Post-Colonial Subjects Negotiating Multiple Identities:

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" Post-Colonial Subjects Negotiating Multiple Identities: "
Asiya Mahmud Parvez Malik S. McKinnon

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	1103784
Doc. No	:	TLpq903792199
Main Entry	:	Asiya Mahmud Parvez Malik
	:	S. McKinnon
Title & Author	:	Post-Colonial Subjects Negotiating Multiple Identities:\ Asiya Mahmud Parvez MalikS. McKinnon
College	:	University of Virginia
Date	:	2011
student score	:	2011
Degree	:	Ph.D.
Page No	:	350
Abstract	:	This dissertation traces the multi-generational, interregional and transnational experiences of Sunni Punjabi migrants who moved from the Indian subcontinent to East Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and then to Canada after the 1970s. In particular, I examine how memories and narratives of the past, situated primarily in British East Africa, continue to shape the identities of migrants and their kinship and marriage practices. I concentrate on two socio-religious organizations in Toronto that have attempted to unite migrants on the basis of sect (Sunni Islam) and provenance (East Africa). This study is situated at the intersection of the historical and contemporary developments within these two associations and the everyday experiences of migrants. This dissertation centers on three main points of investigation. First, I examine how Indian experiences of privilege and struggle or the "politics of the middle" under colonial rule in East Africa serve to unite migrants in Toronto. I unravel how these colonial experiences were not only reconfigured in Canada to counter Euro-Canadian discrimination but also how they were mobilized as markers of cultural differentiation from other communities of Indian ancestry. Second, I show how migrants in Toronto draw on their memories and narratives of the past to recreate community and reaffirm ties of relatedness that were formed between their families in colonial East Africa. I illustrate how boundaries of relatedness and community that are mediated by ethnicity, sect and provenance were also (at least historically) used to define organizational memberships. Finally, I demonstrate the centrality of provenance (East Africa and even Punjab), sect (Sunni Islam) and relatedness in shaping marriage practices. Although these aforementioned desired marriage criteria are not always attained in potential spouses, they nonetheless reveal tensions between generational nostalgia for past ties of relatedness and community and the changing reality of marriage practices among younger generations today. In the latter instance, sectarian unity is increasingly gaining in importance over cultural particularity.
Subject	:	East African Asian
	:	Identity
	:	Islam
	:	Postcolonial
	:	Social sciences
	:	Sunni