Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822317206 ISBN 13: 9780822317203

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 1996

Synopsis

Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity challenges conventional understandings of identity based on notions of nation and culture as bounded or discrete. Through careful examinations of various transnational, hybrid, border, and diasporic forces and practices, these essays push at the edge of cultural studies, postmodernism, and postcolonial theory and raise crucial questions about ethnographic methodology.
This volume exemplifies a cross-disciplinary cultural studies and a concept of culture rooted in lived experience as well as textual readings. Anthropologists and scholars from related fields deploy a range of methodologies and styles of writing to blur and complicate conventional dualisms between authors and subjects of research, home and away, center and periphery, and first and third world. Essays discuss topics such as Rai, a North African pop music viewed as westernized in Algeria and as Arab music in France; the place of Sephardic and Palestinian writers within Israel’s Ashkenazic-dominated arts community; and the use and misuse of the concept “postcolonial” as it is applied in various regional contexts.
In exploring histories of displacement and geographies of identity, these essays call for the reconceptualization of theoretical binarisms such as modern and postmodern, colonial and postcolonial. It will be of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars and students concerned with postmodern and postcolonial theory, ethnography, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Contributors. Norma Alarcón, Edward M. Bruner, Nahum D. Chandler, Ruth Frankenberg, Joan Gross, Dorinne Kondo, Kristin Koptiuch, Smadar Lavie, Lata Mani, David McMurray, Kirin Narayan, Greg Sarris, Ted Swedenburg

About this title

From the Back Cover:

""Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity" is informed not only by detailed attention to specific case studies or theoretical analyses, but also by an awareness of theoretical work in several fields which allows the highlighting of points and circuits of connections across disciplines and areas. This collection succeeds in ways which are thought provoking and likely to lead to vital discussions across disciplines."-- David Lloyd, University of California, Berkeley

About the Author:

Smadar Lavie is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Critical Theory at the University of California at Davis.

Ted Swedenburg is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0822317206
• ISBN 13: 9780822317203
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344
• Editor: Lavie Smadar, Swedenburg Ted