“kenats” by Lara Sarkissian: a Political Signature

Research on the Armenian diaspora take a special place in the modern Armenian studies. Approximately 70 per cent of ethnic Armenians live outside the modern Republic of Armenia. Preservation of the Armenian identity within the diaspora is declared as a priority objective. At the same time, the diaspora is perceived as a strategic resource for the development of the Armenian statehood. Meanwhile, there is practically no comprehensive research on this topic. Accordingly, certain myths exist about a unified Armenian diaspora, however, in reality it is more accurate to refer to it as a plethora of Armenian communities in different countries of the world that vary in many ways and are rather fragmented due to their lack of institutionalized unity. This article aims to study the communities of the Armenian diaspora in all their diversity with the objective to reveal the socio-political portrait of these communities. The analysis especially focuses on the institutions within the Armenian diaspora in order to identify their role in the functioning of these communities in general and the preservation of Armenian identity in particular. The main aim is to comprehend the unity between the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian diaspora through examining the place and role of modern Armenian statehood in the models of self-identification of diaspora communities. To this end, the authors study the available literature on the topic, as well as specific empirical material, namely in-depth interviews with experts in the Republic of Armenia and the results of an extensive sociological poll “The Armenian Diaspora Survey” conducted across various communities of the Armenian diaspora. The study concludes that there is a common cultural and linguistic Armenian identity, which does not extend to include civil, political, and – currently – confessional components.

This chapter presents a linguistic ethnographic case study exploring the role of linguistic resources in the institutional organisation of the Armenian diaspora within the Finnish context. Even though the Armenian diasporas across the globe have been extensively studied in various countries, relatively little research has been conducted on linguistic resources employed in the institutional organisation of the Armenian diasporas. In addition, to our knowledge, no single research has focused on the Armenian diaspora residing in Finland or organisational work done at the institutional level within the Finnish context. The study reported here attempts to address these gaps by drawing upon multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, more precisely, participant observations and informal interviews conducted with Armenian volunteers of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) promoting the organisation of the Armenian diaspora at the institutional level in Finland. To do so, we examine the landscape of the Armenian diaspora, which is shaped on the basis of different generations of historical and contemporary Armenian diasporas, who have increasingly diversified backgrounds regarding their migration grounds and legal statuses in addition to their linguistic and socio-economic characteristics. Some activities, events and festivities arranged by the NGO are then described to illustrate organisational work done by the volunteers with the cooperation of individuals, institutions, associations and schools, apart from with the support of the Armenian diaspora based in Finland. Finally, we discuss linguistic resources that are used by the volunteers in organisational work carried out through internal and external communication within the offline and online contexts. Overall, the study findings indicate that the volunteers of the NGO make use of different linguistic repertoires in organisational work as not all the Armenian diaspora members master Armenian, which is the shared main language for the majority of them. The study, thus, confirms that linguistic, especially multilingual, resources promote the institutional organisation of the Armenian diaspora since linguistic diversity is commonplace among the diaspora members. This chapter contributes to understanding of how the diaspora can be organised at the institutional level through multiple linguistic resources that provides new insights into diaspora communities with little or no common language.

ABSTRACTThe article examines and compares the institutional structures of Armenian diasporas of Russia and Lebanon with the intention of identifying factors that could explain the diverging outcomes in institution building and identity preservation in these communities. The study also aims to contribute to the current understanding of how different diasporic communities of the same diaspora can have discrepancies in terms of their characteristics, institutional structures and policy outcomes. Based on the existing theoretical literature, the article explores the main factors that influence the characteristics of particular communities, including discussion of conditions in the hostland, the origins of community as well as the level of institutionalization of diasporic organizations. The article also explains the role of each of these factors and triangulates them with the results of in-depth interviews conducted with the representatives all core diasporic institutions in both countries. Concentrating on the characteristics of existing diasporic institutions, the article emphasizes the importance of interconnection and cooperation of those institutions in implementation of strategies and practices of identity preservation in the diaspora. The existing literature on the Armenian diaspora tends to either portray it as a homogenous entity or concentrate on case studies, that is, communities and subgroups. Hence, comparative studies of different communities within a single diaspora are understudied.

If diaspora communities are socialized with democratic values in Western societies, they could be expected to be sympathetic to the democratization of their home countries. However, there is a high degree of variation in their behavior. Contrary to the predominant understanding in the literature that diasporas act in exclusively nationalist ways, this article argues that they do engage with the democratization of their home countries. Various challenges to the sovereignty of their homelands explain whether diasporas involve with procedural or liberal aspects of democratization. Drawing evidence from the activities of the Ukrainian, Serbian, Albanian and Armenian diasporas after the end of communism, I argue that unless diasporas are linked to home countries that enjoy both international legal and domestic sovereignty, they will involve only with procedural aspects of democratization. Diasporas filter international pressure to democratize post-communist societies by utilizing democratic procedures to advance unresolved nationalist goals.

Armenian (or , /hɑjeˈɾen/, ISO 639-1 hy) comprises an independent branch of the Indo-European language family.1 Its earliest attested ancestor is Classical Armenian in the fifth century CE (see Godel 1975; Thomson 1989; DeLisi 2015; Macak 2016). Modern Armenian is classified into two dialect families: Eastern Armenian (ISO 639-3 hye) and Western Armenian (ISO 639-3 hyw). Eastern Armenian is spoken in modern-day Armenia, and large speaker communities also exist in Georgia, Russia and Iran (shown in Figure 1). Western Armenian was historically spoken in the Ottoman Empire, but now includes varieties spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas (Donabédian 2018). There are substantial Western Armenian speaker communities in Turkey (Istanbul), Lebanon (Beirut), Syria (Aleppo, Damascus), California (Fresno, Los Angeles County), France (Marseilles), Australia (Sydney) and Argentina (Buenos Aires). There are also recent diaspora communities of Eastern Armenian speakers in California (Karapetian 2014), as well as communities of Western Armenian speakers in Armenia who escaped the Armenian genocide during World War I, who repatriated after World War II, or who fled the ongoing Syrian civil war. UNESCO lists Western Armenian as an endangered language in Turkey, and there are significant language promotion efforts in many diaspora communities that are intended to combat declining use by speaker generations born in the Americas and Europe (Al-Bataineh 2015; Chahinian & Bakalian 2016).

Diasporas in Modem Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return William Safran University of Colorado, Boulder 1. Minorities, Aliens, and Diasporas: The Conceptual Problem In most scholarly discussions of ethnic communities, immigrants, and aliens, and in most treatments of relationships between minorities and majorities, little if any attention has been devoted to diasporas. In the most widely read books on nationalism and ethnonationalism,1 the phenomenon is not considered worthy ofdiscussion, let alone index entries. This omission is not surprising, for through the ages, the Diaspora had a very specific meaning: the exile of the Jews from their historic homeland and their dispersion throughout many lands, signifying as well the oppression and moral degradation implied by that dispersion. But a unique phenomenon is not very useful for social scientists attempting to make generalizations. Today, "diaspora" and, more specifically, "diaspora community" seem increasingly to be used as metaphoric designations for several categories of people— expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien residents, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities tout court—in much the same way that "ghetto " has come to designate all kinds of crowded, constricted, and disprivileged urban environments, and "holocaust" has come to be applied to all kinds of mass murder. Basing their studies on a fairly broad working definition of diaspora such as that of Walker Connor, "that segment of a people living outside the homeland" (16), scholars have applied the term to Cubans and Mexicans in the United States, Pakistanis in Britain, Maghrebis in France, Turks in Germany, Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, Greek and Polish minorities , Palestinian Arabs, blacks in North America and the Caribbean, Indians and Armenians in various countries, Corsicans in Marseilles, and even Flemish-speaking Belgians living in communal enclaves in Wallonia. Lest the term lose all meaning, I suggest that Connor's definition be extended and that the concept of diaspora be applied to expatriate minority communities whose members share several ofthe following characteristics: 1) they, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from a specific original "center" to two or more "peripheral," or foreign, regions; 2) they retain a collective memory, vision, or myth about their original homeland—its physical location , history, and achievements; 3) they believe that they are not—and perhaps cannot be—fully accepted by their host society and therefore feel partly alienated and insulated from it; 4) they regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal home and as the place to which they or their descendants would (or should) eventually return—when conditions are ap- Diaspora Spring 1991 propriate; 5) they believe that they should, collectively, be committed to the maintenance or restoration of their original homeland and to its safety and prosperity; and 6) they continue to relate, personally or vicariously, to that homeland in one way or another, and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity are importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship . In terms ofthat definition, we may legitimately speak ofthe Armenian , Maghrebi, Turkish, Palestinian, Cuban, Greek, and perhaps Chinese diasporas at present and ofthe Polish diaspora ofthe past, although none of them fully conforms to the "ideal type" of the Jewish Diaspora. 2. Diasporas in Comparison The Armenian diaspora condition resembles that of the Jews most closely . Armenian ethnicity and the solidarity of the Armenian community are based on a common religion and language, a collective memory of national independence in a circumscribed territory, and a remembrance of betrayal, persecution, and genocide. Like the majority ofJews, most Armenians live outside the ancestral homeland and have developed several external centers of religion and culture. Like Jews, Armenians have performed a middleman function in the host societies among which they lived; they have been high achievers, have been prominent in trade and commerce, and have made contributions to the science, culture, and modernization of the host society. They have had a clear orientation toward their community but have not chosen to live in ghettos. The fostering of the Armenian language has been important, but this has not prevented Armenians from being fully immersed in the language and culture of the host society. The church has played an important role in maintaining Armenian ethnicity, although there are two competing administrative centers of the Armenian church (with different degrees...

This chapter explores Turkey’s diaspora engagement politics concerning the Turkish and Armenian diaspora communities during the rule of the Justice and Development Party and aims to show the specific strategies and discourses employed by the Turkish state to engage with these two communities. In line with this purpose, the chapter discusses how the Turkish population abroad has come to be recognised as a politically significant category of practice and constructed as a diasporic community by the Turkish state. It also concentrates on how the diaspora-making of the Turkish community is planned to become a counterforce against the Armenian diaspora through state-sanctioned institutions.

The article examines the Armenian press published by the Armenian diaspora in Iran. Due to various historical factors, Armenians have settled in different countries worldwide, forming diaspora communities. The Armenian community in Iran constitutes a significant part of this diaspora and is recognized as an important center for Armenian printing outside the homeland. According to relevant encyclopedic sources, over eighty Armenian periodicals are currently published in Iran. The Armenian press in Iran is regarded as an integral component of the printed heritage of the Armenian diaspora.

The 1915-1918 Genocide unleashed a literary frenzy in Armenian communities in diaspora. It generated not only literary writing expressive of the urgency of the Armenian plight but also heated debates about the purpose, function and direction of Armenian literature, especially in the crucial period of 1919-1928. This thesis brings under scrutiny the discussions of Armenian literature in this crucial period - the formative years of post-Genocide Armenian diaspora in France, Egypt, and the USA. More importantly, it explores the role of literature and literary criticism in the formation of the Armenian cultural identity. The debates on the future of Armenian literature is found primarily in the printed press of the diaspora. Literary critical materials were mainly published in the form of articles in this printed press in the Western Armenian language, the official language of post-Genocide Armenian diaspora. The focus of this thesis is understandably on materials appearing in the post-Genocide Armenian printed press during the years 1919-1928, in Cairo, Paris, Boston and New York, which are the main sites towards which Armenians in general and writers and intellectuals in particular gravitated in the post-Genocide exodus from Ottoman Turkey, including former Armenian cultural centres, such as Constantinople and Smyrna. This thesis, in seven chapters, provides a picture the cultural, political and intellectual topography of the post-Genocide Armenian diaspora. It gives an account of the resilience of the people of culture in the aftermath of the Genocide, when concerted efforts were made in the reorganisation of the cultural and educational life, in order to maintain the Armenian identity. It then discusses the different perceptions of literature by Armenian literary critics in the context of post-Genocide struggle for survival. This is intended to demonstrate the ways in which literature was mobilised for the struggle for survival and the building of community. Literature was not only an aesthetic enterprise but also a social and political institution, a potent tool in achieving social and political unity leading to the coherence and maintenance of Armenian cultural identity. It finally discusses the ways in which critics looked at the future direction of Armenian literature of the diaspora. Debates among the critics at the time, such as Kourken Mkhitarian, Peniamin Tashian, Nigoghos Sarafian, Garo Sasouni, Hrand Palouyian and others, focused on the feasibility of promoting Armenian ethnic values in literature outside homeland. These debates, it may be argued, comprised two strands of thought. One viewed literatiu-e as an important tool of preservation of the Armenian cultural identity in diaspora from nationalist perspective. The proponents of this trend were senior writers, such as Garo Sasouni and Kourken Mkhitarian. And the other, headed by a new generation of writers, such as Nigoghos Sarafian and Hrand Palouyian, advocated an innovative approach to literature. It promoted the idea of hybridisation of Armenian literature with other literatures. These two trends would become the two dominant schools of Armenian literary criticism from 1928 until today.

Though not widely known, Armenian literature is a body of work that goes back hundreds of years. Kevork Bardakjian, a scholar recognized for his expertise in Armenian literary culture, brings his knowledge of that corpus to fill a major gap in our understanding of this tradition. This massive volume offers a comprehensive guide to Armenian writers and literature spanning five centuries. Combining features of a reference work, bibliographic guide, and literary history, it records the output of almost four hundred authors who wrote both in Armenia and in tim communities of Armenian diaspora.

This chapter traces the political and economic factors that rendered Armenians key to tsarist imperialism. It focuses particularly on Russia's conquest of Eastern Armenia during the Second Russo-Persian War, on the Lazarev family of entrepreneurs, and on the inconsistent economic policies that governed the commerce of Armenians in several southern Russian regions. The chapter also explores the contingent objectives of an imperial project aimed toward distinct communities of the Armenian diaspora. It illustrates impoverished immigrants from the Ottoman and Persian empires, established merchants in southern Russia, and elite families aspiring for social and political prominence in St. Petersburg and Moscow. It also analyzes how the autocracy both recruited and distrusted Armenians from abroad and promoted and restrained the commerce of Armenians already settled in southern Russian cities.

In this testimonial, the electronic music producer Eomac describes how his sampling strategy has changed over time. Starting out as a young producer, he used any sound available. Temporary ending as an experienced musician, he is confronted by complex ethical questions. Today, when using foreign sounds, Eomac emphasizes the intent behind as key.

The institutional structure of the Armenian community in Syria includes organizations, unions and associations the majority of which were established during the first years of the formation of the community, while some of them – even earlier. They can be divided into the following types based on the spheres of activity: political (Armenian parties), religious (Armenian churches), cultural and educational (Armenian schools, cultural, youth and sport associations and unions) and benevolent ones. They have played a huge role throughout the history of formation and development of the Armenian community in Syria. First, they helped maintain the intra-community life and connectivity. Second, they have been crucial for the preservation of the unique ethnic and cultural identity of Syrian Armenians that includes both Syrian and Armenian components. Third, community institutions (primarily Armenian churches) provide channels for building and sustaining community’s relations with the Syrian state and society. Moreover, they also serve as a channel that connects the community with the Republic of Armenian (considered as a part of the historical motherland by Syrian Armenians) and with the network of Armenian diaspora communities around the world. Following the outbreak of the conflict in Syria the importance of the Armenian community institutions has grown increasingly. Their main focus has become providing security of the community and giving assistance to Syrian Armenians. This can be considered as the main factor that contributed to the preservation of the community. At the same time normal functioning of Armenian community organizations will affect the issues considering the prospects for its recovery.

The centenary of the genocide of the Ottoman Armenians was commemorated in 2015 by the worldwide Armenian diaspora community, as well as within Armenia itself. This chapter critically examines the ways in which the memory of the genocide of the Armenians has been framed in terms of race, with Western observers from 1915 on applying racialized discourses to the Ottomans and the events of the Armenian genocide. The chapter considers the evolution of notions of “racial extermination” and racial incompatibility and incommensurability in the era of imperialism prior to and during the First World War, and draws attention to the nexus between imperial revisionism, global politics, and genocidal racial violence. Finally, the chapter considers the links between the Armenian genocide and the genocidal politics of the Nazi regime.

In this chapter I look at the “Great Diaspora” immediately after the genocide and how the demographics of both the Armenian Diaspora community in London and the Netherlands is built. I look at the differences but also the commonalities, which have a lot of consequences as we will see in later chapters. We will look at where Armenians went during the initial Diaspora and how we can decipher first waves of immigrants and second and third waves of immigrants: immigrants that did not directly flee the Armenian genocide but the host country they fled to in the Great Diaspora. In this sense the Armenians are an invisible minority group.