Configurations of geographic and societal spaces:

a sociological proposal between methodological

nationalism and the spaces of flows

LUDGER PRIES
Abstract The societal practices, symbol systems and artefacts that form sociologys
field of study are shifting in their spatial reach. Terms like internationalization,
globalization, glocalization or transnationalization denote an (at least perceived)
increase in the flow of information, commodities and capital across nation-state
borders as well as an unprecedented ease of human spatial mobility. Situated in the
wider research programme of transnationalism, in this article I present a typology of
geographic-societal spatial configurations, of which transnationalism is one of
several ideal types. Distinguishing explicitly between an absolutist and a relativist
approach to space and applying this to geographic and societal spaces, the article
puts forward a framework for discussing how shifts in the geographic reach of the
societal are taking place. The case of General Motors provides an example of how
such a typology could be applied. The article concludes by discussing some
consequences for future empirical research.

New information, communication and transport technologies are bringing the world
closer together. In the twenty-first century average individuals in rich industrialized
countries, and members of the upper classes in all countries, could in theory visit
every continent on the globe at least once in their lives. These people can also
participate in the global flow of information as consumers (of television, radio,
newspapers or books) and as actors (by using the telephone or Internet). The spatial
scope of human action is becoming wider or global; the margins for human spatial
mobility are shrinking. However, this is a condition enjoyed by only one-tenth of the
worlds population. In contrast, more than half of all human beings are unable to
afford a daily newspaper. Furthermore, the societal preconditions and consequences
of this segmented globalizing of opportunities and shrinking of mobility margins are
distributed rather unequally over the globe.
In general, increasing spatial mobility goes hand in hand with a wider scope of
action to cope with the societal implications of globalization: somebody who can
afford an eight-cylinder car with high fuel consumption is probably better able to
protect him- or herself against the ubiquitous consequences of global warming (whose
causes have a lot to do with the eight-cylinder car) than has a poor African peasant.
Global Networks 5, 2 (2005) 167190. ISSN 14702266
2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd & Global Networks Partnership

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Ludger Pries
Similarly, inadequate resources for living and surviving normally also limit a persons
geographical radius of mobility. Thus one could conclude that shifts in geographical
configurations of societal space are accentuated by pre-existing patterns of social life
and inequality. At the same time, it would seem that the very nature of these new configurations has a deep influence on social classes and stratification, on the everyday
life of people and on the geographic reach and dynamics of organizations and institutions, i.e. on most of the units of observation and analysis in the social sciences.
The durable and dense combinations and concentrations of societal practices, symbol systems and artefacts that form sociologys field of study are shifting in their
spatial reach. Terms like internationalization, globalization, glocalization or
transnationalization denote an (at least perceived) increase in the flow of information, commodities and capital across nation-state borders, as well as an unprecedented ease of human spatial mobility. These increases in flows and movements have
created new dimensions of lived experiences and perceptions, and have broadened
mental maps and spatial imaginaries for social actors in general and social scientists
in particular. But as Held et al. (1999: 1) warned, globalization is in danger of
becoming, if it has not already become, the clich of our times: the big idea which
encompasses everything from global financial markets to the Internet but which
delivers little substantive insight into the contemporary human condition.
The epistemological problem one that is almost irresolvable is to differentiate
the part of globalization that can be measured in flows of information, interaction,
commodities and capital from the part of globalization that is measurable as the
resulting shifting perceptions and spatial imaginaries. This is due to the simple fact
that, by definition, the latter also form part of the former, as Thomas and Thomas
famously stated: If men define situations as real, they are real in their social consequences (cited in Thomas 1965). The same is true of the terms transnationalism
and transnationalization. They too are in danger of becoming new and fashionable
catch phrases that fail to provide a tangible, additional power of explanation. Therefore, as Portes et al. (1999) emphasized, the new research field of transnationalism is
in need of further empirical analysis to go hand in hand with increasing precision in
the conceptual framework. This article aims at contributing to the latter.
For the social sciences in general, and especially for the discipline of sociology,
changing geographic configurations of societal space call fundamental methodological assumptions into question. As Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002: 302) point out,
the discipline has been burdened by so-called methodological nationalism, which they
define as the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world. According to this assumption, (national) societies
have boundaries that naturally coincide with the territorial boundaries defined and
controlled by nation-states. Epistemologically speaking, this correlation is not surprising: the emergence of modern sociology coincided with the founding of nation-states
and national societies.
Wimmer and Glick Schiller maintain that this national focus has limited the way
in which the phenomenon of migration has been perceived and studied: long confined
to the nation-state/immigrant paradigm, a shift in methodological perspective has
revealed the extent of (pre-)existing transnational phenomena, in which the societal
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spaces constructed by migrants correspond to more complicated configurations of
geographical space. Ulrich Beck (2004: 132) has proposed that the previously
dominant national perspective needs to be replaced by methodological cosmopolitanism, which sees the increased interdependence of social actors across national
boundaries. More drastically, John Urrys Sociology beyond societies postulated a
world in which the social as society is being replaced by the social as mobility
(Urry 2001: 2). This post-societal condition requires the development of a sociology
that is organized around networks, mobility and horizontal fluidities and that relies
on metaphors to focus on movement, mobility and contingent ordering, rather than
upon stasis, structure and social order (Urry 2001: 3, 18).
Some researchers have expressed concern about declarations that twentiethcentury sociological thought and methodology are obsolete. It is difficult to deny that
competing visions of how societal and geographical spaces intertwine have challenged the nation-state paradigm. However, as Adrian Favell (2001) and Gosta
Esping-Andersen (2000) point out, authors who posit the devaluation or disappearance of the nation-state (and with it a central component of sociologys
conceptual framework), often fail to propose alternative models with which empirical
evidence about social phenomena can be systematically generated and compared.
Indeed, Favell (2001: 394) warns that such programmatic declarations are in danger
of amounting to rhetorical hyperbole, beyond the recall of any operationalizable
study. Similarly, Esping-Andersen has advocated the maintenance of intentional and
purposeful empiricism (Esping-Andersen 2000: 72) in the face of epochal shifts in
the discipline. To be able to describe and determine patterns of variance displayed by
emerging social phenomena, it will still be necessary to find a means of capturing new
principles of everyday practices, organization and institutional coherence.
The critique of methodological nationalism and its insistence on a rigid coincidence of societal and geographical space, consolidated in the form of the nationstate and national society, has emerged as a conceptual and methodological challenge
both in the discipline of sociology in general and in the field of migration research in
particular. For a growing number of people, everyday life and social practices, frameworks of symbols and perceptions, and the meaning and use of physical artefacts are
no longer confined to one place or territory. Moving away from the nation-state/
immigrant paradigm, a growing body of literature has emerged on the topic of transnationalism and transnational societal spaces. In a very broad and general sense,
transnationalism refers to the cultural, economic, and political linking of people and
institutions [that] de-emphasizes the role of geography in the formation of identity
and collectivity and creates new possibilities for membership across boundaries
(Levitt 2001: 202; for other definitions see also Khagram and Levitt 2004; Levitt et al.
2003; Vertovec 2003).
However, we should not exaggerate the de-emphasizing of geographic space. As
the term, perspective and concept of transnationalism emphasize, nations and
national societal spaces (as societies and polities) are considered to be basic
constituents of cross-border, overlapping and intertwining structures and processes
from the local up to the global level. This is the case even if commercial, religious,
military or even adventurers activities have always spanned the borders of tribes,
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empires and other domains. The last 200 years have brought forth a system in which
nearly 200 sovereign nation-states or polities structure the geographic and societal
spaces of our globe. Jackson et al. (2004: 6) point out that it is imprudent to discount
the nation-state entirely as a factor that mediates cross-border activities: deterritorialization may be accompanied by simultaneous and equally forceful processes of reterritorialization. Precisely because the activities of migrants, corporate businesses or
non-profit organizations are influenced by different material and symbolic geographies on different geographic levels and are embedded in multi-dimensional societal
spaces, it is necessary to differentiate and specify the conceptual framework that
enables the development of relevant units of analysis without eliding the complex
formations that societal spaces can exhibit.
Situated within the wider research programme of transnationalism which
according to Iztigsohn et al. (1999) and Portes et al. (1999) could also be coined the
broader transnationalism research programme the purpose of this article is to
present a typology of geographic-societal spatial configurations of which transnationalism is only one of several ideal types (and could thereby be understood in
terms of a narrow perspective and concept of transnationalism). The typology is
intended to aid in the creation of more explicitly meaningful units of analysis for
sociological investigations, especially in the field of international migration. In a way,
the configurations captured in the typology could be seen as leitmotivs, which EspingAndersen suggested could serve to codify our common understanding of the world
(and) provide a workable substitute for strong theory (Esping-Andersen 2000: 634).
In the following section, key concepts such as society, geographical and societal
space, and relativist and absolutist concepts of space will be reviewed. Following
this, the typology containing seven different geographic-societal space configurations will be presented. Finally, the case of General Motors will be used to show
how these configurations could serve as flexible and plausible units of reference
that take into account important dimensions of everyday life, its systems of symbols
and artefacts.
Concepts and dimensions of space
The above-mentioned problems, especially the notion of methodological nationalism,
call for more explicit reflection on concepts of space and on the relation between its
geographical and societal dimensions. Globalization and corresponding concepts like
glocalization and transnationalism have to be reinterpreted as new combinations of
societal and spatial relations. As Jackson et al. (2004: 4) argue, the spatial focus is
under-theorized, especially in transnational studies: transnationality is a geographical
term, centrally concerned with reconfigurations in relations with place, landscape and
space. Because the term space is used in all sciences, and because it is employed in
our context in both geographical and societal terms, it is worth making more explicit
and precise our understanding of the concept. Both terms, social and spatial, refer
to concepts people have of the world, which are employed in everyday and scientific
practices to orient, demarcate, differentiate and reduce complexity by giving meaning
to various phenomena.

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Whatever the understanding in particular may be, there obviously exists a
dialectical connection between both: nothing societal can exist without a spatial
dimension, and nothing spatial can lack a societal dimension (Gregory and Urry
1985). All forms of spatiality are societal because human beings construct them,
either physically or mentally. The universe just exists (or most of us maintain that it
does), but it does not (or most of us maintain that it does not) differentiate between its
societal and spatial dimensions: (human) beings make the difference. Similarly, all
societal elements have a spatial dimension: take, for example, the bodies of social
actors and the spatial sediments of social action (like architecture, technical artefacts,
housing and travel). Even the mental constructions we use evoke spatial
characteristics like distance, location and movement from place to place.
All notions of spatiality are social constructions. This becomes clear if one takes
into account the 29 different concepts of space Alexander Gosztonyi (1976) distinguishes in his monumental work Der Raum. In it he demonstrates that no scientific
discipline (natural sciences, philosophy, economics, or the political or social sciences)
can do without concepts of space. For our purposes it may be sufficient to mention
three of these concepts. The first is the space of experience, which refers to the space
people occupy and in which they move physically and mentally in an unselfconscious
way or, as Alfred Schtz (1993) described it, without deeper reflection on its structure, classification or constitution. This space of experience is primary for two
reasons: first, it is the space with which human beings first engage as infants and then
conquer; second, it is primary in a methodological sense because it forms the basis
(also a term with a spatial dimension) for every further experience of space.
One could distinguish different levels or scopes of spaces of experience in which
almost all people engage: family, community, ethnic awareness, (national) society,
macro-regional cultural belonging, and perhaps the global world. For the majority of
people these different levels of experienced spaces overlap like concentric circles. We
will thus label these experienced spaces of everyday life (Berger and Luckmann 1980;
Schtz 1993) and of the world of living (Habermas 1981) societal spaces. Over the
centuries societal spaces in which people coexist and engage in processes of socialization became increasingly tied, in reciprocal exclusiveness, to more or less clearly
defined geographic spheres. In turn, clearly defined geographic spaces extending over
a physical area (a territory or locale) were supposed to correspond to only one
societal space (for example, a community or national society). The coincidence of
societal and geographic space was exclusive in a double sense. First, every societal
space seemed to occupy precisely one geographically specific space; societal spaces
such as families, communities or societies inhabited one coherent territory. Second, a
single geographical space became a socially occupied territory with room for only
one societal space: an apartment or house could contain only one family; a locale
could only accommodate one community; and a nation-state could only house one
national society.
Besides the concept of spaces of experience there are two other important and
opposing conceptions of space that should be addressed here: the relativistic and the
absolutist approaches. In absolutist or substantial terms, space has a quality of its
own, exists free of concrete objects, but is nevertheless thought of as an empirically
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real, homogeneous and empty entity. Albert Einstein (1960) criticized Newtonian
mechanics for relying on such a container concept of space; in Gosztonyis (1976)
terms, this container concept can be characterized as an absolutist concept of space.
Binary associations such as family/household, community/locale and nation-state/
national society exemplify the above-mentioned dominant assumption that societal
and geographical spaces share an exclusive relationship to one another. It can also be
found in at least three of the five basic qualities of spatial configurations outlined by
Georg Simmel (1983), one of the first sociologists to address explicitly the sociology
of space. In his work he noted the clear distinctiveness of one space from another, the
exclusive relationships between spaces and territories, and the durable nature of
spaces over time. Before him, Gottfried Leibniz developed a theory that opposed the
Newtonian absolutist concept of space and maintained that space possesses no existential qualities of its own whatsoever; rather, he conceived it as a configuration of
(material) objects embedded in geographic relations and order. Einstein preferred this
relativist concept of space for use in physics and astronomy. Even in sociology one
could find, though in a minority of cases, this relativist notion of space (for instance,
in the work of Simmel).
Table 1: Concepts and dimensions of space
Concept of space

Dimension of space
Absolutist

Relativist

Geographic space

genuine existence/maintains
its characteristics without
relation to (other) elements

framework of positional
relation of elements/no independent existential quality of
its own

Societal space

geographically contiguous/
societally specific/homogeneous/inclusion and
exclusion

pluri-local, dense, durable

overlapping concentrations of
societal practices, symbol
systems and artefacts/multidimensional

This opposition of absolutist views (space as an absolute unit with its own genuine
characteristics and qualities) and relativistic concepts (space as a configuration of or
the positional relation between elements) has continued to pervade the concepts of
space in all scientific disciplines (Gregory and Urry 1985). In Table 1, the absolutist
and relativist concepts of space have been crossed with the geographic and societal
dimensions of space in order to lay the foundations for a flexible typology of spaces.
From a relativist perspective, societal relations are not framed by a given (container)
space, but constitute space: without elements such as social practices, artefacts and
symbols there can be no socially or sociologically relevant space. In this sense, the

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societal space of a neighbourhood does not consist of a given, geographically demarcated container into which societal practices and mental mappings of its inhabitants
can be put. Rather, the societal space of a neighbourhood allows for the emergence of
a particular configuration of societal practices, systems of symbols and artefacts with
spatial-positional relations.
Although the relativist position is adequate for certain purposes, the absolutist
position is also appropriate at times. Human coexistence and social action are not
possible without demarcations, boundaries and frontiers that include and exclude. The
first distinction of this type that a child learns is the difference between the subject
itself and surrounding objects. Later on it distinguishes between ego and other, I
and you, and between us and them. Therefore, if the material conditions, societal
practices, beliefs, interests and/or life projects of a certain group of people are the
same or shared to a high degree, and if they differ strongly from those of other
groups, their societal space could be considered a container (or a relative container).
The most basic container in this sense is the human body and the individual ego
(even if we could dilute it in a relativistic perspective into one collection of dense
relations between elements located within the multitude of elements of the cosmos).
Households, families, neighbourhoods or communities as societal spaces are more or
less absolute containers. Even if we acknowledge that a particular household or
neighbourhood is the socio-spatial outcome of societal relations and processes, it
becomes a more or less objective precondition for the everyday lives of its social
actors. To them, the socio-spatial unit may appear to be an absolutist container (or
given objective structure in Durkheimian terms) that delimits and structures their
social spaces.
To conceptualize societal spaces outside the lens of methodological nationalism,
and without allowing them to dissolve in a space of flows, a variety of relations and
combinations between absolutist and relativist, as well as between societal and
geographic spaces, have to be considered. In an extremely constructivist and oversocialized position (see Werlen 1993), the geographic-spatial dimension does not
exist in its own right: every geographic space is constructed physically (a church,
house or factory) and mentally (by assigning significance to physical elements such as
mountains and rivers). To avoid this one could combine absolutist and relativist
approaches in the study of space and consider the spatial dimension of the societal as
a relatively independent analytic category.
This makes it possible to understand the nation-state bounded national society as a
combination of absolutist concepts of both geographic and societal space. The
imagined unity of the Commonwealth, on the other hand, could be seen as the
combination of a relativist geographic-spatial configuration and an absolutist notion
of societal space, in so far as the British Crown asserts its hegemonic claim to
sovereignty over these spaces. One could also think of the combination of an
absolutist, contiguous geographic container space like the Mediterranean Sea or
Pacific Ocean and a relativist societal space such as an overlapping encounter of
different political domains and ethnic, cultural or language groups. Finally, the
combination of a relativist societal space and a relativist geographic space leads to
what will be designated below as transnational societal space.
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At the level of nation-state and national society absolutist thinking has not been
completely unreasonable. To a certain extent it has provided an appropriate framework in the past. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many artists,
scientists and aristocrats in Europe did not limit their activities to particular regions,
principalities, empires or nations. Instead, they had a cosmopolitan at that time
European vision (see de Swaan 1995). Musicians used to travel all over Europe; the
noblemen and princes of England, Prussia and the Netherlands were interconnected
by marital ties; and the official language at the Prussian court in the eighteenth
century was French (whereas French was a minority language in France until the
sixteenth century). But then the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought forth
processes of nation building and nationalism. National societies worked hard to define
themselves within their corresponding nation-states, which were fashioned as societal
and geographic containers (see Anderson 1983; Bhl 1966; Therborn 2001). This
mutual embeddedness of geographic space and societal space in each other was an
outcome of considerable economic, social, cultural, political and ideological effort.
Nation-bounded thinking was the predominant way of perceiving social order and
positioning social structures and social change. Therefore, it would be erroneous now
to criticize ahistorically the social sciences for having based their investigations on
the nation-state and national society. Moreover, replacing the notion of the nation
with the concept of globalization would be the equivalent of throwing out the baby
with the bath water. The same could be said of calls to sacrifice the spatial dimension
of the societal completely in favour of notions of delocalization and deterritorialization, or by abstracting older concepts from territorial reference (Albrow et al.
1997: 35; Jackson et al. 2004; see also the historical longue dure arguments in
Schfer 2001).
Three important conclusions could be drawn from these considerations. First, the
container approach to national societies and its generalization as the most important
unit of reference and analysis represents an important historical trend in societal
reality and thought. Second, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the relation
between the societal and spatial is undergoing a process of transformation. The
conditions, forms and outcomes of geographic configurations of the societal represent
an important aspect of the societal change. Third, to analyse these new configurations,
various frames of reference local, micro-regional, national, macro-regional and
global have to be combined, instead of replacing one frame (for example the
national) with another (for example the global).
Ideal-typical configurations of geographic and societal spaces
The differentiation of geographic and societal dimensions, and of absolutist and
relativistic concepts of space, allows us to overcome the container concept of national
societies and to distinguish between different ideal types of societal spaces in relation
to their geographic reach and characteristics.1 The typology (Table 2) takes into
account two basic forms of geographic-societal spaces beyond, alongside and above
the formerly dominant national society paradigm. One form maintains the double
exclusiveness of societal and geographic space found in the absolutist approach. Inter-

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connections between the national containers can be intensified (inter-nationalization);
the geographic-societal scope of the containers can be reduced (re-nationalization) or
widened (supra-nationalization and globalization). The second form uncouples the
exclusive relationship between societal and geographic space, allowing for the
formation of pluri-local, dense and durable agglomerations of societal practices,
symbols and artefacts. This can lead to the evolution of satellites attached to an
imagined motherland or nation (diaspora building), to the combination of the global
as one place and local societal spaces (glocalization), and to the emergence of a
framework of transnational local places building coherent societal spaces (transnationalization). In the following section, these seven ideal-typical configurations of
geographic and societal spaces and their continuing evolution will be sketched out.
The first ideal-typical configuration is inter-nationalization. It refers to intergovernmental relations and interactions between sovereign nation-states. Examples of
such political and inter-state relations include, for instance, the labour migrant treaties
and the accompanying movements between Italy and Germany (1955) or Turkey and
Germany (1961); the friendship treaty of 1927 between Italy and Hungary; the
foundation of the European Community for Coal and Steel by France, Germany, Italy
and the Benelux countries in 1951 or the negotiation and signing of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico and the USA.
The main characteristic of this configuration is the predominance of nation-state
activities and the perception of the inter-national relations as based on national
container societies. This ideal type is not limited to the activities of political leaders.
On the contrary, it is always based on, reproduces or leads to actions involving the
masses (or at least seeming to do so). Economic exchanges between important
national trading companies, ideological national movements and mobilizations, boundary spanning relations between national associations of artists or scientists could also
form the basis of, or emerge from, inter-nationalization. In any case, the point of
reference is the interaction between spatially coherent, nationally bounded units of
action. This type, featuring the increasing significance of inter-national contacts and
societal exchange, developed at the pace of nation-building processes themselves. But
its weight in the current socio-geographic processes is obviously not diminishing; the
conflict between India and Pakistan is a contemporary example of risky and highly
dangerous inter-nationalization. In the social sciences, inter-nationalization is
analysed primarily by political scientists in the traditional sub-discipline of international relations.
The second configuration is termed supra-nationalization. It stands for the
tendency to upgrade the logic underlying the nation-state and national container
society concepts into supra-national but not totally global units. Some aspects of
the European Community, such as the European Commission, could be considered as
an outcome of supra-nationalization. In this case, the legitimate sovereign for regulating and representing certain (but until now not the most relevant) issues is not a
nation-state but a kind of supra-nation-state. Supra-nationalization creates supranational units that are more than the sum of national units. Supra-national units and
actors have their own legal, financial and material basis and develop a new supranational logic of their own, which goes beyond the logic of inter-national relations

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Table 2: Ideal-typical configurations of societal and geographic spaces and the
processes affecting them
Type of
configuration

Description

Maintaining/strengthening relations
Absolutist
/interactions between sovereign
concept of
(1)
nation-states and national societies;
space:
InterMutual binding
Nationalization (perceived) predominance of international relations as based on
of geographic
nation-states and national container
and societal
societies
space. Each
geographic space
Meta-national extension of the
(2)
corresponds to
concept of sovereign containerSupraone societal
state and macro-regional societal
Nationalization
space and vice
spaces
versa

Relativist
concept of
space:
societal spaces
are constituted
as dense and
durable
frameworks in
geographic
spaces. One
societal space
can span several
geographic
spaces, and one
geographic can
contain several
coexisting
societal spaces

176

Examples

European Community for

Coal and Steel/NATO/
NAFTA

European Commission/
European Sociological
Association (ESA)

Re-emergence or strengthening of
national or micro-regional societal
(3)
spaces; strengthening of existing
ReNationalization territorial boundaries or division of
formerly (more or less)
homogeneous container spaces into
various new contiguous societal
spaces

Disintegration of the
Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia/ old & new
economic protectionism
and isolation of the USA
or the EU

(4)
Globalization

Strengthening of (perceived)
worldwide reach of societal affairs,
interactions, communications,
social practices, symbols, events,
risks and rights

Financial streams and

markets/global warming/
diffusion of new communication technology
like the Internet/
McDonaldization

(5)
Glocalization

Strengthening or production of
pluri-local societal spaces focused
on/ resulting from global and delocalized issues

Local causes and impacts

of global warming/the
Internet/production
structure of worldwide
media like CNN or
Hollywood

(6)
Diasporabuilding

Production/strengthening of
Jewish and other religious
societal space spreading over
diasporas/ diplomatic
different geographic-national
corps/ political refugees
spaces by referring to a common,
clearly fixed motherland or centre

Strong societal relations spanning Transnational families,

(7)
pluri-locally above and between the companies and NGOs
Transtraditional container spaces of
nationalization national societies without a clear
headquarters or motherland

Configurations of geographic and societal spaces

between national units. If international organizations (for example trade unions or
professional associations like the International Sociological Association) are organized on the basis of national delegations, they are inter-national organizations;
however, if they are organized (financially, or in terms of voting system) on the basis
of individual membership and supranational structures, then they could be considered
as supra-national organizations (see the European Sociological Association). Building
the NAFTA region could be considered a step towards economic supra-nationalization with remaining, but softly punctured, national polities. The European Union
could acquire more and more elements of a supra-national unit, such as the European
Court of Justice and the European Court of Auditors. The process of passing a European guideline for the compulsory national development of laws for the construction
of European Workers Councils is an example of the complex mix of supranationalization, maintenance of national sovereignty and transnationalization.
The third configuration, re-nationalization, refers to a certain kind of countertendency to the (aforementioned) supra-nationalization and (yet to be addressed)
globalization processes. Re-nationalization therefore refers to (1) a strengthening of
existing national container boundaries (as one possible outcome of intensified, hostile
inter-national interactions); or (2) the process of dividing formerly more or less
homogeneous socio-geographic container spaces into various new societal entities or
spaces claiming their own geographic space and territories (regionalization). In striving for autonomy, the Basques and Bretons are calling for new regional geographic
boundaries; the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia led
to a multiplicity of nationalisms and regional movements, as well as to the creation of
new political entities (or at least competencies) at a level below the national. The
European Communitys protective Common Agricultural Policy and the USAs
unilaterally declared protective steel tariffs are examples of an emerging or ongoing
process of social closure engaged in by strong nation-states against globalization
and neo-liberalization. Nation-states have certainly not relinquished control over
flows of goods and services: in many cases they have merely changed the form of
control (for example the conversion of tariff barriers into non-tariff barriers). The reemergence or strengthening of national or micro-regional societal spaces, the
strengthening of existing territorial boundaries, or the division of formerly more or
less homogeneous container spaces into various new contiguous societal container
spaces are not old-fashioned relics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rather,
they are an integral part of the dynamics driving the reconfiguration of sociogeographic spaces: indeed, during the last two decades the number of sovereign
nation-states involved in the United Nations has grown by approximately one-third to
almost 200.
The fourth (and often-cited) configuration is constituted by the dynamics of
globalization. It refers, on the one hand, to the worldwide spanning and extension of
international transactions, communications, societal practices, symbols and the impact
of these, and to the worldwide perception and awareness of problems, risks, rights,
tendencies and incidents, on the other. According to Giddens (1990: 63) globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which
link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events
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occurring many miles away and vice versa. There are a lot of phenomena, such as
nuclear risks and global warming, that have specific local, micro-regional, national,
macro-regional or inter-national origins, but whose consequences are felt by each
country and individual around the globe. Obviously people and countries with a lot of
economic knowledge and other resources will better be able to respond to such global
challenges, but, one way or another, they will be affected by them. Therefore,
globalization refers (at least partially and in the long run) to worldwide and omnipresent societal affairs, interactions, communications, societal practices, symbols,
events, risks and rights. Regarding its corresponding relations between geographic
and societal space, globalization is often conceptualized either as the geographic
widening of societal relations and spaces (as indicated in Giddens quotation above)
or as the annihilation of space and the compression of our spatial and temporal
worlds (Harvey 1989; see also Waters 1995: 3).
The configurations addressed so far have in common that the double exclusiveness
of geographic and societal space is not questioned or uncoupled substantially; rather,
it is geographically reduced or widened. Even in the globalization approach the
relation between geographic and societal space is thought of as being coherent and
contiguous.2 As Brenner (1999) has argued, globalization research often takes either a
global territorialist or a deterritorialization approach. The former represents global
space in a state-centric manner, as a pregiven territorial container within which
globalization unfolds (Brenner 1999: 59). The other alternative, which he denotes as
the deterritorialization approach, envisions the spatial dimension as losing its
significance altogether. For theorists in this vein, the transition from geographic space
(namely physical place) to cyberspace, and the resultant loss of significance of the
spatial dimension, causes everything to dissolve into a borderless space of flows
(Urry 2001). In contrast to these approaches, both of which presuppose one contiguous geographic space, the following three ideal-types are based on the relativist
concept of one societal space that spans several geographic places. Whereas in the
aforementioned configurations relations between socio-geographic containers are
intensified and their reach widened or reduced, the following configurations involve
contiguous and coherent, dense and durable societal spaces in multi-layered geographic spaces.3
The fifth configuration is a product of critics of the globalization concept. Whereas
globalization discourse often emphasized the disappearance or annihilation of geographic space, the de-territorialization of the societal, or the recession of the
constraints of geography (Waters 1995), the term glocalization (Robertson 1994)
focuses on the dialectics between globalization and localization. Global tendencies
and processes are related to and interconnected with local concentrations of power,
technology, knowledge, money and other resources and occurrences. Also, the
tendency to sweep away some borders often goes hand in hand with drawing new
borders. To perceive globalization as a process aimed solely at gradually reducing the
significance of geographic space and boundaries is to ignore the mounting efforts to
establish new mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion at various territorial levels, or to
deny the locally tangible effects of globalization processes. For instance, global
warming not only has dramatic local effects, it has its origins in locally bounded
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causes (such as the energy consumption patterns of some OECD countries). The same
is true for the global diffusion of fashions and nutrition habits, for the corresponding
decline of isolated local economies, and for the increase in so-called diseases of
civilization. Similarly, the expansion of locally concentrated software economies,
like the one in Bangalore, India, is the result of a more or less globalized market for
special software services (and the very fact that it is located in a time zone that is just
half a day removed from the USA). In sum, glocalization strengthens or produces
pluri-local societal spaces in which globalized/delocalized phenomena and processes
collide with the localized concentration of preconditions and/or effects of such
phenomena and processes. Glocalization involves two geographic levels as sites of
interaction: the global and the local.
The sixth ideal-typical configuration is diaspora-building, which conceives of
diasporas as multi-sited, dense and durable societal spaces with an identifiable (even
if only imagined) centre. Though the term is used in many different ways, the common idea we will stress here is the existence of a shared societal space that spreads
over different geographic spaces and boundaries of regions or nations and that is
constituted mainly with reference to a common motherland or clearly identifiable
centre. The most important historical type of diasporic societal space is the Jewish
experience of dispersion and persecution over many places and nations, in which
references to and images of a common homeland provided the nexus (Cohen 1997).
In a more general sense, the dense and durable societal spaces created by diplomatic
corps or politically persecuted refugees with their homelands could also be considered as diasporas insofar as people in the peripheries (embassies or settlements)
are driven for religious or political reasons to maintain strong loyalty to the sending
centre. In the case of Indian migration towards Australia, Carmen Voigt-Graf (2004)
differentiated between diasporic communities with traditional cultural hearths and
those with new centres.4
Steven Vertovec distinguishes three different meanings of the term diaspora (as a
social form, as a type of consciousness and as a mode of cultural production), and he
defines a diaspora as practically any population which is considered deterritorialized or transnational that is, whose cultural origins are said to have arisen in a
land other than that in which they currently reside, and whose social, economic and
political networks cross borders of nation-states or, indeed, span the globe (Vertovec
2000: 141). For our understanding, this is a very broad concept of diaspora. As we
discussed above, the notion that the societal becomes de-territorialized is highly
questionable. Of course it is important to distinguish different notions of diasporas
according to the quality of societal spaces they embody. However, our purpose here is
to distinguish among ideal-typical configurations of societal and geographic spaces.
This leads us to the seventh and final configuration: transnationalization. This
denotes a growing phenomenon in terms of its quantitative and qualitative significance, one that emphasizes the pluri-local nature of societal relations, networks and
practices. Transnationalization refers to the strengthening or emergence of pluri-local
societal configurations that span above and between the traditional container spaces,
and in which the concentric circles of local, micro-regional, national, macro-regional
and global phenomena are played out. This phenomenon presupposes a relativist con179

Ludger Pries
cept of societal-geographic space, rather than an absolutist one. Thus, transnational
societal spaces can be understood as pluri-local frames of reference that structure
everyday practices, social positions, biographical employment projects and human
identities, and that span locales above, between and beyond the contexts of national
container societies.
Transnationalization as a process consists of relations and interactions that in
some cases strengthen for a while and then dilute again, but it also could lead to the
emergence of relatively stable and durable transnational societal spaces. According to
their level of institutionalization, fixedness or strength, and according to general
sociological understanding, three types of such societal spaces could be distinguished:
(1) habitual and accountable patterns of action and behaviour in transnational everyday life; (2) transnational organizations as stable and dense loci of cooperation and
interaction with rules of membership, given structures and processes, and stated goals
and purposes; or (3) transnational institutions as complex frameworks of routines,
rules and norms, which structure significant terrains of life.5
Transnational societal spaces have been analysed in a wide range of contexts from
migration networks (see Portes et al. 1999 for an overview), migration organizations
(stergaard-Nielsen 2001), business organizations (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989; see
also Carroll and Fennema 2002, Hirsch-Kreinsen 1997) and informal, criminal and
terrorist activities (Passas 2003), to networks of Muslim intellectuals in the eighteenth
century (Reichmuth 2000). Michael Peter Smith (2001: 5) underlined the placemaking aspects of transnational spaces in their geographic and societal dimension in
defining transnationalism as a marker of the criss-crossing transnational circuits of
communication and cross-cutting local, translocal, and transnational social practices
that come together in particular places at particular times and enter into the contested politics of place-making, the social construction of power differentials, and the
making of individual, group, national and transnational identities, and their corresponding fields of difference. Referring to the work of Michael Kearney, Smith
(2001: 3) argues that while the globalization discourse draws attention to social
processes that are largely decentered from specific national territories, as in the case
of Manuel Castells (1998) discussion of globalization(s) as taking place in a space
of flows, research on transnational processes depicts transnational social relations as
anchored in, while also transcending one or more nation-states.
Analytical dimensions of societal spaces
The seven ideal types presented above are not intended to represent separate and
alternative processes. One is not intended to replace or preclude another; rather, it is
conceivable that one or more configurations coexist and influence each other. For
example, ongoing globalization could combine with an increase in re-nationalization
(where the latter could even be an answer to the former). As a consequence, the
twenty-first century cannot be said to be witnessing an annihilation of space but
rather the growing importance of new and more complex configurations of geographic and societal spaces. The societal is not being homogenized into one global
container space but differentiated in terms of socio-spatial relations.

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To increase the analytical potential of the typology presented above, it is
important to add that the processes underlying the socio-spatial configurations can
take place in multiple dimensions, six of which will be addressed here (Table 3).
Perhaps the most significant dimension is the economic one, which encompasses such
aspects as the flow of financial capital, which could be seen as having a globalized
configuration (although it is often concentrated in a few global cities). The second
dimension addressed here is the political one, which often involves issues of
sovereignty and citizenship as they pertain for example to the actions of nation-states
or international organizations such as the UN or NATO, but that also focus on power,
regulation and interest groups.
Anyone strolling through any capital or big city in any part of the world nowadays
will soon come across elements of the third, cultural, dimension. This can involve, for
example, specific patterns of behaviour, such as Ritzers (1993) McDonaldization of
society or the dissemination and consumption of films and television, which shape
patterns and expectations of consumers and citizens. Exposure to such phenomena
may also influence notions of what is regarded as a beautiful and desirable life (for
example the US suburban idyll), or notions about universal human rights and worldwide standards of justice. But changes in the cultural dimension do not have to adopt
an exclusively globalized form; they could go hand in hand with the reinforcement of
national or local or national identities, customs and cultural production.
The fourth dimension concerns social processes, such as international migration or
long-distance tourism, which in a sense interweave the social textures of societal
spaces. In the end, each configuration relies to a certain degree on interpersonal
connections, networks of personal acquaintances and trust. Whereas these four dimensions (economic, political, cultural and social) focus more on practices and symbols
as being constitutive of societal space, the remaining two dimensions (technical and
ecological) deal more directly with societal artefacts.6
Table 3: Ideal-typical socio-geographical configurations and their dimensions
Dimension

economic political cultural

social

technical ecological

Configuration
Inter-nationalization
Supra-nationalization
Re-nationalization
Globalization
Glocalization
Diaspora-building
Transnationalization

The technical dimension encompasses developments such as the improvement of and

increase in affordable communication and transportation technologies. Innovations

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Ludger Pries
such as the Internet would be unimaginable without a global agreement on technical
standards for transmission protocols and infrastructure; at the same time, such
technologies have the power to accentuate regional and supra-national disparities of
opportunities and risks. Finally, there is the ecological dimension. Reports to the Club
of Rome, the Global 2000 study commissioned by the US administration in 1980 and
serious environmental hazards, such as the Chernobyl nuclear accident or the hole in
the ozone layer, have been important milestones in raising awareness worldwide of
common problems that transcend national boundaries. But, as already indicated, even
the ecological dimension does not only apply to the risks of globalization: local
causes, risks and resources mean that there are glocalized elements as well.
Based on the ideal types and dimensions of different configurations of geographical and societal space outlined above, Table 3 provides an example of how
these could be used to analyse international societal phenomena. It allows us, for
instance, to understand and compare the structures and dynamics of international
companies and to develop further the four types of international organizations
proposed by Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989). For example, a company could globalize its
economic activities while simultaneously focusing on a supra-national (EU- or
OECD-related) cultural and knowledge strategy and concentrating on strongly (re-)
nationalized values and norms (like Italian design, French culture or German
technology). The contradictory tendencies contained in the internationalization of the
financial system or of the production and regulation of ecological affairs could be
analysed using a similar approach.
A case study: General Motors
The basic structure and action fields of General Motors (GM) as an international
automobile company exemplify the value of this framework of analysis (see Table 4).
Of particular relevance in this case is the companys cost- and staff-reduction programme, which has been causing harsh conflicts between management and workers
since the middle of 2004. In October 2004, GM announced the reduction of more than
10,000 jobs in western Europe due to severe financial losses incurred by GM Europe
since 2000. The dominant interpretation of these events points to the globalization of
financial markets, the globalized competition between places of production and the
practice of regime shopping as the underlying causes of the situation. But the GM
consortiums overall structural situation and the driving forces and dynamics
influencing its actions are much more complicated. Certainly financial markets
especially the investment strategies for pension funds are almost globalized, and in
the case of GM this has a strong impact on company strategies. However, economic
or financial globalization is not the same for all automobile companies. At Volkswagen, the state of Lower Saxony holds almost a fifth of the shares, and a special
Volkswagen law is in place to hinder the far reaching globalization of shareholders
and financial aspects. At BMW and Ford, family dynasties continue to enjoy strong
financial influence, differentiating, changing and to a certain extent delaying the
pressure of globalized financial markets.

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Configurations of geographic and societal spaces

Table 4: Geographic and societal configuration of GMs structure and action fields
Dimension

economic political

cultural

social

technical ecological

Configuration
Inter-nationalization
Supra-nationalization

NAFTA
EU

Re-nationalization

China/
pensions
Financial
markets

Globalization

Glocalization

Oil price

Diaspora-builing

Centralization

Transnationalization

NAFTA
EU /
EWC
laws
China

Pensions
Internet

Emission
goals/
trade
Centralization

Global
warming/
oil
shortage
CO2
prodution

Central
GSCM
EWC
laws

EWC
laws

In the economic dimension, other factors have to be considered alongside globalization dynamics. The NAFTA region represents an outcome of inter-nationalization,
insofar as stronger economic flows between the three countries have emerged based
on an inter-governmental treaty. This inter-nationalization influenced GM by facilitating the tax-free exchange among GM plants in all three countries. But the NAFTA
side agreements on labour issues (NAALC) have had little impact on expanding
economic inter-nationalization to the political or social dimensions. In contrast to this,
there is a strong tendency towards supra-nationalization in the economic and political
dimensions of GMs operations in the geographical region encompassed by the European Union. A striking example is the possibility, since October 2004, of building a
European joint stock company. In Societas Europae the plants or parts of a company
are considered as part of a European sovereign juridical unit that is subject to European law and jurisprudence. It is interesting that, in the context of crisis and
restructuring, GM Europe has the option to integrate the different plants (in Belgium,
Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden) and brands (Opel,
Saab, Vauxhall) and to shift its European headquarters from Zrich to Brussels. Such
a move to economic and political supra-nationalization would most probably influence the corporate governance structure of the European part of the GM consortium.
In the economic dimension of the current GM situation there are not only aspects
of globalization, inter-nationalization and supra-nationalization, but also aspects of renationalization. This applies, for example (at least until the WTO rules on the matter)
to Chinese national economic policies that forbid free foreign direct investments and
require a minimum of 50 per cent Chinese capital participation. This policy has

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significantly encumbered the growth of GMs market share and production in China
compared with Volkswagen and Toyota. The biggest car manufacturer in the world,
GM, was reluctant to accept these strong national rules as a precondition for early
entry into the fastest growing region of the world. At the same time, some national
specificities in its native USA began to have a stronger influence on the companys
economic situation and scope of financial strategies: the pension and healthcare
obligations GM accumulated towards its former workers in 2003 were greater than
the shareholders and debtors claims. Although GM tried to pass at least a part of its
private pension and healthcare burden to the public or state sector, it was met with
strong political and social resistance at the national level. The centreperiphery
structure of GM with its powerful headquarters in Detroit meant that the compromise
GM made with its former and current workers in the USA had to be constructed in the
US context, hindering a free shift of the corporations power centre to another
location. The alternative of adopting a regime shopping strategy can only be realized
in the periphery (for instance, between Germany and Poland). It should be mentioned
that GM Europes financial problems are deeply intertwined with these very national
(US) economic aspects of the GM company as a whole.
At the same time, the globalization of technical communication mediums like the
Internet, of the effects of global warming and of (perceived) global oil shortages has
glocalized economic and market effects, for instance on the oil price and on national
policies on CO2-emissions and emissions trading. Whereas in Europe fuel-efficient
and diesel cars have an increasing market share (41 per cent of all new cars were
diesel-driven in 2002), this has not been the case in the USA (only about 1 per cent of
all cars were diesel-driven in 2002). In the same period, 51 per cent of all new cars in
the USA were four-wheel-drive or Sport Utility Vehicles with high fuel consumption
rates, whereas only about 11 per cent of new cars in the European Union belonged to
this category. These different national or macro-regional economic outcomes of more
or less homogeneous global ecological tendencies are important for explaining the
GM crisis. One broadly accepted reason for the GM crisis in Europe is the lack of an
adequate and adaptable product strategy for a macro-regional geographical area that
differs completely from the USA context in terms of socio-cultural consumer preferences and responses to global challenges.
But these national and macro-regional differences between the USA and Europe
could not be recognized and treated adequately by the GM consortium as a whole, due
to a pronounced centralization process in the areas of management and decisionmaking. Although Opel, Saab and Vauxhall had long remained relatively independent
of other companies in the GM consortium, GM headquarters in Detroit began to
centralize its European activities in the 1990s. This involved creating a European
headquarters in Zrich that would function as a staff office without the powers to
operate as an autonomous, strategy-defining and decision-making unit. Alongside this
economic and organizational centralization, the institution of Global Supply Chain
Management (GSCM) as reflected, for example, by the supplier squeezing
practices of purchasing expert Ignacio Lpez furthered the process of centralization.
Thus, economic management centralization took the form of diaspora-building,
accentuating a centre/periphery configuration.
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Configurations of geographic and societal spaces

Some transnationalization tendencies can also be observed in the geographic
configuration of GM Europes space of operations. The GM European works council
(EWC) was founded in 1996 as the European Workers Forum and includes representatives from the Opel assembly plants in Belgium, Germany, Poland, Portugal and
Spain, as well as delegates from Vauxhall in the United Kingdom and Saab in
Sweden. The power train plants in Austria, France and Hungary are represented, as is
the European GM distributors network. After years of meeting only once a year to
exchange information, GMs EWC has developed into a real transnational societal
space with its own social, cultural, political and economic dimensions. Most
importantly, there is no clear hegemonic power centre, but a societal space that is
constructed through negotiation, communication and trust, and that is based on common social and cultural values and causes that place emphasis on defining common
interests and preserving a minimum of solidarity. The most important common cause
in this respect was a labour conflict in 2000 and 2001, which erupted over the
proposed closure of the Vauxhall plant in Luton. The EWC organized a Europe-wide
campaign based on the demands that no plant be closed and that no dismissals take
place. In the course of this action, the supra-national EWC law led to the creation of a
transnational socio-cultural space in which intra- and inter-organizational bargaining
played a decisive role (in both the 2000/1 conflict and the Olympia plan in 2002).
Without considering the multiple dimensions of this conflict and the geographicalsocietal configurations of its reach, it is difficult to understand either the dynamics of
the global pressures acting on the company or the European, national and local
strategies developed as a response (Pries 2004).
Concluding remarks
Inter-nationalization, supra-nationalization, re-nationalization, globalization, glocalization, diaspora-building and transnationalization are important processes that could
lead to the emergence of new dense and durable societal spaces. These could evolve
according to the absolutist container model of contiguous, mutually embedded and
exclusive geographic and societal spaces or following the relativistic model of dense
and durable societal spaces that span over the borders of demarcated geographic
spaces. One important challenge for the social sciences is to construct and give
meaning to the units of reference and analysis used in theoretical modelling and
empirical studies. The national society embedded in its nation-state obviously cannot
remain the single and unquestioned framework of reference, as the critique of
methodological nationalism has shown. On the other hand, even if societal relations,
configurations and spaces have probably become more fluid (Castells 1998; Urry
2001), they cannot dissolve and vanish into global air, or become limited to the
realms of cyberspace.
The challenge of manoeuvring between the Scylla of methodological nationalism
and the postmodern Charybdis of global flows and cosmopolitism without space
involves determining which geographic-spatial units of analysis are appropriate for
which type of societal phenomenon or problem. The national container society can
no longer be taken for granted as the natural unit of social analysis; however,

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Ludger Pries
dissolving societal spaces with relatively stable and dense structures and order into
the notion of uncontained flows is neither a satisfying nor an empirically feasible
option.
Furthermore, a broad notion of societal space is required to overcome the
deficiencies of other approaches. A given societal space must be regarded as a
dense and durable configuration of social practices, systems of symbols and
artefacts. It can either extend over one contiguous geographic space or span plurilocally different geographic spaces. This definition provides a means of avoiding
the pitfalls of behaviourist theories, which tend to undervalue artefacts and
symbols, and system and constructivist theories, which often underestimate
artefacts. Observable social practices defined by Giddens (1996) as both routines
and innovation are structured by and restructure these artefacts and systems of
symbols.
Starting with such a broad definition of societal spaces, it is possible to construct
socially and sociologically relevant units of analysis and reflection without having to
presuppose ultimate definitions of societal units like community or national society.
According to the classical reasoning of John Stuart Mill, two conditions should be
fulfilled in order to construct or identify societal spaces: (1) the commonality of
features (of the aspects and variables considered as important) within the societal
space should be significantly greater than the commonality of features shared by it
and other societal units; and (2) the differences (among aspects and variables considered as important) within the societal space should be significantly less than those
between it and other societal units. Based on these general considerations, it will
remain the task of future research to show whether flexible typologies of societalgeographic configurations can serve, in combination with a broad definition of what
constitutes societal space, to construct units that can withstand these most basic
demands of empirical research.
Finally, ongoing debates about the significance of globalization and transnationalization as societal forces could gain a measure of precision from a methodological approach that takes into consideration these and other processes of
transformation, as well as the different dimensions of human activity affected by
them. As shown above, it is the coexistence of and interaction among different
forces at different levels that define a social actors scope of action. Until the 1980s,
dominant discourses heralded an era of economic, technical and cultural globalization. This perspective was later tempered and differentiated by notions of glocalization and transnationalism from below. Now transnational social relations have
reached a critical mass and have combined with other forces of social change,
such as the push of new communication and transportation technologies and transnational organizations, as well as the pull of international mass tourism and the
global presence of mass media organizations. After September 2001, it is no longer
appropriate to think of transnationalism as simply a good thing from below
against the bad globalization from above. Transnationalism has many faces,
including cross-border sex trafficking, crime, smuggling, regime shopping and
terrorism. Just as small portions of yeast are sufficient to influence a greater mass of
dough, transnational societal spaces could have great impact on the dynamics of
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Configurations of geographic and societal spaces

local, micro-regional, national, macro-regional and global life. The challenge of
determining which processes influence which dimension of activity in a given
situation is significant; how this can be accomplished most effectively remains to be
seen.
Ludger Pries
Department of Sociology
Ruhr-University Bochum
Gebude GB 04/47
44780 Bochum
Germany
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Jennifer Elrick for her critical reading and suggestions on content and
language. The anonymous reviewers made substantial comments and suggestions based on a
previous version. I appreciate the fruitful virtual cooperation but feel completely responsible for
all errors this article might include. Furthermore, I am grateful for the feedback I received from
Peggy Levitt, Sanjeev Khagram and other participants at the conference entitled Beyond the
National and the Global: Transnational Organizations and Institutions, held in Cambridge,
MA, 1113 November, 2004.

Notes
1. Other aspects of and differentiations between the geographic-spatial configurations such
as social distance, spatial distribution, density, front stage/back stage, hierarchy and centre
periphery relation cannot be addressed here.
2. This is also the general spatial connotation of the term civilization as stated by Braudel
(1993: 10): Civilizations, vast or otherwise, can always be located on a map. An essential
part of their character depends on the constraints or advantages of their geographical
situation.
3. As geographic-spatial figures and referring to cultural practices spanning the geographic
terrains of civilizations, Lewis and Wigen (1997: 1523) distinguish four useful ideal
types: (1) the middle ground as a type of contested terrain where no cultural hegemony
has been established and where diasporas serve as important ties that facilitate economic
and cultural exchange; (2) the diaspora constituted by maintaining a common identity over
daunting distances, such as transnational communities serving as important conduits for
cross-cultural trade (see also Cohen 1997); (3) archipelagos as enclaves of a given
culture group [like] the millions of Arabic-speaking Christians scattered through the Middle
East or Mandarin-speaking Muslims in the heart of China; and (4) the cultural matrix type
of boundary-crossing social practices as something akin to cultural syncretism, hybridity or
a patchwork identity. Thus, in a matrix model, identity is a matter of ones position in a
multidimensional lattice.
4. At the same time, she equates diaspora-building with transnationalization, whereas in our
terms, only her last case, Transnational spaces following a secondary migration without a
new centre (Figure 12) (Voigt-Graf 2004: 42) could be viewed as a transnational societal
space.

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Ludger Pries
5. The distinction between everyday life, organizations and institutions is based on the durability and density of social relations and differs from Peggy Levitts (2001: 203) definition
of institutions wherein organizations are just a subtype of the former. After extensive use of
the community concept to characterize transnational societal spaces (Levitt 2001; Smith
1995), Wheeler (2004) recently proposed applying the Weberian ideal typical distinction of
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to the field of (ethnic and civic) transnationalism.
Considering the strong affinity of the term Gesellschaft/society to the national container
society concept, it would seem more fruitful to differentiate between: (1) everyday life (as
defined by Berger and Luckmann 1980 and Schtz 1993); (2) organizations; and (3)
institutions, defined as increasingly durable and dense accumulations of social practices,
symbols and artefacts.
6. In criticism of overly constructivist and immaterial approaches, Linde (1972 and 1982)
underlined the general relevance of artefacts for sociological analysis. Recently, Urry
(2004) took up the small world thinking in the sciences to emphasize material worlds as a
precondition and increasingly structuring condition for the social fluidities he described in
earlier work (Urry 2001).

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