Scale Shifting: Explaining Migration Between National, Trans-regional, and Global Literary Fields

• In Event: 3534 - Theory and Research in Global and Transnational Sociology

Abstract

This paper uses the case of Lebanon to explore the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions that make scale-shifting within and between national, regional, and global literary fields possible. How do “national” writers circulate outside of the nation? How do literary spaces of different sizes and scopes interact with one another? I argue that the Lebanese national literary field is fractured along linguistic and cultural lines that link national actors to trans-regional and global literary fields beyond the nation in distinct ways. Creators scale up and scale down and scale in and scale out depending upon whether they work in English, Arabic, or French; how they position themselves and they are positioned in the transnational literary world; and on the distinct topographies and infrastructures of the fields within which they are embedded.

Author

• Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College