How Rituals Of Home Maintain Diasporic Communities

Gatherings in Diaspora brings together the latest chapters in the long-running chronicle of religion and immigration in the American experience. Today, as in the past, people migrating to the United States bring their religions with them, and their religious identities often mean more to them away from home, in their diaspora, than they did before. This book explores and analyzes the diverse religious communities of post-1965 diasporas: Christians, Hews, Muslims, Hindus, Rastafarians, and practitioners of Vodou, from countries such as China, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Iran, Jamaica, Korea, and Mexico. The contributors explore how, to a greater or lesser extent, immigrants and their offspring adapt their religious institutions to American conditions, often interacting with religious communities already established. The religious institutions they build, adapt, remodel, and adopt become worlds unto themselves, congregations, where new relations are forged within the community -- between men and women, parents and children, recent arrival and those longer settled.

Making Home in Diasporic Communities demonstrates the global scope of the Filipino diaspora, engaging wider scholarship on globalisation and the ways in which the dynamics of nation-state institutions, labour migration and social relationships intersect for transnational communities. Based on original ethnographic work conducted in Ireland and the Philippines, the book examines how Filipina diasporans socially and symbolically create a sense of ‘home’. On one hand, Filipinas can be seen as mobile, as they have crossed geographical borders and are physically located in the destination country. Yet, on the other hand, they are constrained by immigration policies, linguistic and cultural barriers and other social and cultural institutions. Through modalities of language, rituals and religion and food, the author examines the ways in which Filipinas orient their perceptions, expectations, practices and social spaces to ‘the homeland’, thus providing insight into larger questions of inclusion and exclusion for diasporic communities. By focusing on a range of Filipina experiences, including that of nurses, international students, religious workers and personal assistants, Making Home in Diasporic Communities explores the intersectionality of gender, race, class and belonging. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology as well as those with interests in gender, identity, migration, ethnic studies, and the construction of home.

This book analyzes the lives and the continuing ritual traditions of the Mayas who live in the United States. Focusing on a predominantly Maya town in rural Florida, it shows how members of this ancient Central American civilization use their religious tradition to maintain their ethnic identity in an unfamiliar environment. Bringing together studies of Mesoamerican fiesta or cargo systems, religious ritual and migration studies, this interdisciplinary work describes the religious traditions of indigenous Guatemala, the crisis migration of the 1980s, and the Mayas' daily life in the United States, including Maya women's reflections on their new challenges. The book is unique in its focus on the transfer of the fiesta cycle to the diaspora and its analysis of the behind-the-scenes aspects of ritual. The rise of leadership, contested interpretations of ethnic identity, choices about symbolic representation, and maintenance of ties to villages of origin all take place in the context of organizing public ritual events. Through these strategies, the Maya people not only cope materially and spiritually with the chaotic experience of uprootedness, but find ways to strengthen their unique identity. Bibliography. Index.

Examines the development of the concept of diaspora and new perspectives on global networks and local identities. Features case histories on the Caribbean, Irish, Irish-American, Armenian, African and Greek diasporas.

This book develops a theoretical perspective on homemaking as the ethnic condition of Indian diaspora communities. It draws on empirical case studies to elucidate the multiple homemaking practices of two overseas Indian groups and their relations to their homeland, namely the Surinami Hindustanis and the Dutch Hindustanis. In doing so, it provides a new perspective on homemaking that captures ethnogenesis, integration and diasporic bonding at once. As opposed to the extant discourse on homemaking which overlooks institutional and cultural requirements, the author makes a point to scrutinise such concepts as douglarisation, groupism, citizenship, institutions, ethnification, social networks and technology, and transnational flows. Unique and compelling, the book will be highly useful in studies of diaspora, globalisation and transnational migration, multiculturalism, cultural studies, ethnic minority studies, sociology, politics and international relations, and South Asian studies.

In a sense, Oceania can be considered a microcosm of World Christianity. Within this region are many of the same observable trends on the global level that impact Christian life, faith, and witness. The geography of Oceania--the "liquid continent"--is unique. Christianity arrived in Australia and New Zealand in the late eighteenth century via British colonial powers. Indigenous Aboriginal peoples, Torres Strait Islanders, and Māori peoples were dispossessed of land, property, rights, and dignity. Christianity grew by migration and conversion (not always voluntary), and over time became tightly intertwined with culture. In the twentieth century, rapid secularization moved Christianity into the private sphere, and by 2020 Christian affiliation had dropped from 97 percent to 57 percent. However, the history of Christianity in the Pacific Islands--Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia--is quite different. Christianity arrived via Protestant and Catholic missionaries between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries and grew substantially in the twentieth century largely due to indigenous Christian efforts. Islanders brought Christianity to neighboring islands, indigenous theologies developed, and churches gradually separated from their Western mission founders. One of the great "success stories" of World Christianity is Papua New Guinea, which grew from just 4 percent Christian in 1900 to 95 percent in 2020. However, growth is never the entire story. Violence against women is endemic in Papua New Guinea and is often combined with accusations of witchcraft. An estimated 59 percent of women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime (and 48 percent in the last year). As Christianity continues its shift to the global South, it becomes increasingly critical to heed the experiences, perspectives, and theologies of Christians, particularly women, in the Pacific Islands.

Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.

Advocating for a more welcoming world involves respecting the human dignity and fundamental rights of all individuals, regardless of their place of origin or immigration status. This perspective offers a powerful insight into the dynamics of social justice across borders.

This book focuses on the Philippines as a powerhouse in the Catholic and global migration landscape. It offers a wide-ranging look at the roles, dynamics, character, and trajectories of Catholic faith and practice in the age of migration through an interdisciplinary, religious, and theological approach to Filipino Catholics’ experience of migration and diaspora both at home and overseas. In so doing, the book introduces the reader to the hallmarks and characteristics of a contextual model of world Christianity and global Catholicism in the twenty-first century.