Longings and belongings: Indian American youth identity,folk dance competitions,and the construction of ‘tradition’

This article examines the development of the ‘cultural competition’ as a site for the production of multiple identities by Indian American youths on American college campuses. Through the examination of two categories of folk dance competitions (bhangra and raas-garba) at a private university in Washington, DC, we argue that these competitions appear to resist hybridity and produce rhetoric that marginalizes diasporic culture in favour of the ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ culture of the homeland. However, the goal of expressing uncontaminated ‘authentic’ culture is not realized as diasporic identities and cultures consistently interrupt and undermine homogenizing narratives of ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’. We also demonstrate that these folk dance groups often reinforce an ethno-regional distinctiveness rather than a hybrid or pan-Indian identity.     

Class I HLA antigens in two long-separated populations: Melanesians and South Amerinds

Class I HLA antigens have been compared in 5,835 Melanesians of Papua New Guinea and 2,028 Amerindians of South America. The sample includes 50 PNGMel ethnolinguistic groups and 22 SAmlnd groups. Both carry 15 serologically defined antigens and an undefined C allele. Except for A2 in Papua New Guinea and Cwl in South America, these antigens are widely distributed in their respective populations. Nine (A2 and A24, B39, B60 and B62, and Cwl, Cw3, Cw4, and Cw7) are common to both. This commonality suggests that these two populations derive from an ancestral population with less polymorphism than modern East Asians. In both populations several theoretically possible haplotypes were absent, and other haplo-types were in positive disequilibrium in both. The parallels in disequilibria suggest that haplotypes are subject to selective forces acting on the level of allelic interaction. Based on three locus haplotype frequencies, the PNGMel groups form five clusters with internally typical linguistic and geographic characteristics and a miscellaneous category, but Samlnd groups show no cluster. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Demography and blood genetics of Argentinian Mapuche Indians

The whole Mapuche Indian community of Blancura Centro was covered by a demographic census, with special attention given to variables of genetic interest. Afterwards a sample of it was investigated in relation to 22 genetic systems. The community can be characterized as a young group, with high fertility, but moderate mortality and endogamy. The index of opportunity for selection is relatively low (0.46). The presence of variation at the ABO and Lutheran loci suggests some non-Indian admixture, calculated as 7% in the sample studied. Unusual findings were the absence of L^*NS, low frequency (7%) of L^*MS and high frequency (37%) of L^*Ns. They also showed low frequencies of P^*1 (28%) and DI^*a (3%), but high of HP^*1 (74%). Similarities, but also differences, were noted with previous results obtained in this tribe in Argentina and Chile.     

Genetic structure of two urban afro-brazilian populations

A total of 218 individuals living in the Brazilian cities of Porto Alegre (in the South) and Salvador (in the Northeast) were variously studied in relation to nine erythrocyte and four plasma protein systems. The results were compared with previous studies in some of these systems, and estimates of interethnic admixture obtained in subsamples according to morphological appearance. As a whole, Afro-Brazilians from Salvador show 42% of non-African genes, the corresponding figure for Porto Alegre being 59%. The Amerindian contribution to these individuals was estimated as null or negligible. Average heterozygosities are similar to those obtained for African groups, but the gene differentiation coefficient (GST') is small. The phylogenetic tree indicates a closer relationship of Salvador with the African subcluster, as would be expected by the admixture and istorical data. Analyses such as this one are important for the unraveling of the complex networks responsible for the present variability of human populations, and for the dispelling of racist concepts.     

The contact–prejudice relationship among ethnic minorities: examining personal discrimination as a boundary condition

This paper contributes to the literature on how perceived discrimination influences the impact of intergroup contact among ethnic minority members. Previous research has shown that perceived group discrimination inhibits the positive outcomes of intergroup contact among ethnic minority members. In extension, this paper examines whether perceived personal discrimination has a similar negative impact as a boundary condition of the contact–prejudice relationship among ethnic minority members. Analyses expand previous intergroup contact research by showing that the impact of intergroup contact is uniform across various levels of perceived personal discrimination. This finding suggests that the otherwise harmful consequences of perceived personal discrimination can be effectively counterbalanced by positive contact experiences among ethnic minority members. Analyses use evidence from a national probability sample, which was fielded in 2006 to examine some of the largest ethnic minority groups (N?=?3,462). The concluding section discusses the theoretical implications of the empirical findings.     

‘We've got team spirit!’: ethnic community building and Japanese American youth basketball leagues

This article examines the role co-ethnic youth basketball leagues play in shaping ethnic community among third- and fourth-generation Japanese American youth. With dwindling rates of Japanese immigration, increased rates of out-marriage, and fewer cultural hubs available, finding a thriving ethnic community has become a particular challenge for later-generation Japanese Americans. Drawing from ethnographic data, I argue that even among highly ‘assimilated’ Japanese Americans, youth basketball leagues serve as an active space for constructing and preserving ethnic community and social networks. I demonstrate how through social, cultural, and spatial interactions facilitated by sports, some Japanese Americans have found a sense of ethnic ‘connectedness’ within basketball leagues while performing their own renditions of ethnic identity that is simultaneously attentive to fluid local and global connections. These findings illuminate the role and importance of sport through which Japanese Americans challenges the racial contours of American-ness and belonging while claiming their place, locally, nationally, and transnationally.     

Economic empathy in family entrepreneurship: Mexican-origin street vendor children and their parents

ABSTRACT

Research on ethnic entrepreneurship has shown that children of immigrants may experience an economic advantage associated with their entrepreneurial parents’ ‘modes of incorporation’ – the individual, group, and structural opportunities and characteristics that facilitate entrepreneurial participation and consequent economic progress. This ethnographic study examines street vending as a family enterprise and finds that the entrepreneurial, but nevertheless, disadvantaged Latino street vending parents experience economic stagnation. Child street vendors in this study experience compounded disadvantages stemming from their parents’ social locations rooted in unauthorized status, informal work, and stigma, as working together shortens the distance between ‘adulthood’ and ‘childhood’. Yet, street vending also sets the stage for children to develop economic empathy, a resiliency that results from experiencing their parent's position of oppression that helps prevent an authority shift in favour of the children.     

Brachymesophalangia-V in five samples of children: A descriptive and methodological study

The occurrence of brachymesophalangia-V (BMP-V) in 2,012 individuals from five samples of children of different ethnic backgrounds was determined using two indices. Frequencies of BMP-V were analyzed for three variants: BMP-V alone, BMP-V with clinodactyly, and BMP-V with a cone-shaped epiphysis. The two indices used to identify BMP-V indicated highest relative frequencies among Mexican children, moderate frequencies among children of European ancestry (Pennsylvania White, Canadian, West German), and lower frequencies in Pennsylvania Black children. Index 1, based on the ratio of the width to the length of the fifth mid-phalanx, consistently produced higher frequencies than Index 2, based on the ratio of the length of the fifth to the length of the fourth midphalanges. Index 1 was also more selective of BMP-alone, while Index 2 selected primarily BMP-V with clinodactyly and/or cone-shaped epiphyses. The differences between indices were largely due to the fact that Index 1, which basically defines shape, selected both the shortest and/or widest mid-phalanges, while Index 2 related actual length differences. It is suggested that Index 2 provided a more suitable criterion of BMP-V in comparative studies, due to possible population differences in phalangeal shape.     

Introduction: Framing difference: racial and ethnic studies in twentyfirst-century Britain

The events in Britain since the beginning of the new millennium starkly and dramatically reflect the continued salience of racial and ethnic difference. In media, political and academic discourse, the struggles over nationhood and multiculturalism, the duties of citizenship and the right to cultural expression, similarity and difference have been played out against global and national backdrops, and across many local stages. The articles in this volume aim to explore the contours of this changing terrain, and suggest new avenues for research and theorization. They are primarily an engagement with British debates and events, but seek to place these within a broader global and diasporic context. The aim of this introductory article is to sketch the background to the events that surround the production of these articles, to outline a broad conceptual overview of the current academic debates and to explore the links between each contribution.