Transnational social fields and imperialism: Bringing a theory of power to transnational studies

Transnational Studies have allowed scholars to move beyond a methodological nationalism that conflates society and the nation-state. Yet rather than addressing globe-spanning systems of power, Transnational Studies that focus on transnational communities or diasporas obscure important relations of power. More recently there has been a spate of publishing on the 'new' imperialism that offers global theories of power. However, much of the emerging scholarship on imperialism fails to examine the processes that legitimate and assist imperial control. By theorizing transnational social fields, transnational migration studies offer insights into the social and cultural processes of imperialist intervention. Drawing from ethnographic research with fundamentalist Christians and Haitian long-distance nationalists, the article argues that our scholarship must examine the relationship between the transnational social fields and imperialist power. Copyright 2005 SAGE Publications.