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Genealogy
Special Issues
Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives
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Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778). This special issue belongs to the section "Genealogical Communities: Multi-Ethnic, Multi-Racial, and Multi-National Genealogies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2024) | Viewed by 15529

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Sarah Griffith

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of History, Queens University of Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28274, USA
Interests: comparative race and ethnic studies; Asian American studies; Pacific Rim transnationalisms; critical refugee studies
Dr. Lily Anne Welty Tamai

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of History, California State University Sacramento, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA
Interests: public history; mixed-race studies; Asian American studies; modern Japan

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The emergence of new networks of global, political, social, cultural, and economic exchange over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries resulted in the formation of new routes of global migration and new concentrations of ethnic peoples across the globe. As societies become increasingly multiethnic and multiracial, so too does the process of racialization and the “hierarchical ordering” of people and communities into what Alexander Weheliye referred to as “humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans.”  Given these realities, it is critical that we understand the processes of racialization, how racial, ethnic, or national identity formation occur, and how societies interpret, understand, and manage racial and ethnic diversity.

Worldwide, racial or ethnic minority populations are particularly vulnerable to sociopolitical exploitation or oppression. Formal and informal systems of power serve to limit and even contain the political and cultural rights, socioeconomic opportunities, rights to movement, and modes of artistic expression and representation of minority and multi-ethnic communities. As historian Paul Spickard posited in Race in Mind: Critical Essays, “Ultimately all racial systems are about power, and specifically about the power to define difference and enforce privilege” (8). In response to these pressures and enforcements of privilege, racial and ethnic groups worldwide have advanced claims of racial and ethnic identity as resistance against social and cultural repression.

This Special Issue of Genealogy, entitled, “Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives”, will focus on the complex racial formations that emerged in multiethnic societies in the postmodern era and the ways marginalized racial or ethnic communities responded to racial projects advanced by hegemonic groups in these societies. Questions that fall under the scope of this issue include: How do disempowered communities communicate and display modes of resistance?  How do minoritized and multiracial people navigate notions of their identity?  How do marginalized individuals and groups challenge racialized constructions of authenticity? And to what effect do these methods of resistance have on destabilizing formal and informal systems of power?

The editors especially welcome submissions from scholars working in interdisciplinary fields that engage with ethnic studies, mixed race studies, Black studies, Asian American studies, Chicanx studies, and critical refugee studies.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Genealogy editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

List of references:

Paul Spickard, Race in Mind: Critical Essays (Notre Dame, Il.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), p. 8.

Alexander G. Weheliye, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), p. 8.

Tentative completion schedule:

  • Abstract submission deadline: 5 February 2024
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: 25 February 2024
  • Full manuscript deadline: 30 June 2024

Dr. Sarah Griffith
Dr. Lily Anne Welty Tamai
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ethnic formations
  • refugee migration
  • forced migration
  • ethnic representations
  • mixed race studies
  • multinational ethnic relations
  • African American studies
  • diaspora/diasporic resistance
  • post-modern/critical theory
  • colonial/post-colonial theory

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 216 KiB  
Article
“Colour” Clashes in Colonial Coaches: Everyday Experiences of the Baboos in Railways
by Paromita Das Gupta
Genealogy 2024, 8(3), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8030111 - 29 Aug 2024
Viewed by 732
Abstract
This article examines a distinctive and debated social group called the “Baboos” in late colonial India, particularly in Bengal. The Baboos represented the Western-educated, aspiring middle class who were integral to the British administration. They were often viewed skeptically for adopting the English [...] Read more.
This article examines a distinctive and debated social group called the “Baboos” in late colonial India, particularly in Bengal. The Baboos represented the Western-educated, aspiring middle class who were integral to the British administration. They were often viewed skeptically for adopting the English language and Western lifestyle. This study delves into the quotidian lives of the Baboos, particularly their interactions with the colonial rulers in public transport, which became a crucial contact zone. Despite facing racial conflicts and discrimination in these shared spaces, the Baboos were not passive victims. They used diverse strategies to combat injustices and voice their grievances publicly. Within this larger narrative of discriminating treatment, another power narrative was played out by the Baboos among their own population. Conscious of their distinct functional status, the Baboos sought to distance themselves from those Indians who did not match their ideas of “respect”. Everyday experiences formed the basis of the public outrage reflected continually in regional newspapers and, subsequently, in the larger narratives of resistance and nationalism. How the Baboos negotiated their position in the public spaces sheds light on their claims of civil rights and their ways of using the colonizer’s tropes of equality, justice, and fairness back at them. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives)
14 pages, 2818 KiB  
Article
Afro-Asian Intimacies: Cross-Pollination and the Persistence of Anti-Blackness in Chinese Culture
by Crystal Kwok
Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020044 - 17 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1978
Abstract
America’s racial history is largely siloed and compartmentalized, separating minority group experiences as if they were neat rows of isolated, discernable categories. Resisting binary narratives, this article reframes history by focusing on the largely unknown lives of the Chinese immigrants and African American [...] Read more.
America’s racial history is largely siloed and compartmentalized, separating minority group experiences as if they were neat rows of isolated, discernable categories. Resisting binary narratives, this article reframes history by focusing on the largely unknown lives of the Chinese immigrants and African American communities in the segregated south. An examination of the intimate histories between the two marginalized groups illuminates how structures of the central white power enforced racial projects that pit Asians and African Americans against each other, laying roots to the tensions we see continuing to play out today. Through my documentary film, Blurring the Color Line, which follows my grandmother’s family growing up in a Black neighborhood, I dive into the obscure but illuminating space of in-betweenness to disrupt hegemonic productions of knowledge and to reveal nuanced stories of how cross-pollinating communities moved amongst and against one another in order to survive and thrive. Stories of conformity and co-mingling between two disempowered communities beg us to question how the language of skin informs social placement and how silenced histories speak deeper truths about the processes and consequences of racialization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives)
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17 pages, 324 KiB  
Article
“Kauaka e kōrero mō te Awa, kōrero ki te Awa: An Awa-Led Research Methodology” (Don’t Talk about the Awa, Talk with the Awa)
by Tom Johnson
Genealogy 2024, 8(1), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8010030 - 15 Mar 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1779
Abstract
Indigenous people continue to develop methods to strengthen and empower genealogical knowledge as a means of conveying histories, illuminating current and past values, and providing important cultural frameworks for understanding their nuanced identities and worlds across time and space. Genealogies are more than [...] Read more.
Indigenous people continue to develop methods to strengthen and empower genealogical knowledge as a means of conveying histories, illuminating current and past values, and providing important cultural frameworks for understanding their nuanced identities and worlds across time and space. Genealogies are more than simply a record of a family tree; they are a rich tapestry of ancestral links, representing a tradition of thought and connection to entities beyond the human. This article proposes an Iwi-specific methodological approach to conducting research based on the specific paradigms (ontological and epistemological) of Māori (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) from the region of Te Awa Tupua in the North Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand. A Whanganui world view can be actioned as an operating system within research by developing a bespoke place-based methodology drawing on kōrero tuku iho (ancestral wisdom) to conduct research amongst a genealogical group with whakapapa (genealogical connection) to a distinct geographic locale. This methodological shift allows the inclusion of human research participants and more-than-human, including Te Awa Tupua (an interconnected environment around the Whanganui River) and Te Kāhui Maunga (ancestral mountains that feed the Whanganui river) as living ancestors. Whanganui ways of knowing, doing, and being underpin a worldview that situates Te Awa Tupua and tāngata (people) as inter-related beings that cannot maintain their health and wellbeing without the support of one another. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives)
9 pages, 209 KiB  
Article
Go-Go Music and Racial Justice in Washington, DC
by Collin Michael Sibley
Genealogy 2024, 8(1), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8010009 - 18 Jan 2024
Viewed by 2192
Abstract
In 2019, a noise complaint from a new, white resident of Shaw, a historically Black neighborhood of Washington, DC, led a local MetroPCS store to mute the go-go music that the storefront had played on its outdoor speakers for decades. The cultural and [...] Read more.
In 2019, a noise complaint from a new, white resident of Shaw, a historically Black neighborhood of Washington, DC, led a local MetroPCS store to mute the go-go music that the storefront had played on its outdoor speakers for decades. The cultural and social implications of muting go-go music, a DC-originated genre of music that has played a central role in DC Black culture, inspired a viral hashtag, #dontmutedc, on social media, as well as a series of high-profile public protests against the muting. The #dontmutedc protests highlighted the increasing impact of gentrification on DC’s Black communities, and connected gentrification to several other important social issues affecting Black DC residents. In the wake of the #dontmutedc incident, several DC-area activist organizations have integrated go-go music into major, public-facing racial justice projects. The first part of this article presents a brief history of go-go music and race in DC community life, mainstream media, and law enforcement in order to contextualize the work of go-go-centered activist work in the aftermath of the #dontmutedc protests. The second part of this article highlights the go-go-centered activist work of three organizations: the Don’t Mute DC movement, Long Live Go-Go, and the Go-Go Museum and Café. These movements’ projects will be used to categorize three distinct approaches to go-go-centered racial justice activism in the Washington, DC, area. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives)
14 pages, 235 KiB  
Article
Social Progress and the Dravidian “Race” in Tamil Social Thought
by Collin Sibley
Genealogy 2024, 8(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8010006 - 4 Jan 2024
Viewed by 5171
Abstract
In the closing decades of the 19th century, a wide range of Tamil authors and public speakers in colonial India became acutely interested in the notion of a Dravidian “race”. This conception of a Dravidian race, rooted in European racial and philological scholarship [...] Read more.
In the closing decades of the 19th century, a wide range of Tamil authors and public speakers in colonial India became acutely interested in the notion of a Dravidian “race”. This conception of a Dravidian race, rooted in European racial and philological scholarship on the peoples of South India, became an important symbol of Tamil cultural, religious, and social autonomy in colonial and post-colonial Tamil thought, art, politics, and literature. European racial thought depicted Dravidians as a savage race that had been subjugated or displaced by the superior Aryan race in ancient Indic history. Using several key works of colonial scholarship, non-Brahmin Tamil authors reversed and reconfigured this idea to ground their own broad-reaching critiques of Brahmin political and social dominance, Brahmanical Hinduism, and Indian nationalism. Whereas European scholarship largely presented Dravidians as the inferiors of Aryans, non-Brahmin Tamil thinkers argued that the ancient, Dravidian identity of the Tamil people could stand alone without Aryan interference. This symbolic contrast between Dravidian (Tamil, non-Brahmin, South Indian) and Aryan (Sanskritic, Brahmin, North Indian) is a central component of 20th- and 21st-century Tamil public discourse on caste, gender, and cultural autonomy. Tamil authors, speakers, activists, and politicians used and continue to use the symbolic frame of Dravidian racial history to advocate for many different political, cultural, and social causes. While not all of these “Dravidian” discourses are meaningfully politically or socially progressive, the long history of Dravidian-centered, anti-Brahmanical discourse in Tamil South India has helped Tamil Nadu largely rebuff the advances of Hindu nationalist politics, which have become dominant in other cultural regions of present-day India. This piece presents a background on the emergence of the term “Dravidian” in socially critical Tamil thought, as well as its reversal and reconfiguration by Tamil social thinkers, orators, and activists in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The piece begins with a brief history of the terms “Dravidian” and “Aryan” in Western racial thought. The piece then charts the evolution of this discourse in Tamil public thought by discussing several important examples of Tamil social and political movements that incorporate the conceptual poles of “Dravidian” and “Aryan” into their own platforms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives)
10 pages, 200 KiB  
Article
Apsara Aesthetics and Belonging: On Mixed-Race Cambodian American Performance
by Tiffany J. Lytle
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 97; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040097 - 8 Dec 2023
Viewed by 2312
Abstract
The image of the Apsara, a celestial dancer in Cambodian myth, is closely associated with Cambodian cultural preservation practices like Cambodian classical dance. The Apsara, its aesthetic features and its association with Cambodian cultural preservation have taken on new meaning in Cambodia’s diasporic [...] Read more.
The image of the Apsara, a celestial dancer in Cambodian myth, is closely associated with Cambodian cultural preservation practices like Cambodian classical dance. The Apsara, its aesthetic features and its association with Cambodian cultural preservation have taken on new meaning in Cambodia’s diasporic communities. In the diaspora, Apsara aesthetics have come to symbolize Cambodian heritage, history and identity, becoming a major feature of performances by Cambodian diasporic artists. However, orientalist expectations of Asian performers in the diaspora, paired with both the forgotten history of colonial intervention in Cambodian arts and state-sanctioned initiatives towards Cambodian nationalism, contributes to orientalist (and thus racialized) expectations of Cambodian diasporic performance. Mixed-race artists fail to fit neatly into the dominant narratives of Cambodian performance and have been marginalized by the Cambodian diasporic community’s dominant conceptions of performance that are rooted in cultural preservation. As people that sit outside of the aestheticized markers of Cambodian-ness, mixed-race artists often struggle to have their work and their subjectivities recognized by their communities. To circumvent questions of their racial legibility, mixed-race Cambodian American artists construct performances that are strategically padded with markers of Khmer identity by engaging with Apsara aesthetics. This article will explore how three different SoCal-based artists have negotiated their Cambodian American identity and cultural politics through performance and/or performance related materials (ads, images, etc.). I will be using examples from the work of music artist and violinist Chrysanthe Tan, theater practitioner Kalean Ung, and autoethnographic engagement with my own creative projects to show how examining the work of multi-racial Cambodian American performing artists can bring forth the complex dynamics of Cambodian diasporic cultural politics and belonging. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contesting Power: Race, Ethnicity, and Self-Representations in Global Perspectives)
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