Asian Ethnicities (13)—Dynamics of Ethnicity (j)

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Asian Ethnicities
A year ago on Round and Square (28 July 2012)—The Accidental Ethnographer: Reading Geil
Two years ago on Round and Square (28 July 2011)—Longevity Mountain: Always the Southern Entrance

[a] Dynamic RF

In the next dozen entries, I will be posting an initial draft of a book introduction on Asian ethnic groups. It is meant for the blog, and does not represent anything like what will eventually be published. I do so especially because this represents a compilation of my thoughts after a full year of intensive teaching and research on Asian ethnicity. The introduction to this series shows some of my thoughts from last year—before I taught my advanced seminar by the same title as this series. This is something of a culmination of the process, even though I will be now moving in many new directions in the teaching and study of Asian ethnic groups.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

IX

Dynamics of Ethnicity (b)

[b] Shred RF

There is one more dimension that we must add to this equation if we are to get the deepest benefit from this volume’s entries. To do so, let’s go back, briefly, to our baseball example. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, can we really assume that everyone in Boston is a Red Sox fan? We already know that there is no possibility that everyone in New York—however we define the area—is a Yankees fan (there have almost always been two or even three teams in the city). How do we account for the Baltimore Orioles fans living in Brooklyn and the Minnesota Twins fans living in Boston? Does “Boston” speak through a single idiom?

Of course not.

[c] Realms RF

Too many discussions of ethnicity seem to assert that “this people” or “that people” acts, works, or plays in a manner that can be shared by the entire group. There is a tiny shred of “truth” to this, of course. To the extent that a group (Boston Red Sox fans, the Tajik people) can be called a group at all, they have to share certain qualities. The purpose of individual descriptions is in outlining exactly those items. These, too, are “subjective” if we parse them enough, but it is clear to any reader that the Boston Red Sox play their home games in Fenway Park, broadcast to all of the New England states, and won the World Series in 2004 and 2009. Those who try to claim that we can know nothing without our “subjectivities” getting in the way have missed the point. We need precisely that kind of detailed information if we are to understand any complex group.

On the other hand, such information can take us only so far. Homi Bhabha might say, “fine; memorize that….now put it into motion—dynamic motion.” For that, we need to understand how the Yankees and Red Sox played their games (myriad contests throughout the past). We need to understand marriage alliances, feuds, and treaties between the Bai people and the Han. We need, in short, to understand the interstices, the contestation.

[d] Alliance RF

And to do that, we need to understand that individuals inhabit their ethnic and cultural realms. There is no such thing as “a culture” (or even “an ethnicity”) doing, acting, or contesting anything. Individuals do that, and make individual (sometimes weird and idiosyncratic) choices while doing so. Sometimes they make terrible mistakes. Sometimes they strike out.

And sometimes they hit a home run. Individuals hit home runs. Teams don’t hit them; they help create them in many ways, and then benefit from them. Only individuals can hit them.

Pierre Bourdieu, our second cultural theorist, never forgot the individual. His angle is a bit different from Bhabha’s, but it merges together with it nicely. His conception of social action, while enormously complex and nuanced, can be summarized in a useful idea—there are no rules that determine how people act. To the extent that researchers have focused on “the way” the Zhuang people behave, for example, they have missed a much larger and more powerful point. People make individual choices within a vast set of correspondences and challenges. Every social action—from a marriage alliance between Han and Miao people to the complex PRC decision to emphasize ethnicity as a part of the history and culture of the state—is strategic. These choices can be individual or engage many layers of people and opinion. Choice is always a large part of the equation.

[e] Choice RF

Although this may seem obvious, enormous misunderstandings have flowed from “over-reading” the stories of individual groups. A “minority” family, for example, that wants to see its younger generation thrive will often embrace ethnicity in one manner (for example, accepting the criteria for minority representation in universities) even while acting in a much more ecumenical manner in others, such as business dealings. Ethnicity is not a “thing” that is worn in the same way in all contexts. They change in time and space, and nuanced interpretations—and actions—are the norm.

***  ***

If we pair the insights of Bhabha and Bourdieu, we can see a sophisticated weaving of two themes. On the one hand, we best understand concepts like ethnicity by focusing on the margins, the interstices, of “ethnic categories.” On the other hand, following Bourdieu, every action at those margins—in the end, every action at all—is a (complex), layered medley of choices in historically and culturally situated settings. What this means for our study of Asian ethnic groups is that we must balance the detailed knowledge we can gain from the formidable information in this book’s encyclopedic entries with knowledge of process, change, and choice. A Mongol family choosing to marry a member of the Han elite today would not be the same—in terms of power, class, or motivation—as one performing the same cultural “act” (engaging to marry outside of one’s ethnic group) during the Mongol-controlled Yuan dynasty (1279-1368).

Ethnicity is always in motion, and this book will help you to understand both the dynamics of movement and the key elements shared by ethnic groups in northern, central, and eastern Asia.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

[f] Motion RF

Asian Ethnicities (13)—Dynamics of Ethnicity (i)

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Asian Ethnicities
A year ago on Round and Square (27 July 2012)—The Accidental Ethnographer: Opening Geil's Book
Two years ago on Round and Square (27 July 2011)—Seinfeld Ethnography: Downtown

[a] Katmandu RF

In the next dozen entries, I will be posting an initial draft of a book introduction on Asian ethnic groups. It is meant for the blog, and does not represent anything like what will eventually be published. I do so especially because this represents a compilation of my thoughts after a full year of intensive teaching and research on Asian ethnicity. The introduction to this series shows some of my thoughts from last year—before I taught my advanced seminar by the same title as this series. This is something of a culmination of the process, even though I will be now moving in many new directions in the teaching and study of Asian ethnic groups.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

VIII

Dynamics of Ethnicity

[b] Interstices RF

To set all of this into motion, we will now examine two cultural theorists whose work has been enormously influential in the past thirty years. During that time, we have gone from thinking of ethnicity almost exclusively in terms of separable elements—not unlike the dolls, rugs, or engine parts of our examples—to a complex weave of similarity and difference. Homi Bhabha and Pierre Bourdieu give us new ways of approaching the dynamics of ethnicity, in Asia and beyond.

The first key idea can be seen in hints and passages in the sections above. In a nutshell, Homi Bhabha emphasizes that the truly influential and fascinating aspects of culture must be found in the intersections—the “interstices”—of actions, patterns of life, and ways of knowing. The study of how group identity came to be is important, to be sure, but the dynamics of understanding flow from the various cultural units bumping up against each other, like so many rugs on a vast hallway floor. Here is how Bhabha puts it. While his prose is sometimes challenging, note that he emphasizes that “singularities” (our rugs, our dolls, our ethnicities) should not only be understood alone.

[c] Unpacking RF

The move away from the singularities of ‘class’ or ‘gender’ as primary conceptual organizational categories, has resulted in an awareness of the subject positions—of race, gender, generation, institutional location, geopolitical locale, sexual orientation—that inhabit any claim to identity in the modern world. What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.

It is in the emergence of the interstices—the overlap and displacement of domains of difference—that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated.[1]

[d] Contested RF

These ideas are worth unpacking, pondering. They speak directly to the challenge we have before us in understanding ethnic groups of Asia. While we surely must understand the details in the entries themselves, we must never forget that the most dynamic and persistent changes in Asian history took place when these entities connected—from ethnic groups such as the Mongols or Manchus to budding nations such as Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and even Taiwan (or the Republic of China on Taiwan, in the increasingly fuzzy political language of the island). We surely can understand individual entities, and must seek to do so. Yet it is in the way they click, crash-into, and even displace others that we see the flow of human history. As Bhabha maintains, that can be found only in the interstices—in the ways that the Han and Bai people, for example, clashed (and married), as well as the manner of conflict and redemption found between smaller groups themselves, from the Miao and Zhuang to the Achang and Bouyei.

Take note of Bhabha’s use of the word “contestation.” We often think of definitions, when we read them, as the thing itself. Bhabha reminds us that definitions are always contested. In isolation, this is a challenging concept. It is less so when we give it a concrete meaning. Think of your favorite sport. I’ll use baseball as an example. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees meet more than a dozen times a year. Fans in each city feel strongly about their teams. Ask a Yankees fan to describe the Red Sox. In fact, ask her to write a description of the team. Now, ask a Yankees fan to describe the Yankees, her home team.

[e] Angle RF

You may see where this is going. If you do the reverse for the Red Sox fan, asking him to describe both the Yankees and his hometown Red Sox, you will have a fairly stark set of renderings. Why is this so? Precisely because it is “contested.” The participants care deeply about how they are portrayed, and do what they can to portray others in a manner that suits them. They are, to use Bhabha’s images, in the center of things.

If we move to the interstices, we can start to sense ways in which the Red Sox and Yankees merge, cohere, and repel. What if we were to ask another observer, someone who rooted for, say, the St. Louis Cardinals, to describe the Yankees and the Red Sox? Surely, her answer would not be quite as jaded as those of the participants. But would it be “right?” Let’s take it just one step further. Imagine that we engage a fine writer who is familiar with baseball, but not really a fan of any team at all—a matter more of other interests than lack of passion for the sport. She writes another account of the Red Sox and the Yankees. Is this one “true,” if only because she has the least “interest” in the subject?

[f] Outgrowth RF

Homi Bhabha, of course, would say no, and quite emphatically. From his perspective, there is no “outside,” “objective” position. We are all, and always, complex “subjectivities.” Even the outside observer views the teams from an “angle.” Some people consider this to be problematic, and rail against the “postmodern” assaults against our knowing. I see it quite differently, and that is the spirit of this introduction and this book. While we can, and should, strive, for accurate, factual accounts (and we can get many, even the vast majority, of details “right”) our overall accounts are going to be an outgrowth of our very humanity. This is always “subjective” (we have known this since Kant’s day) and the real key to understanding a complex social world.

As Bhabha might say—if he had interest in American baseball— the keys to understanding lie in jamming together the various accounts. It is as though we imagined a complex geology of understanding, and the various versions were so many tectonic plates ramming up against each other and creating vast new mountain ranges of knowledge. We cannot ever know the Red Sox or Yankees. We can come to know so much, and in such dynamic fashion, however, that we never again want to go back to the false pretenses of isolated portraits alone.

Although I have been speaking of baseball, it is not difficult to see the same dynamic at work with ethnicity in Asia. Ask a thirteenth century Mongol about northern groups charging through the continent, and you will have one picture. Ask a sedentary Han farmer in the Yellow River valley the same thing, and you will have quite another. Now ask a historian of China…from China…the same question. Finally, ask another historian of China…from, say, Britain, to do the same.

Ethnicity is multi-layered and complex.

Click below for other items in this essay:

Dynamics 1          Dynamics 2          Dynamics 3          Dynamics 4          Dynamics 5 

Dynamics 6          Dynamics 7          Dynamics 8          Dynamics 9          Dynamics 10

[g] Multi-layered RF

Notes

Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 1994), 2.

Assignments (5)—Bridges to Theory

One year ago on Round and Square (20 March 2012)—Displays of Authenticity: Prairie Journalist
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Assignments"

[a] Upper-Middle RF

The midterm assignment in all of my classes (usually scheduled for the week after spring break) is pivotal in several senses of the term. Of course, the first thing students realize is that it is important—pivotal.  A solid chunk of the great turns (pivots) on it. The next sense is even more significant, though. The midterm assignment is designed to encourage students to consider all of the work they have done in the first half of the course and to put it together in a midterm assignment that helps them to pivot to the second half of the course. The results of this assignment are especially enjoyable for me to read, since students have engaged the fascinating and surprisingly complex novels Mrs. Bridge (1959) and Mr. Bridge (1969). These were written by the extraordinarily versatile writer Evan S. Connell, and told in a "polished fieldnote" sort of vignette style that works beautifully in a social and cultural theory course.

Social and Cultural Theory
Anthropology 206
Midterm Assignment—“Bridges to Theory” 

The Basics 

Review Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, then watch the film in class on March 12. Write an essay of at least 3,000 words (about ten pages) commenting upon some of the many themes found in Evan Connell’s vignettes on the Bridges (noting the assignment title above) and showing their connections to the materials we have studied up to this point in the course. “All of ‘em.”*

*Within reason. 

[b] Pivotal RF

Preparation 
Although this assignment is deliberately open-ended (allowing you to use any number of interpretive strategies), do not forget its role as a “pivot” in our course.  Your work should engage, on some level, the full range of our materials from the first seven weeks of the course (your class notes, reading notes, abstracts, and even quizzes will be useful as you proceed).  If you take the assignment seriously, it will give you a solid foundation—and significant momentum—for the second half of the course. 

Review Essay 
A good way to approach the assignment is to write a “review essay.” You have been reading good review essays from the New York Review of Books for several weeks. Now is the time to write one that has a distinctly “theoretical” focus. The basic idea, though, is as follows. A good review essay has a two-pronged approach. It is, on the one hand, a “review” of the books. By this, I mean that you need to engage examples from the life of the Bridges. This should not be at all difficult, given the immediacy of much of the material. In the “rest” of the essay you should show how the themes in the ethnographies can be seen in the wider perspective of social and cultural theory. In other words, how might the essays and lectures we have read in Anthropology and Theory and Social Theory connect to the specific issues in the novels you have read (or, from another perspective, the pile of “fieldnotes” you have been studying)? To be sure, you will blend these approaches, but how you do so will be part of your writing strategy. We’ll discuss this in class. 

[c] Bridgegift RF

Additional Notes 
This assignment asks you to engage your two novels and to review all of the work you have done thus far in the course.  It does not require you to do “research,” and substantial outside work will almost certainly be counter-productive.  For example, spending two or three pages on the history of 1930s Kansas City will be far less productive than spending those pages examining the world of the Bridges.  Background information is occasionally useful (and you may possibly have some from previous reading or coursework), but do not make the mistake of providing so much “background” that you don’t deal fully with the assignment itself. Again, with novels as “up front” as these, this should not be a problem.

The greater challenge is to “use” our theoretical materials well. Plot out some of the themes (or scenes) in the novels and take notes to make sure you have dealt with the full range of possibilities in the theoretical materials.  Your skills in spotting themes in the Moore, Bourdieu, and Moberg books will pay off a great deal in this assignment, as will the general contextual and theoretical knowledge you have gained in our discussions.  You have all of Week IX to pursue this project, and you should use it to review all of the readings and class discussions (not to mention themes) that we have studied thus far in the semester. 

Reminders 
1.   This assignment is meant to “tie together” much of the work you have done this semester.  Just as on weekly quizzes, be sure to use the full range of your “sources” in your interpretations—classroom analyses, Moore, Bourdieu, and Moberg (not to mention Kipnis).  As you know, the theoretical essays in Moore and the close reading of Bourdieu are the heart of the class, and I would like to see connections to them in your essays. 

[d] Bridgestuck RF

2.   Don’t forget that I will be evaluating this assignment with the assumption that you are trying to explain these matters to “intelligent non-specialists.”  That means that I do not want you to “skip” those portions that you know I know.  I want you to explain them.  I want you to be the expert who is explaining these matters to someone who does not know much about cultural anthropology, but is certainly able to follow a complex argument.  Imagine, for example, that you are writing for your FYI professor and those you have in other classes this term, with moi looking over her shoulder. Keep your letter reader in mind, too. It will serve you well.

3.   Follow standard Chicago Manual of Style citation form, and use the style sheet as you proceed.  This is a “formal” paper, and the style sheet’s guidelines should be followed closely.  

4.   There should be a short bibliography of sources (class books and any outside materials that you have consulted) at the end of your document.

5.   Be sure that you fill out a “paper checklist” and attach it to your essay. It will be sent as an attachment.

6.  Good luck.  There is more than enough material to write any number of essays.  Choose several good points, scenes, or themes.  Then write one. 

Due by 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 24th.  (Put a hard copy outside my door).

Use the word count feature of your software and put the word total at the bottom of the essay, e.g. “3,062 words.”

[e] Bridges to Theory RF