Diaspora
Volume
6, Number 3, Winter 1997
Articles:
Three
Meanings of "Diaspora," Exemplified among South Asian
Religions
Steven Vertovec
Vertovec
identifies three general meanings of the term "diaspora"
as it has been used in recent scholarship produced by many disciplines
and about many groups.
He discusses diasporas—and especially South Asian religious diasporas—as
social forms, as types of consciousness, and as modes of cultural
production. He points to changes in the meanings, relationships, and
practice of religion and culture as diasporas experiment with disassociating
them from each other; the differences between syncretic and hybrid
identities, on the one hand, and multicultural competence, on the
other; and the shifting relationship between structure and agency
in diaspora.
(Dis)placing
the Jews: Historicizing the Idea of Diaspora
Jon Stratton
Stratton
reconsiders the changing meanings of "diaspora" by focusing
on the Jewish experience, which encompasses quite different classical,
modern, and postmodern phases. He points to the tensions between a
classical religious conception of diaspora as galut; a politicized
modern conception of diaspora as aspiring for a homeland; and a post-Holocaust
diasporic reality that, after the establishment of Israel, offers
non-Israeli Jews a world in which the meanings of both diaspora and
the nation-state have changed yet again. Criticizing what he sees
as William Safran's ahistorical paradigm of the Jewish diaspora, Stratton
notes that Zionism has valorized the "homeland" and devalorized
diaspora just as "in many Western countries ... the rhetoric
of diaspora has been valorized." In addition, Stratton explores
the varying permutations of matriarchal and patriarchal tropes that
anchor the rhetorics of both homeland and diaspora.
Diaspora
with a Difference: Jewish and Georgian Teenagers' Ethnic Identity
in the Russian Federation
Fran Markowitz
Markowitz
investigates the emerging ethnodiasporan identities of Georgian and
Jewish youth in Russia following the collapse of the USSR. She offers
an account of the changing meanings of nationality, citizenship, and
two inflections of Russian-ness that form the matrix in which the
teenagers she studies develop their own conceptions of identity. For
the "Jewish" teenagers, these self-definitions range from
an exclusive Jewishness that in the future may impose the need to
emigrate to Israel, to strategically nurtured multiple identities
that do not overpower or subsume each other, finally to a view that
Jewishness is "compatible with or inconsequential to their Russianness."
Georgian youth, who are newcomers, hope for a brief sojourn that will
prevent their becoming a nativized diaspora; they hold a view of their
identity as fixed, by their own culture and history and perhaps by
Russian exclusion.
What's
New About Transnationalism? New York Immigrants Today and at the Turn
of the Century
Nancy Foner
Foner
argues that the uniqueness of contemporary transnationalism, and perhaps
also the resistance to assimilation of new transmigrants, have been
exaggerated. She shows that "immigrants in the last great wave"
of migration in 1880–1923 "maintained extensive ... transnational
ties and operated in what social scientists now call a transnational
social field." She offers evidence of remarkably high rates of
return to the homeland, and of repeat migration, by Jews and especially
Italians. Countering the belief that current racism against immigrants
of color is unique, she points to the intense racism directed against
white ethnics, who were thought to belong to several distinguishable
races. Like transnationals today, earlier migrants participated in
the ideological and political landscape of their homelands, and they
were not ignored by homeland governments. While technological innovations,
greater tolerance in hostlands, and changes of scholarly perspective
have made transnationals a more visible and positively regarded force
today, and have enabled their greater quotidian involvement in homeland
life, Foner notes some factors that may yet facilitate their assimilation.
Shangri-La
in Exile: Portraying Tibetan Diaspora Studies and Reconsidering Diaspora(s)
Martin Baumann
Baumann
reviews two new books on Tibet and its diaspora, welcomes diaspora
theorists' emerging recognition of the latter, and reflects on the
attempts to sustain salient features of Tibetan culture—primarily
art and religion—in diaspora, analyzing modifications, innovations,
and failures in areas ranging from painting to monastic life. After
offering a panoptic narrative of the adoption of the term and concept
of "diaspora," beginning with early Christians, who conceived
of themselves as members of a dispersed community, as sojourners,
and as seeds disseminating the religion, Baumann then traces the adoption
of the term by African American historians, political scientists,
Indologists, historians of religion, and Tibetologists, and offers
a detailed account of what he argues are the still-indispensable meanings
of the word in Judaism. He ends by turning from the Judaic to the
Tibetan model of diaspora and sketching their ability to illuminate
each other, as well as other diasporic phenomena.
