Shalini Shankar
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195327359
- eISBN:
- 9780199870639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327359.003.0018
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans ...
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This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans (Desis), especially youth, engage with these Hindi language films with English subtitles on a number of levels. The chapter focuses on the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films in two locations in the South Asian diaspora: Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Ethnographic and sociolinguistic data of conversational exchanges, commentary during viewing, and personal narratives are presented to illustrate Bollywood's role in shaping linguistic processes of indexicality, bivalency, and identity. In these ways, the chapter analyzes how media and language use together shape style and identity in this Asian American community, as well as how this process varies between different locations of the South Asian diaspora.Less
This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans (Desis), especially youth, engage with these Hindi language films with English subtitles on a number of levels. The chapter focuses on the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films in two locations in the South Asian diaspora: Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Ethnographic and sociolinguistic data of conversational exchanges, commentary during viewing, and personal narratives are presented to illustrate Bollywood's role in shaping linguistic processes of indexicality, bivalency, and identity. In these ways, the chapter analyzes how media and language use together shape style and identity in this Asian American community, as well as how this process varies between different locations of the South Asian diaspora.
Vivek Bald, Miabi Chatterji, Sujani Reddy, and Manu Vimalassery
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814786437
- eISBN:
- 9780814786451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814786437.003.0016
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book situates immigration laws within a larger context by focusing on the global migration of South Asians using frameworks of empire and global power. It features chapters that look into the ...
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This book situates immigration laws within a larger context by focusing on the global migration of South Asians using frameworks of empire and global power. It features chapters that look into the South Asian diaspora and how it has been shaped by political movements, globalization, neoliberalism, and imperialism. These chapters challenge the dominant assumptions in the field of South Asian American studies while also addressing the contemporary political and economic conjuncture and the places of South Asian migration within it. The book also examines how South Asian migrants to the United States have joined the ranks of working-class recent immigrants of color who are asked to perform affective labor for the urban elite.Less
This book situates immigration laws within a larger context by focusing on the global migration of South Asians using frameworks of empire and global power. It features chapters that look into the South Asian diaspora and how it has been shaped by political movements, globalization, neoliberalism, and imperialism. These chapters challenge the dominant assumptions in the field of South Asian American studies while also addressing the contemporary political and economic conjuncture and the places of South Asian migration within it. The book also examines how South Asian migrants to the United States have joined the ranks of working-class recent immigrants of color who are asked to perform affective labor for the urban elite.
Linta Varghese
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814786437
- eISBN:
- 9780814786451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814786437.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter explores the role of the home and the household as structuring forces in the lives of domestic workers and how they are entwined with the issue of gender in contemporary theorizations of ...
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This chapter explores the role of the home and the household as structuring forces in the lives of domestic workers and how they are entwined with the issue of gender in contemporary theorizations of South Asian diaspora. As physical spaces of labor, the home and household were sites of economic relations to be brought under labor regulations. As targets of political struggle, they were spaces to be transformed. Both understandings recognized the ideological constitution of home and household as central to shaping quotidian diasporic life embedded in dominant notions of the private and the public. Using data gathered at Worker's Awaaz and the legal case of one of its domestic worker members, this chapter considers the mechanisms of entry and placement through which South Asian migrants become part of a diasporic formation. It also examines the implicit gendering of diaspora as male through attention to movement and rupture associated with men.Less
This chapter explores the role of the home and the household as structuring forces in the lives of domestic workers and how they are entwined with the issue of gender in contemporary theorizations of South Asian diaspora. As physical spaces of labor, the home and household were sites of economic relations to be brought under labor regulations. As targets of political struggle, they were spaces to be transformed. Both understandings recognized the ideological constitution of home and household as central to shaping quotidian diasporic life embedded in dominant notions of the private and the public. Using data gathered at Worker's Awaaz and the legal case of one of its domestic worker members, this chapter considers the mechanisms of entry and placement through which South Asian migrants become part of a diasporic formation. It also examines the implicit gendering of diaspora as male through attention to movement and rupture associated with men.
MADHUJA MUKHERJEE
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198075981
- eISBN:
- 9780199081523
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198075981.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the trope of travel — both literal and metaphorical — within the new Bollywood film as well as cinematic travels to South Asian diasporic spaces. It focuses on Yash Raj films, ...
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This chapter examines the trope of travel — both literal and metaphorical — within the new Bollywood film as well as cinematic travels to South Asian diasporic spaces. It focuses on Yash Raj films, particularly Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995), which triggered Bollywood's travels overseas, and how it became the template for the new ‘travelling’ films. It is shown that the global journey in Yash Raj films appears to anticipate the history of cultural and economic globalization in India, and concludes that DDLJ has evolved into an allegory of Indian modernities.Less
This chapter examines the trope of travel — both literal and metaphorical — within the new Bollywood film as well as cinematic travels to South Asian diasporic spaces. It focuses on Yash Raj films, particularly Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995), which triggered Bollywood's travels overseas, and how it became the template for the new ‘travelling’ films. It is shown that the global journey in Yash Raj films appears to anticipate the history of cultural and economic globalization in India, and concludes that DDLJ has evolved into an allegory of Indian modernities.
Ahmed Kanna
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816656301
- eISBN:
- 9781452946122
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816656301.003.0006
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
This chapter discusses the South Asian experience within the Gulf, as well as the politics of inclusion and exclusion that deny the expatriates within the scope of a modern Emirati identity. The ...
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This chapter discusses the South Asian experience within the Gulf, as well as the politics of inclusion and exclusion that deny the expatriates within the scope of a modern Emirati identity. The South Asian diaspora had arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during the country’s oil boom, as their labor had made up for the lack of manpower in the state. However, in more recent times there came a desire for the elite class to establish themselves as the legitimate ruling class, and their efforts in doing so have alienated the South Asian identity from a chance at citizenship within a neoliberal regime. There is, however, a deeper undercurrent of fear that causes the divide and the complacency thereof between Emiratis and immigrants alike—that the promises of capitalism may fail them one day.Less
This chapter discusses the South Asian experience within the Gulf, as well as the politics of inclusion and exclusion that deny the expatriates within the scope of a modern Emirati identity. The South Asian diaspora had arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during the country’s oil boom, as their labor had made up for the lack of manpower in the state. However, in more recent times there came a desire for the elite class to establish themselves as the legitimate ruling class, and their efforts in doing so have alienated the South Asian identity from a chance at citizenship within a neoliberal regime. There is, however, a deeper undercurrent of fear that causes the divide and the complacency thereof between Emiratis and immigrants alike—that the promises of capitalism may fail them one day.
Vivek Bald, Miabi Chatterji, Sujani Reddy, and Manu Vimalassery (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814786437
- eISBN:
- 9780814786451
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814786437.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book collects the work of a generation of scholars who are enacting a shift in the orientation of the field of South Asian American studies. By focusing upon the lives, work, and activism of ...
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This book collects the work of a generation of scholars who are enacting a shift in the orientation of the field of South Asian American studies. By focusing upon the lives, work, and activism of specific, often unacknowledged, migrant populations, the chapters present a more comprehensive vision of the South Asian presence in the United States. Tracking the changes in global power that have influenced the paths and experiences of migrants, from expatriate Indian maritime workers at the turn of the century, to Indian nurses during the Cold War, to post-9/11 detainees and deportees caught in the crossfire of the “War on Terror,” the chapters reveal how the South Asian diaspora has been shaped by the contours of U.S. imperialism. Driven by a shared sense of responsibility among the contributing scholars to alter the profile of South Asian migrants in the American public imagination, the book addresses the key issues that impact these migrants in the U.S., on the subcontinent, and in circuits of the transnational economy. The book provides tools with which to understand the contemporary political and economic conjuncture and the place of South Asian migrants within it.Less
This book collects the work of a generation of scholars who are enacting a shift in the orientation of the field of South Asian American studies. By focusing upon the lives, work, and activism of specific, often unacknowledged, migrant populations, the chapters present a more comprehensive vision of the South Asian presence in the United States. Tracking the changes in global power that have influenced the paths and experiences of migrants, from expatriate Indian maritime workers at the turn of the century, to Indian nurses during the Cold War, to post-9/11 detainees and deportees caught in the crossfire of the “War on Terror,” the chapters reveal how the South Asian diaspora has been shaped by the contours of U.S. imperialism. Driven by a shared sense of responsibility among the contributing scholars to alter the profile of South Asian migrants in the American public imagination, the book addresses the key issues that impact these migrants in the U.S., on the subcontinent, and in circuits of the transnational economy. The book provides tools with which to understand the contemporary political and economic conjuncture and the place of South Asian migrants within it.
Samia Khatun
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190922603
- eISBN:
- 9780190055943
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190922603.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Approaching the 1895 edition of the Bengali Kasasol Ambia that remains in a Broken Hill mosque as a history book, this chapter examines the historical storytelling techniques that this Sufi text ...
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Approaching the 1895 edition of the Bengali Kasasol Ambia that remains in a Broken Hill mosque as a history book, this chapter examines the historical storytelling techniques that this Sufi text employs. I argue that this particular non-modern history book was underpinned by a relationship between humans and knowledge – an epistemology - quite distinct to colonial modern methods of truth production. The chapter makes a methodological argument for animating and reinvigorating non-modern strategies for producing truths about the past and claims continuity to non-modern historiographical traditions.Less
Approaching the 1895 edition of the Bengali Kasasol Ambia that remains in a Broken Hill mosque as a history book, this chapter examines the historical storytelling techniques that this Sufi text employs. I argue that this particular non-modern history book was underpinned by a relationship between humans and knowledge – an epistemology - quite distinct to colonial modern methods of truth production. The chapter makes a methodological argument for animating and reinvigorating non-modern strategies for producing truths about the past and claims continuity to non-modern historiographical traditions.
Tamara Bhalla
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040481
- eISBN:
- 9780252098925
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040481.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
Often thought of as a solitary activity, the practice of reading can in fact encode the complex politics of community formation. Engagement with literary culture represents a particularly integral ...
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Often thought of as a solitary activity, the practice of reading can in fact encode the complex politics of community formation. Engagement with literary culture represents a particularly integral facet of identity formation—and expresses of a sense of belonging—within the South Asian diaspora in the United States. This book blends a case study with literary and textual analysis to illuminate this phenomenon. The book's investigation considers institutions from literary reviews to the marketplace to social media and other technologies, as well as traditional forms of literary discussion like book clubs and academic criticism. Throughout the book questions how its subjects' circumstances, desires, and shared race and class, limit the values they ascribe to reading. It also examines how ideology circulating around a body of literature or a self-selected, imagined community of readers shapes reading itself and influences South Asians' powerful, if contradictory, relationship with ideals of cultural authenticity.Less
Often thought of as a solitary activity, the practice of reading can in fact encode the complex politics of community formation. Engagement with literary culture represents a particularly integral facet of identity formation—and expresses of a sense of belonging—within the South Asian diaspora in the United States. This book blends a case study with literary and textual analysis to illuminate this phenomenon. The book's investigation considers institutions from literary reviews to the marketplace to social media and other technologies, as well as traditional forms of literary discussion like book clubs and academic criticism. Throughout the book questions how its subjects' circumstances, desires, and shared race and class, limit the values they ascribe to reading. It also examines how ideology circulating around a body of literature or a self-selected, imagined community of readers shapes reading itself and influences South Asians' powerful, if contradictory, relationship with ideals of cultural authenticity.
Vijay Prashad
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814786437
- eISBN:
- 9780814786451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814786437.003.0015
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book has chronicled the international lives of South Asian migrants in the United States. It has examined these migrants' journeys, across the Pacific Rim and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans into ...
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This book has chronicled the international lives of South Asian migrants in the United States. It has examined these migrants' journeys, across the Pacific Rim and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans into New York and New Orleans, and how their visions of life and liberty expanded along with their travels. It has also highlighted American imperialism and its impact on people in dire need of migration, people like Julio Jubala and Kumari Lakshmi Devi but also earlier intellectuals such as the radical journalist Kumar Goshal. Writing in the Pittsburgh Courier and in the National Guardian, Goshal offered an anti-imperialist account of India's struggle for freedom and of America's self-imposed obligations for empire. This Afterword also reflects on personal experience as a professor of an undergraduate course on the South Asian diaspora at Cornell University.Less
This book has chronicled the international lives of South Asian migrants in the United States. It has examined these migrants' journeys, across the Pacific Rim and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans into New York and New Orleans, and how their visions of life and liberty expanded along with their travels. It has also highlighted American imperialism and its impact on people in dire need of migration, people like Julio Jubala and Kumari Lakshmi Devi but also earlier intellectuals such as the radical journalist Kumar Goshal. Writing in the Pittsburgh Courier and in the National Guardian, Goshal offered an anti-imperialist account of India's struggle for freedom and of America's self-imposed obligations for empire. This Afterword also reflects on personal experience as a professor of an undergraduate course on the South Asian diaspora at Cornell University.
Anusha Kedhar
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190840136
- eISBN:
- 9780190840174
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190840136.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Flexible Bodies charts the emergence of British South Asian dance as a distinctive dance genre. Analyzing dance works, dance films, rehearsals, workshops, and touring alongside immigration policy, ...
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Flexible Bodies charts the emergence of British South Asian dance as a distinctive dance genre. Analyzing dance works, dance films, rehearsals, workshops, and touring alongside immigration policy, arts funding initiatives, citizenship discourse, and global economic conditions, author Anusha Kedhar traces shifts in British South Asian dance from 1990s Cool Britannia multiculturalism to fractious race relations in the wake of the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks to economic fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis, and, finally, to anti-immigrant rhetoric leading up to the Brexit referendum in 2016. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with dancers, in-depth choreographic analysis of major dance works, and the author’s own lived experiences as a professional dancer in London, Flexible Bodies tells the story of British South Asian dancers and the creative ways in which they negotiate the demands of neoliberal, multicultural dance markets through an array of flexible bodily practices, including agility, versatility, mobility, speed, and risk-taking. Attending to pain, injury, and other restrictions on movement, it also reveals the bodily limits of flexibility. Theorizing flexibility as material and metaphor, the book argues that flexibility is both a tool of labor exploitation and a bodily tactic that British South Asian dancers exploit to navigate volatile economic and political conditions. With its unique focus on the everyday aspects of dancing and dance-making Flexible Bodies honors the lives and labor of dancers and their contributions to a distinct and dynamic sector of British dance.Less
Flexible Bodies charts the emergence of British South Asian dance as a distinctive dance genre. Analyzing dance works, dance films, rehearsals, workshops, and touring alongside immigration policy, arts funding initiatives, citizenship discourse, and global economic conditions, author Anusha Kedhar traces shifts in British South Asian dance from 1990s Cool Britannia multiculturalism to fractious race relations in the wake of the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks to economic fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis, and, finally, to anti-immigrant rhetoric leading up to the Brexit referendum in 2016. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with dancers, in-depth choreographic analysis of major dance works, and the author’s own lived experiences as a professional dancer in London, Flexible Bodies tells the story of British South Asian dancers and the creative ways in which they negotiate the demands of neoliberal, multicultural dance markets through an array of flexible bodily practices, including agility, versatility, mobility, speed, and risk-taking. Attending to pain, injury, and other restrictions on movement, it also reveals the bodily limits of flexibility. Theorizing flexibility as material and metaphor, the book argues that flexibility is both a tool of labor exploitation and a bodily tactic that British South Asian dancers exploit to navigate volatile economic and political conditions. With its unique focus on the everyday aspects of dancing and dance-making Flexible Bodies honors the lives and labor of dancers and their contributions to a distinct and dynamic sector of British dance.
