A01=Ien Ang
Appadurai 1996a
australia
australian
Australian Cultural Imagination
Australian Multiculturalism
Australian National Identity
australians
Author_Ien Ang
Category=JBCC
Category=JBCC1
Category=JBSL
Category=JHMC
Category=NH
Census
Chinese Communities
Chinese Diaspora
Conferred
Contemporary Society
diaspora
Diasporic Chinese
Diasporic Intellectual
East Timor
Ella Shohat
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
hanson
Hanson 1997a
identity
Indonesian Chinese
Multicultural Australia
national
O R A
Overseas Chinese
pauline
Peranakan Chinese
policy
Pop Stars
Racist Binding
USA
white
White Australia
White Australia Policy
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780415259132
- Weight: 400g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 08 Nov 2001
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this major new book, leading cultural thinker Ien Ang engages with urgent questions of identity in an age of globalisation and diaspora. The starting point for Ang's discussion is the experience of visiting Taiwan. Ang, a person of Chinese descent, born in Indonesia and raised in the Netherlands, found herself "faced with an almost insurmountable difficulty" - surrounded by people who expected her to speak to them in Chinese. She writes: "It was the beginning of an almost decade-long engagement with the predicaments of `Chineseness' in diaspora. In Taiwan I was different because I couldn't speak Chinese; in the West I was different because I looked Chinese". From this autobiographical beginning, Ang goes on to reflect upon tensions between `Asia' and `the West' at a national and global level, and to consider the disparate meanings of `Chineseness' in the contemporary world. She offers a critique of the increasingly aggressive construction of a global Chineseness, and challenges Western tendencies to equate `Chinese' with `Asian' identity. Ang then turns to `the West', exploring the paradox of Australia's identity as a `Western' country in the Asian region, and tracing Australia's uneasy relationship with its Asian neighbours, from the White Australia policy to contemporary multicultural society. Finally, Ang draws together her discussion of `Asia' and `the West' to consider the social and intellectual space of the `in-between', arguing for a theorising not of `difference' but of `togetherness' in contemporary societies.
Ien Ang is Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Institute for Cultural Studies Research at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean. She is the author of a number of books, including Watching Dallas (1985), Desperately Seeking the Audience (1991) and Living Room Wars (1995)
