Showing papers in "Identities-global Studies in Culture and Power in 2012"
TL;DR: This article used the 2011 viral video "My Tram Experience" as a prism through which to consider aspects of the contemporary politics of race and racism, immigration and misoxeny in Britain.
Abstract: This paper uses the 2011 viral video “My Tram Experience” as a prism through which to consider aspects of the contemporary politics of race and racism, immigration and misoxeny in Britain The release and popularity of that clip is seen in the context of the second trial of the murders of Stephen Lawrence and in relation to technological changes and the emergence of virtual and immaterial racism on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook
111 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how an "ignorance contract" lies at the heart of a society structured in racial hierarchy, where ignorance is understood as a social achievement with strategic value.
Abstract: Working with the recollections of everyday experiences of apartheid collected by the Apartheid Archives project, and drawing on the emerging theorization of ignorance in the critical philosophy of race, this article explores how an ‘ignorance contract’ – the tacit agreement to entertain ignorance – lies at the heart of a society structured in racial hierarchy. Unlike the conventional theorization of ignorance that regards ignorance as a matter of faulty individual cognition, or a collective absence of yet-to-be-acquired knowledge, ignorance is understood as a social achievement with strategic value. The apartheid narratives illustrate that for ignorance to function as social regulation, subjectivities must be formed that are appropriate performers of ignorance, disciplined in cognition, affect and ethics. Both white and black South Africans produced epistemologies of ignorance, although the terms of the contract were set by white society as the group with the dominant power.
104 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that boundedness, rootedness and membership in a single national, ethnic or religious group are the natural order of things in migration scholarship and take culture seriously enough, whether it be the different cultures of knowledge production which drive our work, the different culturally infused categories we use or the role of cultural institutions in imagining and changing the nation.
Abstract: Several problems plague migration scholarship. Much work continues to use specific national (and sometimes regional) frames to analyse migration in other contexts or to find general properties based on particular national experiences. It assumes that boundedness, rootedness and membership in a single national, ethnic or religious group are the natural order of things. And it doesn't take culture seriously enough, whether it be the different cultures of knowledge production which drive our work, the different culturally infused categories we use or the role of cultural institutions in imagining and changing the nation. This article expands on these critiques and suggests ways to move scholarship forward.
48 citations
TL;DR: The pervasiveness of binary thinking in contemporary identity studies has been examined in this article, where a genealogy of binary alterity beginning with the synergies between the European Enlightenment and colonialism is reviewed.
Abstract: This article queries the pervasiveness of binary thinking in contemporary identity studies. Reviewing the genealogy of binary alterity beginning with the synergies between the European Enlightenment and colonialism, I note the binary logics that remained embedded within the apparently disparate schools of structuralist and poststructuralist theory. Even the social constructionism of post-colonial scholarship became transmuted through a celebration of radical relativism into a legitimation of continued racialised or culturalised inequalities. To counter this position, I build on but also critique efforts to theorisations of relationalities. A reconstituted identity studies requires the theorisation of unequal globe-spanning imperial power and its contestations through domains of mutual practice. If we set aside an assumption of binaries of difference, such domains of relationship can be found as people meet in terms of their commonalities of experience and aspirations for equality, justice and respect.
44 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore various definitions of place and how this impacts the understanding of mobilities, and demonstrate that the meaning ascribed to nomads is dependent upon a spatialized definition of place which is underpinned by the space-place binary.
Abstract: Though there is a danger that ‘place’ may become subsumed or ignored in research as attention now shifts to questions of ‘mobility,’ discussion of place has burgeoned throughout academia. Many texts declare that place is important, or proclaim the power of place. While place has been shown to be a fundamental part of human existence, what does this then mean for those who are characterized as not being interested in places? Examining nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in Britain, who are often constructed as placeless, highlights that this is not simply a representational concern, but has a tangible empirical affect, impinging on their everyday practices as well as influencing policies and laws that actively deny them their right to place. By exploring various definitions of place and how this impacts the understanding of mobilities, I demonstrate that the meaning ascribed to nomads is dependent upon a spatialized definition of place which is underpinned by the space-place binary. It is this aspect of the disc...
39 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the place of race, class, gender, sexual and national identities and cultures in global climate change and found that women are more vulnerable than men to many meteorological disasters related to climate change, specifically flooding and drought.
Abstract: This article explores the place of race, class, gender, sexual and national identities and cultures in global climate change. Research on gendered vulnerabilities to disasters suggests that women are more vulnerable than men to many meteorological disasters related to climate change, specifically flooding and drought. This is because of their relative poverty, economic activities (especially subsistence agriculture) and the moral economies governing women's modesty in many cultures. Research on historical and contemporary links between masculinity and the military in environmental politics, polar research and large-scale strategies for managing risk, including from climate change, suggests that men and their perspectives have more influence over climate change policies because of their historical domination of science and government. I expect that masculinist identities, cultures and militarised institutions will tend to favour large-scale remedies, such as geoengineering, minimise mitigation strategies, ...
37 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the culture-structure binary ignores the fact that the proper explanation of social behaviour requires both structure and culture; culture cannot be its own cause, and cultural sociology is soft and sentimental, avoiding conflict as well as politics.
Abstract: Contemporary sociology is saddled with a culture–structure binary but the fault for its existence lies mostly with cultural sociology. This article is devoted to four related assertions: (1) There has never been any agreement on the definition of culture, making cultural sociology a field unable to define its central concept. (2) The binary ignores the fact that the proper explanation of social behaviour requires both structure and culture; culture cannot be its own cause. (3) Cultural sociology is soft and sentimental, avoiding conflict as well as politics. (4) It neglects policy and policy-relevant research even more than the rest of sociology. Structural sociology has some shortcomings as well, however, and the culture–structure binary should be abandoned.
31 citations
TL;DR: In the aftermath of Anders Behring Breivik's terrorist acts, which left 77 victims dead in Oslo and Utoya on the afternoon of 22 July 2011, many envisaged a new and more positive debate on multicul...
Abstract: In the aftermath of Anders Behring Breivik's terrorist acts, which left 77 victims dead in Oslo and Utoya on the afternoon of 22 July 2011, many envisaged a new and more positive debate on multicul...
29 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the politics of difference on a global scale and how the internal logic dividing the world into 'us' and 'other' is still significant, using two cases revolving around an Icelandic struggle with 'otherness' at different times in history: one in 1905 and the other in 2008.
Abstract: Scholars have for some time emphasised destabilising the boundaries between colonised and colonisers, in addition to calling for more nuanced analyses of colonialism. I focus here on the politics of difference on a global scale and how the internal logic dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘other’ is still significant, using two cases revolving around an Icelandic struggle with ‘otherness’ at different times in history: one in 1905 and the other in 2008. I claim that the analysis of those at the margins of the dualistic divide of colonised and coloniser clearly brings out the oppositions at play within historical and contemporary global relationships of power and how participation in colonial ideologies involved multiple politics of identity and selfhood within Europe. Both cases show Icelandic anxieties about being classified with the ‘wrong’ people and their attempt to situate themselves within the ‘civilised’ part of the world.
28 citations
TL;DR: This paper reviewed the creation of Somali Bantu ethnicity as an object of humanitarian intervention during Somalia's civil war and found that a variety of local, regional and international actors combined to create the ethnonym Somali bantu for a group of refugees identified as a persecuted minority by the UNHCR and the US government.
Abstract: This article reviews the creation of Somali Bantu ethnicity as an object of humanitarian intervention during Somalia's civil war. A variety of local, regional and international actors combined to create the ethnonym Somali Bantu for a group of refugees identified as a persecuted minority by the UNHCR and the US government and selected for resettlement in the United States. I track the emergence of the name and its affective dimensions for those who embrace Somali Bantu identity and assess criticisms of its authenticity and legitimacy. The creation of Somali Bantu identity reveals critical dimensions of how race is translated across time and space. Since a fundamental dimension of Somali Bantu identity is based on presumptions of racial difference, the article traces the salience of constructed difference for social hierarchies within Somalia, colonial projects in Somalia, refugee camp life in Kenya, US resettlement policy and diaspora politics in the United States.
27 citations
TL;DR: This article examined self and interview ratings of respondents' physical attractiveness and conducted multinomial logistic regressions to ascertain whether level of attractiveness is associated with different racial identification choices for mixed race individuals.
Abstract: The idea that mixed race individuals are physically attractive is a commonly accepted stereotype. Past research in which whites (Australians and British) and Asians (Japanese) were asked to rate the attractiveness of a racially heterogeneous group of faces has shown that mixed race phenotype was judged the most attractive. In this study, I examine whether there is empirical evidence for this Biracial Beauty Stereotype in the United States. Using the data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, I examine self and interview ratings of respondents' physical attractiveness and, in an extension of the previous literature, conduct multinomial logistic regressions to ascertain whether level of attractiveness is associated with different racial identification choices for mixed race individuals. My results indicate that there is in fact a belief in mixed race individuals' superior beauty in America; but, with regard to identity, beauty is not associated with identity for all mixed race groups.
TL;DR: In this article, a number of Dutch and British women, who either immigrated to the respective countries or were born to immigrants, illustrate how the growing rigid integration and assimilative discourses in Europe contradict an individual anchoring in national and local communities.
Abstract: Public discourses on citizenship, identity and nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are infused with tensions and contradictions. This paper illustrates how these tensions are interwoven with multilayered notions of home, belonging, migration, citizenship and individual's ‘longing just to be’, focusing on the Dutch and the British context. The narratives of a number of Dutch and British women, who either immigrated to the respective countries or were born to immigrants, illustrate how the growing rigid integration and assimilative discourses in Europe contradict an individual anchoring in national and local communities. The narratives of women participating in these studies show multilayered angles of belonging presenting an alternative to the increasing strong argument for a fixed notion of positioning and national belonging. The female ‘new’ citizens in our study tell stories of individual choices, social mobility and a sense of multiple belonging in ...
TL;DR: This paper argued that the land discourse has generally been emphasized over and above the latter, which examines principally in terms of the struggle for the rangatiratanga (loosely translatable as autonomy) promised to Maori by the British Crown in the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840.
Abstract: This article interrogates indigeneity in the context of two New Zealand indigenous discourses, one of them land orientated and the other people orientated. It argues that the former has generally been emphasized over and above the latter, which it examines principally in terms of the struggle for the rangatiratanga (loosely translatable as autonomy) promised to Maori by the British Crown in the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840. People-based discourse is seen as key to the resilience of Maoridom and its powerful assertions of agency in recent decades. But to argue in this way is not to discount the land discourse, which in the holistic Maori worldview is conflated with the people discourse and rangatiratanga
TL;DR: In this paper, identity as potentiality is defined as how a narrated form of self-understanding can be mobilized, enacted and shared with others within unequal distributed multifaceted condi...
Abstract: The focal point of this article is identity as potentiality: how a narrated form of self-understanding can be mobilized, enacted and shared with others within unequal distributed multifaceted condi ...
TL;DR: Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power as discussed by the authors explores the relationship between racial, ethnic and national identities and power hierarchies within national and global arenas, to critically engage with the processes of cultural representation and politics, to explore the relationship of culture and power, and to examine the multiple processes by which cultural representation, domination and resistance are embedded in social relationships.
Abstract: In the inaugural issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, founding editor Nina Glick-Schiller wrote of the ways in which issues of identity and culture had emerged as central to “the current historical moment” (1994, p. 1). The original vision for the journal was to “explore the relationship between racial, ethnic and national identities and power hierarchies within national and global arenas” (1994, p. 3), to critically engage with the processes of cultural representation and politics, to explore the relationship of culture and power, and to examine “the multiple processes by which cultural representation, domination and resistance are embedded in social relationships” (1994, p. 3). The view of culture which lies at the heart of this vision was one inseparable from processes of struggle in political, economic and social arenas, and which considered the resurgence of strong racial, ethnic, nationalist and transnational exclusionary identities alongside processes of resistance, hybridization and change – what Glick-Schiller described as “a paradox of our time” (1994, p. 1). In the nearly two decades since the journal was founded, issues of culture and identity have moved to the centre of analysis across the humanities and social sciences. This has been linked to the decline of traditional forms of social affiliation and action and the emergence of new forms of solidarity and collective identities, captured in the notion of identity politics from the 1960s onwards (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, Appiah 2005). These are contiguous with, and inseparable from, the mass migrations from the old imperial peripheries to the post-imperial metropolitan centres, which in the post-war period have transformed the societies of the global north and west permanently. Since the 1980s, the challenges of contemporary forms of globalization, a shifting post-Cold War world order, the age of migration (Castles and Miller 2009), the redrawing of nation-state boundaries and the proliferation of new nations, new loyalties and new citizens as well as the development of innovative technologies that subvert classical notions of time and space, here and there, “us” and “them”, have transformed and unsettled traditional certainties, raising important and troubling questions about who exactly “we” are, who belongs and who, more importantly, does not. The new (and recurring) wars of the past decade, in particular, have reframed the geopolitical cartography of a post-9/11 world order, sharpening old hostilities and discovering new enemies (Calhoun et al. 2002).
TL;DR: This article explored cultural policies implemented and aimed towards cosmopolitanism, and how these policies have affected the international arts scene, which has led to a polarization within the community by excluding the elderly and disadvantaged members of the population from participating.
Abstract: Utilizing the ‘Singapore Story’, this study will explore cultural policies implemented and aimed towards cosmopolitanism, and how these policies have affected the international arts scene, which has led to a polarization within the community by excluding the elderly and disadvantaged members of the population from participating. Singapore's cultural policy has served the function of nation-building and at the same time goes with globalisation and thus calls for constructing a cosmopolitan yet patriotic citizen in terms of identity. This article considers the role of nationalism as a guide to the understanding of cultural policy discourses and argues that a top-down cosmopolitan construction of national identity in cultural policy discourses lacks representation of people's daily life.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how Muslim organisations reject the idea of the need for a Euro-Islam by construing the core of their faith as not being contradictory with Western values, norms and beliefs.
Abstract: Political, public and academic debates about the need for a ‘Euro-Islam’ as a necessary condition for the full integration of Muslim are widespread and strong. For Muslims and Muslim organisations in particular, Euro-Islam can be understood as subverting the very nature of their religious identity, making change or reform impossible. This raises the question as to how Muslim organisations reject the idea of the need for a Euro-Islam by construing the core of their faith as not being contradictory with Western values, norms and beliefs. The current study examines this question amongst two major Turkish Muslim organisations (Milli Gorus and Fethullah Gulen) in the Netherlands and Germany. The analysis shows that in managing the demand for reform a distinction was made between Islam as a belief system and Muslims as a group of people, between religion and culture as two types of belief systems and between politics and the true nature of the West.
TL;DR: In this article, focus group discussions in Kenya have been used to examine transnational contingencies of meaning in political satire, showing how some East Africans appropriated and reinterpreted the Daily Show's political content, deriving from it insights that Stewart himself might have found surprising.
Abstract: Global distribution of a popular American television programme – Jon Stewart's Daily Show – offers a rare opportunity to examine transnational contingencies of meaning in political satire. Drawing on focus group discussions in Kenya, this analysis shows how some East Africans appropriated and reinterpreted – indeed unexpectedly subverted – The Daily Show's political content, deriving from it insights that Stewart himself might have found surprising. Kenyan viewers perceived in The Daily Show gaps between the rhetoric and reality of empire and pointed to limitations of Stewart's dissident satire as they rejected its depictions of non-wealthy nations and marginalized peoples. They reconfigured Daily Show episodes as commentaries on global power relations; reflected critically on Kenyan politics, media and their own political subjectivities; and revised their own earlier assumptions about the gap between Africa and supposedly ‘mature’ democracies such as the United States. Thus, American political satire suc...
TL;DR: The authors argue that in the context of a shift away from the dominant post-war discourse of homogeneous nation to multicultural coexistence society, a space is opening up for greater acceptance of, and thus freedom to express, difference in Japan.
Abstract: Recent changes to immigration and registration laws represent a profound shift in official imaginings of the relationship between Japanese and non-Japanese residents point to the possibility of real change occuring in the way that with those with different nationalities/ethnicities live together in the same physical and cultural space here in Japan. In this paper, I focus on and offer an interpretation of these changes in the light of hitherto less inclusive positioning of ethnic minorities. I will consider their likely impact on the identities of both minorities and the majority Yamato Japanese. I will argue that in the context of a shift away from the dominant post-war discourse of homogeneous nation to multicultural coexistence society, a space is opening up for greater acceptance of, and thus freedom to express, difference in Japan. Yet there are also moves towards an ever harsher position on undocumented migrants and greater centralised control of all foreign residents.
TL;DR: This article focused on a more foundational and related issue: that of the invocation of the "white working class" itself, and pointed out that the white working class has been assumed an integral position.
Abstract: Over the course of the last two decades, ‘whiteness’ has exploded as an area of academic inquiry bringing together scholars from an array of academic disciplines and generating significant new insights that have contributed to a more complex understanding of a racialised positioning often taken for granted as a normative, unmarked, even invisible system of privilege. Within this field, the ‘white working class’ has come to assume an integral position. This category has offered an analytic object through which notions of enduring white privilege, white victimhood, multicultural politics and white racism have all been explored. While there are clear and striking political problems within all of these dominant accounts, this article instead focuses on a more foundational and related issue: that of the invocation of the ‘white working class’ itself.
TL;DR: In this paper, young Rwandans of mixed Hutu-Tutsi heritage explore how their mixed identity shaped their experiences during the 1994 genocide and how it influences their everyday experiences of categorization and belonging in contemporary Rwanda.
Abstract: This article looks at young Rwandans of ‘mixed’ Hutu–Tutsi heritage, exploring how their mixed identity shaped their experiences during the 1994 genocide and how it influences their everyday experiences of categorization and belonging in contemporary Rwanda. It reveals the complex position of these young ‘Hutsi’ and the significant constraints they face in exercising identity choices in a context with a history of ethnic violence and where state policies have outlawed ethnicity. This article argues that the experiences, narratives and performances of these young Rwandans simultaneously challenge and reinforce the binary ‘ethnic logic’ that persists in contemporary Rwanda. Yet it suggests that providing space for Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’ and their diverse experiences could help to de-essentialize the categories ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ and reduce the risks of future violence.
TL;DR: In this article, the socio-economic significance of patronage at the edge of the Indonesian state is explored and the rationale behind border people's often fluid loyalties and illicit cross-border practices, strained relationships with their nation states and divergent views of legality and illegality.
Abstract: This article explores the socio-economic significance of patronage at the edge of the Indonesian state. It argues that marginal borders and adjacent borderlands where state institutions are often weak, and state power continuously waxes and wanes, encourage the growth of non-state forms of authority based on long-standing patron–client relationships. These complex interdependencies become especially potent because of traditionally rooted patterns of respect, charismatic leadership and a heightened sense of autonomy among borderland populations. The article contends that an examination of these informal arrangements is imperative for understanding the rationale behind border people's often fluid loyalties and illicit cross-border practices, strained relationships with their nation states and divergent views of legality and illegality. The article contributes to recent anthropological studies of borders and believes that these studies could gain important insight by re-examining the concept of patronage as ...
TL;DR: The authors suggests that we think about ethnicity and migration cartographically as translocal journeys around and between cities, and that these relationships are under-theorised and poorly demonstrated, supporting new nationalisms.
Abstract: The city remains a crucial arena in condensing the challenges we face in migration and transnational research. Our understanding of cities and their connections with migration and ethnicity lies at the centre of these challenges and raises two problems demanding urgent attention. These relationships are under-theorised and poorly demonstrated. Secondly, older, more settled notions of the relationship between ethnicity, migration and space persist, supporting new nationalisms. This paper suggests that we think about ethnicity and migration cartographically as translocal journeys around and between cities.
TL;DR: This article tried to understand how alternative positions on Alevi identity dynamically construct the boundaries, moral contents and the new shape of Alevis identity in modern urban contexts through use of various discursive resources.
Abstract: Establishing a coherent collective identity within the modern urban context among people who have different ideological, social and religious orientations, and social and economic backgrounds, is an ongoing struggle within the Alevi community in Turkey. This study tries to understand how alternative positions on Alevi identity dynamically construct the boundaries, moral contents and the new shape of Alevi identity in modern urban contexts through use of various discursive resources. At least two main contending ‘positions’ on Alevi identity try to institutionalise Alevi identity in modern urban contexts, which are ‘Ideological Position’ and ‘Religious Position’. Those discourse positions constitute different visions about the past and the future of the Alevi community as well as the cultural and the political boundaries of Alevi identity. More importantly, those positions resonate in ordinary citizens’ life stories as well as group narratives. This study utilises the analytical frame of ‘positioning theor...
TL;DR: In this article, through an analysis of 48 interviews with middle-class Roma in Spain, the authors identify other mobility paths, such as selective acculturation, that exist in addition to full assimilation, and observe how symbolic differences exist between those middleclass Roma who live in an ethnic enclave and have a strong network of support and those who do not.
Abstract: How are different ethnic groups dealing with upward social mobility and assimilation? This is a large question that social research has tried to address in recent decades. In the United States, this issue has been framed by the theory of segmented assimilation. In Europe, regarding the Roma, the assumption still exists that upward mobility paths are intrinsically associated with a loss of ethnic identity, due to a process of full acculturation to the mainstream. In this article, through an analysis of 48 in-depth interviews with middle-class Roma in Spain, we identify other mobility paths, such as selective acculturation, that exist in addition to full acculturation. In this sense, we observe how symbolic differences exist between those middle-class Roma who live in an ethnic enclave and have a strong network of support and those who do not. In most cases, middle-class Roma tend to live outside the enclave and experience what we have called constricted ethnicity.
TL;DR: The authors survey processes of identity construction among Dalits, members of former untouchable and other lower caste communities in India, with a focus on the role of historical consciousness and existing power relations in the imagination of Dalit culture.
Abstract: In the context of the philosophical literature on multiculturalism, I argue in this article that models of cultural identity based entirely on the nonvoluntary possession of a set of cultural characteristics are seriously incomplete. In particular, such models cannot address the need, among some groups, to reconstruct, invent and imagine alternative positive identities as a result of historical injustice, and to fill in the content of ‘culture’ accordingly. As an illustrative case, I survey processes of identity construction among ‘Dalits’, members of former ‘untouchable’ and other lower caste communities in India, with a focus on the role of historical consciousness and existing power relations in the imagination of Dalit culture. Dalit strategies of identity negotiation reveal the understandable need, on the part of the members of this community in progress, to produce a cultural identity that makes sense, psychologically and politically, given who they cannot imagine themselves to be, due to the fact o...
TL;DR: The authors examines the ways in which the trope of rupture has progressively figured in my studies of diverse forms of mobility and argues that this kind of methodological transnationalism does not give enough attention either to the disjunctures that are routinely involved in mobility or to the possibility that rupture might be an actively desired goal for moving either temporarily or for the longer term.
Abstract: This article examines the ways in which the trope of rupture has progressively figured in my studies of diverse forms of mobility. Ironically, this has occurred at the same time as an increasing orientation within migration studies towards transnational links has given a strong emphasis on continuity. I argue that this kind of methodological transnationalism does not give enough attention either to the disjunctures that are routinely involved in mobility or to the possibility that rupture might be an actively desired goal for moving either temporarily or for the longer term.
TL;DR: The authors argue that cultural practices, such as music production and consumption, provide critical tools to critique one-dimensional notions of Britishness and Asianness, as well as to reassert normative notions of belonging and diaspora.
Abstract: Increasingly, the term ‘desi’ amongst British Asians has been commonly used to describe South Asian diasporic cultural forms and practices, particularly regarding musical genres and styles. This article opens up debate on its contested meanings and usage within the London Asian urban music scene. In unpacking the complex and contradictory meanings and uses of ‘desi’ across time, space and place, ‘desiness’ becomes exemplary of the ambivalent spaces of youthful diasporic identities in process. I argue that cultural practices, such as music production and consumption, provide critical tools to critique one-dimensional notions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Asianness’, as well as to reassert normative notions of belonging and diaspora. The exploration of diasporic identities in the making within the spaces of London Asian cultural production highlights the importance of everyday forms and practices and fosters a better understanding of multiculture and new modes of belonging in London.
Abstract: This article explores how improvisation with food and cooking is a way for Armenian women to appeal to ‘public’ national narratives from within their ‘private’ spaces. Such appeal to the grand narrative of Armenian identity is in many ways predicated on their skilful abilities to survive or ‘make do’ with what is available and it is these skills that establish connections between individuals, the community and the nation. When these skills are enacted, women have the power to invoke national feelings of Armenianness and feminine morality through their ability to find and cook a proper Armenian meal. These skills also give women the ability to obligate individuals both within their families and amongst their peers at the same time that they can use them to express creativity and personal identities through their cooking. In other words, through cooking and from within the kitchen, I argue that women engage with powerful ‘public’ or national discourses that are often assumed to suppress them.
TL;DR: The authors investigates how women who have come to the United States as brides of South Asian professionals use threading, a hair removal method, as a home business to negotiate new challenges they face as newly immigrant women.
Abstract: This article investigates how women who have come to the United States as brides of South Asian professionals use threading, a hair removal method, as a home business to negotiate new challenges they face as newly immigrant women. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, the article focuses on how these young women combine their expected roles as wives and mothers in a new country with their own aspirations to win the respect of spouses, in-laws and children via threading. The article demonstrates how these women find meaning and identity through threading and evidences how they negotiate respectability by stressing their connections to home and domestic roles even as they dissociate themselves from beauticians who work at salons. Although they disrupt extant notions of ‘good wives and mothers’, these women nevertheless articulate this disruption within existing models and, more often than not, desire to be the bahu that their mothers-in-law admire.