Trans-Atlantic Exchange and Spatial Development
Trans-Atlantic Exchange and Spatial Development
Transnational social identifications and urban development in the south Atlantic
Sattayah Chang
Abstract:
This paper is an academic discourse on the transnational social exchange as it relates to spatial development. It is not population specific, but uses the subjective analysis of social identities and industries of the African world as a base for theoretical perspectives. Relations are made to selective social groups that illustrate the linkages between trans-Atlantic social value systems and transnational development of functional space in social institutions. The identity groups and industries used as examples occupy functional spaces in contemporary urban places of the Black Atlantic.
Transnational networks are framed sociologically within the context of selected social institutions. A qualitative approach to transnational policy is taken in the way that value systems are observed when initiating transnational interactions. These interactions and the spaces that facilitate them (and are facilitated by them) are looked at based on popular socio-institutional support, outside or within the realm of political policy action. Social institutions of religion, culture and economics are contextualized in terms of the transnational policy of social identity in developing functional spaces.
Trans-Atlantic social identity is analyzed spatially, in broader terms of transnational identity and its influence on local socio-institutional development. Reference is made to Caribbean and West African identities within the context of their transnational social industries. The groups identified in looking at trans-Atlantic exchange and spatial development, populate some major urban sites in the Atlantic world, especially those that connect with the cultures of the African world. The transnational industries related to these social identifications include various religious/ spiritual groups, and cultural industries like sport and music.
Looking at transnational industries in institutional development clarifies some hegemonic relationships, as far as inequities in physical and conceptual institutional space. It also shows how social networks and transnational access to resources from multiple institutional spaces empower spatially marginalized social industries and identities. These relationships are related to transnational identities within urban populations of West Africa the Caribbean and their Diasporas. Urban centers of the Atlantic World provide a window into the mechanics of transnational actors and their role in social development. The theoretical premise behind this paper is that, needs for developing equitable social space in cultural, religious and economic institutions can be approached through looking at the relationships between the transnational policy of socio-industrial identities and their social networks with regard to functional institutional space.
Introduction:
Popular concepts of value mobilize popular support for social development and spatial designation. Social institutions of religion, economics and culture play a substantial role in facilitating value exchange over transnational spaces in the Atlantic world. The Atlantic world consists of people and spaces that surround the Atlantic Ocean; this analysis focuses on the paradigm of space and identity in terms social industries of trans-Atlantic Diasporas.
Space consists of not only physical area but also ideological space where ideas and identities are formed, expressed and recognized. The urban cities that are home to diverse African ethnic populations in the Atlantic world are analyzed as places where transnational identities create a functional space for social value systems in social networks. For the purposes of this paper, functional space is seen as the ideological or physical space needed for social networks and value systems to interact with populations that validate their utility. Transnational development of social institutions that are not afforded balanced spatial access in some societies as opposed to others, points to areas of social development that can be addressed by regional, local or international social policy.
Trans-Atlantic exchange of values potentially transforms social development to fit modes of consumption considered normative by popular standards of acceptability. These standards are suggested and sometimes imposed through the industries of dominant or popularly recognized social groups. The Atlantic world is by no means monolithic in the way of normative values, and although many regions share the same developmental needs, they do not need to take the same developmental direction. Industries that develop certain institutions might marginalize or destroy industries within other institutions. Policy secures public space for industrial actors (the individuals or people that function in the space provided by popularly accepted social value) that may find functional space within multiple different social institutions.
Social institutions represent systems of social value that in many ways determine the direction of policy decision making. Economic, religious and cultural institutions (as well as others like media and community) work together with political structures to facilitate public spaces for industrial interaction and institutional growth. Religious, economic and cultural systems of social value and their related industries (as mechanisms of agency in creating or utilizing functional space) play a vehicular role between socio-institutional spaces. They transport and direct knowledge of how institutions should develop based a perceived value for functional industrial space, whether tangible or ideological.
For example television and other media provide space for cultural expression and exchange through entertainment. Entertainment as a culturally valued industry that functions through media, it extends globally into communities and living rooms. The intellectual space as far as what has been broadcasted is mandated by socio-cultural policy of value which determines a place for the ideas expressed. The physical coverage area represents a political policy mandate on media, based on public acceptability or place for that broadcast space (which can be local or transnational). The public space that social industries like broadcast media function in as directed by political policy decision making, is authorized by reason of their accepted public value. Social values determine the nature of institutional development through what is considered popularly acceptable.
Transnational industry motivations can take socio-institutional spaces beyond the borders of their national homelands. Acculturation of industry defined identifications occurs when the values that they manufacture become publicly acceptable in places outside of where they originated. Popular culture and popular opinion work together at value acculturation in the way popular opinion mirrors pop culture; the values of both might define social acceptability or normalcy. Popular opinion of course, triggers political action through policy decision making. Linkages between popular culture of transnational industries and the institutions they function within, places policy action on local and national levels within the global paradigm of popular value.
European colonialism deeply influences the direction of south Atlantic world development, especially in this contemporary era of global development. Transnational industrial actors in the Atlantic world have a broad history of interactions and throughout the centuries have established institutional networks that delineate normative exchange. Socio-cultural identities of the Atlantic world provide background to similar institutional formations in nations on both the east and west sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For example British and French cultural industries like sports and entertainment remain in the conscious identifications and represent aspects of normative values in independent Atlantic world nations. A prime example of this is the persistence of cricket and football (soccer) sporting industries in the popular expression of Cultural development in developing nations of the Atlantic world.
The urban structure of most Atlantic world cities have physical and social boundaries that may incorporate colonial legacies in the way that space is distributed. Marginal social spaces within the context of race-class culture still prevail (as colonial social constructs) and shape the equity of social space. Social space plays a vital role in the growth and function of social institutions; political culture, as a means to the process of institutional enfranchisement, regulates access to public space based on popularly socialized concepts of value.
Many identifiable social spaces throughout the Atlantic world are synonymously defined by transnational religious, economic and cultural industry actors. Some of which enjoy political recognition and a level of popular influence over other more marginal institutional actors. One example of this is the prevalence of churches and mosques as dominant socially and politically empowered religious spaces in the Atlantic world. When looking at the similarities of social spaces in the south Atlantic world, one has to take into account histories of cultural exchange to rationally understand the development of contemporary transnational identities in the Atlantic, especially with regards to social space.
Space, social i nstitutions and contemporary value systems
At this stage of the analysis, transnational contemporary value systems will be related to the development of social institutions through spatial access and recognition. Some contemporary values systems will be explored in terms of how they affect spatial development through their relative social institutions. Cultural, economic and religious transnational actors take focus as representing their value systems and the development of representative space through popular industry and political agency. Social value systems and how they relate to the industries that function within social institutions characterize the development of space for industrious activities. In the following section it is suggested that transnational identities disseminate social values throughout industries functionally involved in religious, cultural and economic institutions, and play active roles in the development of popularly accepted space.
Transnational cultural spaces and economic development
People empower social institutions through their support for the value associations and assignations that their corresponding social industries manufacture. The value systems social institutions symbolize through their social industries define the way that they use and allocate spatial and social resources. Value systems that industries transmit however do not always represent all of those that accommodate them in their social space. Popular support of value systems wax and wane as their industries compete for spatial recognition.
For example sports or music as entertainment sectors in cultural industry have different levels of social acceptance based on value identifications in different Atlantic spaces. Cricket is not generally perceived as popular a sport in West Africa as it is in the West Indies; however at the last cricket World Cup held in the West Indies there was less popular support for the sport than was assumed by CARICOM and its member states that hosted the tournament. The popular acceptance of West Indian cricket as a cultural heritage remains but popular recognition and support might give way to waves of industrial growth from other sports like football (soccer) and basketball. The public support for these other cultural value systems come from industrial agency in other social institutions like economics and media.
Contemporary political structures can encounter problems in securing social space for institutional growth because of challenges from globalized socio-industrial development. Political institutions function for the interests of social development and are responsible in allocating public space and resources according to potentials for institutional growth. Industrial growth is however seemingly more favored in the contemporary realm of transnational policy. This empowers transnational industries in acquiring institutional space that might not yet be fully developed to fit marginally popular identities of local social institutions. In the same light, marginal social value systems and their associate identities use transnational industry to find spaces of institutional empowerment.
Social institutions are connected through interactive relationships of their industries. Socio-institutional industries create space for value systems beyond their primary or declared institutional affiliation. Many contemporary churches focus more on their popular appeal as religious based industries, but often function within social institutions of culture and economics to further consolidate their popular space. Spatial development is shaped by the way that value systems in social institutions connect space and people; sport as a cultural industrial sector, for example, is a business with contractual agreements and commercial commodities. This creates more than cultural space for sporting values, as economic participation grants sporting industries that institutionally recognized and popular space.
People connect with space in similar ways through different institutions over urban sites in the Atlantic world. Transnational industries that link nations of the Atlantic have impacts on their institutional growth. For example basketball as a sporting industry represents popular values in cultural institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Social capital produced by nations of the Atlantic World now service basketball industries large enough to efficiently use and accommodate that athletic skill. The NBA is one of the highest paying and earning basketball (popularly recognized) sporting firms in the world, and hires athletes from various nations in the Atlantic world. This is true in other cultural industries as well based on the level of their development and recognition within the global community.
The same can be said about the Reggae music industry and the production of global social capital to participate in its development. The reggae industry functions in a global market. Reggae as an industry of cultural social value systems creates and facilitates spaces for interaction between social networks and transnational actors. Transnational participants in the reggae industry span the Atlantic world and earn a livelihood by functioning within the economic component of that cultural space. Jamaica and the United States however have no universal claim to reggae or basketball respectively. They however do have a direct effect on domestic and foreign participants in these industries through the impact of other socio-institutional elements; ones that may spur popular cultural innovations shaping the way reggae and basketball are valued by others. Take for reflection, a popular innovation in style of drumming or dribbling, efficiency in passing or recording, aesthetics or communication on stage or on the court, may come from cultural reactions to socio-economic or religious change.
The migration and retention of social capital in labor and professional sectors of cultural industries also impact economic value systems in the way that services, commodities and exchanges are popularly valued. Economies of scale have more space for professional and labor participants, creating more wealth amongst these participants than in smaller or less accessible socio-economic institutions. Many professionals find more value in traveling outside of local job markets in order to maximize their utility gains from employment. This aspect of migration affects the growth of transnational social networks that involve non-economic institutional factors relative to culture, religion and even politics. An example can be made from the transnational actions of local government relative to the existence and participation of transnational communities and cultures in city level political processes. The City of Lauderhill in South Florida for example has initiated sister city programs with home land cities of its immigrant groups. This indicates local level political recognition of the cultural participation migrants play in the development of their homelands’ cultural and economic institutions.[1]