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••• Ann Brooks •••

sense, to understand the concept of place and indeed ‘regionalization’. While
recognizing the significance of Dirlik’s and others (Olds et al., 1999) contribution to
the theorization of place and regionalization, it has become increasingly difficult to
speak of national cultures and identities, given the transformative character of transna-
tionalism and transculturalism. This chapter seeks to follow Ong and Nonini’s (1997)
theorization of globalization and transnationalism in moving beyond ‘place-bound’
theories in understanding diasporic cultures, identities and subjectivities and in their
representations.
Drawing on the model developed by Nonini and Ong (1997), two case studies will
be considered, the first used by Nonini and Ong in the development of their model,
that of diasporic Chinese transnationalism. The second, the growth of contemporary
Islam and the ‘politics of veiling’ in issues around gender representation, subjectiv-
ity and identity. Acknowledging the limitations of place-bound theories of identity,
implied in terms such as ‘territory, region, nationality and ethnicity’ (Nonini and
Ong, 1997: 5), these authors’ point to the development of a new theoretical language
for understanding new identities and subjectivities. This theoretical language, they
argue, emerging from cultural studies and anthropology approaches, is combined
with an interpretive political economy approach. It is this approach, I argue here,
which offers a more dynamic understanding of the relationship between transna-
tionalism and transculturalism and the politics of representation and identity.
In her analysis of diasporic Chinese transnationalism, Ong studies the ‘flexible cit-
izenship of Chinese global capitalists’ and suggests that we consider the ‘transna-
tional practices and imaginings of the nomadic subject and the social conditions that
allow his flexibility’ (1999: 3). As Ong states, the Chinese global capitalists she
describes are not simply ‘adroitly navigating the disjuncture between political land-
scapes and the shifting opportunities of global trade’. Rather, ‘their very flexibility in
geographical and social positioning is itself an effect of novel articulations between
regimes of the family, the state and capital’ (ibid.). Ong, in her work, is concerned
with ‘human agency and its production and negotiations of cultural meanings
within the normative milieus of late capitalism’ (ibid.). So what is the significance of
this theoretical approach and how can it be located alongside other ‘theoretical lan-
guages’. As Nonini and Ong (1997: 9) explain:
Flexible accumulation, according to David Harvey (1989: 147), rests on flexibil-
ity with respect to labor processes, labor markets, products, and patterns of
consumption. It is characterized by the emergence of entirely new sectors of
production, new ways of providing financial services, new markets, and above
all, greatly intensified rates of commercial, technological and organizational
innovation.

Fundamentally, these changes are associated with the enhanced and increased mobil-
ity of people, commodities, ideas and capital on a global scale.
The strength of this position is the ability to synthesize an analysis of markets,
production, consumption, and transnational labour patterns, and to combine ‘all
aspects of economic (and hence cultural) life, in this latest episode of what Harvey

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