Suchergebnisse

The sun never sets on the Armenian diaspora. Its constituent communities include—in a descending order that reflects population and not cultural, political, or economic importance—communities in Russia (nearly 2 million), the United States (800,000), Georgia (400,000), France (250,000), the Ukraine (150,000), Lebanon (105,000), Iran (ca. 100,000), Syria (70,000), Argentina (60,000), Turkey (60,000), Canada (40,000), and Australia (30,000). There are some twenty other communities with smaller populations, ranging from 25,000 down to 3,000, in Britain, Greece, Germany, Brazil, Sweden, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, the Gulf Emirates, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Venezuela, Hungary, Uzbekistan, and Ethiopia.

Where once were dispersions, there now is diaspora. It may seem anachronistic to say so, since the Greek "diaspora" is the older term, and in its restrictive usage has been applied from Antiquity to Jewish, then also to Greek and Armenian, social formations. Yet the significant transformation of the last few decades is the move towards re-naming as diasporas the more recent communities of dispersion, those that were formed in the five centuries of the modern era and which were known by other names until the late 1960s: as exile groups, overseas communities, ethnic and racial minorities, and so forth.

Three decades ago, "diaspora" was a term of self-description for a few communities—Jewish, Armenian, and Greek—and barely an operating concept in history and some of the social sciences. Today, the term and the sematic domain in which it functions—diaspora, transnationalism, ethnicity, exile—is repeatedaly approriated by various disciplinay (and prolemical) endeavors, and redefined along the way. Part of the task of Diaspora, the journal, is to collocate and juxtapose new disciplinary adaptations of its "mater-concepts."

"This volume provides important insights into the Chinese diaspora through a mix of disciplinary approaches and a wide range of topics, historical periods, thematic foci, and geographical sites. In this way, the volume provides a set of entry points to illuminate the immense diversity that constitutes the Chinese diaspora. It is a valuable addition both to diaspora studies more generally and to our understanding of the ongoing and specific processes that these 50 million people are engaged in as they make and remake the world."--