Between Dispersion and Belonging: Global Approaches to Diaspora in Practice

Between Dispersion and Belonging: Global Approaches to Diaspora in Practice

Between Dispersion and Belonging: Global Approaches to Diaspora in Practice

Between Dispersion and Belonging: Global Approaches to Diaspora in Practice

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Overview

As a historical and religious term "diaspora" has existed for many years, but it only became an academic and analytical concept in the 1980s and ’90s. Within its various usages, two broad directions stand out: diaspora as a dispersion of people from an original homeland, and diaspora as a claim of identity that expresses a form of belonging and also keeps alive a sense of difference. Between Dispersion and Belonging critically assesses the meaning and practice of diaspora first by engaging with the theoretical life histories of the concept, and then by examining a range of historical case studies. Essays in this volume draw from diaspora formations in the pre-modern Indian Ocean region, read diaspora against the concept of indigeneity in the Americas, reassess the claim for a Swedish diaspora, interrogate the notion of an "invisible" English diaspora in the Atlantic world, calibrate the meaning of the Irish diaspora in North America, and consider the case for a global Indian indentured-labour diaspora. Through these studies the contributors demonstrate that an inherent appeal to globality is central to modern formulations of diaspora. They are not global in the sense that diasporas span the entire globe, rather they are global precisely because they are not bound by arbitrary geopolitical units. In examining the ways in which academic and larger society discuss diaspora, Between Dispersion and Belonging presents a critique of modern historiography and positions that critique in the shape of global history. Contributors include William Safran (University of Colorado Boulder), James T. Carson (Queen's University), Eivind H. Seland (University of Bergen), Don MacRaild (University of Ulster), and Rankin Sherling (Marion Military Institute: the Military College of Alabama).

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780773547131
Publisher: McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date: 11/21/2016
Series: McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History , #2
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 384
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Amitava Chowdhury is associate professor of history at Queen’s University. Donald Harman Akenson is Douglas Professor of Canadian History at Queen’s University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Foreword: Between Dispersion and Belonging: At Home in the Diaspora Amitava Chowdhury xi

Introduction: Is "Diaspora" a Live Hand Grenade? Donald Harman Akenson 3

Part 1 Concept 29

1 What and Where Is Diaspora?: Definitions, Analytical Boundaries, and Research Agendas William Safran 31

2 Diaspora: Legacies, Typologies, and "Push-Pull" Donald Harman Akenson 70

3 The Diaspora Symptom: Global Projection of Local Identities Amitava Chowdhury 95

Part 2 Formations 107

4 Who Was First and When?: The Diasporic Implications of Indigeneity James T. Carson 111

5 Trade Diasporas and Merchant Social Cohesion in Early Trade in the Western Indian Ocean Eivind Heldas Seland 125

6 Perhaps a Silly Question: Was There a Swedish Diaspora? Donald Harman Akenson 138

7 An "Invisible Diaspora"?: English Associational Culture in Nineteenth-Century North America Donald M. MacRaild 189

8 Ulster Presbyterians, the Great Famine, and the Historiography of Early Irish America Rankin Sherling 215

9 Narratives of Home: Diaspora Formations among the Indian Indentured Labourers Amitava Chowdhury 240

Conclusion: Diaspora as Global History Amitava Chowdhury 254

Notes 263

Bibliography 311

Contributors 355

Index 357

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