This introductory article defines the concept of transnationalism, provides a typology of this heterogeneous set of activities, and reviews some of the pitfalls in establishing and validating the topic as a novel research field. A set of guidelines to orient research in this field is presented and justified. Instances of immigrant political and economic transnationalism have existed in the past. We review some of the most prominent examples, but point to the distinct features that make the contemporary emergence of these activities across multiple national borders worthy of attention. The contents of this Special Issue and their bearing on the present understanding of this phenomenon and its practical implications are summarized.

The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field

Community ties with friends and relatives are a principal means by which people and households get supportive resources. Quantitative and qualitative data from the second East York study are used to evaluate six potential explanations of why different types of ties provide different kinds of supportive resources: tie strength, contact, group processes, kinship,network members' characteristics, and similarities and dissimilarities between network members in such characteristics. Most relatioships provide specialized support. The kinds of support provided are related more to characteristics of the relationship than to characteristics of the network members themselves. Strong ties provide emotional aid, small services, and companionship. Parents and adult children exchange financial aid, emotional aid, large services, and small services. Physically accessible ties provide services. Women provide emotional aid. Friends, neighbors, and siblings make up about half of all supportive relationships. The ensemble o...

Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support

In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.

Paradoxes of gender

A provocative and disturbing look at the ways new economic facts are shaping our personal and social values. The distinguished sociologist Richard Sennett surveys major differences between earlier forms of industrial capitalism and the more global, more febrile, ever more mutable version of capitalism that is taking its place. He shows how these changes affect everyday life-how the work ethic is changing; how new beliefs about merit and talent displace old values of craftsmanship and achievement; how what Sennett calls "the specter of uselessness" haunts professionals as well as manual workers; how the boundary between consumption and politics is dissolving. In recent years, reformers of both private and public institutions have preached that flexible, global corporations provide a model of freedom for individuals, unlike the experience of fixed and static bureaucracies Max Weber once called an "iron cage." Sennett argues that, in banishing old ills, the new-economy model has created new social and emotional traumas. Only a certain kind of human being can prosper in unstable, fragmentary institutions: the culture of the new capitalism demands an ideal self oriented to the short term, focused on potential ability rather than accomplishment, willing to discount or abandon past experience. In a concluding section, Sennett examines a more durable form of self hood, and what practical initiatives could counter the pernicious effects of "reform."

The Culture of the New Capitalism

The intention of this work is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted the historical accounts of these societies before European intervention. It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Europe and the People without History

Sobrino, Jaime. (2010). Migracion interna en Mexico durante el siglo XX , Mexico, Consejo Nacional de Poblacion.

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Sobrino, Jaime (2010), Migración interna en México durante el siglo XX, México, Consejo Nacional de Población

In this paper, we concentrate on certain trends in Mexican economy and society that are shaping the geography of emigration, are creating new zones of expulsion and are beginning to alter the characteristics of emigrants. Among these trends are the radical restructuring of Mexican agriculture, the reshaping of the urban system through the decline of primacy, the increase in inter-urban internal migration and the relative job stagnation of the Mexican urban economies. An equally important part of the story of emerging zones of attraction and expulsion are the changes in US labor markets, urbanization patterns and migration policies. Labor market and urbanization changes in the US, as in the relocation of food processing industries or the new growth cities and suburbs of the South and South-West, create a demand for unskilled service, construction and industrial labor in zones that had previously not received Mexican migrants. US migration policies, particularly strict enforcement of border control, raise the costs of crossing for undocumented migrants and deter those within the United States from returning home.

The New Geography of Emigration: Emerging Zones of Attraction and Expulsion, Continuity and Change

Mineros, campesinos y empresarios en la sierra central del Perú

The chapter identifies key components of the new patterns of farming and rural livelihoods emerging in Latin America in the twenty-first century. By the beginning of the millennium, most rural areas of Latin America had become integrated into global agricultural commodity networks that curtail the opportunities for small-scale, family-based farming and result in two predominant types of production, the corporate large-scale enterprise suited to oils seeds and their derivatives, cattle or vegetables for processing and the smaller commercially oriented farm producing market garden products, fruits and wine. Both types of farms often form part of commodity networks organized by domestic intermediaries, large-scale supermarket chains, such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour, and foreign food marketers. In addition to the multiplication of external commercial linkages, high levels of urbanization have increasingly blurred the distinction between the rural and the urban. Off-farm work, including international labor migration, is now an important source of rural livelihoods. This context means that research needs to address the multiple interfaces that now connect the different types of rural inhabitants with a wide range of external actors.

Bryan R. Roberts

Papers

Sobrino, Jaime (2010), Migración interna en México durante el siglo XX, México, Consejo Nacional de Población

The New Geography of Emigration: Emerging Zones of Attraction and Expulsion, Continuity and Change

Mineros, campesinos y empresarios en la sierra central del Perú

Changing Rural Scenarios and Research Agendas in Latin America in the New Century

At the Crossroads: Mexico and U.S. Immigration Policy