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Transnational spaces and everyday lives

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.

David Ley
This paper discusses some of the limitations of the global city hypothesis, in particular
its economistic tendencies, the suppression of political and cultural domains, and the
underdevelopment of human agency and everyday life. It tries to establish more fully
the identities of global subjects. Examining two sets of global actors, transnational
businessmen and cosmopolitan professionals, it argues that the expansive reach and mastery
imputed to global subjects, their flight from the particular and the partisan, their
dominance and freedom from vulnerability, are far from complete. The separation of the
global and the local and the ascription of mobility and universalism to the global and
stasis and parochialism to the local is an oversimplification, for an optic of transnational
global spaces should not conceal the intersecting reality of circumscribed everyday lives.

key words global city global–local transnationalism cosmopolitanism hybridity


immigrants gentrification

Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
email: dley@geog.ubc.ca

revised manuscript received 27 April 2004

Introduction enterprise. This ideology was exported through


American political and economic power and
In periodizing the past, only a few decades emerge the punitive actions of the World Bank and the
as more or less capable of sustaining distinct and International Monetary Fund to debtor nations in
coherent narratives. If the 1930s have been forever the developing world.
sullied by the spectre of world depression and the With considerable acuity, Peter Dicken’s Global
1960s animated by a range of social movements shift (1986) engaged the economic geography of
to advance human rights, the 1980s were this transnational world in flux as it was unfolding.
appropriated by the remarkable hegemony of The book’s subtitle, Industrial change in a turbulent
Reagan–Thatcher neo-liberalism. Their occupation world, perhaps alluded too directly to the old econ-
of office throughout the decade – Ronald Reagan omy of goods rather than the new economy that
was American President from 1981 to 1989 and added financial services and the broader service
Margaret Thatcher prevailed as British Prime economy to the vocabulary of economic geography,
Minister from 1979 to 1990 – provided a seamless and this emphasis was corrected by the second
containment of the 1980s by a radical neo-liberal edition that more inclusively identified in its
political economy and a neo-conservative political subtitle The internationalization of economic activity
culture. The unexpected collapse of the Soviet (Dicken 1992). For it was the service economy that
empire at the end of the decade seemed to many was driving economic and job growth in most
to consolidate and legitimate these innovations Western societies, and 1986 was also the year of
and propelled them with fresh momentum into London’s big bang, the deregulation of the City’s
the 1990s, even as the guard changed at the financial sector that led to its rapid reconfiguration
White House and Downing Street. Privatization, in new and expanding trade and financial markets.
deregulation, partnerships with the private The decade saw a marked growth in producer
sector, cutbacks to the welfare state, a disciplinary services, notably but not exclusively in the head
relationship with labour, and promises to offices of transnational corporations and their
downsize government were all part of a new entourage of business services in the principal
lexicon that seemingly liberated the spirit of free metropolitan centres.

Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 29 151–164 2004


ISSN 0020 -2754 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2004
152 David Ley
A second 1986 publication of great intellectual politics of transnationalism, thereby complicating
reach that sought to interrogate the space economy the apparently invincible identities of transnational
of neo-liberalism was John Friedmann’s (1986) subjects well-endowed in human capital. Third, in
highly compressed argument in ‘The world city bringing together the global and the local I aim
hypothesis’, where he identified a hierarchy of to show the particularity and partiality of those
cities, headed by London, New York and Tokyo, that cosmopolitans who populate a world seemingly
were implicated in the global transformations of without borders. We will see that the complex
economic activity. Friedmann extended the range simplicity of geographical difference both empowers
of the discussion by considering not only the eco- but also impales a global reach, for what is gained
nomic characteristics of what he called world cities, by lowered transaction costs and the putative expan-
but also some social and political consequences of sion of borderless space continues to be taken away
economic restructuring. He identified in particular by the tyranny of distance and the particularity of
the development of a socially polarized population place.
that generated a surfeit of problems that over-
whelmed a fast retreating welfare state. The
socio-spatial polarization accompanying world city
Globe talk
formation was treated at length a few years later The power of neo-liberal hegemony and the abiding
by Saskia Sassen (1991) in her analysis of economic influence of early interpretive accounts have created
and spatial restructuring in the three primary a dense presence of what Roland Robertson
global cities. But ahead of her and closer to daily (1992) has called ‘globe talk’, a master discourse
experience in New York was Tom Wolfe’s block- reproduced in intellectual, policy and corporate
buster novel, The bonfire of the vanities (1987), which circles on both the political right and the political
explored the polarized social worlds of Wall Street left.1 John Friedmann’s (1986) seven characteristics
and the Bronx, a global hearth of high finance co- of a global city – its position in the international
existing with the local miseries of an underclass division of labour, its role as an articulation or
district, a world of excess contrasted with the cul- ‘basing point’ in the organization and production
ture of concentrated poverty. Wolfe brought to life of markets, its dual labour force, its locus of capital
the post-industrial global city and its emblematic accumulation from real estate and stock markets,
(if sometimes caricatured) figures just as Charles its function as an immigrant destination, its social
Dickens had done for industrial London. The book’s and spatial polarization, and its social problems
principal character, Sherman McCoy, chief bond that exceed management strategies – these have
trader for a Wall Street firm, thought of himself proven a seemingly endless source of inspiration
as a master of the universe. for subsequent research. Although Friedmann’s
This paper is concerned with the Sherman interpretation was guided by neo-Marxist authors,
McCoys and their social geographies in the global including Manuel Castells, David Harvey and
city, with transnational cosmopolitan elites who Immanuel Wallerstein, his work has been impor-
have risen in visibility and power in the neo-liberal tant for research from varied positions, including
era. While there is a large literature on the eco- critical treatments of social problems and con-
nomic and functional relations of world city servative renditions of the entrepreneurial city. The
formation, much less has been written on the continuing debate on social polarization in global
subjectivities of world city elites (but see Hannerz cities (Hamnett 2003) and the ongoing efforts to
1996; Olds 1997 1998). As Yeoh observes, ‘the bulk establish functional networks of cities (Beaverstock
of current work focuses on the urban impress of et al. 2000) are only two of a number of themes
economic globalization’ (1999, 609). By invoking articulated by Friedmann.
the masters of the universe, I hope to achieve Less obviously a number of the theoretical
several objectives in this paper. First, I wish to assumptions of globe talk have also been repro-
bring the issue of human agency to a globalization duced (Meyer 2003). The economism of Thatcher–
discourse that has frequently been satisfied with Reagan ideology was reproduced by the critical
speaking of a space of networks and flows devoid political economy of the 1980s. Friedmann noted
of knowledgeable human agents. Second, I hope that in his schema ‘The economic variable, how-
to problematize the economism of the globaliza- ever, is likely to be decisive for all attempts
tion literature by bringing it against the cultural at explanation’ (1986, 69), and this presumption
Transnational spaces and everyday lives 153
guided his commentary. Centrally planned econ- cities. While much attention is given to producer
omies, notably the Soviet Union and China, were services, there is oversight in addressing the very
excluded from the world city network, as were significant role of public sector employment.
metropolitan areas such as Washington or Brussels Sassen (1991, 202), for example, commits a single
that were not well-represented by the corporate head sentence to ‘government employment’ in New York,
office complex. Ironically, and especially during although it accounted for 600 000 jobs in 1987, a
the Cold War, Washington and Moscow should higher figure than was employed in finance, insur-
have been identified as the primary command and ance and real estate, while the city administration
control centres in the world, but world city theory alone was expending over US$25 billion in 1989
was not attentive to geopolitical power, or saw it as in public services (Brecher and Horton 1991, 109).
not theoretically separate from economic power. Canadian data add three further points to the
Even recent work continues to sustain such reduc- importance of the welfare state in global cities,
tionism. Sklair’s important study of transnational even in the limited role of employer (Ley 1996):
capitalists proceeds from the position that ‘the state public sector jobs (government and health, educa-
acts like the executive committee of the bour- tion and welfare services) typically contain a
geoisie’ (2001, 14). In contrast, Dicken (1994) sees higher share of well-paying positions; second, they
transnational corporations as both locked in competi- contain a higher proportion of women in profes-
tive struggle as well as engaging in collaborative sional and managerial positions; and third affirma-
initiatives with nation states. tive action programmes have benefited not only
With a reductionist optic, there is little theoretical women but also racial minorities.2 Attention to the
space for politics and especially nation-state politics. role of the welfare state as employer would signifi-
Sklair observes the need ‘to make a decisive break cantly revise the overlapping class, gender and
with state-centrism’ (2001, 16) and this predilection racial profiles usually associated with the labour
runs through much of the globalization literature. market of the global city (McDowell 1997).
Castells in particular has held to this viewpoint in Culture is also given short shrift in the global
his writing during the 1990s, observing that cities literature. Theoretically, it is regarded as
derivative of economic conditions and often tend-
nation states are too small to control and direct the ing toward the global homogeneity of coca-culture.
global flows of power, wealth and technology of the
Sklair’s (2001) discussion of a global culture of
new system, and too big to represent the plurality of
consumption as the project of the dominant trans-
social interests and cultural identities of society. (Borja
and Castells 1997, 5) national capitalist class combines both of these
tendencies. This is a broader feature of a structuralist
thereby losing legitimacy in both domains. A post- tradition in political economy, in which culture is
national position emphasizes that ‘globalization reduced to the outworking of the imperatives of
limits the sovereignty of the state’ (Carnoy and global capital. An oft-cited example of this position
Castells 2001, 12). Other authors pursuing more is the literature on the gentrification of inner city
conventional economic modelling are drawn to housing markets in New York or London, where
celebrate the transcendence of the state and its neo-Marxist positions reject the play of the prefer-
annoying regulatory structures before the dominant ences and identity formation of an emergent new
command and control functions of corporate head middle class, preferring to collapse cultural vari-
offices (Andersson and Andersson 2000). But a ables before the all-encompassing steamroller of
European counter to the US-inspired global cities property capital (Hamnett 2003). Of course, there
paradigm has argued that the projection of a minimal have been numerous attempts by urban boosters
welfare state is the projection of an American present, to harness culture for the purposes of economic
and in Western Europe redistribution and labour development (Zukin 1995; Deutsche 1996). The
market regulations have created a social profile that ‘arts means business’ lobby has fine-tuned a use of
does not incorporate the same social polariza- the arts as tools in urban redevelopment strategies.
tion that is evident in the United States (Esping- At a grander scale, world cities and aspiring world
Andersen 1993; Hamnett 2003). cities have learned the lesson of the spectacle in
Neglect of the welfare state and its policies is their efforts to lasso hallmark events such as world
evident even in heavily empirical accounts of fairs or global sports and athletic events. But
labour markets and employment sectors in world culture reaches much deeper than such transparent
154 David Ley
efforts at cooptation, and it is only the thinnest movements as resistant to the impulses of corporate
of descriptions that contains cultural forms and pro- forays, he sees them as too weak and isolated to
cesses within reductionist categories. Such treat- bear significant political results.
ment of cultural forms as merely epiphenomenal This critical review of theoretical themes on global
has been detected and widely challenged in David cities leads to several conclusions that will inform
Harvey’s (1989) theses on global capital. Michael the remainder of this paper.3 First, Friedmann’s
Peter Smith, for example, notes how Harvey’s short commentary has proven extraordinarily
‘argument follows a “logic of capital” formula in fruitful as a condensed account of contemporary eco-
which culture is produced by economy, the nomic processes that are re-shaping labour markets
former is chaotic, the latter is coherent, and both and international flows in and out of large cities
ultimately are driven by the logic of capital’ plugged into global networks. But, second, as a
(2001, 28). political economy monologue, the discourse is
The suppression or neglect of human agency is incomplete, with insufficient attention to geopolitics,
an inherent part of the privileging of a global polit- political interventions at a range of scales and the
ical economy. Soja’s (1989) review of the surveil- messy realm of urban cultures. Third, the disap-
lant state in Los Angeles is a view from above that pearance of urban citizens playing all manner of
disregards the experience on the street and the roles in everyday life accompanies the deployment
character of everyday life. The voices of the dwell- of a supra-human transnational space of flows. In
ers of the global city are strangely absent in the the empirical discussion to follow, an attempt will
seminal texts and are thereby unable to complicate be made to fill these missing conceptual domains.
the clarity of theoretical claims. This epistemol- But before that, something needs to be said about
ogical detachment has come under strong criticism, geographical scale, and the apparent conceptual
particularly from feminist authors who have chal- divide of global and local.
lenged the view from above as gendered and akin
to the hubris of the male gaze (Deutsche 1996). In
her expansive foil to the global cities literature,
Beyond global–local
Janet Abu-Lughod, like other women New Yorkers Consideration of scale has always been a central
(or former New Yorkers) Rosalyn Deutsche and topic in geographical lore, for example in earlier
Jane Jacobs, prefers the immanence of the street discussions of site and situation in urban
level, bodily encounter with the city: ‘. . . cities must morphogenesis. The development of globe talk has
be directly experienced. Writing about them is only accentuated the centrality of scale and in particular
the weakest substitute for being in them’ (1999, 426). has encouraged the emergence of an ontological
In short, there is need to explore more fully what binary dividing the local from the global. At its
‘living the global city’ is all about (Eade 1997). simplest the global is regarded as the space of
The abrogation of agency leaves a spectre of sameness, and the local with places of difference.
inevitability to urbanism in a global age. The In discussing their engagement, Appadurai has
absence of agents liberates teleological aspects of observed ‘the mutual effort of sameness and
globalization discourse that see a city’s destiny as difference to cannibalize one another’ (1990, 308).
fixed, sometimes even unavoidable, before the Abu-Lughod is critical of the imputed sameness of
global space of flows, an interpretation that has the world city genre, claiming in contrast that the
been internalized all too often by policymakers and largest American cities are characterized not by
politicians in their pursuit of the place marketing sameness but by ‘unique qualities’ (1999, 396). If
strategies of business elites (for example, Cochrane globalization means sameness and localization
et al. 1996). A sense that globalization is insidious means difference (1999, 417– 8), her argument,
and beyond resistance accompanies the impersonal sceptical of the global city model, is that large
and anonymous treatment of economic process. Even American cities are distinctive because they are in
attempts to introduce agency are either incomplete effect made in the USA, with no more than a small
or fatalistic. Sklair (2001) rejects the impersonality fraction of their visible character attributable to
of globalization processes, but the only agents he globalization.
introduces are those of the transnational capitalist Smith (2001) has thoroughly discussed this dual-
class with their predictable objectives of capital ism, and has noted how each member of the global–
accumulation. While Harvey (1989) identifies social local binary has been allocated a distinctive set
Transnational spaces and everyday lives 155
of attributes. Globalization theory constructs the and the global so closely intertwined that shifts in
global as a space that is dynamic, thrusting, open, scale are unavoidable, but also that strategic scale
rational, cosmopolitan and dominant, while the shifts occur as, for example, nation states download
local is communitarian, authentic, closed, static, costs to local government and social movements,
nostalgic, defensive (but ultimately defenceless) like Greenpeace, internationalize.
and the site of ethnic, sexual, regional and other In everyday life to say that the global and the
fragmentary identities. Culture is located in the local are interwoven is commonplace. A survey of
locality, economy in the global (Cvetokovich and residents in a South London borough showed
Kellner 1997). Some authors have seen a gendering pervasive linkages outside the borough and outside
of the two terms, where the local is feminized and England, so that locality should not be regarded as
weak and the global masculinized and powerful static and contained but as fluid and dispersed,
(Freeman 2001). Importantly in such a schema, where ‘distance is measured by biographical “rele-
economic and technological power occupies global vance” ’ (Durrschmidt 1997, 70). Emotional sites may
spaces, while meaning and increasingly politics are be in geographically distant places, so that people
local. Smith (2001, 104) challenges the ringing dualism live a kind of polycentredness, requiring multiple
of Castells (1984, 236), he wrote ‘On the one hand site ethnographies. This is especially the case in
the space of power is being transformed into flows. districts with transnational residents. In German
On the other hand, the space of meaning is being cities, for example, concentrations of Turkish resi-
reduced to microterritories of new tribal commu- dents exemplify transnational linkages through the
nities’. Even if this was the symbolic topography culture of the mosque, through the maze of satellite
viewed from the global observation towers of Wall discs on the sides of apartment buildings accessing
Street and the Pentagon before September 2001, it Turkish television, through telephone calling out-
is no longer. For now it is Wall Street and the lets with their rows of cubicles advertising cheap
Pentagon that are battened down, as the self-declared rates home, as well as through restaurants and
land of freedom appears vulnerable, protected other stores providing homeland products. Such
within the cordon of homeland security. Despite polycentredness may be read from the landscapes
NAFTA’s objective to open borders to trade and of every major city today. It was also prevalent in
labour flows, the northern boundary of the United the comings and goings from colonial cities in
States is buttressed by increased surveillance and the past, as European outposts supported active
new tariff walls, the southern boundary by barbed memories of home. Singapore, for example, has
wire and armed patrols. Beyond is a global enemy maintained much of its British colonial replica
in punctiform local spaces, spaces of hostile meaning, landscape, including the botanical gardens, the
unpredictable, potentially ubiquitous. The invisible cricket field, the Anglican cathedral and adminis-
hand of the global market has been compromised trative buildings (Huang et al. 1995), each of them
by the invisible hand of international terror and has evidence of a displaced cultural Britishness, of
muddied a simplistic global–local dualism. what today we might call a broader transnational
The limitations of the global–local dichotomy field. In temperate white settler societies the
have led to a number of theoretical adjustments. cultural transfer could be more complete, and cities
There is a need to re-incorporate other scales, like Auckland, Sydney or Toronto might assemble
including the regional, the national and the supra- a fuller repertoire of old world cultural forms.
national but not yet global, such as the European These forms were not inert containers but actively
Union and other continental-scale trading net- recharged the memories of home, in an important
works. As Cox (1997) and others have noted, some sense transferred home into unfamiliar and distant
transnational corporations are deeply embedded in territory. Home, the most localized of geographical
national markets and are not readily footloose. scales, became global, transported overseas in
National boundaries still exert significant pressures the fabric of a craftsman cottage, a Tudor revival
for locational stability; deterritorialization is not house, the labours in the rose garden, the social life
without cost and not for every economic activity. on the cricket field or lawn bowling club, worship
Moreover, jumping scales is an important necessity in the Anglican parish church. The power of this
both in explanation and in political practice. Swyn- transnational identity in the British dominions
gedouw (1997) carries this argument forward in could not have been more fully demonstrated than
asserting not only the necessity of seeing the local in the remarkable extent of voluntary enlistment to
156 David Ley
fight in European wars, or in the extravagant cele- as local, family-bound, cultural and vulnerable.
brations at the arrival of visiting royalty (Ley 1995). In this reversal of the post-colonial genre, it is the
In such examples it is difficult to separate local colonist who bears the unfamiliar subjectivity
from global, for identity, expressed in sentiment of victim. From a new angle the global traveller
and action, is itself extended, stretched across has assumed an expanded identity, an identity that
space and distributed among two or several widely includes local vulnerability.
separated sites. If such actors are transnational, are This is precisely the story of Sherman McCoy,
they local or cosmopolitan? Tom Wolfe’s master of the universe. His mastery,
Smith (2001) has used similar examples to pro- we learn, is extraordinarily localized. This warrior
vide a comprehensive challenge to the idea of the of the Internet and fibre optic cables may know
global city. Like Abu-Lughod (1999) he finds the his way around the virtual spaces of the Tokyo,
global city to be a conceptual model rather than an London and New York financial markets, but he is
empirical object, but goes further in rejecting it as a ill-prepared in his own back yard to navigate the
reified form, the projection of unsound theoretical unknown real territories of the Bronx. As he rides
categories. A primary task is to rescue locality from the rapids of a Bronx freeway off-ramp, he runs
the communitarian, traditional and contained aground in a fearful world he can scarcely under-
status it labours under. Rather, in a transnational stand and minimally control, a world that eventu-
district, residents with variable levels of global reach ally through a series of rapacious intermediaries
‘may hardly know of their neighbours’ existence’ conspires to achieve his downfall.
(Albrow 1997, 53). In a sustained analysis Smith An identity of command and control is no
shows not only that the local is far from defence- guarantee of domination either for individuals or
less and may deflect and distort global initiatives, for cities. Japan’s bubble economy exploded in
but also that many agencies and processes are not the early 1990s with devastating consequences for
contained within any single scale. Transnationalism Tokyo’s banking and real estate corporations, pre-
from below means that flows of people, capital, cipitating a recession that has yet to lift. New York,
information and power move across borders and arguably the most dominant of the world cities,
between scales, reconstituting society and space was not long ago on the edge of bankruptcy, while
as they are themselves reconstituted. This scale Los Angeles in the early 1990s was a victim of capital
jumping is sufficiently broadly distributed that flight, afflicted simultaneously by deindustrial-
Smith (2001) presents the transnational city as ization that hollowed out its old industrial base,
a more accurate heuristic than the global city for and the end of the Cold War that led to sharp dis-
thinking about contemporary urbanism. investment in the aerospace and affiliated high
But if the local is successfully rescued from its technology sectors. As Smith wryly observed, with
limited theoretical position, and becomes open to the loss of 240 000 jobs between 1989 and 1993, ‘Los
transnational economic, political and cultural Angeles has been on the receiving rather than the
activities, internally diverse, and peopled by active sending end of “global commands and controls”’
citizens, where does this leave the global? What (2001, 83). Housing markets as well as labour
might be implicit in Smith’s account, I now wish to markets in world cities are also beset by instability.
make explicit. In a transnational paradigm, the The house price cycle displays exaggerated booms
global and the local may dissolve into closely related and busts compared with more gradual changes in
versions of each other. house price trajectories in less globally connected
markets (Ley and Tutchener 2001). Fully exposed
(as Friedmann noted) to international property
The global is also the local capital flows, there is an amplification in the range
In his ethnography of colonial Sri Lanka, James between high and low tides. These vigorous real
Duncan (2000) tells the tragic story of a European estate oscillations are accompanied by a frenzied
tea planter whose two young children died soon psychology. The boom years expose acute afforda-
after settlement when a poisonous local plant was bility problems, financial over-extension, specula-
inadvertently added to their dinner meal. In this tion and entrepreneurial animation; but they are
account, Duncan has upset the normal convention followed as night follows day by the bust years of
for thinking about colonists as mobile, know- negative property equity, personal and business
ledgeable, economic, male and invincible, and natives debt and bankruptcy, and a mood of despondency.
Transnational spaces and everyday lives 157
My intent here is not to deny the capacity of geographic concentration, particularly for such activi-
actors and cities claiming a global reach, but to ties as banking, law and advertising where there
round out their characters more fully, and in so are significant global linkages (Walker and Taylor
doing to muddy the overdrawn distinctions with nd). Among the reasons for co-location are the
the characterization of the local. I will develop this need for face-to-face meetings and the desire of
argument further in two extended examples top managers in this contact-intensive sub-culture
considering transnational businessmen and cosmo- to restrict the length of their travel, for a trip of as
politan professionals, typically regarded as global much as 15 minutes to a meeting is resented (Gad
actors charged with urbane rationality. We will see 1991). Revealing the soft underside of top down-
that metaphors of domination need to be mingled town management, where anxiety seems to be a
with metaphors of vulnerability, images of global constant companion of hubris, Gad continues:
reach with those of parochialism, a discourse of
detachment with one of partisanship. But the speed of circulation is not the only factor that
keeps these men and women tied to a small area. They
worry a great deal about the threat of being out of
Transnational businessmen4 touch, about not keeping up with news, about not
keeping up with peers, about missing a deal, about not
What is the social geography of the masters of the being available when a demanding customer calls.
universe? Some of the literature suggests that the (1991, 207)
transnational capitalist class rarely touches down
on earth. ‘I can live anywhere in the world, but As these global players beat the bounds of their
it must be near an airport’ declared a transna- downtown parish, is their spatial behaviour global
tional Chinese entrepreneur on the West Coast or local, neither or both? Their geographical bound-
(Ong 1999, 135). It is asserted that the erosion edness is exaggerated when transnational business-
of transaction costs and the increasing flexibility men are sent overseas on postings that on average
of citizenship arrangements have created an may last as little as two years in a particular global
‘ungrounded’ or ‘deterritorialized’ transnational city (Beaverstock 2003). Foreshortened time and
class moving at will and occupying virtually space create a circumscribed lifeworld around
undifferentiated space. Ong has in mind the work, bars, and sporting and expatriate clubs.
evasion of national territories but does not examine Particularly in non-Western postings, very little
smaller spatial settings, and challenging this interaction occurs with the locally born outside
sense of an undifferentiated geography is the work (Beaverstock 2002). The outcome is a
work world of transnational businessmen which lifeworld that is the opposite of the expansive
comprises a distinctive local place. Zhou and Tseng and inclusive networks implied by ungrounded or
(2001) have shown how grounded and spatially deterritorialized networks. Instead, the social
concentrated is the network of co-ethnic Chinese- geography of the transnational elite may be highly
American professional services in Los Angeles localized, restricted to particular territories. As
upon which trans-Pacific business activities depend; they are despatched internationally from city to
indeed, in assembling dense local networks of business city, the transnational capitalist class are island
services they see ‘localization as a deliberate and hopping from one expatriate enclave to another.
central strategy to the vitality of transnational The tyranny of distance and the particularities of
networks and practices’ (2001, 136). place continue to unsettle agents with a putatively
At an abstract level, Amin and Thrift (1992) have global reach. In recent years a good deal has been
also noted the tendency toward economic clusters made of the power of overseas ethnic Chinese
to form in ‘place-bound communities’ in the global entrepreneurs, cosmopolitan capitalists (Hamilton
economy. While the easing of transaction costs has 1999), globally networked (Mitchell 1993),
in general lessened the role of geographic proxim- ungrounded (Ong and Nonini 1997), claiming the
ity as a factor in agglomeration in post-industrial mantle of homo economicus (Ong 1999). Their
economies (Andersson and Andersson 2000; Phelps espousal of the free market, unfettered individual
and Ozawa 2003), the concentration of the corpor- rights and the desire for minimal state regulation
ate complex of economic activities remains nota- identify them within the ideology of neo-liberal-
ble. Maps of business and financial services in ism, while their entrepreneurial competence has
central London show a clear tendency toward been much sought after by host states (Ley 2003a).
158 David Ley
Their recruitment through business immigration fund to qualify for citizenship. With declared assets
programmes, notably in Canada and Australia, of well over a million dollars they have abundant
represented a bold move by the state to engage funds to establish a business and begin settlement.
neo-liberal global forces by looking outside Ethnic Chinese immigrants, the major source of
national borders for entrepreneurs with significant business immigration, have moved rapidly into
human and financial capital who could be enticed homeownership, although in Vancouver they are
into becoming economically productive national encountering Canada’s most expensive housing
citizens. market. Despite the high costs, within a decade
Evidence of the transnational hypermobility of after arrival some 80 per cent become homeowners,
this capitalist class is the development of the ‘astro- frequently in some of the most exclusive neigh-
naut family’ where heads of immigrant households bourhoods.
place their spouses and children in Canada, While astronauts may leave management of the
Australia, New Zealand or the United States, joining business to a partner or spouse, other entrepreneur
them for a couple of weeks every three or six immigrants play a more active business role. But at
months on the ‘Pacific shuttle’ from their business this point another spatial barrier intervenes, the
base in Hong Kong, Taipei or Seoul (Ong 1999). But obstacle of geographical difference. Global space
the astronaut’s apparent mastery of distance and it turns out is not an isotropic surface of sameness
sovereignty over space is much less than is apparent. after all. Rather, international movement forces
Family separation may lead to a growing apart adjustments to highly variable business opportuni-
of husband and wife. The wife’s first year in an ties. The low taxation and relatively unregulated
astronaut family is commonly traumatic as she economic environments in Hong Kong or Taiwan
confronts an unfamiliar society as a single parent. do not prepare transnational capitalists for the
Subsequently, as integration into local life occurs, highly regulated economic culture in Canada or
she finds frustrating the need for re-immersion into Australia: ‘What really surprised me and is still
models of Asian patriarchy when her husband surprising me is the tax situation. Not surprising,
returns for a brief visit (Waters 2002). The break-up it’s shocking compared with Hong Kong’. Many
of relationships is common. entrepreneurs try to mitigate uncertainty by
seeking out sameness, establishing store-front busi-
After living here with my wife for six months I was nesses within the large ethnic enclave economies,
invited to join a new business partnership opening two where their linguistic and cultural traditions will
factories in China, and employing over 2000 people. not be a penalty.
I travelled back and forth, coming to Vancouver four
The result is fierce competition in a saturated
times a year for 2–3 weeks. At first you try not to
niche market that cannot support the large number
remember her [his wife in Vancouver] but then the
intimate feeling is lost. Living apart is very difficult and of Korean grocery stores, Chinese restaurants and
divorce is obvious. I really regret it and advise others Taiwanese travel agents. Despite long hours of work,
against being an astronaut family.5 profit margins in the enclave economy are low
and frequent business failures occur. Interviews
Control of teenage children also falls beyond the with 90 entrepreneur immigrants in Vancouver
reach of absent authority. So-called parachute or from Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan showed
satellite kids, both of whose parents have returned that after two years in business, a point when
to Asia, are left to complete alone the education that assessment of the operation by immigration
initially may have triggered the family’s migration authorities determined whether owners could
together. Separation precludes active protection proceed to citizenship, the mean net annual revenue
and guidance, and such children in the care of a from the business was only CDN$20 000, while the
guardian or an older child are vulnerable to dis- net median revenue was zero. Following a positive
traction and predation. While the costs of geographic government assessment, half the entrepreneurs
separation may be overcome economically by astro- sold or closed down their operation. Frequently we
naut households, they exact a heavy social burden.6 were told how different it was to conduct business
Wealthy entrepreneurs entering Canada and in Canada and the personal and family costs
other nations through a business immigration associated with making the effort, even when a
programme have been required to either start a ‘safe’ investment repeated a successful precedent
business or invest a large sum in a venture capital in the country of origin:
Transnational spaces and everyday lives 159
It’s very different from Hong Kong . . . I think that was the transnational entrepreneur typically finds
a mistake we made. We just brought our Hong Kong himself to be disembedded and vulnerable in other
thinking to do business here . . . It can be very depres- settings, the bearer of local knowledge that has
sing. It’s been so hard for me and my family . . . the limited currency value in his new home in Canada.
business we tried really burned us out. We gave a lot
for it . . . and it failed . . . My husband and I didn’t
know any English. We had few friends. Everything was Cosmopolitan displacements
foreign. We didn’t know what was where. My kids
were still very young and the business took up all of The growing internationalization of the economy
our time. It really had a severe impact on our well- has often been associated with the ideology of
being and the life of our family. cosmopolitanism. Kant’s utopian vision of inter-
national peace was linked with the global expansion
Or again,
of trade, where states supposedly would be un-
To have a business you must know many games. willing to engage militarily when to do so would
Lots of my friends started business here in a new compromise the affluence and well-being that
environment. But they don’t know the rules of the accompanied established commerce (Wood 1998).
game and use Hong Kong knowledge, and it doesn’t Mid-nineteenth century, J S Mill announced that
work in this place. They have no local knowledge ‘capital is becoming more and more cosmopolitan’
and most of their investments are failures. I can find
(Robbins 1998, 248) with the internationalization of
out anything in Hong Kong with one phone call. Here
trade that followed the European flag, and within a
I don’t have connections. I have no local knowledge.
few decades the modern movement of cosmopolitan
This informant’s allusion to a lack of local know- intellectuals in the arts and design was claiming
ledge underscores the continuing significance of universal status (Ley 2003c). The coincidence of
spatial differentiation in a globalizing society, and contemporary economic globalization and the
the vulnerability of transnational entrepreneurs revival of ideological cosmopolitanism in the 1990s
bearing imperfect knowledge. Rather than invoking is perhaps not surprising for both transcend
a global savoir faire it broadcasts their situatedness national borders and in their aspiration to a
elsewhere. universal discourse have an air of detachment from
Experiences such as this, or the fear of such expe- local cultural arrangements. Cosmopolitanism today,
riences, led other households to hunker down in notes Ien Ang (2001), is the cultural habitus of
anxiety in what they called ‘immigration jail’, wait- globalization.
ing out their stay until they had acquired sufficient Indeed the cosmopolitan–local dualism is
residency to reach the threshold for citizenship. another version of the global–local dichotomy
The unexpectedly meagre returns of the ethnic (Hannerz 1990). Cosmopolitans think globally, aim
Chinese diaspora in Vancouver were confirmed by to exceed their own local specificities, welcome
their declared income in the 1996 Census. While unfamiliar cultural encounters and express the
asset rich they are cash-flow poor; though 80 per wish to move toward a true humanity of equality
cent were homeowners, often in wealthy districts, and respect, free of racial, national and other preju-
50 per cent of the same population reported house- dices. To accomplish these worthy universal ideals,
hold incomes below the poverty line. This extraordi- cosmopolitanism seeks to destabilize the local and
nary mismatch between ownership of expensive traditional, whether the tribe or the nation state.
houses and minimal declared income is not consist- The cosmopolitan project is aided by the mobility
ent with the reputation of readily transferable trans- that jolts the taken-for-granted world, and the
national entrepreneurship (Ley 2003a). Economic migrant has emerged in recent literature as a key
and social costs and a sense of profound individual agent of enlightened values. Clifford (1992) has
and family vulnerability mock the caricature of a chastised cultural anthropology for its fixation
dominant homo economicus. upon static local cultures, upon dwelling rather
The appearance of the footloose global entrepre- than upon travel. The global migrant engages in
neur with portable skills does not confound the the fusion of old and new cultures, in forms of
play of a deeper geographical imperative that hybridity, and from this in-between position can
continues to assert difference over sameness and potentially establish detachment from both partici-
rewards spatial proximity over separation. Embedded pating cultures. Such a subject position has been
within a particular economic locale in East Asia, occupied by Salman Rushdie and a number of
160 David Ley
diasporic intellectuals, including Homi Bhabha, the gentrifying neighbourhood. Gentrification is
Paul Gilroy and Ien Ang. Hybrid detachment com- much advanced in pre-eminent global cities like
monly leads to critical assessments of both old and London (Hamnett 2003) and New York (Lees 2003),
new locations. Ang (2001) finds affiliation difficult and residents of gentrified inner-city neighbour-
both with the Chinese diaspora and with tradi- hoods have multiple points of openness to cosmo-
tional Australian values, Rushdie both with South politanism. First, they are highly educated,
Asia and with Western Europe. The voice of hybrid particularly in the humanities and social sciences
migrants is seemingly privileged: and have a well-honed appreciation and attach-
ment to cultural difference. Second, many have
If The Satanic Verses is anything, it is a migrant’s-eye
view of the world. It is written from the very experi- artistic or intellectual pursuits that readily draw
ence of uprooting, disjuncture and metamorphosis them into international circuits and a practice of
(slow or rapid, painful or pleasurable) that is the migrant detachment from localized popular culture. Third,
condition, and from which, I believe, can be derived a their urban setting stages ‘a global sense of place’
metaphor for all humanity . . . (It) celebrates hybridity, (May 1996, 211), an aesthetic and cultural glob-
impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes alism with such consumer props as ethnic restaur-
of new and unexpected combinations . . . It is the great ants, import stores, international newspapers
possibility that mass migration gives the world and I and media, and a cosmopolitan architecture that
have tried to embrace it. (Rushdie 1991, 394)7
includes revivals of the past or a post-modern
This evocative passage is something of a manifesto eclecticism that draws upon an international
for a new cosmopolitanism, invoking humanity design menu, all of them aiding the socialization of
and the world as its beneficiaries, and the expansive a global identity. Fourth, their politics typically
possibilities of a new hybrid experience that (but not always) occupy positions that claim a
accompanies migration. Ironically, the manifesto progressive and international edge (Caulfield
was rejected violently by migrants themselves in 1994; Ley 1996). But this global habitus can also be
a book burning of The Satanic Verses in England intensely local. Meticulous heritage preservation
a few months after its publication in 1988. (Jager 1986) and an ideology of resistant localism to
One of the sites of the new cosmopolitanism then land use change identify a subject whose partialities
is the hybrid identity of the diasporic figure. But are parochial as well as expansive.
this globally directed subject position has received Several of these relationships have been worked
considerable disapproval. Cosmopolitanism is a through systematically in a series of Australian
predisposition of intellectuals (Hannerz 1990) and studies. Inner city social and cultural professionals
bears an ‘awkward elitism’ (Anderson 1998, 268) in Australia have been leading supporters of what
as ‘the class consciousness of frequent travellers’ has been called a cosmopolitan social agenda, a
(Calhoun 2002). Its base is in the Western metropolis, political programme championed by the Australian
‘the hybridizing environment of the global city’ Labor Party that includes a much closer position-
(Ang 2001, 92). Mitchell (1997, 533) challenges the ing of Australia within an Asia-Pacific regional
‘hype of hybridity’ as ‘increasingly disarticulated context, commitment to multiculturalism and
from history and political economy’, while Cheah Aboriginal rights, and a republican rather than a
(1998, 299) considers that hybrid cosmopolitanism monarchist constitution (Betts 1999; Ang 2001). In the
has succumbed to cultural reductionism, and as 1999 national referendum, 26 out of 42 constituen-
a ‘closet idealism’ has parted company with the cies that supported constitutional change were
material history and geography of the developing located in inner city districts, and a national
nation. The hybrid viewpoint belongs to the West, attitudinal survey showed republican sympathies
where its subject, rather than universal humanity’s correlated strongly with other aspects of the
view from nowhere, is no less and no more than cosmopolitan agenda as well as with high levels
‘the migrant literary critic in the metropolis’ (Cheah of education and income (Betts 1999).
1998, 301). Of course, there is some discomfort here,
It is they who support the moral values of international
for a critique of cosmopolitanism readily becomes
cosmopolitanism, social justice, anti-racism, multicul-
a critique that may be directed against many of us. turalism, closer integration with Asia, and Aboriginal
Much of the discussion of the new cosmopolitanism self-determination. Most of this group are members of
is abstract, but it can be grounded if we identify the new class of university-educated professionals,
another site of global connections in the world city, concentrated in inner urban areas. (Betts 2002, 40)
Transnational spaces and everyday lives 161
Almost three-quarters of respondents in gentrified right-wing suburban dwellers that draw the ire of
neighbourhoods in Sydney and Newcastle agreed cosmopolitan thought, in its ‘intolerance towards
that ‘they were global community members’ (Rofe intolerance’ (Ang 2001, 141) liberal thought is
2003, 2519). At the same time, this group (like the repeating the same simplification and dismissal of
hybrid literary critic) is both ‘globally aligned’ and the unacceptable other. At this point Ang (2001,
‘nationally disembedded’ (Rofe 2003, 2519). They 141–2) cites Slavoj Zizek’s remark concerning the
are critical, apologetic and shamed by recent unreflexive situatedness of liberal thought: ‘the
positions of the Australian electorate which they liberal gaze itself functions according to the same
regard only as bigoted and xenophobic (Ang 2001; (exclusionary) logic, insofar as it is founded upon
Rofe 2003). Their influence within Labor seems to the exclusion of the Other to whom one attributes
be alienating some traditional native-born blue the fundamentalist nationalism, etc.’ (Zizek 1993, 223).
collar and lower middle-class supporters of the Indeed, the expansiveness of inner-city cosmo-
party, who sense both the demotion of union and politanism becomes both more partisan and more
welfare state policies and also a challenge to their parochial upon closer examination.11 Cosmopolitan
own view of patriotism and nationhood (Birrell identity is not necessarily politically progressive in
2002). In this manner, Australian cosmopolitanism all aspects. The orientation towards cultural diversity
is following a common track in relegating place- is commonly aestheticized (Vertovec and Cohen
based sympathies of belonging and the alliances 2002), and cosmopolitans in Sydney, Hage asserts,
that can flow from it (Calhoun 2002); instead, it is are cultural consumers who ‘embrace difference
‘detached from strong roots and consequently open (by using it)’ (1998, 202).12 Exclusion may accom-
to all forms of otherness’ (Hage 1998, 201). pany aestheticization. A detailed ethnography in
Cosmopolitanism in Australia’s inner cities is gentrified North London concluded that middle-
accompanied by a series of displacements. First, class life exists in a bubble and that values of social
gentrification repeats the familiar story of residen- inclusion and cultural diversity are honoured in
tial displacement of poorer households that the breach in an everyday lifestyle better described
accompanies middle-class settlement in inner cities as ‘one of social exclusivity’, where others are
everywhere. Working-class homes, stores and social valued ‘as a kind of social wallpaper’ (Butler 2003,
clubs undergo a dislocating embourgeoisement. Political 2471, 2484). ‘Gentrification has not so much
and discursive displacements follow. Ghassan displaced the working class as simply blanked
Hage (1998, 202) claims that the ‘White cosmo- out those who are not like themselves’ (2003, 2484).
multicultural subject’ has established a political Harvey (2000) has recently shown that the expan-
culture of distinction in metropolitan inner cities, siveness of Kant’s cosmopolitanism co-existed with
a ‘sophisticated internationalism’ that demeans an a narrow-minded racism, and similarly Stuart Hall
older Anglo-Celtic Australian identity, relegating has observed that the enlightenment pursuit of
it to a discourse of decline.8 This process of de- rational universality was in fact ‘a much dirtier
legitimization has, since the mid 1990s, led to a de- Foucaultian power-knowledge kind of game’ (2002,
camping of segments of this traditional electorate 28). While such exaggerated blind spots may be
away from Labor and to National or even One uncommon today, it should not be surprising that
Nation Party support (Birrell 2002). Political dis- contemporary cosmopolitanisms are also compro-
placement is accompanied by discursive displace- mised by partiality. One difference is that there is
ment. The conventional gentrifier’s rejection of now widespread acceptance that contemporary
suburban life is accentuated in the Australian case versions are never unsituated, always a version of
by a pervasive and sometimes clichéd view of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ (Hall 2002) or ‘dis-
native-born suburban dwellers as xenophobic. crepant cosmopolitanism’ (Clifford 1998). ‘The
Distancing from Australian mainstream culture as interest of the term cosmopolitanism is located, then
inherently myopic is spatialized in a distrust of the … in its local applications’ (Cheah 1998, 260). The
suburbs: ‘When you’re a professional you … you global is also the local and its expressions, for
can’t move to the ‘burbs, it’s just not done’ (cited in example in gentrifying neighbourhoods in global
Rofe 2003, 2520).9 Yet the stereotyped view of an cities, are never as practically inclusive or episte-
inferior suburban other repeats the simple binary mologically universal as they might claim and
oppositions that liberal thought more generally wish to be. The partisan and the local are always
rejects.10 For while it is the exclusionary attitudes of contained within cosmopolitanism and the global.
162 David Ley
3 It is a review that in the interest of space is selective.
Conclusion
Other criticisms of the world cities paradigm are that
My objectives in this paper have been to open globalization is not a new phenomenon (Abu-Lughod
up globe talk by animating certain agents of 1999; Smith 2001) and has important precedents in
global capitalism and cosmopolitan ideology, imperialism that provided a platform for the pre-
eminence of London in a European context (King 1990).
by highlighting their distinctive and bounded
In addition imperial linkages have much to do with
territories, and by filling out more fully their
the origins of immigration streams to cities in the
complex subjectivities. In so doing, we have also global North.
seen in their everyday experience the continued 4 This gendering is deliberate. Though changes are
relevance of the geographical building blocks of occurring slowly, the transnational capitalist class
separation and difference in a putative world of remains dominantly male.
growing proximity and sameness. 5 This statement and others in this section were made by
Besides their material specificities in economic ethnic Chinese business immigrants during interviews
geography, the global and the local are also sites of in Vancouver.
social and epistemological engagement. Just as glob- 6 Beaverstock (personal communication) confirms high
levels of family break-up among the transnational busi-
al capitalists might experience the estrangement
ness elite he has interviewed in several global cities.
of separation and the vertigo of difference, so con-
7 This passage is extracted from Paul Brians Notes
temporary cosmopolitans reflexively acknowledge for Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (http://
the situatedness of their own world views. Ien www.wsu.edu/∼brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/
Ang’s cosmopolitan reflections lead her to ponder intro.html). I am grateful to Sin Yih Teo for this refer-
how ‘the sturdy intransigence of the “local” tends ence. See also Sandercock (2003).
to continually reassert itself in practice’ (2001, 174). 8 May (1996, 200) has detected similar ‘narratives of
But the category of the local is a problem for the decline’ among the working class in gentrifying
cosmopolitan only when it is filled with everything sections of North London.
the cosmopolitan is not. My argument here has 9 The familiar dismissal of suburban life by gentrifiers
is discussed further in Caulfield (1994) and Ley (1996),
been that cosmopolitanism itself is always situated,
amongst others.
always imbued with partiality and vulnerability.
10 Wise (2004) offers an informative exception to this
As Parekh (2000, 338) has observed, cosmopolitan trend.
liberal political philosophy, though inspiring in its 11 For another example, the particular situatedness of
universal ambitions, marginalizes other positions the universal claims of early modernists, see Ley
while failing to recognize its own limitations. In (2003c).
the same way, transnational capitalists, though 12 Again, May (1996) offers a similar interpretation.
posing as masters of space may end up as prisoners See also Bridge and Dowling (2001). For a broader
of geographical difference. I think it is for this discussion of aestheticization and gentrification, see
reason, wishing to escape elitist universalism, that Ley (1996, 2003b).
Craig Calhoun writes, surprisingly, ‘I wish to offer
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