An Archaeology of Asian Transnationalism

2. Diaspora and Transnationalism

29 2 Diaspora and Transnationalism Diaspora and transnationalism are much-debated concepts in the social sciences and humanities, and there is a large volume of literature addressing their intellectual pedigree and how they should be properly defined and conceptualized. Rather than tracing this history in depth, my objective here is to summarize the main issues, discuss how these concepts relate to one another, and suggest how they can best be harnessed to aid in tackling issues of archaeological and broader anthropological relevance. I begin with basic definitions, followed by an overview of how archaeologists and scholars of Asian America have used these concepts in the past; then I proceed to more detailed discussion of important issues raised by these and other theorists in anthropology, sociology, and associated disciplines . In the latter part of this chapter I expand this discussion to address issues of ethnicity and material consumption that tie transnational and diaspora theory to archaeological practice. Background and Definitions Butler (2001: 189) proposes that the most basic definition of diaspora is “the dispersal of a people from its original homeland,” but that scholars tend to agree on three additional features: the existence of two or more destinations; a relationship with an actual or imagined homeland; and maintenance of a distinct, self-conscious identity with respect to the host society (also known as “boundary maintenance”). She adds a fourth attribute , an existence over two or more generations, to distinguish diaspora from temporary exile. Although vertical (that is, ancestor/descendant ) relations with a real or imagined homeland have traditionally been An Archaeology of Asian Transnationalism 30 a defining feature of diasporas, some scholars emphasize lateral (that is, contemporary/peer) connections between diasporic communities as being of equal significance in negotiations of identity in the host country (Clifford 1994; Butler 2001; Brubaker 2005). In a similar fashion, Glick Schiller and colleagues define transnationalism as the process by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement. Immigrants who build such social fields are designated “transmigrants.” Transmigrants develop and maintain multiple relations—familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political that span borders. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, and feel concerns, and develop identities within social networks that connect them to two or more societies simultaneously. (Glick Schiller et al. 1992: 1–2) These relationships form a “triadic connection” linking transmigrants to one another and with the places to and from which they migrate. The term transnationalism has been used in reference to a range of activities undertaken by private citizens, local communities, grassroots organizations , governments, corporations, and other institutional and noninstitutional actors, although the focus here will be on migrant transnationalism (Guarnizo and Smith 1998; Portes et al. 1999). Until the late 1960s, many of the groups formed through dispersion over the past five centuries and now referred to as diasporas were known by other names, including exile groups, overseas communities, sojourners , ethnic and racial minorities, expatriates, refugees, and migrants. Tölölyan (1996) argues that this change in scholarly discourse occurred in the context of the transnational movement in real-world politics, as the dominance of sovereign nation-states and their assimilationist policies encountered resistance and a move toward multiculturalism. Scholars in a range of disciplines, including anthropology, have increasingly framed in diasporic terms the vast population movements that have occurred since the mid-twentieth century in the context of economic migration, independence movements, and warfare. This is an attempt to counter essentialist thinking (the idea of fixed, unchanging identities) inherent in colonial discourse and to more accurately represent the experiences of people whose lives and identities span established borders and boundaries and are marked by multiplicity, heterogeneity, and hybridity (Braziel and Mannur 2003). Likewise, although researchers had previously 31 Diaspora and Transnationalism recognized transnational behavior among migrants, it was at the beginning of the 1990s that anthropologists, and later others, began to develop a formal conceptual framework around the term (Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Portes et al. 1999). Since the late 1980s there has been an increasing shift in anthropological theory toward a more global focus that emphasizes concepts like globalization, transnationalism, and deterritorialization, and is concerned with processes through which things like production, consumption, communities, politics, and identity become detached from local places (Kearney 1995). This turn toward globalization and transnationalism has serious implications for how we classify multiple, overlapping , and decentered identities, which resist traditional models of eitheror classification...