T-Birx-4715.qxd 9/6/2005 4:31 PM Page 2220 2220 TRANSNATIONALISM gained from the world government model, according to Toynbee, is a more efficient plan for growing and distributing food to all of Earth’s people. He does recognize, however, the difficulties in getting people to simply get along with one another. Toynbee is correct to say that political equality among diverse peoples is nearly impossible when those involved are also socially, culturally, and physically many miles apart. Social issues such as the equality of the sexes, unique religious practices, and cultural mores vary widely from one region to the next. He makes the argument that within the United States there are still racial issues, particularly in the Old South, that are only one example of how difficult a task it would be to truly unite the world’s population under a single ruling government. At the same time, he sees hope, citing the example of both Islamic people and the people of Latin America, who seem to be free from racial tensions among their different populations. Toynbee truly sees only one race—the human race— and feels strongly that artificial barriers such as nationalism must be removed in order for all of humankind to survive. It would appear that at this time in our own history, the nations of Europe, in the expansion of the European Union, are beginning to heed his warnings. Fellow historians have sometimes criticized Toynbee’s methods. One concern focuses on his reliance upon insight and imagination rather than arguments or induction. While some scholars defend his style as an example of using metaphor or simply being poetic, others declare that Toynbee fails to go the extra mile in getting his facts straight, thereby weakening some of his arguments. However, in the end, Toynbee must be given credit for his attempt to document our world’s history as a unified one. He has succeeded in showing us that it is at least possible to envision such a future for humankind. — Thomas M. Prince Further Readings Gargan, E. T. (1961). The intent of Toynbee’s history—A cooperative appraisal. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Toynbee, A. J. (1948). Civilization on trial. New York: Oxford University Press. Toynbee, A. J. (1966). Change and habit—The challenge of our time. New York and London: Oxford University Press. 4 TRANSNATIONALISM Transnationalism is the idea that flows of transstate migrants and their symbolic and material accoutrements are bi- or multidirectional and ongoing. That is, where previous generations of migrants tended toward making a “clean break” with their societies of origin, many contemporary migrants continue to have ongoing ties with the communities from which they migrated. Transnationalism has been defined in anthropology as “the process by which immigrants forge and sustain simultaneous multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. . . . many immigrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders.” In many sending societies, out-migrants are expected to play an ongoing role. Receiving societies take a variety of approaches, ranging from barring the assimilation or naturalization of migrants to encouraging ongoing dualities of identity or citizenship, but in states representing the full range of these, the number of people living transnationally is on the increase. Most theorists regard transnationalism as reliant on a new characterization of space. For Arjun Appadurai, deterritorialization is a feature of the new globalized world in which identity is increasingly disconnected, or at least disconnectable, from place. However, Michael Kearney locates transnationalism in its specificity of place, arguing that it differs from global processes that are “decentered” and take place in “global space”; rather, transnational processes are “anchored in and transcend one or more nation-states.” This is reiterated by Aihwa Ong, who regards transnationalism as referring to “cultural specificities of global processes.” Transnational life is made possible by new technologies that facilitate transportation, communication, and the rapid transfer of funds around the world. Air travel, while too expensive for many migrants to use on more than an occasional basis, nevertheless now whisks people between continents in hours instead of weeks. Migrant remittances sustain or improve the lot of impoverished families. Internet-based forms of communication such as listservs, chat, e-mail, and Web sites facilitate the building and maintenance of deterritorialized communities. These technologies have rendered much of the world “self-consciously one single field of persistent interaction and exchange.” T-Birx-4715.qxd 9/6/2005 4:31 PM Page 2221 TRAVEL 2221 Transnationalism has given rise to, and is now facilitated by, new institutions. Michael Peter Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo highlight cross-national institutional networks such as sending country governments’ outreach to their nationals within host countries. Haiti, which does not recognize dual citizenship but has a Ministry of Haitians Living Abroad, is one such example. As Sarah J. Mahler notes, many authors at least implicitly distinguish between transnationalism “from below” and “from above.” The former concerns the daily lives of ordinary people, and the latter the macro-level political and economic forces dominated by elites. Anthropologists have focused disproportionately on transnationalism from below. In an article in which he traces the course of anthropology and his own career in it over the past fifty years, Clifford Geertz notes that an interest in transnationalism began in anthropology only in the 1990s, before which it was “not thought to be a part of anthropology’s purview” but that now studies of it seem to be “appearing on all sides.” — Diane E. King Further Readings Hannerz, U. (1996). Transnational connections: Culture, people, places. London: Routledge. Levitt, P. (2001). The transnational villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ong, A. (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 4 TRAVEL From a Western perspective, travel begins with Europe’s fascination with the “Other.” Examples of this include religious pilgrimages and the Renaissance expeditions of trade and exploration. Undoubtedly, travel is also tied to colonization by European forces, beginning with the travels of the Portuguese to Africa in 1455 to obtain slave labor when Pope Nicolas V granted the Portuguese the right to do so; followed by the voyages of the Portuguese navigator Bartholomew Dias in 1488 around the Cape of Good Hope; Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the Americas from 1492 to 1502; and culminating with the numerous voyages of exploration of the Pacific by Spanish, French, Dutch and English navigators, mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries. Religious missionaries also contributed to the waves of travelers around the world, oftentimes writing long and detailed accounts of their experiences. Many of these accounts, if read with a critical eye, provide valuable insights into the lifeways of indigenous peoples before the massive changes wrought by centuries of contact. Scholars have found a series of parallels between the accounts written by missionaries during their religious expeditions and 19th-century travel writing. Travel expeditions were of particular significance to European naturalists in the 18th (such as Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) who worked in Jamaica, and Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) who worked in Suriname) and 19th centuries, particularly Charles Lyell (1797–1875), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825– 1895), Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), and especially Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882). These travels made naturalists aware of the presence and relevance of the fossil record, the distribution of plants and animals, and the presence of societies with different cultures, languages, beliefs, rituals, and customs. Many of these findings contributed to the emergence of anthropology as a discipline. For instance, Sir Charles Lyell, close friend of Darwin and supporter of Darwin’s theory of evolution, traveled around the world observing geological phenomena. From findings during these travels emerged the concept of uniformitarianism to explain geological changes throughout history. Thomas Huxley, a self-educated intellectual and author of Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863), traveled aboard HMS Rattlesnake to Australia as an assistant surgeon from 1847 to 1851. His findings in natural history (particularly zoology) resulting from this trip were published in a work entitled Oceanic Hydrozoa. Ernst Haeckel, whose “law of recapitulation” was unfortunately appropriated by the Nazi party to justify nationalism and racism, traveled to the Mediterranean to conduct research on invertebrate groups. Charles Darwin traveled for five years (1831–1835) as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle on a British science expedition around the world. One of Darwin’s best-known stops during this voyage was the Galapagos Islands, which Darwin conceived as “a group of satellites attached to America,” with organisms that were physically comparable, organically dissimilar, yet at