Globalization on the Line : Culture, Capital, and Citizenship at U.S. Borders

The essays in Globalization on the Line criticize the almost exclusive emphasis on the ethnically constituted trans-nation, whose function as an instrument of de-nationalization has become signified in the metaphorical use of 'the border.' Contributors focus on the surge of a more diverse variety of cultural forms of citizenship in response to the dramatic change that the geographies of U.S. border areas have undergone and simultaneously held to shape at the end of the 20th century. In its attempt to move beyond examinations of de-nationalized diasporic formations at the border, several essays in the collection add an attention to the northern frontier a hemispheric perspective that was originally spawned by imagining new forms of citizenship within U.S.- Mexico transborder cultures. Instead of viewing globalization and nation-states as two separate and opposed domains of theorization and politics, Globalization on the Line contextualizes U.S. borders within global processes that are currently reconstituting the relationship between nation-states and private corporations at the site of U.S. borders. The volume thus adds to the almost exclusive focus on the counter-hegemonic diasporic trans-nation an emphasis on various forms of citizenship that have emerged in response to increasingly more globally organized entities and practices.
This interdisciplinary collection brings together essays on the cultural effects of globalization at the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders. Artists, activists, and scholars from American Studies, anthropology, Chicano studies, English, folklore, history, and political science examine a wide range of cultural practices in border areas, including cross-border shopping, migration, and transnational media spectatorship. Contributors focus on a variety of border crossers and residents, such as Mexican migrants in the American Southwest, indigenous peoples in the Lake Ontario region, undocumented Chinese immigrants at the U.S.-Canada border, environmental groups in Arizona, NAFTA-displaced women laborers in Texas, squatter communities in Baja California, and maquiladora workers in Chihuahua.
Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction: Border Studies, Diaspora, and Theories of Globalization....Pages 1-27 Front Matter....Pages 29-29 Border Shopping....Pages 31-52 Telling the Difference between the Border and the Borderlands....Pages 53-68 Reading across Diaspora....Pages 69-97 Performing the Border....Pages 99-118 Front Matter....Pages 119-119 Fan Letters to the Cultural Industries....Pages 121-146 Mapping Latinidad....Pages 147-165 Iroquois Border Crossings....Pages 167-180 Front Matter....Pages 181-181 Las Voces de Esperanza....Pages 183-200 Transborder Collaboration....Pages 201-220 Encounter with a Mexican Jaguar....Pages 221-240 Back Matter....Pages 241-248 I begin writing this essay one day after Seattle riot police "managed" the crowds protesting the opening of the 2000 World Trade Organization (WTO) Millennium talks. Draws together essays on the cultural effects of globalization at the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders