Identity Switching and Transnational Professionals

Abstract

Transnational professionals maintain their position in the international political economy through the use, rather than possession, of ideational and material resources. One important means of doing so comes from a capacity to build claims to knowing how to govern—claims that can be generated from identity switching between different network domains. This piece sketches how transnational professionals engage in identity switching and how they can play off different pools of professional knowledge, which enables them to engage in acts of “epistemic arbitrage.” When successful over time, such transnational professionals can also become “epistemic arbiters” of what is appropriate knowledge and meaningful action across a range of policy areas. The combination of identity switching and epistemic arbitrage can be used to maintain professional jurisdictional control in transnational policy space, as well as to provide the means and policy content for transnational professional mobilization. The capacity to move between different networks is a great advantage for those who need to muster support to change how matters are governed. How transnational governance is shaped is frequently considered from the viewpoint of processes linked to authority, or attributed to structure or culture. We can step back from such macro-level analysis and zoom in on how transnational professionals are able to get their way. Useful concepts for this purpose can be found in the literature on identity and emergence in social networks, including “identity switching,” “style,” and “network domain.” Harrison White (2008) and others discuss network domains as experiential processes wherein there is a domain of topics and a network of relations. Different network domains can represent kinship, economic, and political ties, where people have relations in multiple network architectures (Padgett and McLean 2006). People embedded in network domains use identity switching to maintain relationships that provide them with the opportunity to deploy ideational and material resources. Such identity switching is an attempt at control within one's various network domains and also over the self (as a search for personality). Switching occurs not only between kinship and economic network domains but can include a whole array of professional arenas, where people develop different profiles and articulate storylines on how things should be done in a particular way (Godart and White 2010). The process of identity switching across network domains leads to what can be referred to as a “style,” which emerges from patterned interactions of individuals observing how to behave within and across network domains, including how to strategically get action (White 2008:134). Those who have a good footing in one network domain, through high social capital, plus high ambitions to do well in other network domains, may develop a style that permits them to act as “intrepid brokers” in making important connections (Burt 2010).