Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement. Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff. Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 275 pp.
Digital Diasporas is a highly readable, provocative, and groundbreaking study of five diasporas in the United States: Afghan-Americans, Egyptian Copt-Americans, Tibetan-Americans, Somali-Americans, and Nepali-Americans.
To study these groups in the United States, author Jennifer Brinkerhoff, an associate professor of public administration and international affairs at George Washington University, monitored the online communication exchanges within these groups and back to their homelands. The question she asks is a poignant and apt one: “How do communities of migrants become diaspora communities and yet maintain identities that sustain at least psychological links to the homeland?”
Diasporas are not new to human history, but they are emerging with a vengeance and an accessibility through the Internet. Brinkerhoff’s study deals with typical discussion topics, popular themes, and models of communication reply, and includes numerous examples. Brinkerhoff points out that information technology generates several types of community, among which is virtual community that is congruent with physical community and community that overlaps physical community. There is a third community completely distinct from physical community. It is difficult to disagree with this observation: “The Internet is an invaluable asset to diaspora well-being.” She continues, “It holds significant potential to relieve identity stress and build the bonding and bridging social capital necessary for psychological health among diasporans.” Don’t these observations apply to all of us?
The experiences of these diaspora communities, with their emotional tugs to their nations of origin, reflect, again, the American experience, which is a continuing, centuries-long story of immigrants flocking to the United States in search of religious and personal freedoms, and economic opportunities, while remembering home, wherever that is/was. At the same time, especially in the first generation, identification with the home country remains powerful.
Previous immigrant groups—whether Irish, Italian, German, or others—have maintained identity through language, clearly identifiable communities within larger American cities, through their own restaurants, music, and letters, and, sometimes, visits “home.” Flags, festivals, cuisine, and music are the most visible signs of the enduring bonds to the “old country.” We know that African Americans, even in slavery, preserved distinct fragments of their cultural roots, evident right up to the present.
The Internet is transforming the American immigrant experience, allowing instantaneous communication and the exchange of e-mails, photos, and videos with those left behind. The effects this will have are only starting to become evident, and will be nested within the wider online communities being created. Brinkerhoff’s book is a significant full-length scholarly study of this phenomenon
What is fascinating about this book is not just what the author finds about these five communities, but the gradual awareness to the reader that many other groups may follow the same patterns. That is, groups self-identify and locate one another around political, social, and cultural topics, not homeland or adjustment issues. This book does not talk much about the many other kinds of communities, but you can’t help but keep the other kinds of communities in mind as you read about these five sampled communities.
The author provides this chapter: “A New Avenue for Peace and Prosperity?” Perhaps so. This book also includes a chapter in which the diasporas search for ways to help their homeland. Brinkerhoff also argues that the connections forged online diminish security concerns in both the new and the old homes of diasporans.
This research calls out persuasively for more such scholarly investigations. The word “diaspora” descends from the Greek in Deuteronomy 28:25, and was first applied to the Jews. The Jews’ melancholy lament at the conclusion of the Passover Seder—“Next Year in Jerusalem”—captures the longing and links that many diasporas feel about the lands of their birth.
Digital Diasporas is an impressive and sophisticated contribution to the scholarly literature. Scholars and students will find this carefully planned and documented study heuristically rewarding. In a way, this study is about all of us as we negotiate modern life, sitting amidst the media that embrace us. We communicate with our self-selected friends. We plan, we plot. We spend a lot of time in our… well, in a way, our diasporas.
DONALD L. SHAW
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
THOMAS C. TERRY
Idaho State University