An Archaeology Of Asian Transnationalism

In the early twentieth century, an industrial salmon cannery thrived along the Fraser River in British Columbia. Chinese factory workers lived in an adjoining bunkhouse, and Japanese fishermen lived with their families in a nearby camp. Today the complex is nearly gone and the site overgrown with vegetation, but artifacts from these immigrant communities linger just beneath the surface. In this groundbreaking comparative archaeological study of Asian immigrants in North America, Douglas Ross excavates the Ewen Cannery to explore how its immigrant workers formed a new cultural identity in the face of dramatic displacement. Ross demonstrates how some homeland practices persisted while others changed in response to new contextual factors, reflecting the complexity of migrant experiences. Instead of treating ethnicity as a bounded, stable category, Ross shows that ethnic identity is shaped and transformed as cultural traditions from home and host societies come together in the context of local choices, structural constraints, and consumer society.

This handbook presents cutting-edge research on Asian transnationalism written by experts in the areas of migration, diaspora, ethnicity, gender, language, education, politics, media, art, popular culture and literature from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives. The Asian region not only constitutes one of the largest diasporic populations in the world but also the most diversified diasporas in terms of their historical trajectories of emigration, geographical spread, economic and political strength, socio-cultural integration in the host country and transnational engagement with the homeland. Divided thematically into six broad sections, the chapters in this handbook critically discuss and debate some of the pertinent issues of Asian transnationalism: Contextualizing Asian Transnationalism Transnationalism and Socio-Cultural Identities Transnationalism, Education and Infrastructure Transnationalism, Gender and Development Transnationalism and Dynamics of Diasporic Politics Transnationalism, Art and Media The Routledge Handbook of Asian Transnationalism will be an invaluable resource for academics, researchers and students interested in the study of international migration, Asian diaspora and transnationalism. Chapter 29 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Archaeologists are increasingly interested in studying the experiences of Chinese immigrants, yet this area of research is mired in long-standing interpretive models that essentialize race and identity. Showcasing the enormous amount of data available on the lives of Chinese people who migrated to North America in the nineteenth century, this volume charts new directions by providing fresh approaches to interpreting immigrant life. In this volume, leading scholars first tackle broad questions of how best to position and understand these populations. They then delve into a variety of site-based and topical case studies, providing new approaches to themes like Chinese immigrant foodways and highlighting understudied topics including entrepreneurialism, cross-cultural interactions, and conditions in the Jim Crow South. Pushing back against old colonial-based tropes, contributors call for an awareness of the transnational relationships created through migration, engagement with broader archaeological and anthropological debates, and the expansion of research into new contexts and topics. Contributors: Linda Bentz | Todd J. Braje | Kelly N. Fong | D. Ryan Gray | J. Ryan Kennedy | Christopher Merritt | Laura W. | Virginia S. Popper | Adrian Praetzellis | Mary Praetzellis | Chelsea Rose | Douglas E. Ross | Charlotte K. Sunseri | Barbara L. Voss | Priscilla Wegars | Henry Yu

This book explores the influence which education and migration experiences have on women of Indian origin in Australia and the United Kingdom when (re)negotiating their identities. The intersections of migration and transnationalism are critically examined through multiple theoretical lenses across three thematic domains encompassing socio-historical discourses, postcolonial theory, theories on intersectionality and interceptionality, emotional reflexivity and affects. In doing so, the book highlights the ambiguities around gendered access and equity to education, migration experiences, the acculturation process, dilemmas surrounding transnationality and negotiation of identities, belonging and struggles inherent in simultaneously maintaining ties with home and new social fields. Chapters highlight the practical, methodological, and substantive aspects of affective dimensions and voice with a critical understanding of different tensions, challenges, complexities and conflicts underlining the stories. The book raises the question of voice and agency in advocating emotion-based writing in recalibrating conditions representing gendered subjective multivocality of women in breaking silences. Presenting non-Western perspectives through fragmented and often marginalised accounts within transnational and global spaces, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Sociology, Gender Studies, Migration, Transnational and Diaspora studies, Sociology of Education, Feminist Studies, Cultural Studies, Literature and Cultural Geographies.

This book examines the Japanese diaspora from the historical archaeology perspective—drawing from archaeological data, archival research, and often oral history—and explores current trends in archaeological scholarship while also looking at new methodological and theoretical directions. The chapters include research on pre-War rural labor camps or villages in the US, as well as research on western Canada (British Columbia), Peru, and the Pacific Islands (Hawai‘i and Tinian), incorporating work on understudied urban and cemetery sites. One of the main themes explored in the book is patterns of cultural persistence and change, whether couched in terms of maintenance of tradition, “Americanization,” or the formation of dual identities. Other themes emerging from these chapters include consumption, agency, stylistic analysis, community lifecycles, social networks, diaspora and transnationalism, gender, and sexuality. Also included are discussions of trauma, racialization, displacement, labor, heritage, and community engagement. Some are presented as fully formed interpretive frameworks with substantial supporting data, while others are works in progress or tentative attempts to push the boundaries of our field into innovative new territory. This book is of interest to students and researchers in historical archaeology, anthropology, sociology of migration, diaspora studies and historiography. Previously published in International Journal of Historical Archaeology Volume 25, issue 3, September 2021

This book examines Chinese transnationalism as a distinctive domain within the new 'flexible' capitalism emerging in the Asia-Pacific region. It is based on new ethnographic research and interweaves anthropology, culture and politics.

The South Asian Diaspora numbers just under 30 million people worldwide, and it is recognized as the most widely dispersed diaspora. It is, moreover, one which of late has seen phenomenal growth, both due to natural increase and the result of a continued movement of professionals and labourers in the late 20thand early 21stcentury from the subcontinent to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Singapore. This book uses the concept of transnational networks as a means to understand the South Asian diaspora. Taking into account diverse aspects of formation and development, the concept breaks down the artificial boundaries that have been dominating the literature between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ era of migration. Thereby the continued connectedness of most historic South Asian settlements is shown, and the fluid nature of South Asian identities is explored. Offering a unique and original insight into the South Asian diaspora, this book will be of interest to academics working in the field of South Asian Studies, Diaspora and Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Transnationalism and Globalisation.

The "war on terror" has generated a scramble for expertise on Islamic or Asian "culture" and revived support for area studies, but it has done so at the cost of reviving the kinds of dangerous generalizations that area studies have rightly been accused of. This book provides a much-needed perspective on area studies, a perspective that is attentive to both manifestations of "traditional culture" and the new global relationships in which they are being played out. The authors shake off the shackles of the orientalist legacy but retain a close reading of local processes. They challenge the boundaries of China and question its study from different perspectives, but believe that area studies have a role to play if their geographies are studied according to certain common problems. In the case of China, the book shows the diverse array of critical but solidly grounded research approaches that can be used in studying a society. Its approach neither trivializes nor dismisses the elusive effects of culture, and it pays attention to both the state and the multiplicity of voices that challenge it.