Conceiving and researching transnationalism

A review of recent research across several disciplines not surprisingly finds a wide variety of descriptions surrounding meanings, processes, scales and methods concerning the notion of 'transnationalism'. Here, several clusters or themes are suggested by way of disentangling the term. These include transnationalism as a social morphology, as a type of consciousness, as a mode of cultural reproduction, as an avenue of capital, as a site of political engagement, and as a reconstruction of 'place' or locality. These and other approaches to transnationalism are being explored in a newly commissioned ESRC research programme on Transnational Communities (see http:// www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk).