Keywords of Mobility

Critical Engagements

Noel B. Salazar, Kiran Jayaram, Noel B. Salazar, Kiran Jayaram

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785331473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Anthropologie culturelle et sociale

Scholars from various disciplines have used key concepts to grasp mobilities, but as of yet, a working vocabulary of these has not been fully developed. Given this context and inspired in part by Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), this edited volume presents contributions that critically analyze mobility-related keywords: capital, cosmopolitanism, freedom, gender, immobility, infrastructure, motility, and regime. Each chapter provides an historical context, a critical analysis of how the keyword has been used in relation to mobility, and a conclusion that proposes future usage or research.

CHAPTER
1

Capital

Kiran Jayaram

“Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble, and if I stay it will be double.”

—The Clash

Introduction

Though the above lyrical quandary by a British punk band may simply be a catchy match to an unforgettable song, it also evokes the idea that movement or stagnation may have consequences. Indeed, if it can be argued that two conceptual totems define much of the concerns of global politics in the early twenty-first century, then I posit that they are mobility and capital. Many defenders of free markets believe that the uninhibited flow of capital across the entire world would benefit everyone, and those with a critical perspective often see capital as marshaling uneven development on a global scale. Whatever one’s position, the questions surrounding the relationship between mobility and capital remain to be definitively answered.

Within the field of mobility studies, scholars from various disciplines have conducted research and written ethnographies on the capital associated with mobility. In the same way that Keywords sought to understand a word through “the significance of its general and variable usage . . . not in separated disciplines but in general discussion” (Williams 1976), in this chapter, I present definitions, dynamics, and deployments of the keyword capital, briefly as used in common parlance and in the social sciences, and then as it relates to mobility. Next, I describe aspects related to capital and mobility within the work of Marx, which subsequently allows me to critically discuss the capital-mobility nexus. I conclude with considerations about capital for anthropologists and others interested in mobility. I argue that scholars need to determine if capital is a precursor or product of movement or a requisite of sedentariness, and we must also come to grips with the nature of the prerequisite or resultant capital.

Etymology and Denotations

The word capital, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (2014), comes from Latin caput (head) through the Old French word chattel (moveable property) and the Middle English word capital. Hence, from the onset, this keyword has been yoked with the concept of movement. Of interest among the several denotations of the adjectival form is the reference to a type of criminal punishment involving either death or the “loss of liberty, exile, the loss of civil rights, or the seizure of property.” It follows that as a sanction, the word suggests a limit on freedom of movement, death as an ultimate form of a subject’s immobility, or forced movement beyond the homeland. These also imply the existence of a regime that has the power to carry out such discipline. The nominal form of this keyword refers to the top of an architectural column and to “holders of wealth as a class,” but more germane to this discussion, the term points to “real or financial assets possessing a monetary value” and to “any source of profit, advantage, power” (Oxford English Dictionary 2014). This aspect is implicit in the work that references prerequisites to movement, discussed below.

A peculiar linguistic paradox exists in contemporary parlance. On one hand, the positive aspects of the word capital has been trumpeted by national and international economic policies, by university departments and scholars, and common people that hold the economic system of exchange on which it is founded as being an inherent force for good in the world, one that is isomorphic with human nature. On the other, the term is reserved for a punishment that ends a subject’s mobility, that is, death, or deprives the person of property or freedom of movement. Juxtaposing these notions, capital facilitates freedom yet implies limits to life, (im)mobility, and property. The social sciences as well as mobility studies, as shown below, use the term capital in the sense of the French word chattel.

Capital in the Social Sciences

Across the social sciences, various authors have used the word capital to serve their particular purposes. The work of Becker and Bourdieu deserves special mention, given how much of mobility studies have drawn upon their work. In the business and policy world, perhaps the most used capital-related term is human capital, championed by University of Chicago economist Becker (1964), which relates to skills and capacities that allow a person to carry out tasks related to a company within an industrialized economy. In the ensuing decades, new scholarship began questioning the rational-action explanations of human behavior advanced by economists, formalist anthropologists, and some economic sociologists.

Bourdieu, being one of Becker’s critics, understood capital to mean “accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated,’ embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor” (1986, 46). He introduces various forms of capital (social and cultural) as possible transmuted forms of the “economic capital” of political economy (Bourdieu 1986).¹ Elsewhere, he introduces “political capital” (though he does not explain this), “informational capital” (which he says encompasses cultural capital), “symbolic capital” (referring to the form capital assumes when others perceive the value of the specific form of capital implemented), and linguistic capital (Bourdieu 1991). One final form of capital described by Bourdieu is his concept of the “meta-capital” of the state, which refers to the ability of it to legitimize itself through monopolizing and using physical force to control the population, different social fields, and the forms of capital that circulate among them (Bourdieu 1994). Two observations will help highlight the uses of capital in studies of mobility. First, he mentions profits gained by transmission and exchange of capital, but the lack of attention as to how profit is generated leaves the impression that capital is an object to be wielded. Second, because Bourdieu is trying to critique economistic approaches to human behavior, it is remarkable that he delineates so many different kinds of capital (and their potential exchangeability) as a way to explain human action, as if it were isomorphic with human behavior, whereas in Algeria he refers to “folk economics” and the “practical economic sense” that is linked to behavior (Bourdieu 2000).

Other Forms of Capital

Either by agreement or by omission, other scholars have invoked capital in an increasing number of settings, echoing Harvey’s (2001) idea that capital both thrives on and creates difference. Within network analysis, scholars have discussed a person’s centrality as being an indicator of social capital (Borgatti, Jones, and Everett 1998). Scholars in the field of education have broken down cultural capital into even smaller categories of capital to discuss other forms of valuable knowledge that students of color bring to a classroom (Yosso 2005). Some sociologists have furthered a utilitarian approach to human behavior by detailing how valuable social relationships (i.e., social capital) can facilitate obligations, information channels, and fora for the establishment of social norms, all toward fostering profitable behavior (Coleman 1988). Hilgers identifies autochthony as a relational form of capital that “becomes a resource that allows discrimination against competitors in their access to resources” (2011, 44), yet one that requires association with economic, social, or symbolic capital. Other invocations of the keyword relate to intellectual capital (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998), linguistic capital, political capital (Booth and Bayer Richard 1998), professional capital (Hargreaves and Fullan 2011), beauty capital (Hua 2013; Pfann et al. 2000; Price 2008), and biological capital (Warman 2003). Almost all of these forms of so-called capital are derivatives of either human capital (á la Becker) or cultural capital (á la Bourdieu).² Furthermore, one infers that forms of capital can be linked to an increasing number of human behaviors in industrialized societies, an idea easily refuted by the ethnographic record. I revisit this critique in the discussion of mobility-related capital. While the above discussion does not strictly relate to movement, some of the same understandings of capital-as-object are reproduced in mobility studies.

The Mobility of Capital

In the past two decades, a new group of scholars has taken up social research on political economy, and capitalism specifically.³ Sadly, only a few of these works have covered the mobility of capital. Authors have defended or critiqued the unencumbered flight of money, have identified how vilified capital mobility legitimates global corporate transactions, or have linked foreign investment to migratory flows.

Since the late twentieth century, many economists and politicians have declared the need to unleash the market so that everyone would benefit. Perhaps Friedman (1999) explained it best when he explained that governments needed to, among other things, make the private sector the engine of economic growth, shrink the size of the government’s budget and activities, eliminate taxes on imports, and encourage foreign investment. Essentially, once capital, as direct investments, can move freely about the planet, unhindered by any regimes, wealth will be created, eventually benefiting all people. However, even at the time Friedman was making such claims, economists and others had taken issue with such an idea.

Critics of the completely free global movement of capital point to the importance of crises in capitalism. Bhagwati (1998) cites the Asian economic crisis of the 1990s as reason to question the absolute good of complete capital mobility. There is no reason, he claims, to confuse free trade with free movement of capital. In fact, these countries often lose the political independence to enact policies that would protect a country’s workers if it goes against multilateral lending institution guidelines. Thus, he advocates for some control on the mobility of capital. Harvey (1981), who also believes that crisis is inherent to capitalism, contributed the idea of a “spatial fix” to an internal contradiction in this system of exchange. According to Harvey, a crisis occurs when there is an overaccumulation of labor and value and devaluation of commodities. This demands that capitalists find markets in new locations in which to invest. He concludes that given the limited geographic area in which humans live, capital will eventually reach a material limit to its mobility.

In the era of the so-called War on Terror, de Goede (2007) writes on the way in which informal money transfer networks became a target of scrutiny. He describes how the U.S. government worked under the model of a false binary between legitimate global money flows and terrorist financing. Intelligence networks target hawala (informal money remittances based upon trust) in the Middle East and South Asia because these exchanges circumvent the formal financial regulatory systems via intermediaries. De Goede argues that hawala, as “the figure of the terrorist underground[,] is a discursive condition for the post-9/11 maintenance of the legitimate world of global finance” (2007, 157).

In an important work on the relationship between mobility, labor, and capital, Sassen seeks to connect the “the articulation of the new labor migrations with the recomposition of capital as it takes its place in the new industrial zones in Third World countries” (1988, 187). Using data from various countries from the 1960s to the 1980s, she argues that the type of U.S. activity abroad, such as direct investment as a part of an internationalization of production, shapes migratory flows. Sassen sees the U.S. military intervention and later foreign investment in the Dominican Republic as creating a framework for middle-class and subsequently lower-class Dominican migration to the United States. Similarly, she argues that the United States-based capital investment in factories and export-agricultural production zones in Haiti under Jean-Claude Duvalier contributed to migration.

Capital within Mobility Studies

Writings on capital within mobility studies can be placed into two categories: those that consider various forms of capital related to movement, and those that explicitly refer to mobility capital.

Versions of Capital in Mobility Studies

Robert Putnam sees movement as contributing to the demise of social capital in the United States, understood as “networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (67, 1995). Urry (2002) critiques this idea, answering that mobility actually contributes to social capital. Whereas Putnam sees driving alone as a solitary act, Urry posits that in rural areas, this driving alone is what is required to maintain social relations. This debate attests to the ability of movement to maintain or destroy social relations.

Salazar (2011), in his article on the tourism industry, analyzes the role of interpretations of movement as capital, if only as a straw man, by invoking the term cosmobility capital. However, Salazar uses the term to critique any approach that would perpetuate a binary understanding that depicts mobile tourists as holders of cosmobility capital, defined as “resources, knowledge, and abilities that facilitate social as well as geographical mobility” (2011, 582), and immobile locals as those with “cultural capital.” His contribution, then, is to show that research on the imaginations, that is, understandings, of mobility and capital is important, so as to belie any generalized tropes of mobility based upon binary extremes.

Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye (2004) invoke the term movement capital and propose motility as a way of understanding mobility as a form of capital. “Movement capital” is “the potentiality of movement” (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004, 752), and as a part of capital associated with motility, includes the preconditions of access, competence, and appropriation. They state how one can parlay economic capital into other forms, including movement capital. Though Kaufmann and colleagues correctly describe how class may affect social mobility as seen in educational choices, or in other words, that education may contribute to social reproduction rather than emancipation or self-improvement, they suggest that focusing on this reproduction places primacy on economic capital, something they dismiss as hard to calculate and not of primary interest to social scientists. They illustrate the utility of motility through micro-, meso-, and macro-level analysis that seeks to show the relation between spatial and social movements.

Other scholars (Elliot and Urry 2010; Larsen et al. 2006; Sheller 2012) discuss network capital as important for mobility and for understanding it as a source of inequality in contemporary societies (as do Murphy-Lejeune 2002; Salazar and Smart 2011). By network capital, they refer to a mix of the competences of movement, ability to move, legal documents, contacts, communication and transportation machines, meeting places, access to information, time allotment, and people with whom one can connect. Overlapping partially with social capital and motility, this term also includes preconditions of movement. Continuing in this line, Urry states in his interview with Adey and Bissell, “it’s sometimes those with more network capital who are the immobile, who can summon the mobile to wherever they are. We shouldn’t assume that it is those who are powerful who move” (2010, 7). These authors point to the importance of various forms of value (i.e., of capital) as preconditions that can help or hinder social relations and suggest that these constitute another form of inequality in contemporary modernity.

Finally, scholars have discussed the relationship between mobility and capital linked to Hilgers’s emphasis on the role of belonging. Tseng (2000) expands upon the important work of Sassen (1988), who describes how capital investment can lead to outmigration, by focusing on the people associated with these monetary flows. Examining Taiwanese involved in business migration programs and foreign direct investment, her data shows that “sometimes immigration serves [migrants’] interest in capital accumulation; at other times capital investment serves as the means for securing a second nationality” (Tseng 2000, 146). On one hand, some Taiwanese acquire citizenshi...