The Ethnography of Imagined Communities: The Cultural Production of Sikh Ethnicity in Britain

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Band 595, S. 108-121

Abstract

A shift in ethnographic vantage point from an exclusive focus on everyday worlds to the broader historical & cultural processes in which these worlds are embedded brings to light forms of politics that challenge traditional ways of understanding immigrant incorporation in modern nation-states. The author argues that the cultural politics of immigration & citizenship in the global era require this shift in ethnographic perspective. Multisited ethnography enables researchers to illuminate the more complex cultural processes of nation formation & the contradictory &, at times, incommensurate forms of cultural polities within which immigrants are made & make themselves as citizens. Viewing immigration from the perspective of nation formation, moreover, brings into question the explanatory power & political implications of traditional assimilation models of immigrant incorporation. 44 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2004 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]