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Diasporic dreaming, identity, and self-constitution

Publication ,  Journal Article
Ewing, KP
December 1, 2003

The effort to understand globalization and the diaspora experience has challenged anthropology's theoretical apparatus. We can no longer understand culture as a system of meanings that constitutes social reality and shapes the experience of individuals. Anthropologists are now preoccupied with flows of goods, ideas, and people, and with borderlands, where culture is a fluid, often inconsistent and disjunctive process. From this perspective, the idea of the individual as possessing a cohesive self-whether understood to be culturally constituted, innate, or a psychological, developmental achievement-has also been challenged. In its place we now see multiple identities, shifting selves (Ewing 1990a), and even an ever fluid process of identification in which an individual never fully inhabits a stable identity, but is continually escaping into new positions (Hall 1997; Ewing 2000). © 2003 State University of New York. All rights reserved.

Duke Scholars

Publication Date

December 1, 2003

Start / End Page

43 / 60
 

Citation

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Ewing, K. P. “Diasporic dreaming, identity, and self-constitution,” December 1, 2003, 43–60.
Ewing, K. P. Diasporic dreaming, identity, and self-constitution. Dec. 2003, pp. 43–60.

Publication Date

December 1, 2003

Start / End Page

43 / 60