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SYMBOLIC ETHNICITY and the DILEMMAS of DIFFERENCE Talking Indianness with New Zealand-Born Gujaratis

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SYMBOLIC ETHNICITY and the DILEMMAS of DIFFERENCE Talking Indianness with New Zealand-Born Gujaratis SYMBOLIC ETHNICITY AND THE DILEMMAS OF DIFFERENCE Talking Indianness with New Zealand-born Gujaratis Amanda Gilbertson Submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington 2007 Abstract Marcus Banks (1996: 8) argues that the life of ethnicity has been lived out through the writings of academics rather than in the lives of the people they have studied and, indeed, local discourses of ethnicity are remarkably understudied. This thesis takes a step towards addressing the lack of attention given to local discourses of ethnicity by exploring the ways in which sixteen New Zealand-born Gujaratis talked about their Indianness in interviews conducted specifically for this project. Herbert Gans’ (1979) notion of symbolic ethnicity is initially employed as a framework for understanding participants’ narratives. Although this analysis gives an indication of the salience of ethnicity in the lives of my participants, it fails to account for the complex dilemmas of difference they expressed – the definition of ‘Indian culture’ in terms of difference from other ‘cultures’ and the suggestion that they were different from other New Zealanders by virtue of their Indianness. These issues are explained through an exploration of the assumptions about the cultural and the person that were inherent in notions expressed by participants of living in ‘two worlds’ and having to find a balance between them. This analysis suggests that participants constructed both ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ as highly individuated categories. It is argued that these conceptualizations of ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ can be usefully understood in terms of reflexive, or liquid, modernity and reflexive individualism. Under the conditions of late modernity, reflexive – that is, self- directed and self-oriented – thought and activity become idealised and individuals are ideologically cast as the producers of their own biographies. My participants’ discussions of their Indianness can, therefore, be understood to represent a kind of ‘self-reflexive ethnicity’ that is centred on the person rather than on social networks or cultural practices. This mode of ethnicity does not necessarily require the decline of such networks and practices; they are simply reconfigured in terms of personal choice. ii Acknowledgements I have thoroughly enjoyed my thesis year and have many people to thank for their part in it. I would like to thank my participants for so generously sharing their thoughts and experiences with me. Their vivid and insightful comments provided me with a wealth of fascinating material to analyse and are an invaluable part of this thesis. My supervisors, Dr James Urry and Dr Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich, have been fantastic. A huge thank-you for your enthusiasm for my project, engagement with my ideas, incredibly thorough reading of multiple drafts and ready availability in times of ‘crisis’. I am very grateful to the many other academic staff who have shared their time and expertise with me. Particular thanks to Dr Arvind Zodgekar for his help in recruiting participants and to Peter Howland whose encouragement and advice have played a very important role in the development of my ideas. A William Georgetti Scholarship and Victoria University Masters Scholarship provided acknowledgement and generous financial support that were greatly appreciated. Thanks to the postgraduate students and administration staff of the School of Social and Cultural Studies for providing me with such a supportive work environment. A special thanks to Louise Grenside for hunting down bits and pieces of the Youth and Family project for me, and to my office-mates, Arnica and Uwe. Thanks to my family, friends and flatmates for all their encouragement and support. Particular thanks to my mum who read the final draft. Finally, a very special thank-you to Nick and Tamsyn who have patiently put up with my need to share every imaginable detail. Thanks to Tamsyn who has shown enthusiasm for every brainwave and sympathy for every complaint. Thanks to Nick whose constant support, encouragement and provision of much needed distraction have kept me sane and ensured I had a life outside of my thesis. iii Contents Abstract.................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ iii Contents.................................................................................................................. iv Introduction..............................................................................................................1 Research Methodology and Methods.........................................................................................6 A History of Gujaratis in New Zealand and Wellington.......................................................12 Theoretical Framework ..............................................................................................................16 Chapter One: Symbolic Ethnicity ..........................................................................23 The Cultural .................................................................................................................................23 The Social.....................................................................................................................................26 Identity..........................................................................................................................................28 Symbolic Indianness?..................................................................................................................32 Ethnic Options............................................................................................................................34 Concluding Remarks...................................................................................................................43 Chapter Two: Cultural Dilemmas of Difference....................................................45 What Constitutes ‘Culture’? .......................................................................................................49 ‘Culture’ and Everyday Life .......................................................................................................52 ‘Cultures’ and Difference ...........................................................................................................56 Cultural Authenticity...................................................................................................................60 Concluding Remarks...................................................................................................................62 Chapter Three: Individual Dilemmas of Difference..............................................64 The ‘Individual’, the Cultural and the Social...........................................................................64 Agency and Choice .....................................................................................................................67 The ‘Individual’ and Difference................................................................................................74 Concluding Remarks...................................................................................................................80 Chapter Four: Towards a Self-Reflexive Ethnicity ................................................83 The Individual and Society ........................................................................................................84 Agency, Choice and the Reflexive Project of the Self ...........................................................89 Self-Reflexive Ethnicity ..............................................................................................................96 Concluding Remarks...................................................................................................................97 Conclusion............................................................................................................ 100 Appendix .............................................................................................................. 105 Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 107 iv Introduction Being different overshadows the production of difference (Das Gupta 1997: 591). In recent decades considerable academic attention has been given to deconstructing (Banks 1996) and reconstructing (Levine 1999) the elusive notion of ‘ethnicity’. Although the adjective ‘ethnic’ has a long history within the English language (Fenton 2003: 15), it was not until the 1970s that ‘ethnicity’ came to be widely used (Fenton 2003: 1). As a substantial academic industry began to develop around ‘ethnicity’, the term quickly gained wider currency (Urry 1995) to the extent that there can now be little doubt that “the discourse on ethnicity has escaped from the academy and into the field” (Banks 1996: 189). The terminology of ‘ethnicity’ is used in public administration and shapes public policy. New Zealand’s ‘Office of Ethnic Affairs’ exists exclusively for the purposes of managing the affairs of “people
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