Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii 1900-1936
Average Rating: 4.0 Total Reviews: 2
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 On: 2008-01-31
Adam McKeowns recent study Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936 is a departure from but also a crucial addition to Asian America scholarship. Focused on the Chinese diaspora in Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii, this book is both academic and theoretical but not dry. McKeown is well informed and he offers several "critiques" against the conventional narrative of a "nation-based" perspective (McKeown 1-6) of current scholarship. His depart from this perspective is through his introduction of a more complex "transnational" perspective. The departure is premised on a comparative approach of three spaces in an attempt - not always successful - as a confluence and interdependent network whose ties really lie in the "same small region of China" (McKeown 24).
One of the issues McKeown makes a compelling argument about is that we need to collapse Asian Studies and Asian American/Ethnic Studies as the two are intrinsically linked. McKeown bridges this gap not just by saying it but actually doing something to narrow the long-standing chasm between those trained in Asian (in this case Chinese) Studies and the other in, as mentioned previously, Asian American studies. Resisting the urge to do a chapter by chapter analysis, chapter 1 of the book outlines the theoretical foundation of the book. In chapters 2 and 3, McKeown does a comparative look at the Chinese in the diaspora. He takes a step back in chapter 4 to examine conditions in southern China. Finally, in chapters 5 though 7 he looks at Chinese enclaves in Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii, in that order.
As mentioned above, the book advocates a "transnational narrative" and is purposefully a departure from the likes of Sucheng Chan and Ronald Takaki. McKeown, bravely, tackles and tries to re-write Bourdieu by attempting to add complexity to the habitus argument. According to Bourdieu, personal tastes are shaped by larger forces. Habitus is seen as an analysis of social class. McKeown argues that we are not singular Habitus based but that rather we are part of several habiti (McKeown 14-17). A compelling argument in an attempt to bring home that sense that this is a multiple space project. Using primary documents, letters, and communication to prove a transnational back and forth, his argument is that it was not all one way (and then closed out scenario) but that the tie that bounds these people is the region they come from. Much of what happens is influenced by local conditions and that even if they came from the same place the outcomes and their relations vis-Ã -vis China were very different. McKeown sources in Hawaii are purely secondary calling to question that scholars doing research in particular spaces... do they need to be there physically? Again, my sense is not so much that we come up with easy answers but that we have the courage to ask the hard questions.
Miguel Llora
by: Anonymous On: 2002-09-24
it gave a focus on all the china towns in a global perspective. the words were alittle hard to comprehend with the text but it was very imformative.
On: 2002-09-23
it gave a focus on all the china towns in a global perspective. the words were alittle hard to comprehend with the text but it was very imformative.
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