Diaspora
Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2002
The
German-Language Diasporas: A Survey, Critique, and Interpretation
Dirk Hoerder
German-language emigrants and ethnics have not usually been conceptualized as a diaspora. Patterns of migration and of later—
mainly German-language1—scholarly discourse combined to create two distinct images of the Eastern European and North American regions as separate major areas of settlement. A third image places smaller colonies on other continents, of which, for example, those in South America and Australia have been investigated, while those in London and Paris have been neglected.
Minorities
into Migrants: Making and Un-Making Central and Eastern Europe's
Ethnic German Diasporas
Rainer Ohliger and Rainer Münz
Modern German history was shaped by a number of peculiarities and unique developments. One such peculiarity was the continuous flux of territorial as well as ethno-political borders and the strong politicization of policies towards internal and external ethnic minorities. The divergence between state(s) and ethnic nation1 provided for constant conflicts that were at the basis of changing borders and shifting identities. Not least of all, it created a German diaspora, in particular in Central and Eastern Europe. A crucial event in this process was the establishment of the first German nation-state in 1871. After its establishment, a considerable number of ethnic Germans continued to live outside the state's borders, most of them in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in czarist Russia. Territorial and border changes in the aftermath of two world wars intensified (but paradoxically also alleviated) tensions between state, ethnic nation, and their divergence.
Alevism
Online: Re-Imagining a Community in Virtual Space
Martin Sökefeld
Just like physical space, cyberspace, the cultural and social space evolving on the basis of computer-mediated communication, has differentiated into a number of different landscapes (Kollock and Smith, “Communities in Cyberspace”), such as electronic bulletin boards, discussion lists, chat rooms, and homepages, each offering its respective resources, lines of communication, and ecological niches to a rapidly increasing number of users or “cyber-citizens.” Within these landscapes, social and cultural aggregates are developing, connecting people and creating cultural meaning systems almost independent of the constraints of real time and space. By now, a vast literature discussing these issues exists.
Postmodernism,
Realism, and the Problem of Identity
Shari Stone-Mediatore
“Identity” has a troubling history. In the name of identities, lines have been drawn between who may govern themselves and who is enslaved, who can live in the neighborhood and who is excluded, who can and who cannot vote, and who does and who does not have basic “human rights.” Given the way that ideologies of identity and difference have rationalized social hierarchies and oppression, one wonders whether appeals to identity can have any role in progressive social struggles. In fact, many have argued that embracing racial, ethnic, or gender identities implies an acceptance of roles that have been defined by oppression, while organizing around identities repeats the exclusionary and divisive practices of the dominant culture.
