Transnational Reading
Transnational Reading
Transnational Reading
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Stanley J. Tambiab
163
164 Stanley/. Tambiah
the three flows of people, capital, and information, dynamically
related and interwoven, together are generating some intensi
fied effects that are said to be distinctive of our so-called
postmodern world. In combination they test and breach the
autonomy, sovereignty, and territorial boundaries of extant
nation-states hitherto considered as the primary units of collec
tive sociopolitical identity and existence. They
intensify also
and sharpen sociocultural
diversity in what are called plural
societies, which are becoming a common global condition, and
pose for them the challenges of multicultural coexistence, toler
ance, and accommodation.
It is striking that the last twenty-five to thirty years or so
have witnessed an unprecedented movement of people between
countries, from south to north and east to west.1 Certain expan
sionary, even explosive, economic developments in parts of the
world and recent upheavals of other kinds have caused two
kinds of population movements. First, there is voluntary migra
tion of people carrying with them a variety of occupational
skills and cultural practices, leaving their locations of origin or
politics that push them out of their settlements. They may well
have productive skills, but in the short term they are considered
burdens in need of "relief" from their own governments and
from their foreign hosts.
Both voluntary migrants and displaced refugees who make
transnational passages and are relocated in other countries
may be labeled as forming diaspora communities, and the dy
namics and patterns of their involvement in transnational expe
riences and interactions are the main subject of this essay.
Transnational Movements 165
categories are
subject on
to criticism
many grounds, I consider
them useful insofar as they relate to indices such as gross
national product, per capita income, adult literacy, life expec
tancy at birth, access to health services, transportation, elec
myth about their original homeland; they believe they are not,
and perhaps cannot, be fully accepted by their host country;
and they see the ancestral home as a place of eventual return
and a place to maintain or restore. The collective identities of
these diaspora communities are defined by this continuing rela
tionship with the homeland.16
Clifford appropriately remarks that the most questionable
feature of this ideal-type construction is the thesis of a strong
attachment to and a desire for a literal return to a well-pre
served homeland?a requirement that does not accord with
large segments of even the Jewish historical experience, let
alone other well-known diaspora communities.
The philosopher Charles Taylor's plea for the recognition of
the worth of multiculturalism in our time is informed by this
modern, or, if you prefer, postmodern, condition: that all soci
eties are becoming increasingly multicultural while at the same
time becoming more porous. Their porousness means that they
are more open to multinational more of their num
migration;
bers live the life of diaspora, "whose center is elsewhere."17
By this
expression "whose center is elsewhere," pre
Taylor
sumably is suggesting that diaspora communities, although lo
cated abroad, still have their primary concerns turned toward
their "home countries." Such primary orientation may apply to
170 Stanley J. Tambiah
some diaspora, but there are many for whom such a
strong
imputation may not apply. Some theorists even go so far as to
assert that diaspora communities find themselves in a
"deterritorialized" situation and state of mind. These charac
teristics are truer of diaspora communities in their earlier stages
of existence than in their later stages, especially in those con
texts in which the host societies permit them to stay for long
periods with chances for alien residence status and eligibility
for access to the social, educational, and other services avail
able to regular citizens.
Vertical Networks
opportunities.
origin and host country and state?do not by any means cover
or exhaust another aspect of the lives of diaspora groups.
Migrants and immigrants of similar origins are distributed and
situated in many diasporic locations, such that they are inter
connected especially by modern media and travel in a
transnational transactional arena focused on their own preoc
cupations and interests. The actors in this arena, be they indi
viduals, families, groups, or business enterprises, for whom
national and state boundaries as such are irrelevant or second
ary for certain purposes, constitute crisscrossing and intersect
ing networks that Ulf Hannerz has dubbed "the global
ecumene."18Thus, the ability and incentive to circulate between
these sites, to exchange money, goods, and information, and to
conclude marriage contracts and exchanges pose for anthro
quite at home with the English language but also fully in control
of Western scientific and modern commercial skills. Overseas
Indian communities in the United States?and probably in Brit
ain as well?are not so much concerned with their roots in a
marginal rice fields and other lands of San Tin, much of which
continued to be owned by the apical ancestor, constitute corpo
rate property held in lineage trusts in which every agnatic
descendant today has a share (by successive per stripes inher
itance). They are worth hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars and
await capitalist development and new incalculable profits by
the owners, who enjoy the double privilege and possibility of
wheeling and dealing with both the PRC authorities and entre
preneurs in Beijing and the millionaires of Hong Kong, who are
now figuring out the post-1997 future. To some extent, we are
CONCLUSION
plurality of
religious traditions and cultures
challenges people
in every part of the world today, including the United States,
which is now the most religiously diverse country on earth.
"Today, the Islamic world is no longer somewhere else, in some
other part of the world; instead Chicago, with its 50 mosques
and nearly half a million Muslims, is part of the Islamic
world. . . .The of the world in which we live now cannot
map
be color-coded as to its Christian, Muslim or Hindu
identity,
but each part is marbled with and textures
the colors of the
whole."46 It is precisely the intensified interp?n?tration of civi
lizations and cultures that is the hallmark of the late twentieth
century.
As another writer has put it: "The Third World is in the First
World, and the First World in the Third; the North is in the
South, and the South is in the North; the center is in the
periphery, and
the periphery is in the center."47 True, provided
we also remember that the First World continues asymmetri
cally to dominate the Third World, and the North the South,
and that reality is not likely to change in the near future, to say
the least.
ENDNOTES
1
At the same time there also has been movement of people within
unprecedented
developing countries, especially from rural to urban and industrial centers.
Ibid.
8Ibid.
10Ibid., 34. This number for the United States included the majority of the nearly
three million undocumented migrants whose status was later regularized by
the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
192 Stanley J. Tambiah
1
department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, Review
and Appraisal of the World Population Plan of Action: 1994 Report (New
York: United Nations, Population division, 1994), 83.
12"In the developing world, Southern Asia had 19 million migrants as of 1985,
followed by Northern Africa andWestern Asia, with 13 million, and by sub
Saharan Africa with 11 million." Concise Report, 34.
13SeeCharles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," in Charles Taylor et al.,
Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutman
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Will Kymlicka, Multicultural
Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995); and Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1997).
14JamesClifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 244.
15Ibid., 245. He is quoting from Khachig T?l?lian, "The Nation State and its
Others: In Lieu of a Preface," Diaspora 1 (1) (1991): 4-5.
16William Safran, "Diasporas inModern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Re
turn," Diaspora 1 (1) (1991): 83-99.
22Ibid.
page of VHP of America claims that over five thousand youths born and
raised in America have participated inVHP organized camps inAmerica.
Transnational Movements 193
"Nationalism on the Net."
Khandelwal,
34Ibid., 6-67.
35Iam both quoting and summarizing from Diana L. Eck, "Negotiating Hindu
Identities in America," unpublished paper. Also see Eck, "Neighboring
Faiths: How Will Americans Cope with Increasing Religious Diversity?"
Harvard Magazine, September-October 1996, 38.
41"TheNew Affirmative Action Fight," New York Times, 9 August 1999, A18.
42Peggy Levitt, "Forms of Transnational Community and their Implications for
43It is relevant to note in this context that Germany, which has previously resisted
ship.