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Transcript of 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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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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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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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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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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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
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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
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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
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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).
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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
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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).
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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
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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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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
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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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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).
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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,
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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
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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).
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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.
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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
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24.
Los
Angeles
Times 21 August 1992, A8.
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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.
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