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Summary
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.
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"Exceptional for the outstanding quality and internal coherence of the articles included throughout, Globalization on the Line is a timely and consistent critique of the all too-facile"global multiculturalism" that has dominated academic discourse since Gloria Anzaldúa's publication of Borderlands. T he contributors question the validity of "theorizing from the border" when in fact the border, as a place, remains largely unstudied and unknown. [U]nusual for its dual focus on both the U.S.-Canada and the U.S.-Mexico borders, Globalization on the Line will be not only necessary reading in cultural studies courses but it will shape our discussions in the field in the years to come." - Silvia Spitta, author ofBetween Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America
"In this collection Sadowski-Smith has brought together an exciting range of essays by scholars, artists, and activists on culture and globalization. The strength of this collection is in the essays; it is not so much a "new take" on globalization and culture as it is a close look at a variety of cultural practices in which the effects of globalization are especially visible." - Priscilla Wald, author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form
