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<p>This introduction to the forum on my recent book, <i>Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries</i> (2022, Indiana University Press), highlights three key contributions and aims. First, through ethnographic vignettes, the book illustrates how Arab–Latin American business elites ‘make’ global economic relations while navigating between their Arab ancestry, Latin American host cultures, and roles as protagonists of interregional relations. In elucidating the material bases of Arab–Latin American relations, I draw from and add to a growing, multilingual, and multidisciplinary body of literature that analyzes the many (but oft-overlooked) historical and contemporary ties (relating to trade, politics, culture, migration, food, religion, and so on) that link these faraway but long-connected regions, and also highlight the need to ‘globalize’ our understanding of both Latin America and the Middle East. Second, by drawing from the admittedly somewhat esoteric Arab–Latin American case, the book challenges—and adds nuance to—the commonsensical, oft-repeated notion that global capitalist elites are rootless and unmoored, exist independently of the state, and have shed national and other place-based identities and imaginaries in favor of a global class consciousness. Contrary to received wisdom, I argue that while global capitalism cultivates certain cross-border connections, it does not precisely obliterate localized identities, practices, and imaginaries. Rather, it is a culturally, racially, ethnically, and territorially inflected system that often relies on them. Lastly, I argue that the common assertion that global capitalist elites are autonomous from the state (or operate independently of space), whether materially or ideationally, is both misleading and poses a significant political problem. Indeed, I suggest that arguments for a state-averse, free-floating, and globally minded capitalist class risk reinforcing, however unintentionally, two dangerous myths surrounding neoliberalism in particular—that its proponents ‘hate the state’ and that capitalist elites cannot be regulated.</p>

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Global capitalism in/and the global south—introduction to the discussion of Rooted Globalism: Arab–Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年8月31日

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  • Kevin Funk

摘要

This introduction to the forum on my recent book, Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries (2022, Indiana University Press), highlights three key contributions and aims. First, through ethnographic vignettes, the book illustrates how Arab–Latin American business elites ‘make’ global economic relations while navigating between their Arab ancestry, Latin American host cultures, and roles as protagonists of interregional relations. In elucidating the material bases of Arab–Latin American relations, I draw from and add to a growing, multilingual, and multidisciplinary body of literature that analyzes the many (but oft-overlooked) historical and contemporary ties (relating to trade, politics, culture, migration, food, religion, and so on) that link these faraway but long-connected regions, and also highlight the need to ‘globalize’ our understanding of both Latin America and the Middle East. Second, by drawing from the admittedly somewhat esoteric Arab–Latin American case, the book challenges—and adds nuance to—the commonsensical, oft-repeated notion that global capitalist elites are rootless and unmoored, exist independently of the state, and have shed national and other place-based identities and imaginaries in favor of a global class consciousness. Contrary to received wisdom, I argue that while global capitalism cultivates certain cross-border connections, it does not precisely obliterate localized identities, practices, and imaginaries. Rather, it is a culturally, racially, ethnically, and territorially inflected system that often relies on them. Lastly, I argue that the common assertion that global capitalist elites are autonomous from the state (or operate independently of space), whether materially or ideationally, is both misleading and poses a significant political problem. Indeed, I suggest that arguments for a state-averse, free-floating, and globally minded capitalist class risk reinforcing, however unintentionally, two dangerous myths surrounding neoliberalism in particular—that its proponents ‘hate the state’ and that capitalist elites cannot be regulated.