Friday, January 24, 2020

Week 4 _ Angela Alejandro _ ASA 114

Arif Dirlik discusses contrasting orientations regarding Asian American self-images in relation to the global economy. He argues that there is an increasing ambiguity in how Asian Americans are perceived, either as members of grounded communities in the US that has its own distinct and complex history or as a diasporic people who participate in facilitating trade between the country and their homeland. He writes, “The contrast between the two orientations … is paradigmatic of fundamental contradictions that are essential to grasping contemporary Asian America as social and ideological formation (pg.2).” This juxtaposition between the two existing notions is not exclusively an Asian American issue but is an increasingly common phenomenon attributed to global postmodernity, a term referring to the process by which big capitalist powers maintain their economic and political strength. My question for this reading is how do these two groups interact and is there overlap between the populations?

Dirlik, Arif. “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of
Contemporary Asian America.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 22, no. 3, 1996, pp. 1–24.

Image: https://cdn.howmuch.net/articles/world-economy-by-gdp-2017-7c32.png

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