Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T20:48:38.322Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Susan Bibler Coutin ,
Bill Maurer  and
Barbara Yngvesson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay examines the legitimation work of globalization by bringing into dialogue the authors' research on immigration, finance, and intercountryadoption. It is concerned with the practices that produce, define, and preclude both movement and connection, such as “naturalizing” some border crossings while criminalizing others; denying the histories and policies that allow some parents to “choose” babies while others must abandon them; and challenging the practices through which small states tweak transnational financial systems while allowing multinational corporations privileges denied small states. Legitimation work (re)configures jurisdictionality, transparency, and sovereignty–the constructs on which debates over globalization's consequences hinge. Examining how these constructs order, include, and exclude persons, goods, and practices sheds light on the boundaries, slippages, and connections between the legitimate and the illegitimate within global processes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2002 , pp. 801 - 843
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2002 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We would like to thank Carol Greenhouse, Jane Collier, and Boa Santos for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Heinz Klug and Carol Greenhouse also provided thought-provoking remarks at the Law and Society Association session that gave rise to this essay. Our conversations with Tom Boellstorff have been invaluable throughout. The anonymous reviewers for Law and Social Inquiry provided critical commentary and useful suggestions for revision. We are grateful to the International Institute for the Sociology of Law for sponsoring our visit there in July 2000. Susan Coutin's research regarding immigration from El Salvador to the United States was funded by two National Science Foundation grants, awards number SBR-9423023 and number SES-0001890. Bill Maurer's research on offshore finance and alternative currencies has been supported by the National Science Foundation Law and Social Science program, award number SES-9818258; and by Global Peace and Conflict Studies and the School of Social Sciences at the University of California at Irvine. Barbara Yngvesson's work regarding transnational adoption was funded by NSF award number SBR-9511937, as well as by faculty development grants from Hampshire College. Finally, we are particularly indebted to the individuals, groups, and institutions that participated in the research projects on which this essay is based.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Universtiy Press.Google Scholar
Andreas, Peter. 2000. Border Games: Policing the U. S.-Mexico Divide. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Aronson, Jaclyn C. 1997. Not My Homeland: A Critique of the Current Culture of Korean International Adoption. Division Ill Project. Amherst, Mass.: Hampshire College.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1978. Critique of Violence. In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writing/Walter Benjamin, ed. Peter, Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Bicker, Lyn 1996. Private Banking in Europe. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Biolsi, Thomas. 2001. “Deadliest Enemies”: Law and the Making of Race Relations on and off Rosebud Reservation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty. 2000. The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity and “Passing”: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882–1910. Law & Social Inquiry 25(1): 1–1.Google Scholar
Cederblad, Marianne, Irhammer, Malin, Mari Mercke, Ann, and Norlander, Eva. 1994. Identitet och anpassing hos utlandfödda adopterade ungdomar. Lunds Universitet: Skriftserie från Institutionen för barnoch ungdomspsykiatri.Google Scholar
Chock, Phyllis Pease. 1991. “Illegal Aliens” and “Opportunity”: Myth-making in Congressional Testimony. American Ethnologist 18(2): 279–279.Google Scholar
Chun, Byung Hoon. 1989 Adoption and Korea. Child Welfare 68(2): 255–60.Google Scholar
Collier, Jane F., Maurer, Bill, and Suáirez-Navaz, Liliana. 1995. Sanctioned Identities: Legal Constructions of Modem Personhood. Identities 2(1–2): 1–27.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and John, Comaroff. 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Coombe, Rosemary J. 1997. The Demonic Place of the “Not There”: Trademark Rumors in the Postindustrial Imaginary. In Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Gupta, Akhil and Ferguson, James, 249–76. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. Forthcoming. Suspension of Deportation Hearings: Racialization, Immigration, and “Americanness. Journal of Latin American Anthropology.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bilbler. 1993. The Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the U. S. Sanctuary Movement. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 1999. The “Real” Americans: Birth, Choice and Naturalization. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Ethnological Society, Portland.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2000. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Stuggle for U. S. Residency. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler 2001. The Oppressed, the Suspect, and the Citizen: Subjectivity in Competing Accounts of Political Violence. Law & Social Inquiry. 26(1): 63–94.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler, and Pease Chock, Phyllis. 1995. “Your Friend, the Illegal”: Definition and Paradox in Newspaper Accounts of Immigration Reform. Identities 2(1–2): 123–48.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Duckham, Janet. 1998. Letter to the Editor. The New York Times 27 October, p. A28.Google Scholar
Dugger, Celia W. 1999. India Offers Rights to Attract Its Offsprings' Cash. New York Times 4 April, 4.Google Scholar
Ellingwood, Ken 1998. Plan Seeks to Save Lives of Illegal Immigrants. Los Angeles Times 16 June, A3.Google Scholar
[FATF] Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering. 2000. Review to Identify Non-Cooperating Countries or Territories: Increasing the Worldwide Effectiveness of Anti-Money Laudering Measures. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. [FSF] Financial Stability Forum. 2000. Report of the Working Group on Offshore Centres. Available at http://www.fsforum.org/Reports/RepOFC.html. Last accessed 22 October 2001.Google Scholar
Featherstone, Mike. 1995. Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Fineman, Mark. 1997. Resort Islands Now Offer Cash-and-Carry Citizenship. Los Angeles Times, 28 November, A5.Google Scholar
Fonseca, Ralph. 1999. Statement by the Hon. Ralph Fonseca. 1999 annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, September 28, 1999. Available at http://www.imf.org/external/am/1999/speeches/pr50bze.pdf. Last accessed 22 October 2001.Google Scholar
Gibson-Graham, J. K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ginsberg, Anthony. 1991. Tax Havens. New York: New York Institute of Finance.Google Scholar
Gordon, Avery. 1997. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Grossberg, Michael. 1985 Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1995. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gupta, Akbil, and Ferguson, James. 1992. Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology 7(1): 6–6.Google Scholar
Hagan, Jacqueline Maria. 1994. Deciding to Be Legal: A Maya Community in Houston. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Nora, and Stoltz Chinchilla, Norma. 1991. Central American Migration: A Framework for Analysis. Latin American Research Review 26(1):75–110.Google Scholar
Hampton, Mark. 1996. The Offshore Interface: Tax Havens in the Global Economy. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hollinger, Joan. 1993. Adoption Law. Future of Children 3(1):43–61.Google Scholar
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, and Avila, Ernestine. 1997. “I'm Here, but I'm There”: The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood. Gender and Society 11(5): 548–548.Google Scholar
Honig, Bonnie. 1996. Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home. In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Benhabib, Seyla, 257–77. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jordan, Mary. 2001. People Smuggling Now Big Business in Mexico. Washington Post, 17 May, A1.Google Scholar
Kearney, Michael. 1986. From the Invisible Hand to Visible Feet: Anthropological Studies of Migration and Development. Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 331–61.Google Scholar
Kifner, John. 1999. For Kosovars, Losing Homes Means Losing All Wealth. New York Times, 4 April, 10.Google Scholar
Kim, Dae Jung. 1998. President Kim Dae Jung's Speech: October 23, 1998 at the Blue House. Chosen Child 1(5): 15–16.Google Scholar
Lakshmi Kant Pandey vs. Union of India. Writ petition crl. no. 1171 of 1982. Decided on Sept. 27, 1985).Google Scholar
Levi, Michael. 1997. Money Laundering and Regulatory Policies. In Responding to Money Laundering: International Perspectives, ed. Savona, Ernesto, 259–81. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Lifton, Betty Jean. 1994. Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lohr, Steve. 1992. Where the Money Washes up. New York Times Magazine, 29 March, 27.Google Scholar
Long, William R. 1994. Adopting a Tougher Policy. Los Angeles Times, 16 April, A1.Google Scholar
Mahler, Sarah J. 1995. American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Malkki, Lissa. 1992. National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees. Cultural Anthropology 7(1): 24–44.Google Scholar
Martens, Peter L. 1997. Immigrants, Crime, and Criminal Justice in Sweden. In Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration: Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives, ed. Tonry, Michael, 183–255. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Matoesian, Gregory M. 1997. “You Were Interested in Him as a Person?” Rhythms of Domination in the Kennedy Smith Rape Trial. Law and Social Inquiry 22(1): 55–55.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 1995. Complex Subjects: Offshore Finance, Complexity Theory, and the Dispersion of the Modern. Socialist Review 25(3–4): 113–45.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 1997. Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law, and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 1998. Cyberspatial Sovereignties: Offshore Finance, Digital Cash, and the Limits of Liberalism. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 5(2): 493–493.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 1999. Forget Locke? From Proprietor to Risk-Bearer in New Logics of Finance. Public Culture 11 (2): 365–85.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia, Da Vanzo, Julie, Greenwell, Lisa, and Burciaga Valdez, R. 1998. Remittance Behavior among Salvadoran and Filipino Immigrants in Los Angeles. International Migration Review 32(1): 97–97.Google Scholar
Miles, Richard. 1997. Internet's First Offshore Bank Collapses. Guardian Weekly, 17 August, 14.Google Scholar
Modell, Judith L. 1994. Kinship with Strangers: Adoption and Interpretations of Kinship in American Culture. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 1996. Democracy, Power, and the “Political.” In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Benhabib, Seyla, 245–56. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Newman, Peter. 1995. E-Cash: A Looming Financial Revolution. MacLean's 26 June, 30.Google Scholar
Nordin, Sara. 1996. Mer eller mindre svart. SvartVitt 1:4–6.Google Scholar
Paral, Rob. 1995. Naturalization: New Demands and New Directions at the INS. Interpreter Releases 72 (27): 937–43.Google Scholar
Perea, Juan F., ed. 1997. Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Pertman, Adam. 1998. A Private Matter No Longer. Boston Sunday Globe, 8 March, A1.Google Scholar
Peterson, Jonathan. 1999. The Buck Does Not Stop Here. Los Angeles Times, 2 April, A1.Google Scholar
Post-Adopt-China, Internet listserv. Message posted 9 Sept. 1998.Google Scholar
Probyn, Elspeth. 1996. Outside Belongings. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Radin, Margaret Jane. 1996. Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children, Body Parts, and Other Things. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Register, Cheri 1991 Are Those Kids Yours?”: American Families with Children Adopted from Other Countries. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Susan. 1994. Fictitious Capital, Fictitious Spaces: The Geography of Offshore Financial Flows. In Money, Space, and Power, ed. Corbridge, Stuart, Martin, Ron, and Thrift, Nigel, 91–115. Oxford, England: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rose, Jacqueline. 1996. States of Fantasy. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Saffian, Sarah. 1998. Ithaka. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Sanchez, George J. 1997. Face the Nation: Race, Immigration, and the Rise of Nativism in Late Twentieth Century America. International Migration Review 31(4): 1009–1009.Google Scholar
Santner, Eric L. 2001. On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sassen, Saskia. 1989. America's Immigration “Problem”: The Real Causes. World Policy Journal. 6(4): 811–31.Google Scholar
Sassen, Saskia. 1996. Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Savona, Ernesto, and De Feo, Michael A. 1997. International Money Laundering Trends and Prevention/Control Policies. In In Responding to Money Laundering: International Perspectives, ed. Savona, Ernesto, 9–69. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Schmid, John. 2001. Euro Notes: Bonanza for the Undetworld International Herald Tribune, 15 August, 1.Google Scholar
Serrill, Michael S. 1991. Wrapping the Earth in Family Ties. Time International, 4 November, 40–46.Google Scholar
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 2001. Making Babies, Making Families. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Michael J. 1988. The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in Biography, Photography, and Policy Analysis. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Specter, Michael. 1998. Population Implosion Worries a Graying Europe. New York Times, 10 July, A1.Google Scholar
Stanley, Alessandra. 1997. Hands off Our Babies, a Georgian Tells America. New York Times, 29 June, 1.Google Scholar
Starchild, Adam. 1998. The Offshore Entrepreneur, http://www.au.com/offshore.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. The Gender of the Gift. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tranströmer, Tomas. 1987. Answers to Letters. In Tomas Tranströmer: Selected Poems 1954–1986, ed. Hass, Robert. New York: Ecco Press.Google Scholar
Tranströmer, Tomas. 1995. Golden Wasp, In For the Living and the Dead: New Poems and a Memoir. Hopewell, N. J.: Ecco Press.Google Scholar
Trotzig, Astrid. 1996. Blod är tjockare än vatten. (Blood is thicker than water.) Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag.Google Scholar
U. S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. 1996. FATF-VII Report on Money Laundering Typologies. FinCEN Advisory, August 1996.Google Scholar
Von Mehlen, Anna. 1998. Samtal med vuxna adopterade. (Conversations with adult adoptees.) Stockholm: Rabén/Prisma.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jan 1995. Giving away Simone: A Memoir. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. 1981 The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality. In On Narrative, ed. Mitchell, W. J. T., 1–23. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara. 1997. Negotiating Motherhood: Identity and Difference in Open Adoptions. Law and Society Review 31(1): 31–31.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara. 1998. States of Origin: Race, Roots and Nation in the Adoption of Children Transnationally. Paper delivered at the ninety-seventh annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 2–6 Dec., Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara. 2000. “Un Niño de Cualquier Color” Race and Nation in Intercountry Adoption. In Globalizing Institutions: Case Studies in Regulation and Innovation, ed. Jenson, Jane and de Sousa Santos, Boaventura, 167–204. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara, and Mahoney, Maureen. 2000. “As One Should, Ought, and Wants to Be”: Belonging and Authenticity in Identity Narratives. Theory, Culture and Society 17(6): 77–110.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.Google Scholar