The Chinese Face in Australia
Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australian-born Chinese
Buch in deiner Nähe kaufen
Beschreibung
The Chinese Face in Australia
Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australian-born Chinese
Lucille Lok-Sun Ngan and Chan Kwok-bun
They have been settled for three, four, five and even six generations and have strong national and cultural identities grounded in Australia. Yet Chineseness remains central to the identity of the Australian-born Chinese— whether they willingly choose to identify with it or it is imposed upon them by others.
The Chinese Face in Australia explores how long-settled Australian-born Chinese (ABCs) perceive and perform ethnicity within the family, the ethnic community, Australian society, and the global Chinese diaspora. Using extensive interview transcripts and rich autobiographical and visual materials, the authors examine the social experiences of the ABC community in Australia, particularly in terms of the Chinese cultural discourse. This provocative volume:
- Explores the impact of racial concepts on the formation of hybrid identities throughout their life courses, complicating and placing burdens on the daily lives of long-settled ABCs.
- Describes how these social processes and practices have been shared for centuries by other Chinese diasporic communities across the world.
- Informs the discourse on the experience of Australia’s other minority groups.
- Addresses global issues of race, ethnicity, culture, and immigration.
- Provides object lessons for other immigrant societies confronting difficult issues of race and identity.
The book explains how multi-generational Australian-born Chinese (ABC) negotiate the balance of two cultures. It explores both the philosophical and theoretical levels, focusing on deconstructing and re-evaluating the concept of ‘Chineseness.’ At a social and experiential level, it concentrates on how successive generations of early migrants experience, negotiate and express their Chinese identity.
The diasporic literature has taken up the idea of hybrid identity construction largely in relation to first- and second-generation migrants and to the sojourner’s sense of roots in a diasporic setting somewhat lost in the debate over Chinese diasporas and identities are the experiences of long-term migrant communities. Their experiences are usually discussed in terms of the melting-pot concepts of assimilation and integration that assume ethnic identification decreases and eventually disappears over successive generations. Based on ethnography, fieldwork and participant observation on multi-generational Australian-born Chinese whose families have resided in Australia from three to six generations, this study reveals a contrasting picture of ethnic identification.
Unique dual focus on racial discrimination as stimulus and strategies of coping with racism as response Autobiographies and visual material enhance the theoretical material Addresses a global readership interested in ethnicity, race relations and diasporas
Autor*in
Lucille Lok-Sun Ngan
Themen in »The Chinese Face in Australia«
Assimilation and integration Australian-born Chinese/Chinese Australians Chinese Identity Chinese diaspora in Australia Chinese disapora Cultural and racial discourse Ethnic identification Hybrid identity construction Melting-pot Migrant communitites Mulit-generational Australian-born Chinese physicality and faciality race and ethnicity
Stimmen zu »The Chinese Face in Australia«
From the reviews:
“Ngan (Univ. of Hong Kong) and Chan (Hong Kong Baptist Univ.) skillfully engage the postmodernist elusiveness of race theory while contesting the essentialist assumptions that presuppose ethnicity and culture in this timely contribution to the complex project of examining the methodological and analytical strategies for understanding identity politics. … An important addition to migration studies and ethnic studies scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (A. Cho, Choice, Vol. 50 (5), January, 2013)
"...The Chinese Face in Australia...an excellent job of portraying and analyzing the challenges of "doing Chinese" in Australia and elsewhere, it clarifies key issues which surround the present sociological conceptions of ethnicity and social identities...The Chinese Face in Australia represents a real step forward in the consideration of ethnic identity....the book expresses the cautious hope that what its authors have to say about ethnicity goes further than addressing the case of the identified Australian-born Chinese."
May S. Partridge, Independent Scholar
Journal of Chinese Overseas, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2014
"The book has offered a rare and nuanced analysis of the psychology and sociology of Chinese men and women in a changing Australia. Apart from enriching our understanding of multi-generation identities among Chinese men and women born in Australia, the book has ably captured issues of race, ethnicity, and gender in Australia from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, including the important post-World War II experiments with mass immigration and ensuing assimilation, integration and multicultural approaches to managing cultural diversity."
Pookong Kee, The University of Melbourne
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2014
()