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Does the concept of nationality apply to the economic elite, or have they shed national identities to form a global capitalist class?
In Rooted Globalism, Kevin Funk unpacks dozens of ethnographic interviews he conducted with Latin America's urban-based, Arab-descendant elite class, some of whom also occupy positions of political power in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Based on extensive fieldwork, Funk illuminates how these elites navigate their Arab ancestry, Latin American host cultures, and roles as protagonists of globalization. With the term rooted globalism, Funk captures the emergence of classed intersectional identities that are simultaneously local, national, transnational, and global.
Focusing on an oft-ignored axis of South-South relations (between Latin America and the Arab world), Rooted Globalism provides detailed analysis of the identities, worldviews, and motivations of this group and ultimately reveals that rather than obliterating national identities, global capitalism relies on them.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Capitalism and Class in Global Latin America
1. Progress and Lacunae in the Study of the "Global Capitalist Class"
2. How Latin America Met the Arab World
3. The Tradition of Dead Generations: On the Persistence of Place-Based Longings
4. Rootless Globalists? On Denationalization and Globality
5. "The Flat Pluralist World of Business Class": On Constructing (and Contesting) Corporate Global Imaginaries
Conclusion: The Future of Global Imaginaries: Thinking Beyond Nativism and Neoliberal Propaganda
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Kevin Funk is a fellow in the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, where he is also a lecturer in the Department of Political Science and an affiliated faculty member of the Institute of Latin American Studies.
