A Field Theory of Transnational Difficult Pasts

• In Event: 468 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Paper Session. Migration, Nationalism, and Identity

Abstract

This paper proposes a field theory of transnational difficult pasts by combining Jeffrey Olick’s process-relational methodology with Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam’s theory of strategic action fields. First, Olick’s process-relational methodology helps demarcate a field of a transnational difficult past by identifying relevant actors, tracing their interactions over time, and examining consequent changes in their commemorative positions. Olick’s process-relational methodology, however, needs to be anchored in Fligstein and McAdam’s theory of fields, rather than in Bourdieu’s, because transnational difficult pasts involve a number of organizational actors, such as governments and NGOs. In turn, Fligstein and McAdam’s theory needs to be made fully processual in Olick’s sense, taking seriously long-term institutional trajectories of commemorative practices. Specifically, how relevant actors delineate their commemorative positions in a field of a transnational difficult past is fundamentally mediated by two institutionalized logics of commemoration, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. To illustrate how the field theory of transnational difficult pasts works, the paper applies it to the so-called “history problem” in East Asia − Japan’s disputes with South Korea and China over the commemoration of the Asia-Pacific War – and explains the dynamic and trajectory of political struggles over East Asia’s transnational difficult past.

Author

• Hiro Saito, Singapore Management University