Week2_Julie Guan_ASA114

Week 2 Blog

Evelyn Hu-Dehart uses Asian Americans that have been appointed into high-level political offices or careers such as, Gary Locke and Bill Lann Lee, to demonstrate the concept of transnationalism and globalism in Asian American Formations in the Age of Globalization. She states that Asian Americans like Locke can be used as an example to explain the underlying effects that motivate globalization. Specifically, the success that Locke had achieved in the United States resulted in stronger ties to those back in China and bring, “an economic boom to [Taishan]” (Hu-Dehart 2), as well as, executing a pride in one’s ethnicity. Furthermore, Hu-Dehart also states that Asian Americans serve a hybrid role being the “translators and go-betweens for the Asian and American cultures” (Hu-Dehart 3), thus demonstrating an example tying together this week’s theme of globalization and Asian Americans. While globalization can be deemed positive, such as having the ability to bring upon economic prosperity it can also negatively impact minority communities through labour exploitation caused by Asian Americans, and companies, of which is extremely relevant today. For example, many major companies are moving to countries part of the global south to conduct business due to the profits that can be earned since there are no incentives to pay high wages to its workers. On the other hand, in “The Ordeal of Ethnic Studies in the Age of Globalization” E. San Juan Jr. argues that, “instead of accentuating cultural differences and its potential for bantustans, turf wars, liver apartheid and … ‘ethnic cleansing’ … we need to attend to the problem of power” (San Juan Jr. 286). This relates to the theme of globalization because ethnic studies have a strong connection to the negative impacts of globalization on the people that are studied within the ethnic studies subject. 

Question: In Hu-Dehart’s piece she states that Gary Locke decided to go back to China and to his father’s hometown but as an American, that was not born in China, what motivated him to go to Taishan to promote his success to people that do not know who he is? 

Nike Sweatshop in China

Works Cited: 

http://fashion.lilithezine.com/Nike-Sweatshops-in-China.html

E. San Juan Jr. “The Ordeal of Ethnic Studies in the Age of Globalization.” 

Displacements.            
Evelyn Hu-Dehart. “Introduction: Asian American Formations in the Age of Globalization.”