Diaspora
Volume
9, Number 3, Winter 2000
In
This Issue
From
Opium Farmer to Astronaut: A Global History of Diasporic Chinese
Business
Adam McKeown
The image of the Chinese businessman pervades the contemporary Asia-Pacific. Whether seen as the cutting edge of a new Asian capitalism, as the source of unsound practices that precipitated the crash of 1997, or as small-scale opportunists symbiotic to the primal creative force of large transnational corporations, diasporic Chinese businessmen are a fixture in discussions of regional Asia-Pacific economies. Their depiction as small shopkeepers and clannish ethnic minorities is becoming a thing of the past. Now, they are astute, cosmopolitan (although still a bit clannish) businessmen, linked through their cell phones, masters at negotiating the ever-changing terrain of global capitalism and flexible accumulation. They are "astronauts" in constant movement around the globe, seeking out property, education, citizenship, and market opportunities in myriad nations, feeling comfortable anywhere as long as it is near an airport. Even Chinese who haven't advanced to the jet-setting class still carry a certain mystique, an aura of privileged access to shadowy flows of information, interpersonal trust, and rapid deals made on a nod and a promise. Their ephemeral firms, dense networks, rapid adaptability, and geographic dispersion are said to confound familiar methods of measuring economic success and to challenge us with new ways of conceiving and doing business.
Transnationalism
and Globalization: The Greek Orthodox Diaspora between Orthodox
Universalism and Transnational Nationalism
Victor Roudometof
The recent "discovery" of transnationalism has fueled the production of research on international migration (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Szanton Blanc, "Transnationalism," "From Immigrant"; Smith; Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc; Smith and Guarnizo; Mahler, American Dreaming; Laguerre; Van Hear; Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt). It has also generated considerable controversy over the definition of transnationalism, as well as its asserted novelty (Mintz; Van Hear 241-56; Mahler, "Theoretical" 75; Guarnizo and Smith 16-17; Dominguez; Hanagan). In this essay, I attempt to approach transnational studies by developing a world historical framework for understanding transnationalism and by applying this framework to a case study.
Soul
Mates
Kate Baldwin
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Alice Walker describes her undergraduate years at Spelman College as marked by a fascination that, in her estimation, put her at a remove from the students around her. Walker reflects, "I paid as much attention to Russian literature as many of the other girls paid to makeup, clothing and boys" (Gussow 10). But if this kept her away from her college-mates, Walker's predilection for Tolstoy and Dostoevsky placed her squarely within the paradigm that Dale Peterson proposes in his study of affinities between Russian and African American literatures. Eschewing the conventional boundaries between Russian and American literary studies that have characterized the exceptionalist enterprises of each, Peterson brings together literature from both canons.
Provincials
and Tropicopolitans: Eighteenth-Century Literary Studies and the Un-making
of “Great Britain”
Suvir Kaul
In a well-known essay, Dipesh Chakrabarty calls for historians to begin "the project of provincializing `Europe,' the `Europe' that modern imperialism and (third-world) nationalism have, by their collaborative venture and violence, made universal" (240-1). Chakrabarty offers an acute diagnosis of the intellectual and disciplinary problem at hand:
For generations now, philosophers and thinkers shaping the nature of social science have produced theories embracing the entirety of humanity. As we well know, these statements have been produced in relative, and sometimes absolute, ignorance of the majority of humankind--i.e., those living in non-Western cultures. This in itself is not paradoxical, for the more self-conscious of European philosophers have always sought theoretically to justify this stance. (225).
Thinking
and Rethinking Ethnic Economies
Antoine Pécoud
Studies on ethnic entrepreneurship may be reaching a turning point. This is indicated by the high number of reviews of the literature published in the last few years (Barrett, Jones, and McEvoy; Chan and Ong; Rath, "Introduction"; Rath and Kloosterman). There seems to be a felt need for recapitulations of thirty years of fruitful and dynamic research on the topic. Three or four decades ago, there was no such thing as an "ethnic economy": as a fact, it barely existed; as a concept, the role of ethnicity in contemporary economic life was largely unexplored. The appearance and growth of ethnic businesses, both in North America and in Western Europe, was followed by a large body of research that is today mature and important enough to be surveyed and evaluated, as in this volume, which can also function as an advanced textbook for new researchers.
Notes
on Contributors
