Filling the Hollow: Ethnic Identity as Diasporic Practice

• In Event: 30420 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Racial Identity, Complexities, Hierarchies

Abstract

This article asks how people put ethnic identities into practice, and what consequences their activities have for collective life. Following calls to understand racial identity as active projects of engagement and negotiation, I examine the the roots seeking practices of Chinese Americans to ask how ethnic identities and ideas about “authenticity” are made through social practice, and the kinds of relationships that are built or severed both domestically within the US and transnationally through these practices. To surface these understandings, I draw on 80 life history interviews with self-identified Chinese Americans, as well as 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork at “roots seeking” events, genealogy workshops, and other gatherings aimed at connecting to Chinese identity. Extending on existing research about ethnic identity formation and boundary making, I propose four predominant types of practices through which people “do” ethnicity: consumptive practices, embodied practices, discursive practices, and relational practices. I expand on this typology by arguing that doing ethnicity in the US also requires a continuous process of reflexive interpretation. Even as actors seek belonging and authenticity within ethnic categories and form relationships that undergird ethnic groupness, they narrate ethnic identity as inherently contentious and under construction.

Author

• Charlotte Xue Lian Wang, Columbia University