Situating Transnational Actors

Abstract

Actor-centered approaches range prominently in transnational history. Studying transnational actors has helped to better grasp the extent, dynamics and mechanisms of particular cross-border connections, and has highlighted the entanglement and mutual constitution of cultures and societies in a more general sense. While empirical research continues to reveal more complex transnational interaction, the general notion of “transnational actors” has gradually flattened out: the transnational sphere is now often studied in isolation and conceived of as a rather homogeneous space of action, while transnational actors are largely seen in their border-crossing capacities and activities only. We argue that such an orientation captures only one dimension of transnational actors, namely their mobility, while leaving out their embeddedness in local, national or regional contexts, and their important role in the production of various kinds of spaces. To reconnect these aspects, we situate transnational actors in their diverse, yet specific socio-spatial contexts and relations. Situating transnational actors is proposed here as a way of underlining the plurality, heterogeneity, and entanglements of transnational arenas and references as part of historically changing spatial constellations.

Biographical Note

Dr. Katja Naumann (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), Leipzig University, Germany)
Dr. Katja Naumann is a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe at Leipzig University (Germany) where she coordinates a handbook on the transnational history of East Central Europe. She studied history, philosophy, and political science at Leipzig University, earning her PhD in 2012 with her thesis on the history of world history writing at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University (1918-1968). Being an editor of the electronic journal Connections and teaching global history at Leipzig University and previously in the USA and France, her main research fields include internationalism and international organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, history of historiography in East Central Europe, and the transatlantic world in particular.

Dr. Antje Dietze (SFB 1199, Leipzig University, Germany)
Dr. Antje Dietze is a senior researcher in the SFB project A1 investigating cultural entrepreneurs, urban mass culture, and transnational entanglements from 1880 to 1930. She studied in Leipzig (Germany) and Paris (France), earning her PhD in 2012 from Leipzig University for her work on the role of cultural organizations and artistic practice during the post-socialist transition in Germany. As part of her current research she spent 2015/16 as a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) P.R.I.M.E. research fellow at the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Montreal (Canada). Her research interests include entertainment and the arts, cultural industries, and cultural change within the study of culture and transnational history, focusing particularly on Europe and North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.