|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
'Chinatowns' are familiar places in almost all major cities in the
world. In popular Western wisdom, the restaurants, pagodas, and red
lanterns are intrinsically equated with a self-contained, immigrant
Chinese district, an alien enclave of 'the East' in 'the West'. By
the 1980s, when these Western societies had largely given up their
racially discriminatory immigration policies and opened up to Asian
immigration, the dominant conception of Chinatown was no longer
that of an abject ethnic ghetto: rather, Chinatown was now seen as
a positive expression of multicultural heritage and difference. By
the early 21st century, however, these spatial and cultural
constructions of Chinatown as an 'other' space - whether negative
or positive - have been thoroughly destabilised by the impacts of
accelerating globalisation and transnational migration. This book
provides a timely and much-needed paradigm shift in this regard,
through an in-depth case study of Sydney's Chinatown. It speaks to
the growing multilateral connections that link Australia and Asia
(and especially China) together; not just economically, but also
socially and culturally, as a consequence of increasing
transnational flows of people, money, ideas and things. Further,
the book elicits a particular sense of a placein Sydney's
Chinatown: that of an inte-connected world in which Western and
Asian realms inhabit each other, and in which the orientalist
legacy is being reconfigured in new deployments and more complex
delimitations.. As such, Chinatown Unbound engages with, and
contributes to making sense of, the epochal shift in the global
balance of power towards Asia, especially China.
'Chinatowns' are familiar places in almost all major cities in the
world. In popular Western wisdom, the restaurants, pagodas, and red
lanterns are intrinsically equated with a self-contained, immigrant
Chinese district, an alien enclave of 'the East' in 'the West'. By
the 1980s, when these Western societies had largely given up their
racially discriminatory immigration policies and opened up to Asian
immigration, the dominant conception of Chinatown was no longer
that of an abject ethnic ghetto: rather, Chinatown was now seen as
a positive expression of multicultural heritage and difference. By
the early 21st century, however, these spatial and cultural
constructions of Chinatown as an 'other' space - whether negative
or positive - have been thoroughly destabilised by the impacts of
accelerating globalisation and transnational migration. This book
provides a timely and much-needed paradigm shift in this regard,
through an in-depth case study of Sydney's Chinatown. It speaks to
the growing multilateral connections that link Australia and Asia
(and especially China) together; not just economically, but also
socially and culturally, as a consequence of increasing
transnational flows of people, money, ideas and things. Further,
the book elicits a particular sense of a place in Sydney's
Chinatown: that of an interconnected world in which Western and
Asian realms inhabit each other, and in which the orientalist
legacy is being reconfigured in new deployments and more complex
delimitations. As such, Chinatown Unbound engages with, and
contributes to making sense of, the epochal shift in the global
balance of power towards Asia, especially China.
|
|