Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.007
Vinh Nguyen
Marguerite Nguyen’s America’s Vietnam: The Long Durée of U.S. Lit erature and Empire is a beautifully written and carefully argued book that furthers our understanding of how Vietnam has been and continues to be a shaping force for the American imagination. Undertaking the work of periodization and formal analysis, the book offers not just a cru cial historiography of the Vietnam War, but also a novel genealogy for American literary history via an exploration of the United States’ long engagement—beyond just the militaristic kind—with the geographically small but politically and culturally significant nation of Vietnam. Situated in and contributing to a number of fields including Asian American stu dies, critical refugee studies, diaspora studies, and American studies, America’s Vietnam is an original take on a well-studied topic, or what some view as an “over-documented” war in American history. It does this by insisting on a long historical view, one that does not take the Viet nam War and the years after its end as a starting point for the analysis of “America’s Vietnam.” Instead, Nguyen draws attention to the “pre conflict contexts that must inform our comprehension of the war’s enduring effects in the present” (3). In doing so, Nguyen emphasizes and illuminates the “multidimensionality of ‘Vietnam’” (147), whereby the sig nifier is not a fixed or given entity, but a historically contingent and dis cursively produced formation that has served different cultural and political ends at particular moments in time. Although it is rooted in the specific context of Vietnam, the book of fers broader insights into the emergence and development of American empire, transnational and diasporic networks, and the co-constitution
{"title":"America's Encounters with Vietnam: Empire, Refugees, Diasporas","authors":"Vinh Nguyen","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.007","url":null,"abstract":"Marguerite Nguyen’s America’s Vietnam: The Long Durée of U.S. Lit erature and Empire is a beautifully written and carefully argued book that furthers our understanding of how Vietnam has been and continues to be a shaping force for the American imagination. Undertaking the work of periodization and formal analysis, the book offers not just a cru cial historiography of the Vietnam War, but also a novel genealogy for American literary history via an exploration of the United States’ long engagement—beyond just the militaristic kind—with the geographically small but politically and culturally significant nation of Vietnam. Situated in and contributing to a number of fields including Asian American stu dies, critical refugee studies, diaspora studies, and American studies, America’s Vietnam is an original take on a well-studied topic, or what some view as an “over-documented” war in American history. It does this by insisting on a long historical view, one that does not take the Viet nam War and the years after its end as a starting point for the analysis of “America’s Vietnam.” Instead, Nguyen draws attention to the “pre conflict contexts that must inform our comprehension of the war’s enduring effects in the present” (3). In doing so, Nguyen emphasizes and illuminates the “multidimensionality of ‘Vietnam’” (147), whereby the sig nifier is not a fixed or given entity, but a historically contingent and dis cursively produced formation that has served different cultural and political ends at particular moments in time. Although it is rooted in the specific context of Vietnam, the book of fers broader insights into the emergence and development of American empire, transnational and diasporic networks, and the co-constitution","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128490886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.003
A. Howard
Abstract:This article is the product of nearly sixty years of ethnographic research among people from the island of Rotuma inthe South Pacific, during which time the population has developed into a distinctive ethnic group that has scattered around the world. The processes by which a relatively isolated island-bound people transformed to a culturally conscious diasporic population are documented. Of special concern are the ways in which the Internet has been instrumental in producing a now-global Rotuman community via a Web site I created in 1996 and the introduction of Facebook a decade later. Data from my participation with a number of Rotuman Facebook groups and the results of an online survey concerning Rotumans' experiences with Facebook are presented to illustrate the impact of social media on the processes of community formation. The changes that have taken place as a result of Internet participation raise questions about the relationship between the concepts of community and diaspora, which are explored in the light of debated definitions of each.
{"title":"Diaspora No More? The Role of Facebook in the Development of a Global Rotuman Community","authors":"A. Howard","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article is the product of nearly sixty years of ethnographic research among people from the island of Rotuma inthe South Pacific, during which time the population has developed into a distinctive ethnic group that has scattered around the world. The processes by which a relatively isolated island-bound people transformed to a culturally conscious diasporic population are documented. Of special concern are the ways in which the Internet has been instrumental in producing a now-global Rotuman community via a Web site I created in 1996 and the introduction of Facebook a decade later. Data from my participation with a number of Rotuman Facebook groups and the results of an online survey concerning Rotumans' experiences with Facebook are presented to illustrate the impact of social media on the processes of community formation. The changes that have taken place as a result of Internet participation raise questions about the relationship between the concepts of community and diaspora, which are explored in the light of debated definitions of each.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114838844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.002
A. Nguyen
Abstract:Drawing on my empirical analysis of a group of newly immigrated Vietnamese Americans with diverse class backgrounds and modes of entry, this essay examines the migrant experience of a new Vietnamese transmigrant community whose migratory impetuses are prompted by better educational and professional conditions in the United States and rendered possible by both their citizenship pluralism and their human/social capital. This newer Viet Kieu generation often has strong financial, business, and professional ties to the sending country; many either split their time equally between the two countries or have resettled or plan to resettle in Vietnam. Such migratory nuances and mobility blur the boundary between sojourner and immigrant and foster an interesting Vietnamese migrancy and new generation of Vietnamese American transmigrants, whom I call the sojourn-immigrant Viet Kieu. This article attempts to provide a counter-narrative to the often uni -directional studies of migration that presupposes the United States to be the permanent place of resettlement for Vietnamese migrants. I argue that a globalized sojourn-immigrant Viet Kieu identity has emerged and taken shape in response to fast-changing contemporary socioeconomic demands. The sojourn-immigrant identity thus encompasses a more flexible articulation of citizenship(s) to reflect a new form of Vietnamese transmigrant mobility within the Vietnamese diaspora.
{"title":"Global Economy, Citizenship Pluralism, Transmigrant Mobility, and the Sojourn-Immigrant Vietnamese Americans","authors":"A. Nguyen","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Drawing on my empirical analysis of a group of newly immigrated Vietnamese Americans with diverse class backgrounds and modes of entry, this essay examines the migrant experience of a new Vietnamese transmigrant community whose migratory impetuses are prompted by better educational and professional conditions in the United States and rendered possible by both their citizenship pluralism and their human/social capital. This newer Viet Kieu generation often has strong financial, business, and professional ties to the sending country; many either split their time equally between the two countries or have resettled or plan to resettle in Vietnam. Such migratory nuances and mobility blur the boundary between sojourner and immigrant and foster an interesting Vietnamese migrancy and new generation of Vietnamese American transmigrants, whom I call the sojourn-immigrant Viet Kieu. This article attempts to provide a counter-narrative to the often uni -directional studies of migration that presupposes the United States to be the permanent place of resettlement for Vietnamese migrants. I argue that a globalized sojourn-immigrant Viet Kieu identity has emerged and taken shape in response to fast-changing contemporary socioeconomic demands. The sojourn-immigrant identity thus encompasses a more flexible articulation of citizenship(s) to reflect a new form of Vietnamese transmigrant mobility within the Vietnamese diaspora.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125051921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-05-11DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.003
P. Wood
Abstract:A cosmopolitan environment offers challenges for cultural groups that seek to reproduce themselves in the next generation. British Pakistanis have not seen the kind of breakdown in marriage boundaries that characterizes other post-war migrants to Britain. The article examines how this pattern is linked to commitments to transnational marriage, which promise a source of future remittances to Pakistan. However, the need to maintain these links has exaggerated the importance of religious and moral display for British Pakistanis, and these have wider effects in the policing of social contact with outsiders and the negative portrayal of the sexual morality of non-Pakistanis.
{"title":"Marriage and Social Boundaries among British Pakistanis","authors":"P. Wood","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:A cosmopolitan environment offers challenges for cultural groups that seek to reproduce themselves in the next generation. British Pakistanis have not seen the kind of breakdown in marriage boundaries that characterizes other post-war migrants to Britain. The article examines how this pattern is linked to commitments to transnational marriage, which promise a source of future remittances to Pakistan. However, the need to maintain these links has exaggerated the importance of religious and moral display for British Pakistanis, and these have wider effects in the policing of social contact with outsiders and the negative portrayal of the sexual morality of non-Pakistanis.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116502321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-05-11DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.002
E. Morawska
Abstract:Drawing on recent studies of diaspora and its members’ transnational engagements, which treat the former as fuzzy-boundary, context-dependent groupings and the latter as multifaceted (rather than two-pronged) relationships, I explore in this article the notion of diasporans’ polymorphous and multidirectional transnational commitments; identify different types of such involvements; and propose a preliminary list of macro- and micro-level circumstances contributing to multifarious transnationalism. In conclusion, I consider the implications of the notion of diaspora members’ multifarious transnational engagements for the study of (im)migrant transnationalism in general and suggest some questions for future research on this phenomenon.
{"title":"Multifarious Transnational Engagements of Contemporary Diaspora Members: From Revolving-Door Universalists to Multinationals and Site-Hopping Vagabonds","authors":"E. Morawska","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Drawing on recent studies of diaspora and its members’ transnational engagements, which treat the former as fuzzy-boundary, context-dependent groupings and the latter as multifaceted (rather than two-pronged) relationships, I explore in this article the notion of diasporans’ polymorphous and multidirectional transnational commitments; identify different types of such involvements; and propose a preliminary list of macro- and micro-level circumstances contributing to multifarious transnationalism. In conclusion, I consider the implications of the notion of diaspora members’ multifarious transnational engagements for the study of (im)migrant transnationalism in general and suggest some questions for future research on this phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133122256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-05-11DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.004
I. Malki
Abstract:This article explores representations of the Lebanese in West Africa from the colonial to the postcolonial and contemporary eras. It contextualizes a diverse body of scholarly and vernacular works by examining the arrival of the Lebanese, their patterns of settlement, and the growth of their communities, while also demonstrating how academic studies of these populations developed alongside the accounts of Lebanese migrant authors and travel writers. It identifies three genres of scholarly analysis. The first focused on the Lebanese as “middlemen” in the colonial and early independence eras. The second inserted the migrants in discourses of dependency and underdevelopment during the Cold War period. The third, contemporary trend contemplates the migrants’ roles in globalizing forms of religious and national identity on one hand and the history and historiography of empire on the other. Recent works have further repositioned the story of West Africa’s Lebanese in ways that show how the migrants and their descendants reasserted their ties to their ancestral “homeland,” while redefining what it meant to be Lebanese from diasporic perspectives. Ultimately, scholarship on the Lebanese of West Africa represents a case study of the evolution of historical and social scientific deliberations on “strangers” in colonial and postcolonial societies. Periodizing this body of work demonstrates how theoretical constructs of race, religion, belonging, and identity have evolved in tandem with the historical unfolding of colonialism, decolonization, and nationalism in West Africa.
{"title":"Between Middlemen and Interlopers: History, Diaspora, and Writing on the Lebanese of West Africa","authors":"I. Malki","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores representations of the Lebanese in West Africa from the colonial to the postcolonial and contemporary eras. It contextualizes a diverse body of scholarly and vernacular works by examining the arrival of the Lebanese, their patterns of settlement, and the growth of their communities, while also demonstrating how academic studies of these populations developed alongside the accounts of Lebanese migrant authors and travel writers. It identifies three genres of scholarly analysis. The first focused on the Lebanese as “middlemen” in the colonial and early independence eras. The second inserted the migrants in discourses of dependency and underdevelopment during the Cold War period. The third, contemporary trend contemplates the migrants’ roles in globalizing forms of religious and national identity on one hand and the history and historiography of empire on the other. Recent works have further repositioned the story of West Africa’s Lebanese in ways that show how the migrants and their descendants reasserted their ties to their ancestral “homeland,” while redefining what it meant to be Lebanese from diasporic perspectives. Ultimately, scholarship on the Lebanese of West Africa represents a case study of the evolution of historical and social scientific deliberations on “strangers” in colonial and postcolonial societies. Periodizing this body of work demonstrates how theoretical constructs of race, religion, belonging, and identity have evolved in tandem with the historical unfolding of colonialism, decolonization, and nationalism in West Africa.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121614150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-05-11DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.005
Jill C. Murray
Abstract:It has been estimated that over 40% of people of Greek origin reside outside their home country, maintaining their language and cultural identity in different ways and to different degrees (Tamis 2005). As the proportion of Greek-born migrants in diaspora communities diminishes, their second-, third-, and fourth-generation descendants have been found to develop hybrid identities in which different attributes and values define their “Greekness.” Visits to the homeland and the nature of homeland experiences provide avenues for revaluation of identity, and real-world encounters involving the Greek language can play a significant role in how diaspora and transnational Greeks experience insider or outsider status, exerting an influence on the way they come to see themselves.This article reports on the experiences of Australian-born members of the diaspora, ranging in age from late teens to late forties. Conversational interviews were used to elicit stories of experience, which were then analyzed in terms of a multifaceted identity framework including reflexive, projected, recognized, and imagined identities. The findings reveal a complex interaction between the different facets of identity and shed light on how some individuals can represent experience in ways that reflect an overall positive picture of resilience and cultural clarity.
{"title":"“You Speak Greek Well . . . (for an Australian)”: Homeland Visits and Diaspora Identity","authors":"Jill C. Murray","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:It has been estimated that over 40% of people of Greek origin reside outside their home country, maintaining their language and cultural identity in different ways and to different degrees (Tamis 2005). As the proportion of Greek-born migrants in diaspora communities diminishes, their second-, third-, and fourth-generation descendants have been found to develop hybrid identities in which different attributes and values define their “Greekness.” Visits to the homeland and the nature of homeland experiences provide avenues for revaluation of identity, and real-world encounters involving the Greek language can play a significant role in how diaspora and transnational Greeks experience insider or outsider status, exerting an influence on the way they come to see themselves.This article reports on the experiences of Australian-born members of the diaspora, ranging in age from late teens to late forties. Conversational interviews were used to elicit stories of experience, which were then analyzed in terms of a multifaceted identity framework including reflexive, projected, recognized, and imagined identities. The findings reveal a complex interaction between the different facets of identity and shed light on how some individuals can represent experience in ways that reflect an overall positive picture of resilience and cultural clarity.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126993133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-05-11DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.006
Emily Johansen
Abstract:Teju Cole’s 2011 novel Open City has received a good deal of scholarly attention, the majority of which suggests that the novel depicts a failed cosmopolitanism: the narrator’s emphasis on literary and aesthetic forms of global connection is undercut by his repeated ethical failings. However, in this article, I argue that Open City instead demonstrates a form of “territorialized cosmopolitanism” that emphasizes the embodied negotiation between local places and global connections rather than the intangibly aesthetic. This is a model of cosmopolitanism that emphasizes the contingent and temporary instead of the universal. The cosmopolitanism present in Open City emerges in multiple ways: through the interaction with and interpretation of place, through embodied forms of sympathetic encounter, and through the transformation of rage at past trauma into a force for social justice and reparation. What unites these three cosmopolitan modalities is the novel’s rejection of a universalizing liberal cosmopolitanism, despite Julius’s erstwhile endorsement of such a view of global community. Open City, then, presents a model of cosmopolitan world fiction that offers glimpses of potential cosmopolitan futurities that do not seek either to elide messy historical or contemporary realities or to naturalize the language of class and cultural capital.
{"title":"History in Place: Territorialized Cosmopolitanism in Teju Cole’s Open City","authors":"Emily Johansen","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Teju Cole’s 2011 novel Open City has received a good deal of scholarly attention, the majority of which suggests that the novel depicts a failed cosmopolitanism: the narrator’s emphasis on literary and aesthetic forms of global connection is undercut by his repeated ethical failings. However, in this article, I argue that Open City instead demonstrates a form of “territorialized cosmopolitanism” that emphasizes the embodied negotiation between local places and global connections rather than the intangibly aesthetic. This is a model of cosmopolitanism that emphasizes the contingent and temporary instead of the universal. The cosmopolitanism present in Open City emerges in multiple ways: through the interaction with and interpretation of place, through embodied forms of sympathetic encounter, and through the transformation of rage at past trauma into a force for social justice and reparation. What unites these three cosmopolitan modalities is the novel’s rejection of a universalizing liberal cosmopolitanism, despite Julius’s erstwhile endorsement of such a view of global community. Open City, then, presents a model of cosmopolitan world fiction that offers glimpses of potential cosmopolitan futurities that do not seek either to elide messy historical or contemporary realities or to naturalize the language of class and cultural capital.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116134157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-05-11DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.001
Anna M. Klobucka
Abstract:The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora is an ambitious repository for a selective yet extraordinarily wide-ranging assembly of cultural artifacts drawn from the entire history of the Portuguese empire and Lusophone postcolony. Within the chronological expanse ranging from 1415 to (roughly) 2015, the book stages a storytelling enterprise of encyclopedic breadth and scope, skillfully intertwining historical accounts with brief vignettes and longer analyses of a wide array of artistic objects, from literary works to maps, paintings, decorative arts, sculpture, and cinema. Given the study’s broad definition of diasporic experience (which encompasses a variety of often nonpermanent or short-term dislocations) and its guiding focus on “imperially produced hybridity that is characteristic of lusophone culture” (72), the book is best read as a lively history of hybrid cultural processes and legacies of the Portuguese empire rather than as a sustained reflection on the diasporic condition as such.
{"title":"The Portuguese Empire and the Lusophone Postcolony as Diasporas","authors":"Anna M. Klobucka","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.1.001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora is an ambitious repository for a selective yet extraordinarily wide-ranging assembly of cultural artifacts drawn from the entire history of the Portuguese empire and Lusophone postcolony. Within the chronological expanse ranging from 1415 to (roughly) 2015, the book stages a storytelling enterprise of encyclopedic breadth and scope, skillfully intertwining historical accounts with brief vignettes and longer analyses of a wide array of artistic objects, from literary works to maps, paintings, decorative arts, sculpture, and cinema. Given the study’s broad definition of diasporic experience (which encompasses a variety of often nonpermanent or short-term dislocations) and its guiding focus on “imperially produced hybridity that is characteristic of lusophone culture” (72), the book is best read as a lively history of hybrid cultural processes and legacies of the Portuguese empire rather than as a sustained reflection on the diasporic condition as such.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129631194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-05-18DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.19.2-3.351
P. Manning
Abstract:Erik Scott's book Familiar Strangers begins with a tantalizing paradox: How did Georgians, a small people numerically, come to play a role as internal diaspora out of all proportion to their numbers in the Soviet Union from start to finish? I argue that in the thread that ties together the many examples of Georgian ethnic strategies (including the changing, but continuous, presence of Georgians in political and cultural life of the Soviet Union), Scott rightly focuses on the varied affordances of the Georgian table, both the "edible ethnicity" of Georgian food and wine but also the traditions of hospitality centered on this commensality and the forms of networking arising from it, which took hold in Soviet Culture beginning with Stalin. When Soviet citizens became guests at the Georgian table, a paradoxical inversion of guest-host relations occurred, so that the whole Soviet Union became, in effect, the guests of Georgian hosts. As Scott argues, it was precisely through making their own food, drink, and attendant rituals of hospitality central to Soviet rule and Soviet life that Georgians moved from being metaphoric ethnic guests in a host society to hosts within the imperial capital itself.
{"title":"When the Guest becomes the Host: Review of Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of the Soviet Empire","authors":"P. Manning","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.19.2-3.351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.19.2-3.351","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Erik Scott's book Familiar Strangers begins with a tantalizing paradox: How did Georgians, a small people numerically, come to play a role as internal diaspora out of all proportion to their numbers in the Soviet Union from start to finish? I argue that in the thread that ties together the many examples of Georgian ethnic strategies (including the changing, but continuous, presence of Georgians in political and cultural life of the Soviet Union), Scott rightly focuses on the varied affordances of the Georgian table, both the \"edible ethnicity\" of Georgian food and wine but also the traditions of hospitality centered on this commensality and the forms of networking arising from it, which took hold in Soviet Culture beginning with Stalin. When Soviet citizens became guests at the Georgian table, a paradoxical inversion of guest-host relations occurred, so that the whole Soviet Union became, in effect, the guests of Georgian hosts. As Scott argues, it was precisely through making their own food, drink, and attendant rituals of hospitality central to Soviet rule and Soviet life that Georgians moved from being metaphoric ethnic guests in a host society to hosts within the imperial capital itself.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132265159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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