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- Volume 1, Issue 1, 2010
Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2010
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2010
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Cinematic representations of diaspora: Italians and Jews
Authors: Lesley Marx and Robin CohenIn this article we consider recent re-evaluations of the concept of diaspora and extend the notion of diasporic space using cinematic representations of two diasporic experiences, Italian and Jewish. The first film selected is the work of Edward Dmytryk, a controversial member of the Hollywood Ten (prominent film-makers who refused to disclose their political affiliations during the McCarthy period). The second film is the work of Joan Micklin Silver, who, starting her career in the 1970s, draws particular attention to female experiences of diaspora. The two cases and their respective filmic treatments show significant divergences. However, they are both concerned with the complex tasks of trying to retain elements of the old ways while finding legitimate cultural and social expression in the New World. Our analysis of the films also demonstrates the complex ways in which the New and Old Worlds are spatially and imaginatively linked in the diasporic consciousness.
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Echoes from the borderlands: Transnation and cultural identity in Chuang Hua's Crossings
By Weimin TangTransnational migration and Diaspora have been seen as the moving force that fractures the parameters of nation and identity. Recent critiques of Diaspora discourses started, however, to call into question the oxymoronic relationship between the two. This article, through its endeavour to map out the complex psychic landscape of the Chinese American migr protagonist in the Chinese-born American writer Chuang Hua's novel Crossings, first published in 1968, captures a glimpse of the dynamic double act of transnational mobility. That is, the act of going global towards transnationalism implicates the simultaneous act of going local towards both an embedded hybridity and a cultural locality of an imagined homeplace that double back on the migration routes. Meanwhile, the dissolution of the primordial subject entails the uncanny return of the schizophrenic migrant subject of the borderlands. While the narrative of the cosmopolitan migr's existence reflects a universal theme of a bi-racial and bi-cultural fragmented self in search of cultural anchorage that transcends national boundaries, this article illustrates how the myriad crossings, geographical and psychic, spatial and temporal, as undertaken by the Chinese American protagonist Fourth Jane, simultaneously de- and re-territorializes the boundaries between nation and transnation, cosmopolitanism and locality as well as the self and the Other. As such, the global and local, transnation and cultural identity are re-viewed here as double-gestured and mutually constitutive rather than exclusive.
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Performing aesthetics, performing politics: The Jewish Home Beautiful and the re-shaping of the Jewish exile narrative
More LessPerforming Aesthetics, Performing Politics addresses the role that community art can play in the process of making home anew for dislocated individuals. By examining the specific case of The Jewish Home Beautiful pageant first written in the 1930s and performed by North American Jewish congregations ever since questions about home's properties, associations and manifestations (or lack-thereof) in the political, cultural, emotional and physical realms are posited alongside a critical analysis of the ways in which aesthetics contribute to the process wherein homelessness in one group ends up creating homelessness for others.
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Towards an anthropology of cultural mobilities
More LessHuman mobilities, whether horizontal or vertical, internal or boundary-crossing, are infused with cultural meaning, manifested in metacultural discourses and imaginaries. While cultural elements clearly have an impact on people's mobility, the way people move across borders also exerts strong influence on their culture and society. Studying the interaction between culturally rooted imaginaries of mobility and real physical movements, a relation coloured by global media images as well as personal accounts, helps us understand the multiple meanings behind contemporary migratory phenomena. Cultural anthropology, as a discipline situated between the social sciences and the humanities, is ideally suited to analyse critically the complex dynamics between mobile cultures and human mobility. This article, based on long-term fieldwork in Tanzania, exemplifies what an anthropological take on the interplay between culture and mobility may look like. Placed in their wider historical and socio-economic context, I discuss migratory movements and their cultural representations in Tanzania. An analysis of the ethnographic data reveals how imaginaries and social relations concerning mobility are materialized, enacted and inculcated. The particular case of the Maasai people, who are entangled in an intricate web of cultural mobilities, illustrates the complexity of the issues at stake.
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Moving from silence into speech: Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon speak about their lives
By Maria HoltPalestinian Arabs who were forced to flee from their land when the state of Israel was established in 1948 are one of the oldest refugee communities in the world, and those living in Lebanon are recognized as being the most disadvantaged. By focusing on the memories and identity formation of refugee women and asking how successive generations have addressed the hardships of exile while waging an anti-colonial struggle to claim their rights, my article will argue, firstly, that the nature of women's involvement and the ways in which they have been affected by trauma is somewhat different from the experiences of men; and, secondly, that despite substantial changes in the lives of individuals, today's young generation of Palestinians are no nearer to resolving the refugee issue than their parents or grandparents. However, by moving from silence into speech, Palestinian refugee women have begun to articulate and enact a new vision for the future.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Katie Tonkiss, Rikke Wagner, Prakash Shah and Vessela DaskalovaMigration Without Borders: Essays on the Free Movement of People, Antoine Pcoud and Paul De Guchteneire (Eds), (2007) New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1845453468, Paperback, 45.00
Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender, Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik (Eds), (2009) New York and London: New York University Press, (576 pp.) ISBN: 9780814776001, Paperback, $22.00
International Migration and the Governance of Religious Diversity, Paul Bramadat and Matthias Koenig (Eds), (2009) Kingston: School of Policy Studies, Queens University, Canada 340 pp., ISBN: 1553392668, Paperback, $39.95
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, and Societies, Scott E Page, (2008) Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 424 pp., ISBN 0691138540, Paperback, 14.99
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On digital crossings in Europe
Authors: Sandra Ponzanesi and Koen Leurs
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