Few recent phenomena have proved as emblematic of
our era, and as little understood, as globalisation. Are
nation-states being transformed by globalisation into a
single globalised economy? Do global cultural forces
herald a postnational millennium? Tying ethnography to
structural analysis, Flexible Citizenship explores such
questions with a focus on the links between the cultural
logics of human action and on economic and political
processes within the Asia-Pacific, including the impact
of these forces on women and family life. Explaining how
intensified travel, communications, and mass media have
created a trans-national Chinese public, Aihwa Ong
argues that previous studies have mistakenly viewed
trans-nationality as necessarily detrimental to the
nation-state and have ignored individual agency in the
large-scale flow of people, images, and cultural forces
across borders. She describes how political upheavals
and global markets have induced Asian investors, in
particular, to blend strategies of migration and of
capital accumulation and how these trans-national
subjects have come to symbolise both the fluidity of
capital and the tension between national and personal
identities. Refuting claims about the end of the
nation-state and about "the clash of civilisations," Ong
presents a clear account of the cultural logics of
globalisation and an incisive contribution to the
anthropology of Asia-Pacific modernity and its links to
global social change. This pioneering investigation of
trans-national cultural forms will appeal to those in
anthropology, globalisation studies, postcolonial
studies, history, Asian studies, Marxist theory, and
cultural studies.
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