Analytical response - Essay Example

It will also evaluate the concept of popular culture as a melting point for transnationalism. The paper will also go on to examine the relationship between transnationalism and religion and its implication on pedagogy. Transnationalism Transnationalism refers to the social matter that grows from the interconnectivity between people and the disappearance of national boundaries. This is because it evolves from the integration of minorities and foreign persons into a nation's cultural and social spheres.

“The concept of transnationalism was coined in the early 1990s by an enterprising group of social anthropologists to refer to the multi-stranded activities created by immigrants across national borders” (Ben-Refael and Sternberg, 2009: p568). This implies that transnationalism is borne out of the cultural osmosis that culminates from the migration and settlement of foreign nationals in a given nation or state. Lionet and Shih (2005) go further to say that prior to the 1980s when migration became common around the world, national cultures were somewhat homogeneous.

People maintained their real identities and did not really have direct linkages to other cultures. In most cases, these “other” cultures were deemed as “foreign”. . However, after the advent of globalization and multiculturalism, nation-states need to be a little more accommodating due to the restructuring of the global order (Salih, 2013). Thus, the rest of this paper will involve a critique of the main themes of transnationalism. This will include an examination of elements that have changed with transnationalism from the core elements of the course.

Transnationalism and Identity Obviously, in the current dispensation of globalization and multiculturalism, the identities of people are destined to be questioned and people are bound to change in accordance to the modification of their environments and places of domicile. Zalanga starts his analysis of the relationship between identity and transnationalism by examining the core thesis of the Marxist theory. This exegesis states that people are born into preexisting social systems and structures and hence, they grow up to honor the elements and values of the social system they were born into.

This argument is true, in that different people have different attitudes and approaches to others depending on their social values and their social norms and traditions. The variations of social systems spans across the different continents and nations around the world. Thus, in a typical situation, transnationalism involves one person who grew up and spent his formative years in a single environment (Zalanga, 2012). This individual builds his conceptions and worldview around a given social system and social framework.

However, such an individual may migrate and find himself or herself in a totally different nation and environment in which he might be surrounded by a totally different nation and a totally