Colonization, appropriation, commensuration: Three modes of translation

Abstract

What happens when practices are transferred from one place to another? This question lurks in the background of competing concepts of social order, modernization and globalization: Does it expand a homogeneous space where the functionality of original practices is reproduced? Or does it mix up any settled orders and create a dynamic space of heterogeneous assemblages? We here draw on a mobile ethnography following the travel of ‘mini-publics’, a pratice of organizing public participation, across different situations. We find three different modes by which mobilized elements of this practice (people, texts and artefacts) link up with local configurations: Firstly, colonization is when the original practice is sought to be replicated at the site of destination, reflecting a modern ambition to territorially expand the order that guarantees the original function. Secondly, appropriation is when mobilized elements of practice are left to freely change their meanings and effects as they are absorbed into various local configurations, reflecting a postmodern ambition to dissolve boundaries and hybridize settled orders. Thirdly, commensuration is when elements embedded in different sites are linked with each other through a broader abstract model within which they are positioned as functionally equivalent, reflecting a reflexive-modern ambition to build network infrastructures for integrating diversity. We find that the three modes coexist and thus propose them as components of a broader conceptual repertoire for empirically analysing how transfer happens, how translocal spaces are constituted, and how globalization takes shape, rather than a priori assuming either one, or the other mode as the generally dominant pattern.