Diaspora and Class Consciousness

Diaspora and Class Consciousness PDF

Author: Shanshan Lan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-12-12

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1136466568

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This book is an ethnographic study of the multi-linear process of racial knowledge formation among a relatively invisible population in the Chinese American community in Chicago, namely the working class. Shanshan Lan defines "Chinese immigrant workers" as Chinese immigrants with limited English language skills who work primarily at low-skill, blue-collar service jobs at the extreme margins of U.S. economy. The book moves away from the enclave paradigm by situating the Chinese immigrant experience within the larger context of transnational labor migration and the multiracial transformation of urban U.S. landscape. Through thick ethnographic descriptions, Lan explores Chinese immigrant workers’ daily struggles to cope with the disjuncture between race as an American ideological construct and race as a lived experience. The book argues that Chinese immigrant workers’ racial learning is not always a matter of personal choice, but is conditioned by structural factors such as the limitation of the Black and white racial binary, the transnational circulation of U.S. racial ideology, the negative influence of prevalent U.S. rhetoric such as multiculturalism and colorblindness, and class differentiations within the Chinese American community.

Diaspora, Memory and Identity

Diaspora, Memory and Identity PDF

Author: Vijay Agnew

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0802093744

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Memories establish a connection between a collective and individual past, between origins, heritage, and history. Those who have left their places of birth to make homes elsewhere are familiar with the question, "Where do you come from?" and respond in innumerable well-rehearsed ways. Diasporas construct racialized, sexualized, gendered, and oppositional subjectivities and shape the cosmopolitan intellectual commitment of scholars. The diasporic individual often has a double consciousness, a privileged knowledge and perspective that is consonant with postmodernity and globalization. The essays in this volume reflect on the movements of people and cultures in the present day, when physical, social, and mental borders and boundaries are being challenged and sometimes successfully dismantled. The contributors - from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - discuss the diasporic experiences of ethnic and racial groups living in Canada from their perspective, including the experiences of South Asians, Iranians, West Indians, Chinese, and Eritreans. Diaspora, Memory, and Identity is an exciting and innovative collection of essays that examines the nuanced development of theories of Diaspora, subjectivity, double-consciousness, gender and class experiences, and the nature of home.

The African-Americanization of the Black Diaspora in Globalization or the Contemporary Capitalist World-System

The African-Americanization of the Black Diaspora in Globalization or the Contemporary Capitalist World-System PDF

Author: Paul C. Mocombe

Publisher: UPA

Published: 2016-11-16

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 0761867228

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This work sets forth the argument that in the age of (neoliberal) globalization, black people around the world are ever-so slowly becoming “African-Americanized”. They are integrated and embourgeoised in the racial-class dialectic of black America by the material and ideological influences of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism as promulgated throughout the diaspora by two social class language games of the black American community: the black underclass (Hip-Hop culture), speaking for and representing black youth practical consciousness; and black American charismatic liberal/conservative bourgeois Protestant preachers like TD Jakes, Creflo Dollar, etc., speaking for and representing the black bourgeois (educated) professional and working classes. Although on the surface the practical consciousness and language of the two social class language games appear to diametrically oppose one another, the authors argue, given the two groups’ material wealth within the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism of corporate (neoliberal) America, they do not. Both groups have the same underlying practical consciousness, subjects/agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism. The divergences, where they exist, are due to their interpellation, embourgeoisement, and differentiation via different ideological apparatuses of the society: church and education, i.e., schools, for the latter; and prisons, the streets, and athletic and entertainment industries for the former. Contemporarily, in the age of globalization and neoliberalism, both groups have become the bearers of ideological and linguistic domination in black neoliberal America, and are antagonistically, converging the practical consciousness of the black or African diaspora towards their respective social class language games. We are suggesting that the socialization of other black people in the diaspora ought to be examined against and within the dialectical backdrop of this class power dynamic and the cultural and religious heritages of the black American people responsible for this phenomenon or process of convergence we are referring to as the “African-Americanization” of the black diaspora.

Imagining Home

Imagining Home PDF

Author: Sidney J. Lemelle

Publisher: Verso

Published: 1994-12-17

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780860915850

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This collection of original essays brilliantly interrogates the often ambivalent place of Africa in the imaginations, cultures and politics of its “New World” descendants. Combining literary analysis, history, biography, cultural studies, critical theory and politics, Imagining Home offers a fresh and creative approach to the history of Pan-Africanism and diasporic movements. A critical part of the book’s overall project is an examination of the legal, educational and political institutions and structures of domination over Africa and the African diaspora. Class and gender are placed at center stage alongside race in the exploration of how the discourses and practices of Pan-Africanism have been shaped. Other issues raised include the myriad ways in which grassroots religious and cultural movements informed Pan-Africanist political organizations; the role of African, African-American and Caribbean intellectuals in the formation of Pan-African thought—including W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James and Adelaide Casely Hayford; the historical, ideological and institutional connections between African-Americans and South Africans; and the problems and prospects of Pan-Africanism as an emancipatory strategy for black people throughout the Atlantic.

The New Noir

The New Noir PDF

Author: Orly Clerge

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0520296788

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The expansion of the Black American middle class and the unprecedented increase in the number of Black immigrants since the 1960s have transformed the cultural landscape of New York. In The New Noir, Orly Clerge explores the richly complex worlds of an extraordinary generation of Black middle class adults who have migrated from different corners of the African diaspora to suburbia. The Black middle class today consists of diverse groups whose ongoing cultural, political, and material ties to the American South and Global South shape their cultural interactions at work, in their suburban neighborhoods, and at their kitchen tables. Clerge compellingly analyzes the making of a new multinational Black middle class and how they create a spectrum of Black identities that help them carve out places of their own in a changing 21st-century global city. Paying particular attention to the largest Black ethnic groups in the country, Black Americans, Jamaicans, and Haitians, Clerge’s ethnography draws on over 80 interviews with residents to examine the overlooked places where New York’s middle class resides in Queens and Long Island. This book reveals that region and nationality shape how the Black middle class negotiates the everyday politics of race and class.

Labels and Locations

Labels and Locations PDF

Author: Louise Lightfoot

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2015-02-27

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1443875821

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Some happy occasions, like the 1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book to Bangladeshi-Australian author Adib Khan, the 2008 Man Booker Prize to Indian born Australian writer Arvinda Adiga, and the 2013 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction to Sri Lankan-Australian author Michele de Krester, have boosted the self-confidence of South Asian-Australian writers in Australia. South Asian diasporic communities have also been the focus for relatively small, but constantly growing, studies by anthropologists and sociologists on the interrelation of gender, race, ethnicity and migration in Australia. The terms Labels and Locations capture numerous aspects that contribute in the making of a diasporic consciousness. This book critically examines the issues of identity, gender, family, class and caste, expressed in the short narratives of South Asian diaspora writers based in Australia. Taking an interdisciplinary approach – from literary, cultural, historical, anthropological, and sociological studies – this book engages chiefly with the oeuvre of postcolonial writers and academics, namely: Mena Abdullah, Adib Khan, Yasmine Gooneratne, Michelle De Kretser, Chandani Lokugé, Chitra Fernando, Satendra Nandan, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Hanifa Deen, Christopher Cyrill, Suvendrini Perera, Sunil Govinnage, Brij V. Lal, Sunil Badami, Glenn D’Cruz, Chris Raja, Manik Datar, David De Vos, Rashmere Bhatti, Kirpal Singh Chauli, Sujhatha Fernandes, Neelam Maharaj, Sushie Narayan, Madu Pasipanodya, Shrishti Sharma, Beryl T. Mitchell, and Sunitha. This book will, by calling upon the works of this much-neglected South Asian diaspora group, fill a lacuna in the broader critical rubric of diaspora studies.

Routes of Passage

Routes of Passage PDF

Author: Ruth Simms Hamilton

Publisher: African Diaspora Research Proj

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13:

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Routes of Passage provides a conceptual, substantive, and empirical orientation to the study of African people worldwide. The book addresses issues of geographical mobility and geosocial displacement; changing culture, political, and economic relationships between Africa and its diaspora; interdiaspora relations; political and economic agency and social mobilization, including cultural production and psychocultural transformation; existence in hostile and oppressive political and territorial space; and confronting interconnected relations of social inequality, especially class, gender, nationality, and race.

Mapping the New African Diaspora in China

Mapping the New African Diaspora in China PDF

Author: Shanshan Lan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-04-07

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1317203526

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When one thinks of African diasporas, it is likely that their mind will automatically drift to locations such as Europe and America. But how much is known about the African diaspora in East Asia and, in particular, within China, where race is such a politically sensitive topic? Based on multi-sited ethnographic research in China and Nigeria, Mapping the New African Diaspora in China explores a new wave of African migration to South China in the context of the expansion of Sino/African trade relations and the global circulation of racial knowledge. Indeed, grassroots perspectives of China/Africa trade relations are foregrounded through the examination of daily interactions between Africans and rural-to-urban Chinese migrants in various informal trade spaces in Guangzhou. These Afro-Chinese encounters have the potential to not only help reveal the negotiated process of mutual racial learning, but also to subvert hegemonic discourses such as Sino/African friendship and white supremacy in subtle ways. However, as Lan demonstrates within this enlightening volume, the transformative power of such cross-cultural interactions is severely limited by language barrier, cultural differences, and the Chinese state’s stringent immigration control policies. This book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of China/Africa relations, race and ethnic studies, globalization and transnational migration, and urban China studies, as well as those from other social science disciplines such as political science, international relations, urban geography, Asian Studies, African studies, sociology, development studies, and cross-cultural communication studies. It may also appeal to policymakers and non-profit organizations involved in providing services and assistance to migrant populations.

Claiming Diaspora

Claiming Diaspora PDF

Author: Su Zheng

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-10-25

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 0199873593

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Framed by a century and a half of racialized Chinese American musical experiences, Claiming Diaspora explores the thriving contemporary musical culture of Asian/Chinese America. Ranging from traditional operas to modern instrumental music, from ethnic media networks to popular music, from Asian American jazz to the work of recent avant-garde composers, author Su Zheng reveals the rich and diverse musical activities among Chinese Americans and tells of the struggles of Chinese Americans to gain a foothold in the American cultural terrain. She not only tells their stories, but also examines the dynamics of the diasporic connections of this musical culture, revealing how Chinese American musical activities both reflect and contribute to local, national, and transnational cultural politics, and challenging us to take a fresh look at the increasingly plural and complex nature of American cultural identity.

Thinking Past ‘Post-9/11’

Thinking Past ‘Post-9/11’ PDF

Author: Jayana Jain

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-07-28

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1000423425

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This book offers new ways of constellating the literary and cinematic delineations of Indian and Pakistani Muslim diasporic and migrant trajectories narrated in the two decades after the 9/11 attacks. Focusing on four Pakistani English novels and four Indian Hindi films, it examines the aesthetic complexities of staging the historical nexus of global conflicts and unravels the multiple layers of discourses underlying the notions of diaspora, citizenship, nation and home. It scrutinises the “flirtatious” nature of transnational desires and their role in building glocal safety valves for inclusion and archiving a planetary vision of trauma. It also provides a fresh perspective on the role of Pakistani English novels and mainstream Hindi films in tracing the multiple origins and shifts in national xenophobic practices, and negotiating multiple modalities of political and cultural belonging. It discusses various books and films including The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Burnt Shadows, My Name is Khan, New York, Exit West, Home Fire, AirLift and Tiger Zinda Hai. In light of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 attacks, current debates on terror, war, paranoid national imaginaries and the suspicion towards migratory movements of refugees, this book makes a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debates on border controls and human precarity. A crucial work in transnational and diaspora criticism, it will be of great interest to researchers of literature and culture studies, media studies, politics, film studies, and South Asian studies.