Rationalization of belonging: Transnational community endurance

Abstract

Contemporary thinkers are pessimistic about the endurance of transnational communities. The deviant case of the century-and-a-half-old transnational Esperanto community features a process that can explain transnational community survival: rationalization. Rationalization manifests in Esperantists reproducing a form of community logic integrating symbols, principles (justifications, values, etc.), communication practices and technologies, and organization centered on the Esperanto language. The Esperanto language and community logic enable unifying Esperanto activities across space and time. The Esperanto case suggests that community rationalization and language rationalization – an element thereof – are global phenomena integral to modernity. Having affected communities and language too, rationalization as a global process appears to be more extensive than previously suggested. Transnational communities can endure as manifestations of a global community institutional order organizing social life alongside but largely independently of nation-states, science, professions, and religion.