Transnational Careers Research Articles

Le sionisme transnational entre Hongrie, Bohême et Moravie (1900-1914). Quatre études de cas

This article examines the Zionist commitment of four rabbis of Hungarian descent who were active in Bohemia and Moravia around 1900. Only their transnational careers provide a satisfactory explanation of their political involvement. Being German speakers, but exposed since childhood to the pressure to acculturate to the Hungarian nation, they felt little affected by the German-Czech antagonism. They tended to conceptualise a specifically Jewish nation faster than some of their colleagues. Some also endeavored to smuggle Zionist ideas back into Hungary.

Judicial Biography in the British Empire

This article adds to the biographic "turn" in legal studies. While there is a large body of scholarship examining judges in the United States and the United Kingdom, comparatively little is written on their legal counterparts in the common law world. What can judicial biographies offer for comparative law? Do these studies generate useful information about the movement of law? What can be gained by a better awareness of the lives of those at the top of the colonial legal profession? This article shows that within the common law world, judges, like those in the United States and the United Kingdom, were central figures in the administration of justice and in the colonial socio-political elite. Biographical studies are even more important in understanding the way law moved through the British Empire because the backgrounds of these figures shaped their ability to deal with new social groups and diverse societies, and to create pluralistic solutions to legal problems. As colonial judges had to be geographically mobile to move through the British Empire, they possessed transnational careers and accumulated experiences from different common law based legal systems. Through their role as colonial adjudicators, judges influenced the world around them, in part, due to their experiences and socialization. We argue that judicial biographies provide a new way to see the way law moved across colonial and imperial jurisdictions.

A lurking ambivalence: The discourse on female taiyupian stars’ experiences in Hong Kong

This paper analyses the transnational careers of taiyupian female stars, who, during the first downturn in taiyupian production during the late 1950s and early 1960s, travelled to Hong Kong to make Amoy-dialect films. This collaboration contributed to a transnational Hokkien ethnic film culture and has been claimed for the formation of a Hokkien-identified cultural sphere. However, a closer examination of star discourses surrounding their experiences of working and living in Hong Kong reveals ambivalence that complicates this proposition. This paper argues that the shared ethnic Hokkien heritage that enabled co-productions is complicated by an implicit unease toward modernity as well as market competition between the film industries in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Australian Women Working in British Broadcasting in the 1930s and 1940s

This article analyzes the connections between gender, labor, and mobility by tracing the transnational careers of two Australian women who began working at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the 1930s and 1940s: Peggie Broadhead and Muriel Howlett. Both participated in the production of media content aimed at British diasporic audiences while at the same time negotiating their own Australian national identity and sense of belonging, within an imperial framework. A close study of institutional and private archives reveals that these professional responsibilities and tensions resulted in the formation of a new transnational identity of “Dominions broadcaster.” This article reveals the agency and adaptability of Australian women working in international broadcasting, and argues that through their labor and mobility they inscribed and made real the idea of imperial and Commonwealth networks.

Cultural Brokers in Uniform: The Global Rise of Military Musicians and Their Music

The article assesses the role of the military in the global dissemination and exchange of music in the long nineteenth century. It shows that, first, Western military music and its instrumentation were influenced by cross-cultural encounters, primarily with the Ottoman Empire. Second, I argue that educational professionalization and instrumental standardization were important vehicles for the global rise of the military band beyond its original purpose. Third, tracing the transnational careers of some German military musicians will make evident that competition with respect to national prestige, rising imperialism, and the increasing commercialization of musical life were crucial features of the spread of military musicians all over the world, making them cultural brokers not only of military music.

Transnational Contexts for Professional Identity Development in Accounting

Global expansion in the boundaries of professional work, the introduction of managerial concepts and thinking, and changes in the organizational form of professional service firms all impact the process by which professionals come to identify with their profession. The focus of this paper is on transnational professional careers and professional identity development, which remain an under-researched aspect of how globalization affects the professions. Based on original survey data from Australia, we chart the influence of social and organizational contexts on professional identity development for migrant and local accounting professionals respectively. Findings suggest that unlike the “boundaryless” opportunities associated with globe-trotting professionals, the majority of professional migrants are significantly constrained by the organizational and inter-subjective settings in which they work. Theoretically, we extend the concept of professional identity development to include not only formative early career experiences, but also large institutional jolts such as those provided by migration. Findings also help expand current understandings of organizations as sites of professionalization by shedding light on their impact on transnational careers.

Contemporary Indian Dance: New Creative Choreography in India and the Diaspora by Ketu H. Katrak (review)

Reviewed by: Contemporary Indian Dance: New Creative Choreography in India and the Diaspora by Ketu H. Katrak Kathy Foley CONTEMPORARY INDIAN DANCE: NEW CREATIVE CHOREOGRAPHY IN INDIA AND THE DIASPORA. By Ketu H. Katrak. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 288 pp. Cloth, $100.00. This text opens with some of the usual topics in Indian dance literature: the rise of bharatanatyam from the devadasi (courtesan dancer) system in South India and the innovations of Uday Shankar and Ram Gopal in popularizing the art of modern Indian dancing internationally. The development of Kathak, in which Madame Menaka played a role separating the art from the traditional nautch performance, is also detailed. Coverage is clear, but where the text does its most useful work is in discussing the new developments since the 1970s, showing how a tradition versus modernization debate that was important in the work of artists like Chandralekha and peers in India has progressed in India and the diaspora. The divide of modern dance (pioneered by Uday Shankar and Ram Gopal and carried forward from the late 1960s by figures like Astad Deboo) and traditional or “classical” dance has diminished since the 1980s as a new generation in India and abroad combines innovative choreography and new themes with aspects of traditional training. These artists also move around the globe and circulate back to India. The first chapters discuss the anti-devadasi and nautch history, detail important figures of the twentieth century, including Uday Shankar, Chandralekha, Astad Deboo, and UK-based Shobana Jeyasingh, who carved out careers as dancers that were not confined to a single Indian genre and who had transnational careers as performers often collaborating with or fusing with movements in international modern dance. The next section of the book is short discussions of a wide range of innovators both in India and internationally, including those in Kuala Lumpur, Canada, the United States, and Britain. The emphasis is on more avantgarde performers. The book has its limits (for example, the author’s Southern California base and links to UCLA World Arts program means that artists from that area are discussed, while dancers based in Northern California, New York, Boston, or Chicago get less attention). The book ends with the work of Akram Khan. While one can, of course, think of important figures whose work is not detailed, this is a strong work telling the varied stories of a number of important dancers moving Indian performance forward around the globe. The ambition of the book is its global reach, but with such a canvas it cannot go as deeply into all the important dancers discussed. It is however a useful survey and a contribution to the increasing scholarship on Indian dance in the contemporary period. [End Page 686] Kathy Foley University of California, Santa Cruz Copyright © 2015 University of Hawai‘i Press

First Trip Abroad: Expectations, Experiences and Stories of Transnational Romanians

Abstract The paper analyzes transnational Romanians’ stories about their first trip abroad. The concept of physical mobility is seen in a broader framework for understanding transnational and cosmopolitan behaviours as well as international migration. In order to distinguish between different types of travelling for the first trip abroad the article is constructed keeping in mind the structural changes and constraints regarding physical mobility for Romanian citizens. During the process of transition from a communist country to the status of EU member, Romanian citizens’ stories about travelling abroad for the first time fundamentally changed. Labour migrants, asylum seekers, business travellers, students or tourists left the countries with different expectations and faced different problems at destination. Their attitudes toward origin and destination framed their images about the first trip abroad. Using a qualitative approach and samples of Romanians who live in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom, the analysis emphasizes certain differences between different types of travelling for the first time abroad and reconstructs how Romanians started their transnational careers

“A Sweet Canadian Girl”: English-Canadian Actresses’ Transatlantic and Transnational Careers through the Lenses of Canadian Magazines, 1890s–1940s

From the late nineteenth century until at least the end of the 1920s, English-Canadian periodicals such as Saturday Night, Mayfair, and The Canadian Magazine were keen to cover “the stage” and those Canadians who appeared on it, both in Canada and abroad. Figures such as Margaret Anglin, Julia Arthur, Viola Allen, May Irwin, Bea Lillie, and Margaret Bannerman were featured in these publications, their work heralded as evidence of the country’s talent in the performing arts. These women also were depicted as evidence of Canadians’ ability to move across and around national borders, proof that the country was linked to transnational and transatlantic circuits of performance and, in particular, cultural knowledge. Yet, cosmopolitan subjects though they might be, these actresses were, nevertheless, always “Toronto girls” (or Hamilton or Ottawa), women whose considerable charms and appeal were grounded in their country of origin. This article explores the ways in which these upper-middle-class periodicals helped shape the actresses’ images, as they reported their movements on- and offstage, in Canada, the US, Britain, and (in some cases) Australia. It also considers the ways in which these actresses, in turn, might have lent more glamor, sophistication, and cosmopolitanism to the periodicals themselves.

Cosmopolitan Capital and the Internationalization of the Field of Business Elites: Evidence from the Swiss Case

The aim of this contribution is to explore how the recent internationalization and the increasing importance of ‘cosmopolitan capital’ has impacted on the structure and character of the field of the Swiss business elite. For this purpose we will develop the notion of cosmopolitan capital and comparatively investigate the field of the Swiss business elite in 1980, 2000 and 2010 with multiple correspondence analysis. We can show that in this period international managers with transnational careers and networks not only grow in number, but come to conquer the apex of the biggest and highest capitalized Swiss firms. At the same time, national forms of capital decline in importance and Swiss managers themselves are differentiated increasingly into national and international fractions.

Connecting Spain and the Americas in the cold war: the transnational careers of Jorge Negrete and Carmen Sevilla

Connecting Spain and the Americas in the cold war: the transnational careers of Jorge Negrete and Carmen Sevilla

National identities in multinational worlds: engineers and 'engineering cultures'

An important contemporary change in engineering practice is the increasing internationalisation of work, both through the expansion of multinational organisations and increasing mobility of engineers. International work can break assumed links between working for one's employer, one's country, humanity in general, and oneself. The recent expansion in continuing engineering education (CEE) has generally not included attention to issues in transnational careers. This paper introduces and summarises assessments of 'Engineering Cultures', a liberal arts approach to cross-cultural training for engineers through multimedia modules. These country-based modules examine how what counts as an engineer and engineering knowledge has varied over time and from place to place.