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    http://csc.sagepub.com/ Methodologie s

    Cultural St udies C ritical

    http ://csc.sagepub.com/content/1/3/355The online version of this article can be found at:

    DOI: 10.1177/153270860100100304

    2001 1: 35 5Cultural Studi es Critical Methodologies John Lie

    Diasporic Nationalism

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    Diasporic Nationalism

    John LieHarvard University

    In the article, the author stresses the significanceof the external anddiasporicorigins of nationalism. To illustrate the argument, the authordraws on the examplesof modern Japanand Korea.

    In the 1990s, the concept of diaspora emergedas a major theme in thehuman sciences. In effect, it sought to replace-or at least supplement-thelanguageof migration (see Lie, 1995). As exemplifiedin the dominant histori-ographyof United States immigration-associated,above all, with OscarHandlins (1951/1973) The Uprooted-theidea of migration, and its two com-ponents, emigration and immigration, presumeda particularimaginaryofpopulation movement. Peopleuproot themselves from their country of originand restake themselves in the land of destination. Needless to say, the move-ment need not necessarily be international-hence the cardinal distinction

    between internal and international migration-but both the popular andscholarly emphasishighlighted cross-country movements. In the dominantimaginaryof migration, the sojourn is singularand more or less irreversible.There are return migrants, to be sure, but the proverbial poor, hungry,and tiredmasses emigratedfrom the old Europeto the new United States. The drama ofmigrationcontinues in the new land of destination. The linear trajectory envi-sions the telos of assimilation. Meanwhile, the incompleteinsertion into thenew society evokes the new character type: the immigrant.This conceptionofmigrationpresumes and privilegesthe place of the nation-state and the mean-ing of national identity. Although the Italian immigrantmay have regardedhimself or herself as a villageror a Tuscan,her new identity as an immigrantisconjoinedbyher ethnonational category. With the partialexceptionof Jewishimmigrants,every immigrantbecomes sorted into a national or a supranationalracial group (such as Asian or Oriental). Subnational identities largelydisap-pear. Japanese immigrantsmay be classified as Japanese or Asian, but theirpremigrationidentities, such as Okinawan or Burakumin, are expungedin thecourse of the trans-Pacific passage.

    Authors Note: This article was originallypresentedas a keynoteaddress at the Third International Con-ference on Diaspora.I wish to thank the organizer,MaryYu Danico, for her kind invitation. Direct allcorrespondenceregarding this article to JohnLie, Departmentof Sociology,Harvard University,Cam-bridge,MA 02138; e-mail: [email protected] Studies H Critical Methodologies,Volume 1 Number 3, 2001 355-362@ 2001 Sage Publications

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    The idea of diaspora, in contrast, questions the teleologicalnarrative andthe nationalist presumptionof the dominant migrationnarrative. Rather thanthe singular journey from one country to another, the concept of diasporamakes space for multipleand complextrajectories.Indeed, the very possibilityof transnationalism denies the irreversibilityof the migration process or theinevitable assimilation of the migrant. Instead, the idea of diaspora is inextrica-ble from the idea of transnationalism, redolent with the possibilityof myriadidentities and multifarious networks. Furthermore,rather than presumingandreifyingthe nation-state, the concept of diasporaquestions the assumptionofnational homogeneity.Instead of the homogeneousItalian or Japanese, it seeksto reveal the heterogeneousconstellation of peoplewho transform themselves

    from peasantsor

    Tuscans into Italiansor

    Okinawansor

    peasants into Japanese.In so doing, rather than the homogeneousspace of the nation, it gives glimpsesinto a variety of heterogeneous terrains, including borderlands andsubnational identities. Instead of the grandnarrative of migration and assimi-lation, it recuperates a variety of personal voices of sojourns and shiftingidentities.

    In brief, the languageand imaginaryof diaspora providesamplespace toexplore the complexrealities of human movements and identities. To be sure,diasporastudies risks beingan empty signifier,but imprecision can at times beemancipatory,liberatingus from the straitjacketof the migrationnarrative. Atthe very least, we open the possibilityof empirical investigations hithertoclosed off by the unquestionedacceptance of the migration imaginaryand itsreification of the nation-state.

    In this article, I wish to suggest that the promiseof diasporastudies remainspreciselya promise rather than an achievement. Most significantly,manyscholars workingunder the sign of diaspora continue to rely on the reified,essentialist, and nationalist conceptions of human flows and identities. Inother

    words,againstthe

    complexrealityof diasporicprocesses,we are still far

    from achievinga nonessentialist and nonnationalist understanding.The gripof nationalism remains evident in an area that most trenchantly offers to eman-cipate our sociologicalimagination. At the same time, I also wish to suggestthat it is precisely nationalist historiography and social sciences that wouldstand to benefit most from diasporic studies. In this article, I will draw on theexamplesof the Korean and Japanesediasporas to illustrate my argument (see

    Abelmann & Lie, 1995; Lie, 2001).

    The Nationalist Reification of Diaspora

    If there is any consensus generatedby the recent outburst of writings onnationalism, it is the assertion of the modernityof nationalism (e.g.,Calhoun1997). From the empiricalwork of EugenWeber (1975) to the academic block-buster by Benedict Anderson (1983/1991), few now question the post-18th-centuryinvention and dissemination of popularnational identity.Until

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    mandment), the protagonist ultimately comes out of the ethnic closet todeclare his Burakumin identity. At the end of the novel, we find him emigratingto Texas. If Burakumin are not simplyJapanese, then we mighteven note thathe goes to Texas, not the United States. That is, we might refer to him asBurakumin Texan, not Japanese American.

    Another major group is Okinawans. Although many contemporaryJapanese-as well as non-Japanese-are wont to pronounce Okinawans asquintessentially Japanese, such an assimilationist assumptionelides the ele-mentary fact that Okinawa was an independentkingdomuntil the modern Jap-anese state annexed it throughmilitary conquest in the 1870s. The Japanesegovernment policy transformed Okinawa into a classical colonial economy,

    repletewith

    land-hungryfarmers who

    soughttheir fortune outside of the

    islands, resultingnot only in a massive migration to the main Japaneseislandsbut also in Okinawans becominga significantpart of the Japanesediaspora tothe Americas. In this regard,I conducted a particularlyvivid interview with aJapaneseBrazilian who had returned to Japanas a migrantworker in the early1990s. She said that in Brazil, she faced serious discrimination from ethnic Jap-

    anese because of her Okinawan ancestry. In Japan, however, she was simplylabeled Nikkeijin-sort of ex-Japanese-and no one cared about herOkinawan ancestry. Instead, she experienceddiscrimination as Nikkeijinwhohailed from Brazil. Quite clearly,the shiftingethnonational identity does notnecessarily emancipatepeople from the thrall of ethnic discrimination.

    In spite of the significanceof subnational identities in Japan, we have no sys-tematic demographicrecords of this fact. The dominance of the nationalistmindset is not restricted to historians and social scientists; it is, rather, exempli-fied by administrators and bureaucrats who establish the very categories fordescribing and counting people. National population accounting-both inJapan and the United States-has tended to privilegethe nation-state as thefundamental unit of description and analysis(cf. Desrosi~res, 1993/1998,chaps. 5-6).

    What my brief consideration of the Japaneseexamplesuggests is that theconcept of diaspora should avert the essentialist reification of the nation as aprivileged unit of analysisand identity.This is just as true for the studyof theKorean diaspora. Even if we should restrict our gaze to the post-1965period,when South Korea had emergedas a hypernationalist country in which SouthKorean national identitywas increasingly paramount, we should still be able torecuperate the fundamental differentiation of the population outflow from

    South Korea.Consider onlythe disproportionatenumber of peoplefrom northern Korea,

    the discriminated Cholla province, the Chinese minority (who in turn hailedfrom particularareas and regions of the vast Chinese cultural sphere),or theKorean minority in Japanwho entered the United States as Koreans. If the ori-gins of the Korean diaspora are diverse, so too are their itineraries and destina-tions. Many Korean Americans, for example,had spent considerable time in

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    Asia, Europe,and Latin America before their eventual (and far from final) set-tlement in the United States.

    In summary, we should take seriouslythe achievement of nationalism stud-ies and applyit to populationmovements. Rather than presumingthe nationalhomogeneityof emigrants, we should describe and analyzetheir actually exist-ing heterogeneity. Althoughthey may be unproblematicallyidentified as Japa-nese or Korean once in the United States, their premigration identity is usuallyfar from settled or singular.

    Diasporic Intervention in Nationalist Historiography

    Having lodgeda case

    againstthe

    hegemonichold of the nation on our socio-

    logicalimagination, let me suggest-as my second point-somethingof anantithesis. Diasporicstudies is importantnot onlyin and of itself but also in thehistory and sociologyof the nation. That is, diaspora studies is not somehowmarginal-somethingof interest only to the numerical minority who lefthomeland and their descendants-but quite central to homeland history andsociety.

    The conventional, nationalist view portrays national history as endoge-nous. Diasporic outflow is merelya dispersalof a marginalminorityoutside of

    the national borders. Althoughmassive emigrationand immigrationmay havehappenedlong ago-a matter for archaeology and mythology-nationaldevelopmentconstitutes a lineageof pure descent, not hybridity. In the case ofKorea, for example,perhaps people from present-day Manchuria and else-where may have entered the Korean peninsulamillennia ago, just as some peo-ple from the peninsulamoved to Japan, but national developmentoccurredfundamentallywithin the closed national borders. Territoriality andpeoplehoodare inextricablyintertwined in this view. National developmententails the history of a particular,well-defined territory and peoplewithin it.

    Such an autochtonous view of national history is problematicbecause, as Iarguedin the previoussection, popularnational identityis a belated achieve-ment of the modern nation-state. The presentist bias should be clear if we shiftour historical starting point beyondthe purviewof the nationalist myth.In onesense-if we believe the contemporary wisdom on human origins-we are all

    Africans (or African Americans, for those livingin the United States). Moreproximately, the vision of the homogeneousnation dispersing people at themarginsfundamentallydistorts the past and present.

    Consider in thisregard

    theJewish diaspora.

    Itsorigin

    is shrouded in

    mythistory, but it is safe to say that there was no originary Jewishnation. Juda-ism, after all, was a slave religionat the outset (Gottwald, 1979), and Moseswould be an Egyptianif we were to follow our contemporary ethnonationalclassification (cf. Assmann, 1997). On more solid historical grounds,we knowthat the diaspora-with the unintended aid of the Nazis-created Israel, notthe other way around. Palestinians, many of who were pushed out of

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    present-day Israel, in turn solidified their identity in exile and, as the Pales-tinian diaspora, now seek the establishment of the Palestinian state (cf.Khalidi, 1997). In either case, diasporic nationalism precedes homelandnationalism.

    Althoughthe cases of the Jewishand Palestinian diasporas seem extreme, Iwonder whether it would be so far off the mark to say the same about theKorean diaspora and Korea. At least, in Korea-hitherto not a nation knownfor massive migration-we can confidentlyconclude that the diasporaplayedasignificantand constitutive part in national origin and development.In fact,nationalism in Korea was fundamentallydiasporic nationalism.

    In the genealogyof modern Korea, the makingof the nation was virtuallycoeval with

    Japanesecolonialism. Indeed, it is difficult to

    disaggregatethe two

    processes. More concretely,the epic nationalist struggles-the dream of anindependentKorea-occurred mostlyoutside of the Korean peninsula. This istrue for the very origins of the anticolonial, independencemovement, exempli-fied by the March First IndependenceMovement, led byJapanese-educatedintellectuals. Even in the hagiographicreconstruction of post-WorldWar IINorth and South Korea, diasporic nationalist struggleswere central, whetherfor Kim 11 Sungsguerillawars in Manchuria or Rhee Syngmanslobbyingefforts in Hawaii. In any case, diasporic Koreans in Japanand China were cer-

    tainlycentral in the imaginationand organization of the anticolonial, nation-alist aspirations of the Korean people. Polemicallyput, the very conceptualiza-tion of the Korean peopleas such owed to nationalist discourses generatedbydiasporic Koreans (Lie, forthcoming).

    BeyondKorea, the anticolonial, nationalist ideologiesand movements thatcharacterized much of the Third World were often forged in the colonialmetropolises. The very ideas of anticolonialism and nationalism were imbibedin the belly of the beast, whether we think of Ho Chi Minh or LeopoldSenghor.Diasporic nationalism, in this sense, is nationalism tout court for manypostcolonial societies. The very idea of the nation becomes imaginedin the lan-guage and framework of the colonizers, dialecticallytransformingcolonial uni-versalism into anticolonial nationalism. Althoughwe should not denyindige-nous ideas and endogenousdevelopments,we should also not expunge theimportanceof external inspirations and exogenous struggles.

    Needless to say, I do not mean to suggest that all cases of postcolonialnationalism demonstrate the centralityof diaspora.Yet, more often than not,diasporic imaginingand strugglesplayeda significantrole in national develop-ment. National

    developmentcannot be understood

    purelyand

    solelyas

    endog-enous ; diaspora is central and constitutive.

    Synthesis, or Conclusion

    Because I have mentioned that very 19th-centuryterm dialectics,let me con-clude with some sort of a synthesis.If diasporastudies is still under the thrall of

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    the nationalist imaginaryand if nationalism itself is a product in part ofdiasporic imaginings, then what is the point of diaspora studies? What is to bedone?

    Theoretically-ironically-we have no choice but to avoid the Hegeliantemptation of seeking essences and to cast off the legacy of 19th-centurynationalism in which the social sciences remains so deeplysteeped. We need topierce throughthe reified exterior of the national frame and recover some of thefluxes of national construction and populationmovements.

    In this regard,we should avoid the temptation for a facile, mechanical syn-thesis, which is to reifythe role of diasporaand to commit diasporic national-ism. The scholarly attention on diasporic peopleshas often elevated various

    diasporiccommunities as transhistorical. Consider the Jewishand Christian

    diaspora-twosuch movements that often insist on the garb of antiquity andcontinuity. Yet, asserted continuities are in fact merelyformal and erase theconstant movements in and out of these identities, whether because of conver-sion, apostasy, intermarriage, or migration. Ifwe reifythese diasporic commu-nities, we would miss the constant flows in and out of these identities. Wewould also bypassconsiderable heterogeneityunder the unity that was usuallynominal, if not ideological.

    Consider the imminent formation of the EuropeanUnion. Should its

    appearance give us a license to redraw the past in the imageof the present? Cer-tainly,historians would have little trouble drawinga singular lineageof LatinChristendom, and sociologistsshould be able to generate significantgeneral-izations about Europeanidentity.We would also be awash with talk of theEuropeandiaspora. Yet, how meaningfulwould it be to talk of Europe as anation or diaspora?To put it negatively,we should not substantiate and reifythe nominal character of the Chinese diasporaor the Jewishdiaspora that con-flates profoundlinguistic,cultural, and even somatic differences among theputatively unified peoples.

    A moments dip into world historyshould allow us to see that the fundamen-tal force of globalizationin the last half millennium has been colonization, thatglobalization and nationalism evolved together,and that nationalism and dias-pora did so as well. Hard-headed empiricists make mockeryof the concept ofdiaspora, but they remain trapped in the equally grandiose, albeit successfuland naturalized, category of nationalism or diasporic nationalism. There are notranshistorical essences, and we are condemned to trace concrete historical

    developments.This makes the role of theory all the more important, for what is

    theorybut a way to make sense of

    patterns?We cannot, however,sit in a dark

    room and ponderthe underlyingunity of it all.Practically,then, we need to encompass the complexand expansiverealityof

    concrete networks of peoplesand ideas. This poses a profoundchallengeto theusual way of doingthe human sciences, divided as it is bydisciplines;national,area, or ethnic studies; and languagegroups. We must, alas, become at onceinterdisciplinaryand transdisciplinary,do area studies and ethnic studies, and

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    even learn a languageor two. This is all hard work, but the past and present ofdiasporas demand nothing less.

    References

    Abelmann, N., & Lie, J. (1995). Blue dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angelesriots.Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

    Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities:Reflectionson the originand spread ofnationalism(Rev. ed.). London: Verso. (Originallypublished1983)

    Assmann, J. (1997). Moses the Egyptian:The memory of Egyptin western monotheism. Cam-bridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

    Calhoun, C. (1997). Nationalism. Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota Press.Desrosires, A. (1998). Thepoliticsof largenumbers: A historyofstatisticalreasoning(C. Naish,

    Trans.). Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press. (Originalwork published1993)Gottwald, N. K. (1979). The tribes of Yahweh: A sociologyof thereligionof liberatedIsrael

    1250-1050 BCE. Maryknoll,NY: Orbis.Handlin, O. (1973). The uprooted(2nd ed.). Boston: Little, Brown. (Originalwork pub-

    lished 1951)Khalidi, R. (1997). Palestinian identity:The construction of modernnational consciousness.

    New York: Columbia University Press.

    King,D. S. (2000). MakingAmericans:Immigration,race, and the originsof thediverse democ-racy. Cambridge,MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

    Lie, J. (1995). From international migrationto transnational diaspora.Contemporary Sociol-ogy, 24, 303-306.

    Lie, J. (2001). Multiethnic japan.Cambridge,MA: Harvard UniversityPress.Lie, J. (forthcoming).Diasporicstrugglesand the makingof the Korean nation. In H. Em

    (Ed.),Between colonialism and nationalism.Noiriel, G. (1992). Le creuset franais:Histoire de limmigrationXLYe-XXesicle[TheFrench

    meltingpot].Paris: Seuil.

    OBrien,D. J., & Fugita,S. S. (1991). The Japanese Americanexperience.Bloomington:Indi-ana University Press.

    Torpey, J. C. (2000). The invention of thepassport: Surveillance, citizenship,and the state.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press.

    Weber, E. (1975). Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of ruralFrance, 1870-1914.Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress.

    John Lie isa

    visitingprofessorof sociologyat

    Harvard University(2001-2002).His recent publications include Han Unbound: The Political EconomyofSouthKorea (Stanford UniversityPress, 1998)and MultiethnicJapan(HarvardUni-versity Press, 2001).

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