On Diaspora

The following is in response to Jonathan's post at Head Heeb. It is a selection from a piece I'm working on about South Asian diaspora communities and hybrid art.

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Diaspora, as an analytic term, is one that has multiple meanings,^[1] and that needs some clarification before proceeding with its use. One convenient way to begin thinking about diaspora is to make a distinction between physical diasporas and the idea of diaspora as metaphor.^[2] Physical diasporas^[3] can be further divided into types, such as classical, victims, labor, trade, and imperial.^[4] The key type of diaspora for South Asians is the labor diaspora, which is defined as the movement of members of an ethnic group who move for economic reasons and maintain a sense of ethnic identity in the host society.^[5] Robert Cohen, a typologist of diasporas, also discusses the idea of cultural diaspora, which is akin to the idea of diaspora as metaphor, and talks about how cultural diasporas can exist independently of physical diasporas. According to André Levy and Alex Weingrod, "diaspora as metaphor" is "a way to emphasize the powerful cultural and other relationships between minorities living in several different countries (for example, between Blacks in England and African-Americans in the United States) … Diaspora in this sense means rejecting the path of assimilation into the dominant majority," ^[6] and a reason for such rejection is being constructed as a racialized other.

For our purposes then, there was a labor diaspora that resulted in the migration of South Asia to various places around the world. The children of these diasporics are now part of a cultural diaspora, who are not interested in being associated with a homeland, but with a home.^[7] Several sociologists have questioned whether the term diaspora can be applied to second-generation South Asians, preferring the term transnational community instead.^[8] However, I believe such a critique relies only on the idea of a physical diaspora, and that the idea of a cultural diaspora encompasses the ideas of transnational communities. On the other side of the argument are those who argue that the idea of diaspora is about creating cultural isolation,^[9] but I believe misses the sociologic concerns of minority communities. The "diasporic community"^[10] is not about the minority remaining the minority, but about fighting marginalization and redefining the mainstream.^[11] This concept of the South Asian cultural diaspora that I suggest mirrors closely Paul Gilroy's concept of the Black Atlantic:^[12] a cultural system that is not specific to a nation, but that is localized to national concerns.

Bibliography

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London; New York: Routledge, 1996.

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction, Global Diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Friedman, Jonathan. "Diasporization, Globalization, and Cosmopolitan Discourse." In Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places, edited by André Levy and Alex Weingrod. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Levy, André, and Alex Weingrod. "On Homelands and Diasporas: An Introduction." In Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places, edited by André Levy and Alex Weingrod. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Purkayastha, Bandana. Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Raj, Dhooleka Sarhadi. Where Are You From?: Middle-Class Migrants in the Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

 

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^[1]           André Levy and Alex Weingrod, "On Homelands and Diasporas: An Introduction," in Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places, ed. André Levy and Alex Weingrod (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005).

^[2]                Ibid., 7.

^[3]                For definitions of this type of diaspora, see Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, Global Diasporas (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 23, 26.

^[4]                Ibid.

^[5]                Ibid., 57.

^[6]                Levy and Weingrod, "On Homelands and Diasporas: An Introduction," 17.

^[7]                Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 180.

^[8]                Bandana Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 172-73, Dhooleka Sarhadi Raj, Where Are You From?: Middle-Class Migrants in the Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 168.

^[9]                Jonathan Friedman, "Diasporization, Globalization, and Cosmopolitan Discourse," in Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places, ed. André Levy and Alex Weingrod (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 145.

^[10]              Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities, 183.

^[11]              Ibid., 210.

^[12]              Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

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Comments

[Edward]

Now all that did was want me to read more on dispora.
Nice blog by the way.

Salam

[Dragos Cires]

Detectivi Particulari - Confident - Birou de detectivi particulari, servicii detectivi, supraveghere si investigare

[Dragos Cires]

Detectivi Particulari - Confident - Birou de detectivi particulari, servicii detectivi, supraveghere si investigare