Showing papers on "Diaspora published in 1995"

Refugees and Exile: From "Refugee Studies" to the National Order of Things

Abstract: This review offers a critical mappingo f the construction-in-progress of refugees and displacement as an anthropological domain of knowledge. It situates the emergence of “the refugee” and of “refugee studies” in two ways: first, historically, by looking at the management of displacement in Europe in the wake of World War II; and second, by tracing an array of different discursive and institutional domains within which “the refugee” and/or “being in exile” have been constituted. These domains include international law, international studies, documentary production by the United Nations and other international refugee agencies, development studies, and literary studies. The last part of the review briefly discusses recent work on displacement, diaspora, and deterritorialization in the context of studies of cultural identity, nationalism, transnational cultural forms—work that helps to conceptualize the anthropological study of displacement in new ways.

Television, ethnicity, and cultural change

Abstract: For 'ethnic minorities' in Britain, broadcast TV provides powerful representations of national and 'western' culture. In Southall - which has the largest population of 'South Asians' outside the Indian sub-continent - the VCR furnishes Hindi films, 'sacred soaps' such as the Mahabharata, and family videos of rites of passage, as well as mainstream American films. Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change examines how TV and video are being used to recreate cultural traditions within the 'South Asian' diaspora, and how they are also catalysing cultural change in this local community. Marie Gillespie explores how young people negotiate between the parental and peer, local and global, national and international contexts and culturess which traverse their lives. Articulating their own preoccupations with television narratives, they both reaffirm and challenge parental traditions, formulating their own aspirations towards cultural change. Marie Gillespie's in-depth study offers an invaluable survey of how cultures are shaped and changed through people's recreative reception of the media.

Russians in the former Soviet republics

Abstract: The Empire has Collapsed: who Lies under the Debris? The Growth of the Russian Diaspore, 1500-1917 Modernization or Grand Design? Russian Movements, 1917-1989 From National Minority to Herrenvolk - and Half Way Back The Baltic States Irredentism and Separatism: Moldova Belarus and Ukraine Former Soviet Central Asia Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan Russia's Diaspora Policy Addressing the Diaspora Question.

Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots

Abstract: Preface The Los Angeles Riots, the Korean American Story Reckoning via the Riots Diaspora Formation: Modernity and Mobility Mapping the Korean Diaspora in Los Angeles Korean American Entrepreneurship American Ideologies on Trial Conclusion Notes References Index

Nation and migration: the politics of space in the South Asian diaspora

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction: The Diasporic Imagination 1. A Sikh Diaspora? Contested Identities and Constructed Realities 2. Bhakti and Postcolonial Politics: Hindu Missions to Fiji 3. Projecting Identities: Empire and Indentured Labor Migration from India to Trinidad and British Guiana, 1836-1885 4. Homeland, Motherland: Authenticity, Legitimacy, and Ideologies of Place among Muslims in Trinidad 5. Hindus in Trinidad and Britain: Ethnic Religion, Reification, and the Politics of Public Space 6. New York City's Muslim World Day Parade 7. Indian Immigrants in Queens, New York City: Patterns of Spatial Concentration and Distribution, 1965-1990 8. Gendering Diaspora: Space, Politics, and South Asian Masculinities in Britain. 197 9. New Cultural Forms and Transnational South Asian Women: Culture, Class, and Consumption among British Asian Women in the Diaspora Contributors Index

From International Migration to Transnational Diaspora

Abstract: In his influential history of American immigrants, Oscar Handlin (1973:3) wrote: "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history." Indeed, the sociology of international migration has been a central concern of American sociology, of which William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918/1958) remains a foundational text (see Wiley 1986). An inspired work of the sociological imagination, The Polish Peasant analyzed historical and structural changes in Poland and the United States and their interrelationships without squelching personal narratives and experiences. Thomas and Znaniecki not only employed a wide array of methods and data sources, but also combined theoretical and practical discussions in their sustained empirical inquiry. In spite of American sociology's auspicious beginning, very few current works bring together the personal with the historical and the structural, advance theories and inform politics, and use multiple methods and data sources. At the same time, several bedrock assumptions-best exemplified in the narrative structure of Handlin's extremely influential The Uprooted-have guided the majority of international migration studies. The sojourn of immigrants entails a radical, and in many cases a singular, break from the old country to the new nation; migration is inter-national across well-defined national territories and boundaries. In the process of unidirectional crossing, migrants are "uprooted" and shorn of premigration networks, cultures, and belongings. At the shores of the new land, migrants enter the caldron of a new society. The melting pot "assimilates" migrants; the huddled masses become Americans. In analyzing international migration, sociologists have plunged into and plumbed the depth and breadth of various "waves" of immigrants. They have analyzed macrostructural changes affecting international migration, the persistence of premigration networks, gender and other sources of social differentiation, and the differential adaptation and assimilation of distinct migrant streams. Yet theoretical and methodological concerns remain rooted in the classic immigration narrative and statistical analyses of survey and census data. The historical and the ethnographic impulse of The Polish Peasantand most glaringly the place of personal narratives-has largely sunk with only a few traces (see, e.g., Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). In pursuing scientific rigor, most sociologists have consigned individual voices to the academic periphery-the marginalia of Americana. International Migration Review [IMR], the flagship journal of migration studies in the United States, exemplifies this trend. The special issue on "The New Second Generation" (IMR 28:4, 1994), edited by Alejandro Portes, features a wide range of interesting and informative articles. The vast majority of them, however, focus on the questions of socioeconomic and cultural accommodation and assimilation and rely predominantly on survey and census data. A similar range of topics and methods characterizes most recent articles in IMR (the first three articles in the previous issue, 28:3, 1994, are on unauthorized workers, naturalization, and economic attainment). The repressed legacy of The Polish Peasant has, however, revived with a vengeance in recent publications, which mark a sea change in the study of international migration. No longer is it adequate to peruse International Migration Review: New journals-Diaspora (Oxford University Press)

The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora

Abstract: This study of the Jewish community in third and fourth century Rome addresses the question of interaction of Jews and non-Jews in late antiquity through an analysis of Jewish, Pagan, and early Christian archaeological, epigraphical, and literary remains.

Russians Beyond Russia: The Politics of National Identity

Abstract: Ethnic Russians and the Russian language in the Russian and Soviet empires the new Russian diaspora in the domestic politics of the Russian federation Latvia and Estonia - the struggle for citizenship Moldova and Transdniester - the Russian military and ethnic separatism Ukraine - the clash of Slavic and national identities Kazakhstan - European Slavs and the titular Turkish minority.

Rethinking 'Babylon' : iconoclastic conceptions of the diasporic experience

Abstract: The word ‘diaspora’ is closely associated with enslavement, exile and loneliness. A people is seen to be scattered as a result of a traumatic historical event. Contrary to this assumption, a closer examination of the provenance of the classical diasporas, Jewish and Greek, reveal a degree of voluntarism in their patterns of out‐migration, or a mix of impelled and colonising migration. Although the idea of a ‘victim diaspora’ can be sustained in the case of the Armenians and Africans, other experiences are more ambiguous or benign. Indeed, diasporas can be seen as galvanising a new creative energy outside the natal homeland. In the modern period the force of excluding nationalisms often generated counter‐nationalist or return movements among diasporic groups. However, the current period of globalisation has enhanced the practical, economic and affective role of diasporas, raising the possibility that they may become alternative or parallel foci of loyalty to the nation‐state.

The black diaspora

Abstract: Providing a history of black people outside Africa, this book describes the societies from which Africans were seized for slavery, their long struggle for freedom, and their experience today in different countries, from Britain and America to Jamaica, Haiti and Brazil. It sets out to show how the diaspora has enriched world culture, in music, language and literature, the visual arts, sport and religion. The author left South Africa in 1960 for political exile in Britain, where he convened the 1964 International Conference of Economic Sanctions against South Africa.

An other tongue : nation and ethnicity in the linguistic borderlands

Abstract: As our millennium draws to a close, we find ourselves in the midst of great and rapid global changes with nations and political systems dissolving all around us and the world becoming one of shifting identities--of peoples unified and divided by such distinctions as nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, and colonial status. The articulation and construction of these distinctions, the very language of difference, is the subject of An Other Tongue. This collection of essays by a group of distinguished scholars, including Norma Alarcon, Gayatri Spivak, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerald Vizenor, explores the interconnections between language and identity. The Chicanos, the U.S./Mexico borderland polyglots whose sense of history, nationality, and race is as mixed as their language, are the book's prime example. But the authors recognize that border zones, like diasporas and post-colonial relations, occur globally, and their discussion of hybrid or mestizo identities ranges from the United States to the Caribbean to South Asia to Ireland. Drawing on personal experience, readings of poetry and fiction, and cultural theory, the authors detail the politics of being human through the mediation of language. What does "shadow" mean to the Native American Indian, or diaspora to the East Indian immigrant? How does British colonialism yet affect Irish and Indian nationalist literary production? Why is the split between Eastern and Western European language use necessarily schizophrenic? So much of our sense of difference today is constructed as we speak, and An Other Tongue speaks with eloquence to this phenomenon and will be of great interest to those concerned with the discourse of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and the remapping of world literature. Contributors. Norma Alarcon, Alfred Arteaga, Juan Bruce-Novoa, Cordelia Chavez Candelaria, Michael G. Cooke, Edmundo Desnoes, Eugene C. Eoyang, David Lloyd, Lydie Moudileno, Jean-Luc Nancy, Tejaswini Niranjana, Ada Savin, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Michael Smith, Tzvetan Todorov, Luis A. Torres, Gerald Vizenor

The Penguin Atlas of the Diasporas

Abstract: The problem of diasporas: the Jewish diaspora the Armenian diaspora the gypsy diaspora the black diaspora: the Chinese diaspora the Indian diaspora the Irish diaspora the Greek diaspora the Lebanese diaspora the Palestinian diaspora the Vietnamese and Korean diasporas.

African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power

Abstract: Beads, bones, rags, straw, leather, pottery, fur, feathers and blood - these are the raw materials of "vodun" artworks. As objects of fury and force, these works are intended to protect and empower people and cultures that have long been oppressed. In this major study Suzanne Preston Blier examines the artworks of the contemporary "vodun" cultures of southern Benin and Togo in West Africa as well as the related "voudou" traditions of Haiti, New Orleans, and historic Salem, Massachusetts. Blier employs a variety of theoretical psychological, anthropological, and art historical approaches to explore the contrasts inherent in the "vodun" arts - commoners versus royalty, popular versus elite, "low" art versus "high." She examines the relation between art and the slave trade, the psychological dynamics of artistic expression, the significance of the body in sculptural expression, and indigenous perceptions of the psyche. Throughout, Blier seeks to pushe African art history to a new height of cultural awareness that recognizes the complexity of traditional African societies as it acknowledges the role of social power in shaping aesthetics and meaning generally. This book should be of critical interest not only to those concerned with African, African American, and Caribbean art, but also to anthropologists, African diaspora scholars, students of comparative religion and comparative psychology.

India On-line: Electronic Bulletin Boards and the Construction of a Diasporic Hindu Identity

Abstract: The Hindu diaspora is being written through the lines—the techno-informational lines of electronic bulletin boards. These “nets” provide a space for South Asian Hindus to construct and contest iden...

The Penguin atlas of diasporas

Abstract: The problem of diasporas: the Jewish diaspora the Armenian diaspora the gypsy diaspora the black diaspora: the Chinese diaspora the Indian diaspora the Irish diaspora the Greek diaspora the Lebanese diaspora the Palestinian diaspora the Vietnamese and Korean diasporas.

"Bombay, U.K., Yuba City": Bhangra Music and the Engendering of Diaspora

Abstract: In his 1992 song, “Mera Laung Gawacha,” British Indian deejay and record producer Bally Sagoo mixes the voice of Rama, a female, British-based Indian folksinger, with that of Cheshire Cat, a male d...

Africans in the Americas : a history of the Black diaspora

Abstract: Preface - PART 1 AFRICA, EUROPE, AND THE AMERICAS - Africa to 1500 - Africa and Europe Before 1700 - Early African Experiences in the Americas - PART 2 THE SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS - Africans in the Caribbean - Africans in Brazil - Africans in Mainland Spanish America - Africans in the Thirteen British Colonies - PART 3 ENDING THE SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY - Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade - Emancipation in the Caribbean and Spanish America - Emancipation in the United States - Emancipation in Brazil - PART 4 AFRICANS IN THE AMERICAS SINCE SLAVERY - African Americans in Post-emancipation Economies - Race and Politics in the United States - Race and Politics in Latin America - The Americas' Continuing Ties with Africa - Afterword - Glossary - Bibliographic Essay - Index - About the Authors

Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African-American, and Caribbean Drama

Abstract: Looking in detail at the works of Baraka, Soyinka, Walcott and Shange and their historical trajectories in black anti-Eurocentric discourses, Olaniyan offers a sophisticated reading of how these writers are preoccupied with the invention of a post-imperial cultural identity Drawing on contemporary theory and cultural studies, Olaniyan provides a meticulous account of the social foundations of an important aesthetic form, the drama of the African diaspora

Inside Babylon : the Caribbean diaspora in Britain

Abstract: This collection aims to reflect the varied experience of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain. The contributors set out to show how employers and police, psychiatrists and welfare services help to channel black people into residential and occupational ghettoes. They also show how within and against such oppressive conditions, black people in Britain have forged a new identity. The book includes several essays by black women, including work from Amina Mama and Claudette Williams on attempts to combat sexism and racism, and Gail Lewis on characteristic patterns of employment and unemployment with particular reference to black women. Cecil Gutzmore illuminates the Notting Hill Carnival, both as evidence of the resilience of the black community and as a focus for state and media racist formations. Other contributions include Steven Vertovec on the particular experience of Indo-Caribbeans within the black community, Errol Francis on the shocking experience of psychiatry on black people in Britain and Clive Harris, Bob Carter and Shirley Joshi on the economic destiny of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain.

Irishness, gender, and place

Abstract: National identities are profoundly gendered, yet difference is subordinated to unity. In this paper the largely unacknowledged intersections of Irishness and gender in Britain are explored. It is argued that Irishness has at least two distinct dimensions, each gendered in ways reflecting the colonial relationship between Britain and Ireland. One is the ‘roots’ of the collectivity, mediated through the diaspora experience. The second is the construction of Irishness by Britishness, characterised as male, middle class, Home Counties, Anglican Protestant, and white. Irish women are positioned in relation to these hegemonic values and are racialised both by invisibility and by exclusion.

In and out of the Ghetto: The Jewish Quarters in German Towns during the Late Middle Ages

Abstract: [In memoriam Daniel Cohen ] In this essay I shall avoid the central theme of this volume, namely “ghetto,” and resort instead to the more neutral concept of “Jewish quarter.” This concept means no more than a rather large, spatially concentrated Jewish settlement. In this way I wish to avoid a long-standing confusion that is still apparent, even in recent research. This confusion manifests itself, for example, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica under the entries “Jewish Quarter” and “Ghetto.” The first asserts that the “ghetto did not appear as a permanent institution until its introduction in Venice in 1516.” It is, however, conceded that the “idea of the ghetto in its restricted sense resulted from the tendency of Christianity from the fourth and fifth centuries to isolate the Jews and to humiliate them.” The further use of the term “ghetto” for “quarters, neighborhoods, and areas throughout the Diaspora, which became places of residence for numerous Jews,” is rejected as “erroneous.” In the same encyclopedia, however, we find under the heading of “Ghetto,” and without any visible critical distance, that “it has come to indicate not only the legally established, coercive ghetto, but also the voluntary gathering of Jews in a secluded quarter, a process known in the Diaspora time as well, before compulsion was exercised.” In this wider sense, therefore, “ghetto” means any Jewish settlement “in a secluded quarter.”

Inside the language planner's head: Tactical responses to a mass immigration

Abstract: To add a sudden 10% to its population in the form of 05 million Soviet migrants, professionalised and wedded to Russian culture, would test any monolingual society Faced with this, Israel's traditional Hebrew‐enforcement policy in the Ingathering of the Diaspora is apparently in retreat Israel is now officially committing large resources to fostering an immigrant language as a channel of information, education and culture This study documents and evaluates this policy shift, with particular reference to the procedures and rationales of decision makers themselves In 1993–94 I conducted interviews across central and local government and quasi‐official agencies Instead of a centralised language policy, I found a multiplicity of individual Russian‐language initiatives and creative budgeting within ministries and agencies, made possible by the privatisation of absorption and policy fragmentation These measures were widely portrayed as an emergency tactic for coping with the scale and alien natu

Conceptualizing Diaspora. The Preservation of Religious Identity in Foreign Parts, Exemplified by Hindu Communities Outside India

Abstract: L'A. s'interesse au phenomene de diaspora qui peuvent marquer certaines religions et il focalise son attention sur le cas particulier des communautes hindouistes vivant hors des Indes. Il s'agit d'analyser le processus par lequel un groupe tâche de preserver son identite religieux en terre etrangere. Pour ce faire, il est necessaire de detacher de son origine judeo-chretienne cette notion de diaspora pour en faire un concept theorique. C'est pourquoi ce travail est divise en deux sections : l'une est consacree a la definition du terme, l'autre a l'exemple hindouiste

The Structure of Dual Domination: Toward a Paradigm for the Study of the Chinese Diaspora in the United States

Abstract: The primary purpose of this paper is to critique the existing dominant paradigms for the study of the Chinese in the United States and to develop an alternative one. My other intention is to demonstrate both the importance and limit of transnational approaches in Chinese American studies within the framework of Asian American and ethnic studies.