Roots And Routes

This book seeks to find creative and transformative relationship among roots and routes and create a new dynamics of awakening so that we can overcome the problems of closed and xenopbhobic roots and rootless cosmopolitanism. The book draws upon multiple philosophical and spiritual traditions of the world such as Siva Tantra, Buddhist phenomenology and Peircean Semiotics and discusses the works of Ibn-Arabi, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Raimon Panikkar,among others.The book is transdiscipinary building on creative thinking from philosophy, anthropology, political studies and literature. It is a unique contribution for forging a new relationship between roots and routes in our contemporary fragile and complex world.

Elizabeth DeLoughrey invokes the cyclical model of the continual movement and rhythm of the ocean (‘tidalectics’) to destabilize the national, ethnic, and even regional frameworks that have been the mainstays of literary study. The result is a privileging of alter/native epistemologies whereby island cultures are positioned where they should have been all along—at the forefront of the world historical process of transoceanic migration and landfall. The research, determination, and intellectual dexterity that infuse this nuanced and meticulous reading of Pacific and Caribbean literature invigorate and deepen our interest in and appreciation of island literature. —Vilsoni Hereniko, University of Hawai‘i "Elizabeth DeLoughrey brings contemporary hybridity, diaspora, and globalization theory to bear on ideas of indigeneity to show the complexities of ‘native’ identities and rights and their grounded opposition as ‘indigenous regionalism’ to free-floating globalized cosmopolitanism. Her models are instructive for all postcolonial readers in an age of transnational migrations." —Paul Sharrad, University of Wollongong, Australia Routes and Roots is the first comparative study of Caribbean and Pacific Island literatures and the first work to bring indigenous and diaspora literary studies together in a sustained dialogue. Taking the "tidalectic" between land and sea as a dynamic starting point, Elizabeth DeLoughrey foregrounds geography and history in her exploration of how island writers inscribe the complex relation between routes and roots. The first section looks at the sea as history in literatures of the Atlantic middle passage and Pacific Island voyaging, theorizing the transoceanic imaginary. The second section turns to the land to examine indigenous epistemologies in nation-building literatures. Both sections are particularly attentive to the ways in which the metaphors of routes and roots are gendered, exploring how masculine travelers are naturalized through their voyages across feminized lands and seas. This methodology of charting transoceanic migration and landfall helps elucidate how theories and people travel, positioning island cultures in the world historical process. In fact, DeLoughrey demonstrates how these tropical island cultures helped constitute the very metropoles that deemed them peripheral to modernity. Fresh in its ideas, original in its approach, Routes and Roots engages broadly with history, anthropology, and feminist, postcolonial, Caribbean, and Pacific literary and cultural studies. It productively traverses diaspora and indigenous studies in a way that will facilitate broader discussion between these often segregated disciplines.

The book discusses how we can cross-fertilize relationship between roots and routes with and beyond the logic of closure, monological assertions and violence. The book draws upon multiple philosophical, historical, religious and spiritual traditions of the world to rethink our conceptions and productions of identity as well as our conventional understanding of roots and routes. The book particularly explores the vision and practice of creativity, socio-cultural regeneration and planetary realizations to cultivate new pathways of identity realization and new relationship between identities and differences in our fragile world today. Trans-disciplinary in engagement and trans-civilizational in its dialogical pathway, the book is a unique contribution to our contemporary scholarship about ethnicity, identity, social creativity, cultural regeneration and planetary realizations.

This exciting new book explores the lived conditions and experiences of trauma among the forcibly displaced, refugees, and migrants -- those who are uprooted from their places of origin -- tracing their journeys of transition to sites of arrival. Bringing together contributions by scholars, activists, professionals, and practitioners from a variety of fields and backgrounds, Roots and Routes of Displacement and Trauma is one of the first works of its kind to interrogate the social, political, and economic contexts of forced displacement in relation to its traumatic outcomes. The goal of the book is to encourage students and practitioners to critically analyze the causes and contexts of displacement. The resilience and strengths of migrants are emphasized, and readers are encouraged to learn what it means for people to adapt in the face of their new lived realities while challenging oppression. Among the topics explored in the book are theoretical approaches to displacement and trauma; the impact of environmental disasters, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict, gun violence, and employment trauma on displacement and trauma; the experiences of specific groups with respect to displacement, trauma, and healing, including indigenous peoples of Canada, the Maya of Guatemala, Roma, and Iraqi and Afghan women; ethical issues related to working with refugees; the effects of government policy on the lives of refugees in receiving countries; and the challenges faced by practitioners in working with migrants and refugees. The book is an invaluable resource for practitioners and scholars, as well as required reading for students in social work, social service and community worker, and immigrant studies programs.

The lives of a previously 'invisible' and forgotten 'first people' of South Africa come to the fore in this carefully researched study. The 'Karretjie People' (Donkey Cart People) of the Great Karoo are direct descendants of the /Xam (San/Bushmen), who were the earliest inhabitants of much of the Karoo interior. Today, as itinerant sheep-shearers, the Karretjie People roam the arid expanses of the Karoo in their donkey carts in search of a possible shearing opportunity, sleeping on the roadside in their make-shift overnight shelters. This unique book is the result of several decades of original research into the lives and community of these gypsy-like wanderers, and it highlights the plight of this marginalized South African community, the 'poorest of the poor.' The ingenious adaptation of the Karretjie People to particularly trying circumstances and their challenging environment is illustrated by their unique way of life. In a reader-friendly narrative, the book not only makes the story of the Karretjie People accessible to the general reader, but offers a deeper insight into the early history and environment of the Great Karoo. Besides offering a colorful portrait of a community neglected by both government and NGO agencies, this book contains rich sociological data, which should bear important implications for policy-makers in the spheres of education and development, as well as in the domain of political decisions. *** "Anthropologist de Jongh describes a people who are an integral part of the socioeconomic structure of the Great Karoo in the southwestern part of South Africa, yet are markedly marginalized. There are 13 case studies, informative maps, and beautiful large photos. Recommended." Choice, January 2013, Vol. 50 No. 05

This text explores how Afro-Brazilians define their Africanness through Candomblé and Quilombo models, and construct paradigms of blackness with influences from US-based perspectives, through the vectors of public rituals, carnival, drama, poetry, and hip hop.

An in-depth look at the influences, meaning, and identity of this contemporary music form

This book brings to life initiatives among scholars of the south and north to understand better the intelligences and pluralities of multilingualisms in southern communities and spaces of decoloniality. Chapters follow a longue durée perspective of human co-existence with communal presents, pasts, and futures; attachments to place; and insights into how multilingualisms emerge, circulate, and alter over time. Each chapter, informed by the authors’ experiences living and working among southern communities, illustrates nuances in ideas of south and southern, tracing (dis-/inter-) connected discourses in vastly different geopolitical contexts. Authors reflect on the roots, routes and ecologies of linguistic and epistemic heterogeneity while remembering the sociolinguistic knowledge and practices of those who have gone before. The book re-examines the appropriacy of how theories, policies, and methodologies ‘for multilingual contexts’ are transported across different settings and underscores the ethics of research practice and reversal of centre and periphery perspectives through careful listening and conversation. Highlighting the potential of a southern sociolinguistics to articulate a new humanity and more ethical world in registers of care, hope, and love, this volume contributes to new directions in critical and decolonial studies of multilingualism, and to re-imagining sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and applied linguistics more broadly.