Both Alcalde’s and Dietze and Katja’s dosseirs address different outlooks on the spatialization of transnational history. Their work discusses scholarly trends that challenge the supposed natural, fundamental, and self-contained nature of spatial units such as the nation-state. In summary, both works argue that spaces are defined and formed through transnational interactions.
Alcalde discusses two methodologies to spatialize transnational history: 1) considering space as flexible and constructivist, and 2) combining spatial scales in a manner that doesn’t challenge established understandings of space directly. Alcalde’s work critically engages with the framework of space and urges historians to study spatial formations, spaces, perceptions of space, spatial dynamics, and spatial practices and uses.
Dietze and Katja’s work, although similarly focusing on spatializing transnational history, narrows in on transnational actors. They critique the previous’ scholarships’ neglect of the rooted element of transnational actors. Not only are these individuals mobile, but they are also rooted within their own regional and local contexts. Thus, they must learn to balance multiple spaces. Not only are these actors connectors, but they have the potential to shape the nation-state in the same way these conceptions of territoriality influence and shape their mobility.
Dietze and Katja’s work reminded me of various dimensions within Kreuder-Sonnen’s work on international scientific exchange and Polish medical experts. Polish physicians such as Bujwid and Ludwik were shaped by national spheres: such as German and French debates on germ theory (in Bujwid’s case forced him to renounce his German teachings to learn from Pasteur), the Tsarist government’s control over Poland’s public health and limitations on Polish leadership, the wider international networks created to address Typhus in the region, and the colonial rhetoric which shaped understanding of Polish regions. The Polish scientists simultaneously shaped these national spheres in an attempt to carve out their own nation state; Bujwid incorporated Parisian and German microbiology and bacteriology in a manner that challenged the Tsarist government’s limits on Polish leadership, Ludwik served as an intermediary in the International committees on Typhus, and Polish scientists responsed to colonial rhetoric and formed their own categorization and distinction (i.e the west and the east).
However, this caused me to think about last week’s readings on how questions of agency could create issues in transnational history. Although the spatialization of transnational history could make history more critical of our understanding of space, I fear that the field would still neglect the people who could not be mobile. After all, the archives do not really feature many individuals who were left behind in transnational history — how can we reconstruct if and how their interactions informed transnational spaces and how they interacted with the “less” significant and more local scales?
Week 5 Blog