Multiple Homemaking

The Ethnic Condition in Indian Diaspora Societies

Ruben Gowricharn

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781032046051
• eBook ISBN: 9781000220049
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

1
INTRODUCTION

The issue of immigrant homemaking

Ethnic groups are a specific kind of group, characterised by a common history, racial similarity and common features such as language and religion. Their members are born and raised in the group. Their bonding to the group is thus primarily internally generated, which amounts to saying that it is also primordial. This conception of primordial bonding has a long tradition comprising scholars such as Edward Shils (1957), Clifford Geertz (1971), Steve Fenton (2003) and Murat Bayer (2009). It does not rule out ‘circumstantial-ist’ approaches that account for ethnic bonding as the outcome of external threats or other circumstances, rendering ‘reactive’ ethnicity (Chandra 2012). The circumstantial approach suggests that the ethnicity will fade away when the threat disappears (Cornell and Hartmann 2007). Circumstances may impact on the scale and intensity of the bonding, but chronologically and conceptually a latent ethnicity has to be presupposed. People born and raised in an environment of ‘circumstantial ethnicity’ may become primordial after some time as the ethnicity becomes natural for them.

Most ethnic groups in modern society emerged from immigrants who had to make their home in the host society. This homemaking, which includes a modified reproduction of the ethnic group and a structural and cultural entanglement with the host society and the society of origin, I label the ethnic condition that is typical for ethnic groups in modern society. The ethnic condition, a paraphrase of Hannah Arendt’s human condition (Arendt 1958), refers to ethnic life and identity as typical features of modern life. As a specific type of human condition, it may differ from society to society, but each of the bonds represents a feeling of home as ethnic groups organise their belonging in the newly adopted homeland and keep connected with their parental or ancestral society. Consequently, their homemaking includes ethnogenesis, rooting in the host society and diasporic entanglements. These are pivotal processes that ethnic groups face across the world when making their home in new environments (Clifford 1994; Brubaker 2005; Alexander 2017). The Indian diaspora communities also face the ethnic condition, despite huge differences among them.

The concept of homemaking refers to attachments to places and the reproduction of familiarity and safety. The concept has a long history; however, there is no consensus on its meaning. It has been used in studies on nationalism (Duyvendak 2011), housing (Easthope 2004), material culture (Miller 2001), home possession (Money 2007), social relationships (Compton, Leung and Robles 2018) and memory (Raychaudhuri 2018). Homemaking underscores, as Easthope (2004) pointed out, that everything is ‘emplaced’, that the construction of place intertwines with the search for affective relations, political and economic power, ideas of community, collective memory, individual and group identity, political organisation and capital flows. Concepts such as ‘house’, ‘home’, ‘place’ and ‘space’ are related to ‘feelings’, ‘practice’ and ‘being in the world’. Easthope (2004) claims that a home is safe, relaxed and familiar; it is a haven and a shelter. While some scholars also point out that not every home is associated with safety and familiarity, especially in the case of women and children (Ahmed, Castanada, Fortier and Sheller 2003; Brickell 2012), the consensus is that immigrants, in particular, face the challenge of making a home. Since a vast literature has documented that these groups maintain diaspora relations with their previous home society, it is safe to expect a kind of diasporic homemaking.

The idea of diasporic homemaking is often synonymously used with nostalgia, which is considered a productive force as it fosters creativity or challenges the cultural hegemony of the host society (Blunt 2003; Duyvendak 2011; Raychaudhuri 2018). Nostalgia is described as

the mourning of a home that has been lost in time and space.… When cultural memory leads to particular narratives of home and homeliness, when these narratives can be said to be attempting a reimagining and reconstructing, then these acts of memory can be described as nostalgic.

(Raychaudhuri 2018: 11–12)

One may argue that homemaking comprises material culture, institutionalisation of familiar routines and relations as well as feelings of bonding, which all provide familiarity and safety (Mallett 2004). Nostalgia may be part of this reproduction of the community but it is likely to fade away after one or more generations. That points to the limits of this force as second and later generations also make their own homes.

In a review of transnational studies, Boccagni (2012) argues for a deeper and specific analysis of identifications and senses of belonging of migrant connectedness with their homeland. However, the ethnic condition requires a broader reflection comprising three forms of connectedness that represent three types of homemaking: ethnogenesis, which addresses internal relations; integration in the national realm, which makes the ethnic group part of the new society; and integration in the diaspora communities, which – depending on the history of the ethnic group and the needs of home and host groups – may include the transmission of new culture and material stuff. A brief word about these three forms.

The making of the ethnic group presupposes the development of groupism, a feature that Brubaker (2006: 8) repudiated as the ‘tendency to take discrete, bounded groups as basic constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units of social analysis’. This position has been questioned: ethnic groups may act as a collectivity, either because they are represented by community leaders or because they arrive together at collective judgements (Townsend 2019). Alternatively, they may interact to arrive at a collective judgement (Douglas 1987). In other words, collective action requires groupism and leadership, which is a fundamental precondition for integrating in the national society and in the diaspora community. In this process, societies are imagined (Anderson 1983) and ethnicity is invented (Sollors 1989), as are traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Examples include the global rise of Hindu nationalism known as the ‘Hindutva movement’, which refers to a great Hindu empire in the mythical past (Bhatt and Mukta 2000), and the global dissemination of Bollywood, which has created a new culture in the Indian diaspora, specifically songs, music, dancing and various kinds of social intercourse. Homemaking thus comprises the synthesis of cultural heritage and the invention and creation of local culture. Ethnic homemaking is therefore not a once-and-for-all occurrence: it adapts and develops itself over generations (Gowricharn 2013).

The mode of integration in the host society is a vexed issue. In Western scholarship, integration is considered to be the individual acquisition of citizenship. The main limitation of this approach consists of the ignorance of differences in classes, and the racial and ethnic backgrounds of citizens (Bloemraad 2015; Schinkel 2017; Van Reekum, Duyvendak and Bertossi 2012). Competing concepts, all suggesting similarity, are integration and assimilation. Integration, a term mostly used in Europe, comes down to the normative expectation that immigrants will adopt the lifestyle of the native population (Alba and Nee 2003; Brubaker 2006; Favell 2001). This assimilation occurs by participating in work, sending children to school and participating in institutions of health, politics and housing. Immigrants are considered integrated when they meet the expectations of the native population, specifically when their degree of participation in several domains and public life equals that of the native population.

Schinkel (2017) argues that integration is imagined, driven by the dominant discourse in the receiving society. In Europe, this discourse consists of topics such as culture, sexuality and security, which together define the imagined society into which migrants have to integrate. Schinkel called the discursive themes ‘programmes’ that selectively link issues such as crime, the oppression of women, school dropouts and residential segregation to larger themes such as culture, ethnicity and citizenship (Schinkel 2017: 27). This is a highly refreshing perspective since it makes it clear that integration cannot be conceived properly without taking the prevailing ideology of the host society into account. Rather than suggesting that assimilation is a compelling ‘natural’ requirement for integration and that integration and ethnicity are mutually exclusive (Alba and Foner 2016; Gans 2007), Schinkel argues that integration performances are highly determined by the requirements set out by the host society. For migrant communities to integrate, they should adopt the issues and practices of the receiving society and make their home as a kind of assimilation.

While in Western scholarship the integration of ethnic groups is considered in individual terms, in many plural societies the rooting of ethnic groups occurs as a collective. The success of ethnic communities, notably Indian diaspora communities, presupposes the establishment of ethnic institutions. Group formation and modes of integration, while sometimes being a spontaneous process, require an ethnic ideology and leadership in different domains of life, such as religion, politics and culture. Along with the prevailing conceptions in the host society and the opportunities provided, these forces specify how Indian groups integrate into core institutions of the receiving societies. To that end, the formation of an ethnic group is pivotal for integration into the host society. The organisation of belonging to the newly adopted homeland, which can resist assimilation as well as the dissolution of the group, is hardly considered in Western scholarship (Alba and Nee 2003; Favell 2001; Gans 2007). In most Indian diaspora societies, such a successful groupist integration is observable, whether they are represented by ethnic political parties or not.

Transnational connections are equally vulnerable. Reddy (2016), focusing on societies containing descendants of British-Indian indentured labourers, argued that these communities are Creolised by necessity. While their Indianness assumes different forms, the common thread is that they maintain an ‘Indianness outside India’. While that is a clever observation, Reddy ignores the fact that along with the tendency towards hybridisation, an everlasting tendency exists to retain Indian culture. This culture is acquired and disseminated by diaspora visitors to India and adopted from Bollywood, which comprises movies, songs, music, dresses, language, religion and other traditions. Viewed from a broader perspective, throughout the Indian diaspora items such as food, fashion, language and religion are disseminated (Chatterji and Washbrook 2013; Hedge and Sahoo 2018; Raghuram et al. 2008). Thus, Indian ethnic communities both Creolise and increase their ethnic salience. In addition, it should be taken into account that both India and its image are also changing. So it is quite possible that the identity of overseas Indian communities relates to an imagined India as Reddy argues. That outcome is not compelling, however, since diaspora tourism and the Internet may act as a powerful corrective.

The dissemination of culture not only occurs by means of tourism or commercial distribution, it is also digitally distributed (Elahi 2014; Sahoo and de Kruiff 2014). In most cases of global dissemination, the receivers in the diaspora may adjust the culture to their local needs, which is known as ‘glocalisation’ (Robertson 2012). It not only includes the adoption of a global culture and makes it fit for local use, but it may also refer to a different meaning attached to a commodity or service as well as the creation of a new local culture. These different uses of glocalisation add to the hybridity when integrating into the global ecumene (Hannerz 1996). They do not constitute a retention of old culture since it is new culture, even when it originates in the ancestral homeland since neither diaspora community nor homeland has been frozen in time.

This book argues that the ethnic condition has become a permanent feature of modern society, whether in the Western or developing world. It offers an analysis of the ethnic condition as elucidated by the multiple homemaking practices of two overseas Indian groups and their relations to their homelands. Current conceptualisations of homemaking fall short since they focus on individuals and demonstrate an ignorance of institutional and cultural requirements, groupist ideology, and contextual and historical forces. The present study of overseas Indian groups shows that homemaking presupposes group formation, rooting in a new homeland while creating a new culture, yet retaining bonds with the old homeland (Gowricharn 2013).

In applying this perspective, adopting a historical perspective and employing multiple methods, the book critically engages with the concept of home to develop a new synthetic perspective on the sociology of emigration, glocalisation and ethnicity in contemporary societies. It does so by critiquing and engaging established concepts such as ethnicity, integration and diaspora bonding as well as the overarching concept of homemaking, specifically because the current concepts of homemaking ignore institutional and cultural requirements, notably groupist ideology, political leadership, interracial relations, social networks, technology and transnational flows. All of these concepts are compelling elements in homemaki...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: the issue of immigrant homemaking
• 2 British Indian ethnogenesis: their historical homemaking in the Caribbean
• 3 Ethnicity and political integration: making the political home
• 4 Homemaking by douglarisation?
• 5 Institutional homemaking of Dutch Hindustanis
• 6 Second-generation transnationalism
• 7 Technology, social networks and culture of young Hindustanis
• 8 Shopping in Mumbai: transnational homemaking
• Index