Displacement... -- Book Reviews by Sunaina Maira
American Anthropologist , Mar 1998
Papers by Sunaina Maira
Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East & North African Migration Studies
In Arab New York, Emily Wills poses an important and timely question: What does it mean for Arab ... more In Arab New York, Emily Wills poses an important and timely question: What does it mean for Arab Americans to engage in politics when they are subjected to political exclusion on so many levels in the United States? In this book, Wills focuses on the "everyday politics" of Arab Americans, which, she argues, occurs "wherever they struggle, argue, or resist the workings of power" (6). The "compulsory" politicization of Arab Americans, as a community experiencing systemic anti-Arab racism, imbues their daily lives with politics (6). The book expands the fields of Arab American and social movement studies by offering a fascinating case study of Arab Americans in New York, the third largest Arab American community in the US but which Wills observes has been less researched than Detroit's Arab American community, the largest in the nation and the focus of much of the earlier work in Arab American studies. This ethnography focuses on Arab Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, which is home to the largest concentration of Arabs in New York, and is based on research conducted between 2008-2010. Wills rightly argues that Arab Americans are "differently political" due to what she calls the "discursive misrecognition" of Arab Americans that leads to their silencing and subjection to "forced speech," such as demands that Arab (and Muslim) Americans denounce terrorism (13). Wills challenges the notion that the majority of Arab Americans are not "politically mobilized as individuals or as members of groups" (5). The author points out that this presumption is based on "formal politics" and suggests that "politics is everywhere for Arab Americans" (5). That said, this is an uncontroversial assertion for scholars in cultural studies, ethnic studies, and American studies;
Muslim Students, Education and Neoliberalism, 2017
led to a heightened racialization, or reracialization, of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communiti... more led to a heightened racialization, or reracialization, of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities in the USA. This re-codification of race was driven in part by the attempt to find new categories for classifying populations seen as 'suspect' of being threats to national security, accompanied by community-led efforts to create coalitions among those targeted by the state in the US-led War on Terror. My research examines the significance of these new and shifting racial formations in the post-9/11 era and the implications they have for Muslim American youth who have come of age in this moment. In the book on which this chapter is based (Maira 2016), I discuss the ways in which coalitional categories such as AMSA (Arab, Muslim, and South Asian) or AMEMSA (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian) have been produced by campaigns that challenge anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism but may also participate in a politics of disciplinary inclusion. One of the major tensions in this negotiation of post-9/11 racial politics is the complicated and sometimes uneasy relationship between religious and racial or national categories and the racialization of the category of 'the Muslim'. The scrutiny of Muslim Americans as the 'enemy within' rests on
Muslim Volunteering in the West, 2019
This chapter focuses on the possibilities and limits of civic engagement by Muslim American youth... more This chapter focuses on the possibilities and limits of civic engagement by Muslim American youth in the post-9/11 era and the political implications of volunteerism for Muslim communities subjected to scrutiny and surveillance in the War on Terror. Drawing on ethnographic research on Arab, South Asian, and Afghan American college students in northern California, I explore the ways in which Muslim American volunteer activities are embedded in the regulation of “good” (moderate) or “bad” (radical) Muslim political subjecthood. My research reveals how liberal civil rights, interfaith, and environmental activism projects are sanctioned as forms of civic engagement if they evade challenges to US militarism and foreign policy and uphold the tenets of neoliberal citizenship.
Meridians, 2002
Henna has helped bring India back home for me. It has brought home to me, and many other South As... more Henna has helped bring India back home for me. It has brought home to me, and many other South Asian American women, the instability and power of the concept of nation, the ambiguity of cultural possession, and the perils involved in the material processes of "bringing back" a memory or fantasy of belonging. Traveling to the U.S. in the guise of "body art," henna and other popular markers of "Indo-chic" exemplify the ways in which the use of commodities expresses the contradictions of transnational capital, gendered multiculturalism, and racialized citizenship. This paper is based on a preliminary study of Indo-chic that is interdisciplinary in its methodology and its conceptual framework, based on ethnographic observations and interviews as well as on analyses of representations, for a deeper understanding of popular cultural phenomena requires an analysis both of discursive practices and of the social contexts in which they are embedded. Interdisciplinaritythat slippery, contested
Mashriq & Mahjar Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies, 2015
Hisham Aidi's new book is a highly compelling discussion of new Muslim youth cultures that engage... more Hisham Aidi's new book is a highly compelling discussion of new Muslim youth cultures that engages with key questions of imperialism and transnational solidarity, race and racism, history and memory. This work offers a timely and incisive analysis of the ways in which globalized forms of music are emerging from and producing various forms of community and collective protest, based on the premise that "today music is the realm where Muslim diaspora consciousness and identity politics are most poignantly being debated and expressed" (p. xxvi). Using examples of cultural production such as hip-hop, gnawa, jazz, and punk that span the Americas, Europe, and North Africa, Aidi suggests that these cultural movements embody "an alternative idea of modernity and cosmopolitanism, as well as a different relationship to the West," drawing on an archive of African American Islam (p. xxiii).
International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue Internationale D Etudes Canadiennes, 2001
New Mexico has a long history of funding public education through state revenues distributed by f... more New Mexico has a long history of funding public education through state revenues distributed by formula funding. K-12 education in New Mexico relies on central state funds rather than on local property taxes. This paper presents a history and overview of *
In-depth interviews were conducted with 7 second-generation Indian American students between 17 a... more In-depth interviews were conducted with 7 second-generation Indian American students between 17 and 21 years of age to study their ethnic identity formation. Respondents were college students who came from families that represented the earlier waves of post-1965 Indian immigrants, highly educated middle-and upper-class professionals. The interviews were preceded by a survey of 48 Boston (Massachusetts) area college students to develop information about issues related to ethnic identity. As visible minorities, many second-generation Indian Americans find the ascription of ethnic identity by others to be an important factor that constrains options for identification. Others are mistaken for members of other ethnic groups, making the subjectivity of ethnic identification particularly relevant to them. Regional and religious identities may promote or conflict with Indian identity. Family expectations and gender role ideals also may sharpen the experience of being culturally different for secOnd-generation adolescents. This exploratory study suggests that ethnic identity is dynamic and complex for Indian American adolescents. Suppressing or enacting cultural schemas in different contexts is just one strategy that may be used by second-generation adolescents in response to complex sets of pressures. They must negotiate an array of social identities, many of which can be considered ethnic. Appendixes ct.Intain the interview guide and two illustrative schema-maps of identity. (Contains 47 references.) (SLD)
Amerasia Journal, 2005
Terror that criminalize the innocent through s\,:,"eeps, clearances, and monitorin g , include dr... more Terror that criminalize the innocent through s\,:,"eeps, clearances, and monitorin g , include dragnet arrests, undercover activities at mosques, and Special Re g istration of Muslim men. Criminalization and cultural citizenshi p are related as they are both embedded in power relations and in processes of disci pliningsubjects by the state through law, policy, and cultural and social categorizations. Cultural citizenship is defined as the ev eryday experience of belonging to the nation-state in relation to experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Citizenship has tradition� ally been thought of in p olitical, economic, and civic terms,S but more recent analyses focus on the notion of cultural citizenship.
Amerasia Journal, 1999
It is a hot, humid August afternoon in Manhattan. The air shimmers in the haze, as if the molten ... more It is a hot, humid August afternoon in Manhattan. The air shimmers in the haze, as if the molten sidewalks are hallucinating. Maybe they really are, because for some reason all of the faces of the people clustered along Madison Avenue have turned brown. Or more precisely, desi. The avenue is lined with throngs of South Asians, hundreds and hundreds of men, women, and children, faces eagerly turned to the street as if willing a collective mirage. The apparition appears, on cue, conjuring up a homeland; an India materialized in festive floats with blaring music. It is the India Day parade, August 16,1998, and nationalism is in the air. Toddlers wave tri-color flags with chubby fists. There is another flash of orange in the crowd, weaving through with chants of "Jai Hindustan." Placards hail the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party that seized the reins of government in Delhi after instigating one of the most tragic events in recent Indian history: the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque and the accompanying campaign of violence and hate against Muslim Indians and other minority groups threatening the fundamentalist vision of hindutva. A motley group of desi youth is causing a minor stir on the sidewalk, holding bright placards that scream, as they do at the top of their lungs, "Big Jerks Party!" Other signs protest the nuclear bomb tested by the BJP. Still others proclaim proudly, "Desi Dykes Zindabad" (Long live desi dykes!), and "Inquilaab Zindabad" (loosely, in Hindu/Urdu, long live the struggle!). lnquiluab evokes a
Journal of Asian American Studies, 2000
Journal of Asian American Studies, 2006
Asian American Studies After Critical Mass
... 148 Sunaina Marr Maira ... research on specific groups of immigrant and second-generation you... more ... 148 Sunaina Marr Maira ... research on specific groups of immigrant and second-generation youth, yet most of this work has focused largely on issues and indices of social and economic adaptation of the children of immigrants and on ethnic identity typologies (Portes and Zhou ...
YOUNG, 2004
This article offers an analytic review of US youth culture studies, which is defined as research ... more This article offers an analytic review of US youth culture studies, which is defined as research that recognizes the agency of youth - their meaning-making, cultural productions, and social engagements - in relationship to cultural and political contexts. The article focuses on four selected areas of research that are influential in US youth culture studies: developmental research, the ‘youth crisis’ literature, educational research, and subcultural and cultural studies. The discussion of each of the four areas is focused on one or two major theorists and a particularly illuminating question or problem that speaks to the larger question of how theory, methodology, and national context are intertwined. In conclusion, we attempt to develop a framework of ‘youthscapes’ to provide an analytic and methodological link between youth culture and nationalizing or globalizing processes, using our own research as examples. We envision a youthscape as a way of thinking about youth culture studi...
South Asian Popular Culture, 2010
... students were as bold as Ayesha in challenging the profiling of Muslims and publicly claiming... more ... students were as bold as Ayesha in challenging the profiling of Muslims and publicly claiming a Muslim identity which Ayesha did without ... according to the state's interests in regulating Muslim subjects that support or oppose its policies, as suggested by Mahmood Mamdani22. ...
CR: The New Centennial Review, 2008
I n t r o d u c t i o n : A P e d a g o g y o f E m p i r e An honest, accurate, and open discuss... more I n t r o d u c t i o n : A P e d a g o g y o f E m p i r e An honest, accurate, and open discussion of the history and reality of the vexed Palestine question has long been missing in the U.S. public sphere.
Journal of Popular Music Studies, 2003
Cultural Dynamics, 2007
This article will examine the nature of deportation as a logic that upholds state sovereignty and... more This article will examine the nature of deportation as a logic that upholds state sovereignty and constructions of citizenship through technologies of exclusion, discipline, and `removal'. Regulations of immigrant populations by the state rely on notions of unwanted bodies that contaminate or threaten the national body politic and so must be cleansed from national territory. My research focuses on the impact of post-9/11 policies of surveillance, detention, and deportation of Muslim immigrants that were part of the US state's War on Terror and were bolstered by ideas of protecting `national security' from `internal' and `external' terrorist threats. The paranoia and nativism accompanying this siege mentality overlooks the ways in which deportation is, on the one hand, an economic policy of the neoliberal state that disciplines labor and depresses wages, and on the other, is also a political instrument for repressing movements that oppose US polices at home and ab...
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Displacement... -- Book Reviews by Sunaina Maira
Papers by Sunaina Maira
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The JVC Palestine Portfolio is an incredibly powerful, heartfelt, heart-wrenching, life-affirming and hopeful polyphony of reminiscences, art works, graphic designs, scholarly texts, critical writings, briefings, visual activism, petitions, and mobilisations. Thanks to Sage, it is free to access, and is available to download (and circulate widely, if you’re so inclined) on the Sage site (https://journals.sagepub.com/home/vcu) and here.
The JVC Palestine Portfolio with contributions by: Larissa Sansour, Rashid Khalidi, Mazen Kerbaj, The Mosaic Rooms, Strike MoMA, Ariella Azoulay, Danah Abdulla, Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso, Hanan Toukan, Zeina Maasri, Adrian Lahoud and Jasbir K. Puar, Yoav Galai, Distributed Cognition Cooperative (Anna Engelhardt and Sasha Shestakova), Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Firas Shehadeh, Sami Khatib, Léopold Lambert/The Funambulist, Tina Sherwell, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Rochelle Davis and Dan Walsh, Lina Hakim, Ariel Caine, Nida Sinnokrot/Sakiya, Yara Sharif, Visualizing Palestine, Nada Dalloul, Simone Browne, Rehab Nazzal, Lila Sharif, Oraib Toukan and Mohmoud M Alshaer, Mark Muhannad Ayyash, Omar Kholeif, Oreet Ashery, The Palestinian Museum, Kareem Estefan and Nour Bishouty, Ghaith Hilal Nassar, Adam Broomberg, Kamal Aljafari, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Palestinian Feminist Collective, W.J.T. Mitchell, Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture, Jill H. Casid, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Stephen Sheehi, Susan Greene, Sunaina Maira, and Shourideh C. Molavi and Eyal Weizman.
Preface:
The JVC Palestine Portfolio
Journal of Visual Culture’s Editorial Collective has a longstanding commitment to tracking and analyzing critically the continued unfolding of racialist, colonialist, and jingoistic discourses. The journal often provides a critical space wherein these discourses can be researched and debated so as to redress the social, political, and ethical injustices that continue to plague the world we share. Everything we do in this journal exists under the sign of Stuart Hall’s vital challenge: ‘We must mobilise everything [we] can find in terms of intellectual [and other] resources in order to understand what keeps making the lives we live and the societies we live in profoundly and deeply antihumane in their capacity to live with difference’.
As a Collective, then, we stand in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli settler colonialism and the Apartheid that results from it.
Compelled to respond to the urgency of the moment instigated by the Israeli regime’s actions in Gaza in May and June 2021, which we also acknowledge as a part of the ongoing Nakbah and an extension of official policies of displacement and erasure since 1948, we sent out an email with the subject line: ‘Journal of Visual Culture for Palestine: a call to [name of recipient]’, asking for a favour, for cooperation, for a contribution. The email in full is as follows:
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