Diasporic representations of the home culture: case studies from Suriname and New Caledonia
The focus of this paper is the ways in which certain customs and traditions are actively selected and/or reinvigorated and subsequently authorised, by institutions or by individuals, as being key markers of the culture of the ‘homeland’. The cultural practices chosen for
discussion are the kejawen mystical system as practised in Suriname and the acquisition of the Indonesian national language, bahasa Indonesia, in New Caledonia. The discussion is informed by two key ideas. The first is that immigrant communities designate certain cultural practices
as being worthy of preservation as an ‘inheritance’ for the future. The second is the interplay between cultural practices and power or authority, which gels in scholarly discussions about ‘cultural heritage’. I argue that the continuation of a cultural practice or
tradition lies as much with its authorisation by key individuals or institutions as it does with its purported authenticity.
Keywords: Indonesian; Javanese; New Caledonia; Suriname; cultural heritage
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Faculty of Arts, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania
Publication date: 03 July 2015
- Editorial Board
- Information for Authors
- Subscribe to this Title
- Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content