In This Issue

Diaspora 7:2 1998 In mis Issue Fortier examines in some detail the political and cultural practices of identity in which the leaders of the Italian diaspora in Britain engage. These seek to produce coherent narratives of collective selfhood which are neither simplistically essentialist nor relentlessly pluralist, Fortier argues. Challenging both poles ofthat disturbing dualism in diaspora studies, she shows that Italian practices in Britain combine elements of essentialism (e.g., appealing to a "fixed and unalterable original culture") and pluralism (e.g., demanding that the Italian nation-state alter its conception ofitselfin order to give a political voice to Italians living outside the state's territory). Working hard to integrate the "here" of their local British experience with the "there" of Italian origins, this diaspora, Fortier demonstrates, creates "a border zone between identity-as-essence and identity-as-conjuncture." Gabaccia examines Nicholas Harney's account ofthe Italian diaspora in Toronto today, which focuses on community organizations as local sites for the production ofdiasporic cultural identity. These organizations belong to three fairly distinct tiers and include clubs that bring together emigrants and descendants from a single village , a region, or all of Italy. All are responsive to incentives and pressures both from the Canadian state—with its official multiculturalist policies—and from the Italian state, whose changing policies toward its national and regional diasporas significantly reshape Toronto's communal institutions, even as non-state factors, such as the celebrations of local patron saints, also persist. Gabaccia, a historian examining the work of an urban anthropologist , reflects on the ways in which different disciplinary and gender perspectives lead to consequentially different conclusions when scholars and governments ponder how and to what effect the diasporic identities of the "new" transnational immigrants in multicultural societies differ from earlier migrations. Gibb studies the diaspora of Muslim elites from Harar, once almost a city-state in Ethiopia. Although until recently the Harari, like most Ethiopians, migrated little, today some 10% of them live in Toronto. Gibb surveys the changing meanings of Ethiopian identities in a country that has never been homogeneous, and of Harari identity within that context. She also contrasts the special dispensations concerning Harari identity within Ethiopia and the 115 116 Diaspora 7:2 1998 loss of distinction within the larger Ethiopian and Muslim diasporas of Canada. Drawing on comparative ethnographic fieldwork in Harar and Toronto, Gibb explores the effects of a Canadian "multiculturalism policy that defines diasporic communities on the basis of 'nationalisms' or citizenship rather than subnationalisms, ethnicities or religious orientations." Such an approach, she argues, risks failing to understand critical aspects of the immigration and settlement experience. Denied the privilege of the distinct local identity they held within Ethiopia, the Harari of Toronto are developing a Muslim Canadian identity which diverges from and even criticizes the traditions of Islamic practice and "sainthood" which so distinguish Harar in Ethiopia. Miles and Sheffer argue that among the ranks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) now emerging in global civil society, there are trans-state as well as transnational organizations. Respectively representing these by the organizations created by the movement for Francophonie and those created by Zionism, they argue that both "diasporic entities constitute significant subsystems of the emerging global civil society." They offer brief narratives of the ideological and historical origins of the two movements, then establish detailed parallels of organization and function and reflect on five types of comparable problems encountered by these organizations . Despite "the marked differences between Zionism and Francophonie, especially in regard to the ... number of their members, their ethnic composition and their goals," the authors conclude, the two remain comparable entities. Though both movements emerged before the new global system, they are now effective members of it and indeed are "forerunners of novel patterns of social and political organization." Panossian offers a historical overview and a detailed analysis of the changing political links between Armenia and the Armenian diaspora over the past seventy-five years. He traces the shifting strategies ofArmenia's communist rulers (ca. 1921-1991) and ofthe Diaspora's leading organizations and institutions. His account points to the ways in which the ideal of a diasporic nation can clash with the priorities of both Communist and...