Social Science

Abstract

Social Science Hung Cam Thai, Chair Committee Members: Pensri Ho, Dina Okamoto [End Page 352] Winner: Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions, edited by Rhacel Parrenas and Lok Siu Honorable Mention: Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities, by Pawan Dhingra Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics, by Angie Y. Chung The Social Science Book Award Committee judged this year’s books on four main criteria: originality, theoretical contribution, methodological soundness, and innovation. Parrenas and Siu masterfully collected a series of original essays, fulfilling these four criteria and demonstrating groundbreaking research in the areas of Asian diasporas and globalization. In doing so, they underscore the ways in which the prevailing “transnational” perspective in Asian American studies has been limited in framing the lives of Asians across the globe. The introduction by the editors, together with original essays by twelve authors focusing on different diasporic approaches, highlights the relationship between contemporary Asian American issues and the post–Cold War “area studies” paradigm that dominates research about displacements of Asian populations; the importance of the “sending” communities in homeland geopolitics on Asian diasporic lives, but not necessarily only in binary terms between “sending” and “receiving” countries that most other social science research has emphasized; the legacy of colonialism in shaping contemporary Asian diasporic communities; and the clarification of the definition of diaspora to involve not only ties between “sending” and “receiving” countries but also connections between different receiving societies. Prior to this book, all claims of “diaspora” studies mistakenly described a mere transnational connection between the United States and the sending country in Asia as “diaspora,” losing sight of the definition of diaspora as referring to the dispersion of one group to multiple destinations. In short, the book reminds us that diaspora involves ties between destinations and not only transnational ties between homeland and hostland, which is an important reminder as the term “diaspora” has come to be loosely thrown around and used to refer to anything transnational. We believe this book advances our thinking on Asian diasporas by building on, but also providing fresh conceptions to, previous groundbreaking works on transnational studies in Asian American studies. [End Page 353] This year’s entries were impressive, making the decision quiet difficult to choose from nearly thirty books. We awarded an honorable mention to two books: Legacies of Struggle, by Angie Y. Chung, and Managing Multicultural Lives, by Pawan Dhingra. Chung examines how two Los Angeles 1.5 and 2nd generation Korean American community organizations have the capacity to bridge the sometimes competing interests of ethnic immigrant elites and mainstream funding institutions for social justice endeavors within an increasingly racially diverse Koreatown. Her book combines theoretically grounded research with a community activist sensibility that harkens back to a major founding principle of Asian American studies, where students and faculty shared a commitment to and engaged in collaborative social justice efforts in and for disenfranchised Asian American communities. Chung provides a compelling example of how such engaged scholarship continues within our discipline. Dhingra’s ethnographic study of Korean American and Indian American professionals in Dallas, Texas, examines the complexities of heterogeneity and multiculturalism through the lens of hybridity. A focus on Asian American professionals foregrounds socioeconomic class status in shaping racial experiences in ways that significantly differ from working-class ethnics. At the same time, his book challenges dominant theoretical frameworks that focus on understanding the adaptation of Asian Americans as either model or marginalized minorities in American society, and instead provides a new understanding of how Korean Americans and Indian Americans navigate challenges to their identities as American, Asian, and ethnic. [End Page 354] Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press