling blocs

14

And , while these blo

rely heavily on the m achinery of the state, they also make use

of

other institution

such as churches, schools and, increasingly, the corporate-controlled m ass media

Struggles over affiliation and identity assume their full significance in the conte

of efforts to shape the grounds on w hich particular coalitions can be formed an

held together while others are subverted or prevented from emerging. And , w hi

hegemonic influence is partly concerned with issues such as these, it also involv

attempts to shape peoples dispositions regarding their relationship to work, the

conduct as consumers, and the discrepancies they encounter between the promise

they are offered and the realities in which they live.15

The MCI advertisement is shaped by all of these considerations. While

might seem simply to be an effort to promote the companys image and its produc

by providing people with a better understanding of the world around them, it

also an argument for a particular way of organizing the relationship between th

state and private capital. More fully, it seeks to foment the kind of coalitio

among segments of the business world, gov ernment and the broader public th

will work best to support this arrangement. And, at the same time, it strive

to subvert the formation of opposing coalitions united around the idea that th

companys project either threatens national interests or encourages greater soci

inequality. 6 More fully still, through its emphasis on fluidity, flexibility an

improvisation, it seeks to forge subjects that will be most appropriate for th

arrangements it is promoting. Indeed, it is only when these broader consideratio

are taken into account that it becomes possible to g rasp the logic and import

the advertisementsmost striking features: its hyperbolic claims , its appropriatio

and blending of divergent images, and its constant oscillation between clari

and obfuscation regarding time, location, interest and identity. Rather than del

ing deeper into the advertisement itself, however, I shall move in the opposi

direction, trying to show how the considerations I have outlined can be used

construct a much broader m odel concern ing the cultural politics of class relatio

under transnational conditions in the contemporary United States.

14. The concept of the ruling bloc is implicit in Gramsci (197 1: 57-61, 158-167 , 177-185) a

is used explicitly in Hall, Lumley and McLennan (1977).

15. Gramsci moves most clearly towards the idea

of

the d ifferential shaping

of

peoples attitud

and dispositions regarding work and consumption in his essay, Americanism and Fordism (197

279-3 18), where he discusses the need to elaborate a new kind

of

man suited

to

the new kind

work and productive process (286).

16. See Steve h h r , Data Highway Ignoring

Poor,

Study Charges,New York Times 24 M

1994, A l , C5


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The

Map

and t h e

Clock

In the years following World W ar Two , mem bers of the bourgeoisie in the United

States significantly changed the processes and relations through which they pur-

sued profits and accumulated capital. Operating domestically through a variety

of shifting coalitions, they combined a growing emphasis on mass production

and consumption with heavy government investment in the economy. And, as

a key part of this strategy, they markedly restructured their relationship with

labor. Corporations that relied o n a dependable supply of skilled and semiskilled

labor negotiated a social compact with the unions that provided high wages,

good benefits and secu re employment in return for a m ore tightly regulated system

of industrial relations, thus helping to segment the proletariat into primary and

secondary sectors. A nd, using a similar mixture of stimulus and repression, the

government introduced subsidies that made it easier for working-class people to

buy houses while passing laws that further circumscribed their right to organize

and strike. M eanwhile,

U.

S .

corporations dramatically increased their levels of

investment overseas and , m ore impo rtantly, m odified the nature of their involve-

ment. P reviously, they had con centrated largely on extracting raw materials from

peripheral regions of the world to supply manufacturing activities at home and

had directed the products of these activities primarily at domestic markets. But

the war-time devastation suffered by both the axis powers and the E uropean allies

opened up new opportunities that U.S. firms moved quickly to exploit. W ith active

government su pport, they w orked systematically to stimulate the development of

mass consumer markets in western Europe and selected Third W o r l d countries

such as Mexico, B razil and India, and to establish a dominant presence for them-

selves within these markets. Supplying them partly through the export of goods

produced at hom e, they also moved to circumvent local import tariffs by establish-

ing factories of their own within these regions. The net result was a system of

accumulation that found its principal institutional expression in large, multina-

tional corporations, coordinating m ore o r less self-contained marketing and manu-

facturing activities in a number of different countries. For two full decades this

system was remarkably effective, ensuring high profits for the U.S. bourgeoisie

and a significant growth in aggregate prosperity for the U.S. people as a wh ole.

3

T h ink ing t h rou

Transnat ional is

17. In putting together the condensed account that follows, I have drawn most heavily on Ber-

beroglu (1992); Bowles, Gordon and Weisskopf (1990); Davis (1986); Gordon, Edwards and Reich

(1982); Sassen (1988); and, above all, Harvey (1989). Inevitably, numerous important differences

between these analyses, and a great deal of their subtlety, have been lost in the double process

of

synthesis and summary.


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Publ ic

Culture

From the mid- 1960s onwards, however, these arrangements were subjecte

to increasing stress, The revitalization of Germany, Japan and Italy and th

concom itant resurgence of corporations based within them sign ificantly intensifi

competition throughout the capitalist world. Growing popu lar protests from tho

denied access to the benefits of the post-war boom, especially peasants in th

Third World and women and people of color in the United States, raised t

costs of regulation, whether in the form of military repression or conciliato

social transfers. And the ability of som e Third W orld countries to establish great

control over the extraction and marketing o f their raw m aterials increased instabi

ties in the costs of production, a tendency b rm gh t vividly to a head by the actio

of the OPEC states in 1973. Indeed, gradually and with ever greater force, the

developments combined by the early 1970s to produce a thoroughgoing cris

in established processes of accumulation and, more specifically for the bourgeo

sie, in the level of its profits. A nd, while this crisi s affected capitalism a s a whol

it was felt with particular urgency in the United States, where twenty years

global domination had encouraged many to turn the transient privileges of t

post-war period into basic expectations.

Over the last two decades, m embers of the bourgeoisie h ave responded to th

crisis with a wide range of economic strategies wh ose varied implications ha

been fundamental in shaping the logic and imperatives of hegemonic influen

in the United States today. These strategies have not been the products of a sing

blueprint, first prepared and then consistently applied. Different segments

the bourgeoisie have emphasized distinct and som etimes divergent approache

Corporations, as the principal vehicles for the pursuit of these strategies, ha

clashed to varying degrees with different agencies

of

the state. And, as foreig

based companies have come to play a growing ro le in the U .S. econom y, relatio

within the bourgeoisie and between corporations and the state have been ma

more complex still. Moreover, there has been throughout a great deal of tri

and error. Ov erall, however, the U. S . state and the corporations operating with

its boundaries have continued to work in tandem. And , amidst the variations a

the constant improvisation, certain general tendencies have em erged. I shall gro

these tendencies under three broad headings, each one dealing with a differe

element in the pursuit of profit.

One set of strategies has focused on expanding the realms of profit-makin

activity. Members of the bourgeoisie have become more heavily involved

globally oriented financial speculation. They have also, a s the case of MCI mak

clear, moved energetically into activities that were previously either run by t

state, such as policing and the operation of prisons, or licensed to a monopo


13/50

provider, such as the national telephone system. And, most importantly, they

have markedly intensified their involvement in the production and provision of

services, especially domes ic services such as cooking and cleaning, medical

services and leisure, entertainment and tourism. Especially in the case of tourism,

this has meant pushing ever further beyond the boundaries of the national in

search of people and places that can be re-presented as sufficiently exotic and

authentic to feed the escalating need for markers of distinction.

A second set of strategies pursued in the last two decades nd in many ways

the most crucial-has focused on reducing the costs of labor and, above all, on

undoing as fa r as possible the obligations that the bourgeoisie had a ssumed within

the post-war social compact. A utomation and the consequent deskilling of many

previously well-remunerated jobs have been common. Growing emphasis has

been given to flexible forms of labor use via subcontracting, firing and reh iring,

and both part-time and temporary employment. But the most important strategy

has been the turn to less expensive and more malleable kinds of labor. In part,

this has been pursued through the growing use of migrant labor from regions

such as Mexico and Central America, the Caribbean and southeast Asia. Often

lacking long traditions of proletarian experience, proper legal papers, or both,

migrants from these regions have been particularly attractive to employers looking

to meet the burgeoning demand for secondary sector worke rs that has been brough t

about by the deskilling of manufacturing jobs and the rapid expansion of the

service industries. M eanwhile, a growing num ber of companies have transferred

parts of the manufacturing and assembly process to export processing zones in

poorer countries, w here labor has been cheaper and government regulation much

less strict, Togethe r, these strategies have not only reduced em ployers immediate

labor costs but also markedly expanded the pool of prospective workers and, in

so doing, undermined the bargaining power of those already employed.

Finally, a third kind of strategy has involved attempts by corporations to

increase the level of demand for their goods and services. Moving beyond price

reductions and the commercial promotion of individual items, these corporations

have made a variety of more complex moves. One has been the simultaneous

extension and intensification of a general ethos of consumerism, an attempt to

persuade more people in more profound ways that their worth as persons is

intimately linked to their capacity to acquire and consume particular kinds of

goods. A second has been the introduction of ever finer distinctions into the

semiotics of consumption. That is, people have been encouraged to attribute

significance to increasingly minute differences in the world and, in so doing, to

search more anxiously for the specific product that co rresponds to their distinctive

3

Thinking throu

Transnationali


14/50

366

Publ ic Cul ture

needs or exam ple, a particular kind of blue jeans to articulate a subtle differenc

in social positioning o r a specialized cleaning product to resolve

a

newly identifie

problem in domestic hygiene. Finally, a third move, nicely exemplified by th

MCI advertisement, has been the growing effort by corporations to instill

consumers a loyalty to their trademarks and their brandnames. This has partl

been an exercise in commercial parsimony, enabling the promotion of sever

different products in a single campaign and it has been particularly useful fo

companies that operate across a multilingual landscape. But, for foreign firm

and for domestic corporations with a strong global orientation, it has also offs

potential hostilities from customers and clients who might otherwise privileg

national allegiances.

These d ifferent kinds of strategy have not exe rted their effects in an unm ediate

way. Interacting with and, in some instances, contradicting one another, the

have also been absorbed, reworked, resisted and som etimes openly challenge

by the people at whom they have been directed. But, as the strategies of tho

with the greatest wealth and the greatest influence ove r the media of disseminatio

and enforcement, they have been the most powerful forces shaping the conte

within which processes of hegemonic influence are currently being enacted.

is therefore important to look closely at their implications.

The entire nation and beyond An important consequence of the bourgeoisies r

sponse to the crisis in the post-war system of accumulation has been a reconfigur

tion of the landscape of socioeconomic experience. Its strategies have increase

the speed and frequency with which people, m oney, goods, information, im ag

and ideas move across the boundaries of the United States. Th e efforts to expan

the realms of profit-making have sent financial capita l, comm unications system

U.

S .

produced films and television programs and U.

S .

tourists further afield,

faster rates than ever before. Attempts to reduce the costs of lab or have increas

both U.S. industrial investment in select areas of the Third World and Thi

World m igration to the U nited States. And efforts to expand consumer dem an

for goods and services sold by

U .S ,

based companies specially in the conte

of a sustained assault on the earning power of many U.

S .

work ers ave extend

the reach of corporate advertising into new, emerging markets beyond the borde

of the nation. Meanwhile, other closely related developments have intensifi

counter-flows from other countries. Parallel strategies of the foreign bourgeois


15/50

have opened the United States more fully than ev er before to outside investment

and comm ercial influence. And the mobile tactics of Third W orld migrants, under

conditions in which increasing economic uncertainty in both their hom e countries

and the United States has intersected with growing access to faster forms of

transportation and com munications, have ensured a considerable amount of move-

ment back and forth and a concomitant growth in their own role as conduits for

the further flow of money, goods, information, images and ideas across the

boundaries of the state.

At the sam e time, the varied strategies of the bourgeoisie h ave also changed

the manner in which these flows are organ ized. In the case of industrial capita l, the

most in fluential of the elements in motion, multinationalcorporations, integrating

more or less self-contained production and marketing facilities in a number of

different national sites, have been supplemented and, in many w ays, superceded

by transnational corporations that take a single production process, redistribute

it across sites in different areas of the world, and use eve r faster commu nications

to synchronize the interactions of its interdependent parts. Indeed, perhaps the

most important aspect of this complex shift has been the w ay in which the new

information technologies have allowed an increasing approximation to simultane-

ous involvement in a variety of different places. This m ove toward simultaneity

has also been a crucial feature in the changing import of corporate-controlled

forms of news broadcasting and entertainment, allowing people in countries thou-

sands of miles apart to participate at the same time in the sam e events. And , at

a more informal level, it has introduced a significant difference between the

experiences of contemp orary Third W orld (im)migrants to the United States and

those of earlier (im)migrant groups.

The tendency of the newer groups to move

between particular com munities of origin and specific settlements in this country

and, in

so

doing, to establish important links between them is not, in itself,

particularly novel. But their growing access to telephones, electronic banking,

videorecorders, fax machines and computers has brought a significant shift, mak-

3

Th ink ing t h rou

Transnat iona l i

18.

I

use the term (im)migrants to interfere with the well-rehearsed assumptions that attend

uses of the terms, immigrants and migrants. Within the bipolar logic that informs most popular

and academic thinking about migration to and from the United States, the former suggests a process

of unidirectional movement in which people reorient to their destination, the latter a process of

movement back and forth in which they remain oriented to their place of origin. Yet matters have

rarely been this simple and they have grown steadily more complex under transnational conditions.

The term, (im)migrants is meant to evoke the ambiguity and indeterminacy that are frequently

involved in these processes. For a fuller discussion, though without use of the new term, see Rouse

(1991, 1992a).


16/50

368

Pub l ic Culture

ing it possible for the first time for (im)migrants to operate more o r less simultan

ously in the different settings they inhabit.

Together, these developments have transformed the position of the Unite

States in relation to the wider world. Its boundaries are now more perforate

and permeable than ever before. Its capacity to mov e those who enter its borde

in the direction of a putative uniformity is much w eaker. A nd, correspondingly

the relationship between the state as emblem of the nation, the population th

resides within its borders, and the corporations that do business there is mo

disjunctive than at any time in the countrys history. Mo re corporations operatin

within the U nited States are foreign-based, m ore

U.S. corporations are involve

in other countries and more migrants are caught in a chronic state of divide

orientation and allegiance.

In these circumstances, it is, I think, vital to approach the contemporary Unite

States from a transnational perspective, to see it not as a clearly bounded an

internally coherent national space or as a global epicenter of determ ining trans fo

mations but as a fluid, contested and constan tly restructured site in which d iffere

and divergent circuits of internationally organized cap ital, labor and comm unic

tions collide with one another a s much a s with the increasingly tattered remnan

of local ways of life (Ro use 1991). Yet recen t uses of the concept of the transn

tional to capture the specificity of the present m ight be m odified in several way

If, indeed, the m anifest flows and forms of organization common ly characterize

as transnational are, themselves, a function of changing strategies regarding t

pursuit of profit and the accumulation of capital, it seems more appropriate

use the term p rimarily to describe the new system of accumulation which the

strategies have brought into being. And , in

so

doing, it is important to challen

the idea that the current m oment is o ne in which th e practices of at least elemen

of capital have subverted the interests of the state, for, by and large, corporatio

and the state, as differently mediated forms of bourgeois practice, have w ork

together. Correspondingly, if the present is to be understood by reference to th

growing adoption of a transnational system of accumulation, it is important

stress that this has emerged not from a prior situation dominated by the nation

but, instead, from a multinational system o r, more fully, that a dialectical relatio

ship between the national and the multinational has been giving way to o

between the national and the transnational.

Yet the emergence of a transnational regime of accum ulation cannot be unde

stood solely in terms of the changing processes of exchange and circulation

has fostered. It is also crucial to look closely at the ways in w hich it has reconfi

ured class relations and the other forms of inequality to which they are linke


17/50

The distances between humanity s ic )

As part of the shift from multinational to

transnational processes of accumulation, there has, in fact, been a significant

change in both the structure of class relations in the United States and their

articulation with other vectors of inequality organized along the lines

of

gender,

race and national origin. l9

The post-war shift to multinational processes of accumulation helped bring

about a broadly pyramidal class structure. Between the bourgeoisie and the allied

ranks of a growing professional-managerial class, on the one hand, and the large

number of ill-paid and weakly o rganized workers in the secondary sector proletar-

iat and the reserve army, on the other, there emerged a broad middle band of

relatively well-paid primary sector workers, the direct beneficiaries of the post-

war social compact. Unemployment among those seeking jobs was relatively

limited and, as a result, most people in the reserve army were able to work at

least periodically, w hile the latent reserve army -those remaining chronically

unemployed

was fairly small.

Access to the different levels of the class structure and to the benefits of the

post-war boom was distributed in a highly uneven manner alo ng lines of gen der,

race and national origin. Almost all the jobs in the professional-managerial class

and the great majority in the well-paid primary sector proletariat-the common ly

unionized jobs that offered the prospect of steady, lifelong employment were

held by white male citizens. Meanwhile women, people of color and foreign

migrant work ers were confined largely to the ranks of the secondary sector prole-

tariat and the reserve army and thus not only had much lower incomes but also

experienced much greater mobility in and out of paid employment. Indeed, it

was from these latter ranks that the strongest forms

of

social and po litical protest

emerged as it became evident that the benefits of the post-war b oom would not

be redistributed more equitably. Yet, women and people of color did increase

their participation in the labor force during this period and the gradually extend ing

reach of the welfare state did help alleviate some of the hardship these groups

experienced.

Over the last two decades, how ever, a s a function of the shift to a transnational

regime, these varied inequalities have increased. To begin with, the gap between

3

Th ink ing t h rou

Transnat ional is

19. The main sources

I

have relied on in this section are those cited in footnote 17. F or further

evidence of the changing place of wom en and people o f color, see Amott and Matthaei 1991) and

for further evidence o f grow ing income inequality over the last two decades, see B aily, Burtless and

Litan (1993).


18/50

370

Publ ic

Culture

the top and the bottom of the structure has grow n larger a s wealth has increasing

been concen trated in the hands of the bourgeoisie and their associates in the upp

levels of the professional-m anagerial class. M ore importantly , substantial secto

of the population have begun to expe rience a steady decline in their real incom e

Meanwhile, the pyramidal class structure has come to look increasingly like

rocket. T he growing em phasis on professional services and the coordination

global production processes has led , a t least until the very recen t past, to a stead

expansion in the ranks of the professional-managerial class. The attempts

undermine the terms of the social compact and the position of its beneficiari

have eroded the previously thick middle band of people in the primary sect

proletariat, an d the growing emp hasis on service work and deskilled manufactu

ing has encouraged a vast expansion of the ill-paid secondary sector proletaria

Grow ing recourse to flexible modes of labor use, allied to the increased volatiliti

of the economy, have led to a sharp growth in the reserve army and temporar

forms of employment. And, finally, and most savagely, employers increasi

unwillingness to hire certain kinds of citizens, particularly young men of colo

has significantly expanded the ranks of the chronically unem ployed.

In terms of other inequalities, there has, of course, been a token improvement

the distribution of women, people of color and (im)migrants across this changi

structure of positions, with all three groups gaining at least some representatio

in the growing ranks of an increasingly diverse professional-m anagerial clas

This has led to a gradual narrowing of the gap in average earnings, at lea

between men and women, and a growing convergence in forms of work expe

ence. O verall, however, the situation of most people in these categories has n

improved and, in many cases, it has worsened. W hite male citizens continue

dominate the upper levels of the class structure. The great majority of (im)m

grants, most women and many people of color remain within the ranks of t

secondary sector proletariat and the reserve arm y, increasingly distanced fro

the few who have experienced upward mobility. And it is people of color

particularly young African-American and Chicano men who predomina

among the ranks of the chronically unemployed. Moreo ver, the inequities of th

distribution have been heightened by the deteriorating pay and work conditio

in the lower ranks of the class structure and by cuts in welfare payments. In dee

the narrowing of the gap in average earning s that has taken place between m

and women and the convergence in work experience have both been largely

result of the redistribution do wnward of white male citizens consequent on t


19/50

steady erosion of the primary sector jobs that they once dominated. In general,

then, the shift to a transnational regime of accumulation has involved not only

a reconfiguration in the landscape of socioeconomic experience but also, and

largely as a result, a marked exacerbation of social inequalities.

+++

Best-kept secrets Th e evidence suggests, that in economic term s, the varied strate-

gies adopted by the bourgeoisie have served them well. The real incomes of

those at the top of the class structure have grown fast and profit levels have

begun to rise again.*O Ye t, in the process of reso lving its econom ic proble ms ,

the bourgeoisie has generated many others related to its hegemonic influence.

Established logics of coalition-formation have been undermined a s the growing

significance of transnational corporations, some

of

them foreign-based, has

changed the relationship between capital and the state and as modifications in

the class struc ture have altered the relative influence of different classes and class

fragments. At the sam e time, the efforts of ruling blocs to generate a broad consent

to their dominance have been problematized as the rapid shift to transnational

arrangements has eroded confidence in discourses of national integrity and global

leadership and a s the decline in job security and the exacerbation of social inequali-

ties have fostered a growing sense of uncertainty and frustration.

Yet these are not the only aspects of the hegemonic process that have been

imperiled. As I mentioned earlier, hegemonic influence also concern s the produc-

tion of subjects, the shaping of peoples attitudes and dispositions

so

that they

will act in ways that members of the ruling bloc consider appropriate to their

interests. And, while the shaping of peoples ideas about affiliation and identity

is an important aspect of this process, the bourgeoisie must also emphasize the

shaping of peoples dispositions regarding work, influencing their conduct as

consumers and modulating the relationship between their aspirations and the

realities they confront. Moreover, all of these processes are carefully tailored

to the imperatives of specific systems of accumulation.

3

Thinking throu

Transnationali

20 . Berberoglu suggests that total net corporate profits more than doubled in real terms betwe en

1970 and 1988 (1992: 64-66). Bow les, Gordon and Weisskopf note a sharp surge in profits after

1983 , though they a lso point out that profit levels have remained significan tly low er than in the 1950s

and 1960s (1990: 43-45, 157-163).


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Public Culture

The recent shift in the workings of accumulation has thus meant that way

of producing subjects developed during the post-war years have been rendere

increasingly inadequate. This is not to say that such problems have been broug

vividly to the surface. They have, in general, remained latent and hidden, th

best-kept secrets of a system ostensibly in order. Yet they have played a cruci

role in shaping the current strategies of different bourgeois-dominated coalitio

regarding the maintenance of cultural control. Before considering these strat

gies, it is therefore important to bring the nature of the problems more clearl

into view.

If domination is enacted primarily through coalitions, it follows that the effor

of different sectors of the bourgeoisie to establish and maintain their rule a

focused at least partly on fomenting alliances they consider beneficial while u

dermining others that might threaten their ambitions. Consistent with this logi

the greatest fears of ruling groups are often directed less at specific subalte

populations than at the prospect that they might develop dangerous allianc

with people occupying other positions in the class structure. Correspondingl

mem bers of the bourgeoisie have long placed considerable emphasis on influen

ing the conceptual and experiential ground on which struggles over coalitio

formation are played out. In particular, they have striven energetically to sha

ideas about how the social field should be divided and about the distribution

interests, loyalties and affiliations within this field. And they have common

sought to fortify key lines of difference and to influence the kinds of interactio

that take place across them by regulating the ways va ried groups are distribut

in space and through the structure of available occupations.

In the two and a half decades following the Second World War, these effor

were more or less effective. Cold War images of a global struggle betwee

capitalism and comm unism reinforced the idea of an overriding national intere

in capitalist arrangements and, more specifically, encouraged the notion th

corporations operating on a multinational basis were working for the nation

cause. The continued emphasis on race and ethnicity as cruc ial forms of differen

impeded the development of wide-ranging social solidarities, particularly amon

those in the lower reaches of the class structure. And these two developmen

further marginalized critical understandings of class relations that had still be

prominent during the inter-war ye ars, especially in segments of the labor mov

ment (Fantasia

1988: 3-24).

Meanw hile, various forms of spatial ordering worke

to reinforce the key distinctions. Suburbanization and the selective distributio

of housing subsidies broke up inner-city neighborhoods where people occupyi

a variety of class positions had often lived side-by-side and helped separate t


21/50

growing primary sector proletariat from other segments of the working class.

These developments and related forms of de ju re and de facto segregation rein-

forced the boundaries between whites and people of color. And immigration

policies that further tightened entrance requirements and directed Mexicans pri-

marily to agriculture limited the interactions between citizens and foreigners,

reversing the tendency towards growing interaction that had been taking place

in major U . S . cities during the first half of the century. Finally, the maintenance

of w hite male domination in the middle and upper reaches of the class structure

ensured that, even as wom en and people of color increased their levels of labo r

force participation, members of these different groups often worked in different

places and held different kinds

of

jobs.

Over the last twenty-five years, how ever, bourgeois economic strategies asso-

ciated with the shift to a transnational regime have challenged these dividing

practices in a number of ways. T he force of U.S nationalism has been undermined

not only by the sudden end to the Cold War but also by the ways in which

transnational corporations have increasingly sought to offset the pull of national

allegiances among both employees and consumers. One

of

the most striking

features of recent advertising by such corporations has been the tendency to

encourage the idea of a relationship between individuals and com panies on the on e

hand and the global context on the othe r that is largely unmediated by references to

the national or appeals to its emotive force.

Mo re importantly, bourgeois strategies have brought together many popula-

tions that were previously kept apart. While the end of d e ju re segregation has

done little to remove the physical isolation of mo st African-Americans (Massey

and Denton

1993),

the growin g use of Third W orld migrant labor, especially in

the urban service industries, has meant that people with different national and

racial identifications, and often occupying different class positions, have come

to interact much more than they did during the post-war boom . Meanw hile, token

forms of upward mobility for women and people

of

color and the redistribution

downward of white men have brought increasing convergences between these

groups regarding where they work and the kinds of jobs they d o. In som e cases,

of course, these forms of increased interaction have exacerbated tensions between

the groups involved. Backlash forms of sexism, racism and xenophobia have

grown markedly over the last decade and the level of workplace violence has been

escalating fast. But the widespread reshuffling of the topograph ies of difference has

also presented ruling blocs with the possibility that people might develop new

forms of mutual understanding and, correspondingly, build broader and more

effective kinds of counter-hegemonic coalition.

3

Think ing throu

Transnat ional i


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Public

Culture

Meanwhile, the shift towards a transnational system of accumulation has als

created difficulties for the bourgeoisie concerning the shaping of work-relate

subjectivities. Ruling blocs have always sough t to influence not only the materi

conditions that frame the relationship between employers and employees but als

peoples attitudes and dispositions toward work. Moreo ver, they have g eneral

done

so

in a differentiating man ner.21Given the importance of both maintainin

a reserve army and limiting the frustration of those w ithin its ranks, ruling blo

have worked hard to make a segment of the population accept and even fin

value in moving intermittently in and out of paid labor and, in this process,

key role has been played by gendered ideologies regarding the importance

domestic obligations and other ideologies that have stressed for urban migran

the merits of periodically returning home. At the same time, those directed to

wards steady and sustained employment hav e been encouraged to develop attitud

and understandings specific to the niches in the class structu re that they are deeme

most likely to fill. People thought destined fo r professional-m anagerial activitie

for example, have been equipped w ith attitudes to time and space, persona an

sociality significantly different from those im pressed upon people directed tow ar

wage work (Rouse 1992a).

During the years of the post-war boom , the high demand fo r labor meant th

most people, including many destined for the reserve army, were equipped w i

a basic set of work-related dispositions. The expansionary dy namic of the eco

omy and the significant growth in both the primary sector proletariat and t

professional-managerial class meant that many in the lower ranks of the cla

structure were encouraged to envisage stable, lifelong work trajectories an

often, steady upward m obility. A nd this, in turn, meant that emphasis was plac

on providing people with work-related attitudes and understandings that th

could build on and transform as they moved from one niche to the next.

Over the last twenty-five years, how ever, the shift to a transnational syste

of accumulation has made most of these procedures increasingly archaic. T

logic of instilling a work-related orientation throughout the population has be

undermined by the growth of chronic unemploym ent. An d the logic of inculcati

durable dispositions has been challenged by the g rowing flux and volatility th

almost everyone has experienced regarding w ork. Companies growing assau

on the ranks of the primary sector proletariat, their grow ing reliance on flexib

forms of labor use, and their growing emphasis on downsizing have made s ecu

access to sustained employment much less likely at every level of the class stru

2

1.

See

Gramsci

(197

1

: 279-3

18)

and Althusser

1971).


23/50

ture. And they have made periodic downward mobility a much more common

prospect (Ehrenreich 1989; Newman 1989:

20-41).

At the sam e time, these developments have created difficulties regarding the

production of disciplined consumers. The bourgeoisie has always sought to shape

the ways in which people use the money that they earn and it has done so with

growing force as it has turned increasingly to the promotion of mass consum er

markets. In part, of course, this has involved a continual injunction to spend an d,

more g enerally, to find self-worth in the capacity to do so. Yet these incitements

to consume have always been channeled in particular ways. People have been

encouraged not simply to spend but to focus their spending on those goods and

services produced by capital, especially the major corporations. Correspo ndingly,

they have been discouraged from spending their earnings on illicit goods and

services such as drugs, gambling and prostitution. This has been partly motivated

by the desire to regulate the energies of workers and to limit unregulated and

potentially threatening forms of social interaction specially acros s lines of class

division. Ho wever, the fact that governments and corporations have, at various

times and in various places, been involved in marketing prostitution, gambling

and a variety of harmful drugs suggests that regulation has also been m otivated

by the desire to channel profits in approved directions. Moreover, there has

always been a careful concern to modulate the relationship between the injunctions

to consume and peoples capacities to pursue such activities, to ensure that the

seductions

of

advertising do not turn into vehicles of bitterness and frustration.

And these two forms of channeling have been related to the extent that illicit

objects of consumption have often seemed more appealing, both as a medium

of money-making and a source of satisfaction, when the capacity to enter the

approved circuits of exchange has been frustrated.

In the two and half decades following the Second World War, there was a

marked growth in the promotion of consumerism. Y et, for most people, the gap

between the promises of advertising and their capacity to realize them was kept

within reasonable bounds. T he emphasis on mass production for a mass consum er

market meant that many of the commodities being sold were inexpensive. Mean-

while, the general rise in real incomes and, especially, the growth in the ranks

of the primary sector proletariat, meant that many people w ere able to envisage

buying them. In this context, a relatively homogeneous set of mass consumers

operated in a largely shared market. The general growth in real incomes also

limited the appeal of illicit sources of income and consumption.

With the shift to a transnational regime , however, much

of

this has changed.

The promotion of consumerism has continued to expand ; and, m ore importantly,

3

Think ing throu

Transnat ional i


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Public Culture

as a function of the growing penetration of the mass media into peoples dai

lives, it has exerted its influence more widely and more thoroughly than ev

before. Children, for example, have increasingly been interpellated directly

consumer subjects. Yet, at the same time, as real incomes have stagnated fo

large segments of the population and declined for m any, the ability to approxima

the increasingly inflated definitions of self-worth projected in the commerci

mass media has steadily been undermined. And frustrations over this exclusio

have led to a growing use of illicit goods and services, both as ways of earnin

money and as alternative sources of pleasure.

Finally, and more generally, the shift to a transnational regim e has exacerbate

problems concerning the regulation of peoples aspirations and desires. In an

hierarchical social system, there is a gap between the realities that most peop

experience and the promises they are offered. This gap works to reconcile peop

to the difficulties of daily life by holding out the prospect of a better future. F

those who dominate, it is a space that must be wide enough to encourage peop

to act in the ways that are demanded of them but not so wide that people gro

frustrated. As a result, the cultural politics of domination always concerns t

regulation of desire, the careful modulation of the relationship between the prom

ises that are made and the prospects of achieving what they offer. And, in th

context, ruling groups have often promulgated images and narratives that bo

explain the gap and offer plausible accounts

of

how it might be bridged.

In the first twenty-five years after th e Second World W ar, the dominant mod

for reconciling reality and aspiration were the American Dream, the immigra

narrative of intergenerational incorporation and advancement, and the broad

stories of global modernization under U .

S

.

leadership. In emphasizing uniline

processes of progress, growth and development, these modes portrayed the ga

between reality and promise as temporary and suggested that success was almo

certain for those who worked hard and loyally in a sustained way. Howev

illusory their promises, the credibility of these images and narratives was

su

tained by the steady expansion of the U.S. economy and the rise in people

standard of living. More specifically, the existence of a thick middle band

well-paying proletarian job s encouraged m any at the bottom of the class structu

to believe that, with sustained effort, they or their children would eventual

move upwards.

Since the early 1970s, however, the m aterial bases for these images and narr

tives have been steadily eroded. The United States brief mom ent of unquestion

global hegemony has passed. R eal incomes have stagnated or declined fo r lar

segments of the population, the primary sector proletariat has been pared awa


25/50

and job insecurity has increased throughout the class structure, especially in

recent years. And, in these circumstances, fulfillment of the post-war promise

of progress in return for patient and sustained hard work has come to seem

increasingly elusive.

Self healing Capabilities

In a multitude of minor ways, then, members of the bourgeoisie in the United

States have been facing over the last few years a secret but significant crisis

regarding the maintenance of their hegemonic influence. But they have not re-

sponded passively. Moving rapidly, anticipating problems as much as reacting

to them , they have striven energetically to reshape peoples attitudes a nd disposi-

tions and, in

so

doing, to seal over the wounds that their own activities have

opened up. They have used a wide variety of techniques. Non-discursive modes

of

influence, directed most immediately at peoples bodies and their actions,

have played a significant part.22Growing emphasis has been given to state-based

violence and repression, especially in relation to the burgeoning ranks

of

the

reserve army. Policing has become more intense and imprisonment an increas-

ingly common tool of social control. Meanwhile, continued reliance has been

placed on less dramatic processes of quotidian habituation that work by instantiat-

ing basic principles and distinctions in the organization of space and carefully

regulating the ways in which this structured space is

used.

A complex cultural

politics has been concretized in the reorganization of urban landscapes and the

refinement of techniques for policing peoples movements through them. But

discursive forms of influence have also played a crucial role. In the face of

the problems I have outlined, members of the bourgeoisie have developed and

disseminated a plethora of images, narra tives, programs and prescriptions better

22. There ar e many, of cou rse, who, following Foucault, se e the discursive as involving both

written and oral communication on the one hand and the physical shaping of actions on the other.

I agree that, in the end, these must be seen as integrally related but I am wary of using terms such

as discourse and the discursive to mark this unity. Their long, ordinary language association with

the verbal exchange of ideas and the expression of thought via speech and writing Websters

Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, s.v ., discourse)encourages scholars not only to ignore the physical

shaping of actions in a particular analysis (as I do here) but to forget its significance altogether and

thus make the examination of written and oral communication and the texts through which it is

articulated seem sufficient in itself. In the sp irit of both A lthusser (197 1) and Bourdieu (1977, especially

87-90), I therefore consider it important to maintain at least an analytical distinction between the

discursive (articulated modes of communication at a distance) and what, for brevity,

I

refer to as

the non-discursive (direct action on peoples bodies and their actions).

3

Think ing throu

Transnat ional i


26/50

378

Public Culture

suited to producing the kinds of subjects they desire. It is these discur sive strategi

on which

I

shall focus here.

As with the economic strategies that I described earlier, I do not mean

imply that a single class agent has been pursuing a single, integrated projec

Different segments of the bourgeoisie have worked through different coalition

And, more complexly, they have used their varied discourses as much to brin

particular coalitions into being and sustain their fragile unity as to transform th

attitudes and practices

of

others. Nor do I mean to imply that these differe

coalitions have necessarily created brand new discourses designed specifical

for their current needs. They have often taken do minant images and narrativ

from the post-war years and retooled them for contemporary u se or appropriate

and rechanneled idioms first developed to oppose their own positions. There h

been a great deal of improvisation and considerable trial and erro r. Mo reove

the discourses they have developed have rarely served simply to address a sing

kind of problem. Commonly, they have exerted their influence across a wi

variety of overlapping issues and concerns.

Yet, amidst these numerous complexities, it is possible to tease out a num b

of general trends and pattern s.

I

can do this most effectively by relating d iscours

that have become prominent in recent years to the varied problems regardin

hegemonic influence that

I

outlined in the prior section.

Think

of

it as economicfuel injection. At Toyota, were committed to

building in America.

. . .

From our manufacturing facilities to our

U . S .

research and design centers, our operations here provide more than

16,000

obs and give an economic boost to communities right across

America. Investing in the things we all care about.

Toyota advertisemenP3

Resituating the n ation al In the face of the growing threats to the national as bo

a focal field of action and an object of emotional investment, and in the light o

growing doubts about the compatibility of a global orientation and a commitme

to the national interest, different segments of the bourgeoisie h ave responded

divergent ways. Y et this has not involved a simple struggle between politicia

23.

National

Review 21 February

1994.

In this and subsequent references, I cite the locat

in which

I

first came across the advertisement in question. This does not necessarily mean that

appeared first, or solely, in the context cited.


27/50

and agencies of state who want to uphold the national, and globally oriented

corporations who want to transcend it. Many corporations have been loathe to

offend the national commitments of crucial political allies and of key groups

among their actual and potential customers. M any politicians have been sym pa-

thetic to the global orientations and engagements of corporations . A nd m embers o f

the bourgeo isie, w hile increasingly oriented to worldwide form s of profit-seeking

have remained attentive to the hegemonic b enefits involved in fostering a sense

that there are unifying national interests and that their own activities work to

uphold them. As a result, the most common tendency in recent years has been

to argue that a global cosmopolitanism and reconfigured forms of nationalism

are, in fact, compatible and, indeed, in many cases, reciprocally reinforcing.

This was very much Bushs position during the

1992

election campaign, w hen

he claimed constantly that his close attention to developments in the world at

large not only distinguished him from Clinton but w as vital to the national interest.

The world is in transition, and we are feeling that transition in our hom es, he

told the Republican National Convention in

1992.

The defining challenge of the

90s

is to win the economic competition, to win the peace. W e must be a m ilitary

superpow er, an economic sup erpower, and an export superpow er. In this election,

youll hear two visions of how to do this. Theirs is to look inward and protect

what we already have. Ours is to look forward, to open new markets, prepare

our people to compete

. . .

to save and invest so we can win. Yet the sam e

ideas have informed b oth Republican and Democratic rhetoric in suppo rt of free

trade agreements that make n ational boundaries m ore permeable to capital and

commod ities. A nd, in Clintons hands, the continued force of nationalism in the

context of a global orientation has been given added impetus through the mixing

of an active promotion of free trade with a strong rhetorical and symbolic emphasis

on

restricting both the influx of undocumented (im)migrants and the exodu s of

jobs.

At the same time, related rhetorical strategies have been used by many globally

oriented corp orations. W hile some, like Chrysler under Iacocca, have pretended

a pure nationalism that actively effaces their overseas engagements, many m ore

have used their advertisements and commercials to claim that, by operating on

a worldwide basis, they are much better placed to serve domestic interests and

concerns. In the MC I advertisement, for example, the company uses its involve-

ments w ith the Internet, a system that empowers

20

million people to conduct

a worldwide conversation with each other via computers, to present itself as

3

Th ink ing t h rou

Transnat iona l i

24.

Los

Angeles

Times 21 August 1992, A8.


28/50

380

Publ ic

Culture

particularly well-equipped to serve the interests of the entire nation and beyond

Interestingly, however, the connection has been emphasized most explicitly b

foreign-based transnationals anxious to offset nationalist antipathies within the

U.

S .

markets. Toyota has designed an advertising campaign that draws attentio

to its 5 billion investment in America, its American research and desig

centers, its U .S. m anufacturing plants, its use of over

400

American suppl

ers, and more generally, its commitment to giving an economic boost to comm

nities right across America.* A nd, in a recent advertisement, the French ban

Credit Lyonnais, described itself as An American Success Story. After five yea

of record growth, capped by our most successful year, ou r recognition as a partn

to American business is confirmed. .

. .

Our strength is no longer simply th

power of a global bank. It is diversity. It is adaptability. Qualities that are tru

American.26As in many other areas, then, the transnational has not

so

muc

displaced the national as resituated it and thus reworked its meanings.

. . . here is no going back: diversity breeds diversity. It is the fuel that

runs todays America and, in a world being transformed daily by tech-

nologies that render distances meaningless, it puts America in the fore-

front of a new international order.

Time2

Reinscribing difference

While w orking energetically to relocate the national in t

global, members of the bourgeoisie have also acted to reshape peoples ide

about the relationship between the national and its internal lines of differenc

In particular, in the face of growing challenges to the post-war mechanisms b

which taxonomic distinctions of gender, race and national origin were instantiat

in modes of spatial and occupational segregation, they have launched a va riety

efforts to reinvigorate and recast the divisive power of the taxonomies themselve

Here, the unifying theme has been the rapid growth in a generalizing discour

of identity. Introduced into the social sciences in the United States during th

1950s, this discourse initially moved slowly into popular usage. Over the la

fifteen years or so, however, it has become ubiquitous, the m ost vivid idiomat

25 . Drawn from advertisements that appeared in Time 3 January 1994; Newsweek 10 Janua

26.

Business Week

31 October 1994.

27. Special Issue, The New Face

of

Ame rica, Fall 1993, 9 .

199 4; and National Review 21 February 1994.

Roger Rouse_Cult Pols of Class Rels

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