Mini Carnival of Diasporas

For the four people who expressed interest in this idea I present the first Carnival of Diasporas in the Blogoverse. There are four links below. Some of them, however, connect to other links. So it looks deceptively small.

As I have stated before I consider a diaspora to be a culturally defined group of people living outside their historic homeland that have maintained a transgenerational connection to that homeland. These ties can be cultural, political or even just psychological. But, they do prevent total assimilation of these groups into their host populations and continue to mark them as being parts of larger communities across international boundries.

The prototypical diaspora group are the Jews. Indeed the capitalized version of the word Diaspora refers to the Jews dispersed from ancient Israel across the globe. Before World War Two, large Jewish populations lived in the Arab world, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Romania. Today the United States is home to the largest and historically most sucessful Jewish Diaspora. Jonathan Edelstein at Head Heeb links to a series of posts celebrating the 351st anniversary of the first Jewish settlers in what is now the US.

The mixture of traditional cultures brought by diasporas from their homelands with that of their host societies has created interesting fusions. Often the traditional culture of the diaspora reacts creatively to the pressures of living as a minority in an alien culture. Diasporic literature has sought to grapple with the issues this situation presents. Over at Sohel's Blog there is a discussion of Indian diasporic writing. Other forms of cultural expression have also developed unique diasporic styles. Over at Sepia Mutiny there is a review of the rock band the H1Bees formed by members of the Indian diaspora in the US. In many ways the literature, art and music of diaspora groups are greater than the sum of their homeland and host society components.

The political connections of diasporas to their ancestral homelands has always been an issue for all three parties involved, the diaspora community, the homeland country and the host society. Powerful diasporas such as the Jews and Armenians have exercised considerable clout in the politics of their imagined homelands. This influence is often negative as the most reactionary and militantly nationalist strains of politics tend to get preserved in diasporas. Raffi Meneshian at Life in the Armenian Diaspora strongly defends the political role of the Armenian diaspora against its critics. The comments section proves just how nasty and divisive diaspora politics can get.

This may end up being the only Carnival of Diasporas ever hosted so enjoy it. Any comments regarding the post above or diasporas in general are welcome in the thread below. Let me know what you think.