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Avtar Barah. 1996 Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (Gender, Racism, and Ethnicity Series), London & New York: Routledge, 276 pages.
This volume meanders from 'identity' to 'diaspora' and, in-between, the author tries to come to grips with concepts such as gender, race, ethnicity, multiculturalism, and universalism. Though these concepts are very complex, she tries to devise a framework for a better understanding of contemporary debates on the issues involved. Barah conveys an important message in the introduction to the book by stating that '... [the] politics of solidarity with another group is one thing, but the self-organising political mobilisation of the group itself is quite another'. The rest of the volume consists of nine chapters. The first three chapters map out the emergence of 'Asian' as a racialised category in post-war British popular and political discourse, as well as in government policies and practices. It documents Asian cultural and political responses, paying particular attention to the role of 'gender' and 'generation'. The remaining six chapters analyse the debates on 'difference', 'diversity' and 'diaspora' across different arenas, but mainly within the discourses on 'feminism', 'anti-racism', and 'post-structuralism'.
In the first chapter, 'Constructions of "the Asian" in post-War Britain: Culture, Politics and Identity in the pre-Thatcher Years', the author deals with culture and identity, making use of her own personal experiences. She views culture as the symbolic construction of a vast array of life experiences of a particular social group. Culture is the embodiment, the chronicle of a group's history. Since the group histories of different sections of society differ in important ways, their 'cultures' are correspondingly different. This is an attempt to identify how, and in what ways, various debates acquired saliency...