Diaspora

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Arjun Appadurai (1994) describes diaspora as cohorts of individuals and relates to democracy in different parts of the world.

"The fluidity of ideoscapes is complicated in particular by the growing diasporas (both voluntary and involuntary) of intellectuals who continuously inject new meaning-streams into the discourse of democracy in different parts of the world" (p. 322).

In another quote,

"The Japanese are notoriously hospitable to ideas and are stereotyped as inclined to export (all) and import (some) goods, but they are notoriously closed to immigration, like Swiss, the Swedes, and the Saudis. Yet the Swiss and the Saudis accept populations of guestworkers, thus creating labor diasporas of Turks, Italians, and other circum-Mediterranean groups" (322).

Here, diasporas are seen as groups of guestworkers, not immigrants, that create diasporas under a difference lens.

"Often, global labor diasporas involve immense strains on marriages in general and on women in particular, as marriages become the meeting points of historical patterns of socialization and new ideas of proper behavior" (335).

Here, diasporas are not only a way to form a community and find work in other parts of the world, but are also a "strain" on the family.

We see another view of diaspora in the "Glossary" in Cohen and Kennedy's Global Sociology (2000):

"Diasporas are often formed by the forcible or voluntary dispersion of peoples to a number of countries. They constitute a diaspora if they continue to evince a common concern for their 'homeland' (sometimes an imagined community) and come to share a sense of a common purpose with their own people" (376).

Here, the picture is a bit rosier. There is an imagined community, and these people have a "common concern for their 'homeland'. This competes with Appadurai's concept of guestworkers. They may be worked more about work, but it just so happens to be that they are of the same nationalit working in the same foreign country.

"Strong diasporas are the key to determine success in the global economy..Diaposras scores by being able to interrogate the universal with the particular and by being able to use their transnationalism to press the limits of the local" (354).

This also competes with Appadurai's visions of family conflict due to the moving of one spouse or parent to another area just for work. They are a "key to determine success in the global economy" according to whose perspective?!

Websites

For further inclusive and religious definitions of diasporas:

• Catholic Encyclopedia
• Jewish Virtual Library's "Glossary"
  
  

References

Appadurai, A. (1994)."Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (Eds.) Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Columbia University Press: New York.

Cohen. R. & Kennedy, P. (2000). Global Sociology. New York University Press: New York , 2000.

 

Contributed by Amy Firestone