Transnational perspectives, methodological nationalism and cosmopolitanism

In this introduction to the first section of the volume, I mention to the various definitions of transnationalism and to the diverse transnational perspectives on migration. Furthermore, I discuss the economic and political dimension of transnationalism by focusing respectively on socio-economic remittances, co-development on the one hand, and, on the other hand, on long distance nationalism. In the second part I take into account some of the analytical characteristics of methodological nationalism and the cosmopolitan ambition of the anthropology of migration. In the field of anthropology and the social sciences, Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) define methodological nationalism” as “the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer, Schiller, 2002: 302). And it is this process of naturalisation in the empirical studies of migration that have been particularly challenged by the transnational perspective on migration. Yet, some authors have expressed some perplexity about the novelty both of transnationalism and of a transnational approach to migration. Indeed, the premise that multiple networks connect several contexts in a continuous manner has been previously illustrated in some work of British anthropology of the colonial and post-colonial era (Werbner, 2008). These studies were already dealing with the circularity, which binds together the rural and the urban contexts through social networks. Furthermore, Werbner argues that in anthropology, which she defines as “the study of part-societies and social fields”, one cannot find the sin of methodological nationalism. Instead, she believes that anthropology has always been characterised by a cosmopolitan take towards the people and the subject under study. Yet, this reminder of a hidden continuity may run the risk of underestimating the epistemological break provided to the evolution of anthropological thought by the processual approaches of Marxist political economy and Manchester school. Moreover, despite disagreements over methodological nationalism, one aspect in common between the two articles introduced here is an historical sensitivity that one finds in Werbner theoretical reflections as much as in the historical discussion of Nation-building provided by Glick Schiller. Somehow both anthropologists urge us to avoid the mistake of considering recent migration trends as the mechanical rise of novel forms of social relations and of neglecting, from a phenomenological and epistemological viewpoint, the central role played by long lasting historical processes surviving technological change.