Christopher Lee
Lee situates multiple positions and debates that discuss how Asian America studies has come to see its object of study as transnational. Lee uses Ien Ang's description of diaspora to limit the concept to a single definition but to suggest a range of phenomena which may be included in diasporic studies. Lee interestingly gives an example of how arguments that use global capitalist systems to relate East and West reproduce the stereotypes of Chinese business men that have fueled anti-Chinese movements in Southeast Asia. Taking this further, the boundaries of Asian American can be blurred even more when this anti-Chinese sentiment is spread via transnational connections between Southeast Asia and their diasporic communities.
Scene after angry mobs burn, loot scores of [Chinese]-owned factories, Binh Duong province, Vietnam, May 14, 2014.
A quote I really like from Lee is "If the transnational is manifested in the local, then localities themselves cannot be understood apart from their position in transnational frames." My question is, what can Asian American scholarship learn from African Diasporic scholars about transnationalism positioned in ethnic studies?
No comments:
Post a Comment