Exporting Ideologies

The particular elements of Inderpal Grewal’s Transnational America I would like to highlight are the roles of neoliberal socioeconomic practices in altering the ways in which borders, markets, and welfares operate within constructed “global” notions.  Grewal pays close attention to the ways in which United States imperialist marketization and commercialism works in tandem with the exportation of hegemonic-state conventionalized products, resources, and ideologies.  Grewal notes, “…shifting and changing national subject…moving across nations and national boundaries to produce American identities imbricated within a consumer citizenship that exceeds the bounds of nation to become transnational” (loc. 150 of 3647).  The desire for the “American dream” and the empowerment of white, Western privilege furthered the transnational distribution and retention of neoliberal policies. 

This repression of varied cultural identities, in the endeavor of creating a global cosmopolitanism, by the United States and other Western neoliberal imperialists reminds me of Castenada Ahmed's "Introduction to Uprootings and Regroundings."  Ahmed states, “...the emergence of...flexible cosmopolitan cultures or civil societies still depends on the constraints of particular articulations of power, hierarchy, inequality and positioning" (Ahmed, 4).  While the empowered nation-states altered world social, political, and economic pathways under the façade of “progress,” in reality, their methods have subjugated “less advanced” peoples and nation-states in the name of capital and power accumulation; “Transnational capital has helped to resuscitate some nation-states while simultaneously reducing the power of others” (Grewal, loc. 1079 of 3647). 

Grewal’s most captivating example of this relation between American ideals bleeding into newly formed transnational markets and subject identities is that of the infamous Barbie in India.  By throwing America’s generic, white female Barbie doll in the traditional sari garb of Indian women, Mattel’s iconic figure assisted in the building up of transnational, “global” markets and the (re)empowerment of Western ideologies.  Grewal notes, “The cultural work required to create a consumer desire for a product…contributes to and participates in wider cultural changes within which the product can become meaningful…” (Grewal, loc. 1157 of 3647).