Diasporic Chinese Voluntary Associations in Transition

Ethnicity, Gender and Community (Re)making in the Asia Pacific

Ningning Chen, Emily Hertzman, Sylvia Ang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040318867
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

Recent studies of Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs) have attempted to highlight the theoretical significance of CVAs for understandings of community (re)making. However, the power dynamics inherent in community (re)making have rarely been expounded. In recognition of this, this book weaves together case studies across countries in the Asia Pacific to explore the complex power relations played out in and through the transformation of CVAs. Collectively, CVAs are understood as ever-changing, heterogeneous ancestral communities composed of common ancestral ties, be it origin, locality, surname, religion or language. Contributions to this book focus on CVAs in three ways: (1) by foregrounding CVAs as sites of power relations through unpacking ethnic relations and gender hierarchies; (2) by illuminating Chinese diaspora transnationalism beyond political-economic perspectives; and (3) by examining the contemporaneous transformation of ethnic Chinese communities in shifting times, including amidst China's 'rise' as a global power. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Chinese Voluntary Associations in the Diaspora: Ethnicity, Gender and the (Re)making of Ancestral Communities
• 1 From Survivalism to Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Transformations of A Chinese Voluntary Association in New Zealand
• 2 Sometimes “Us”, Other Times “Others”: Identity Politics within Chinese Voluntary Associations in Australia
• 3 Negotiating Chineseness in an Age of China’s ‘rise’: Younger Diaspora’s Engagement with Chinese Voluntary Associations in Singapore
• 4 Chinese Indonesian Hometown Associations in Singkawang: A Sentimental Construction of Kampung Halaman
• 5 Between National Identity and Transnational Connections: The Case of a Chinese Temple in Brunei Darussalam
• 6 Confluences and Contestations: Gender Politics, Grassroots Buddhism and Chinese Voluntary Associations, 1920s–1970s
• 7 “Girls Doing a Big Job” in Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Minority and Making Modern Chinese Women Associations in White Australia
• 8 Performative Filiality and Chinese Voluntary Associations in Transnational Commemoration of the Second World War
• 9 The Chee Kung Tong: A Voluntary Sworn Brotherhood Across the Cantonese World
• Index