Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism (Chinese Worlds)

Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism explores the ever-changing personal and cultural identity of Chinese migrants and the diverse cosmopolitan communities they create. Within these communities migrants face a fight between departure and destination cultures. This book considers the consequences of this conflict of identity and the numerous possible outcomes from cultural assimilation to the emergence of mutually developed hybrid cultures. Using extensive case study material, various models of newly-forged communities are examined. The book analyses the individual’s place in society, as well as the conflict between personal ethnic identity and migration, integration and cultural conversion. Chan highlights the point that communities are not homogeneous but composed of an array of motives, aims and degrees of receptivity. Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism emphasises the changing face of Chinese ethnicity. Drawing on extensive experience and knowledge in the field, Chan delivers a fresh, fascinating and ultimately very human analysis of migration, culture, identity and the self. Chan Kwok-bun is Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology and Director of the David C.Lam Institute for East-West Studies at the Hong Kong Baptist University.

Chinese Worlds Chinese Worlds publishes high-quality scholarship, research monographs, and source collections on Chinese history and society. ‘Worlds’ signals the diversity of China, the cycles of unity and division through which China’s modern history has passed and recent research trends towards regional studies and local issues. It also signals that Chineseness is not contained within borders—ethnic migrant communities overseas are also ‘Chinese worlds’. The series editors are Gregor Benton, Flemming Christiansen, Delia Davin, Terence Gomez and Frank Pieke. The Literary Fields of Twentieth-Century China Edited by Michel Hockx Chinese Business in Malaysia Accumulation, ascendance, accommodation Edmund Terence Gomez Internal and International Migration Chinese perspectives Edited by Frank N.Pieke and Hein Mallee Village Inc. Chinese rural society in the 1990s Edited by Flemming Christiansen and Zhang Junzuo Chen Duxiu’s Last Articles and Letters, 1937–1942 Edited and translated by Gregor Benton Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas Edited by Lynn Pan New Fourth Army Communist resistance along the Yangtze and the Huai, 1938–1941 Gregor Benton A Road is Made Communism in Shanghai, 1920–1927 Steve Smith

The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927 Alexander Pantsov Chinas Unlimited Gregory Lee Friend of China—The Myth of Rewi Alley Anne-Marie Brady Birth Control in China, 1949–2000 Population policy and demographic development Thomas Scharping Chinatown, Europe An exploration of overseas Chinese identity in the 1990s Flemming Christiansen Financing China’s Rural Enterprises Jun Li Confucian Capitalism Souchou Yao Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882–1941 Kedah and Penang Wu Xiao An Chinese Enterprise, Transnationalism and Identity Edited by Edmund Terence Gomez and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao Diasporic Chinese Ventures The life and work of Wang Gungwu Gregor Benton and Hong Liu Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949 Leaders, heroes and sophisticates Hung-yok Ip Migration, Ethnic Relations and Chinese Business Chan Kwok-bun Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism Chan Kwok-bun

Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism Chan Kwok-bun

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2005 Chan Kwok-bun All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-02953-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-36929-0 (Print Edition)

To my family, Kate, Nin and Yoan

Contents Acknowledgements

x

Preface

xii

Foreword

xv

Prologue

1

1 Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

14

2 Civic identity and ethnicity

34

3 The migrant family drama

60

4 The ethnicity paradox of immigrants

77

5 One face, many masks

88

6 Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan

110

Epilogue

122

Notes

132

Bibliography

142

Index

153

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Gregor Benton, editor of the Chinese Worlds series, for asking me in 2000 to write this book. I would also like to thank Herbert Tsang, Stephanie Rogers, Terence Gomez, Vivienne Luk, Heather Hynd, April Chia, Pam Summa, Karamjit Sandhu Kaur, Anna Lo, Christie Tang, Nicole Lee, Jennifer Law, Carmen Lau and Karen Lau for their help in bringing this book out. The David C.Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI) of the Hong Kong Baptist University has provided me with a grant during the book’s revision and editing stage. The prologue is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (eds.) Conceiving Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) under the title ‘Both Sides, Now: Culture Contact, Hybridization, and Cosmopolitanism’, pp. 191–208. It is reproduced in this book with the kind permission of Oxford University Press. Chapter 1 is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in International Migration Review, 1993, vol. xxvii, no. 1, pp. 140–68, under the title ‘Rethinking assimilation and ethnicity: the Chinese of Thailand’. Co-authored with Tong Chee-kiong, it is reproduced in this book with the kind permission of the Centre For Migration Studies of New York. Chapter 2 is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in Tong Cheekiong and Chan Kwok-bun (eds.) Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand (Singapore: Times Academic Press; and Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001), pp. 227–70, under the title ‘Wang Thong: civic identity and Chinese ethnicity in a Thai market town’. Co-authored with P.Tarkulwaranont and Tong Chee-kiong, it is reproduced in this book with the kind permission of Times Academic Press and Brill Academic Publishers. Chapter 3 is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 2003, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 171–200, under the title ‘Migrant family drama re-visited: a study of the Mainland Chinese immigrants in Singapore’. Co-authored with Seet Chia Sing, it is reproduced in this book with the kind permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Chapter 4 is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in Ronald Skeldon (ed.) Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese (Armonk: M.E.Sharpe, 1994), pp. 308–21, under the title ‘The ethnicity paradox: Hong Kong immigrants in Singapore’. It is reproduced in this book with the kind permission of M.E.Sharpe, Inc. Chapter 5 is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 361–89, under the title ‘One face, many masks: the singularity and plurality of Chinese identity’. Co-authored with Tong Chee-kiong, it is reproduced with the kind permission of the University of Toronto Press.

Chapter 6 is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1997, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 195–214, under the title ‘A family affair: migration, dispersal, and the emergent identity of the Chinese Ccosmopolitan’. It is reproduced in this book with the kind permission of the University of Toronto Press. The epilogue is a revised version of an essay that first appeared in John Rex and Gurharpal Singh (eds.) Governance in Multicultural Societies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 227–44, under the title ‘From multiculturalism to hybridity: the Chinese in Canada’. It is reproduced in this book with the kind permission of Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Preface This book is a compilation of ten years of sociological research on migrants, immigrants and migration. The chapters form a diary of my intellectual life, a sort of ‘sociological autobiography’, to borrow a concept from Robert Merton (1988), and even, in some ways, of my psychological reality as it evolves. I was born a refugee. I was born in 1950 when my family, along with hundreds of thousands of other Chinese people, was making its way from China to Hong Kong. My father, a self-made man and a landlord in his village, lost everything practically overnight. As a child growing up in Hong Kong, I experienced poverty, but not refugeehood in the sense of feeling myself to be far from ‘home’ and an outsider in society subject to discrimination and hostility, probably because there were so many others like us in Hong Kong. Also, my family had remained intact. In 1969,1 left Hong Kong and went to Canada to study. While I was a university student in Canada, I did not spend much time thinking about the life of a ‘stranger’ and his encounters with society. I was interested in sociological theory, social thought and philosophy, on the one hand, and literature, drama and creative writing on the other—or, to put it another way, ideas and emotions and their role in human conduct and society. My interest was abstract and theoretical. The more tangible aspect of it was simply that I wanted to acquire the tools of my trade, to learn the theories and ideas that would help me become a sociologist. As a foreign student in a cold, unfamiliar, faraway land, who lived among other Chinese students in a kind of ghetto, I led a stranger’s life. But I was not aware of it at the time, and I was certainly not interested in examining the plight of the stranger in an intellectual way. I cannot recall having written, as a student, a single essay even remotely related to the subject, although classical sociologists have written much about alienation, anomie, self-estrangement and exploitation (by the self and others). Simmel’s (1908) classic essay ‘The stranger’, Schuetz’s (1943) essay of the same title and the works of Park (1928) and Stonequist (1937) on the marginal man were not part of my reading then. As a student in Canada, I was not bothered by my marginal status. You cannot be upset by what is outside your consciousness. This book consists of nine chapters (including this preface) on identity and ethnicity, concerning the Chinese in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada. Such analyses of identity and ethnicity are central to sociology; they required me to rethink many of my former ideas about identity and the self. I discovered that there was a new kind of migrant, one who ‘made up’ a way of life out of moving between a place of departure and a place of arrival, who built and maintained ties in both places and who set the stage for transnationality and cosmopolitanism. Travelling in a global circuit, such migrants negotiate political, geographic, social and psychological borders, exploiting the resources of both places. At the same time, their very existence poses serious questions about such old concepts as ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’. I also found that contemporary migrants do not necessarily have to choose between the two classical options that

sociology has presented them with for decades—either rigidly adhering to past traditions and becoming ossified, or assimilating and losing themselves in the new culture of the host society. Instead, many migrants have managed to hang on to both cultures—that of departure and that of arrival—and alternate between them. Some migrants have gone even further, transforming their biculturality or sense of a double identity into cosmopolitanism. In the prologue of this book, I ask a question that has intrigued sociologists and anthropologists for decades: what happens when strangers meet? I outlined several possibilities, each one representing a particular way of theorising identity and its relation to the self and the other. Identity is an elusive thing. It has a knack of transforming and slipping away, even as the sociologists think that they have grasped it. Despite this slipperiness, I find the possibility of identity renewing and re-inventing itself to be exciting. I return to this excitement in the epilogue, with a critique of multiculturalism, a popular idea then and now, and a theory of inner hybridity. Although this inner hybridity initially creates turmoil within the individual, the psychological entanglement of what is familiar and what is different, of self and other, may give birth to something fluid, something new. Its very fluidity, its flow—its ability to cross boundaries, break apart and then re-integrate—is positive, a sign of hope in a world that seems profoundly divided by uncrossable boundaries, into opposing camps of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Despite the dark side of being a stranger, and despite the sense of personal marginality that may always be the stranger’s fate, the beginnings of hybridisation in new migrants seem to offer a solution to the dangers of polarity, to suggest a way out and a way forward. If ethnic persistence on the one hand and assimilation on the other represent two options to the ethnic person, then ethnic Chinese overseas are faced with a dilemma. As it happens, the dilemma turns out to be more apparent than real upon a discovery of the complexity of ‘the Chinese problem’ in the contemporary era—and perhaps of most instances of ethnic group relations. What has emerged is a third idea, a third image of the Chinese, a third ethnicity, which is a product of structural and cultural integration. Born out of an intellectual heritage that speaks vehemently of pluralism and a variety of multiculturalisms, this third wave stresses the multiple faces of ethnicity. In contemporary Thailand, Canada, Singapore and different parts of South-east Asia, there are many ways of being Chinese and, for that matter, of being a citizen in one’s adopted land. Several core concepts inform this third wave, this third ethnicity. First is the discovery of one’s multiple rootedness; this conjures up an image of plurality, not singularity. A related concept is that of hybridity born out of multiple rootedness and consciousness. Ethnic actors are forever mixing and mixed, forever crossing, traversing and translating linguistically, culturally and psychically. They are not either/or, but both. Being Thai, Canadian, Singaporean or South-east Asian interacts with being Chinese. The third concept, that of positionality, is ‘enabled’ by the first two. Because of their plural consciousness and hybridity, to ethnic actors, identity is about positioning. Their ethnic competence is in what Berger (1986:68) calls alternation, which is ‘the possibility to choose between varying and sometimes contradictory systems of meaning’. In alternating their identities, the ethnic Chinese person develops ‘the perception of oneself in front of an infinite series of mirrors, each one transforming one’s image in a different conversion’ (Berger 1986:77). A Chinese person thus has as many selves or faces as the number of mirrors that he cares to look into.

Identity is a slippery thing. It is elusive, hard for the theorist to pin down; it is complex and multifaceted because it is sometimes displayed depending on the nature of the audience. As such, the form or style of identity as intended by the ethnic actor should be as interesting as its substance. As a personality type, cosmopolitans interest me a great deal. For them, home is where they hang their hat. The compression of time and places in a post-modern world lands them inadvertently in a multiplicity of circumstances. Adaptability and pragmatism is their ticket to survival. Before the theorists get too carried away with the romance of cosmopolitans, they are best reminded that, while such a manifestation of post-modernity has its charm, others may find this way of life not so endearing. Moralists or nationalists demand ‘authenticity’, ‘sincerity’ and commitment. They may find the cosmopolitans’ indeterminacy morally wanting, if not offensive. Hybridity is enabling because it puts one in the best of all possible worlds. Much has been written about this, but hybridity can also be disabling because the hybrid person has to live with others, which sometimes leads to discrimination. Hybridity as identity thus has its own psychic costs. Although expanded in their intellectual horizons and unstrained in their movements, hybrid people have their moments of nervousness. Others must ask questions about their identity or, more precisely, their allegiance, their loyalty. A study of identity is as much a study of the self of the person, as of the other—and the latter’s capacity to tolerate difference. The question of identity is thus first and foremost political. Modern societies are as heterogeneous as the sociologist can imagine. What happens to a multirooted identity in an ethnically heterogeneous society? There is not a singular ethnicity for one to assimilate into—thus my ‘discovery’ of the complexity of the problem. An ethnic person alternates, changes, mutates in form and structure, oscillates between positions as identities—or, positionality as identity, positionality to replace identity as concept. I thus have this rather graphic, dramatic image of one face, many masks—Chinese now, not Chinese later; one type of Chinese now, another type later, depending on the nature of the audience. The Chinese cosmopolitan is forever ‘on stage’, always engaged in some form of performance. I now have an idea of identity firmly grounded in heterogeneity and hybridity that fascinates as much as it abhors the nationalists who insist on borders, boundaries, purity, loyalty, oneness and singularity. At the time of this writing, I am living in Hong Kong once again, having come full circle, so to speak. At this point, sociology has become, for me, more than an occupation; it is a way of understanding the various life experiences of many different peoples. The nine essays collected in this book represent my personal, sometimes admittedly selfindulgent, attempt to make sense of the stories of those who are ‘strangers’—among whom I now count myself. Through my life’s work, sociology and autobiography have merged and become one. Meanwhile, the migrant and the sociologist continue to ask ‘Who am I?’ ‘What am I?’ ‘What can I be?’

Foreword I met Chan Kwok-bun in 1999 when he was engaged with Robin Cohen in a series of comparative studies on globalisation and transnationalism at the University of Warwick. He came to see me and I realised that we had much in common. At that time, he was based in Singapore. He moved to Hong Kong in 2001, and we kept in touch. In 2002, Gurharpal Singh and I organised a conference at Warwick with the support of the British Social and Economic Research Council under the title ‘Governance in Multicultural Societies’, and I invited Chan to attend. Those invited to the conference to give papers on theoretical, historical and empirical aspects of multiculturalism came from fifteen countries, and it seemed to me that Chan would make a significant contribution because he would be well aware of the problems of living in Hong Kong, now that it was operating under the slogan ‘One Country, Two Systems’. In his paper and his chapter in the book1 that we published (Rex and Singh 2004), he went beyond this brief, talking about his experience as a migrant and a student of sociological theory and of ethnic relations in Canada, and looking critically at the concepts of cosmopolitanism and cultural hybridity. In introducing the present volume, I find it convenient to set out the position that I had arrived at as a result of my own studies. This was articulated in my book Ethnic Minorities in the Modern Nation State (Rex 1996). The essays that I collected could be said to involve critiques of the two notions of essentialism and diaspora. Against the view of cultural diversity, I presented my own view of migrant cultures as having three points of reference: a changing homeland culture, the culture of the migrants in their land of first settlement and their culture in lands of onward migration. Against the loose usage of the concept of diaspora,2 I suggested that, far from envisaging a return to their homeland, migrants had accommodated themselves to living in a permanently transnational community. Looking more closely at the three points of reference of the migrants, I argued that the first was to a homeland that was itself changing. It was changing because the migrants had left it and might return temporarily or permanently to challenge the role of traditional elites. In the land of first settlement, they had to deal with the culture and institutions of a modern society, which often took the form of some kind of welfare state. In such societies, individual migrants and groups of migrants had to live in two cultures. One of these was the public culture that they shared with their hosts; the other was that of their own communities with their own languages, religions and family practices. I saw that there were difficulties in this two-domain thesis. On the one hand, there would be attempts to extend the public domain to cover or replace communal institutions, and attempts to extend the values of the communal cultures into the public domain. On the other hand, there appeared to be a third domain in the areas of cuisine, literature and, more generally, the arts that was the product of interaction between the public and private communal domains.

It seemed to me that the nature of the public domain had been indicated by the British sociologist T.H.Marshall (1951), who had argued that earlier forms of identification based on class were being superseded by an identification with citizenship, first based on equality before the law, then on a political franchise and, finally, on social rights within the welfare state. This, however, said nothing about the position of immigrants and ethnic minorities. The integration of these minorities was discussed in Britain in the light of a statement by the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, who defined integration ‘not as a flattening process of uniformity’ but as ‘cultural diversity coupled with equal opportunity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance’.3 Migrants and ethnic minorities thus have an interest in participating in this way in the public realm. However, ways of dealing with the crises of birth, marriage and death do appear to survive for several generations, drawing upon religious celebrations in synagogues, mosques and temples. This makes for complex identity problems. Some migrants may stay within this milieu in their land of first settlement, and some, after several generations, may even become assimilated. Others, however, may make a further move. They may see better prospects in moving to a third country. There, they will have the recurrent problems of class and identity that they had during their first migration, but they will also have the problems of feeling themselves, and being seen as, strangers. In this complex situation, the concept of diasporas is inadequate. These are much better described as transnational communities of migrants. I thought about this problem with the example of migrants from the Indian subcontinent in mind, including Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who were Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus and who spoke Punjabi, Gujarati or Bengali. When I turned to Chan’s work, I was interested to see whether there was any parallel with my understanding of South Asian migrants in the case of Chinese migrants. Some comparisons were suggested in his contribution to the Rex and Singh volume. The essays contained here, however, go much further and raise many new issues. They look at the diverse experience of Chinese migrants in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada. They take up questions of socio-logical theory and the sociology of ethnic minorities as Chan encountered them as a student in Canada. They look at the theoretical understanding of Park and the Chicago school, Mead and Zangwill, and the way in which these have been represented, as well as significant European theories such as those of Stuart Hall, Rath, Schierup and Alund.4 Importantly, they look at psychological questions and the possible responses to the pain and the advantages of migrant status. They also draw upon literature and the arts, as well as the social sciences. In this last respect, they bring sociology into touch with the sorts of personal and social interaction that novels record. Overall, Chan has deepened and enriched my understanding of what is involved in the migration process. John Rex University of Warwick

Notes 1 This paper has been revised and included as the Epilogue of this book. 2 By loose usage, I mean the way in which the concept was used to refer to the experience of the Jews who, having experienced a traumatic event, now sought to return to Zion, and of the descendants of African slaves who sought to return to Africa. 3 This is reported in a comparative study of integration in the United States, Germany and Great Britain by Joppke (2000). 4 The comprehensive bibliography at the end of this book is a valuable and comprehensive guide to the theory of migration.

References Joppke, C. (2000) Immigration and the Nation State; the United States, Germany and Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marshall, T. (1951) Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rex, J. (1996) Ethnic Minorities in the Modern Nation State; Working Papers in the Theory of Multicultural Societies. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Rex, J. and G.Singh (2004) Governance in Multicultural Societies. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Prologue The term cosmopolitanism may not have been in popular use until the twentieth century, but the phenomenon itself is quite old. In his 1928 essay on ‘Human migration and the marginal man’, Park stated that ‘the first cosmopolite and citizen of the world [was] to be found in the emancipated Jew’. Since the twentieth century, the opportunities to become cosmopolitan, a ‘citizen of the world’, have multiplied as the spread of capitalism and the rapid growth in the technologies of communications and transport have compressed time and place. This phenomenon, called globalisation, generates an intensified consciousness of the world as a whole and of the interconnectedness of the people within it. Globalisation sharpens our sensitivity to people and things different and foreign, setting up a context in which we begin to develop a certain attitude, tolerant or not, towards others. Central to this awareness of being connected to other people in the world is the sense of those people who are ‘other’—who are not like ‘us’, but who live in our midst—and the attendant fascination and antipathy one feels for the unfamiliar. The wife can be other to the husband, or the parent to the child, but in this book I focus on the ‘other’ as someone who leaves his country of origin in order to live, for a while at least, in another country—the other as migrant or refugee. Sometimes, this traveller is an ethnic other and, sometimes, as in the case of the expatriate returning home, he is other simply because he chose to leave home.1 In the past ten years, empirical works on transnationalism have narrated the migrant’s dilemma—the dual nature of feelings attached to where one finds oneself (‘destination’) and where one is from (‘origin’). These works show that a person can be, in a certain sense, in more than one place at the same time; in this way, simultaneity is a defining characteristic of transnationalism. The sense of belonging and loyalty to both places gives rise to a dual identity, a ‘doubleness’, that is also a critique of the nation-state and of the old, sometimes dangerous, idea of a singular loyalty to one place, one regime—thus the prefix ‘trans’ before ‘nationalism’. Cosmopolitanism extends transnationalism in that it goes beyond loyalty to the physicality of a place; the word suggests a bone-deep attitude of receptivity towards people and places that are different from one’s own. More and more migrants of the twenty-first century will have—or will strive for—this receptivity that is called cosmopolitanism. Transnationalism and cosmopolitanism seem more likely to occur in large cities, where there is a greater propensity for different cultures, ethnic groups and religions to co-exist, where contradictions must be resolved or at least accepted, where conformity is discouraged, at least ideologically, more so than in rural areas, where tradition tends to prevail and conformity is expected. In metropolises such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, London, Paris and Shanghai, encounters with those who are different are part of the fabric of everyday life, evoking feelings of curiosity and hostility simultaneously. In such places, many immigrants have become cultural hybrids because they must adapt their transplanted culture to the daily, practical

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

2

exigencies of living in the new culture, thus transforming themselves and the milieu in which they live. The large number of transnationals in the cities has raised the question of whether their ‘doubleness’ or even multiplicity of ethnicity can be put to good use—in economic terms, but also in terms of facilitating cross-cultural and crossnational understanding. In this book, the Chinese (and occasionally Indochinese) provide a case study for such questions, as well as for interrogating a number of sociological concepts around cosmopolitanism, including what it means to be a marginal man, a stranger, a refugee, an ‘other’.

Culture contact and its dialectic What happens to one’s identity, ethnicity and culture as a consequence of migration or, more precisely, as a consequence of transnationalism? The question is an age-old one: what happens when different cultures—and their carriers, such as people, images and so on—meet? There are many possibilities, at least conceptually speaking. Following but also freely interpreting an essay by Femminella (1980) on the dialectic of culture contact, I will designate the culture of the place of departure as A and the culture of the place of arrival as B2 and describe the five possible outcomes of the encounter between A and B. 1 Essentialising: A↔B=A/B. Both A and B polarise and ossify upon their encounter with difference, each retreating to his ‘unchanging same’. This possibility is particularly real when it happens at the group level. The group is a breeding ground of prejudice, discrimination and racism because groups in contact manufacture and exaggerate their differences by constructing stereotypes of the ‘other’ and themselves. 2 Alternating: A↔B=A+B. B is internalised by the person and co-exists side by side with A, the culture of departure. Both are compartmentalised and kept separate. The person uses A or B depending on the occasion and the presence of others. He alternates identities, practising mental migration in order to ‘pass’. He becomes an identity juggler who lives in perpetual fear that he might drop a ball. Identity is thus a matter of positioning. 3 Converting: A↔B=B. This option is perhaps the most talked and written about, and has been called assimilation, acculturation, anglo-conformity or conversion. The image here suggests a replacement of A by B, usually because of the loss or negation of one culture because the person is uprooted and has buried his ‘old self’.3 4 Hybridising: A↔B=AB or Ab or Ba. The upper case A or B designates which label has greater significance to the person. In this option, the airtight compartmentalisation of the identity juggler is removed if the person can relax about his culture of departure (A) while striving not to be overly critical about the culture of the place of arrival (B). This kind of mental agility and tolerance can open up many exciting possibilities. Immigrants live in the midst of neighbours who are initially unlike them in many fundamental ways, but a process of entanglement between them occurs as foreigners and locals learn to work through their differences. After years as co-residents, they share a common identity based on a shared sense of history and community. This

Prologue

3

hybridisation or syncretism takes many forms and is now increasingly reported in scholarly writings by sociologists, anthropologists and theorists in cultural studies. One can find and prove hybridity in other cultural carriers such as cuisine, music and architecture, for example. The term hybridisation is a theoretical throwback to the Chicago school of sociology, when Robert Park (1921, 1937) first wrote about assimilation to refer to a mutual interpenetration of cultures, a two-way fusion of ideas, beliefs and manners. Although Park is often remembered as the social theorist who defined assimilation as A↔ B=B (B replacing A), that is a misconception perpetrated by those who have not read his original text. Park was one of the first theorists to look upon immigrant institutions, such as the clan associations in Chinatowns throughout North America and Europe, not as closed, isolated entities (another misconception that persists among laymen and academics even now), but as collective attempts to adapt to a new milieu, and thus being fully, often painfully, aware of what B stands for and embodies. Adaptation is about dialectic and transformation; and the influence that passes between A and B is reciprocal. The migrant transforms himself while also transforming his milieu. It is a first-order theoretical challenge to figure out what exactly happens in the hybridising process, e.g. are there stages to the process, is there resistance to change, are there pleasures in change, is there a dark side, how rhetorical is such a discourse, and can we demonstrate all this empirically? What methodology is at our disposal, or do we need to invent one by using a variety of research methods? In the process of hybridisation, there is plenty of selective remembering and forgetting of the migrant’s first culture; this goes hand in hand with the desire to pick and choose among the identity options on offer in the place of arrival (Rex 1973). Immigrants of the twenty-first century are likely to be sojourners on the world stage many times over as their mobility is often experimental and open-ended—a kind of emergent ethnicity. This fourth possibility may lead to innovating, a fifth possibility. 5 Innovating: A↔B=AB or Ab or Ba→C. In this symbolism, the entanglement and collision of cultures within a person’s mind may take the form of trauma. It may cause existential pain, a dialectic of opposites, and even degenerate into pathology; or it may give birth to C, a new culture. The foregoing analysis is constructed in purely abstract theoretical terms; it can be complicated or corrupted by the politics of difference and power between A and B. When B is the majority culture and A is the minority culture, the carrier of A must learn strategies for entering the institutional landscapes of B, and often will be a target for discrimination, being pushed out while trying to find a way in. Acute ambivalence is often the result. Assimilating the rhetoric, or the ideational part of the dominant culture that rejects him in practice, the minority immigrant experiences turmoil and anxiety. What separates the ideal and the real is experienced as a deep psychological and spiritual chasm that tears the mind and the body apart. The minority immigrant thus casts himself, often involuntarily, in the role of a stranger, a marginal man, an outsider looking in, and such a role comes complete with feelings of inferiority and tension. These emotions are the downside of hybridisation, its psychic cost. The cultural hybrid often feels tentative and insecure about his conduct even while striving to be firm in his faith. Yet the sociologists of the Chicago school insist that the hybrid has wider and higher intellectual

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

4

horizons because he carries an existential problem of race on his back. The marginal man must try harder and take himself more seriously—he is condemned to be free. I imagine the migrant of the twenty-first century as someone who is relentlessly in motion, stepping out (Chan and Chiang 1994) of a social structure to experience ecstasy. He is caught in a migrational spiral that spins without cease. As the philosopher and social psychologist George H.Mead (1934) imagined him, he is a provident man. He lives out of a suitcase. He socialises his children into an existence that accepts, or even celebrates, the portability of just about everything as an ontological given, a prerequisite of modernity. A family can be disassembled—its members going off to live in a variety of places—and then re-assemble. The cycle of separation and reunion may repeat numerous times, due to individuals in the family taking on their own personal projects and/or because of politics and economics. Seen in this way (in the fifth possibility of A↔B=C), C, as the new product of cultural hybridisation, can theoretically go on fusing and amalgamating with new culture(s) forever, thus engendering D, E, F, G, H and so on. This takes our imagination about hybridisation to a completely new theoretical plane. We may here imagine a continuous widening of the interior space of body and mind. Perhaps this will offer a way forward into a new poetics of location. Several theoretical elements can be discerned in Femminella’s (Postiglione 1983: 149–73) analysis of what transpires when two different cultures, A and B, are in contact with each other. In the first stage of this culture encounter, dialectic would predict that, man being a territorial animal, B’s anxiety over defending his space and resources would cause him to perceive his absolute, polar opposite in A in the form of the ‘estranged intruder’ or the stranger. This is a stage of boundary crisis, to see and experience the different other as the stranger, someone to be kept at a distance. In the second stage, A enters into conflict and competition with B over resources in the marketplace, with B demanding that A submit and A stubbornly resisting. The conflicts thus generated, and the mutual entanglement of A and B, can be resolved only through a synthesis in the third stage, which Femminella calls ‘impact-integration’ or ‘emergent culture’, as ‘it is out of this impacting that new syntheses evolve’ (quoted in Postiglione 1983:170). He goes on to say that, ‘Assimilation then must be seen as having two directions—toward the core culture and then back to the ethnic subculture’ (quoted in Postiglione 1983:172). Meanwhile, ethnicity and ethnic communities persist in a form of voluntary segregation because A does not want to assimilate totally into B. A has a need to be both a part of and simultaneously apart from B, and it is out of this tension that a new culture and community evolve. As Femminella says, ‘The conflict is in a cultural integration that changes not only the persons involved, nor even also their groups, but the whole society itself (quoted in Postiglione 1983:170). Femminella’s theory of human nature is that people are not merely territorial; they are also migratory, which inevitably leads to conflict. But man is not only a tension-ridden animal, he is also a tension-reducing one, through the synthesising function of his dialectic, which continuously creates and invents new social forms. Femminella’s writings have a particular logic that privileges the mixing of things different, encompassing those confrontations between individuals, groups and cultures that are only temporarily resolved by synthesis and unification. A dialectical process articulated as such can seem rather brutal because conflicts and competitions are a given.

Prologue

5

The third stage of the impact-integration process is similar to Park’s idea of assimilation, that social process whereby people of different races and cultures are drawn into ‘the ever narrow circle of common life’. Park goes on to say that: It referred to the erasing of external differences, the development of superficial uniformities particularly in manners and fashion but also in language which enables newcomers to participate in the new life, in a ‘practical working arrangement’, so that like-mindedness in individual opinions, sentiments and beliefs may eventually accrue. Park quoted in Postiglione (1983:160) What perhaps sets Femminella apart from other social theorists is that he forces a rethinking of the straight-line, one-way, linear theories of assimilation by solving the problem of unification through dialectic. It is a dialectic that unites and changes but does not homogenise the groups concerned. Femminella always keeps both sides, A and B, in full view, even while placing them at opposite poles. Postiglione (1983:164) gives this interpretation of Femminella: A point of intersection, although always focused upon by both groups, is never reached. A group may move in the direction of another but never merge. This is similar to the idea of walking toward a wall by continually cutting the distance in half. One never reaches the wall. Conceptually and empirically, the entanglements of migration are displayed within the hub of the modern-day city. To study how such entanglements are resolved, one must study human nature, the dialectic of its very character. In this, it will be useful to invoke the early theoretical as well as practical concerns of the Chicago urbanists.

The dialectic of Chinese culture In a short but thought-provoking essay (text in Chinese), the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Yijie (1990) interrogates classical Confucian texts to read Chinese history and culture. From a series of dialectical exchanges in the Confucian texts, he invokes the idea of ‘harmony/integration in difference’ or he’erbutong. By integration, Confucius did not mean B totally obliterating A, or vice versa; rather, he referred to A and B finding a point of confluence during their interactions, resulting in change that was mutually beneficial. When two cultures, A and B, encounter each other, Tang reasons, there are at least four possible benign processes that can occur. In the first instance, A and B, upon communicating with each other, discover that they are not all that different, that they have something in common. For instance, there are variants of the concept of selfless love in Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism and Moism. On a generalised, abstract level, all these concepts of ‘love’ provide a common ground for discourse, while each preserves its own uniqueness, or difference from others.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

6

In Tang’s second instance, A interacts with B and discovers something new in B that is not, upon deep reflection, antagonistic to A; and it is ‘worked into’ A, thus enriching A. The psychological principle of selective attention and inattention is at work in this process. Tang cites the absence in China of the concept of the supreme realisation of the Dao, which was imported by Cheng and Zhu and by Lu and Wang during the Song and Ming dynasties. In Tang’s third instance, A interacts with B and discovers a new concept in B that is oppositional to an essential concept in A. To incorporate the new concept from B, the old concept in A must go. (This process is similar to that of displacement or replacement in culture contacts.) Tang cites the example of the transplantation of the concept of democracy into China, which required the abandonment of the old Sangang idea of the paramount importance of one’s duties to a higher authority (on the part of the official to the emperor, the son to his father and the wife to her husband). In Tang’s fourth instance, A interacts with B, and both discover concepts that had been non-existent in their own cultures, and invent new concepts. Examples include peaceful co-existence, critical pluralism and multiculturalism. When a foreign (in the sense of being new) idea from A is incorporated into B, it either gives birth to something unique or assumes an adapted form because it must take the B culture into account as the prerequisite for being incorporated. This new idea from A, when imported into B, may facilitate the full expression and realisation of something in A that would otherwise remain dormant because it is not adequately ‘released’. This idea of release is like a sudden burst of understanding: I heard you; I now see what I didn’t see before.4 This is yet another form of cultural change, following the principle of being ‘harmonious but not the same’. Tang articulates this most elegantly: Harmony in diversity engenders growth, while sameness results in degeneration. Harmony can be found when the encounters between A and B are conducted with ‘deference’, each yielding to the other, as well as postponing their need to react until a later time, when communication can bring something beneficial to both sides. Following Hall (1990: 222–37), the verb ‘defer’ thus has a double sense: I defer my actions till a later time because I must act with deference to you and, hopefully, you will do the same. It is an etiquette that requires a willingness to wait and see, the capacity to listen and a desire to understand the other, which is crucial to conciliation.

China’s migration saga In an outstanding essay (text in Chinese), which attempts to re-interpret Chinese history, An and Wang (1992:3–13) take a rare position of examining historical occasions of ‘booming collision’ between the myriad cultures in China. During the two Han dynasties, the Yellow River culture ‘collided’ with the Mongolian culture from the north and the Qiang culture from the west. The agriculture-based Han culture met with ‘foreign’ nomadic cultures, resulting in the importation into China of cattle-breeding techniques, as well as the entire culture based on such knowledge. The Great Wall was only a military barrier; it did not stop interactions between the agricultural and the nomadic cultures.

Prologue

7

An and Wang note that, by the Han and Wei dynasties, tribes north and west of the Yellow River were beginning to move into the region, and these ethnic minorities then lived amidst the Han people. By the end of the West Jin dynasty, political corruption resulted in sharp social contradictions during a period called ‘Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms’. To An and Wang, what appeared from the outside as monumental ethnic chaos among tribes was in fact ‘internal culture wrestling’ among the plural communities. What classical historians called ‘Five Barbarians Throwing the Han into Chaos’ was a ‘booming collision’ between Han and ‘barbarian’ cultures. The consequence was that the Han culture incorporated the ‘barbarian’ emphasis on athletics and martial arts, and frugality and modesty, along with a forward-looking, adventuresome spirit, an ethic of mutual aid in interpersonal relations and equality among nationalities—while slowly banishing from its culture core things such as cronyism, decadent materialism and prejudice against ethnic minorities. The famous Chinese historian Chen Yingue described this transformative process as the injection of vigorous alien blood into a sickly Han body. Chen and An and Wang attribute the cultural brilliance of the Tang dynasty to this ‘transfusion’. The massive internal migrations from the north and the west into the Yellow River region continued throughout the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. During the Eastern Jin period, as a result of wars, natural calamities and severe food shortages, tens of thousands of refugees headed south, providing the labour and production technology for the development of the lands south of the Yellow River. These massive southward migrations took place periodically after the Invasion of the Year of Jingkang; it was also at this time that famous poets from Shandong, such as Li Qingzhao and Xin Qiji, undertook their southward movements. In the subsequent 500 years of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, such migrations led to a structural merging of the Yellow River culture of the north and the Yangtze River culture of the south. Generations of Chinese historians believed that all these large-scale migrations led to mixing, conflicts and the eventual accommodation of peoples and cultures. As the Yellow River and Yangtze River cultures engaged in thousands of years of interactions and exchange with each other, they formed the culture that is called Chinese. As An and Wang put it, the end-result was that ‘I find myself in you, and you find yourself in me’. Culture change is thus a long process of forgetting—and remembering— this or that part of oneself, of picking and choosing, of mutating and transforming.

The stranger’s dark side Sociologists have exercised their imagination on the attributes of the stranger—the person from outside a culture who approaches those who live within it—for nearly a century. Like Robert Park’s (1928) marginal man or Howard Becker’s (1963) outsider, the myth of the stranger has achieved a sort of cult status in the sociological literature, as a modern and post-modern product that is mystified and eulogised. In his classic 1908 essay entitled ‘The stranger’, Georg Simmel (1908) characterises the stranger as someone fond of wandering, the sociological opposite of the man who lives a settled existence. The stranger is here today, gone tomorrow. He lives out of a suitcase, not in a house. The stranger is no ‘owner of soil’; he is not rooted to a particular bit of ground, or even to any

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

8

ground at all. The stranger is an outsider to the group he is approaching and, as Simmel puts it, in terms of his relations with the group, he is near and far at the same time. The stranger must confront the group, make demands of it and require a response from it, with the possibility of transforming both himself and the group, for better or for worse. Simmel implies that the stranger has the potential of transforming the group by the fact of his confronting it. While he is there, he has a temporary membership in the group and, for the duration of his membership, is simultaneously outside and inside the group. The core of Simmel’s essay is his insistence on the stranger’s objectivity and freedom because he is ‘bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given’. His actions are not tied to habit, piety or precedent. He does not share the group’s tradition or heritage; thus he is free of their prejudice. He may look at intimate relationships from a bird’s-eye view. In fact, his objectivity and freedom stem from his tendency to regard social relationships in the abstract, to generalise rather than personalise them. As an example of how the stranger’s detachment can be useful, Simmel points to the practice of Italian cities calling in their judges from the outside, because ‘no native was free from entanglement in family and party interests’. Simmel’s stranger is by definition freer and more objective than the group he interrogates because he does not share their past. The pleasure of wandering lies in the wanderer’s theoretical or intellectual autonomy. But in the hands of another social psychologist, Alfred Schuetz, who in 1943 wrote an essay also entitled ‘The stranger’, the outsider remains outside the group’s experience of its past: ‘Seen from the point of view of the approached group, he is a man without a history’ (1943:502). The flip side of Simmel’s objectivity is Schuetz’s alienation. Quoting from Dewey, Schuetz insists that the stranger has only a knowledge about, not a knowledge of, the group. The latter is knowledge taken for granted, like the air one breathes. Schuetz (1943:505) goes on to say what it means to be linguistically competent as an insider: In order to command a language freely as a scheme of expression, one must have written love letters in it; one has to know how to pray and curse in it and how to say things with every shade appropriate to the addressee and to the situation. Only members of the in-group have the scheme of expression as a genuine one in hand and command it freely within their thinking as usual. The stranger relies on translation; his speech is not natural, not genuine—not free. The stranger lives at the fringes of the insiders’ shelter. His field is a field of adventure, in a problematic situation that is difficult, although not impossible, to master. He exists in a ‘labyrinth in which he has lost all sense of his bearings’ (1943:507). Schuetz (1943:506) offers us another chilling paragraph of the psychical abyss the stranger has found himself in: Hence, the stranger’s lack of feeling for distance, his oscillating between remoteness and intimacy, his hesitation and uncertainty, and his distrust in every matter which seems so simple and uncomplicated to those who rely on the efficiency of unquestioned recipes which have just to be followed but not understood.

Prologue

9

While members of the group live a life they don’t understand because they can follow it without thinking, the stranger lives a life of otherness, which he seems to understand but cannot simply follow. The stranger’s existence is devoid of the insider’s ‘habituality, automatism, and half-consciousness’ (1943:505). He lives an unwarranted life, a life of no guarantees, no tested recipes. The insider’s life is much of the time dream-like, only half-conscious, as a matter of course. The stranger is always intense and alert because his life is so problematic. His theoretical objectivity or unbiasedness is in tension with a nagging sense of being accused of disloyalty and ungratefulness. All this is the stranger’s existential cost. In 1944–5, Schuetz wrote another essay entitled ‘The homecomer’, which ad-dressed what happens when the stranger returns to his home group, his place of departure. The wanderer’s separation from home interrupts the community of space and time in that ‘both sides, instead, build up a system of pseudo-types of the other which is hard to remove and never can be removed entirely because the homecomer, as well as the welcomer, has changed’ (1944–45:369). The homecomer, ironically, suffers a form of culture shock on his return: home means one thing to the stayer, another thing to the leaver, and still another to the homecomer (1944–45:370). As Schuetz reminds us, ‘we cannot bathe twice in the same river’ and ‘What is here in question is nothing less than the irreversibility of inner time’ (1944–45:370). If ‘to feel at home’ is an expression of the highest degree of familiarity and intimacy’ (1944–45:370), the deep paradox is that the homecomer feels ill at ease in his own home. Such is the fate of the modern stranger: he is exiled by time, a stranger in his own skin—and that is the shadow side of what it means to travel. In 1928, Park constructed his marginal man as a person ‘on the margin of two cultures and two societies, which never completely interpenetrated and fused…’ (1928:354). The conflict of the two cultures on the outside is the reflection of the inner turmoil of the marginal man—the divided self manifesting as restlessness, hesitation and intense selfconsciousness. Park narrates the ‘spiritual distress’ of Heine, who struggled to be both a German and a Jew, by quoting Lewis Browne, Heine’s biographer, who wrote that: ‘His mind lacked the integrity which is based on conviction: his arms were weak because his mind was divided; his hands were nerveless because his soul was in turmoil’ (1928:355). Thus, the marginal man’s mind is a place where cultures encounter each other. Stonequist, in his 1937 book The Marginal Man, would call the marginal man’s mind ‘the crucible of cultural fusion’. Park sees intelligence, like consciousness, as ‘an incident of action’, just as ‘the intellectual attainment of an individual or a race is a function of their activities’ (1937:387). Restlessness is ‘the first and most elementary response to a problematical situation that requires reflection’ (1937:387). The conflict of the two cultures in which the marginal man is caught is now taken up as his personal cause. It becomes his psychic obsession to resolve the conflict; in this way, he has enhanced his intelligence and intellectual life. It is in this statement that Park is in agreement with Schuetz and perhaps Simmel, although Schuetz is quick to remind us that this intellectual enhancement has profound social and psychological costs. The stranger remains lonely everywhere. Understanding both sides, he is trusted by neither.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

10

Alexander’s subway incidents Meena Alexander (1993), an Indian poet teaching English literature in the United States, uses poetry to describe the experience of being a sojourner in a strange land. She likens the feeling to that of being crushed between the closing doors of a subway car. She experiences the present as a chasm that seems to hollow out and swallow the body, sucking it into the void. Reliving the past has become a trick the poet plays on herself, because the present is so unbearable. The psychiatric literature has two concepts to describe this kind of experience: nostalgic illusion and nostalgic fixation. In the former, the rainbow colours of nostalgia overlay the past, distorting it, and this distortion is a critique of the present. In the latter, the rainbow-coloured past has become part of the person, like a second skin. The person is haunted and possessed, living in a past time and place—and feeling state—that is constructed like a scaffolding on sand, and which never stops threatening the dreamer’s physical and psychological existence. In an unpublished poem called ‘Cosmopolitan’, Alexander repeats her imagery of being crushed between the closing doors of ‘the metal train’, but concludes the poem on a note of hope: ‘That ancient sage whispers in my ear:/I have seen the sea changed three times/into a mulberry field/and back into the sea’. In these lines, Alexander has envisaged the possibility of a unity that can be maintained in flux. The vision is one of beauty, which may make the pain worth it.5

The way forward In the discourse of the social sciences, sympathy refers to ‘the capacity to apprehend the pain, suffering, or signs of negative emotions in man or animals and to respond to these with appropriate negative feelings’ (Wispe 1968:441–7). Thus, sympathy is not just the apprehending of suffering, but also the attempt to share it, to try to feel the other’s pain. To feel sympathy is to experience pain as a kind of communion, ‘an entering into and sharing the mind of someone else’ (Cooley 1956:102). The antithesis of sympathy is what the philosopher William James (1992) calls ‘the blindness with which we are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves’. When people become preoccupied with their own ‘vital secrets’, they build walls to keep others out and keep their secrets safe. In this way, the pain of the other is absolutely excluded from consciousness, and therefore is impossible to comprehend. The secret becomes the ‘vital’ thing, the basis of one’s inner identity, but guarding it prevents one from reaching out to and understanding others (Park 1966: 167–77). Thus, no one knows anyone except himself, and that is in total solitude, because everyone is busy building and repairing the walls that imprison them. How does one cure oneself of this blindness? Park suggests that encountering those who are different from ourselves may sharpen our consciousness and increase knowledge of self and other. This, in turn, may lead to sympathy, ‘since the attitudes and sentiments which we find in ourselves we are able to appreciate and understand, no matter how indirectly expressed, when we find them in the minds of others’ (Park 1966:176). The deep human paradox is that it is as a result of conflicts and contradictions that

Prologue

11

understanding of both the self and the other is achieved. The authenticity of what I have discovered about myself is strengthened because I have found affirmation of a bit of myself in you, through scrutiny and imagination. Ancient Chinese philosophy offers another way out of blindness, in its concept of cosmic harmony or taihe. Confucianists believe that taihe is realisable in four stages, or moments: the first moment begins with moral self-cultivation to achieve peace with oneself; this leads to the second moment of peace between self and others; followed by the third moment of harmony between humans and nature; and, finally, the fourth moment of partaking of nature’s own harmony and peace. Such a processual view stresses the importance of self-cultivation and self-awareness as the starting point. According to Confucius, in encounters with those who are different, the first behavioural imperative is to recognise and respect the difference between self and other, not to make one become the other through coercion or assimilation. The ancient Chinese sages wrote that the discourse that will lead to self-knowledge is one that stresses that ‘turtles are without hair and rabbits have no horns’. This delineation of the self and the other contributes to the awareness of what makes—and marks off—the self, and can lead to making peace with one’s limitations. It is also the first moral injunction against the violence of hegemony, of making the other the same as self. The ancient Chinese word he, in its verb form, meant to reconcile things or people that are different to achieve harmony, without striving to make them similar. To he is to allow different things to co-exist, ‘to live and let live’. Such interactions contribute to growth. He leads to growth and newness, while making or keeping things the same can lead to decay or stagnation. The ideal of the ‘taihe of tens of thousands of things’ stresses diversity and spontaneity. Taihe is the spirit of things in their multiplicity, not their oneness or unity. Metal, wood, water, fire and earth are five different elements, which, when combined, engender the birth and growth of all matters and people. Confucius states that, ‘The gentleman strives for a peaceful order among things different; the petty man, a disharmonious, conflictual order among things similar.’ For immigrants, who combine different cultures within themselves, one way to resolve the conflict between the divisions within the self may be to treat them as various and equal, and in this way find—or at least move towards—some inner peace. For those who meet with strangers, it may help to heed the advice of the Chinese, who say: ‘Treat anyone who passes by your door as your invited guest.’

Conclusion In this prologue, I explore the psychically and existentially threatening idea of difference as personified by the immigrant, the stranger, the marginal man, as well as the discriminatory treatment he often receives from the settled other. The experiences and treatment of immigrants show that their new country may be hostile, alienating and even violent towards those who are different. Moving to another country may feel like visiting a modern shopping centre, where multiple floors of long pedestrian corridors are the distinguishing architectural feature, and potential consumers are eternally mobile objects who pass each other by, without speaking, making eye contact or slowing down. At the individual, psychological level, the stranger experiences the torment that occurs when

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

12

one’s existence is denied by others—and this is the dark side of cosmopolitan encounters. The cosmopolitan is in a condition of boundless loneliness, tentative about himself, frightened and self-conscious. The Chicago school sociologists portrayed such personalities and their psyches with a visual and graphic intensity, as well as a compassion and understanding rarely equalled in the history of sociological writing. However, competent social theory cannot stay at the level of the individual and of the mind, no matter how fascinating it promises to be. There is another side to these encounters between the stranger and the group—at the historical, and structural levels. Again, the Chicago school brand of urban sociology on the subject of ethnic or racial encounters has an optimism and a sparkle. Its analysis is focused on the mutual entanglement of two different groups. In this prologue, I have articulated one narrative of such mutual entanglement: China’s social history when read as moments and sites of culture contact because of massive migration and population dispersal. The analytical gaze is at the unspectacular, everyday life fusion and hybridisation that happens when groups share a neighbourhood, a history and memory based on simply living together and solving practical problems of living that requires a certain transcendence of group identities, important as they are. As it happens, one culture sort of ‘slips into’ another culture,6 half-forgetting itself, and half-changing the other; ‘one is allowing oneself to be inhabited by the other, while still recognising the other’.7 In narratives of such cosmopolitan encounters, it is also important to stress the continuing salience of group difference itself. Difference or strangeness or unfamiliarity attracts because it offers something new; it makes the dialectic possible in the first place. Strangeness arouses and excites, not only in a sensual sense. Cosmopolitanism thus does not, and should not, absolve attachments based on locality, because such attachments provide the individual, however cosmopolitan, with a spiritual anchor; thus, the seemingly self-contradictory ideas of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ or the ‘cosmopolitan patriot’ (Appiah 1998:91–114), the local cosmopolitan, the Chinese cosmopolitan and so on. The global does not exclude the local. Difference matters because it makes the person feel important and passionate. Or, as Stuart Hall (2002:26–31) puts it, family cultures support you as you leave them and you know it. That may well be the reason why we keep coming back to the family, at least in a metaphorical sense. Most people want both roots and routes, tunnels to the past and corridors to the future as a sensible articulation of the present. The past stifles but comforts, and the future frightens but fascinates. A discourse on cosmopolitanism cannot dispense with diversity and difference. Difference reminds us that there are many ways of doing one thing. These many ways underline Berger’s (1963) fascinating, almost magical world of makeability. Things can be made, unmade and remade in a world of continuing enchantment. Meanwhile, the humanities and the social sciences are forging forwards to look for a language in which to imagine cosmopolitanism. Our social imagery of cosmopolitanism suffers from being too thin and casual. The cosmopolitanism idea is nothing new; it is found in classical Chinese texts, in the many historical encounters of China’s Han people with other ethnic groups from the north and the west, in the many everyday life strategies of generations of Chinese immigrants overseas coping with living with others culturally, in the social psychology and urban sociology of America in the 1920s, and onwards.

Prologue

13

Yet, as Nussbaum (1997a: 45), the Chicago philosopher, reminds us, a cosmopolitan attitude is not a given; rather, one must labour against habits of ‘mental blindness’. Indeed, it takes a lifelong, relentless labour at mental alertness. The Confucianist must be self-reflexive, asking himself, as Confucius did, ‘Do I do to others what I don’t want to be done to myself?’ Would I exchange my condition with that of the stranger whom I have mistreated? How else does sympathy come about if not through self-cultivation8— self-awareness as part of a continuing moral education? The stoic philosopher, the Confucianists, the American sociologists and social psychologists in Chicago, as well as the contemporary philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and poets pose the same question and under various guises advocate the same behaviour: educating the mind by a language that has yet to be found. Even though there are no guarantees that understanding will result, parent and child, man and woman, foreign and native, migrant and settled, must try to understand each other. And then perhaps we can, as the poet Meena Alexander puts it:’…be at home everywhere/in this moving world’.9

1 Rethinking Chinese ethnicity Assimilation and ethnicity Two important aspects of assimilation are its directionality and the influence differential between the assimilator and the to-be-assimilated (Teske and Nelson 1974:363–4). Much of the classical American literature on the subject either implicitly or explicitly treats assimilation as a one-way process, suggesting ‘an essentially unilateral approximation of one culture in the direction of the other’ (Siegel et al. 1953:988), typically in a context of unequal status and power. Accordingly, it is alleged that assimilation operates in the direction of the dominant group exerting influence on the less dominant group—a unilineal process of social change. Such a view, elegantly articulated in Park’s (1950) influential theory of race relations’ cycle, contains a sense of inevitability and irreversibility. The eventual absorption of minorities into the dominant culture and the gradual disappearance of ethnicity are to be understood and accepted not only in terms of what they are and what they will be, but also in terms of what they should be. A theory of ethnic relations and social change becomes an ideology in disguise which, in spirit and in practice, prescribes rather than describes. What is prescribed here is the vision of one country, one culture, one ideology, one way of feeling, thinking and doing—a loopback into a tribal existence of oneness and homogeneity. This dominant view of assimilation in the social science literature evokes images of an eager majority group intent on moulding, shaping and, if necessary, coercing minority groups ‘to become alike’ and ‘to fall in line’, so to speak. This view is based on one assumption: the assimilator and the to-be-assimilated are both willing game players, the former to affirm his sense of cultural superiority and racial homogeneity, the latter to gain cultural acceptance and structural integration. In van den Berghe’s (1981:217) words: …it takes two to assimilate. Assimilation is sought by members of the subordinate group—granted by members of the dominant group… For assimilation to take place, therefore, it takes a convergence of desire for it from the subordinates and acceptance by the dominants. This willingness to be assimilated thus cannot be taken for granted either theoretically or empirically. As van den Berghe argues, a desire for assimilation must be motivated, often from an initial position of inequality, so that assimilation confers some benefit. While hypothesising that ‘the more unequal their relative position is, the more of an incentive members of the subordinate group have to be accepted into the dominant group’, van den Berghe (1981:216) is cognisant of a contending hypothesis that points to the persistence of ethnicity and ethnic sentiments and the propensity to feel an emotional bond with those presumed to be kindred. Contrary to the American model of assimilation,

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

15

this contending hypothesis makes it theoretically imperative not to take assimilation and the demise of ethnicity for granted. Understood in this sense, assimilation is problematic and demands explanation when it happens, as is the disappearance of ethnicity. In striving towards a realistic model of assimilation—realistic in the sense that it addresses theoretical queries as well as observed empirical variations—the theorist needs to develop a good grasp of the concept of ethnicity and its role in model-building. What then is ethnicity? Van den Berghe (1978:403) advocates a sociobiological view: My central thesis is that both ethnicity and ‘race’ (in the social sense) are, in fact, extensions of the idiom of kinship, and that, therefore, ethnic and race sentiments are to be understood as an extended and attenuated form of kin selection. This view is based on his interpretation of the sociobiological concept of ‘inclusive fitness’ (Hamilton 1964), a phenomenon associated with the propensity to ‘prefer kin over non-kin, and close kin over distant kin’ (van den Berghe 1978:402). Van den Berghe’s view of ethnicity in terms of maximising individual fitness by behaving nepotistically and, therefore, ethnocentrically is essentially in consonance with that of the primordialists, who see ethnicity as ascribed, ‘deeply rooted, given at birth, and largely unchangeable’ (van den Berghe 1978:401). The primordialists, accentuating the ‘subjective’ feelings of the ethnic experience, argue for the irreducibility of ethnic membership to class membership. As van den Berghe (1978:404) argues: [e]thnic groups, for nearly all of human history, were what geneticists call breeding populations, in-breeding superfamilies, in fact, which not only were much more closely related to each other than to even their closest neighbours, but which, almost without exception, explicitly recognised that fact, and maintained clear territorial and social boundaries with other such ethnic groups. This conscious and intentional preference for members of the same ethnic group as well as the deliberate attempt to maintain clear spatial and social distance from other ethnic groups is at the root of one anthropological school, which sees ethnicity as a phenomenon that deepens as one moves from the boundaries to-wards the centre (Rosaldo 1988). It is at the centre, in the middle, not on the outer edges, where things or events ethnic ‘concentrate’, ‘gather together’, ‘thicken’ and ‘pile up’—some strong concepts used by the Ilongots of northern Luzon in the Philippines in describing and explaining ethnicity (Rosaldo 1988). In this view, ethnicity is cumulative over time, maintaining and preserving the condition prior to the point of culture contact as well as resisting and defending attempts at cultural penetration, dilution or absorption by a dominant group. Collectively, members of ethnic groups enjoy the experience of gathering together. By so doing, in ‘a state of healthy vitality and well-being’, using Rosaldo’s phrase, the group becomes ‘strong and thick’. In contrast to the primordialist and sociobiologist views of ethnicity are those of the situationists, who suggest that ethnicity is a phenomenon emerging from ‘a constantly evoking interaction between the nature of the local community, the available economic

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

16

opportunities and the national or religious heritage of a particular group’ (Yancey et al. 1976:397). The theoretical focus here is on how members of a particular ethnic group go about manifesting themselves while in full view of the opportunity structures in the wider society. In due course, ethnicity emerges, unfolds and takes shape. The human being is an active agent selectively and strategically displaying his ethnic emblems. Ethnic identity is merely ‘a thing’ subject to manipulation and differential presentation; it is not a reflection of the true self. As Rosaldo (1988:164) puts it, ‘Ethnic identity, a thing that groups put on and take off to signify their difference from other such groups, comes to resemble clothes, masks, emblems or badges’. The situationists view ethnicity more as form and process than as content, and most empirically expressive and visible along ethnic boundaries, not in the ‘centres’ (Earth 1969:15). Thus, Nagata (1974) would argue for the plausibility of a model of ‘ethnic oscillation’ whereby individuals, with no single or fixed reference group, interpret situational requirements, adjust and display themselves for social affinity, expediency and social mobility. Foster (1977:114) completes this line of thinking: An ethnic identity is not necessarily an all-or-nothing, permanent thing. One may claim one identity in one situation and a different identity in another situation, depending on the relative payoffs. Nagata, like Foster, argues that some individuals, in coping with particular exigencies of survival, develop a double identity and lead a double life.

Concentrating within and crossing ethnic boundaries Rosaldo (1988:161) is disinclined to see these two anthropological views as necessarily contradictory to each other. Neither does he think that the two conceptions completely explain the empirical phenomenon of ethnicity. To him, ethnicity is neither completely expressive (and primordial) nor completely instrumental (and situational); rather, it ‘usually is both instrumental and expressive, and theories that oppose the two perspectives have posed a false dichotomy’. On occasions of cultural ‘get-together’, ethnic identity ‘thickens’ while the traditions are selectively re-enacted, not simply repeated. Rosaldo’s attempt to ‘reconceive’ ethnicity—by criticising the distinction drawn by the primordialists on the one hand and situationists on the other as being ‘more analytical than empirical’—was anticipated by De Vos and RomanucciRoss’s (1982:378–89) analysis of the instrumental and expressive uses of ethnicity. The vectors of expressiveness and instrumentality of ethnicity interpret, define and regulate interpersonal relationships both within and between ethnic groups. Instrumental behaviour is essentially goal-oriented, a means to an end, while expressive behaviour is an end in itself, ‘a result of a prior need or emotional state’ (De Vos and Romanucci-Ross 1982:379). It is not clear from De Vos and Romanucci-Ross’s formulation whether instrumental ethnicity in terms of the five thematic concerns of achievement, competence, responsibility, control-power and mutuality applies to interpersonal relations both within

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

17

and between different groups. Nevertheless, their ‘expressive ethnicity’ in terms of harmony, affiliation, nurturance, appreciation, pleasure and fortune clearly and explicitly denotes social relationships within a particular ethnic group. In combining and synthesising the formulations of Rosaldo and De Vos and Romanucci-Ross, as well as those of the primordialists and the situationists, one may observe that interpersonal relationships ‘in the centre’ are characterised by an excess of ‘expressive’ over ‘instrumental’ ethnicity. Within the centre of an ethnic group, in such private places as homes, community halls or clan associations or on such ritualistic occasions as festivals, religious worship and holidays, ethnicity is manifested mainly expressively to meet the emotional need for appreciation, affiliation, harmony and pleasure. The individual is subsumed willingly within a larger whole (which is invariably more than the total of its parts) to find and express his sense of belonging, and of continuity with a tradition. Yet, as De Vos and Romanucci-Ross (1982) and Rosaldo (1988:169) are quick to point out, the persons and the group are also conscious of pleasure turning into suffering or even death when the gatherings are penetrated by outsiders, threatening loss of their own identities and possibly, eventually, of group survival. Yet, in such private places, on such ethnic ritualistic occasions, there is no shortage of manifestations of instrumental ethnicity either. Rituals not only explain but also affirm group and, therefore, personal origin. As De Vos (1982) puts it, they solve the perennial human problems of where we are from, what we must do and how we are different from others. In the centre, ethnicity is primarily primordial and expressive at the personal level. Yet it is also constructed and used at the group level, noticeably towards group cohesion. In answering the question of why humans co-operate, van den Berghe (1978:409) identified three main principles of human sociality: kin selection, reciprocity and coercion. By kin selection, he means that humans are expected to co-operate within the same kin group and, by extension, the same ethnic group. Ethnic groups appeal to individual loyalty because they are ‘supra-families’. While relations within ethnic groups are essentially co-operative, intergroup relations are typically characterised by competition and conflict, which is visibly observable along the fringes, in common public places where boundaries intersect and overlap. Sometimes, competition and conflict are muted. As van den Berghe (1978:409) puts it, ‘ethnic groups may enter a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship based, for instance, on the exploitation of two specialised and noncompetitive niches in the same market’. Reciprocity can occur between non-kin and between ethnic groups. It is co-operation for mutual benefit, to exploit, and there is an expectation of exchange and return. Co-operation within and between classes, and between non-ethnically based trades, occupations, associations, organisations, institutions and communities, is typically in the realm of reciprocity. At the fringes of ethnic boundaries, in common public places, where materialistic transactions are negotiated and completed, the instrumental use of ethnicity emerges. It is also in these places where the situationist view begins to gain plausibility. Ethnicity becomes changeable, culturally and ecologically defined and situationally sensitive. The classical view holds that it is at the boundaries where ethnic action happens, more dramatically so when either co-operative or conflictual relationships between ethnic groups need to be strategised and enacted with obvious political and economic consequences.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

18

It is at these moments of boundary crossing when Hoadley (1988:504) insists that enquiry be focused ‘on those aspects of cultural and public life most likely to reveal ethnic boundaries and evidence of individuals having crossed them’. What then is the motivation for crossing boundaries? Hoadley (1988:604) argues that, ‘[a] 11 things being equal, the authority and status enjoyed by the majority group within a society exerts a natural attraction for minorities’. The situationist view is once again invoked here, that a member of a minority is strategising realities, constructing and reconstructing them, in order to profit both psychologically and materialistically. The next question, for both ethnic actors and students of ethnic relations, concerns behaviour, or how do ethnic actors conduct themselves in their public lives? In part, the answer depends on the balance of power between the ethnic groups, on the one hand, and the fluidity and ease of flow between these ethnic boundaries, on the other hand. In majority-minority relations, members of the minorities may be tempted to try and ‘pass’, a form of denial of the authentic self. As De Vos (1982:28) suggests, passing requires maintaining a façade and a variety of intrapsychic and external manoeuvres. Conversely, in relations of balanced power and relatively equitable distribution of resources, ethnic actors cross boundaries for different reasons. Under these circumstances, entry into class-, interest- and opportunity-based relations does not typically demand a complete abdication of one’s ethnic identity, although one’s ethnicity is being worked on. At one moment, a person may temporarily submerge it in favour of a façade closer to and more identifiable with the other group. At another moment, he may decide deliberately to express his ethnicity when emblematic usage of the language, clothing, culture and customs of his own ethnic group will favour him in the transaction. Sometimes, transactions are best negotiated when ethnic boundaries and stereotypes are maintained. So, on the fringes as well as in the centre, ethnicity can be instrumental and expressive, with the ethnic actor being fully aware and alert, and not assimilated. He does not ‘pass’ as one of the dominant group, nor does he lead a ‘double life’. He is not a marginal man either. He has a primary, core ethnic identity, best expressed and nurtured in private. This is his master identity. He also has a secondary ethnic identity, the acquisition of which is sociologically and psychologically problematic and, therefore, demands a more vigorous explanation than we presently have. Just like the primary ethnic identity, this secondary ethnic identity needs to be acquired, nurtured, presented and validated. Foster (1977:114) maintains that, ‘[validation is accomplished by showing that the individual in question has certain critical behavioural attributes that define the ethnic category’. Thus, in this case, the ethnic actor cannot just present a superficial identity for situational gains. He must have it internalised, yet in a way that will reconcile with his primary ethnic identity. He must be capable of enacting the many critical and necessary emblems of the other ethnic groups—language, cultural practices, behavioural comportment, values, etc.—while remaining most natural and spontaneous in one language (Sapir 1968), one ethnic group and one community. Conceived as diametrically opposing assimilation are the related theories of cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism, and integration. Borrowing John Dewey’s concept of democratic pluralism, Horace Kallen (1924:122–3) stresses that, ‘[c]ultural pluralism is possible only in a democratic society whose institutions encourage individuality in groups, in persons, in temperaments, whose program liberates those individuals and

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

19

guides them into a fellowship of freedom and cooperation’. Pluralism articulates a pattern of ethnic relations whereby groups that are different from each other in fundamental ways come to share a common culture and a common structure of institutions within the confines of a ‘plural society’, while allowing for the preservation and perpetuation of ethnic distinctiveness in businesses, religions, voluntary associations, clubs and media, as well as among families, kin networks, friendship cliques and intergroup marriages. As an ideal and an ideology, pluralism promotes cultural and social heterogeneity and, therefore, self-awareness and self-direction in the private spheres, as well as unification and co-operation in the public domain—without necessarily creating ethnic division and social conflict. Louis Adamic (1938), extending the idea of cultural pluralism, borrows from the poet Walt Whitman’s phrase ‘a nation of nations’ to highlight the multicultural character of America as an immigrant country. In the process of integration, what emerges is a synthesis of two or more ethnic cultures—such a process unites but does not homogenise the two groups. Following Glazer and Moynihan (1970), who first stressed the processual quality of integration, Femminella (1961) uses the word ‘impact’ to describe ‘a booming collision (of two cultures) resulting in a forced entanglement’. Postiglione (1983:23) suggests that ‘out of the process of impacting and integration evolves a new synthesis which gives meaning and importance to the developing nation’—the complex forces of this ‘culture collision’ yield a creative aftermath (Postiglione 1983:22).

Skinner’s views of the Chinese in Thailand It is generally believed that the Chinese in South-east Asia exhibit a strong sense of cultural persistence and continuity. Mallory (1956:258) points to the ‘amazing loyalty of the Chinese to their own culture century after century…so that they perpetuate their language and social customs and hold firmly to them’. More recently, Ohki (1967:5) suggests that ‘the Chinese culture is highly resistant to being worn down by other cultures during the acculturation process’. Although there may be some truth in this observation, it is fallacious to assume that Chinese migrants react in the same way in the vastly different physical and social environments of South-east Asia. In Thailand, for example, the literature seems to suggest that the Chinese bear more attributes of social integration and assimilation than of conflict. Skinner (1963:1) has found that a majority of the descendants of Chinese immigrants in each generation merge with Thai society and become indistinguishable from the indigenous population to the extent that fourthgeneration ‘Chinese’ are practically non-existent. He feels that the reason why many western and Chinese observers grossly overestimated the number of Chinese in Thailand was in part their failure to see the extent of complete assimilation as ‘they note the large migration of Chinese, but fail to see that a large proportion of the Chinese migrants in each generation merge with Thai society’ (Skinner 1963:2). Furthermore, Skinner (1963:4) suggests that the cultural persistence of the Chinese community in Bangkok is due not to a peculiar unchangeableness on the part of the Chinese, but rather to a continual reinforcement of Chinese society through immigration. Scholars studying the Chinese in Thailand have continued to use the Skinnerian paradigm. Both Amyot (1972) and Ossapan (1979), for example, argue that the combination of Thai government

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

20

policies and the lack of formal Chinese education has led to the assimilation of the Chinese. Both authors have made a much-generalised statement. If Skinner is right and assimilation is taking place regularly, then the Chinese cannot survive as ‘Chinese’ in Thailand. The gates of immigration have been closed since 1949; thus, it follows that the Chinese minority would be eroded away and, in two to three generations, there would be no ethnic Chinese community in Thailand. Yet, in presentday Thailand, there are still a substantial number of ethnic Chinese. Boonsanong (1976:57) suggests that ethnic Chinese form one-tenth of the Thai population, or close to four million persons, and China-born residents of Thailand who are aliens number nearly half a million. Similarly, Szanton (1983), based on ethnographic data collected in Sri Racha, has found that many Chinese still maintain themselves as sociologically distinct segments, and intermarriage between the Chinese and Thai is not as common as has previously been suggested. Furthermore, in present-day Thailand, especially around the Bangkok area, there are still many Chinese associations, both economic and religious, which look after the interests of the ethnic Chinese. In addition, there are still many private Chinese schools in Bangkok. What are some of Skinner’s major hypotheses on the assimilation of the Chinese in Thailand?1 First, he (1963:5) asserts that, other things being equal, there has been a fairly constant rate of Chinese assimilation in Thailand over a period of a century and a half. Second, the assimilation rate of the Chinese in Thailand is at least of the same order of magnitude as that of Europeans in the United States (1963:5). He notes that one may cite similarities between Thai and Chinese cultures as important pro-assimilation factors: The Thai cultural inventory has always had many points in common with that of the South-east Chinese. The preferred food staples for both peoples, for example, are rice, fish and pork. The Thai commitment to Theravada Buddhism was no barrier to social intercourse or cultural rapprochement in view of the familiarity of the Chinese to another form of Buddhism. In addition, the differences in the physical appearance between Chinese and Thai are relatively slight. In his comparison of the assimilation patterns of the Chinese in Java and Thailand, Skinner (1973:399) singles out certain factors as having a primary effect on the Chinese assimilation rate in Thailand. First, he suggests that the historical experience of the Thai, with no direct subjugation by any colonial power, has resulted in the Thai’s sense of security and pride in the manifest excellence of his tradition. Thus, Thai culture, by virtue of its vigour and continuity, was attractive to the Chinese, which accelerated the assimilation process. Skinner (1973:311) also points out that the Chinese in Thailand were free to reside and travel throughout Thailand. He observes that: throughout the new residential suburbs in Bangkok, Chinese are found residing among the Thai in a random arrangement [and] show no sign of neighbourhood segregation. Even families headed by Chinese immigrants have moved to such suburbs. This changing pattern facilitates the development of social intercourse between the Chinese and the Thai.

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

21

If we accept the hypothesis that the assimilation rate is related to the size and composition of the ethnic community, then this greater access and contact of the Chinese with the Thai will result in a faster rate of assimilation. Moreover, the Chinese in Thailand were free to identify as either Chinese or Thai. One of the reasons for the acceleration of assimilation in Thailand is the availability of ‘structural avenues’, which were conducive to and, in fact, encouraged the absorption of the Chinese into the dominant indigenous culture. Except for certain periods, the Thai government reacted favourably towards the Chinese and adopted a pro-assimilationist policy, as can be seen in its educational and economic policies. Skinner (1957a: 365–72) notes that, as early as 1898, the Thai government had adopted a scheme that actively sought to integrate Chinese schools into the national educational system. Bearing in mind that education represents a major source of socialisation, and at an age when the individual is most susceptible to behavioural and character moulding, the acceptance of Thai language and education by the Chinese will greatly accelerate the assimilation of the Chinese into Thai society. As one Thai author (in Skinner 1957b: 250) puts it: [w]ithout a doubt, compulsory education in Bangkok, where most Chinese congregate, is one means of assimilation. In compulsory education lies an instrument which is infinitely useful for our purposes. It would ensure that the second generation of Chinese will, to all intents and purposes, be Siamese. Economically, the Chinese play a vital role in Thailand. The Chinese migrants were needed to provide manpower for agriculture, shipping and trade expansion. Skinner notes that, in Thailand, unlike the Javanese case, mass migration meant that the Chinese were spread out in all strata of Thai society. This promoted, or at least did not pose a barrier to, their assimilation. Moreover, the ruling and administrative elites in Thailand were dominated by Thai, and the Chinese businessmen identified with this group. Thai leaders also advocated giving citizenship to the Chinese. The Nationality Act was amended ‘in conformity with the government’s liberal policy toward the Chinese so that all persons born in Thailand were automatically Thai citizens’ (Skinner 1973:378). These measures, Skinner notes, assured the Chinese in Thailand that they were desired and thus gave the Chinese a sense of security. Thus, Chinese culture in Thailand underwent changes in the direction of Thai culture; gradually, the ‘Chinese way’ became less sharply distinguishable from the larger Thai society. By the 1950s, the basic administrative distinction between the Chinese and Thai was wiped out. The children of mixed marriages grew up as Thai, and the social visibility of the Chinese decreased. Skinner concludes that first- and second-generation Chinese might be more Chinese oriented but, by the third and fourth generations, the Chinese in Thailand are, in all practical considerations, Thai.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

22

Bilingualism and bicultural education Skinner has overemphasised the forces of assimilation and that has coloured his perception of the Chinese in Thailand. Anomalies arise when we look more closely in our study at the situation of the Chinese in Thailand today.2 On the issue of language acquisition, for example, it has been suggested that the adoption of the language of the dominant group and the extent of its use are indicative of cultural assimilation, as language acquisition is often accompanied by the adoption of cultural values and by entry into the social institutions of the majority. Undoubtedly, many Chinese in Thailand are fluent in the Thai language. Social and economic survival in Thailand has necessitated this. But most Chinese in Thailand are not monolingual. In fact, Boonsanong (1971:13) found that, although every Chinese person he interviewed speaks Thai, nearly all of them also speak Chinese. Moreover, a large number of his respondents also speak one or more additional Chinese dialects besides their parents’ mother tongue, although the majority of them learned to speak their parents’ dialects first and acquired the rest later. This suggests that, for this group of people, Chinese cultural values are internalised first and Thai cultural values come later. There is significant proof of the cultural influence of parental language on the respondents’ early socialisation (Boonsanong 1976:13). During our fieldwork, when we asked our respondents why Chinese was used, some of the common reasons given were, ‘It is more natural for me to speak Chinese in my family because we are Chinese’, ‘Chinese is the business language—if you don’t speak Chinese, how can you do business?’ or ‘I try to speak to my children only in Chinese so that they can learn from me’. During fieldwork, we encountered many Chinese who were bilingual. In one interview with a family (middle-aged parents with two children, one nine years old and the other six), we noted that the parents were speaking to one another and to their children in the Cantonese dialect, but the children answered in a mix of Cantonese and Thai. This was also true when the siblings spoke to one another, although we noticed a greater usage of Thai in this situation. In another instance, during an interview we conducted in a mix of Mandarin and Teochew with a shopkeeper, he spoke to his customers in Thai, but to the shopkeeper next door in a Chinese dialect (Teochew). These fieldwork observations corroborated the following statement from one of our informants: There are many families who still speak Chinese dialects at home. Of course, this is more so among the older generations, but I know many third generation Chinese who still know Teochew and speak Teochew to their parents and grandparents. There are, in fact, shopping centres in Bangkok where most of the shopkeepers speak Teochew and Cantonese to one another. We observed the use of different languages as codes in different environments to signify and maintain ethnic identity: Teochew is used between Chinese and among young people you know. When Chinese businessmen do business with one another, it is in the Teochew dialect or Cantonese. Because of necessity, I allow my children

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

23

to attend Thai school. This is the fate of an overseas Chinese. It is better if they know the language (Thai). To get ahead in Thailand, you have to do this. My wife is Thai. My children speak to her in Thai. However, I taught my children to speak Chinese (Mandarin) from when they were very young. So now I can speak to them in Chinese. In the domestic environment, Chinese had a high percentage of usage, especially when speaking to parents and older relatives. Chinese language was also more widely used when talking with other Chinese. Outside the home, especially when dealing with Thai bureaucrats and Thais in general, Thai was used. Boonsanong’s data indicated that, among the ‘Group One’ Chinese, over 76 per cent of the respondents said they used Chinese more than Thai at home.3 Although there was a reduction in the usage of Chinese at home for the ‘Group Three’ respondents, that is those who were supposed to be the ‘most assimilated’ group, a significant 20 per cent still claimed that, in the domestic environment, they spoke Chinese more often than Thai. Closely related to language acquisition is the role of education in the process of assimilation. We have already noted Skinner’s argument that the integration of Chinese schools into the national educational system and the influx of Chinese into Thai schools, where Chinese students are strongly persuaded to speak Thai and pledge allegiance to Thai symbols, facilitated the assimilation of the ethnic Chinese into Thai society. In a later study, Guskin (1968:67) arrives at the same conclusion: [Given] the results of the law of Thailand, the cultural values related to education, the norms and values related to respect for teachers and the school regulations which must be followed if the student desires to succeed, [Chinese children] are committed to attending Thai schools and, it would seem, are normatively integrated into them. It is true that Chinese education has been affected by Thai government policies. Many Chinese parents realise that there are practical values to be accrued from a knowledge of Thai and that Thai education is an important aspect of upward mobility. But not all Chinese in Thailand hold this view. According to our informants, there were still some Chinese parents who deliberately avoided sending their children to Thai schools, sending them to Chinese schools instead. There were even some parents who kept their children out of school for their extra labour in business and commercial activities. Contrary to Skinner’s position, Coughlin (1960:144–68) argues that Chinese education was in a stronger position in the 1960s than in the 1930s and 1940s. He noted that, although there was a marked decline in the number of Chinese schools, there were more children attending Chinese schools: 17,000 in 1938 and 63,000 in 1960. There was also no evidence that the Chinese community had given up its desire for separate Chinese schools. The existence of Chinese schools helped to perpetuate Chinese culture and nationalism. This has been the basis of the government’s opposition to these schools from the beginning, but it is also one reason for the Chinese community’s desire to maintain them. Chinese schools provide virtually the only means by which written Chinese can be learned (Coughlin 1960:158), although the home teaches and reinforces the use of the spoken language.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

24

What is significant is the fact that, even today, there are many Chinese schools in Bangkok and even some in the provinces. According to our informants, many Chinese parents still send their children, or at least some of their children, to Chinese schools. There are even parents who send their children to Taiwan to receive what they consider a proper Chinese education (Szanton 1983:109). These can be taken as indications of the Chinese desire to retain a Chinese identity. We found during our fieldwork in Thailand that, in 1989, there were 102 Chinese language schools in Bangkok alone, and 213 in the whole of Thailand. Owing to government policies, they are no longer called huaxiao (Chinese schools), but minxiao (people’s schools) or gongxiao (public schools). These schools, ac-cording to one informant (a school teacher), follow the regular curriculum of Thai schools, but classes are conducted in both Chinese and Thai. Moreover, other than these public schools, many parents, especially the richer Chinese, send their children to private schools where Chinese language is used as the medium of instruction. According to one informant, Chinese parents who sent their children to Thai schools also engaged private tutors to teach their children Chinese. Some children attend Thai schools during the day and take Chinese classes in the evening. Said one informant: There are fewer Chinese schools today compared to the past. This is due to government policy. They do not encourage Chinese education. The Chinese are a very practical people. If they see that it is better to have their children in Thai schools, they will send them there. But they will find ways to maintain the Chinese language and Chinese education. As Chinese education in Thailand is available for only the first six years of schooling (it is possible for an optional three more years), parents who want their children to have higher education in Chinese will send them overseas. Said one Chinese: In the past, many Chinese sent their children back to China or, if they are pro-Guomindang, they will send the children to Taiwan. Many Chinese parents today, I don’t know exactly how many, but I think many, still send their children to Taiwan for higher schooling. Recently, they also send them to Malaysia and Singapore. It is not because of nationalism that they want to maintain Chinese education. Chinese is an economic language, a language of survival. Chinese language is very useful for doing business in Thailand. There are really two issues here: affordability and desire. Parents who can afford it will send their children overseas for higher education, often to Taiwan. Many send their children to Malaysia, which is not very expensive. But the point to be made here is that many Chinese parents we interviewed have a strong desire for their children to have a Chinese education. It is also important to remember that Chinese schools in Thailand today do not teach the type of nationalistic Chinese education that was prevalent in the 1940s and early 1950s. There is a growing recognition that education cannot be entirely Chinese if it is to be of any use in Thailand. Thus, the curricula in these schools are fitted to the needs of

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

25

the Chinese in modern Thai society, incorporating the teaching of Thai language and history with that of Chinese language and culture. One strategy that is adopted by many Chinese parents is to send some of their children to Thai schools and the rest to Chinese schools. This is based on the premise that a Thai education will lead to an administrative post in the Thai bureaucracy while the children in the Chinese schools can help in the family business. It is often said that nothing can be more advantageous than for a Chinese businessman to have a brother who holds a high position in the Thai administrative or political elite.

Social-economic organisations and occupational differentiation If Skinner is correct in his analysis of Chinese assimilation in Thailand, the Chinese would have undergone a process of what Gordon (1964) meant by ‘structural assimilation’, that is, there must have been a large-scale entry of Chinese into cliques, clubs and institutions. Coughlin (1960:32–66) argues that the very commercial success of the Chinese in Thailand was due in large part to the development of tight-knit social and economic organisations that encouraged co-operation among the overseas Chinese and provided protection for them in a hostile environment. These Chinese associations, which tied together individuals with similar interests (familial, economic or religious), were the backbone of the Chinese community in Thailand. Coughlin (1960:66) further noted that: these overseas associations in their totality are so influential in perpetuating social distinctions between the Thai and Chinese population groups that their continued vitality as growing institutions beyond the immigrant generation can only be the indefinite postponement of any major move towards a more thorough assimilation of the Chinese minority in Thailand. Many of our informants reported that they regularly send money to relatives in China, indicating that there are still ties with the homeland (Botan 1977). Presently, in Bangkok, there are over eighty Chinese associations (based on clan, region or dialect) that serve important social and community functions. The most important of these are the economic organisations, such as the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and occupational guilds. Chinese businessmen still make substantial financial contributions to these associations. In a sense, this is an indication of their usefulness, as the Chinese seldom put money into any organisation that has limited utility. Furthermore, these associations still provide the social prestige structure for the Chinese community. For example, the top offices in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce are highly valued for their prestige and power. Although the persistence of these associations indicates a failure of complete ‘structural assimilation’, this point should not be overemphasised. Most of the Chinese businessmen who join Chinese associations are also members of Thai associations, such as the Thai Chamber of Commerce. In order to succeed in Thailand, Chinese businessmen know that they have to co-operate with the Thai elites, who control the political, military and administrative arenas, but lack the economic base to bolster their

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

26

political and military powers. Thus, alliances are made between the Thai elites and Chinese businessmen, a complementary relationship that serves the interests of both. Chinese businessmen have reorganised their commercial corporations to include Thai elites with ‘good connections’: many Chinese-Thai ventures have been set up, utilising the capital and entrepreneurial skills of the Chinese, with the Thai officials providing ‘protection’, official privileges and government contracts. Not only do many Chinese join Thai associations for pragmatic and economic reasons, some in fact sit on the board of directors of both Thai and Chinese associations. As an example of this cross-representation strategy, we noted that Vichien Tejapaibul (from a wealthy Chinese banking family), in 1989, was the Deputy Honorary Treasurer of the Thai-Chinese Chamber of Commerce. At the same time, he was Vice President of the Thai Chamber of Commerce and Treasurer of the Board of Trade of Thailand. Similarly, Boansong Srifeungfung sits on the Board of the Thai-Chinese Chamber of Commerce as well as the Board of Trade of Thailand. Even when an individual is not on both boards, there is often representation through other members of the family. For example, one member of the Lamsen family (Thai Farmers’ Bank) is represented on the Thai Chamber of Commerce while a relative is represented on the Thai-Chinese Chamber of Commerce. There is a strong sense of the division of labour between the Chinese and the Thai in present-day Thailand. There seems to be a high degree of consensus among our informants that Thais tend to enter the bureaucracy and the army while the Chinese remain in the business world. ‘The Thais become soldiers, policemen and teachers’, said one informant, who continued, ‘In fact, most civil service jobs are taken by Thais. The Chinese are businessmen and merchants. They tend to engage in freelance activities.’ Another informant said, ‘Eighty per cent of all doctors in Thailand are Chinese. They also control the restaurant business’. One Chinese said, ‘The value of being a soldier is not highly regarded by the Chinese’. Boonsanong (1971:26) notes that: it is clearly evident in the interview responses which point in a matter-offact way to an a priori state of affairs in which some occupations are Chinese occupations and others are Thai occupations. Furthermore, it seems largely taken for granted that Thai should do certain kinds of work and Chinese other kinds. Close to three-quarters of the respondents in Groups One and Two in Boonsanong’s survey said that Chinese exhibited greater skill in trade and commerce than did the Thais. Perhaps more significantly, 58.3 per cent of those in Group Three, the Chinese government employees, agreed. Similarly, in Sri Racha, the Chinese tended to define their Chineseness in terms of their degree of commercial orientation and business success (Szanton 1983:109). Both Chinese and Thais seem to accept the ethnic stereotypes of Chinese as better businessmen and Thais as better governmental administrators. Some reasons given by our respondents were: ‘Trade and commerce fit well with the character of the Chinese people’ or ‘Chinese are gifted merchants’. On the Thai side, it is believed that ‘government work is the work of the Thai people’ or ‘Thai have contact (phuak) and relatives (yaat) in the government’. Ethnic prejudice remains a strong undercurrent in Thai society today and indicates a lack of cultural assimilation. An editorial in the

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

27

Bangkok Post, a major English-language newspaper in Thailand, in 1983 clearly illustrates this prejudice. Under the headline, ‘Chinese Connection and Money’, it reads: The true Thai as a race form a typical warrior society with typical conservative values. They prefer to accumulate position and prestige. They hate to touch and discuss money. Even Thai farmers with their earthy wisdom would still want their sons to be civil servants, rather than have anything to do with money… The Chinese take over money matters. Thai people of Chinese descent continue to have a stranglehold on business and money. Chinese-Thai pour money into acceptable charitable organisations to get recognition and royal decorations. All of them search sophisticated dictionaries to find lengthy Thai names and surnames in order to appear more Thai, with the result that now one can recognise really the true Thais only by their short surnames. One Chinese businessman said: The Chinese are the masters of the business world. When the Thais feel that they cannot get into business, they say that the Chinese are crude, only interested in making money. One Thai person remarked: People realise that there are differences between the Chinese and the Thais. The Chinese are the rich people.4 Another Thai informant said: The Thai government likes to give rank and position to the Chinese. If you are chairman of a bank, or give money to charity, you will be awarded titles. But this does not make them Thai… They are simply ornaments. The Thais feel that they have to work 30–40 years before they get an award, but when the Chinese give money, they get titles. Do you know half of those with the title kunying (ladies of the Court) are Chinese women from rich families? Coughlin argues that the occupational separation of the Thai and Chinese is a major source of friction between the two peoples. He (1960:116) reasons that: this occupational separation has given the Chinese minority immense economic power, but at the same time has excited fear, resentment and a growing measure of intolerance on the part of many leading Thai. Their present economic position, related as it is to so many fundamental institutions and values, is the major obstacle to the further integration of the Chinese minority There is certainly some truth to this statement, especially in reference to the period between the 1930s and 1950s, when strong Thai nationalistic fervour led to criticisms of Chinese economic control. The Chinese were perceived as subtly undermining the livelihood of the Thai people.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

28

Occupational separation, to a large degree, still exists in Thailand today, but the availability of Thai education for the Chinese has meant that more and more Chinese are finding jobs in the Thai administrative service. There is also a growing awareness among many Thais that ‘Thai can be businessmen too’, and more Thais are engaging in commercial activities. But it can be argued that, at the elite level, this occupational differentiation is maintained not with tension, but as complementary functions. As pointed out earlier, Chinese businessmen, in order to protect their financial interests, have formed alliances with leading Thai politicians and military men, who in turn retain high remuneration by serving as directors in such companies. Thus, a case can be made that there is no desire or necessity for the Chinese elites to be assimilated as this will disturb the finely balanced relationship between the two groups. On the Thai side, the assimilation of the Chinese elites could be seen as an intrusion and would threaten their interests. If we were to look at the ethnic Chinese minority in Bangkok today, it is likely that a large proportion are the wealthier people who have more to gain by maintaining the status quo. ‘Becoming Thai’ would lead to a conflict of interests with the Thai elites. In this sense, the Chinese and Thai elites can be seen as subgroupings of different ethnic categories that assume complementary economic roles in the local environment. They enjoy a selective advantage, for they reduce competition between culturally distinctive groups. By occupying exclusive economic niches, these groups maintain their separate cultural identities (Golomb 1978:162). At one level, the wealthy Chinese in Bangkok seem to have much to gain by remaining Chinese. However, at another level, the fact that they interact with the Thai elite will have many subtle, although largely unclear, influences on their abilities to remain Chinese. In reality, the poor Chinese are less likely to change because they have little to gain by becoming Thai. Many of the Chinese farmers and small businessmen in the northern and northeastern regions and in the highlands maintain contact with lowland urban Chinese relatives or friends to retain their Chineseness. These more marginal Chinese are even less assimilated than the well-off Chinese in Bangkok.

Religion, tradition and ethnic identification Skinner suggests that the basic similarities between Chinese and Thai religious life are conducive to assimilation. ‘The Chinese popular religion, with Mahay ana elements, is similar to Theravada Buddhism. Chinese religious sentiment is eclectic and syncretic rather than exclusivistic. Thus, religion is no barrier to Chinese assimilation in Thailand’ (Skinner 1973:408). To say that because both Thais and Chinese practise Buddhism and, therefore, religion is no barrier to assimilation is like saying that Protestants and Catholics, as they are both Christians, should get along well. There are significant differences between Thai Theravada Buddhism and Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. The Thai, for example, worship at Buddhist ‘wats’, whereas the Chinese worship at deity temples. The Thai cremate their dead in the wat, whereas the Chinese prefer to bury their dead. More significantly, the Thai have no ancestral duties, whereas the Chinese are duty-bound to carry out such rituals. There are other differences as well. For example,

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

29

Chinese Buddhism is less strict with members of the monastic order, putting less emphasis on asceticism and combining many more Chinese folk beliefs and rituals with Buddhist ones. Thai Buddhism, on the other hand, places greater emphasis on the purity of the religion. Differences between Thai and Chinese religious beliefs are not irreconcilable, but their similarities should not be exaggerated. In Thailand today, a large number of Chinese continue to carry out ancestral rituals. This observation receives support from Boonsanong’s survey, which indicated that nine out of ten Chinese respondents were engaged in ancestor worship. This figure is for Group One respondents but, even among Group Three respondents, supposedly the most assimilated, 63.3 per cent claimed to be ancestor worshippers (Boonsanong 1971:34). The ancestral rituals are central to Chinese religious life and contribute to the integration and perpetuation of the family as a basic unit of Chinese social life. Moreover, ancestor worship is linked to the idea of xiao or filial piety, according to which children owe their parents obedience and are committed to perpetuating the family name and lineage. Our own informants said that many Chinese in Thailand still practise ancestor worship; many continue to go to the temples for worship. There are numerous Chinese temples in Bangkok, particularly in the Savatburi area. The Chinese in Thailand also celebrate Chinese religious festivals. The Chinese New Year continues to be celebrated on a grand scale in Bangkok, Phuket and the southern provinces. Other important festivals are the Qing Ming, Chun Yuan and Mid-Autumn festivals. One Thai informant noted: The Thai people know that Qing Ming (during which is practised a Chinese ritual of cleaning the graves, like the Christian’s ‘All Souls Day’) is around, because at that time, there will be bad traffic jams as the Chinese make their way to the graveyards to pray to the ancestors. This is especially true in the Saratburi and Chonburi areas, where there are many Chinese cemeteries. The Chinese festival of ‘praying to the moon’ is also popular. We Thai know about this festival because we eat the mooncakes too. Almost everywhere you see mooncakes. In fact, I think the biggest mooncake in the world was made in Bangkok. I think it is in the Guinness Book of World Records. Another informant asked a rhetorical question: If there are no Chinese in Thailand today, who are those people celebrating Chinese New Year and praying to the ancestors? The continued practice of ancestor worship and the widespread celebrations of religious festivals point to the persistence of Chinese cultural values in presentday Thailand. Chinese religion and rituals have emerged as important markers of ethnic identification in Thailand. One of our Thai informants said that he could easily tell whether a person is Chinese or Thai simply by observing the way the person carries out religious rituals. Many Chinese continue to hold on to the tradition of having reunion dinners and handing out hongbao—money in a red packet to signify a gift of good luck. However, the very same Chinese who practise Chinese religious rituals also perform rituals at Thai wats.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

30

Many Chinese claim that they make regular donations to the Thai wats. The Chinese celebrate both the Chinese New Year and the Thai New Year. Even at funerals, the Chinese perform rituals that are distinctly Chinese in origin and content but are carried out in Thai ways. Undoubtedly, Chinese ritualistic behaviours in a Thai setting testify to an overt mixture of Chinese and Thai customs. Yet, this mixture does not mean the demise of Chinese rituals nor their replacement by Thai ones, but a modification and adaptation of both customs to become ‘part Chinese and part Thai’. There are six Chinese daily newspapers in present-day Bangkok, with an estimated readership (not circulation) of over 500,000 people daily. The oldest, and probably most influential, is Sing Sian Re Pao. It was originally founded by Aw Boon Haw, who was a leading Chinese merchant with business connections in Hong Kong, Singapore and Burma. The second largest paper is Universal Press. According to one informant, this paper is funded by the Republic of China and its editorials are slanted towards Taiwan. Chinese newspapers in Thailand are either pro-PRC (People’s Republic of China) or pro-Taiwan. Most readers of the Chinese papers belong to the older generation. However, many young people continue to read them. Finally, we turn to intermarriage and family life. Here, we find some discrepancies in empirical observations. On the one hand, Skinner notes a high degree of intermarriage between Chinese and Thai, especially before 1893, when there was a dearth of Chinese women immigrants. Likewise, Boonsanong (1971:57–8) has found that between 30.3 per cent (Group One) and 63.7 per cent (Group Three) stated that they had Thai members in their households. However, Coughlin (1960:75–83) argues that intermarriage between the Chinese and Thai, especially in Bangkok, was not as prevalent as many had been led to believe. In his random survey of 145 marriages, representing a full range of socioeconomic levels, he found no instance in which a Chinese girl had married a nonChinese, and only two men who had married Thai girls. He suggested that the reason for this was partly the trend towards numerical equality of the sexes and also the cultural differences between the two. ‘The Thai consider the Chinese uncouth and raucous in public…and…grasping, excessively materialistic, interested only in making money’ (Coughlin 1960:75–83). Conversely, the Thai are characterised by the Chinese as indolent, untrustworthy and slippery in business dealings. More specifically, there are cultural differences between the two ethnic groups regarding marriage rules. Chinese are generally patrilineal and patrilocal, whereas Thais are matrilineal and neolocal. Marriage rituals are also very different, with different values and expectations between the two groups. Such cultural differences underpin and intensify feelings of ethnic prejudice. Chinese consider Thai girls marrying into Chinese families as a form of upward mobility, giving the Thai better economic conditions as well as business linkages. Chinese girls marrying into Thai families, except for royal and military connections, are often considered to be marrying ‘down’. A large percentage of the Chinese in Thailand today claim that they would prefer to marry another Chinese instead of a Thai. Boonsanong noted that over 60 per cent (Group One) said that they preferred Chinese spouses. Some reasons given for this attitude were: ‘My parents would approve of it and would be happy with a Chinese in-law’ or ‘As Chinese, we would understand our customs better’.

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

31

One Chinese informant of ours, sixty-five years old, asserted his ethnicity in this way: Many Chinese have acquired Thai citizenship (he also estimated that about 200,000 have retained PRC citizenship). In legal terms, they are Thai. Even in public, most of these people will say that they are Thai. But, in cultural terms, from their way of life, they are still Chinese because they retain many elements of Chinese culture. It is like milk and coffee. When you pour milk into coffee and stir it, they mix. It is very difficult to distinguish the milk from the coffee. But, they are still two different things. I can speak Thai like any other Thai, but I am Chinese. To be Thai is not to deny my Chineseness. To stress Chineseness is not to deny my Thainess.

Conclusion Contrary to Skinner’s assertions, as far as the Chinese in Thailand are concerned, assimilation, as defined and prescribed in the sociological and anthropological literature, has not taken place. Neither does it seem to be a useful, sufficiently dynamic concept to delineate and make sense of the complexity of relationships between the Chinese and the Thai in Thailand. Theories of assimilation often overexaggerate the absorptive powers of the majority group and its culture, over-simplify the process of social change in terms of its directionality and dimensionality and tend to view minority groups in terms of the simplistic dichotomy of either having been assimilated or not. Conceptualising assimilation as a one-way, unilineal, unidimensional process, the theorist fails to come to grips with the tenacity of ethnicity and therefore fails to account for its persistence. Any theoretical attempt to disentangle majority-minority relations needs to incorporate a rigorous treatment of the dynamics of ethnicity and ethnic identity. In the same vein, we argue that ethnicity is both primordial and situational, not either or. Ethnicity is selfmaintaining, cumulative, self-affirming and most vividly used in the centre of one’s own ethnic group, in the private place. It resists outside attempts at dilution or penetration, i.e. assimilation (or, using a more graphic term, ethnocide, following van den Berghe’s (1981:2171) analysis. In its primordial sense, ethnicity resists assimilation and holds its own. It derives its nourishment and vital energy from its primary identity, a psychosocial core formulated since birth in the family, nurtured and maintained before, during and after contact with a foreign culture. A person thus usually and typically has one primary ethnic identity, one reference group, one heritage. Ethnicity is also amenable to construction and presentation on the part of both the ethnic actor and his observers. In the ‘fringes’, where ethnic boundaries intersect and overlap, ethnic actors enter into co-operative (or, under other circumstances, conflictual) relationships. In such a public place, minorities strategise and manage their ethnicity; situations and exigencies of survival need to be defined, constructed and acted upon with caution. Ethnicity is instrumentally used: it either (more likely) feeds on one’s secondary ethnic identity, ‘an identification with the other,’ thus minimising differences and social distance between the majority and minority groups, or will not.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

32

Most Chinese in Thailand today adopt Thai values, speak Thai, go to Thai schools, join Thai associations and celebrate Thai religious festivals. They consider themselves as Thai, not citizens of China. They pledge allegiance to the Thai flag and monarchy. All these attempts at integration into the Thai society facilitate everyday life interactions as well as administrative, political and economic transactions in the public place. Their secondary ethnic identity is not just momentarily conjured up and then displayed for the occasion; it has been acquired, as an integral part of the individual’s own definition of ethnicity. Two other markers of expressive and instrumental ethnicity are the use of language and ancestor worship. Chinese, especially shopkeepers, talk to one another in Chinese, often Teochew. However, in their dealings with Thais, they use Thai. Similarly, Chinese is most often used in the home, as opposed to Thai in public. Unlike Thais, the Chinese worship their ancestors. This is used by many Chinese to maintain their identity as it differentiates them from the Thais. It also acts as a reinforcement of their historical linkage with China. Most Chinese businessmen in Bangkok enter into symbiotic relationships with the Thai political and administrative elites. These relationships are typically class or interest based, mutually beneficial to both parties, and are intrinsically precarious in terms of power balance maintenance. The prevailing stereotype of the Chinese is, as one Thai succinctly put it, ‘All the Chinese in Bangkok are rich’. The Thai elites have political and administrative control while the Chinese have financial and economic resources. These ethnic stereotypes separate the Chinese from the Thai and retard assimilation. In actual fact, we argue that wholesale assimilation of the Chinese upper economic echelon into the Thai political and administrative elites would lead to a relational imbalance. Assimilation would result in an overlap in roles and, therefore, threaten the interests of both groups. It has been suggested that the Thai economy is dominated by a handful of large commercial banks owned by leading Chinese families. One of the biggest banks in Thailand is owned by a Chinese. Many seats on its Board of Directors, however, are occupied by Thai political and military elites (see Gray 1986). While the Chinese elite in Bangkok continue to nurture and manage their relationships with the Thai in the form of alliances, agreements and contracts, most Chinese in Thailand speak both Thai and Chinese, worship in both Thai wats and Chinese temples and join Chinese as well as Thai associations. Yet, a primary Chinese identity survives: Chinese schools and associations persist, and Chinese religious rituals are still practised daily. Coughlin (1960) calls this ‘double iden-tity’, an essentially static concept that fails to view the person as an active being who understands and respects his group allegiances, uses his ethnicity expressively and instrumentally, conducts himself in ways he sees most appropriate and advantageous in private and public places, knows the distinction between primary and secondary identification, and uses the distinction strategically. Such a view of an ethnic actor must logically consider assimilation as problematic and, certainly, not taken for granted. It is a view that focuses theoretical and empirical attention on the human actors relentlessly meeting their own needs while adopting and trying out strategies in daily social transactions (Whitten and Whitten 1972). It is a pro-active view in the sense that the theoretical interest lies in acknowledging the individuals and the group as making the best of the situation, not as mere victims of social forces. This same ethnic actor recognises and nurtures his sense of belonging to his ethnic group. As

Rethinking Chinese ethnicity

33

Rosaldo (1988) points out, while members of an ethnic group enjoy ‘piling up’ and ‘concentrating’, they are also conscious of the possibility of these gatherings being penetrated. The essence of ethnicity is thus one of maintenance and resistance, as much as one of construction and presentation. The key question is no longer whether the Chinese in Thailand or, for that matter, most overseas Chinese everywhere are assimilated or not. The concept of assimilation has little explanatory utility beyond what has already been used or prescribed in the social science literature. The more relevant question is: How do the Chinese go about conducting themselves as a group and as individuals in their daily social transactions with each other and with ‘the others’? Such a question subsumes under it a constellation of experiential and phenomenological questions best answered at the level of everyday life. We believe that the concepts we have suggested in this chapter, retrieved from classical sociological imagination and utilised by contemporary students of ethnic and race relations, offer some useful theoretical tools.

2 Civic identity and ethnicity The position of the Chinese in Thailand has long been integral to Thai social studies, given the history and extent of their immigration and the role they have played in Thai society. Nevertheless, many aspects of the Chinese and their place within the wider Thai society have not been adequately investigated. Added to these gaps is the sheer speed and extent of social and cultural change that has affected Thailand, especially after the Second World War. Many of the older studies (Landon 1941; Skinner 1957a 1957b, 1958, 1963, 1973; Coughlin 1952, 1955, 1960) present an image of the Chinese that is simplistic and dated. This study is an ethnographic contribution to the understanding of the Chinese in Thailand based on our experience of the market town of Wang Thong.1 It examines the changes in ethnic identity, its capacity to adapt and how the pattern of ethnic relations is dominated by the ‘past’ and, at the same time, by a local civic identity. The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, it is to discover the present state of ethnic identity and ethnic relations in Wang Thong. The common view concerning the Chinese in Thailand is that they have, to a great extent, been assimilated into Thai culture and society. Many secondand third-generation descendants are said to have become ‘Thai’ in terms of their cultural practices and association with the Thai. Skinner’s works, which uphold this view, have up to now dominated the analysis of the Chinese in Thailand. However, despite Skinner’s findings, there remain today descendants of Chinese immigrants who, in varying circumstances, still identify themselves as ‘Chinese’. It is thus a major research problem to find out whether they have become ‘Thai’ or remain ‘Chinese’. Second, this chapter analyses the significance of the ‘past’ (local history, myth and ritual) in the context of ethnicity and ethnic relations. In Wang Thong, a small rural market town where, in theory, the Chinese are thought to have been assimilated easily and rapidly into Thai society, we found that Chinese ethnicity co-exists alongside the so-called Thai identity. The Chinese form an astonishingly integrated community with the local people. Investigations of the history of multiethnic associations of the area and different versions of local oral traditions and rituals suggest that the present pattern of ethnic identification and relations in Wang Thong is largely determined by the issue of the ‘past’. By reconstructing local history, myth and rituals, the Chinese have come to possess, when compared with the Thai, a greater claim to local community. This is an essential resource, which legitimises their local political and economic rights and is associated with their identity. Furthermore, owing to the lack of a predominant historical identity and the need for local economic and social co-operation, the Chinese and the Thai have adopted a new form of common identity associated with Wang Thong localism, which binds them together within one economic and social boundary.

Civic identity and ethnicity

35

For more than thirty years, the dominant explanation for the pattern of ethnic relations between the Thai and the Chinese was ‘assimilation’. This idea of assimilation was first developed from experiences in the United States, where various ethnic groups participated in the creation of a new nation and new identity. Immigrants from various parts of the world, after a period of residence, have assimilated this new identity of ‘being an American’. In Thailand, the same idea was applied to Thai-Chinese ethnic relations, suggesting a cultural transformation of the Chinese and their social integration into Thai culture and society. However, this idea was developed during the period of unique political and social conditions and was supported only by data from the Chinese population in Bangkok. The period before and during which Skinner carried out his research was a difficult time for the Chinese in Thailand. Under the two Phibun governments, 1938–44 and 1948–57, the Chinese were placed under severe restrictions. It is simple enough to suggest that such pressures, along with inadequate support from the Chinese government, forced the Chinese immigrants and their local-born descendants to assimilate Thai culture in order to enjoy the privileges of full Thai citizenship. In addition, Skinner suggested factors that encouraged voluntary assimilation among local-born Chinese in Thailand in contrast to those in other South-east Asian countries. Unlike other South-east Asian countries that had experienced colonialism, the elite class in Thailand had always been Thai. This group of Thai possessed power, privilege, prestige and wealth. If the Chinese in Thailand aspired to upward mobility, they would have to become Thai. As there were no distinct cultural or physical differences between the Thai and the Chinese, full assimilation of the Chinese into Thai society was possible (Skinner 1957b: 299–300). Although he did not provide a clear definition, Skinner proposed that assimilation here involved two processes of socio-cultural transformation. First, the Chinese must be ‘desocialised’ (Parsons 1975:53–83) from their Chinese groups and identity. Skinner offered the closing of Chinese schools as one example. This was to be followed by resocialisation, in which the Chinese became familiar with the Thai way of life, beliefs and symbolic identity, and adopted them in practice. This second process, according to Skinner, can be the result of intermarriage, schooling and other forms of close intergroup association. There are three major problems with Skinner’s idea of assimilation. First, one cannot simply say that the Chinese are absorbed into Thai culture or Thai society. Many aspects of the Thai culture and social structure have been influenced by Chinese elements as well. Second, especially in recent years, both the Thai and the Chinese have been exposed to external western elements during the country’s modernisation and industrialisation processes. It is not that the Chinese and Thai have become more alike because the Chinese are assimilated into Thai culture, but because both are (to a certain extent) being assimilated into a common new cultural and social environment. Finally, it must be remembered that the Thai and the Chinese are not homogeneous ethnic groups. There is no single set of Thai cultural practices into which the Chinese have been assimilated. Neither can one say that all Chinese have followed the same pattern of relationships with the Thai. This chapter does not intend to extend the debate on theoretical issues concerning the ‘assimilation theory’, but rather to propose an alternative approach to the studies of the Chinese in present-day Thailand. This is needed to understand the ethnic relations in this

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

36

particular case of Chinese-Thai relations, and perhaps elsewhere. Our experience in Wang Thong suggests a strong relationship between issues of the ‘past’ and ethnic relations—a ‘past’ that includes not just the history of the community but also local myths and rituals. In recent years, the idea that the ‘past’ plays a significant role in the conduct of present social phenomena and that it could be largely the product of certain current interests have been widespread in anthropological circles. This chapter addresses the current debate on the relations between the past and the present. In addition, the chapter will show that such relations between the past and the present can be applied to the study of ethnic relations. Unlike evolutionists and diffusionists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there is an increasing realisation among anthropologists that history is not merely the reflection of human evolutionary process or the means for cultural comparison between societies, but is an important issue on its own that needs as much attention as other aspects of anthropology. An increasing number of anthropologists working on the less orthodox materials of the past (such as oral traditions and local myth) have gradually developed anthropological techniques for handling and interpreting such materials. Oral traditions such as popular versions of local history, once restricted or even considered conjectural, have gained status. Following the works of Malinowski (1926) and LeviStrauss (1963, 1967) on the studies of myth (in the context of history), more anthropological investigations on this issue have proved that there are significant connections between the past and many aspects of present social phenomena, particularly in the areas of social organisation and politics among different social groups (Leach 1954; Geertz 1966; Robertson 1973; Willis 1980; Appadurai 1981; Peel 1984). This chapter is based on the general theory that, in a society composed of several social groups, the pattern of intergroup relations as well as domination of the society is determined by the relevant historical resources (power of the ‘past’) possessed by each group, and vice versa. In the case of ethnic relations, the pattern of relationship between (and among) the groups is determined by their claim to the history of the community. Conversely, the power to manipulate the ‘past’ is determined by the present social standing of each group in the community. The resources of the ‘past’ include conventional forms of history as well as oral traditions of narrative history, legends and local myth. Particular rituals concerned with elements in the ‘past’ are also considered to be resources of the ‘past’. The Chinese moved into the Wang Thong area over a century ago. Despite being ruled by the Thai, they had their own versions of local history and myth, which differed from the Thai’s. Moreover, in local ritual display, the Chinese have managed to dominate the community while the other groups’ original ritual practices are fading away. Although the Chinese have integrated into the local community (both socially and economically) and shared the local civic identity (chaw Wang Thong), their dominant roles in local economy and politics reflected their greater possession of the ‘past’ and their power to manipulate it. Unlike other parts of the country, where economic domination and differences in Thai-Chinese ethnicity are the major obstacles in ethnic relations, the Chinese of Wang Thong, through their claim to local history and the dominant ritual display of their goddess, have integrated with the local community while maintaining their economic domination and distinct ethnic identity.

Civic identity and ethnicity

37

This chapter, therefore, investigates the resources of the ‘past’ possessed by each major group in Wang Thong, namely the Thai, Chinese and Lao. This includes their roles in the reconstruction and manipulation of local history, myth and ritual. To understand the domination of the Chinese in this particular aspect of power, we will also look into the role of local government officials concerning the inclusion of (central Siameseoriented) national ritual practices which, to a great extent, affect the Thai in their claims to the ‘past’.

Wang Thong: setting, history and demography There are various definitions of Wang Thong. Formally, it refers to the administrative boundary of the district (amphoe) of Wang Thong. The trading community in Phitsanulok and the nearby region refer to Wang Thong as the market centre of the district. For villagers in remote parts of the district, Wang Thong is the district office where they have occasional contacts with government officials. Other villagers view Wang Thong as the talaad, the market where they can purchase most of their necessities. In this chapter, the term Wang Thong refers to both the administrative area and the market town. By the market town of Wang Thong, we mean the sukhaaphibaan Wang Thong (the sanitary district, roughly coinciding with the original boundary of Wang Thong village) plus its six surrounding satellite villages, which have close social and economic ties with the sukhaaphibaan. The term Wang Thong is also used to refer to local civic identity. However, the development of identity being dynamic, it is impossible to establish a geographical boundary where the people identify themselves as chaw Wang Thong, the people of Wang Thong. Wang Thong is, by Thai standards, a sizeable market town. It serves the district of the same name as the centre of economic, social and governmental activities. Having relatively good transportation facilities, Wang Thong has become one of the biggest market centres outside Phitsanulok, the provincial city. As market transactions are mostly handled by the Chinese traders, Wang Thong also has the second largest Chinese community in the province. The district of Wang Thong is 17 km from Phitsanulok and covers an area of 1574.6 sq km or about one-sixth of the province. About 55 per cent of its area in the north and central part of the district is mountainous. The lower central and southern part of the district consists of highland valleys and lowland. The PhitsanulokLomsak Highway (built in 1956) runs through the district from west to east linking the district with Phitsanulok, Nakorn Thai district and the provinces in the North-eastern Region. The south-bound Wang Thong-Khao Sai Highway connects the district to the provinces in the Central Region. Within the district, travel between each tambon (commune) is expedited by asphalted roads or well-maintained dirt roads. Some villages in the hinterland, however, can be difficult to reach during the heavy rainy season. Regular transportation to the provincial city and other provinces is provided by forty-two buses daily. Another fifty minibuses ply between Wang Thong market and Phitsanulok. Most of the villages have at least one or two minibus services to the district market and provincial city.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

38

Water transportation in the district is of little significance. In the past, traders transported paddy down the Wang Thong River to Phijit and Nakorn Sawan. Today, the river has become so shallow that it is used, mainly in the rainy season, by some farmers to transport their daily garden products to the market. The ethno-demographic structure of present-day Wang Thong is very complex. The division of subethnic groups and the different periods of the arrival of both the so-called Thai and the Chinese make it impossible to discuss ethnic relations in the simple terms of Thai versus Chinese. By the mid-1980s, the ethno-demographic composition of Wang Thong could be described in two ways. Using the subethnic divisions and the period in which each group arrived, there are at least ten distinct groups. These include the descendants of the Siamese Thai from the upper central region, the Lao Song from Phetburi province and the Chinese from nearby areas who came during the second half of the nineteenth century. From the early twentieth century, inflows include the descendants of the Khon Muang from the Northern Region, the Lao Isan from the North-eastern Region and the Chinese from Ban Sam Ruan and Phitsanulok. The latest inflow during the last thirty years includes the Lao Isan, the Chinese of three different dialect groups and their descendants. However, if we divide Wang Thong into three socio-geographical parts, the picture of ethno-demographic composition assumes the following pattern. The market town of Wang Thong comprises descendants of the Siamese Thai who came during the second half of the nineteenth century; descendants of the Hainanese Chinese of the early twentieth century; and the Chinese immigrants (Hainanese, Teochew and Hakka) of the last thirty years who came with their children. In the surrounding lowland villages are descendants of the Siamese Thai, the Khon Muang, some Lao Isan and some early Chinese farmers, all of whom arrived during the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Up in the highland villages, the population consists mainly of the descendants of the Lao Song, who arrived during the second half of the nineteenth century, and the recent Lao Isan immigrants.

Multiethnic association It is clear that Wang Thong has experienced two major developments in multiethnic association and the reconstruction of its local history. First, the history of the area is marked by social and cultural intercourse among various groups of people. Owing to Wang Thong’s geographical location, different ethnic and cultural elements, the Siamese Thai of the central region, the Lao from the north-east and the Khon Muang from the north, have migrated into the area, including the Chinese of the later period. Thus, the inhabitants are composed of various groups of people who have migrated as a result of political and economic forces throughout history. Second, as various groups arrived almost contemporaneously during the most recent period of resettlement, it is difficult for an observer to establish the historical primacy of any single group. Unlike other parts of the country where local history is dominated by a single majority group, the people in Wang Thong do not accept that any single group has the monopoly in the reconstruction of the local history.

Civic identity and ethnicity

39

The ethno-demographic complexity is intensified by the fact that these different ethnic groups are by no means separate from each other. The increasing scale of economic interdependence and social involvement link them together. To a great extent, the majority of the people share the common identity of chaw Wang Thong. This is important in explaining much of the social relations in Wang Thong. Even in times of great economic and political conflicts—for example, between the Lao farmers and the Chinese traders—an emphasis on chaw Wang Thong identity has helped to ease the situation. This is not to suggest that the groups have abandoned their ethnic or subethnic identity, but rather that they have developed a communal identity that they can share without sacrificing their original identities. To become chaw Wang Thong, they were not forced to adopt the unfamiliar culture of any predominant group as there is no such group in Wang Thong. They can therefore preserve their cultural practices and original identities, and yet also maintain local recognition as members of the community. Among the younger generation, although the consciousness of ethnic and subethnic identities is still very much alive, there is no fixed cultural pattern to which one must conform. There is evidence that the present inhabitants no longer see cultural patterns of each ethnic and subethnic group as being as categorically distinctive as they were in the past. Moreover, many of the younger generation are adopting the way of life, beliefs and cultural practices of each other’s ethnic groups. This is not due to assimilation, because they adopt these practices on a selective basis and without attaching ethnic identification to them. The society as a whole has become more or less multistranded; there is more than one pattern of beliefs, values, religion and so on. Unlike the situation in a ‘plural society’, where different cultural patterns belong exclusively to a particular ethnic group, these practices can be adopted by other ethnic groups. The recent changes in the economic and social structure of Wang Thong have had an effect on the pattern of identity and relations among the various ethnic groups in the community. The most significant is the expansion of local civic identity and the emergence of the residential identity of Wang Thong, which brings together the different ethnic and subethnic groups as well as the market and village communities. The conception of such an identity has helped the Chinese to acquire local recognition and establish good relations with the Thai. Thus, Chinese ethnicity in this study can only be understood together with the other aspects of identity that have been developed in the community. The development and changes within Chinese ethnicity, in this case, appear to be the result of a renegotiation process between Chinese and the local identity. It is thus essential to discuss the pattern of ethnic relations based not merely on the issue of ethnicity, but also on the changes in ethnicity and local identity. Let us now focus on three major areas in the development of identity and ethnic relations: the local Chinese ethnicity, the formation of localism and local identity and the pattern of relations between different groups in the community.

Local Chinese ethnicity Like the Chinese in Singapore, who as a group see themselves as racially or primordially Chinese though individually using a multiplicity of indicators such as language, religion, education or culture, or none at all, there are many Chinese in Wang Thong who identify

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

40

themselves as Chinese, and yet differ from each other in their religious beliefs and cultural practices. During the past 100 years of settlement in the area, some of their cultural practices have remained unchanged, while others have been adapted to the local situation. For example, many of the younger generation local-born descendants no longer use Chinese dialects. Those who married Thai wives and raised their children as any ordinary Thai family would seem even more vulnerable to losing their ethnic identity. Yet, the majority of these Chinese and their descendants still identify themselves as ‘Chinese’ or ‘having Chinese blood’. The question is ‘What binds them together?’, or ‘What is their concept of Chinese ethnicity?’ There seem to be at least three definitions of Chinese ethnicity. The first group of Chinese, who came to Thailand before and after the Second World War, emphasise the ability to speak one of the Chinese dialects and knowledge of Chinese ritual practices, especially ancestor and deity worship. Other aspects of cultural practices are more negotiable. For instance, most do not hesitate to participate in the Thai merit-making rites or private Thai household rituals. Many of them have one of their sons ordained as a Buddhist monk for a short period.2 Many also adopt Thai food habits and Thai animistic beliefs. However, this does not mean that they have absorbed Thai culture. Rather, they see these beliefs and practices as differing little from Chinese ones. The second notion of Chinese ethnicity is articulated by local-born Chinese (not necessarily born in Wang Thong) whose parents are both Chinese (immigrants or local born). Although most in this group could speak a Chinese dialect, they do not consider language to be an essential element of Chinese ethnicity. Instead, they emphasise the knowledge of ancestral history and the consciousness of Chinese blood ties. They encourage their children to marry other Chinese and have ‘pure’ Chinese grandchildren. Nevertheless, they do not stop their children from marry-ing Thais. This group also holds a strong belief in ancestral worship, Chinese gods and deities, but their belief is not as strong as that of the first group. The third concept of Chinese ethnicity belongs to the local-born Sino-Thai who have been raised in Sino-Thai families. For them, the central indicator of Chineseness is having Chinese ancestors. Many claim that the children of a Chinese are automatically Chinese, regardless of whether they speak Chinese or know Chinese rituals. Equally, the children of a Thai are naturally Thai. When asked which of their parents, if one is a Chinese and the other is Thai, has a stronger influence on their identity, most appeared indecisive. For example, over half the Sino-Thai informants claimed: ‘We (people in Thailand) all have Chinese blood, only more or less’. It seems then that ethnic identity does not depend on one single set of cultural traits and can be kept alive by in-group cultural transformations. Thus, Chinese immigrants and their descendants, as long as they identify themselves as ‘Chinese’, can be considered as Chinese even though their cultural practices and way of life differ from those of their origins and of their immigrant ancestors. For most ordinary Thai of Wang Thong, the concept of ethnicity seems very abstract; the majority do not feel able to talk about it. There is, in fact, no equivalent Thai term for ‘ethnicity’. The closest term used by Thai anthropologists is chaad phan (birth race), which makes sense only in academic circles. Among lay Thai, the whole concept of ethnicity can only be described in separate terms, such as chya chaad (race), phaa saa

Civic identity and ethnicity

41

(language) and caariid thamniam (tradition and/or custom). In general, the Thai do not seem to have an integrated, complete concept of ethnicity. Only when pressed will the Thai define Chinese and Chinese ethnicity in terms of immigrant Chinese and the national and cultural identities of mainland China. Consequently, according to local Thai people in the market and the villagers, there seem to be only 20 or so Chinese in the whole of Wang Thong. When asked about the ethnic identity of local-born traders (both of whose parents are immigrant Chinese), most Thai villagers become indecisive, but finally put them into the category of luuk ciin Wang Thong (Chinese children of Wang Thong). With regard to visible Chinese ritual practices in the town, for example, the worship of Caw Mae Thong Kham,3 while the Thai do recognise its Chinese origin, they see the procession as part of praphenii thong thin, the local tradition.4 The villagers in Wang Thong, in particular, prefer to identify individuals according to their occupation, socio-economic status, their relationship with others and, most of all, their relations with the community. Thus, when referring to one Chinese trader in the market (as a respondent), most of the Thai villagers identified him as trader (phoo kha), rich man (khon ruaj), well-known person (khon miinaa miitaa) or market person (chaw talaad).Only a few villagers actually used the term ‘Chinese trader’ (phoo kha ciin) to identify him.5

Localism, ethnicity and ethnic relations Folk concepts of Chinese ethnicity among the Chinese and Thai in Wang Thong suggest that there has been a process of renegotiation of ethnic identities among different generations of these two major ethnic groups. Members of both groups clearly recognise their distinct ethnic identity but are not overly concerned by their differences and instead emphasise their common residence. Throughout our fieldwork, the term chaw Wang Thong (people of Wang Thong) was used repeatedly by local people whenever the question of ethnic identity was raised. Apart from a few cases, there seemed to be no hostility between the two groups, although the Chinese clearly dominate the local economy. Kuwinpant did not report the use of the term chaw Wang Thong during his fieldwork between 1974 and 1976. There were, however, two common terms used for local identity, chaw talaad (the market people) and khon baan nok (people of the outer villages) (Kuwinpant 1980:12, 14). Like chaw Wang Thong, the last two terms seemed, at that time, to identify people according to residence and not ethnic identity. This suggests that the emphasis on local identity (and not ethnic identity) had been developing for some time before another identity began to claim a larger geographical ground, namely the chaw Wang Thong, which includes the people in both the market and the surrounding villages. The recent shift in identity from chaw talaad (covering only the market centre) to chaw Wang Thong (including both the market and the surrounding villages) is likely to be supported by the development of local transportation, changes in village economy and the emergence of Wang Thong as a district urban centre.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

42

The construction of roads and communication networks between villages and the market have brought the ‘market’ (talaad) and the ‘outer villages’ (bann nok) closer together, forming an integrated community. In addition, the changes in village economy, especially the expansion of the market network and changes in occupational patterns, have made the two parts of the community more economically interdependent. A large number of villagers developed extensive personal and business relationships with traders in the market and have come to consider themselves as part of the same community. This consciousness seems to overcome the problem of ethnic or class divisions. During our fieldwork, we did not witness any major signs of ethnic antagonism between the Chinese and the local Thai people, nor any serious conflicts between traders and villagers. Although the Chinese traders are much wealthier than the local Thai, most Thais perceive them not as alien traders who exploit the local economy, but as friends and relatives who are successful because they work very hard. Most Thai petty traders and villagers have at least one or two traders in the market whom they can turn to in times of need. The patronclient relationship is common among the traders and villages. Traders, especially in agricultural products, provide low- or zero-interest credit to their regular customers in order to maintain their businesses. Occasionally, farmers can arrange for advance payment from the traders, before the sale of their farm products, to meet urgent expenses.6 In general, interethnic relations in Wang Thong are restricted to two types of interaction: between the Chinese and the Thai traders in the market town and between the Chinese and the Thai petty traders and villagers in the surrounding villages. A number of Siamese Thai and Lao families who own stores or shops in the market have close personal and business connections with the Chinese traders. Social visits and the loan of goods when one is short of stock are common practices. Outside business, these Chinese and Thai (and Lao) families usually know each other well as they live in the same neighbourhood and most of their children go to the same school. In fact, almost everyone knows each other well within the market. On the occasion of any household ritual ceremony (for example, birth, marriage, Buddhist monk ordination), the neighbourhood joins in without a need for formal invitations. Similarly, at events such as the communal Buddhist meritmaking rites (ngaan bun or phitii tham bun), the neighbourhood gets together to organise the ritual. Apart from the functional division of the market and the neighbourhood, there is hardly any sense of division in the community. Intermarriage between ethnic groups also helps to establish good relationships between families. With or without actual kinship relations, most people in the community address each other by the Thai kinship terms of phii (older brother or sister), paa (aunt: father’s or mother’s older sister) or lung (uncle: father’s or mother’s older brother) as a way of showing respect.7 Ethnic relations between the market Chinese and the villagers seem to be based more heavily on their economic interdependence. Only four Chinese families actually have kinship relations with Thai families in these villages. The rest establish their relations with villagers through the marketing network. However, unlike the outer villages, most Chinese know and have direct relations with a large number of villagers in the six surrounding villages. Although such relations are based mainly on business, Thai villagers regard the Chinese as khon ruu cak kan (people who know each other) or khon kan eng (people of the same group), and invite or expect them to join in village social

Civic identity and ethnicity

43

events or household ritual ceremonies. During village communal merit-making rites or festivals (such as the boat race festival), most Chinese traders are approached by villagers to support the events. However, at market merit-making ceremonies or other market festivals, only the more affluent villagers feel it appropriate for them to participate. Contrary to what Skinner and most writers on ethnic relations in Thailand suggest, the Wang Thong community (the market and the six villages) has developed into an economically and socially integrated unit. Both Thai and Chinese conceive of ethnicity not based on differences, but rather as the identification based on common locality. These two major phenomena seem to lead to the development of chaw Wang Thong, the new identity that is shared by the Chinese and the Thai, and helps to establish the unique patterns of ethnic relations between them. How did such a form of local identity develop in Wang Thong? Why has residential identity become so significant in their lives? How can the lack of ethnic antagonism in Wang Thong be accounted for? Our study suggests that this distinct pattern of ethnic identity, the emphasis on the Wang Thong locality and ethnic relations within the community have, in part, to do with the construction, negotiation and appropriation of the local history and perception of the past. Each group, whether Thai, Chinese or Lao, manipulates the past through myth, oral traditions and rituals to claim dominance and/or legitimacy for their present social standing. The ‘past’ can be seen as a mode of human communication that reveals the underlying structure of relations and the significant unconscious structure of belief (Kirk 1970:42). Thus, let us see how the Chinese have been able to reconstruct local rituals, particularly the worship of the goddess, Caw Mae Thong Kham, to justify existing social arrangements in Wang Thong. We suggest that the symbolic content of myth and ritual acts (the dramatic recapitulation of myth) serve to justify existing social arrangements by validating the rights of particular members or groups while enforcing social sanctions within that particular social system. But even within a stable social system, and particularly in a multiethnic setting, there may be more than one set of myths generated by different rival groups, or factions, to validate and balance the rights and powers of each group. As Leach (1954:278) suggests, ‘Myth and ritual is a language of signs in terms of which claims to rights and status are expressed, but it is a language of argument, not a chorus of harmony’. The distinct patterns of ethnic identity, the emphasis on the Wang Thong locality and ethnic relations within the community have arisen from the unique historical background of the area. The history of the area and the recent development of the market and its adjacent villages have been discussed. Let us now explore another aspect of history that is based on the perception of the ‘past’ as reconstructed by the people in Wang Thong.

Local history, myth and ritual As in any other society, the people of Wang Thong are both the writers and the readers of their local history. The past has many benefits, among which are validation of the present and enhancement of communal identity: ‘If they don’t talk about their past, they will have no future… Their history is their identity’ (Lowenthal 1985:46). Local history, as seen through local oral traditions, reflects both the perception of the past based on present

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

44

social conditions and the perception of the present based on conditions in the past. Oral traditions in the form of history, legends and myth are in fact the living dialogue between past and present conducted by the living members of the community. Claims over the past are used to justify social standing in the present, and present social conditions are used to manipulate and reconstruct the past. In the case of Wang Thong, the Thai, the Chinese and the Lao each have their own version of Wang Thong’s local history and myth, which co-exist. Although the Thai (Siamese of Central Region) are the majority group, there is no sign that their version of local history is dominant. The existence of these various versions of local history and myth suggests that the groups share a considerable space in the reconstruction of their local history. In other words, the Thai, the Chinese and the Lao each possess certain claims to the resources of the ‘past’. This does not suggest that the resource of the ‘past’ as a whole is proportionally allocated to each group. In the context of retelling and dramatising their claim to the ‘past’ (ritual display of certain mythic elements related to the ‘past’), the Chinese seem to be dominant. Each year, the Chinese traders in the market organise the festival and ritual procession of their goddess, Caw Mae Thong Kham, who is the major element in their version of local myth. This festival is one of the major annual events of the entire community. The original local Thai and Lao ritual traditions have declined in importance, and new forms of national Thai rituals have been introduced into the community. The survival of local Chinese rituals has strengthened their version of local history and myth about their goddess, who is believed to be the guardian of Chinese economic well-being. Although the goddess today has become less exclusively identified with the Chinese, the festival and ritual procession, to a certain extent, still symbolise the Chinese (Hainanese) economic and social leadership in the Wang Thong market as well as its surrounding villages, which have become more and more integrated into the market economy. The three major ethnic groups of the community have developed, over time, different versions of the Wang Thong local history and myth.

The Thai story The Thai who told the following version of the story of Wang Thong are the Siamese Thai of the Central Region, who form the biggest subethnic group. Unlike in other areas, the local history of Wang Thong (according to this group) does not appear to have any certain form as a narrative, at least in the context of Thai oral traditions. There is no formal locally instituted body that has kept the story alive to pass on to the next generation. Occasionally, however, the story is told by older members of the neighbourhood to a young audience. The story of the local history told on such occasions varies according to the storytellers and their audience. The following version of the Wang Thong local history is compiled from stories told at three different merit-making events by different storytellers, and from the accounts given to us in interviews with six informants: A long long time ago, there were two brothers who lived in a small village far away in the north. At that time, the village was suffering from famine. One night the two brothers had a strange dream of an old man in white

Civic identity and ethnicity

45

clothes. In the dream, the old man told them that there was a very prosperous piece of land waiting for them in the south where the river runs through a large valley. There they would find themselves a comfortable home and fertile farmland. The following day the brothers told the other villagers about the dream and tried to persuade them to move to the new land, but no one believed them. The two brothers, however, headed southwards by themselves. After a few days’ journey, they finally found the piece of land where the river (Wang Thong River) runs through the valley. They settled down and built a small hut under the shelter of betel nut trees on the west bank of the river. Since the land was quite fertile, more and more families settled there and a village grew. The farmland expanded along the west bank of the river as more families moved in. The village became bigger, and when it was time to divide the village, the younger brother moved southwards following the river and set up a new village. Each brother built a temple as the centre of his village, Wad Paamaak for Baan Paarnaak and Wad Baangsaphaan for Baan Baangsaphaan, the new village. The two villages together formed Nakhon Paamaak Commune (Betel Nut Forest City Commune). The name commemorates the betel nut forest where the two brothers first settled down in this valley. As time went by, villagers from Nakhon Paarnaak set up more and more new villages along the river until it became a big cluster. There were twenty villages in 1892 when the local government recognised the importance of the community and set up the district office; Amphoe Nakhon Paamaak then emerged. By that time, the farmland had expanded as far as Sup Priwan (about 20 km to the north-west), but Nakhon Paamaak remained the centre of the area; agricultural products were gathered here before sending to Phitsanulok. Villagers from surrounding areas came occasionally to exchange goods and food on the playground next to the river bank halfway from Baan Paamaak to Baan Baangsaphaan. This became a marketplace later on. At that time, it was said that some villagers discovered gold in the river near the marketplace. Villagers rushed out to the river but no gold was found. However, the event was big enough to have the river named Wang Thong River (river of the golden loop). Baan Paamaak, Wad Paamaak and Nakhon Paamaak Commune were also renamed Baan Wang Thong, Wad Wang Thong and Wang Thong Commune after the river. The expansion of farmland and the development of new roads encouraged the traders and the market to move northwards to set up a new site near Wad Wang Thong known as talaad Chum (Chum market), which later expanded into the present Wang Thong market. Wang Thong kept growing, more people came and, since the land in the valley was already occupied, they headed for the forest on the highland in the north-east. Wang Thong became the gateway to the whole remote area in the north and north-eastern part of the province. It grew to be the centre of at least two other districts: Nakhornthai and Noen Mapraang.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

46

The Chinese story The Chinese version of local history is chiefly dominated by the genealogical background of a Hainanese family whose ancestors are said to be the founders of Wang Thong market (Kuwinpant 1980:58–9). According to the Hainanese Chinese in Wang Thong, the local history is based heavily on the commercial history of the market and the significant role of the Hainanese traders in the development of the community: About 120 years ago, the area was only a small village of a few families surrounded by forest. A Laotian family from Vientiane came. On the way, the only daughter of the family married a Hainanese trader who was on his way from Phitsanulok to the north. After they were married, the husband decided to settle down since he was told by the Laotian family that up north there are only mountains and forest. It seemed to him that Wang Thong was the marginal river basin village and the gateway to the remote area up on the north and north-east highland. He was confident that Wang Thong would one day become an important market centre. He and his wife, Jaaj Myang, started a small shop, the first in the village and the surrounding area, selling household groceries to villagers. The husband spent most of the time travelling to and from Phitsanulok bringing new stocks for the shop. Jaaj Myang ran the daily business and dealt with the villagers at her shop. Years after, more Hainanese traders from Phitsanulok and nearby cities came, more shops were set up and the place soon became a market. It was then named talaad Jaaj Myang (Jaaj Myang market). It was the Hainanese who foresaw the changes in the agricultural market. Instead of waiting for villagers in Phitsanulok, some of them came and started their agricultural product business in Jaaj Myang market. Talaad Jaaj Myang grew as its scale of marketing activities increased. It provided villagers from the nearby area with their everyday necessities as well as served as a marketplace for them to sell their agricultural products. Not long after, Wang Thong had the largest Hainanese community in Phitsanulok province, second only to the provincial city. When the Phitsanulok-Lomasak Highway was completed in 1956, Ko Thang, a Thai-born Hainanese, one of Jaaj Myang’s great great grandsons-in-law, was the first trader to move to the new site close to the new highway. With permission from the district governor, he built the new marketplace next to the district office at the corner where Wang Thong was to become a bigger market for agricultural products. This version of Wang Thong history, however, is not shared by all the Chinese traders in the present-day Wang Thong market. In recent years, there has been an ever-increasing number of non-Hainanese traders in Wang Thong market, particularly the Teochews. These non-Hainanese Chinese view the history of Wang Thong differently. According to them, the present-day Wang Thong is the result not of market development, but rather a geographical shift of a single major market site. Therefore, the present significant role of Wang Thong as a leading market centre is viewed as part of a wider and longer history of

Civic identity and ethnicity

47

markets in the area. Their story is that, long before Wang Thong played the role of a marketplace, and when the former Nakhon Paamaak and Bang Krathum was still one district, the major marketplace was situated at Baan Saam Ruan in the present-day Bang Krathum district.8 In 1898, when the district office was moved to present-day Baan Wang Thong, the market and most of its traders shifted to talaat Chum (or talaak Jaaj Myang in the Hainanese version) to take advantage of better communication facilities brought about by the new district office. Finally, in 1956, after the Phitsanulok-Lomsak Highway was completed, the market was moved to its present site. In addition to the history of Wang Thong, there is a Hainanese legend of their goddess, which is related to River Wang Thong and the early marketplace. The Hainanese traders believe that Caw Mae Thong Kham, their guardian goddess, is of local origin despite her Chinese appearance. According to the older generation of the Hainanese, the story of Caw Mae Thong Kham is as follows:9 A long time ago when the Chinese traders first came to Wang Thong, most of the trade was done along the river bank. Chinese traders from Wang Thong travelling by boats followed the river to Thalo, Phijit, Taphanhin, Bang Munnak, and as far as Paknampho.10 They carried paddy and other agricultural products down the river to major market centres such as Paknampho and took back manufactured goods to Wang Thong. Because the river flow was strong, travelling upstream took almost twice the time and labour compared with the journey from Wang Thong. One day, a Hainanese trader travelled upstream back to Wang Thong after his business trip to Phijit. Just before Wang Thong, he and his crew had to stop the boat to spend the night halfway between Wang Thong and Thalo. However, none of them could sleep in peace as they were disturbed by a knocking sound from the rear of the boat. Each time the trader sent his men to find out what was making the noise, the knocking stopped. Once the men returned to bed, the knocking started again. Fear of being attacked by forest bandits or by a ghost kept the men alert all night. The next morning, they continued the journey. Soon after they moved the boat, they discovered what had kept them awake the previous night. It was a piece of wood floating at the rear. But what was strange was that, no matter how they tried to push it away, the piece of wood kept following the boat against the river current all the way to Wang Thong. The trader, having other business to attend to, left the piece of wood at the river bank and almost forgot about it. The following nights, many other traders in Wang Thong shared a strange dream. In the dream a young and beautiful lady in a bright golden dress asked them to build her a house, and said she would reward them with a fortune. After a long discussion, the Hainanese traders agreed that what they saw in the dream was a goddess asking for a shrine to be built for her. Since they had seen the golden goddess in their dream at the river bank, they decided to take a look at the site. Meanwhile, the first trader, after unloading his goods, heard about the dream and suspected that it might have something to do with the piece of wood he had left at the river bank. Most of them agreed that the goddess in the

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

48

dream must be related to the piece of wood. They had the wood carved into a goddess image and placed in the shrine built for her. The shrine is located at the spot where she (the goddess spirit in that piece of wood) first landed at Wang Thong. From that time on, all the Hainanese businesses prospered under the protection of the goddess, Caw Mae Thong Kham (the Golden Goddess). The market (talaad Jaaj Myang or talaad Chum) developed into a bigger market centre. The market was finally moved to the Caw Mae Thong Kham at the southern end of the town, about 500 metres from the present marketplace.

The Lao story The word ‘Lao’ used here is the general term for three culturally different groups of the Thai-Lao people in Wang Thong. Of particular concern are the Lao who immigrated from the provinces of the north-eastern region. In recent years, their numbers have increased rapidly, so they play a more significant role in the community than the other two Lao groups. The following version of their story is compiled from accounts by informants in the villages of Baan Nam Duan and Baan Din Thong. These accounts were related to us on three different occasions when the villagers were asked about the history of their ancestors who immigrated to the area: Hundreds of years ago, there was a great Naaj Hoj from the north-east plateau who led the buffalo trains from the North-eastern Region into the upper Central Region. On his last trip, at the age of fifty, he was on his way back after his sale of cattle when he saw a huge curtain of rain hanging across the sky. Since the rain was heavy, he and his men decided to make camp and stay the night at the foot of the Khaw Kayaang mountain (present-day Kaeng Sophaa area). When they awoke the next morning to a clear sky, the Naaj Hoj ordered his men to prepare for the journey. Just after they finished packing and were about to set out on the journey, the heavy rain started again. This went on for many days even though it was the dry season. Finally, he decided to brave the heavy rain, which kept on for three days. Before he and his men could go very far, the Naaj Hoj fell ill with forest fever. That night, he saw the god of the forest in his dream. The god threatened to take his life unless he stopped raising animals to be killed and took up farming instead. In the dream, the Naaj Hoj made the excuse that his homeland was dry and infertile and there was nothing he could grow. In response, the god allowed them to settle in this area. The next morning he told his men the dream and said that he had made a pact with the forest god to give up leading buffalo trains and to settle down in the area. The men, after experiencing all these off-season rains, and all the trouble, agreed with him. From then on, more and more Lao villages settled in the area.

Civic identity and ethnicity

49

The distinctive elements in these stories clearly reflect the identities of these people and their ethnic origin. No matter how strange the Thai, the Chinese and the Lao stories might be, they were all constructed according to each culture and identity. There are obviously three major sets of distinct ethno-cultural and mythic elements, as shown in Table 2.1. Although the stories as told by the three ethnic groups share several common elements, there are also elements that belong exclusively to each group. For the Thai, the old man in white garb is generally believed by many villagers to be the ancestral spirit. The story of Ramayana, from which are drawn the characters of Hanuman and Rama, has long been syncretised into Thai legends and folktales. For the Chinese, the story of the Golden Goddess is identical to the Hainanese deity, Shui Wei Niang, worshipped in Hainanese communities in the northern part of the country. In the case of the Lao, the term Naaj Hoi and the cattle-trading tradition are obviously of north-eastern region Lao origin. These stories share a common emphasis on local geographical elements, such as the mountain, the lake, the river and the hill route. Each group used these elements to point to the specific locality. The stories also have the same basic function: they describe why and how each group came to settle in this area. By using supernatural figures and their mystical powers, each story also establishes the right of each ethnic group to be in the community. The Thai were inspired by their ancestral spirit (old man in the dream) to come to Wang Thong and were promised this fertile valley. The Chinese, who came to trade, have the blessing of their ‘local’ goddess to stay and prosper in Wang Thong. The Lao, on the other hand, have their right over their land because their ancestors (the Naaj Hoj and his team) were granted this land by the forest god.

Table 2.1 Ethno-cultural and mythic elements in oral history and myth Thai

Chinese

Lao

The dream The river trader The Naaj Hoi Old man in white clothes The sacred wood The off-season rainstorm Hanuman The dream The dream Rama of Ayothaya The goddess The forest god The magic horse The blessing of the goddess Buddhist concept of karma Giant fish The forest god granting land Buddhist concept of karma

That these ethno-culturally distinct stories co-exist within the socially and economically harmonious community of Wang Thong suggests an interesting pattern of social formation: the crystallisation of community where distinct ethnic groups share the same space in the reconstruction of local history and myth, and the right of each group over the community. However, in the context of recapitulating the ‘past’ (in terms of retelling and dramatising the elements of the past in certain versions of history or myth), only the Chinese have played a significant role. Unlike the Thai and Lao, the Chinese manage to keep and display the ritual traditions directly related to the major elements in their version of local history and myth, and thereby surpass the others in their claim to the ‘past’.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

50

Ritual display of the goddess In Wang Thong market town (including some immediate adjacent villages), the ritual calendar comprises three major events: the Buddha’s Footprint Festival at Khaw Samokhlaeng, the annual procession of the goddess Caw Mae Thong Kham and the boat race of Wang Thong River.11 Among these, the procession of the goddess is the largest celebration. Despite its obvious Chinese appearance, this festival has drawn the attention of not just the Chinese but also the Thai people in both the town and nearby villages. The festival can be interpreted as a local institution that links different groups in the community. The social significance of the festival is, first, the transformation of the goddess from a foreign deity into a local goddess and, second, in bringing together different groups of Chinese as well as the local Thai people in one common cultural function. It cannot be ascertained when and by whom the shrine to the goddess was built. The older generation of Hainanese Chinese, however, claims that the worship of the goddess Caw Mae Thong Kham has been a part of the local community since the early days of Wang Thong market. Among Hainanese traditional deities is a goddess called Shui Wei Niang, who has been worshipped by most Hainanese boatmen, river traders and boat builders.12 Shui Wei Niang’s festivals and shrines dedicated to her are found in almost every Hainanese settlement in the northern part of Thailand. Many of these shrines date back to the early nineteenth century, and the goddess has somehow adopted the Thai name of Caw Mae Thab Thim.13 Although the younger generation of Hainanese descendants might not know the name Shui Wei Niang, it is cross-generational knowledge that Caw Mae Thab Thim is of Hainanese origin. As the Chinese community of Wang Thong has been dominated by the Hainanese from the beginning, it is possible that the early Hainanese pioneers brought this particular deity with them. As they were mainly river traders and boat builders, the worship of Shui Wei Niang must have been an important part of their ritual life in the early days. In addition, many of the Chinese inscriptions in the shrine were dedicated to Shui Wei Niang. However, instead of adopting the Thai name Caw Mae Thab Thim for this deity as did other Hainanese communities, the Hainanese of Wang Thong chose the name Caw Mae Thong Kham for their goddess. This may be because, in the process of re-negotiating their ethnic identity, the Hainanese of Wang Thong also transformed the features of their deity, converting her from a foreign deity into a local goddess, who thereby became a genius loci. The myth of the goddess and the emphasis on her local name play an important part in validating their identification with the local community and the consequent rights entailed in such an identification. Thus, here lies the emphasis and incorporation of specific local geographical elements with the Chinese mythic elements of this particular deity. The original name of the goddess, Shui Wei Niang, which literally means ‘the goddess of the lower stream’, was localised and became Caw Mae Thong Kham, the Golden Goddess (Wang Thong means ‘golden loop’). In this way, the Hainanese gain both the claim to the community and the protection of a ‘local’ goddess. Another significant aspect of the festival is that it reflects the changing pattern in intraethnic relations among the Chinese. In recent years, many non-Hainanese Chinese have settled in the market town of Wang Thong. Although the Hainanese are still the major

Civic identity and ethnicity

51

subethnic Chinese group, the changing subethnic composition in the marketplace has affected the long-standing tradition of Hainanese dominance. The goddess has also been appropriated by her non-Hainanese ‘clients’. Thus, non-Hainanese serve on the shrine committee, and non-Hainanese rituals are included in the goddess’s procession. For example, according to traders, the procession of the goddess has begun to incorporate the Eng Ko dance. The term Eng Ko itself is Teochew, and the dance is a form of traditional Teochew folk dance imitating the ‘108 Bandits of Liang Shan’ in the Chinese classic Shui Hu Chuan.14 Many Hainanese recognised this Teochew tradition but did not object to its inclusion in the festival. These modifications in the Caw Mae Thong Kham ritual reveal that the two dialect group identities are merging into a more compromising pattern of Chinese identity based on their local business and social interdependence. The goddess who was once responsible for the well-being of the Hainanese has now extended her protection to the Teochew as well as the Hakka. But this does not suggest a decline in Hainanese dominance. Although the goddess has become less exclusive, she is still the symbol of the business interests and communal leadership of the Hainanese. Thus, the preparation of reception tables and the act of ritual submission to the goddess by non-Hainanese traders are, more or less, the signs of local acceptance of Hainanese authority. In 1984, among thirty-six non-Hainanese stores and service shops on the procession route, thirty-one had prepared their reception tables to honour the procession.15 The final aspect of the festival is its role in the relationship between the Chinese and the Thai. The Thai view the festival as either inclusive or exclusive, depending on how close the individual is to the market community. Thai villagers are divided by their social and economic connection with the traders; those who consider themselves part of the market see the festival as a local event. Although they do not participate fully in the ritual or the feast, many come to the festival to enjoy the fringe activities, such as the operas or film shows. The festival, therefore, provides opportunities for the Chinese and Thai to interact, enabling the Thai to become more familiar with the Chinese ritual. The Thai who do not have a close business connection with the market and those who reside in the outer villages view the festival as exclusively for the market people. They refer to the festival as Ngaan Caw Mae Wang Thong, the Festival of the Goddess of Wang Thong. The main reasons why they feel excluded from the festival are that they are not the people of Wang Thong, nor the market people, and neither are they rich nor well known. Only a very small number say they do not join the festival because it is Chinese. The differences between these two groups of Thai demonstrate quite clearly that, despite her Chinese origin, the goddess Caw Mae Thong Kham has become an integral part of the Wang Thong locality. The Thai who consider themselves as chaw Wang Thong, therefore, see the festival as part of their local social events; implicitly, there is some recognition that the Chinese are an integral part of the community.

The Buddha’s footprint Each year commencing on the twelfth day of the third month in the Thai lunar calendar, a major event is organised at the temple Wad Khaw Samokhlaeng.16 This is referred to by

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

52

the locals as well as those in Phitsanulok as Ngann Phraphudthabaad Khaw Samokblaeng, the Festival of the Buddha’s Footprint at Khaw Samokhlaeng.17 The festival lasts at least three days and has drawn crowds of 7,000 to 8,000 pilgrims. Most come from Phitsanulok city or nearby provinces. According to the abbot of Wad Khaw Samokhlaeng, only one in twenty pilgrims is from Wang Thong, and fewer than 100 pilgrims are from Wang Thong town itself. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to discuss the pattern of ritual activities in this festival to understand the changes in local ritual practices. Such changes demonstrate the decline of original local Thai ritual practices and the introduction of central, national Siamese Thai ritual practices that have, in the long term, weakened a sense of local vis-à-vis national identity. Unlike in most other local Buddhist festivals, the preparation of Ngann Phraphudthabaad Khaw Samokhlaeng is largely done by the wad in co-operation with the provincial and local authorities rather than by the local lay community. The festival comprises four sessions daily. The first is the Phithii Tukbaad Ruam, a collective offering of food to the monks. The second, Thambun Liang Peen, requires the offering of food and other necessities (sometimes money) to the monks. The third and most important ritual is the Wian Thian (circling) and Pidthongphra (gliding) the Mondob and the Buddha Footprint in the evening. Wian Thian is a ritual practice common in most Buddhist festivals. Literally, the words Wian Thian mean circling with candles. Buddhist monks and laymen, holding candles, incense and flowers, circle a sacred building or place of worship in a clockwise direction.18 Pidthongphra, on the other hand, is a practice of Thai origin involving the craft of gliding.19 Judging from the number of participants in these rituals, the Wian Thian and Pidthong session is considered the focus of the whole festival. It is only in this ritual that the Phuuwarachakarn Cangwad (the Provincial Governor) and other leading figures of Phitsanulok participate in the festival. However, as the pattern of these ritual sessions is repeated every day, the Phuuwarachakarn Cangwad only appears on the first day. Entertainment is provided after the completion of the formal procession. In 1987, during each festival night, films were shown until 3 a.m. Like many other Buddhist festivals, entertainment of this kind is provided partly by the lay community and partly by the wad. Apart from the films, there are many other activities, similar to those in a local funfair, on the wad ground. Throughout the festival, this four-session ritual is repeated daily. The difference is that the formality of the ritual declines after the first day, as does the number of participants from the lay community. As far as the local people could determine, the Khaw Samokhlaeng festival started about twenty years ago. It was not until 1953 that the present monastery was re-established. Before then, Wad Khaw Samokhlaeng and six other monastery sites on the mountain had been ruins for more than a century. Some years later, the second abbot of Wad Khaw Samokhlaeng, with support from Phitsanulok and local authorities, restored some of the more accessible footprints and built a mondob over the biggest one near the monastery. Our own investigations suggest that, before the initiation of rituals in their present form, there might have been a locally instituted pattern of ritual activities at the Khaw Samokhlaeng. At the foothills of Khaw Samokhlaeng, right beside the highway, where the old village of Baan Khaw Samokhlaeng once stood, there is an ancient well called Bo Chang Luang. Elderly villagers in the nearby villages said there used to be an annual

Civic identity and ethnicity

53

ritual of Ram Chaang at the well, although we could not find any villager who knew how the ritual was performed. These local rituals have disappeared and been replaced by the new form of the central region Siamese-oriented ritual activities. As with most rural communities throughout the history of centralisation, regional rural communities have had to sacrifice their local identities under the premise of nation unification. In the case of Wang Thong, although the introduction of the new state-sponsored ritual is not directly responsible for the decline of locally instituted ritual practices, such additions make it harder for a local community to revive rituals that are closely associated with local history, identity and affiliation with the community. The festival, as presently celebrated, is a provincial event rather than a local one. The provincial administration in Phitsanulok has promoted it as one of the major tourist attractions in the province (especially in 1987, when the central Thai government had just started its tourist promotion campaign in the ‘Visit Thailand Year’). The extensive involvement of government officials at the provincial and district levels can be explained in two ways. First, it is their official duty to participate, as each local office represents the political power of the central government. As Buddhism is the state-sponsored religion, it is the task of the government and its local agents to ensure that the best facilities are provided. Unlike other non-Buddhist rites (for example, the Chinese goddess procession), the heads of government departments have to appear alongside the Buddhist hierarchy. This may be because, in the traditional Thai political ideology derived from the Phra Thammasaad, the Anaacak (the state) and Saadsanacak (the Sangha) are described as the two allied powers of the land. The Phuuwarachakarn Cangwad and the Buddhist hierarchy of Phitsanulok are therefore local symbols of the dominant political and religious power. Second, many officials believe that personal involvement in this kind of major event will improve their popularity. As most of the senior officials did not originally belong to the local community, they want to gain local popularity. Although they are more concerned with their superiors in Bangkok, they also have to establish good public relations with the local community. It is said that the central government sometimes takes this aspect of public relations as an indicator of successful and industrious officials, especially among the local governors. Compared with the procession of the goddess, the festival at Wad Khaw Samokhlaeng has very different effects in terms of local identity. The Chinese have transformed their traditional deity into the most dominant local goddess, and she provides them not only with business protection, but with a claim to local identity (chaw Wang Thong). Paradoxically, local history, myth and the original local identity of the ‘Thai’ population have no place in this modern version of imported Buddhist rites. Earlier forms of ritual activities, which reinforced their identity and legitimised their claim to the community, have given way to state-sponsored rites. Although the rituals of the Buddha Footprint festival do not dramatise the entire myth of Buddha’s Footprint, we see it as the mythic recapitulation of a two-fold story. The first part is the triumph of Buddhism over the indigenous gods, and the second is the domination of the central Siamese-oriented identity over local identity.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

54

The boat race In traditional Thai rural society, villagers hold an annual ceremonial boat race at the end of the rainy season. Similar boat race traditions are found in other parts of mainland South-east Asia—Burma (now Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. However, there are differences in the ritual and in the degree of significance among these South-east Asian boat race customs. In Wang Thong, the boat race has its own unique origin. According to the older generations, the original boat race was exclusively between the villages of Baan Wang Thong and Baan Baang Saphaan. Although the race took place in November after the rainy season, members of the older generation of both villages insisted that the boat race was a festival on its own and not part of the Buddhist Kathin Offering Festival that comes after the end of the Khaw Phansaa period (the Buddhist Lent). This original boat race rite, however, had ceased to exist by the 1940s. The early Wang Thong-Baan Saphaan communities relied heavily on the Wang Thong river. Before the construction of the highways, most of the southbound traffic to Phijit and Nakhorn Sawan was by boat. Even before the arrival of the Chinese traders, villagers must have had some network of economic exchange among the villages along the river. The so-called ‘Brotherly Villages boat race’ could symbolise such a relationship. If this was the case, then the decline of their original boat race tradition might be the direct result of the development of the overall regional transportation. The construction of highways and roads changed the mode of transportation and, in some cases, even changed the physical arrangement of villages and market centres. Most houses in the villages were moved away from the river bank to be near the roads. The market centre also moved twice after the construction of new roads and highways.20 The present form of the boat race festival in Wang Thong was introduced only a few years ago. In 1982, a plan to introduce the annual boat race in Wang Thong River was discussed by senior local officials, traders of Wang Thong market, farmer organisations and the abbot of Wad Baang Saphaan. According to some senior officials who attended the meeting, the main objective of the boat race was to promote Khwaam Saamakkhii Naj Chum Chon, the unity of the community. The plan, however, did not seem to be based on the original tradition of the community, as those who were asked to form the racing teams represented not the Wang Thong-Baang Saphaan community, but farmer and village organisations set up by the government’s rural policy. The racing boats were sent in by five major teams representing Wang Thong: the Wang Thong Trader Community (mostly Chinese traders), the Farmer Organisation of Baan Nam Duan, the Farmer Cooperative of Baan Wang Phrom, the Khloong Ped Farmer Group and the villagers of Baan Baang Saphaan. The race was officially opened by the District Officer, Naaj Amphoe. The winning team and their sponsors and friends may hold a feast at the close of the event. Unlike the festival of the Buddha Footprint at Khaw Samokhlaeng, the present form of the boat race involves few rituals. Apart from the involvement of local officials, the boat race reflects a different pattern of development. The syncretised form of pre-Indianised and Buddhist boat-racing tradition (involving both totemic dualism and Buddhist Kathin festival

Civic identity and ethnicity

55

symbolism) seems to have been replaced by one in which the myth about the origin of the community and the relationship between the two brotherly villages (Baan Wang Thong and Baan Baang Saphaan) was dramatised and reinforced. This tradition in turn declined (because of the development in local transportation) and was replaced by the modern form of the Siamese boat race tradition. Such a development reflected the decline of local Thai myth and history (of the two brotherly villages). This contrasts strongly with the vigour of the Chinese historical tradition, expressed as a thriving ritual.

Discussion and conclusion This chapter concerns itself with three closely inter-related issues: changes in ethnicity; the pattern of ethnic relations in Wang Thong; and the role of local history, myth and rituals in ethnic relations and local civic identity. We suggest three points to consider in delineating the boundaries of ethnic identity. First, ethnic identity is not necessarily based on a universal set of cultural or sentimental attachments. Chinese ethnicity, in this study, derives from various historical backgrounds, different dialect groups and many forms of cultural practices, although all identify themselves as ‘Chinese’. Second, even among the Chinese of the same dialect group, there are changes in cultural practice in different generations, bringing forth a diversity of practices, lifestyles and beliefs among people who call themselves ‘Chinese’. Third, in any open society exposed to a wide range of cosmopolitan practices and ideas because of modernisation and development, there is a tendency for members of different ethnic groups to hold many practices and beliefs in common, thus becoming increasingly more like each other. These three points are best borne in mind when defining who is Chinese and the pattern of ethnic relations. This chapter suggests a broader definition of the Chinese in Thailand than was found in earlier studies. Taking into account the changes in ethnicity, we suggest that Chinese immigrants and their descendants by and large still possess their distinct ethnic ‘Chinese’ identity. Regardless of the practices that differ from their ancestors’, people are considered Chinese as long as they identify themselves as Chinese (Bao 1995). In the case of Chinese descendants whose lifestyles appear to be no different from those of the Thai, this study suggests that such a phenomenon is not necessarily the result of assimilation. The apparent similarities between the Thai and Chinese descendants can be the result of both groups adopting wider cosmopolitan practices and beliefs, chief among which are those related to western symbols and material culture (Bao 1995). In the smaller Chinese community of upcountry Thailand, particularly in Wang Thong, the pattern of changes in Chinese ethnicity seems to confirm this hypothesis. Although it has been suggested in earlier studies that the Chinese in rural areas are more easily assimilated into local Thai culture and society, we found that the majority of the Chinese and their descendants still preserve their identity as Chinese. Like Chinese communities elsewhere, conceptions of Chinese ethnicity in Wang Thong vary according to different dialect groups and different generations, spawning a host of mutual subethnic, intergenerational stereotypes (Bao 1995). In other words, the idea of Chinese identity itself is dynamic. Adoption of some Thai cultural practices is common among many Chinese families, but it does not have much effect on their identity as ‘Chinese’.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

56

The definition of Chinese ethnicity among the local-born Chinese is also changing. The majority see their Chinese identity as related more to ancestral origins and less to Chinese cultural practices. They see the changes in Chinese cultural practices as adaptive responses to changes in their settlement—a core argument of the ‘emergent ethnicity’ hypothesis (Yancey et al. 1976), namely that an immigrant group’s ethnicity has more to do with ‘where one is at’ than with ‘where one is from’ (Ang 1993). Nevertheless, for the time being, a number of basic original Chinese practices, especially those concerned with the worship of ancestors’ spirits and Chinese deities, have changed very little. The effects of cosmopolitan ideas and practices can also be seen in a small community such as Wang Thong. Almost every aspect of life in the most remote villages of Wang Thong district has changed rapidly in the last twenty years. Economic development and new communication facilities have exposed the local population to new forms of ‘modern culture’ and a ‘new way of life’. Many Thai and Chinese have now become more similar to each other as a result. On the relations between the Thai and the Chinese, this chapter offers two significant findings. First, the Chinese have not been assimilated into ‘Thai culture’, but into a wider modern form of materialist cultural practice that has been adopted and accepted by both the Thai and the Chinese.21 Second, the present co-operative relations between the Thai and the Chinese of Wang Thong are based not on the assimilation of their cultural practices but on their dialectically developed as well as mutually shared civic identity. One major problem in any discourse on assimilation is how ‘Thai culture’ is defined. This chapter suggests a pattern of non-universal Thai cultural identity, that is, the Thai people are not culturally homogeneous. In present-day Thailand, apart from the southern region, there are three major subethnic Thai groups: the Siamese in the central region, the Lao in the north-eastern region and the Khon Muang in the northern region (which are further subdivided into many more smaller cultural groupings). Each of these subethnic groups has its own distinct historical and cultural identity. Nevertheless, their geographical movement, as a result of wars or economic conditions, has reshaped the boundary of these cultural regions and transformed many parts of the country into a multicultural society of subethnic groups with a variety of cultural standards. In Wang Thong, the area at the junction of three cultural regions, the history of multicultural and multiethnic association can be traced back to the Sukhothai period. Apart from the Chinese, the area is composed of various subethnic Thai groups. In recent years, many of their original cultural practices have become less distinct but, at the same time, many others endure, contributing to the continuity of their subethnic identities. The adoption of different practices and beliefs across subethnic lines is common among Thai villagers, but it appears to be selective and circumstantial. A person is free to adopt any practice, belief or value standard without altering his subethnic identity. In addition to these subcultural norms among the Thai, other forms of ‘modern practices’ introduced from Bangkok or western culture are also casually adopted. This pattern of eclectic cultural adoption is also true of the local-born Chinese. The pattern of ethnic relations between the Thai and the Chinese is based on a common identity shared by both the Thai and the Chinese. In Wang Thong, the issue of local civic identity is more salient than the ethnic identity of the individual members. The term chaw Wang Thong, the people of Wang Thong, unites members of the local community regardless of their original ethnic identity. The Chinese are able to become an

Civic identity and ethnicity

57

integrated part of the community, or even dominate the community, because the local Thai people acknowledge their chaw Wang Thong identity. To acquire this local civic identity, the Chinese have demonstrated to the Thai people that (despite their ethnic identity) they and their ancestors were part of the history, prosperity and identity of the local community. Consequently, they too have rights in the community. The final issue of the chapter is concerned with local history, myth and ritual, in an attempt to explain how and why the Chinese have succeeded in their claim to local history and the community. We propose three explanations. First, as the Thai, Chinese and Lao moved into Wang Thong (the present market town and the adjacent villages) at about the same time during the period of resettlement in the early nineteenth century, each group has been able to establish its own version of local history and myth without challenge from the Thai as majority group. Second, at present, only the Chinese manage to preserve a ritual that was directly related to their version of local history and myth. Finally, most of the original local Thai and Lao rituals related to their local history and myth have disappeared or been transformed by the stronger central Siamese cultural force. The last resettlement of the area in the middle of the nineteenth century saw a number of culturally distinct ethnic and subethnic groups moving in. Although some of the Siamese villagers might have been migrating back to their ancestral homeland, the majority were newcomers to the area. Each of these groups brought with them their original culture in interaction with (or in adaptation to) their experiences during migration, which formed their local history and myth. The Chinese, though fewer in number, gradually established a small trading centre in Wang Thong and reconstructed their own version of the local history and myth based on their trading experiences on the river. The diversity of the Thai versions of local history and myth, resulting from differences in their subethnic groups, makes their story less uniform. Unlike Thai local history elsewhere in the country, the Thai versions of Wang Thong local history and myth have not been dominant enough to supplant the Chinese version or monopolise the reconstruction of local history and myth. Thus, side by side with the Thai, the Chinese have preserved their version of local history and myth and passed them on to their localborn descendants. What keeps their stories alive is the ritual display of their local history and myth, especially in their annual worship of the goddess Caw Mae Thong Kham. Although many features of the ritual are distinctly Chinese in origin, the majority of the local Thai people acknowledge that the festival is, as a whole, a local tradition. The festival thus performs a dual task. First, it recapitulates the Chinese version of local history and myth and keeps the stories alive. Second, it enhances the Chinese account of the origin of the community and, hence, also enhances their right to membership in the community. At the same time, many of the local Thai ritual practices related to their story of local history and myth have declined in recent years. Our study cites two major Thai annual events which demonstrate the pattern of changes in local Thai rituals. The festival of the Buddha’s Footprint at Khaw Samokhlaeng shows the introduction of centralised Siamese Thai ritual practice into the area. The boat race of Wang Thong River shows how local ritual declined after changes in the economic and geographical structure of the community, and how a new tradition was introduced by central, tradition-oriented

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

58

government officials. In both cases, changes in local Thai rituals have resulted in the decline of the Thai local history and myth. Whereas other scholars have chosen to analyse Thai-Chinese relations in terms of assimilation, we suggest a new analytical approach focusing on three issues: changing concepts of ethnicity of different groups; the interethnic relationship between the Chinese and the Thai; and the use of the ‘past’ in attempts to establish rights in the local community. Our analysis is based on two main hypotheses. The first is that the ethnic identity of the Chinese in Wang Thong has been re-negotiated from their original Chinese identity to a more dynamic and localised identity. Although many aspects of their cultural practices have changed (as a result of adopted local Thai practices or ‘modern’ cultural practices), they remain Chinese. The second hypothesis is that the pattern of ethnic relations between the Thai and the Chinese population of Wang Thong has been determined by the Chinese claim to membership in the community and the Thai attitude to that claim. This second hypothesis is closely linked with the use of the ‘past’ by each group (in the reconstruction and recapitulation of the ‘past’). Our analysis begins with the resource of the ‘past’—history, myth and ritual. In Wang Thong, although the Chinese have more or less an equal share in reconstructing local history and myth, they surpass the Thai in recapitulating their version. The Chinese are the only group that manages to maintain ritual practices that keep alive the essential elements in their version of local history and myth. Thus, they have acquired membership in the local community chaw Wang Thong despite the fact that their ethnic identity differs. This claim to local community is the key factor that privileges the Chinese in their relations with the Thai. There are five direct consequences arising from the Chinese claim to local community and civic identity. The first two consequences are the right to exploit the local economy and the right to compete for leadership in the community. In Wang Thong, the Chinese have been quite successful in both areas. They have achieved greater control over the local economy than the Thai, and many Chinese traders have been acknowledged as leaders of the community (within the boundary of the market town and its adjacent villages). The Thai accept Chinese control because they see the Chinese as legitimate members of the community. Chinese domination over local economy and leadership in return enhances their power to manipulate the ‘past’ and to maintain their version of local history and myth. For the Chinese, the past, the present and the future feed each other. The other three consequences are concerned with the persistence of and changes in other aspects of their identity. One consequence is that the Chinese are able to keep their Chinese identity and many of their cultural practices (although both their identity and their cultural practices are firmly embodied in their version of local history, myth and ritual). Moreover, because their civic identity is based on the resources of the ‘past’, the Chinese are not committed to assimilation to gain local recognition. However, because the Chinese version of local history and myth is reconstructed in such a way that it can be identified with the local community, some aspects of their cultural practices and beliefs have been renegotiated. This process of re-negotiation in their identity does not fall into the assimilation category, but can be better described as a merger or fusion of Chinese ethnic identity and local identity. Examples of such processes are the construction of the local goddess whose name coincides with the name of the river and the community (Thong Kham and Wang Thong) but preserves all other characteristics of the Chinese

Civic identity and ethnicity

59

deity Shui Wei Niang; and the adoption of the term luuk laan ciin Wang Thong (Chinese children and grandchildren of Wang Thong) to indicate both the identity of the Chinese and Wang Thong. The final consequence of the Chinese claim to local community and civic identity is in their identification on the national level. Once the Chinese acquire the civic identity of chaw Wang Thong, they are automatically recognised as rightful citizens of Thailand regardless of their persistent Chinese ethnic identity, especially among the local-born descendants. This national identity as citizens of Thailand, in return, legitimises their economic and political rights. This study has shown a unique pattern of development in Chinese ethnicity and ethnic relations between the Thai and the Chinese. Although the Chinese of Wang Thong at present may not appear as a distinct ethnic group because of the ethnic re-negotiation process, their identity, to a certain extent, remains Chinese. Also, the chapter suggests that the present state of ethnic relations between the Thai and the Chinese has been determined by the issue of the ‘past’. The new approach employed in this study and the new explanation of Thai-Chinese ethnic relations might help us to increase our understanding of situations in other parts of the country. However, until more studies on other communities are carried out, it would be premature to suggest any generalised pattern of Thai-Chinese ethnic relations for Thailand as a whole. Our own experience in Wang Thong suggests that developments in ethnic relations in each community operate within a set of variables that set it apart and have to be considered separately. For anthropology as a whole, this study sheds light on three particular areas. The first relates to the studies of ethnicity and ethnic relations. This chapter suggests a distinct approach to considering the structure of ethnicity. Ethnic characteristics of any ethnic group have never been a rigid set of static physical or cultural qualities because such qualities are inherently dynamic. Despite wearing the same ethnic label, each generation has developed its own concept of ethnic identity—based on what has been passed on to them and their new experiences. Changes in the identity of any ethnic group, therefore, could be the result of its internal development as well as its interaction with other ethnic groups. Given this inherent dynamism and indeterminacy of ethnicity, social scientists seem to be confronted with a new ethnicity each time a new case is discovered. The traditional approach of ethnic classification by, for example, culture, language and education seems to provide us with a picture of ethnic groups that no longer exist. Conceptions of ethnicity and ethnic groups themselves thus become the core of one’s research problem rather than the means of research. Second, in the study of history, myth and ritual, this chapter confirms the functionalist view on the power of the ‘past’. History, myth and ritual have been used by different groups of people in society as a powerful resource to secure and legitimise their interests. Moreover, we suggest that, unless it is retold or recapitulated, the possession of the ‘past’ by itself is powerless. By retelling or dramatising the story of the ‘past’ (history and myth), the possessor has enlivened particular elements of the ‘past’ that can determine the ‘present’. Finally, in the studies of Thai society, apart from Thai-Chinese ethnic relations, this chapter has presented an original account of local Thai history, myth and ritual that may contribute to an anthropological understanding of other aspects of the area.

3 The migrant family drama Long, a thirty-eight-year-old man, came to Singapore in 1997. He had been an engineer in China. Through friends who were working in Singapore, he learned of a job opening there and relocated.1 A year later, his wife, Jian, joined him. Jian, a doctor with more than eight years of medical practice, was unable to recertify herself in Singapore; she gave up her medical practice and worked part-time in a Chinese language school.2 Their son, Guang, arrived with Long’s parents, who had taken care of him since Jian’s departure, the following year. Guang attended a local primary school near their flat in the eastern part of the island. After school, Long’s retired parents looked after him. In 1992, Le, in his late thirties, came to Singapore from Australia, where he had studied and worked. His wife joined him in Australia in 1988, a few months after his arrival there. Their daughter, Lydia, who was then only a year old, was left in China with her maternal grandparents. Le did not know about this childcare arrangement until he met his wife at the airport.3 When he was recruited to Singapore, arrangements were made for Lydia to rejoin them. While Le continued to pursue his career, his wife gave up her job as a human resources manager. The woman who never had any intention of becoming a fulltime homemaker was forced to become one. Ling came to Singapore in 1997; her daughter, En, followed a year later. Her husband, the first in the family to move, had made use of his technical skills, which were in high demand in Singapore then, to facilitate his move out of China. Ling followed shortly after but, while her husband had maintained his job status, Ling lost hers. Despite a good degree from a renowned university and years of experience in teaching, she could not find a job in her previous field. She went back to school to ‘upgrade’ her skills. Zhen, 27, was engaged to a childhood friend, Shan, who went to Singapore in mid1996 for his postgraduate studies. The two did not see each other again until Shan went back to China for their wedding in December 1998. They used letters, email and telephone calls to make their marriage preparations. Within a year and a half, they gave birth to a son. They lived in a flat with their son and Shan’s mother, who came to take care of the baby. This arrangement enabled Zhen to return to work after her one-month maternity leave. She worked as an administrative clerk in an insurance company, a job that she ‘luckily’ found soon after arriving in Singapore.4 Throughout history the Chinese have always migrated. Each migration is the result of different circumstances and has its own opportunities and constraints. The peak of Chinese out-migration occurred at the turn of the twentieth century, when massive numbers flowed out of China to all parts of the world during the ‘coolie trade’, but Chinese migrations did not begin or end there (Sowell 1996; Pan 1998).5 Migrations have continued until this very day.

The migrant family drama

61

Compared with other countries,6 Singapore is a different sort of destination for Chinese migrants. Unlike other places where the Chinese are a minority and often live together in the same area as obvious ‘foreigners’, Chinese foreign-ness in Singapore, where the Chinese majority stands at 76.8 per cent, seems relatively inconspicuous. This, however, does not mean that the divide is invisible (Clammer 1983; Suryadinata 1985). In fact, constant efforts to distinguish between each other are made not only by the local Chinese Singaporeans but also by the Chinese from China.7 Social distance is evident. Despite being so close in physical appearance to the Chinese ‘natives’ that few can tell the two apart, the migrants from China remain ‘foreign’ and, therefore, at a distance. Like Simmel’s stranger,8 contemporary Chinese migrants work and live in Singapore, and are ‘fixed’ there as a social type. The migrant has not ‘belonged there from the very beginning’, and remains foreign and strange.

Some theoretical and methodological issues Migration studies have become more important than before as the movement of people around the globe increases in magnitude and frequency, both within and across national boundaries. With a significant proportion of the world’s population having moved from their place of birth, and the global volume of remittances estimated at US$71.1 billion in 1990,9 research attention has been focused on the centrality of international migration in world development.10 The conventional structural approach, emphasising historical transformations, uses push and pull factors to account for movements between cities and countries (Pearse 1970; Griffin 1976; Sassen-Koab 1983), hypothesising that pull factors at the place of destination and push factors at the place of origin induce movement. This macroscopic explanation, however, lacks power of predictability. Focusing on uniformity in thoughts and interests, rather than on variations, this conventional approach fails to explain why some move while many others facing the same conditions stay put. The conceptual gap between structural conditions and individual actions is thus left unbridged. Moreover, push and pull factors are not explicit, simple or exhaustive. With each migrant holding on to his individual list of so-called repulsive and attractive conditions, how can family migration be explained, where individuals with very different agendas move together? Following Ravinestein’s ‘laws of migration’ (1885),11classical economics emerged to take part in ‘reading’ migration decisions and trends (Sjaastad 1962; Lee 1969). Neoclassical labour economics, in its endeavour to fill the gap left by the push-pull theory, suggested that movement can be predicted by taking into consideration all the individual members’ expected costs and returns. When the present value of net benefits, after discounting the real interest rate, is positive,12 migration occurs. Stressing the economic rationality of migrants, this school of thought is not without flaws. To begin with, estimating non-monetary indirect costs, such as adaptation costs and the loss in affective ties,13 and converting them into a mathematical equation are highly problematic tasks. Even if this estimation were achievable, the equation fails to account for the differential power that each member possesses to affect the outcome. Despite accounting for everyone in the summation, the meanings attached to these gains and losses will differ greatly. Plus signs cannot be expected for every part of the equation. Minus signs have

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

62

different results depending on which member of the family they attach to. For instance, when the father of a family has to pay a price, the impact on the final decision is different compared with the daughter having to bear the same cost, despite the magnitude being quantitatively identical. Some family members are always on the side of the equation that yields returns, while others remain on the other side that pays the price.

The importance of the family The very idea of the family as a monolithic, harmonious, unitary whole is problematic. Yet, we are taught from childhood that ‘families are special’:14 A family is a group of people who are related to each other…family consists of people who not only live together under one roof, but love and care for one another, and laugh and cry together in good times and bad times. It is the family sharing and doing things together that makes growing up special. We are all part of a family even if all the members of the family do not live together… As a social institution, the family not only supports us, but also wraps us up like an envelope, confines and imprisons us. This psychological imprisonment determines how we in turn approach the family, construct it, study it and comprehend it. Being mindful of ‘an institution as a regulatory agency, channelling human actions in much the same way as instincts channel animal behaviour…(which) provide(s) procedures through which human conduct is patterned, compelled to go, in grooves deemed desirable by society’, the individual is led to ‘believe that the institutionally predefined course of action is the only one he could possibly take, the only one he is ontologically capable of’.15 We should be reminded that it is not only the subjects of study who are kept within bounds in this way—the person studying them is not exempt, hence the imperative for sociologists to be aware of their own preconceptions. The traditional functionalist theorist ‘sees the family as universal and holds the belief that the nuclear family is “fitted” to the needs of modern industrial societies’ (Court 1997:83); in this case, the monolithic construct of the family is deeply implanted in the individual. On the other hand, feminist research approaches the family as a site of sexist exploitation where inequalities have a way of justifying themselves.16 Use of the systems perspective in migration studies has been increasing (see Fawcett and Arnold 1987; Boyd 1989; Pohjola 1991; Kritz and Zlotnick 1992). Family and kin networks provide critical material assistance to migrants.17 The migration system, with two or more places linked by flows and counterflows of people, information, material and resources, is interconnected and interdependent. Focusing on the family and its social networks allows us to dissect the migration decision at an intermediate level, while striving to connect the micro-individual level with the macro-societal-global level. Serving as a mediator between the two levels of analysis, the family can be used as a strategic unit of analysis to facilitate understanding of the migrants’ experience.

The migrant family drama

63

There has been no shortage of research on families in migration (see Hendrix 1979; Perez 1986; Kamiar and Ismail 1991; Hugo 1995) but, so far, most of them have focused on the male heads of the households. Co-operation and co-ordination within this ‘cohesive’ unit is assumed or alleged—with migration as a long-term strategy for benefiting the family. Studies on family migration and decisions are conducted on the basis of the ‘common knowledge’ that the family is a uniform entity. Women, who are part of a unitary family unit, hence move with motivations ‘similar’ to men, who represent them and the family (Mincer 1978; Shihadeh 1991). Such studies are indifferent to the members within the household as distinct individuals and blind to any divergence in the interests of the different members. Issues on women in migration have received increasing attention partly due to the sheer volume of women migrating independently (see Morokvasic 1984; Parmar 1984; Simon and Brettel 1986; Pedraza 1991; Day and Icduygu 1997). Such a perspective demands ‘a scholarly reengagement with those institutions and ideologies immigrants create and encounter in the “home” and “host” countries in order to determine how patriarchy organises family life, work, community associations, law and public policy, and so on’ (Pessar 1998:577). Unfortunately, this gendered perspective has not replaced the more traditional ones. Family migration research continues to thrive under a conventional, male-biased scholarship. That the migrant family is a site of oppression and exploitation is not a new discovery (see Kibria 1993; Khaled 1995; Foner 1997a). Working on ‘an awareness that the family is not just a haven in a heartless world but a place where conflict and negotiation also take place’ (Foner 1997a: 961), some studies have acknowledged the intended as well as the unintended reinforcement of patriarchal relationships within the migrant households. This is especially evident in the spousal relations, as some individuals, usually the wives, ‘in accommodating the career goals of their husbands, are willing to play a secondary and supporting role in order to enhance the long term advancement of the whole family’ (Ngo 1994:406). As it happens, the family, although a site of power struggles and inequalities, is simultaneously also the site of justifications and rationalisations, which attempt to patch up the disparities between tradition, conventional wisdom and experience. By presenting the experiences of the individual members within the family unit, this study strives to give everybody a voice. However, it should be noted that, in spite of encouragement to speak ‘for themselves’, many people remain silent because of their position or location in the family: Our language is not chosen by ourselves but imposed upon us by the particular social group that is in charge of our initial socialisation. Society predefines for us that fundamental symbolic apparatus with which we grasp the world, order our experience and interpret our existence. Berger (1963:136)

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

64

Despite sociologists’ efforts to create a space for the woman’s voice to be heard, pauses and moments of silence are to be expected. After being deprived of a voice for so long, the woman is no longer capable of speaking for herself without borrowing from the normally heard voices, replicating them in an analogous language.18 Women as speakers are still socially located within a patriarchal society. By listening intuitively, we may hear the inaudible. But, more often, an initiator needs to generate upheaval from without to hear what has gone unspoken; and there is always a danger that the initiator is merely picking up echoes from within. At this juncture, it should be noted that migration is part of a life process. It is not an isolated experience that can be studied independently, but one that spills over into all segments of life. Migrants are holistic actors, and researchers should be careful to approach them as they are, instead of viewing them as objects-of-inquiry in ‘isolated’ conditions laid down by the objectives of a study. Migration does not exist as a unitary text but is variously intersected by social characteristics such as gender, generation, ethnicity, class and religion. There is a need to decompartmentalise experience, to read migration as part of a continuity (or series of discontinuities) and not as a detached event. The family, as a group of people related by blood or marriage, is to be distinguished from ‘the family’ as a system of relations and ideologies internalised through socialisation and then mapped back on to our understanding and interpretation of other events and structures (Laing 1972). To demonstrate the power of the metaphor of ‘the family’, several ongoing and recurring family dramas will be shown in this chapter. Diverging from the conventional approach, we will look at the individual members who ‘add up’ to constitute a family, instead of allowing the lone male to construct and reconstruct all his assumptions and project them back on to the family.

The study and the sample Twenty-seven Chinese migrant families were interviewed in Singapore in 2000. Instead of the usual ‘one-off interviews, contact with these families was maintained throughout the entire research. This allowed rapport to be built over time and provided insights into the family. In order to explore the drama of family dynamics, some parents and children were interviewed together. Initial contacts consisted of personal friends and informants introduced by friends. A snowballing technique was also used, but only to a limited extent. This was in part to prevent crowding the research with respondents grouped by certain characteristics, such as religion and occupation, which could distort the findings or block out potential areas of exploration. Face-to-face in-depth interviews, each averaging an hour, were held at the respondents’ residence, office or other public places. Conducted mainly in Mandarin,19 the interviews were later translated into English. Primarily unstructured, the interviews allowed respondents to talk freely about their personal views and experiences,20 and gave the researcher room to probe.

The migrant family drama

65

All principal respondents were adults. Children and the elderly informants were related to them. Despite the obvious methodological importance of accessing alternative opinions of diverse sources, entry was not immediate and permission to gain contact was never guaranteed. Out of twenty-five families, only seven children were interviewed. Similarly, out of eleven three-tier families with fifteen grandparents in them, we only spoke to five. During the second phase of our study, we made contact through email with migrants in the academic field in local universities. We also attempted to find informants in public places, but as researchers we were not accepted in the ‘natural settings’ of the migrants. Our efforts to obtain official data and to contact related organisations, such as the Chinese embassy and a church with a mainland Chinese congregation, were also unsuccessful. Relying heavily on the qualitative research approach, the bulk of our data consisted of transcripts from interviews and observations we made of the migrants’ homes. Familial relations and personal emotions could be better accessed and assessed while the meaning of interpersonal conflicts could be grasped from the direct interaction between the researcher and the family member. To augment these primary data, other sources, such as letters, emails and telephone bills, were also used. Before analysing their decision to migrate, we would like to stress that we can only partially ascertain the migrants’ motivations. The researcher’s understanding is merely the second tier of a double interpretation process. The researcher interprets the migrants’ interpretations and needs to find ways to check their validity. Motives may be neither clear nor straightforward, not even for the migrants themselves.

The migrants’ side of the story Examining the history of the decision to move is one way to make sense of a family’s migration: My friend recommended me for this job. His company was looking for someone with a good knowledge of China and can work here… I was very displeased with my work then… In China, many of the supervisors were not concerned about your qualifications at all… Most had never attended university…so they use people based on practical experience and relationship… Most recent graduates end up with little chance… I didn’t like to be involved in all the politics, so I left. Lin, a man in his early thirties I came here four years ago, but I left China 11 years ago… I studied in Canada and then worked in Hong Kong… Opportunities in China were limited back then, so I didn’t return…but my wife was in Shenzhen… I came here by accident, I read about the job opening in the newspaper… I was married but I didn’t have any children yet, so my mobility was higher… I wanted to try out, so I sent the application…then, I came…Z Zeng, man, 3321

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

66

I was working in America… Singapore’s Economic and Development Board (EDB) held some recruitment talks for the Chinese there… I was informed through the Chinese Student Association… I just went… At that time, the American economy was bad and I could only get temporary positions. Singapore was offering a longer term job… Ao, man, 4022 An ex-colleague introduced me to my current job. I thought that it was a good opportunity… Anyway, if it doesn’t work out, I can still go back, or go somewhere else… I had always thought of going overseas after graduating… But, after I have my own family, it is not very convenient to move again. Moreover, it costs about twenty, thirty thousand Renminbi and I need to consider before raising that sum… Long, man, 38 The efforts of the Singapore government and local recruitment brokers to attract skilled labour coincide with the migrants’ feelings of dissatisfaction with the status quo, their desire for adventure, and their hope for better work opportunities elsewhere. Migrants go where the opportunities are, even though most of them do not know much about Singapore. They take the risk and hope the new country will offer something better. The push-pull theory continues to influence the migrants’ own migration discourse. They strongly believe in the general societal conditions being deterministic. So, why this rumpus about the classical theory when many migrants are mimicking the structural theorists and explaining their situation with a similar logic? Macro-conditions do have a part to play in the context of migration. One cannot study migration without painting a larger picture. The general political system as well as the economic climate affect the decision to migrate and, way before that, the ability to think about migrating. However, one cannot rely entirely upon these macroscopic factors to predict a migrant’s conduct. Opportunities are more meaningfully understood as ‘opportunities for whom?’. Access to opportunities is not equally distributed among the family members. The greater opportunities fall to the decision-makers in the family, and the negligible, or even negative, opportunities to those with little power in decision-making. Upon a closer look at the reasons given for migration, it is obvious that most of those who cite external conditions as motivations and as if they were matters of fact are men. We will look at the other side of the story, as reality is not binary nor can it be dichotomously arranged, to see the fallibility of the structural approach and the falsity of its generalisations. Those grand explanations, which fit so nicely into the theorists’ hypotheses, pertain only to certain people, usually heads of households, who may be trying to justify their decision to migrate. Not everyone’s say is given due attention. This inequality is often perpetuated by researchers, knowingly or not, who muffle the voices of the rest of the family by recognising only the male voice.

The migrant family drama

67

Listen carefully We now turn to another set of reasons for migrating: It is not exactly that I liked the idea of coming to Singapore; it is because Shan was here. He planned to work here, and at least stay for some years, so I came. Zhen, woman, 29 Lin [her husband] didn’t feel happy working in his unit. It was quite pointless for him to stay on… Since there was an opportunity here, it doesn’t make much difference for me. Rong, woman, 30 In China, there have always been desires among those better qualified and with the capability, to want to leave the country… I’d thought of going overseas too, but that was before I got married. It remained a dream… Depending on opportunities, most would like to go to America. But, for me, Singapore seems like a better option because it is nearer and there are many Chinese here… Therefore, when my husband first mentioned that he would like to work here, I didn’t have many reservations. Ling, woman, 3223 Because Feng [her husband] was working here and he felt that Singapore is not bad… His work is here, and there are better prospects here for him… so I followed… Living apart is not a long-term solution. It is like separation. Xing, woman, 3624 My husband came first, after he obtained his PR (permanent residence), my child and I came over…no definite reason… I was quite passive in the whole process. Frankly, we already have a family in China, to migrate is actually very troublesome…but my husband felt that his job in China was unsatisfactory and prospects weren’t good, so he came out… I respect his decision. Jiao, woman, thirties25 Actually, I’d never really given it serious thought… My husband is a computer engineer. There is a demand for his expertise here and his prospects would be better… In terms of technology, it is still quite backward in China… He came over, so I guess that’s why I’m here… Hong, woman, late twenties Since he is here, I would not want to stay in China for long. It’s only a matter of time that either he’ll go back or I’ll come out… Not long after

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

68

he left, I started to apply for my visa… It was not much of a decision… Of course I was very sad to give up my clinic. I had just started it with a friend and I cannot even continue my medical practice here… My credentials and experience aren’t recognised… But my family is still more important… Anyway, my life is still going on quite well at the tuition centre. I have made many other friends. Jian, woman, thirties The men moved and their wives followed, complying with their husbands’ decision and trailing their moves. These women had little independent wish to migrate. They reckoned that, when husbands move, families split, and this split should not be permanent. While men often acknowledged the sacrifice their wives had made, seeing it as a waste for women to give up their careers, they usually hastened to add that there had been ‘no choice’ and that ‘it could not be helped’. Our women respondents, surprisingly, seemed to take their losses lightly. No one mentioned being ‘wronged’. Most made sense of their move by seeing it as a way to improve the living conditions of their families; by ‘following’, they were helping to make the family dream come true. In spite of job dislocations and personal frustrations, they upheld the claim that the family benefits, and that this was the most important issue. They saw the family as a supra-structure, beyond the self, and worth relinquishing their own ‘selfish’ rights for. For every seemingly rational, calculated move, there are other irrational ones, especially when families move ‘as a whole’. It is hard to believe that a doctor turned parttime private tutor, or a manager turned homemaker, can be formulated arithmetically as an equation of net gain for the family. What is surprising is that none of these highly educated women voiced any doubt. They still seemed to expect a positive return. Migration is often talked about as if it were a ‘family decision’. Although most of our respondents said that a discussion was ‘of course’ held before migration, not many gave details except for physical arrangements. These arrangements, of who moves first, when and how, followed by whom, and so on, are the observables or ‘facts’ that the researcher can reflect upon.26 Through these observables, meaning can be attached to the actors. These visible ‘facts’ once again point to those whose interests are really at stake in the course of migration. Power dialectic are uncovered as one slowly unwraps the seemingly unitary family. In cases where the wife moved first, did she do so for her own sake? I felt it was right and just went ahead to send in my application. My husband said nothing against it… If I come to work, he’d object, but I came to study… My parents were not happy… I had quite a good job and a stable life…but I hope to widen my horizons… In the case of Mei,27 she moved first, leaving her husband and son in China, but only to experience an even tighter bondage with ‘the family’ as an ideal. She is free to leave home and fly off into the air, like a kite—but not without the family pulling the string. One part of her was tied to her husband, as she was continually on the lookout for openings for him to come over. Another part was bonded to the son she had left with her parents in China, and whom she had totally lost her say over. She wanted her son to learn

The migrant family drama

69

English before coming over for the entrance test at a local primary school in Singapore. She entrusted the task of getting him an English tutor to her parents. Dismissing the idea as unimportant, her parents refused to do so. She could do nothing. These worries and frustrations had torn her apart, adding to all the problems she had to face in the host country. When her husband finally arrived, her situation did not improve: My husband doesn’t like me to go out with friends. He objects to me going out too often… I seldom join my friends nowadays. Now, my life revolves around this office. Now that Mei is alone with her husband, instead of sharing her life with him, she is more isolated than before he arrived. She is unable to see her friends. She said that the place that she rented with her husband is not ‘home’ for her. She would rather be in her office. She used to love the rainy days in China, being at home and just resting and enjoying the rain. In Singapore, such ease is impossible, with no sense of feeling at home, and entangled as she is with going along with the will of her husband and losing control over her son. Her migration opportunity led not to empowerment but to entrapment and loss. Women who followed their husbands’ moves ‘successfully’ had a different story to tell. Many of these women, despite a dramatic fall in status, seemed calm and accepting, at least on the surface. Few of them found work equivalent to their jobs in China. This is not surprising as ‘a high level of education does not necessarily guarantee high status in the labour market due to a lack of mechanism to recognise foreign credentials’ (Liu 1994:584). To give a few examples: Xie’s wife, who used to be a practitioner of Chinese medicine, now works in a clinic as a receptionist. Long’s wife, also a doctor, gave up her seven years of training, eight years of practice as a skin specialist and her newly set-up clinic to join her husband in Singapore and work as a part-time Chinese language teacher. Zhang’s wife, who worked as a mechanical engineer, now stays at home to look after her sixteen-month-old toddler, as she could not find a suitable job. Hong, without waiting for her results in the qualifying examination to get her lawyer’s licence in China, followed her husband to Singapore and went back to school to ‘upgrade’ her qualifications. Li’s wife first gave up her post as a financial analyst when she went with him to Australia, and later dropped out of the degree programme in computing she was halfway through when Li decided to move to Singapore. Now she stays at home. Jiao never complained about her teaching job in a secondary school in China. Her relationship with her superiors was not very good, but she liked her colleagues. Although the hours were long and she had to travel some distance on unpaved mud roads with heavy truck traffic, she derived great satisfaction from her job. But her husband asked her to quit and join him in Singapore, saying that he was constantly worried about her safety during the long and ‘dangerous’ trips to work. Because of his anxiety, she quit her job and joined him. Now working as a part-time home tutor in Chinese, she has little job satisfaction, and the money only supplements her household income. Our account of the women’s work dislocation could go on and on. Besides losing their self-reliance, these women have forfeited their self-esteem. Blatant discrimination and subtle prejudices from their hosts along with the loss of marital power must have occasioned some inner turmoil. But none of them spoke about it much.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

70

When these women did lament, they did so for others. Perhaps they were projecting what they thought of as undesirable and ‘sad’ on to other women they knew. Most insisted their own condition was ‘not too bad’, seeing themselves as ‘lucky’ compared with many migrant women they knew. The other women they had in mind were friends, acquaintances, friends of friends and sometimes even fictional characters created by merging reality with imagination. By making up these unfortunate others, they lessened their own plight. ‘Most people are motivated to justify their own actions, beliefs, and feelings. When a person does something, he will try, if at all possible, to convince himself (and others) that it was a logical, reasonable thing to do’ (Aronson 1972:86). The irrevocability of their decision to move might cause them to justify the move as rational and ‘good’, however irrational and ‘bad’ it might be before the fact. This distortion in the face of the irrevocability of the move results in comments such as ‘Every move is a right move’. Knowing that a sacrifice on their part is inevitable, wives attempt to reduce the unpleasantness of their situation by convincing themselves that ‘It is not so bad after all’. When there appears to be an absence of external justification, especially for the migrant women who so evidently do not benefit from the move, they begin to believe their own lies. There exists a mechanism inherent in the family that explains away one’s personal misfortune and suffering. Sacrifices for the good of the family are not tragic, but the right thing to do.

Children in migration Children have the least say in the decision to move, although their life chances and experiences are affected the most. While adapting to a new environment may be difficult for adults, at least they left home of their own accord. Children usually have no choice at all: I don’t like it here… I love to climb mountains with my grandfather during weekends. We do that back home… Here, there is only school. I want to go back… Mother says we will go back, but we never will… En, 6, Ling’s daughter who came less than two years ago She always asks us to bring her back… My parents came with her initially and when they were around, things were not so bad. After that she began to throw temper tantrums…she keeps saying that she has to go back to Hangzhou… Once I told her if I had time, I would bring her back to visit her grandparents. She thought we were going back for good and went back to her school to announce that she’s leaving Singapore… Now, she only hints at that once in a while, not as frequently… Children forget. Ling28 Although our respondents appear to abide by the morality of making sacrifices for the family, and aware of the costs such sacrifices entail, as adults they retain control and discount the child’s voice. Frequently, those children who are the most honest and vocal

The migrant family drama

71

about the move are dismissed as being ‘immature’. The parents seem to believe what it suits them to believe: namely that children are so adaptable that they are the ones who have the least difficulty in adjusting to life in a new country. The initial period of throwing tantrums is expected and normal, nothing to worry about. Insisting that ‘children forget’, adults normalise their children’s reactions towards migration. In this way, the child’s voice is muffled. Over time, children do stop their ‘complaints’, relinquishing the struggle as a lost cause, which is read by parents as having adapted to the local culture and lifestyle. Children’s views are seldom solicited before the move and are disregarded after the move. Yet most parents insist they migrated ‘for the children’.

A‘blissful’ retirement for grandparents Another group of migrants whose voices are not heard are the elderly, those grandparents brought to Singapore by their adult sons and daughters to enjoy ‘blissful family life’. To those who have been caregivers much of their adult lives, it is allegedly their ‘good fortune’ to spend their old age babysitting their grandchildren. This hegemonic cultural image of the elderly in China taking delight in their roles as grandparents leads to their exploitation by the family. Some couples come to Singapore first, leaving their children in the care of their own parents in China. Other dual-career couples bring their parents over to Sin-gapore and assign them homemaking duties. Most grandparents are on social visit passes, while a few are on dependence passes. Some eventually obtain permanent residence, but very few apply for citizenship. They are the least permanent residents of the family in Singapore, and the most dependent. As domestic helpers, they provide labour which is not rewarded. Their service is often discounted or hidden behind the facade of the ideal family.

All in the family, all for the family To be at home is to have the sense of a terrain—spatial, epistemological, and cultural—which one expects to navigate with smoothness and ease. But homes, like other civic institutions, are sites for producing and reproducing bodies, borders, subject positions, discourses and ideologies, mechanisms of surveillance and discipline. Sagar (1997:237) The family presents a disturbing site for investigations into migration decisions. Exploitations are often accompanied by delicate and subtle forms of justification: Family oppression is about family subordinates being personal dependants. It is about their not being able to change to another husband/father [in this case, son as well] and their having to do whatever

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

72

their husband/father requires rather than specific tasks… Family dependants do not own their own labour power in the same way as the heads of households own theirs… Delphy and Leonard (1992:1–2) The issue is not simply about oppression. The construct of the family ideal that is internalised by the individuals acts back upon them. In situations where there are supposedly choices and options, the individuals do not experience freedom of choice because the ideal of the family, once internalised, now controls them from within. The surface ‘common good’ is actually a cover-up for many inequalities, a way to hide them from the outsider’s gaze and, to a large extent, from the insider’s own awareness of what is really happening. ‘Irrational’ moves do occur, and may sometimes be described as such when they benefit only the head of the household, but the family strives to appear harmonious and functional. For many trailing spouses, children and grandparents, the family ideal provides justifications the individual can use to make sense of his journey—that the move benefits the family as a whole, and is therefore good.

Constructing the family in the transnational arena ‘In a transnational perspective, contemporary immigrants are seen as maintaining familial, economic, and cultural ties across international borders, in effect making the home and host societies a single arena of social action’ (Foner 1997b: 355). They are the ‘transmigrants’, in Schiller, Basch and Blanc’s words, those ‘whose daily lives depend on multiple and constant interconnections across international borders and whose public identities are configured in relationship to more than one nation-state’ (Schiller et al. 1999:73). ‘Simultaneous embeddedness’ and ‘multistranded social relations’ are part of this ‘condition in which, despite great distances and notwithstanding the presence of international borders, certain kinds of relationships have been globally intensified and now take place paradoxically in a planet-spanning yet common—however virtual—arena of activity’ called ‘transnationalism’ (Vertovec 1999:447). This very much describes the biographies of Chinese migrants in Singapore, who act out their everyday lives on a transnational stage. Many respondents indicated that they maintained contact with people back home through the telephone, usually weekly. When asked why they would make these calls, especially when there was very little to talk about and there was no real news, most simply smiled and remarked that their parents wanted to ‘hear their voice’. Even though most could not recall the exact content of these conversations,29 they made such calls rather regularly, as a symbolic gesture to maintain family ties.30 Telephone conversations were held among family members to make up and perform transnationality collectively. Although physically dispersed, members of the family regarded such moments of communication as something ‘close to the heart’. Talking to each other about the mundane details of their daily lives, even though it might mean

The migrant family drama

73

spending a large portion of their income, is essential for reinforcing and deepening the idea of the family. These weekly telephone exchanges, usually initiated in Singapore, were limited to family members and very close friends, while emails were exchanged among ex-classmates and ex-colleagues. The latter contacts were maintained for both social and economic reasons, serving as informal information sources and for work-related engagements. It was through such links that some of our respondents were informed of work opportunities in Singapore. Gift exchanges can also be viewed as a family ritual, performed symbolically to bond the family together by stressing interdependence and mutual help. Although most of the gifts exchanged were available in both countries, they continued to shuttle between two places as if there was a real scarcity of them at either end, or as though the price differentials were large enough to justify the delivery costs. The fact of the commodity’s ready availability and the lack of a price gap was apparently lost on people engaging in gift exchanges, suggesting that gifts were significant in terms of maintenance of emotional ties and attachments. Gift exchange had little to do with the need for a specific item, and much with the meaning attributed to gift giving. A gift represented the ‘heart’ of the sender, and wrapped up within it was the sender’s love. In this way, gifts were also about the ideological construction and reproduction of the family. Migrants made regular return trips to China. Once a year, on average, these migrants returned to re-establish family ties and to reconnect with the sending coun-try and those who remained. Contrary to what some might think with regard to social controls having been loosened for migrants, these visits continued to renew and tighten social bonds between sending and receiving countries. Although not everyone was enthusiastic about these home visits, during which having meals together and updating each other about recent life events were typical, most carried them out like a mission. The mission was to rebuild family solidarity and tie oneself, one more time, to the ideal of the family. Sometimes, family representatives were sent over, usually the female adults. Some migrants had ambivalent feelings about these trips. Although many women found such home visits ‘exhausting’ or ‘boring’, they also described them as ‘emotionally fulfilling’. They could have taken their vacation elsewhere but, invariably, they went back to China. Transnationalism and its practices provide a context within which interpretations of a migrant’s experiences are constructed: Now, you don’t think of a family as three generations living together under one roof anymore… I don’t feel that I’m not part of the family by being away… I still keep in contact with them as much as I can; it doesn’t matter where I am… I always visit my parents every year… Min, single woman, 35 We still do things together… If I have any problem, I’ll discuss it with my family…although we don’t live together; we are still together at heart… we still frequently communicate through whatever means… Dong, single woman, 30

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

74

Migrant families can insert themselves into this transnational space, and the migrants act accordingly with this sociological or existential knowledge in mind. The migrant’s conscious conduct in everyday life is articulated against the background of an awareness of this transnational space. Contrary to what one of our respondents said about becoming less bounded and controlled by the social networks back home, familial control and solidarity do not necessarily decrease with distance. Transnationality manifests itself in the adaptation in a migrant’s everyday life, and in the migrant’s emergent concept of the two countries. The imagery of uprooting and assimilating has in fact weakened. The migrant no longer either adapts to fit into the new society or returns to the old one: the migrant travels back and forth between the two countries, or may even go on to a third country. Living in the host country begins to take on a new perspective as the migrant explores, experiments and opens up new options. ‘Home’ is no longer locally restricted nor is assimilation obligatory. While feelings for the ‘motherland’ continue to influence how these migrants speak of China, transnationality encourages them to look to strange and unknown places. Transnationality is about imagination, fantasy and desire. But transnationality cannot always grant the migrant’s desire. Perceived as a phenomenon that ‘preceded “the nation”’ (Vertovec 1999:447), transnationalism has perhaps been glamorised by researchers, who fantasise it as an alternative to nationalism. Transnationalism carries too many promises it cannot fulfil, at least not yet. Although some of the pitfalls of transnationalism have been identified and discussed (Portes et al. 1999), its downsides have been by and large ignored. A transnational lifestyle, although much celebrated in the anthropological and sociological literature, remains out of reach for many people without the requisite resources. This discrepancy in ownership of resources might result in a wide gap separating the transnationalistic and the local, the ‘home bound’. Access to a transnational lifestyle is not equal for everyone in the family either. The elderly might not have the skills to connect themselves with the world through the internet; many don’t know how to make a long-distance telephone call. Access to science and technology is kept under the control of their adult children. Male adults undoubtedly predominate in the transnational space; they hold the key to the brave new world.

Conclusion In this chapter, an effort has been made to make sense of the workings of the Chinese migrant family. Although there have been family studies and migration studies for decades, analyses of the family and migration have been conducted separately; combining these two areas of study would yield fruitful results. In an age of hypermobility, when migration is part and parcel of everyday life, the scope of family studies remains limited without paying attention to those who move at speed. The sheer volume of migrant families is significant, and denying them a place erases one salient part of the real social world. Likewise, as migration studies begin to proliferate, it is also important to take into account the family. Intertwining the two social phenomena, migration and the family, gives birth to this study.

The migrant family drama

75

From the macroscopic structural contexts, including economic climate, immigration and emigration policies, to the micro-individual, personal motives, contemporary human migrations result from a wide variety of forces. The Chinese migrants move with varied agendas. While migration is not a haphazard but a calculated move, only those with the resources being able to conceive the idea of moving, no migration is undertaken because of a simple set of push and pull factors, nor is it based purely on economic rationality. Individual migrants strive to work out their decisions within the contexts of families, although the power that each person has to negotiate his position within the family differs. In family migration, not everyone benefits, but complaints from some sectors are almost never heard; most people speak of the positive gain in moving. Those who disagree with moving, such as children and ‘trailing’ wives, are muted by constraints within the family structure or sometimes even by researchers, albeit unintentionally. Family migration has long been studied as a collective move, with everyone in the family taken as part of a harmonious and integrated whole. Although recently the oppressive nature of family relationships has been reinserted into studies of migrant families, the power of the family to generate norms and values for its members to abide by, without the individuals themselves being aware of it, is still largely overlooked. The family as a site for oppression and justifications remains understudied. In family migration, the image of the ‘trailing spouse’ conveys the idea of a wife willingly following her husband. Husbands ‘trail’ too, but their numbers are fewer. In our study, the analytical focus has been shifted from the husband’s point of view to the wife’s. Like the trailing husbands who explain their situation in order to appear that they are not trailing their wives, wives who suffer from dislocation or a fall in status, at work or within the family, may resort to an airtight system of rationalisations to allow themselves to read their plight more positively. Like the wives, children and the elderly usually migrate to ‘follow’ their family. Children are never consulted about migration, whereas the elderly are asked for their opinion out of respect, but often not until they have already been informed of their adult children’s plan to migrate. It is no surprise that the presence of the elderly in migration studies has been insignificant. As dependants, grandparents and grandchildren have little or no say in decisions being made about migration. Their silence is further glossed over by images of the cosy and loving family, of adults moving for the good of their children, and of the elderly enjoying a blissful retirement in the host society. The idea of family varies from person to person. Women generally have a wider definition than men of who should be included in it. This family definition in turn influences how individuals conduct themselves in family-related activities such as maintaining transnational networks. Such activities, transcending national borders, have intensified with the use of new technologies, while the traditional modes of bonding and communication continue to have a symbolic value. By moving, a migrant supposedly breaks free from the bondage of the family; many studies indeed celebrate migration as emancipatory. But the idea of the family is powerful, and becomes more so when the family must stick together as a cohesive unit, as when faced with a common ‘enemy’—the hostile or at least strange condition in the host country. Even when the migrant is physically away from the family, he or she is not

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

76

a free-floating individual, but is still tied to the family ‘back home’. Although often construed as something that transcends national boundaries, transnationalism thus far has failed to transcend the moral compass of the family. The Chinese migrants in Singapore spend much time reproducing the ‘reality’ of ‘family togetherness’, thus tightening their bondage to the family back in China. Making sense of migrant families involves looking at the family as a unity of interacting personalities; individuals who somehow ‘got lost’ in the move would have their lost selves quickly reinserted back into the family drama.

4 The ethnicity paradox of immigrants On 10 July 1989, the Singapore government announced a modified immigration policy to offer permanent residence to 25,000 skilled and semi-skilled workers and their families from Hong Kong. These were to include technicians, craftsmen, white-collar workers and self-employed people. Prospective applicants needed to have a secondary education, to earn at least S$ 1,500 a month and to have five years of work experience; or to have at least five GCE ‘O’ levels; or to have an acceptable trade certificate. The successful applicants would have five years to take up residence and an option to extend for another five years, thus effectively giving them an opportunity to remain in post-1997 Hong Kong before deciding whether to move to Singapore. Previously, Singapore had opened its doors only to graduates, professionals and businessmen with capital of at least S$ 10,000. The Singapore government continues not to impose a quota on this occupational group, and suitably qualified Hong Kong people may immigrate under this category. On 11 July 1989, a day after the policy was announced, ‘a line of would-be Hong Kong emigrants snaked hundreds of metres around the bases of the gleaming office towers of downtown Admiralty business centre’ where the Singapore High Commission opened a special booth to hand out visa applications (Asiaweek 1989). In underscoring the fervent ‘let’s go’ sentiment of this Hong Kong rush to Singapore, the same news article reported: In an hour, officials had handed out 8,000 forms. Then a sudden squall sent people scurrying for cover, and some used the confusion to jump the queue. Police moved in to restore order and scuffles broke out. The stand was quickly closed and the crowd told to get forms by post. So anxious were the applicants, though, that police reinforcements were called and still needed several hours to disperse them. Singapore’s modified immigration policy took place on the heels of the 4 June prodemocracy incident in China’s Tiananmen Square. The Singapore High Commissioner in Hong Kong described the policy as ‘insurance’ for Hong Kong people and said that it had been prompted both by their unease and by Singapore’s labour shortage. ‘Special provisions’ were thus made by the Singapore government ‘partly out of compassion and mainly out of enlightened self-interest’ (Straits Times 1990, cited in Ng 1991:67). Singapore also expected to tap the entrepreneurial skills and resourcefulness of Hong Kong people to boost its economy. One Singapore government minister maintained that skilled Hong Kong immigrants would mean a larger, better trained work force, help to attract more investment and provide more jobs. The Straits Times of 11 August 1989 reported that another minister had reiterated that a developing country such as Singapore needed the skills and new insights of immigrants. The former Prime Minister of

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

78

Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, referred to Hong Kong people as being ‘superior, adaptable, flexible’ and went on to say that they could ‘quickly adjust to any condition in the world’ (cited in Ng 1991:67). It is the intent of this chapter to examine the personal, familial and associational adaptations of Hong Kong immigrants since their arrival in Singapore. The chapter is based on three data sources: a re-analysis of data from tape-recorded, in-depth interviews completed in 1991 with twenty Hong Kong skilled workers’ families;1 a series of subsequent unstructured interviews in 1992 and 1993 with fifteen professionals, businessmen, church representatives and ethnic association leaders; and a 1993 Singapore government survey conducted by the Social Integration Management Service (SIMS) on Hong Kong immigrants’ adaptation to life in the Republic.2 In the SIMS study, questionnaires were sent out to 4,000 Hong Kong immigrant families and 1,317 returns were received (a response rate of 33 per cent). This represented over a quarter of the total of 4,800 Hong Kong families settled in Singapore from July 1989 to December 1992. These figures on families suggest that well over 10,000 Hong Kong migrants have taken up residence in Singapore since the beginning of the scheme. Almost half those in the labour force who responded to the survey were managers and executives (29.3 per cent) and professionals (20.3 per cent), while technical, skilled and white-collar workers accounted for 30 per cent, although they, as an occupational category, make up 64 per cent of the entire Hong Kong migrant population of working age in Singapore. Businessmen and entrepreneurs (9.4 per cent), housewives (5.5 per cent) and others (5.5 per cent) made up the rest of the survey sample.

Theoretical issues Migrants face adjustment problems which stem from reinforcing their own cultural identity and adopting elements of the culture of the society of arrival.3 Migrants may emphasise ‘culture-building’ activities that will identify them as special and different, reinforcing internal group solidarity and identity and possibly causing social isolation and separation from the mainstream society; or they may model their conduct on a dominant group for the purpose of upward social mobility, which necessitates integration and joining the majority group. The inherent paradox in such dualism may well be the breeding ground for inner conflict, within both migrant groups and individuals. Migrants may not know whether to celebrate and retain their former cultural identity, which may consign them to the bottom of the social hierarchy, or to emulate the host culture for upward mobility.4 These two contradictory orientations, the ‘separatist’ and the ‘assimilationist’, can be found in individual members and in the group at different times, or even at the same time. Such ambivalence sets the stage for tension and conflict. Many theorists writing about ethnicity, ethnic identity and the processes of immigrant adjustment and adaptation view this dualism as the essence of the immigrant condition.5 Migrants deliberate and decide between competing ‘types of group allegiance’ (De Vos 1982:5–41). Should an immigrant’s priority be with a special heritage, that is his ethnicity, or with the present, with a profession and the social status such an occupational orientation will bestow? The latter option may require an individual to keep a distance from or even renounce heritage, ethnicity or country of origin. The former option

The ethnicity paradox of immigrants

79

encourages migrants to affiliate with immigrant institutions that ease the transition to urban life. These migrant associations may provide a ‘buffer’ for rural migrants in the city, they may serve as social security bodies in urban areas, or they may re-create a familiar way of life in a strange environment or provide social support to the newcomers (Skeldon 1990:164–6). The creation or re-creation of an immigrant culture in the host society can be seen as a collective strategy that allows immigrants to acquire a larger share of valued, scarce resources.6 Migrants live within and between two cultures, striving to integrate with the country of resettlement, even while maintaining an affiliation with, or loyalty to, the home country. Giovanna Compani and her colleagues have called this ‘bilaterality of references’ in their study of Italian immigrant associations in France (Compani et al. 1987:187). The term refers to an orientation towards two cultures; in a particular situation, one system of values may be preferred but, even then, the value system of the other culture is taken into account. When seen in these terms, immigrant institutions provide the individual with ‘identity options on offer’, according to which the individual makes his own choice.7 The individual, in deliberating, may feel torn between taking up contradictory options within the same community, or between options offered in the community and those offered outside.8 We therefore need to examine the culture-building, social mobility and integration tendencies of immigrants, as well as the processes by which individuals and groups make choices out of a range of identity options.9 For many immigrant groups, the incorporation strategy appears to be an attempt at a judicious balance of ‘full and equal participation in society of settlement institutions in the public domain and, at the same time, the maintenance of their own culture in the private domain’, which refers to such matters as ‘marriage and the family, religion, and moral socialisation’ (Rex and Josephides 1987:27). A sociological analysis of an ethnic actor’s differential belonging or commitment to a group requires us to identify the variables that will tend to increase or decrease ethnic group membership: for example, group size relative to total population; degree of residential concentration or dispersion; length of term of residence; ease and frequency of return to homeland; compatibility with host society in language, religion, race and culture; entry by forced or voluntary migration; degree of homogeneity or diversity in class and occupation; education level; experience with extent of discrimination; and degree of social mobility in the host society.10 This list is by no means exhaustive, although it includes both structural and middle-range variables. As a stocktaking list, it is useful to draw attention to the relevant factors at work in immigrant adaptation while predictions are being made about the future course of adaptation in terms of relative failure or success.11

Orienting to the past and culture-building Months or even years after their resettlement in Singapore, there is little evidence yet that Hong Kong immigrants have relinquished their socio-emotional ties with family, friends and work colleagues left behind back home. Many letters and telephone calls are exchanged;12 frequent trips are made back to Hong Kong for social visits, and migrants in Singapore continue to receive visitors from Hong Kong. Mothers are brought into

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

80

Singapore to help with childcare for young migrant families, and it is not at all unusual for Singapore-bound migrant families to leave their young children in the care of grandmothers back home, albeit temporarily. Migrants’ transactions with the past are articulated by attempts to use ties and resources in the country of origin as social support, to ease the early transitional phase of resettlement. The past is held on to in order to cope with the present and the future. This orientation to the past can take the form of ‘nostalgic illusion’ (Zwingmann 1973:19–47). The past is glorified, and recalling the ‘good old days’ helps maintain affective continuity and preserves psychological equilibrium during the stress of relocation. Hong Kong immigrants in Singapore continue to make comparisons between their countries of origin and resettlement, invariably favouring the lifestyle now lost, as least for the time being, and emphasising the need to recapture the familiar past in the face of the unfamiliar present and the unknown future. It is this need for historical and cultural continuity that fosters the creation of community associations for migrants. The ‘associational life’ of immigrants helps in ‘maintaining and developing shared patterns of meaning’, which are invariably based on a past frame of reference, at least initially (Rex and Josephides 1987:19). In the new country, immigrant associations seek to reproduce aspects of the homeland culture through social gatherings, celebrations of festivals, and popular culture such as movies, newspapers, videotapes, magazines, and so on. Many Hong Kong immigrants came to Singapore with a somewhat superficial, unsophisticated perception of a cultural similarity between Hong Kong and Singapore, both being ‘a Chinese society’. Such a perception is invariably constructed from information and images in the mass media or orientation sessions organised by ‘migration brokers’ such as travel agencies, consultancy firms or lawyers. Migrants’ real experiences in Singapore often call this perception into question. It is the existence of difference rather than similarity that seems to be the real issue. Hong Kong is an overwhelmingly Cantonese, and thus relatively homogeneous, society. Immigrants to Singapore experience cultural as well as linguistic incompatibility in Singapore, where Hokkien and Teochew are the majority Chinese dialect groups. In addition, the Republic’s increasingly prevalent usage of the English language and Mandarin in both public and private places and its multiracial, multicultural and multireligious character emphasise difference. According to the 1990 census, Singapore was 77.7 per cent Chinese, 14.1 per cent Malay, 7.1 per cent Indian and 1.1 per cent other; it was 53.9 per cent Buddhist or of Chinese religion, 15.4 per cent Islamic, 3.6 per cent Hindu and 12.6 per cent Christian. Coping with difference is a real, everyday concern for Hong Kong immigrants. Skeldon views the cultural and linguistic contrasts between the two cities as being among the major reasons for the less-than-expected inflow of Hong Kong immigrants into Singapore (1994a). Our respondents had the following to say about their language and communication problems: I have people under my supervision. I have to find a way to communicate with them. There are a few races in my workplace, and some of them are from Malaysia. Some people had warned me that I need to learn to deal with members of other racial groups.

The ethnicity paradox of immigrants

81

We do not know the roads. We do not know how to take buses or which stations to alight at. Sometimes we cannot express ourselves clearly. When we meet others, we cannot speak well. Even if they want to help, they cannot because they don’t understand our speech. Our informants told us that Hong Kong immigrants regularly get together for dinner parties in each other’s homes, or go out for dinner or weekend brunch in local Chinese restaurants with Cantonese chefs from Hong Kong, just to have an opportunity to speak ‘Hong Kong-style Cantonese’. This is a clear sign of maintaining continuity with the past, and shows how food and language can re-create one’s culture. In a sense, on social occasions of this nature, Hong Kong Cantonese are collectively differentiating themselves from Singaporeans and their various local Chinese dialect groups, including the Cantonese. Both Hong Kong and Singaporean Cantonese are quick to point out that they speak ‘different brands of Cantonese’, at a different rate, using very different linguistic repertoires, hence inadvertently setting forth the processes of group selfinclusion and ethnic boundary maintenance. There seems to be little evidence yet that such self-inclusion processes are merely transitional in nature. The more likely scenario is that they will continue to be among the enduring, self-reinforcing processes of community and culturebuilding precisely because they fulfil deep socio-emotional needs: A group of us meet for lunch every week at a restaurant. Two tables are booked permanently there. It’s a chance for us to speak Cantonese. We just turn up. It gets very crowded when more turn up. Cantonese is our mother tongue. We were brought up in it for the first twenty years of our lives. I feel closer to Hong Kong people. I call to invite them over for dinner. We go to Chinatown, the Zoo, Merlion Park. It is important to mix with other Hong Kong people. We need to have news about Hong Kong. After all, our problems are similar, so it is only natural to have more contact among the Hong Kong people. My husband’s biggest problem is that he does not quite know English. So I’ve asked him to learn more English. We have problems with all kinds of languages, even Cantonese, because the Cantonese spoken here is slightly different. Sometimes when people speak to me in Hokkien, I don’t understand. When I speak to Singaporeans in Cantonese, they don’t understand either. They say our Cantonese is different from theirs. The Social Integration Management Service (SIMS) study found that more than half (53.9 per cent) of the respondents indicated that they interacted most often with other Hong Kong people, although 45 per cent and 43.5 per cent said that they also mixed with Singaporean friends and colleagues, respectively, thus revealing a mixed social circle though still favouring members of their own group.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

82

Associational life and the ethnicity paradox An often neglected aspect of immigrants’ associational life is their participation in the local religious institutions. Our informants reported a concentration of Hong Kong immigrants in three local churches offering Cantonese Sunday worship services, namely the Grace Church, the Queenstown Baptist Church and the Cantonese Methodist Kum Yan Church. An office worker at the Grace Church reported that Hong Kong immigrants accounted for one-third (about 100 persons) of those attending the Cantonese services, while slightly fewer (about sixty) attended the Mandarin services. In January 1991, the Grace Church set up a temporary unit to collect material on new Hong Kong immigrants, visit them at home, provide immigrant orientation services and develop strategies to recruit them to the church. By July 1991, the unit had become permanent, specialising in working with Hong Kong immigrants. By July 1993, as many as sixty Hong Kong immigrants had been converted to Christianity. There are twentynine churches in Singapore that provide Cantonese worship services, eleven of which also provide other activities in Cantonese. It is too early to assess the implications of Hong Kong immigrants’ involvement in these local churches. Nevertheless, they provide the new migrants with two identity options: socialisation among themselves, or among the local Cantonese community, as an initial step towards social integration. Of course, it is possible that the two options are not mutually exclusive, although, in practice, one may often be favoured over the other. Now boasting a membership of seventy, the Friends of Hong Kong is a social club set up in 1991 by Hong Kong immigrants in the restaurant business. Supper parties are held monthly after midnight (when most of the restaurant personnel have finished their day’s work) on a rotation basis in one of the restaurants of the club. To be a member of the club, one must be in the restaurant business as owner, manager or chef and be from Hong Kong. Others may attend the club’s social functions as guests. Our informants reported that the club’s functions were primarily social in nature; the club provided a vehicle for interaction and socialising among Hong Kong restaurateurs. In September 1989, the government of Singapore, under the Public Service Division of the Ministry of Finance, set up SIMS to ‘help new immigrants to overcome the initial problems of relocation and integrate successfully into the Singapore community’ (SIMS n.d.: 1). As a government-run ‘one-stop’ immigrant service agency, it uses guidebooks, question-and-answer format brochures, slide presentations, talks and video shows to provide information on a spectrum of issues: housing, job placement, schooling for children, citizenship, taxation, childcare, health care, language (Mandarin and English) training and community services. In striving to meet immigrant needs, the agency is mindful of acquainting newcomers with local customs and practices as well as with ways of settling into the community neighbourhoods of various public housing estates. The goal is to help migrants integrate into their new home. Two specific strategies of the agency are noteworthy. First, the agency notifies community centres and residents’ committees of the arrival of newcomers so that they can show newcomers where to find police posts, polyclinics, libraries, childcare centres, supermarkets and other amenities in the neighbourhood. Second, single immigrants are referred by the agency to two other

The ethnicity paradox of immigrants

83

government-run units (the Social Development Unit and the Social Development Section) so that they can find out about social activities and meet other Singaporeans who are single. In April 1990, about six months after its establishment, the agency set up and subsequently provided support to the Kowloon Club, which now has a membership of about 1,000 families. The club’s office is located in the youth block of the People’s Association in Kallang, and it uses SIMS as its correspondence address. Its affiliation with SIMS is obvious, and the latter supports the publication of the club’s newsletter. Some of the objectives of the club, as stated in its constitution, are: to act as a focal point for members to meet regularly and interact with each other so as to strengthen community spirit among them; to promote friendship and understanding among members and other Singaporeans; and to assist new permanent residents whenever possible and facilitate their integration into the Singaporean community. The club regularly organises social activities for families to get together and, in the past year, women, youth, children and sports committees have been formed. The objectives of the Kowloon Club are consistent with those of SIMS in helping individuals to solve their personal problems, overcome social isolation and integrate into the community. We can detect an incompatibility between the associational goal of building an internal ethnic community spirit among the Hong Kong immigrants on the one hand and that of working towards social integration and assimilation on the other. Our informants were quick to point out such a contradiction in the associational life, hence the ‘ethnicity paradox’ of culture building and social integration. One of our respondents articulated his need for social integration into Singapore society as follows: I think it is better that we try to socialise with the Singaporeans. It is better this way than running around with a group of Hong Kong people. This way, there are more opportunities to understand each other. In Wickberg’s essay (1994) on overseas Chinese associations as ‘adaptive organisations’, he emphasises the flexibility and adaptability of such ethnic institutions and their ability to take on new functions as new needs appear, discarding or de-emphasising those that are no longer relevant. Given their function of easing migrants’ social, cultural and economic participation in the host society, migrant institutions can be a springboard from which to launch one’s entry into the wider community beyond. The paradox between their reinforcement of home community feeling and their adaptive functions has been observed in other parts of the developing world.13 This organisational dilemma has its parallel expression in the real choices that migrants need to make in their everyday lives. Such personal dilemmas are further complicated by the fact that many Hong Kong immigrants, especially the skilled workers, came to Singapore because of the unique opportunity presented by the modified immigration policy. Some would have preferred to have gone elsewhere; Singapore was not their first choice. In the SIMS study, about 8 per cent (109 respondents) stated that they had applied for permanent residence in other countries, the most popular being Canada, followed by Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Twelve respondents had applied for permanent residence in more than one country.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

84

Ties with Hong Kong, whether social or economic, are never completely severed. Some of our informants reported that they were still maintaining two households, one in Singapore, the other in Hong Kong. Others were ‘astronaut’ families, with one spouse, usually the husband, shuttling between the two places. The SIMS study found that 13 per cent of the 1,317 respondents were such families. Most of the spouses were husbands who continued to work at better paid jobs in Hong Kong; most of them had no immediate plans to relocate to Singapore. Still others had not completely relinquished the hope of migrating yet again to another ‘preferred country’, which might well be back to Hong Kong itself, depending on how circumstances unfolded before and after 1997. This has prompted Ronald Skeldon (1994b) to emphasise the highly mobile, circulatory character of Hong Kong migration. Our analysis of the in-depth interview transcripts revealed a deep ambivalence among the Hong Kong immigrants, even two or three years after their arrival in Singapore: We’ll stay if it is good. If it is not, we’ll go elsewhere, maybe return to Hong Kong. I don’t know for sure how long I will stay here. If I don’t like it here, I will leave. If I like it, I will not leave. After the Tiananmen incident, the Singapore government started to distribute application forms. My husband initiated the decision to migrate. I have no objections. After all, if I don’t like it here, I can still go back. For many, the move to Singapore is provisional: the migrants have a wait-and-see attitude and keep their options open on whether to stay, whether to move on elsewhere or whether to return home.

The private and public lives of the migrant The analysis of the interview transcripts revealed a tendency for Hong Kong migrants to intensify their family relationships immediately after their migration from Hong Kong. Our respondents spoke of spouses and family members being thrown upon each other for support. Our migrant respondents reported that they spent more time with family members than before. Having experienced difficulty in Singapore in finding work and salaries comparable to their Hong Kong jobs, the women spent more time at home doing housework and supervising children, but certainly not without a sense of role loss. Men also spent more time than before on household chores and their children’s education, the latter quickly becoming a major everyday concern: I think I talk to my husband more often over here because there is now more time. I am closer to my children over here because I am not working. So I face them every day. We go out more often here. In Hong Kong, we seldom had the opportunity to go out. Now the whole family goes out…my husband spends more time with me.

The ethnicity paradox of immigrants

85

My relationship with my husband is better in Singapore because when we came over to a new place like Singapore, a lot of problems arose like housing problems, finding a school for our child. So in these respects, we have to discuss things, come to a compromise. After all these, our relationship has improved because of the time spent together. I definitely see more of my husband here in Singapore. I speak more to my husband. My other family members aren’t here any more. It’s the two of us for everything now. In Hong Kong, each of us would do our own things, but over here the family would discuss things more. If there are problems, we would discuss. We are more closely knit here. In Hong Kong, we did our own things but we now have to look out for each other here. Hence, although some families appear to be separated as a result of their migration, with one spouse in each city, other families are thrown together. Whether there are systematic reasons behind the development of these different patterns, perhaps based upon income level, must await future analyses. Upon their arrival in Singapore between 1989 and 1991, many Hong Kong immigrants found themselves congregating in certain public housing blocks (mainly Block 41 in Batok). Since then, some of them have bought private property and moved out. A large majority of the Hong Kong immigrants still live in public housing estates (Housing Development Board apartments), which are ethnically mixed because of government policies towards social integration. The Hong Kongers’ relations with neighbours remain cordial, though non-committal. Our respondents reported difficulty in communicating with their neighbours in English, Mandarin or local Chinese dialects, and in getting used to the multiracial character of the public housing estates. For many Hong Kong migrant families, the extension into the family of the husbands’ relations with colleagues in the workplace represents perhaps the most salient form of integration into the host society, and the boundaries separating the public (work) and the private (family) become blurred. Our respondents reported that they had been helped by their work colleagues in employment, housing and children’s schooling, and in coping with a new life in general. Work colleagues thus become the migrants’ ‘cultural brokers’, and the workplace becomes a platform from which to launch the immigrants into society proper. One of our respondents made this comment about his work colleagues: My company’s colleagues are nice. They taught us how to socialise with people, how to go to certain places. Because of my work, we start talking naturally. They are very compassionate. They know that we have just arrived so there will be some problems. I meet them quite often. By the same token, those who have encountered difficulties in work relations (for example, middle-level managers or foremen not coping well interpersonally or linguistically with a multiracial workforce) experience a lesser degree of congruence with the host society.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

86

Discussion and conclusion According to the SIMS study, 1,155, or 88 per cent, of the Hong Kong respondents indicated that they were happy with life in Singapore; they were reported as saying that the country was ‘safe and secure’, that it offered a ‘good living environment’ and that it had ‘spacious and cheap housing’. However, there was the oft-made complaint that the cost of living in Singapore was too high, particularly when the salary earned in Hong Kong could be higher. The authors of the study went on to observe: ‘Hence most Hong Kong immigrants, although happy living in Singapore, may have no choice but to return to Hong Kong to work after they receive their Singapore citizenship, if they are unable to find a suitable and satisfying job here’. The likelihood of short-term (as in the case of ‘astronaut’ families) or long-term migration, although partially determined by job satisfaction achieved in the host country, will ultimately depend upon the political and economic circumstances of post-1997 Hong Kong. At present, Hong Kong continues to prove attractive, and more and more Hong Kong immigrants to Singapore, once their immigrant or citizenship status is secured, are going home. However, some family members may remain in the country of immigration and lead a ‘dual existence’, shuttling back and forth between the two places. Conceptually, this pattern of dual existence may reinforce the ethnicity paradox, which is the result of forces mediating between homeland, immigrant community and host society. My study has shown that many Hong Kong immigrant families in Singapore are, at the moment, physically split, with one or more members in Singapore and the others somewhere else, suggesting a short-term picture of so-called ‘family disintegration’. However, seen from a more long-term perspective, the analyst may well be witnessing the emergence of a new form of functionally extended family, a ‘diasporic family’ that discharges its familial functions globally, across political boundaries. Its maintenance is not without its problems, however, as my analysis of the familial and associational life of Hong Kong immigrants to Singapore has shown. Nevertheless, the perceived location of one’s community in this larger spatial or diasporic context, with all its attendant familial, clan, associational and economic linkages, can be a source of strength and security. Seen in this way, the immigrants’ attempts to reproduce tradition and familiarity may not merely be transitional conduct to ease them through the initial phase of adaptation, but may be an integral and more long-term part of this global development. The gradual emergence and growth of an ethnic community among Hong Kong immigrants in Singapore will continue. On one level, an ethnic community will facilitate the immigrant’s integration into the larger society; it fulfils the immigrants’ immediate needs and thus is likely to prolong their stay in the country of adoption. On another level, it reproduces the immigrant’s culture and heritage and thus retards assimilation. More importantly, the needs of the immigrants change, and ethnic institutions will themselves change to meet these new needs—indeed an untold story in the sociological literature on migration. As a small group, residentially scattered, diverse in class and occupation, but with a relatively high level of education as well as a certain degree of compatibility in culture, written language, race and physical appearance with the Chinese of Singapore, the Hong Kong immigrants should assimilate relatively easily. Yet such a conclusion is contingent upon the nature of their experiences in the host society, and upon their job

The ethnicity paradox of immigrants

87

satisfaction, and will take place in the context of emerging realities in Singapore and other major centres of the Chinese diaspora. The Hong Kong Chinese have become what Ronald Skeldon (1994b) calls ‘circulators’, moving among not two, not three, but a series of destinations, and giving shape to an innovative international migration system, the ‘new’ Chinese diaspora. Seen in this light, assimilation into a host society is not necessarily positive and desirable. And culture-building, ethnic or migrant associations and continued returns to, or contacts with, the homeland are not necessarily regressive or conservative. What is important is not assimilation and the denial of one’s own ethnicity and culture, on the one hand, or the creation of associations and the reinforcement of culture, on the other, but the relationship between the host coun-tries and this quickly emerging and expanding migration system brought about by ‘transilients’ who ‘leap across’ physical boundaries and barriers (Richmond 1994). Conceptualised in this way, the dualism between countries of origin and destination disappears and the importance of assimilation fades. Looking forward several decades, hypermobility involving many forms of population movement may be the norm rather than the exception, and it is through these transnational networks that new identities will be forged.

5 One face, many masks For many decades now, sociologists have been chasing what Isaacs (1975:30) called the ‘snowman of ethnicity’, otherwise first made known to us by Francis Bacon as ‘idols of the tribe’. This creature, ethnicity, is as elusive and slippery as it is complex. A plausible starting point for our discourse on the subject is Weber (1992:389), who sees an ethnic group as one whose members ‘entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonisation and migration’, adding that ‘it does not matter whether or not an objective blood relationship exists’ (emphases added). The strength of Weber’s definition lies in its embodiment of an interplay between the objective and the subjective, perhaps analytically favouring the latter—one’s belief or construction. Traces of the influence of this Weberian accent on the subjective can be found in Lyman and Douglas’s (1973:350) description of the individual ‘making use of ethnicity as a manoeuvre or stratagem’. This dynamic, fluid exercise is conducted against the backdrop of the group engaged in an ascriptive process of recruiting members and classifying others. Such a fluid and ‘loose’ conception of ethnicity, as Alba (1990:25) aptly calls it, is well articulated in Fishman’s (1977) insistence that ‘ethnicity is concerned not only with an actor’s descent-related being (paternity) and behaving (patrimony), but with the meanings that he attaches to his descent-related being and behaving (phenomenology)’ (cited in Siddique 1990:40–1). Fishman’s phenomenological interplay between the ascriptive and self-selective aspects of ethnicity, between individual and group, albeit again leaning more on the latter, finds a more nuanced formulation in Smolicz’s (1981:86) concept of personal cultural system, which recognises ‘the conscious activity of a human agent in selecting values from the group stock and organising them into a system which suits his own particular purposes and interests’. As concept and in the empirical world, the personal cultural system mediates between public group culture and private individual behaviours, the latter always under the gaze of the sociological eye. Explicit in Smolicz’s characterisation of ethnicity in terms of the trichotomy of group culture, individual and the personal cultural system in between is his accent on the consciousness and self-selecting capabilities of the human agency. Smolicz’s accent on choice and selection was in fact anticipated by other classical formulations: Novak’s ‘voluntary ethnicity’, Silver’s ‘individualism as a valid mode of Jewishness’, Eisenstadt’s ‘Jewish diversity’,1 Yancey’s ‘emergent ethnicity’ and, most significantly, Gans (1979), who argued that ‘today’s young ethnics are finding new ways of being ethnics’ and called the most prominent of their new practices ‘symbolic ethnicity’. Worldwide, among third-generation ethnics, the onset of ‘ethnicity drift’ or ‘cultural erosion’ (which the older generations often lament), leading to little or no knowledge of their national origin and emigrant ancestry, and to their non-participation in

One face, many masks

89

ethnic cultures and organisations, is common. Such ethnics are increasingly more concerned with identity (in a socio-psychological sense) than actual cultural practices or group relations, with feeling rather than being ethnic; this opens up the possibility of choosing ethnic role definition, of voluntary, individualistic ethnicity. It is a kind of ‘no costs’, ‘pick-and-choose’ ethnicity, more voluntary than ascriptive, more expressive than instrumental, always affording a distinct possibility of the individual altering, diluting or even dropping entirely many cultural elements of ethnicity without abdicating feeling ethnic. The internal feeling is externally manifested or displayed in things symbolic, physical, visible, be they customs, habits, rituals, attire, food or festivals—thus, the accentuation on the visuality and visibility of ethnicity. Gans’s voluntarism has recently received vigorous theoretical renewal as well as empirical validation in Alba’s (1990) study of the ‘transformation of white America’. Gans’s insistence on the independence of ethnic social structures from ethnic identity, on individualism and cultural erosion, and on feeling and identity over being and culture, is retained by Alba (1990:300) while the latter theorises about the ‘privatisation of ethnic identity’—a reduction of its expression to largely personal and familial terms. The new view of the new, young ethnics is that their ethnicity is no different from the facts of their own family history, childhood and personal past. Of course, this new view of new ethnicity has not displaced the older, anthropological and, if you like, colonialist and, in turn, folk/lay view of ethnicity as ascription. The latter insists on ethnicity as a given (Horowitz 1985:56), on name and body (Isaacs 1975:29–52), given at birth, on descent and appearance, on skin colour and other physical, phenotypical features as badges or emblems of identity (Isaacs 1975:29–52), as salient ethnic makers because they are visible, objective, permanent, unchangeable, immutable and, therefore, ‘reliable’ (Horowitz 1985).2 In the case of the Chinese, many observers have remarked upon several Chinese propensities: first, to stress physical elements in their description of racial others and their insistence on ‘racial purity’, because breeding with ‘outsiders’ of almost any description would threaten physical sameness (Isaacs 1975:40); second, to emphasise appearance and biological descent (Clammer 1981:275) or ‘race’ (Smolicz 1981:81); and, third, to insist on patrilineal ancestry and transmission as well as an ‘exclusionist’ view of boundaries of group membership as absolute and non-negotiable (Wee 1988:2–17), which prevents the entry of outsiders and the exit of insiders. This act of classification as Chinese by birth is further compounded by non-Chinese as others imposing on Chinese (and Jews, blacks and so on) their ascriptive ethnicity. Others do not conveniently forget that Chinese is Chinese; that one is always reminded by others of his Chineseness (Wee 1988:32; Tan 1993:25). Labelling by self and others thus collides, colludes and fuses. In a brief moment of ruminating about her autobiography and ethnicity, Ang (1993:8) sombrely proclaims: ‘Chineseness…to me was an imposed identity…a sign of the inescapability of my own Chineseness, inscribed as it was on the very surface of my body, much like what Frantz Fanon (1970) has called the “corporeal malediction” of the fact of his blackness. The “corporeal malediction” of Chineseness, of course, relates to the more general “fact of yellowness” characterised among others by those famous “slanted eyes”’.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

90

Research methods With these theoretical issues in mind, we began in March 1992 and February 1993 to collect data on the Chinese in Singapore. This study was conducted using qualitative fieldwork methods. Two major interview methods were used: openended, semi-structured interviews guided by an interview schedule; and casual, interview-like, ‘everyday life’ conversations during the fieldwork. The interview schedule consisted of questions pertaining to, among other things, use of language(s), personal and family life histories, ethnic prejudice and social contacts between groups and, especially, meanings of being Chinese. The interviews were conducted in English, Mandarin and the main Chinese dialects used in Singapore, namely Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese. Field notes were made during and after interviews, which generally lasted from half an hour to three hours, with most of them averaging an hour and a half. A total of fifty-six informants were interviewed; 52 per cent were male, 48 per cent female. While making no claim to randomness, the study attempted to stratify the sample by several key criteria, one being the language in which interviewees were educated, given the close link between language, ethnicity and mental processes. In the sample, 42 per cent were English-educated, 42 per cent were Chinese-educated, and 16 per cent had no formal education. Another important variable was the age of the informant: 42 per cent of the informants were between fifteen and twenty-five years old, 34 per cent between twenty-six and forty years, 18 per cent between forty-one and fifty-nine years, and six per cent above sixty years. It was also felt that the occupational background of the respondents may have an impact on their perception of ethnicity. In the end, we had a wide range of occupational groups in our study: students, journalists, provision shop owners, school teachers, housewives, doctors, taxi-drivers, clan leaders and engineers. The interviews were supplemented by a survey of 1,025 Chinese conducted in 1989. The survey, while concentrating on Chinese religion in Singapore, contained information relevant to this study. Another source of data was the newspaper and archival collection, in English and Chinese, at the National University of Singapore. We also managed to deepen our analysis through discussions with scholars working in this area.

Ethnicity in flux In the course of an interview during our fieldwork, an informant proclaimed that ‘English-educated Chinese in Singapore are less Chinese’. Perplexed, as if Chineseness in Singapore is an objective thing that can be quantified and measured, we asked him what he considered to be the attributes of being Chinese. He was slightly stunned; except for the fact that he knew he was ‘Chinese’, he confessed he could not articulate what it was that made him Chinese. In fact, one characteristic of our informants during the interviews, particularly the younger ones, was the combination of deep confusion, painful self-examination and rationalisation when confronted with the exercise of defining their Chineseness. To quote from one informant:

One face, many masks

91

Because no one thinks of whether one is a Chinese or not, you just take it for granted and no one usually has to think about whether one is Chinese or not…but now you are asking questions, that will make people think about things that they would normally not have to think about. This is really stressful. I have never thought about these questions. I really have to think. It is really in the blood to be Chinese, isn’t it? Man, 26, English-educated, tertiary education, medical doctor There were many inconsistencies and contradictions in our respondents’ discourse. One English-educated Chinese informant claimed that the Chinese language is the central marker of ethnic identity, but she herself does not speak Chinese at all. Yet she saw no problem in calling herself Chinese. Whether concerned with gender, ethnicity, religion, occupation, generation or the problem of one’s own existence, identity questions, when asked, are inherently anxietyinducing for many, if not for all. As questions, they are rarely asked by others or by self. Self-interrogation is a rare thing. One typically does not ask oneself ‘Who am I?’, ‘What am I?’, except when thrown into acute selfconsciousness during moments of transition brought upon by such life events as threat of imminent death, acute illness, religious conversion, forced migration, marriage and divorce, natural disasters or while in hospitals, transit lounges of international airports, hotels, concentration or refugee camps and so on. Identity is put behind or underneath consciousness because of its taken-forgrantedness. It is ordinarily non-problematic, so one ‘moves on with life’. Yet, for some, perhaps a minority few, ethnic identity is a securely fastened personal bundle, safely deposited in a mental place, comfortably. It is firmly anchored in one’s psychological priorities; one thus speaks about one’s place of origin, heritage, homeland and belongingness with certainty and conviction. Among our informants, the older, China-born Chinese in Singapore, the first-generation immigrants, had little difficulty in defining their Chineseness. They called themselves ‘teng-swa-lang’ or ‘Tang people’, people of the Tang Dynasty. For them, ethnic identity is anchored in territoriality and grounded in the historicity of China. Their sense of ethnicity is tied to ‘place’, ‘locality’ or ‘community’. Ques-tions such as ‘Who is Chinese?’, ‘What is Chinese?’ were silly non-questions to them. Ethnic identity questions become stressful when it is assumed by authorities that one knows and should know about one’s place of origin—but does not, when asked. One may not ‘know’ because of unique personal or political circumstances not of one’s own making. But it does not matter. One is still shamed and annoyed when the sociologist asks. One should not be in an ethnicity drift, but one is—one is thus exhorted to return to ‘roots’, olden times. Ethnic identity questions are stressful when one prefers to deem ethnicity as largely symbolic in much of one’s personal life, at a time when the state seems to think otherwise and insists on its ascriptive primacy. Disjuncture in definitions between state and self puts the latter under stress, sociologically. While espousing a policy of multiracialism, the Singapore state constantly intervenes in the lives of its citizens, both in public policies and in areas that constitute the private sphere, including birth, choice of marriage partner and education. Given the presence of many diverse ethnic groups living in close proximity, the state has, since independence, taken a proactive role in ethnic policies. For example, the government adopts an official

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

92

classification of the population based on racial/ethnic membership: what is popularly known as CMIO (Chinese, Malays, Indians and others). This official classification is inscribed on a person’s birth certificate and identity card. Such an inscribed identity often creates problems for the individual, especially in families with interethnic marriages. For example, a child whose father is Chinese and mother is Indian would be classified as Chinese, while a child whose father is Indian and mother is Chinese would be classified as Indian. The problem is exacerbated when the child enters school. Singapore’s educational system emphasises bilingualism: a child is required to learn English and a mother tongue. Children who are officially designated Chinese will have to offer Mandarin as their mother tongue, even if their home language is Tamil. Similarly, children who are classified as Indian, and who may be, due to their mothers’ influence, more conversant in Mandarin, will have to offer Tamil as their mother tongue. While this policy has been relaxed somewhat in recent years, the disjuncture between selfidentification and the imposition of racial identity creates ambiguities and often bring stress to the child and the family. Ethnicity might have gone the symbolic, voluntary path for many an individual, but it is not the case with society and the state. In the case of Singapore, the institutionalisation (Clammer 1981) and bureaucratisation (Siddique 1990) of ethnicity through ‘Speak Mandarin Campaigns’, ‘racially’ based self-help groups and so on has ensured the stability and constancy of racial consciousness in Singapore society. With the equation of ethnicity with race in the foreground, the state shapes and directs the ethnicity discourse. Singaporeans, especially those Singapore-born and younger ones, are coping with this state discourse in their own ways, certainly not without ambivalent feelings, inconsistencies or self-contradictions.

Ethnic membership by ascription Most of our informants tended to use ascriptive elements to describe and to account for their Chineseness. There was this shared idea that one is ‘born’ a Chinese, into a Chinese family and is thus ‘naturally’ classified as Chinese. One informant said: We are Chinese because we are born Chinese and there is no way of changing that. Man, 25, Chinese-educated, secondary level-four education, shopkeeper Another informant reiterated: If you are born that way [Chinese], you will always be like that. It is all in the blood. It is all in the human nature. Woman, 43, English-educated, pre-university education, housewife In fact, regardless of age, birth place, religion, language, education or socio-economic status, our Chinese informants seemed to use birth and bloodline as the most important markers or criteria for ethnic identification and membership. The emphasis was on ethnic membership by ascription, which was operationalised or ‘indicated’ by phenotypical

One face, many masks

93

characteristics. That is, people who are Chinese have black hair, dark eyes, yellow skin and so on: When you talk about being a Chinese, you look at the colour of the skin. Now we look at the Singaporean Chinese, it is still the same because your blood is Chinese blood. How can we say that your blood is Malay blood? That’s not possible…you look at the colour of the skin. For example, if you look at the offsprings (sic) of mixed marriages, their skin colour is different from ours… You have a Malay who speaks Mandarin, you’ll have to look at his skin colour—if it is very dark, then you’ll know that he is Malay. Now if you have a Malay who speaks English, which is very common these days, you won’t have a problem identifying him as a Malay immediately because he is dark and speaks no Chinese dialect. If a child is brought up speaking English only and knows no Chinese language, and you ask if this child is still Chinese, it would be difficult because from young to old, the child has only been speaking English…but if you look at the child’s skin colour, you’ll be able to tell that he is Chinese. You have the exceptions of those who are really dark, then that will be the minority because most of us Chinese are fair-skinned people…a bit yellow… Children of mixed marriages are not the same. Their facial features are different. If you look carefully or closely enough—because we are so much older than you, we can tell that these features are different. You can see all through that (even if the child’s father is Chinese)! Because their skin colour will still be mixed. You see, if a Malay who is dark-skinned marries a Chinese who is fair, the child’s skin will never be white as ours. You will see that the colour of the child’s skin is mixed. Even if the father is Chinese, the child’s eyes and lips will also be different from a pure Chinese’s. The child will carry the ‘whatever’ of the other people with him in his facial features and the child will just look different because of this. Man, mid-40s, Chinese-educated, primary school education, provision shop owner Seemingly untroubled by the fact that there is a gradation of skin and hair colours among the Chinese, our Chinese respondents insisted on the primordial, immediately visual, phenotypical elements as markers of Chineseness. The colour may be slightly varied, but it is still Chinese blood. What is not visual or visible, like blood, is ‘operationalised’ or ‘indicated’ by what is, like skin colour and black hair. Of course, such an exercise of caricature by phenotypes was undertaken without awareness of the fact that the Chinese were not the first to refer to their own skin colour as yellow—the Caucasians were. The Chinese describe skin colour as white, or as fair (desirable) or not fair (not desirable). The language and habits of racial classification of powerful others have in time become one’s own (Tan 1993):

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

94

Our ancestors had the genes…it has been passed down to us and we all have yellow skin. Our eyes are black… That is why we are Chinese… Yet we can’t change our origin—we are really and absolutely Chinese and that cannot be changed. No one can change us into a European or Indian. We can’t be changed because our ancestors are from China. They are real Chinese people—they are our ancestors. We can’t change that… It is a simple fact. Our ancestors are Chinese with yellow skin and black hair. Man, 25, Chinese-educated, secondary level-four education, deliveryman The surname was also reported as a related ethnic marker. Many respondents claimed that the surname determines who is Chinese:3 You need a Chinese surname to be a Chinese. ‘Tan’, ‘Lim’…these are Chinese surnames. This is because no matter what, you still have a Chinese surname. You can’t deny it. If you’re born with a Chinese surname, that will always be part of you. A child would be Chinese because of the Chinese surname. But if it is the child’s mother who is the Chinese, the child will take the father’s surname and not the mother’s surname. This would mean that the child is not Chinese. Man, 66, no formal education, retired How then do we go about making sense of the emphasis among Chinese Singaporeans on primordial characteristics as the basis of ethnic identification and membership? It may be because the Chinese in Singapore live in a multiracial society where the other groups, the Malays (14 per cent) and the Indians (8 per cent), are clearly of different skin colour from the Chinese (77 per cent), the former groups being predominantly darker in colour. The emphasis on skin colour affords and facilitates group differentiation: we are Chinese because our colour is yellow, unlike the dark-skinned Indians and Malays: Chinese are Chinese because of their colour. The older generation used to feel that skin colour mattered a lot…the ‘blacks’ were the Malays and Indians…‘white-skinned’ people were the ‘whites’ and yellow were the Chinese. So my father used to say that we Chinese are from China… First, our skin colour is yellow, our language is different…those were the most important distinguishing factors…then our habits, likes and dislikes, are all completely different. Man, 52, Chinese-educated, primary school education, shopkeeper Through contrastive effects, being in close contact with other ethnic groups in everyday life heightens differences and creates boundaries between groups. Also, when other ethnic markers such as language, religion and education are becoming increasingly amorphous, phenotypical distinctiveness gains functional salience. It is used for boundary maintenance, controlling an individual’s entry into and exit from the group. It is thus this constructed ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the culture enclosed in it (Earth 1969:15).

One face, many masks

95

Many of our Chinese informants made the point that one cannot become a Chinese if not born Chinese. Thus, a Malay or Indian who speaks Mandarin or a Chinese dialect, practises a Chinese religion, its customs or rituals and observes all the cultural behaviours will still not be Chinese. In fact, such a person is often regarded as an oddity by our Chinese informants: Is it possible for a Malay to become Chinese? No, I don’t think you can. You have to identify with a race. When you are born, they classify you. Okay, a Malay can adopt the Chinese way of thinking but he will not be Chinese. Look, how would you feel if a Caucasian tells you that he is Chinese? We are westernised but, basically, we’re Chinese. That’s how I perceive who is a Chinese (emphasis added). Woman, 20s, English-educated, tertiary education, legislative assistant Many Indians in Malaysia are able to speak good Chinese and can act Chinese, but the blood itself is Indian. I will say that no matter how, you can never change nature. Man, 26, English-educated, tertiary education, engineer If you are not born Chinese, you can’t become a Chinese. Woman, 24, English-educated, tertiary education, personnel assistant If one parent is not Chinese, the appearance of the child would not look Chinese. Man, 22, Chinese-educated, secondary education, clerk At the same time, our interviewees felt that people who are born Chinese will always be Chinese even if they cannot speak the language or do not practise a Chinese religion, its customs or rituals: For me, I’m a bit westernised. I don’t use chopsticks and I seldom speak Chinese. When my colleagues speak Chinese too fast, I can’t keep up with them. So they speak to me in English. When I need to speak to them, sometimes I use broken Mandarin and Cantonese. People say that if you are Chinese, you have to have Chinese values, [but] mine have disappeared, I think western. But I think Chinese morals are good… Yes I still consider myself a Chinese. I think that as long as your face is Chinese, even if you do not speak Chinese, you are still a Chinese. Only your ability to speak Chinese has been reduced (emphases added). Man, 21, English-educated, tertiary education, student I think that one is Chinese, no matter what. So what if he does not speak Chinese, his heritage is Chinese! If you are Chinese, you are Chinese. If you are yellow skin, you are yellow skin, there is no way to change that. Woman, 30, Chinese-educated, pre-university education, Chinese teacher

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

96

What is clear from these interview excerpts is that ethnic membership by ascription in terms of racial or phenotypical features is invoked to separate the insider and the outsider. This perceptual propensity can be gleaned by examining our informants’ attitude towards intermarriage. The intermarriage rate in Singapore since independence has been constant and generally low, hovering between 3 per cent and 6 per cent of the total number of annual marriages. The Chinese intermarry least, followed by Malays and Indians (Hassan and Benjamin 1976; Kuo and Hassan 1979; S.M.Lee 1988). Our informants insisted that children of intermarriages cannot be considered ‘Chinese’. Some concessions are occasionally made if the father is Chinese, given the importance of patrilineage in Chinese society. By and large, children of mixed marriages are often regarded as chup cheng or mixed genes—invariably used in a derogatory sense: If the child’s father is not Chinese, but the mother is Chinese, then the child cannot be considered a Chinese because the child will become a Eurasian. The child cannot be accepted as Chinese anymore because the blood of the child is no longer pure. Man, 40, Chinese-educated, primary education, shop proprietor To be pure Chinese, the father and mother must be Chinese. Of course, there are lots of mixed races, the ‘chup cheng’… If one parent is Chinese, he might have some traits that are Chinese, for example, looking Chinese but he is still mixed. It’s important to be pure Chinese. Man, 21, Chinese-educated, tertiary education, student Born a Chinese, always Chinese, still Chinese, though having achieved none of the alleged cultural characteristics. Not born Chinese, still not Chinese, in spite of one’s cultural adoption or achievement. The singular principle of birth—by ascription, descent and origin—for ethnic group membership emphasises the ‘fact’ of immutability and unchangeability of one’s Chineseness. Ethnic membership being a given, it is taken as something no one single individual can do anything about. This singular principle of birth implies categorical exclusion and exclusiveness, and continued insistence on absolute purity of blood and origin, vigilance over and fear of intrusion, penetration by the other ‘races’, by the genetically different. The opposite of purity is impurity, and it is feared—contamination by intermarriage is to be guarded against by the group, to be negated by the anthropology, sociology and psychology of the internal, self-maintaining forces of the group. Chinese marrying Chinese has become a moral duty, a ‘must-do’ behaviour; to be otherwise is shameful, not respectable. Interbreeding ‘gives birth to’ difference, sometimes a sociological stigma: one is lesser, inferior, an oddity, a bit freakish. The mixed child is, nevertheless, still Chinese, though an inferior Chinese, contaminated, somehow reduced, in the eyes of the Chinese, the ‘pure’ ones.

One face, many masks

97

Religious bifurcation Many ‘traditional’ markers of ethnic identification (language, education, religious affiliation) have lost their homogenising influence among the Chinese in modern-day Singapore. For example, religion might have been among the ethnic markers of ethnic identity for the Chinese because core cultural values regarded by the Chinese as important—filial piety, duty and the perpetuation of the family line - are encoded in the religion. The very enactment of rituals, particularly ancestral, birth and death rites, reinforces values that maintain Chinese identity. As rituals celebrate tradition, they are links to people’s roots and ties to the homeland. Religion thus provides, through ritual performance and the belief system, constant reminders, for the individual, of the history, tradition and cultural values of Chinese society. Rituals affirm the sense of community and, in the Durkheimian sense, unite the group by bringing together diverse people for a common purpose. Rituals bind and bond, through heightened activities and common sentiments, the individual to community. For example, the Chinese celebrate the Hungry Ghosts Festival. The Chinese believe that souls can be trapped in hell until they are released or reborn. Adherents of traditional Chinese religion claim that, during the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the ‘gates of hell’ are opened and ‘hungry ghosts’ are allowed to roam the earth for a month. This is considered a dangerous period, and people take precautions to avoid offending the wandering spirits. Communal rituals are conducted, including the offering of food and money. The idea is that these rituals appease the spirits, and people come together to ward off wandering spirits from the community. In modern Singaporean society, however, it is difficult to argue that religion continues to perform these functions for a majority of the Chinese. In the 1921 Census of Population of Singapore, 98 per cent of the Chinese population claimed affiliation to a Chinese religion.4 Then, it can be argued, at least statistically, that religion acted as a crucial ethnic marker. Recent statistics, however, show that this is no longer the case. For example, in the 1990 Census, 39 per cent of the Chinese respondents claimed to be Buddhists and 28.2 per cent Taoists (Tong 1992). Taken together, those who believed in the Chinese religion formed only 67 per cent of the Chinese population in Singapore. A significant 14.2 per cent claimed to be Christians, and 18.3 per cent said that they had no religion. This in fact makes the Chinese the most religiously fragmented community in Singapore. Religious affiliation for the Chinese in Singapore is marked by heterogeneity rather than homogeneity. Moreover, those who claim affiliation to Christianity come from very different sociodemographic backgrounds from the Taoists or non-religious; a Chinese Christian is a very different person from a Chinese Taoist. Christianity is more attractive to the younger, English-educated Chinese, who typically come from more well-to-do families. In fact, in terms of language competence, over 27 per cent of the English-educated were Christians, compared with only 6 per cent for the Chinese-educated. Taoists seem to have socio-demographic characteristics opposite to the Christians. They tend to be older, have lower educational attainment and speak either Mandarin or a Chinese dialect. In this sense, it can be suggested that, in Singapore, religion acts as a marker that divides rather than unifies the Chinese community.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

98

In a study (Tong 1988) on the customary practices of the Chinese, it was found that, while many Chinese still perform traditional Chinese customs and religious practices, there is a significant decline in ritual performance among the younger, English-educated Chinese Singaporeans. For example, for those below the age of 30, only 72.2 per cent observed the Qing Ming celebrations, compared with 86.5 per cent of those aged forty to forty-nine years. Similarly, for the English-educated Chinese, a significant 49.1 per cent observed less than four festivals a year, compared with only 26.5 per cent for the Chinese-educated. Even among the younger Chinese who claimed to be Taoists, we saw a decline in the practice of traditional Chinese customs. Chinese customs no longer act as a binding, unifying force, a cement holding the community together. Rather, there is a movement away from the performance of Chinese rituals as obligatory to an understanding of them as voluntary. When we examine further the variable of religion, an even more dramatic picture emerges. For those who claimed affiliation to a Chinese religion, 85.3 per cent celebrated at least five (out of a maximum of nine) calendrical rituals or Chinese festivals annually. On the other hand, 90.4 per cent of the Christians celebrated fewer than four festivals a year. It appears that a great majority of Christians perceive Chinese festivals as superstitious and avoid them. Using multivariate analysis, it was found that religion was the only predictor of whether Christians will carry out Chinese customs or not. There are probably two reasons for this. First, the vast majority of Chinese Christians in Singapore are converts from traditional Chinese religions. Religious switching implies a dissatisfaction with the Chinese religious system. Secondly, the nature of Christianity in Singapore is one that emphasises doctrinal and ritual purity. Chinese customs tend to be perceived as superstitious—there is thus a desire to refrain from practising what is seen as contradictory to Christian theology. Nevertheless, it is rather important to note that most Christians, if not all, do not regard themselves as not being Chinese, just because they do not carry out customary practices. Rather, they feel that religion is not a necessary condition for ethnic identification. The point we are making here is that religion might have acted, because of a shared belief system among the Chinese, as an ethnic marker in the past. But, in modern-day Singapore, we see a heterogeneity of beliefs and a movement away from obligatoriness and towards voluntarism in the observance of traditional Chinese customs and festivals. Of course, we can in one sense argue that the ease with which the Chinese have been able to switch religions, compared with, say, the Malays, who still remain Muslims, means that religion may not have been an important ethnic marker to begin with. Such a view of Chinese religion has always been held by intellectuals, who feel that the Chinese do not have religions, only ideological systems (Yang 1970). The assumption that the Chinese community in Singapore was once homogeneous and is now heterogeneous may well be problematic. One may argue that the Chinese were never really homogeneous to begin with, only that the factors that used to divide the Chinese have now changed. Whereas, in the past, the divisions in the Chinese community were based on dialect, locality, region, politics (pro-Nationalists vs. pro-Communists) and occupation, they are now language, education and religion. But it is also probably true that there were more variables holding the Chinese together in the past, be they territorial identity, cultural factors or historical consciousness, than now when, it seems,

One face, many masks

99

only the principle of birth, blood and descent prevails as a singular marker separating the insiders from the outsiders. Birth, blood or descent is familial—and individual—rather than community based. One hallmark of modern society is increasing individualism. We argue that, even in ethnic identification, we have moved towards greater reliance on the individual than on the community—that is, individual identity rather than the community, personal identification rather than cultural homogeneity. The large increase in the number of Chinese Christians between the 1920s and the 1990s is particularly interesting as, in many ways, Christianity had for a time been viewed by many Chinese, particularly the older ones, as antithetical to Chineseness—as a western tradition that erodes the base of Chinese customary practices. Such a view is supported by data from a study (Tong 1988) of Chinese customs, which shows that the one single factor accounting for why Christians did not carry out customary practices, including celebrating Chinese festivals and observing the rites of birth, marriage and death, was their adherence to the precepts of Christianity—along with their view that these Chinese customs are superstitious, anti-Christian and paganistic. Thus, there is a fundamental bifurcation in the Chinese community: those who are Christians and those who are Chinese religionists, along with a group of Chinese who are Muslims or neoHindu groups and those who profess no religion at all. The distinction between Chinese Christians and non-Christians is complicated by the fact that they are cross-cut by other divisive factors. Christians tend to be English-educated, while the Chinese religionists tend to be Chinese-educated. At the same time, Christians tend to have higher socioeconomic and educational status than the Chinese religionists. The observed sociological correlations between religion, language and education, on the one hand, and socioeconomic status, on the other, have led one to wonder whether the sociology of intraethnic relations among the Chinese in Singapore should include class influence in its future analyses. In general theoretical terms, it is probably true that, while the relationship between Christianity and Chineseness is one of mutual co-existence or, possibly, fission, affiliation with a Chinese religion would certainly further deepen the meaning and effects of one’s Chinese ethnicity. Among the Christians, however, we found that the majority seemed to have found ways to resolve the contradiction between being Christian and Chinese, while some rationalised their inner battles away or just accepted the possibility of Christianity making one less Chinese. To quote our informants: Like in religion…we may vary in our beliefs. You may be Christian, but you are still Chinese. You may not want to eat what we offer to our gods, but you are still Chinese. Some Christians at the bottom of it all, they will still tell you that they are Hokkiens too…that is why, even if they have a different religion, they are still Chinese (emphases added). Woman, 73, no formal education, housewife No, you can’t take religion or food to be the major ethnic marker. For example, you are Christian, but you wouldn’t say that you are not Chinese, would you? You are still Chinese. In fact, many youngsters are now Christians, and you can’t consider them not Chinese. Some even eat

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

100

food that has been offered for worship. I know that some Christians will not eat this sort of food. They are still Chinese (emphases added). Man, 66, no formal education, retired

Language and education as contested terrain During their colonial rule, the British in Singapore, and elsewhere in South-east Asia, pursued the practice of ascriptive ethnicity, allocating differential and unequal economic and social roles to the Malays, Chinese and the Indians (Trocki 1992; Lian and Ananda 2002). British colonial administrators viewed themselves and others as members of a distinct, separate community first, and as individuals second (Stockwell 1982:56). The ruler and the ruled related to each other as communities, in an interactional mode symbolised by residential concentrations of different ethnic groups in the city (Hodder 1953). Solidarity, rather than dialectical relations, between human nature, culture, ethnicity, geography, community, socio-economic organisation and the individual was thus firmly established. One may venture that the Singapore government’s use of the official CMIO racial classification scheme in modern-day Singapore bears the historical legacy of a colonial ideology (Lian and Ananda 2002). One major consequence of the state’s multiracialism policy is that ‘races’ remain separate and distinct, and a heightened racial consciousness remains, whereby Chinese are under pressure to become more Chinese, Indians more Indian, and Malays more Malay (Benjamin 1976)—than they otherwise would be if left alone by the government. The formal educational system in Singapore was first set up by the British colonial administrators, whose aim was to create an indigenous elite, which was Malay. The Chinese were left on their own; the community, particularly the clan associations, provided the resources to set up schools. The language of instruction in these schools was, not surprisingly, Chinese (Mandarin). Textbooks and teachers were drawn from China and Taiwan. English (pro-British) education was something only the elite, including a few Chinese, could afford. When the People’s Action Party assumed power in 1959, it set out to transform the educational system. In stages, schools became centralised and integrated while a uniform curriculum was introduced. Initially, Chinese-medium schools existed alongside the English-medium schools. By the 1980s, enrolment in Chinese schools began to decline, resulting in the closure of many. Chiew (1983) uses the concept of ‘depluralisation’ to explain ethnic relations in postindependence Singapore. Depluralisation, for him, means the breaking down of ethnic boundaries and exclusiveness. As the boundaries of the ethnic groups overlap more and more, an overarching national identity emerges. Using the concepts of broker and parallel institutions—the former referring to institutions that mediate and bridge two or more ethnic groups, and the latter to those that are shared but duplicated—Chiew suggests that broker institutions have become increasingly significant while parallel ones have declined. The bridging institutions he has identified include integrated schools, bilingual education and public housing. An example of a parallel institution is the vernacular language schools. Chiew claims that Singapore society, due to depluralisation, enjoys a high degree of structural integration and the successful creation of a national identity. In Singapore, the government adopted a policy of bilingualism and bilingual education

One face, many masks

101

where all students are required to study English as a first language and the mother tongue (Chinese [Mandarin], Tamil or Malay) as a second language. The then Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew (1978), rationalised the bilingualism policy in this way: Our task is to create an enduring society. It must have some essential common features. One of these is the ability and ease in communicating with one another through the use of one common language in our multilingual, multicultural society. Since then, the educational system has undergone several changes, most importantly through the setting up of special schools, which teach English and Chinese as first languages. What has been the impact of the changing educational system on the self-identity and ethnicity of Singaporeans? In colonial and post-independence Singapore, language policies are often tied up with education and, inevitably, the politics of the nation-states (Gopinathan 1980; Lian and Ananda 2002). In the colonial era, the educational system was divisive, creating boundaries between the Chinese and other ethnic groups. The various groups and, more importantly, their children were segregated from one another. Chinese children were educated in Chinese. Chinese education, at that time, followed the more traditional, classical idea of inculcating morality in a person. Thus, Chinese schools, in colonial times, reinforced the socialisation process in the family and strengthened the sense of group identity. At the time, Chinese education was China-centred, with little relevance to Singapore (Franke 1965). Chinese children were educated to identify themselves with Chinese nationalism, with the politics of the nationstate in China. The Singapore state, since 1959, has promoted an ideology of multiracialism, based on the founding Charter principle of equal treatment of cultural and ethnic identities of the various races as well as the four streams of education—Malay, Chinese, English and Tamil (Benjamin 1976). The educational policy after the independence of Singapore in 1965 was to break down the segregation of the various ethnic groups and to set up ‘integrated’ schools. Education, nevertheless, remained a divisive force within the Chinese community. A differentiation between the ‘Chinese-educated’ Chinese and the English-educated Chinese developed, mutually spawning various ‘subethnic’ stereotypes. In the 1990s, vigorous promotion by the government of the four official languages, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and English (Pakir 1993), was partly responsible for signs of polarisation between the two groups. However, the process of dichotomy began as early as the beginning of the twentieth century with the formation of two distinct groups: a minority of Anglophile Chinese and the majority of Chinese-educated. One English-educated Chinese noted the following: They (the Chinese-educated Chinese) were one kind and we were another kind. They were very narrow-minded. They only spoke Chinese. As a Chinese-educated, there’s no future. They only went to Nantah (the then Nanyang University, a Chinese language university). They were at a disadvantage. If they wanted to go to England, they could not speak English. As an Englisheducated, it’s all right not to know Chinese because you can still get by. I had neighbours who were all Chinese-educated.

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

102

Thank goodness for them, they eventually became bilingual and did very well. One of the sisters had to sacrifice her life and education to let her brother go and study abroad. I suppose that is what I admire about the Chinese-educated. But Chinese education is not that important. It’s good to know something just to get by. In Singapore, you do not need to know Chinese. English is far superior. If you only know Chinese, you are at a disadvantage. Man, mid-twenties, English-educated, tertiary education, engineer Obversely, the Chinese educated have a low view of their English-educated counterpart: If a person looks Chinese but does not speak Chinese, I do not think he is Chinese, and if a person speaks Chinese and does not look Chinese, he is also not a Chinese. Woman, 22, Chinese-educated, secondary education, housewife I think learning Chinese is a torture. But at the same time, it is a shameful thing if you don’t know your own language, especially when you are abroad. The Japanese and the French are all very proud of their language, we should be too. Man, 22, Chinese-educated, secondary education, clerk Chinese-educated Chinese were depicted by the English-educated as ‘ultraconservative’ and ‘unfashionable’. Similarly, the Chinese-educated saw the English-educated as ‘liberal’, ‘sexually loose’ and half-Chinese, an inferior kind of Chinese with little sense of what Chinese culture is. There were different senses of what constitutes Chinese identity and culture between the two groups. It is not accidental that the Chinese-educated tended to use language as a central marker of ethnicity, vital to the transmission of cultural values: ‘Once Chinese language goes, Chinese culture will go with it’. To quote one informant: I think Chinese who do not speak Chinese are not really Chinese Chinese. Some do not even celebrate Chinese New Year, they just sleep at home. It’s such a waste. They calculate how much ang pow (cash money in red paper packets symbolising prosperity and good luck) they have to give and decide that it’s not worth it. He’s not very Chinese and he has difficulty communicating with his neighbours. It is not right that he does not speak Chinese at all. I can accept him but I don’t think the older people can. I think in future, his kids will have problems. They will not be able to speak Mandarin. In Singapore, since Chinese are the majority, he will have problems communicating with others. It’s also very disgraceful. There are some foreigners who are trying to learn Chinese, and then you have a Chinese who cannot speak Chinese.

One face, many masks

103

If foreigners speak to you in Chinese and you cannot reply, it’s very embarrassing. Most younger generation mothers today do not speak to their children in Mandarin because they know that without English, they cannot survive in Singapore. Because of this, now there’s a big gap between grandchildren and grandparents. They cannot speak to each other. Man, 22, Chinese-educated, secondary education, office worker Feeling deprived because of their Chinese-language education, such people have developed an emphatic attitude towards the Chinese language, possibly through a process of reaction formation—the powerless in-group embraces and takes renewed pride in the very thing that has been stigmatised by the powerful out-group. Also, in defence, the Chinese-educated turn the language-culture linkage into a moral issue. The inability of the English-educated to have a sound command of the Chinese language is often depicted by the Chinese-educated as disgraceful. Derogatory terms such as ‘banana’, that is ‘yellow outside and white inside’, or ‘WOG’, an acronym for ‘western oriental gentlemen’, were used to characterise the English-educated. The Chinese-educated were apparently oblivious to the paradoxical etymology of such terms, which were first coined by Caucasians to refer to second- and third-generation Asians (mainly Chinese and Japanese) who had been so culturally assimilated that they no longer conversed in their own native language nor functioned well in their native culture. Now, in turn, they are adopted by the Chinese-educated to ridicule the English-educated for their ethnicity drift, for having ‘lost their roots’. An outsider’s condemnation has become the insiders’ bone of contention. Other than an insistence on the Chinese language, the Chinese-educated also tended to emphasise knowledge of and adherence to Chinese culture, an idealised notion of Chineseness: People are turning to other cultures because they cannot identify with their own culture. I feel that since one is Chinese, they should know their own culture, otherwise there would be no need to define race. Since we are the majority, obviously, our culture has done most for the society. If the other races could not tolerate us, they would have voiced it, but they have not, so it shows we are all right… For all you know, they may want to share our thinking too. Do you realise that in five thousand years, China has never conquered anyone and even if they have, they did not cause too much hardship or destroy their country? This is significant because of an important Chinese virtue—harmony. Man, 40, Chinese-educated, primary education, shop owner The English-educated Chinese, as expected, tended to underemphasise the role of language in defining identity. Rather, the markers used were ‘bloodline’, hair and skin colour and practising what they considered as core traditional values. While the Chineseeducated felt that a Chinese must speak, read and write Chinese and follow all the customs and rituals, the English-educated tended to be more concerned with what they

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

104

regarded as core values, the most often cited being ‘filial piety’, and the performance of key rituals, such as the celebration of Chinese New Year or Mid-Autumn Festival. It should be emphasised here that, while the English-educated and Chinese-educated agreed with each other on what constitutes core values, such as descent, which refers to the perpetuation of the family name through the provision of sons, and filial piety, in other areas, especially language, disagreement was acute. The Chinese-educated tended to regard language as core, while the English-educated did not, although at times expressing a sense of cultural loss, ambiguity and ambivalence. While there were individual as well as group differences in what are to be considered as core values, for all informants interviewed, whether Chinese- or English-educated, there is no sense of not being Chinese: Yes, I am less Chinese. I am aware that I am Chinese and that makes me want to be more Chinese. To be more Chinese, I should be something else. I can’t help my being English-educated. But my wish to be able to speak Chinese is a manifestation that I want to be more Chinese. I am more westernised because my parents speak to me in English, and also the mass media portray it such that you get more prestige if you are Englisheducated rather than Chinese-educated. Physically I am Chinese, culturally and psychologically I am not. Woman, twenties, English-educated, tertiary education, student

Between generations Our study found a shift in the conception of ethnicity between the older and younger generations. The older generation tended to be more confident of the roots of their ethnicity. For them, the sense of ‘territorial’ identity was very important. In the interviews, they tended to call themselves ‘teng-swa-lang’, literally ‘Tang people’, or ‘tiong-kok-lang’, ‘people of China’. Their ethnicity is tied to a sense of place, and ethnic boundary is a geographical one, with a sense of territorial identity closely related to the fact that they were born in China and had migrated to Singapore in the 1920s as sojourners and they see China as their homeland. Many of these people still retain a desire to visit the homeland, return to China and be buried in their ancestral place. However, given that a majority of these older migrants were illiterate peasants who came to South-east Asia as indentured labourers, their sense of homeland was not based on a sophisticated knowledge of a long, proud history of China’s culture and tradition. Rather, their ethnicity was tied to the ‘soil’ or ancestral land. While they did associate the notion of Chineseness with the idea of a ‘China’ or Chinese civilisation, their sense of what this China is appeared to be, at best, an amorphous one. This sense of China as homeland was displayed in one interview with a main-land Chinese who worked in Singapore. To him, like the first-generation migrants who came to Singapore in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the characteristically diasporic desire to return to China was strong, holding up history, tradition and territoriality as glue binding the Chinese together:

One face, many masks

105

The most important sense of what it means to be Chinese is our history. For the Chinese, the history of China goes all the way back to over five thousand years ago. With such a long history, this is therefore the Chinese identity. It is not language that is the Chinese identity. The foundation of Chinese identity is China’s history. This is what makes you a Chinese. It is not just history, it is the culture that makes up a civilisation that makes you a Chinese. Since a long time ago, our ancestors originated from China. We call ourselves ‘Singapore Chinese’, but if you trace our roots to a long, long time ago, our ancestors originated from China. The colour of our skin is yellow. They spoke in Chinese and they received their education in Chinese. And for thousands of years, everything has remained the same. And for thousands of generations, things have remained the same. Our ancestors had the genes… so it has been passed down to us and we all have yellow skin. Our eyes are black. It is definitely like that. That is why we are Chinese. There has been much foreign influence on Singapore…yet, we can’t change our origins—we are really and absolutely Chinese and that cannot be changed…we can’t be changed because our ancestors are from China. They are real Chinese people— they are our ancestors. That is as early as anyone can think of... our ancestors have been Chinese and generations after generations of Chinese have been born till our present generation of Chinese—that is how and why we are still Chinese. We can’t change that. We can’t change our history. We can’t change the fact that our ancestors are Chinese. Therefore, this question ‘Why are we Chinese?’ would only be a question for us to ponder over if we have ancestors who are Eurasians… But I tell you, we Chinese have no problems saying that we are Chinese because from thousands and thousands of years ago, our ancestors have been yellow-skinned Chinese and this has been passed down to all generations till us, the present generation. Everyone has a history that will explain things… Europeans have their own history to tell. Man, 35, Chinese-educated, tertiary education, professional This sense of China as home, as homeland—that is ethnicity based on territorial and political dimensions—was not shared by the younger Chinese Singaporeans, whether Chinese- or English-educated; ‘Chinese citizenship’, ‘Chinese polities’ or ‘events happening in China’ were not of interest to them nor did they figure in their definition of Chinese identity. Instead, there prevailed a diffuse sense of cultural confusion and loss, resulting in a search, particularly among the English-educated, for markers that would define their ethnic identity. The Chinese-educated have chosen the Chinese language. Yet Chinese language in Singapore has taken a bashing. The Chinese-educated have witnessed the rise of the English-speaking middle class and the demise of Chineselanguage schools; they feel that they have been deprived of economic and educational opportunities. Thus, their emphasis on the Chinese language must be viewed, simultaneously, as a political, economic and linguistic issue. It was for this reason that many Chinese-educated claimed that the English-educated Chinese are ‘less Chinese.’

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

106

Interestingly, many English-educated Chinese shared this mode of discourse, but for very different reasons. Most of these English-educated Chinese who do not speak the Chinese language fluently did not feel that they are any less Chinese than those who can. However, they did feel a sense of loss: I do not feel less Chinese since I speak three (Chinese) dialects. I am into seal carving, I play Chinese musical instruments. Thus, I have all the credentials. The other side of me is fairly anglicised because I have been in Britain for three years. Western ideas have become an intrinsic part of me and, I think, the nation as a whole. We cannot deny British influence in Singapore for 180 years. All this talk about the decadent West is not true. But I sometimes do feel something is missing, something has been lost. I am stranded between East and West. Man, mid-twenties, English-educated, tertiary education, professional It is when interacting with the non-Chinese, particularly those who can speak Mandarin, or when they are overseas and meet Taiwanese or mainland Chinese, that this sense of loss and inadequacy arises. When this happens, we detect an instant onset of rationalisation—insisting that language is not central to identity, or expressing a wish to learn the language as soon as they have the time. For others, however, there is a sense of superiority, feeling pity for the Chinese-educated because of their lack of economic and educational opportunities. Fluency in the Chinese language is a marker used by the non-Chinese in Singapore to define Chineseness. In addition to blood (which cannot be seen) and phenotype (which is variable), the Chinese language is a clear marker to the outsiders. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the government emphasised the learning of English. It was seen as a neutral language and, more importantly, the language of science and development. However, in the 1980s and the 1990s, there was a shift to the learning of Chinese, as seen in the launching of the Speak Mandarin Campaign and the setting up of SAP (Special Assistance Plan) schools, in which both English and Chinese are taught as first languages. The official rationale was that the Chinese in Singapore are becoming too westernised and the Chinese language would act as a cultural ballast for the Chinese. Other than merely a linguistic issue, there has been a debate in Singapore on the role of language in cultural transmission. Advocates of Mandarin argue that it is impossible, or at least incomplete, to transmit Chinese cultural values without the Chinese language—suggesting that most English-educated Chinese are less Chinese. On the other hand, most non-Chinese educated are suggesting that, while a knowledge of the language is useful, it is not a necessary condition for Chineseness. The discourse suggests that a large part of what it means to be Chinese in Singapore is contested terrain.

Community fragmentation and disembedding What used to be a Chinese ‘community’ has largely disappeared. Traditionally, and partly due to British policies, the Chinese were segregated from the other ethnic communities. They tended to live in close-knit and clearly marked-out territorial areas. However, rapid

One face, many masks

107

urban renewal and development and ethnically integrated housing policies have, by and large, broken down these physical boundaries and mixed the various communities. In modern-day Singapore, territoriality, language and religion no longer serve as markers of ethnicity for all Chinese. Rather, these factors have become part of a contested (and sometimes self-contradictory) discourse in defining identity. The core features of ethnic identity have over time become closely tied to ascriptive features of phenotype, bloodline and lineage, resulting in a strong sense of sociological boundary, of who can and cannot be Chinese. People are ‘born Chinese’, and cannot become ‘un-Chinese’, although they can be regarded as inferior Chinese; people from other races who adopt ‘Chinese cultural values’ cannot and will never become or be accepted as Chinese. It is probably this sense of exclusion and exclusiveness that provides the strong bonds holding together a Chinese ‘community’ in Singapore—in spite of the loss of community, the loss of place (Rushdie and Grass 1987). The fragmentation of Chinese ethnicity manifests itself on many fronts. One observes great diversity, multiplicity and heterogeneity in conceptions of being Chinese. Among the Chinese-educated, Chinese language is central; among the English-educated, it is filial piety. Among the older Chinese, it is a sense of China as homeland. Among the younger Chinese, one observes a ‘disembedding’5 of space in that China and the concept of homeland have become unimportant in their sense of Chineseness. For them, having been born in Singapore, a sense of ancestral place is missing. Many have never been to China and have little sense of what it is like. Of those who have visited China, many have come back with rather negative feelings about its backwardness, disorder and lack of hygiene. This disembedding process is important to note as it allows one, at one level, to define the uniqueness of the Chinese in Singapore, as Singaporean Chinese, as opposed to the ‘China Chinese’, ‘Taiwanese’, ‘Hong Kong Chinese’ and so on. At the same time, the ascription to blood and lineage allows the Chinese in Singapore to identify and affiliate with the ‘Chinese’ worldwide, the Chinese diaspora. The notion of disembedding is extremely important here. The prevalent definition of Chinese is mistakenly related to the idea of China, its long history and tradition. Yet, even among the older Chinese in Singapore, who can claim an affiliation to this tradition, this is an idealised conception. There is an overemphasis on the notion of the great cultural ‘tradition’, which probably arose from the fact that many scholars who have written on the Chinese are westerners with an idealised notion of what Chinese is, or from the educated Chinese people’s own mystification. The majority of the Chinese, both inside and outside China, are peasants and traders. While they have a sense of the ‘tradition’, it is at best an amorphous one. There are in fact disembeddings at several levels and at different points of time and place. On one level, there was a disembedding of the self from mainland China, Chinese history, culture, tradition and heritage, resulting in a sense of loss of place and, on another level, disembedding from the local community in Singapore. This is important in articulating a discourse on the unity and diversity, sameness and differentness, of Singaporean Chineseness. It allows, in a sense, an individual to say that ‘I’m a Chinese, they are also Chinese, but they are so different from me’ The self, over time, has experienced a closer identification with family and family history rather than with community or community organisations. Identity has become more individualised, personalised or, if you like, subjectivised. A movement of ethnic identity tied to the

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

108

individual self is becoming more prevalent. Finally, there is a separation of self-identity from nationality. It is no longer necessary to be a citizen of China to be Chinese, and there is no problem for them to be ‘Singaporean Chinese’, to be both Singaporean and Chinese, to be Singaporean precisely by being ethnically Chinese. One may surmise that, once outside Singapore, the Chinese, like those from Hong Kong, Taiwan, America or Europe, will decide whether or not to attach any importance to their Chinese label, to their nationality. They will thus enjoy immense liberty in articulating their sameness or differentness in the Chinese diaspora politics. This may well be their greatest strength.

Conclusion Ethnic groups can be located at different points of a continuum, with voluntary membership (choice) in some groups at one end and involuntary membership as given (birth) in others at the opposite end. As Horowitz (1985:55) reminds us, ‘We like to think of birth and choice as mutually exclusive principles of membership, but all institutions are infused with components of both’. The Karen along the Thai-Burmese border recognise outsiders who marry Karen women and exhibit behavioural conformity to a few Karen rules as Karen (Marlowe 1979). The opening up of group boundaries through intermarriages, alliances and trade relations serves the interest of the Karen (Lian and Ananda 1993). When a Malay marries a non-Malay, the non-Malay will be classified as Malay by becoming a Muslim, learning the Malay language and performing certain Islamic rituals (Smolicz 1981). Neither of these forms of ethnic inclusion by ‘achievement’ of certain cultural competences is acceptable to the Chinese, who insist on a first and singular principle of classification on account of birth, descent and appearance. With the oft-noted, muchdebated ‘cultural erosion’ or ‘ethnicity drift’ on the part of the later generation, young Chinese Singaporeans, their meagre cultural achievement in traditional terms leads to an accentuated emphasis on phenotypical manifestations of an ascribed ethnicity—or, to put it simply, ethnicity as race. The logical extreme is that one is still Chinese, with or without culture. Yet once this primary birth principle of classification is satisfied, the secondary principle of multiple or plural conceptions of ethnicity is often invoked, stressing individualistic, voluntary, autonomous expression. In the past, birth and choice, ascription and achievement, cohered. Now, the two may or may not. This new ethnicity, whether called symbolic (Gans 1979) or emergent (Yancey et al. 1976), will wear as many masks as individual members care to present to themselves and to others (Chan and Tong 2001). Ethnicity is a variable (Cohen 1974; Yancey et al. 1976; Alba 1990) in terms of differences in manifestation. The ethnic actor, at any point in time and place, has in front of him or her a plurality of ‘identity options on offer’ (Rex 1987). One face (racial), many masks (cultural) or none. The inherent heterogeneity and multiplicity of the character of ethnic identity—in addition to its fluidity and indeterminacy—must be recognised by social analysts. Lest mistaken as another stance of unfounded romanticism, the negotiability of ethnicity, Chinese or not, has its limits precisely because it continues to be categorically bound by the first principle of birth, as both Chinese and non-Chinese have always insisted. Nagata’s (1974) situational ethnicity, strictly speaking, does not

One face, many masks

109

apply to the Chinese; the Chinese in Singapore and, for that matter, elsewhere cannot pass as they will (Clammer 1981; Lian and Ananda 1993). Birth, appearance, descent set the first parameters. A Chinese cannot unbecome himself or herself racially. However, as we have tried to show in this chapter, there is still plenty of room left for the ethnic actor to move around. Human agency is still very much alive and well. Now, is the ethnic actor free or not free? Is ethnicity involuntary or voluntary? In the case of the Chinese in Singapore, the answer is: It is not either/or; it is both. It is both non-negotiable and negotiable. Ethnic actors have indeed increased their degree of freedom over the years but are best reminded of the limits.

6 Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan This chapter puts forward two main claims. First, it argues that dispersing the patrilineal Chinese family is, paradoxically, often a rational family decision to preserve the family, a resourceful and resilient way of strengthening it: families split in order to be together translocally. The astronaut families of Hong Kong are a model of such dispersion for our time. Second, this chapter argues that these spatially dispersed families constitute strategic nodes and linkages of an ever-expanding transnational field within which a new type of Chinese identity is emerging—that of the Chinese cosmopolitan. Migration often disperses family members, thus massively ‘manufacturing’ a familial form often viewed by family specialists as pathological. This view is especially common among those who take it for granted that the family as a cohesive unit must be based on family members being physically together, in order to articulate their family life in one geographical place, under the same roof (see Bernades 1993; Cheal 1993). To the practitioner in marital counselling, family therapy, social work, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, as well as to those providing pastoral care through various religious institutions or the mass media, family dispersal is usually evidence of family disorganisation, and needs to be corrected. Yet, when one looks beyond these narrow concerns and scrutinises the classical and contemporary migration literature with special reference to the actual processual workings of the family, one notices that family dispersal often, if not always, co-exists with migration; there is evidence of family dispersal having been anticipated, accepted and seized upon as a rational strategy to optimise the benefits of migration while minimising its risks and costs. Stark’s (1995:101–6) portfolio investment theory is among several recent attempts (see Belong et al. 1986; Perez 1986; Fawcett 1989) to place the family at the heart of the migration decision—and to place analyses of migration within the context of the family. Stark argues that, when family members migrate from a rural to an urban sector, usually as the result of a collective decision, the family is ‘simultaneously sampling from a number of separate markets (that is, investing in one without completely liquidating and shifting holdings from another), and sharing both costs (e.g. financing the move) and rewards (e.g. through remittances), and so forth’ (1995:103). Families disperse their labour resources over geographically scattered and qualitatively different markets in order to both reduce risks and pool and share their incomes. Support, in the form of remittances, flows to that sector of the family that stays home to deal with, say, crop failure; but remittances can also go to the urban migrant during times of economic recession. All this, of course, is contingent upon the migrant (the son or daughter)1 and his family (represented by the father) entering into a co-insurance contract, a form of diversified portfolio investment, in which the command of the family over the migrant is secure, if not guaranteed. As such, family dispersal is not simply a ‘consequence’ of

Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan

111

migration; on the contrary, the anticipation, acceptance and adoption of family dispersal as a strategy releases, sets in motion and necessarily precedes the very act of migration in the first place. Of course, family dispersal as migration strategy is not without stress; the family sociologist is thus as interested in its problematic character as in its attendant coping strategies. Yet, as this chapter argues, the scattering of family in a duality or, increasingly, a plurality of geographical places within a new, enabling global environment provides one crucial context within which a Chinese cosmopolitan identity emerges and is articulated. Other relevant contexts include the development of intimately intertwined world economies with multidirectional flows of trade and investment; the emergence of a Chinese diasporic economy with its ethnically structured networks of nodes and poles (see Lever-Tracy and Ip 1996); and modern technological advances in communications and transport that facilitate the transmission of popular culture (Cohen 1994:20–1). Together, these conditions further enhance the viability of familial dispersal as an intermediary strategy of transnational migration and, in turn, of Chinese cosmopolitanism. Correspondingly, the phenomenology and anthropology of this new, emergent Chinese identity necessitates a rethinking of such issues as traditional versus modern Chinese culture; culture loss versus culture gain; and assimilation versus the persistence of ethnic consciousness. Speaking sociologically and historically, the contemporary astronaut families of Hong Kong are best seen as a variant, not deviant, family form—or, simply, as a migration strategy, a positive act, long noted in the migratory history of mankind, although they are now much more mobile, resource rich and resilient than their nineteenth-century predecessors. As a group or class, the resulting diaspora is constituted by what are variously called the ‘transilients’ (Richmond 1994), the new overseas Chinese (Skeldon 1994b, 1994c) or the new middle-class Chinese (Li 1983).

Migration and family dispersal in history As early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a massive movement across the Atlantic of male migrants from old Europe—who left their spouses, children and extended families behind—into the brave new world of America to seek better opportunities and new fortunes. This migratory movement intensified in 1845–1850, then again in 1880 and onwards, and captured the attention of sociologists decades later. W.I.Thomas and Florian Zananiecki’s (1918–20) The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, partly based on the analysis of letters exchanged between husbands and wives and between family members across the Atlantic, is a classic in the genre of migration studies. Handlin’s (1953) The Uprooted is another. In these two texts, marital separation and family dispersal as forms of social disorganisation and alienation are salient themes. As a social phenomenon, the dispersal of families in disparate geographical places as a result of migration was long noted in the migration literature but, by and large, it was looked upon negatively, as an undesirable consequence. China in the nineteenth century was a distressed society. Among the push factors associated with massive Chinese emigration, the demographic and economic ones were the most prominent: a failing economy, tenant exploitation by landlords, overpopulation,

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

112

shortage of basic food staples, inflation, gross social insecurity, natural calamities and civil wars. News and rumours about the proliferation of opportunities in America had also begun to seize the imagination of many potential Chinese emigrants. The discovery of gold at John Sutter’s mill along the Sacramento River in 1848 set in place a tumultuous ‘pull’ that induced a worldwide migratory movement. Between 1848 and 1852, there was an influx of up to 25,000 male migrants from China’s Pearl River delta region into the west coast of the United States and later, in 1858, into Canada’s Fraser River Valley—migratory men crossed the Pacific to participate in the ‘gold fever’ and later to work as manual labourers, building roads and railways or working in various other burgeoning industries (Chan 1991:15).2 Lacking passage money and uncertain about their own future in America, the migrants left their wives and children (when they had any) behind. The more fortunate ones managed to make occasional trips back home, staying in China only long enough (typically one to two years or only months) to father children and renew kin ties, while others continued to send home letters (most of which they did not write themselves because of their illiteracy) with money to keep their family and marital ties alive. Letter-writing and sending money home3 were gestures of family solidarity, a means of ensuring one’s continued role and integration into the patrilineal family and kin network, a way of sharing rewards with others to ensure the collective well-being of the family. Most of the time, the husband-fathers played out their roles and discharged their responsibilities, however inadequately, from a distance. They eked out their migrant labourers’ existence in a male bachelor society, often finding themselves vulnerable to the so-called ‘ethnic vices’ (Chan 1991:171) - gambling, opium addiction, visiting prostitutes and so on—long noted in social science as well as literary texts dealing with overseas Chinese males. Throughout the early 1900s, Chinese migrants in the United States and Canada were often unfairly caricatured and stereotyped in the white-owned mass media, accused of ‘vices’ that emerged precisely because they were denied the right to bring over their wives and families. The sexual orientation and behaviour of the Chinese male migrant was often portrayed by the media in extremes; the Chinese male was either sexless or oversexed, and he was viewed as abnormal or pathological. The myriad of clan- and occupation-related associations in the Chinatown areas acted as surrogate or substitute families for many migrants, whose sexual relief continued to be found elsewhere, among non-Chinese prostitutes. On 6 May 1882, US President Chester A. Arthur signed into law the Exclusion Act—the first of what was to become a series of acts and policies aimed at excluding Chinese from American immigration. The Act prohibited the importation of Chinese skilled and unskilled labour into the United States and was not repealed until 1943, sixtyone years later. In Canada, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 levied a head tax of $50 on almost every Chinese upon entry into the country; this was increased to $100 in 1900 and $500 in 1903, culminating in the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923, which ‘fortified’ the male bachelor society that earlier immigration had created while further institutionalising marital separation and family dispersal among the Chinese. What had started out as a partly purposive and partly involuntary migration strategy soon became an institutionally imposed course of action. The Canadian Chinese

Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan

113

Immigration Act was not repealed until 1947, at which time many Chinese families were reunited and many wives were brought into Canada, often after decades of marital separation. Wives had to look after husbands who were ageing and often also frail, weak and sick, if not dying (Chan 1991:237).

The family and its role in migration The social science literature on migration in general has long noted, though often not explicitly enough, that both migration and the policies of the host governments and their recruiting brokers select young, strong, able-bodied males and launch them on longdistance voyages. The demand in a rapidly developing host society is for foreign migrants to provide a constant supply of dependable cheap labour. Looked at micro-sociologically, the family selects strong, able-bodied males as ‘target migrants’ to undertake the precarious journeys of migration to further the fortunes of the family left behind, to ensure its survival and continuing well-being. In Stepping Out (1994), a book I wrote with Claire Chiang about the Chinese business pioneers who came to Singapore in the 1920s, often penniless, having left povertystricken villages in southern China, we noted the same process of migration in general, and how it pertained to the family-kin group in particular. Poverty required that the process of decision-making about migration be undertaken cautiously and collectively, with the full participation and consent of the elderly members of the family and kin network. Mothers and wives often played a crucial role in arranging for the passage money through loans from the larger family-kin group; as such, the women left back home had considerable say in who was to migrate, when, how and to where (Chan and Chiang 1994:181–3; 236–7; 239–41). The group deliberated, selected the ‘target migrants,’ launched them on a sojourn overseas and forced the paradox of separating and dispersing the family in order to ensure its continuity, prosperity and hoped-for eventual reunification. Some member of the family, whether the husband or the male child, had to be sent away to make good for both himself and the family, to keep the functionally deficient family from falling further apart. The family’s role must be foregrounded in the migration process. In a sense, the extended family col-lects and releases the migration inertia energy; the elders borrow money from kin, neighbours, friends and acquaintances to pay for passage, make transactions with migration brokering agencies in China, locate and use sources of contact in targeted countries of destination. The family plans and plays an instrumental role in each and every stage of decision-making before, during and after the departure of the target migrant. Ultimately, while it is the lone individual who moves, physically speaking, it is the family that negotiates with the micro and domestic groups and with the macro, socio-economic and political forces in both country of origin and country of destination. Migration is a family affair, too important to be left to the individual himself. The more contemporary migration literature has not been negligent in foregrounding the saliency of the family in terms of its role in the internal as well as the external dynamics of the migration process. In her review essay, Boyd characterises the family, understood in its broadest sense as a set of personal networks or linkages, as an essential strategic constituent element of the international migration system (Boyd 1989; see also

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

114

Dejong et al. 1986; Perez 1986; Fawcett and Arnold 1987; Fawcett 1989). The family mediates or ‘intervenes’ between individual migrants (as actors) and the larger, structural, transnational forces (to which the actors are subjected); it also connects the personalindividual, the ‘micro’, with the structural, ‘macro’ and global levels of analyses; properly viewed, the family also increases the explanatory power of theories about the motivation to migrate. Finally, the family connects the forces responsible for migration in countries of origin and destination. In addition, once the dispersed family as a system of networks and linkages is in place globally and becomes fully operational, subsequent flows of migrants are set in motion to join the pioneers or ‘family predecessors’ because the opportunity structure and all the other necessary supportive and facilitative infrastructures are now in place: hence the unfolding of a’chain migration’. As Fawcett puts it, ‘family relationships have an enduring impact on migrants. Policies, rules and norms may change, but obligations among family members are of an abiding nature’ (1989:678). The foregrounding of the family points to a paradox underpinning the ‘individual’ migrant’s situation. For the Chinese individuals involved, migration continues to be family-initiated and family-sponsored, and this fact has deep, farreaching psychological and moral consequences for the individual. He must make good not just for himself, but for the family. He owes it to the family to make it in the new world. He has an existential burden in that the family is perpetually ‘on his back’: to escape entirely (read, psychologically) from the influence of the ancestors’ shadow is an impossibility. The ‘family’ inside him controls him from within. The lone migrant is seemingly set free to lift off from his home ground, into the air, like a kite—but not without the family pulling the string, if necessary, back to the hearth, although not always successfully.4 The migrant thus experiences the family in his everyday sojourning life as a real factor, sometimes seeing it as a liability or a constraint, other times as a source of strength and enablement. The destinies of the family and the individual are intertwined.

Family, migrant community and cultural change Much of the literature on non-Chinese migration suggests that assimilation follows migration because distance from the family and homeland is a form of ‘groundlessness’, an absence of tradition. The physical ‘groundedness’ of a homeland or village is compensated for by other means in Chinese migration: the Confucian and patrilineal family ethos and the concentration of Chinese immigrants into peculiar enclaves known as Chinatowns transform and reinforce tradition. The individual migrant is a physical carrier of traditions and culture, while the family back in the homeland acts as an origin, a source of cultural transmission, an agent of continuity. Being held in the family grid, the migrant is in close contact with traditional Chinese cultural values: filial piety, obligations and duties to the family, hard work, frugality and so on. Over time, the migrants paradoxically become ‘enthusiastic proponents of traditional values’ (Watson 1975:215), often to a greater degree than when they left. As a result of the ‘workings’ of the family, the traditional culture is maintained and reproduced within the person of the migrant. The sociologist of Chinese migration rarely loses sight of the fact that the migrant as individual, though now away from the homeland, operates within a

Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan

115

Chinatown, a migrant community that has its own institutional structure made up of a myriad of immigrant associations and organisations that, in the case of the overseas Chinese, are based on family/kin ties, a common surname and origin-locality. Home village, ancestral tomb and common name are the stuff of the socio-cultural glue. While reproducing traditional culture, such immigrant associations often function as surrogate or substitute families. They nurture and protect, but also apply sanctions on individual migrants, holding them in check, policing them. The migrant communities are thus best seen as a sociological entity in a particular physical and cultural space. They evolve and develop for themselves a blend of migrant ethos and morals and insist that the migrants abide by them or run the risk of being ostracised or disowned by the only community they can lay any claim to in a foreign land. The behaviour of the lone migrant is held in check both by a remote family, or the ‘family idea’, and by the immigrant associations’ disciplinary influence. The migrant keeps his moral eye, his gaze, on others who share his values. As a result, he necessarily also keeps his gaze on himself—thus, the migrants collectively evolve a ‘moral community’. The ‘associational life’ (see Rex 1987; Rex and Josephides 1987) of individual migrants thus has its conservative, self-reinforcing, self-maintaining side. The resulting social artifact is neither a migrant culture retrieved and transplanted from the past, from its homeland, in toto, in its purest, essentialist form, nor a wholesale embrace and internalisation of the host culture, as migrants’ integration into the mainstream societal institutions is not desired by the natives - in fact, this integration is often systematically curtailed or blocked because of prejudice and discrimination. Ideologically speaking, two diametrically opposing ‘identity options’ (see Rex 1987; Rex and Josephides 1987) are on offer to the migrant: assimilation or ‘voluntary’ confinement to an ethnic/cultural enclave (see Wang 1993). Yet another option, increasingly available and chosen by many modern-day migrants, is that of a gradual combination of the two previously mutually exclusive options. The immigrant initially finds himself ‘in the cracks’ of a pull from the traditional culture and a push towards the mainstream local culture. Existentially, in his everyday life, he experiences the inevitable tension intrinsic in his dual existence. He is the marginal man (Park 1928) par excellence. But, in the end, his marginality to two ways of being is no longer an either/or; it metamorphoses, producing a new hybridity, an integrated multiplicity. As a result of ethnic revival, through ethnicisation and re-sinification, or through a third-generation loopback into tradition and heritage (see Nagata 1991; Ang 1993), the culture of the past is to some extent retrieved, but also imagined, idealised, romanticised, purified (see Lowenthal 1985; Turner 1987; Chase and Shaw 1989); it is not a past duplicated in toto, in its completeness or essence. ‘The observed traditional cultural values that are enacted by the migrant are thus better seen as “adaptive” or “reactive” values than as transplanted, orthodox, authentic values’ (Light 1980:34–6). The resultant past, thus transformed, can be more past than the past. This is why many a keen anthropological observer finds cultural behaviours in the immigrant community that have been long lost or transformed in the homeland but, ironically, are maintained, ‘re-antiquated’ or re-packaged in their purest, ‘most ancient’ ways in a new home. Nagata (1985:22) reports in her study of Indonesian Chinese immigrants in Toronto, Canada, that immigrants typically change their names back to the Chinese originals, enrol in Chinese language classes for the first time and show renewed interest in Chinese issues

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

116

(to the consternation of the Indonesian Consul there). Others begin to celebrate Chinese festivals, observe customs or practise rituals they have formerly (before migration) neglected, ignored or taken for granted. Suddenly, Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, Hungry Ghost Festival and so forth are reinvented and take on added significance.5 Typically, the migrant is brusquely thrown upon the harsh, demanding present. His task is to transform himself, to acculturate; he must earn his hybridity, multiplicity, heterogeneity and multidimensionality (Lowe 1991:24–44). Much is lost, much is gained. The immigrant is an emergent man, tentatively—but necessarily—a cultural relativist, a pluralist. The immigrant community is an emergent community. The immigrant culture is an emergent culture. It incorporates into its orbit the triangle of China (tradition), the host society (present) and the world Chinese diaspora (future) as one colossal imagined community. The sociologist and anthropologist must therefore look at the problematic of cultural continuity and change in various overseas Chinese communities from this standpoint.

The Hong Kong astronaut families By 1992, five years before the 1997 return of Hong Kong to China, official Hong Kong government estimates put the number of those leaving Hong Kong at over 66,000 per annum, the highest since it reached 20,000 in the early 1980s (Skeldon 1994c). Their principal destination countries were Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. These Hong Kong emigrants are among the world’s middle-class international migrants—the elite (Wong 1992:4), the ‘new middle class’ (Li 1983), the ‘new’ overseas Chinese (Skeldon 1994b). As a class of new actors on the international stage of migration, they set themselves apart from the unskilled, male labour migrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Well educated, highly trained, with portable skills and probably classified everywhere in the world as ‘professional, technical, administrative and managerial personnel’, they are well versed in the art of dealing with government bureaucrats as well as in exploiting personal relations, and have been seeking entry en masse into the west. Their requests are often granted under increasingly popular programmes for business immigrants and economic investors. They bring significant human capital and ethnic as well as class resources to their countries of destination. ‘Astronaut families’ is a term coined by the Hong Kong mass media to refer to contemporary middle-class dispersed nuclear families. They usually begin with one spouse (usually the wife) and children settling in a host country, while another spouse (usually the husband) continues with his work in Hong Kong, periodically shuttling between the two places, making short stays in the adopted country to fulfil minimum immigration requirements and to maintain the solidarity of the family and the marriage. The term ‘astronaut family’ has a triple meaning. First, it denotes a family (or parts of it) in flight, commuting, travelling, crossing borders; second, it signifies a family straddling two places, not in either one or the other but rather in both, in marginality and duality, in a two-legged existence, one in the country of exit, another in the country of entry. Third, it attempts to describe the physical, psychic and psychosocial existence of wives in families thus dispersed, in marriages thus separated. The Chinese counterpart of the

Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan

117

English word ‘astronaut’ is made up of two Chinese ideographs: tai, referring to ‘wife,’ and kong, meaning empty, lonely, solitary, hence wanting or lacking in something, unfulfilled. The term ‘astronaut family’ explicitly denotes an unaccompanied wife and young children. Although a newly coined term occasioned by the mass emigration of Hong Kongers, the word ‘astronaut’ has rather quickly found its way into the everyday vocabulary and discourse of Hong Kong. It is a familial and marital phenomenon linked with a host of social problems or issues (see Lam 1994; Skeldon 1994b, 1994c). Spousal infidelity is one. Prolonged separation, distance from the normative moral constraints of family and marriage and the new freedom of being unwatched and alone in a not-yet-integrated immigrant community overseas challenge the ability of either spouse to confine sexuality within wedlock; the so-called ‘emptiness of marital life’ and the attendant vulnerability to occasions of ‘sin’ (read, infidelity) applies equally to husband and wife. Extramarital affairs in the workplace among members of these astronaut families and the use of prostitutes’ services have never failed to capture the attention of the journalists who are accustomed to feeding a society in flux with sensational news of scandals. Changes in parental supervision of young children is another issue. Hong Kong migrant families typically want to avail themselves of educational opportunities in the west. Children are thus left to the care of one parent (usually the wife) in the adopted country. As a result, many astronaut families have in fact been split into two: a femaleheaded, single-parent segment in one place, a lone father in another. The wives are thrown into circumstances where they are required to play substitute father and mother at the same time, or at different times, thus inevitably compounding the stress of relocation and resettlement. Lastly, Chinese often rationalise emigration to the west in terms of a parental, or paternalistic, desire to procure a better education, a better job and, eventually, a better life for their children, although there is little evidence of the children having been consulted prior to such a momentous family move. Ironically, it stands to reason to suggest that some children, given a choice, may desire otherwise—to stay put. The scanty literature on second- and third-generation American-born Chinese children is beginning to serve notice that some such children are expressing ambivalence over these migration moves, while others are simply resentful and angry—they are thrown into a destiny not of their own volition, forced into a resulting identity crisis. The contemporary Hong Kong astronaut families bear a certain resemblance to the dispersed Chinese families of the early 1900s in that husbands by themselves are supposed to eke out an economic existence, although in reverse (wives and families are now at the place of arrival, husbands back in Hong Kong). This circumstance sets in motion a host of familial and marital problems that require coping and adjustment. However, more so than their predecessors, the Hong Kong astronaut families of today have adopted family dispersal and marital separation largely as a voluntary, anticipatory, purposive strategy to procure a better future life for all, in spite of present hardships. Family dispersal is discussed, deliberated upon, anticipated and adopted as a migration strategy. Rationally factored into the migration calculus, the idea of the family agreeing on a dispersal in which the wife and children move to the new country first precedes and launches migration. It is thus no longer simply a case of migration forcing family dispersal, but also of the family anticipating a temporary rupture in togetherness to

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

118

procure a desired family future. As such, the dispersed migrant family is the social psychologist’s delayed gratification par excellence, purposive and conscious. Envisaged in such terms, the family in its physical, tangible sense is dispersed so as to realise ‘the family’ as idea, ideal or project. The ideal of ‘the family’ has thus become a source of motivation and energy setting forth the family dispersal strategy. The sociologist sees family dispersal, like migration and relocation themselves, as largely a voluntary, positive act (Wickramagamage 1992:171): it is progressive, anticipatory and future oriented; it is enabling. When the husband-migrant of hypermobility is straddling places, leapfrogging geographical and political boundaries—being the ‘transilient’—he finds himself necessarily mindful of work or business opportunities wherever they are, both in Hong Kong and in the west. He might one day finally pack his bags and leave Hong Kong to reunite with his family in Canada, the United States, Australia or wherever; not finding suitable work there, he might re-migrate back to Hong Kong, joining many, many others in ‘return migration’. Traversing these different zones of time and space, often many times over, in hypermobility blunts and blurs the distinctions between place of ‘origin’ and ‘destination’, between ‘exit’ and ‘en-try’, in his mind and in the realities of his experience. In a sense, culture becomes a portable substitute for place. Dichotomies become less sharply demarcated—his mobility orbit is thus cast in a circulatory international system of migration (Skeldon 1994b, 1994c) or in what Rouse (1991:14) calls the ‘transnational migrant circuit’, where people, money, goods and information circulate, while his existence is articulated in the structure of his dispersed family. The home, thus imagined, no longer takes the form of a fixed physical entity, nor does it necessarily ground itself in a particular soil. The dispersed family, fashioning itself in a duality or, rather (in the future, if not now), a plurality of places provides him with a structure, form and context to articulate his multiplicity of selves and identities in motion, in the cracks between psychologies, ethnicities, cultures and civilisations, touching all. It is this motion, grounded in the phenomenology and anthropology of his migrant experience, that has given his existence a distinctive transnational, dynamic, everchanging character—the consequent ideal for him is not one fixed, eternal, pure ethnicity but a somewhat integrated conglomerate of ethnicities that is most authentic and feels most comfortable in between boundaries, on the margins, at the peripheries. It is a hybrid identity that uses the dispersed family as an arena. Being post-modern, such a genre of Chinese ethnicity is inadvertently precarious, provisional, indeterminate, tentative (Ang 1993:4).

Chinese cosmopolitanism as emergent Chinese identity In a 1991 essay, Wang Ling-chi (1991:181–206) has identified five different types of Chinese identity in terms of variant orientations of overseas Chinese to China, the various host countries in the west and the differential meanings attached to one single Chinese word gen (roots) (see also Wang 1993). They are yeluo guigen (fallen leaves return to the roots, the soil) or the classic, ‘old-fashioned’ sojourner mentality; zancao chugen (to eliminate grass, one must pull out its roots) or total assimilation; luodi shenggen (settle down or ‘sink roots’ in a foreign land and accommodate to the host society) or

Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan

119

accommodation; xungen wenzu (search for one’s roots and ancestors) or ethnic pride and consciousness; and shigen lizu (lose contact with one’s roots and ancestors) or the uprooted, the alienated, the ‘wandering intellectuals away from their roots in historic China’ in exile. In addition to these five types of Chinese identity, the identity of the transnational Chinese bourgeoisie that has been characterised thus far in this chapter may well represent a sixth type. He has long since overcome or exorcised his desire to search for and sink his roots in ancestral China. He may or may not go back; he has a choice; he has always made efforts to strive for integration, without assimilation or acculturation, in whatever country he happens to find himself; strictly speaking, he is not really experimenting with accommodation in the host society, either because he cannot see himself settling down and sinking his roots in any single place or because his consciousness is tied not to one origin, one ethnicity, but to many. Neither is he the classic, much caricatured ‘uprooted’ migrant, spiritually dispossessed, alienated from the present and the past, thus suspended in the air and unable to go home again, psychically or physically. One may call this sixth emergent type of Chinese identity chonggen or multiple rootedness or consciousness. The Chinese character chong (also pronounced zhong) has three meanings: first, multiple, not singular; second, regenerative, as in ‘born again’; third, to treasure, to value (one’s many diverse roots). It conjures up an image of a succession of sinking roots as process, and multistranded roots as outcome. It is akin to what Lee (1991:215) calls ‘Chinese cosmopolitanism’. Calling the term a loose epithet, Lee further explains it as ‘one that embraces both a fundamental intellectual commitment to Chinese culture and a multicultural reciprocity, which effectively cuts across all conventional national boundaries’ (1991:215). It is, in other words, ‘a purposefully marginal discourse’. To a Chinese cosmopolitan, again in Lee’s words, ‘the boundaries are again not so much geographical as intellectual and psychological’ (1991:219). Of course, one is aware that, in a certain discourse, roots or gen always mean ground, earth—the antithesis of translocality. There is thus the potential paradox of a translocal, indeed transoceanic, rootedness—a decidedly mixed image. As a sixth type of Chinese identity, the transilient is perhaps the old-fashioned sojourner type deconstructed and brought ‘back in vogue, in a rather more respectable form’ (Nagata 1991:277). The new cosmopolitan is not the nineteenthcentury sojourner, forever yearning to return to China, to go home, in mind or in body. The new overseas Chinese may or may not go home, just like his Jewish contemporaries, muttering quietly and privately to themselves, ‘Next year in Jerusalem, every year’ (Clifford 1993:4). At any one given time and place, he is sojourning, not intent on eventually going home to China but, rather, willing to go anywhere provisionally. It is his provisionality that seems particularly salient and needs to be foregrounded. He makes a chronicle of brief appearances in a succession of geographical places, but always on the world stage. He has a suitcase at the door, always ready to go. Lest this be mistaken for or confused with the romantic idealist’s notion of a true, ultimate cosmopolitan, internationalised man with absolutely no physical, materialist anchorage—the wugen (the rootless), the one who does it all without (wu in Chinese) roots, transcending it all, who may or may not empirically exist—the ‘sixth’ type being all too briefly sketched here is one in whom ‘a certain elemental awareness of Chinese

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

120

identity at its most basic seems to persist uninterrupted beneath the surface’ (Nagata 1985:22). He may or may not ‘spontaneously invoke a Chinese identity in context’ (Nagata 1985:22). Or, as Ang puts it, ‘sometimes it is and sometimes it is not useful to stress our Chineseness, however defined. In other words, the answer (to the question why still identify ourselves as “overseas Chinese” at all?) is political’ (1993:14). Of course, the emergence of this sixth type of Chinese identity necessarily takes place within an evolving global structure, a transnational trade environment in which economies are intricately intertwined. Economists and sociologists are now casting their futuristic eyes on the emergence of a Chinese diaspora economy (see Lever-Tracy and Ip 1996). As observed by Ma Mung (1993), Chinese entrepreneurs in Paris, through trade expansion and diversification and through the creation of ‘upstream enterprises’ that involve trade outside the community formerly monopolised by non-Chinese businessmen, have been articulating their business networks and economic arrangements within a larger, global diaspora economy. By expropriating ‘spatial resources’ in a transnational space, Chinese entrepreneurship in Paris has taken on an extra-territorial character. The otherwise amorphous structure of such a diaspora economy, however, is given substance by the many nodes or poles that constitute local networks, be they in New York, Bangkok, Jakarta, Shanghai, Hong Kong, London or Toronto. One may want to add that this extra-territorial business character has its personal counterpart in our sixth type of Chinese cosmopolitan. Such a global economic system has internal as well as external principles of social organisation. The gradual shift from a reliance on ethnic resources to class resources among the new overseas Chinese has given this diaspora another dimension. Examples of ethnic resources, the result of internal socio-cultural characteristics of an immigrant group or community, include ready access to start-up capital available at rotating credit associations and a supply of cheap, dependable family or co-ethnic labour. The more intangible ethnic resources include ethnic solidarity and in-group loyalty. Class resources are more formal in nature and have to do with educational qualifications, job training and skills and expert knowledge of markets and industry. Class or bourgeois resources are the ‘normal cultural and material endowment of bourgeoisies’ (Light and Rosenstein 1995:23). On the material side, class resources include private property, human capital and money to invest. The bourgeoisie also have their vocational culture, which includes occupationally relevant values, attitudes, knowledge and skills acquired in the socialisation process (Light and Rosenstein 1995:23, 120–1). Another vital source of the global system’s economic energy will probably come from a putative Chinese economic zone in Asia comprising East and Southeast Asia. Lim (1992:41–6) has documented increases in trade, investment and government economic links among the region’s disparate nations, links that are often overlaid with an ethnic dimension; merchants of southern Chinese descent, mainly Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese, have ‘familial, clan and other ethnic links and networks which stretch across political and geographical boundaries’ (Lim 1992:43). One expects a free flow of capital and credit between family, kin and co-ethnics (Cohen 1994:21); ‘an intimate handshake of ethnic collectivism’ (1994:22) is at work here. Within the Chinese diaspora, yet another principle of social organisation, another source of cohesion, in addition to the now well-known familial and clan ties, is religion, which is important and vital, but seldom studied. In her analysis of religion’s role among the Chinese in South-east Asia

Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan

121

and Canada, Nagata (1985) turns her attention to how Chinese Buddhists, Confucianists and Christians are attempting to exert a global influence through their systems of internationally intertwined institutions.

Conclusion Migration disperses families, splits marriages. Yet the very act of migration is often preceded by the deliberate contemplation on the part of the family and kin groups about dispersal as a migration strategy. The family concerned must decide who is to go, who is to stay, when and how—a rational choice in the name of the family, a way of safeguarding family continuity and well-being, while simultaneously bringing maximal benefits to all individuals, who otherwise will gain less and lose more, in the long haul, when acting alone. Although family members physically separate from each other, the ‘family’ as collectivist emotion, sentiment, idea or ideal provides a transnational source of unity. The concept of ‘the family’ is binding on individual family members, while also bonding them. There is no binding without bonding, and vice versa. A familial contract is enduring and binding partly because it is based on emotions, which makes it, as a contract, unique. Understood in this sense, family functions not only as an agent of bonding, solidarity and intimacy, but also as an apparatus of bondage, confinement and control. Family dispersal is probably as old as human migration. Human beings have always moved from one place to another, but now they do so in greater numbers and at greater speed. The Hong Kong astronaut families are but one example of such dispersed families worldwide. Thus, any attempt to view negatively family dispersal is ahistorical and shortsighted; it fails to recognise the realities of international human migration and its impact on family forms. In a modern-day, circulatory international migration system underpinned by a massive number of dispersed families as strategic nodes and linkages, the ‘family compass’ is stretched further and further so that work and business opportunities begin to multiply because the field has been expanded. In such a field, a new type of Chinese identity emerges: the transilient, the cosmopolitan, who, having been thrust into and later having chosen provisionality and multiplicity as a mode of existence, is best seen as a cultural hybrid. Home does not have to be here or there but is everywhere. This so radically alters the meaning of home (and homelessness) that the search for a new vocabulary becomes a priority. Hybridity is by nature multistranded and heterogeneous; it does not respect the primacy of centre over periphery, origin over destination, exit over entry, or vice versa. As ideology and reality, it renews the ideal of cultural diversity, relativity and pluralism.

Epilogue Multiculturalism in Canada, as elsewhere, advocates conformity to a unitary culture in the public place and tolerance of diverse cultures in the private place. This tolerance of cultural heterogeneity in the sphere of the intimate, as a reaction to assimilationism, which demands public and private compliance, is often upheld as a defining characteristic of Canadian society. Yet multiculturalism is muddled as an idea, and flawed as a public policy. This becomes obvious when looking at the idea through the eyes of the people it is supposed to serve: immigrants. In this chapter, I will discuss what happens under multiculturalism, especially as it affects Chinese immigrants to Canada. The insistence on a public/private divide is at odds with the desire of the children and grandchildren of Chinese immigrants to adapt to their host society and, in so doing, to transform themselves, their families and communities and the larger society in which they live. A multicultural policy that continues to hark back to the past turns a blind eye to the fierce generational and gender politics within the Chinese family. While the parents see Canada as refuge or shelter, their children see Canada as their new home. In addition, Chinese women would like to sample a wider range of ‘identity options on offer’ (Rex and Josephides 1987) than those endorsed by their husbands or fathers. Thus, Chinese women and children may need to debunk the myth of the public/private divide by forcing the family and the ethnic community open, to change. Multiculturalism’s insistence on heritage and the past does not square well with a more progressive social theory of self, identity and culture that is cognisant of the psychological duality of human beings, who look backwards and forwards, are committed to preserving the past and exploring the future, want to be part of the public culture and to be private and autonomous, wish to feel a sense of belonging and of individual uniqueness. The Canadian multicultural policy suffers in a two-fold way: empirical and theoretical. A possible solution is to pursue a Hegelian dialectic that sees culture as what emerges after the collision of dissimilar cultures (Chan 2002; Prologue). We need a new urban social theory that sees integration, fusion and hybridisation—not assimilation and not cultural pluralism - as possible and desirable outcomes. We may need a public policy that perceives the promise of the city in this way, designing institutions and public spaces that promote hybridity in the mind, that encourage a mental space that is open to life’s contradictions and paradoxes. This is a radically different vision of society than the one multiculturalism presents.

The history of multiculturalism The idea of multiculturalism was constructed in Canada in reaction to another idea, that of assimilation. Assimilation had been central to the discourse among US intellectual and political elites during the 1950s and 1960s and was traceable to the works of the Chicago sociologists Robert Park (1950), who was often misquoted and misunderstood, and

Epilogue

123

Milton Gordon (1964). The assimilationist school of ethnic and racial relations, in the context of American society, stressed Anglo-conformity or Americanisation. Using the title of a play by the Jewish immigrant Israel Zangwill (1909), sociologists conjured up the powerful image of a melting pot, a cauldron within which cultures and beliefs of all shapes and colours would melt, and the end-result would be something new and unprecedented. The melting pot image offered hope for solidarity in a society torn by racial and ethnic conflicts. The assimilationist vision of immigrant societies found its way into the writings of Cornell University anthropologist William Skinner (1957a, 1957b, 1963, 1973), who argued that the Chinese immigrants in Thailand, to all intents and purposes, would become Thai by the fourth generation. Deeply intertwined with the possibility of a cultural hegemony of one ethnic or racial group over all others and of cultural universalism, this Anglo-conformity idea was met with a fair share of opposition and resistance in Canada. The Canadian sociologist John Porter (1965) offered another image as an alternative to the melting pot metaphor, that of a vertical mosaic: different groups co-exist, side by side (as well as above or below each other), in a condition of tolerance, which was allegedly a defining characteristic of Canadians and their society. Multiculturalism revived an older discourse among political theorists on pluralism in a pluralistic society (Li 1999). Pluralism, unlike singularity, allows for or even promotes the idea that different kinds of things have value, and thus the right to exist and flourish alongside each other. Individuals, groups and communities of various ethnic, racial or religious backgrounds can maintain, in private, their own personal cultural life in a society that otherwise demands conformity in its public institutions. But multiculturalism not only relegates pluralism to the private sphere, it also confines it there, in the domain where only the personal pursuits of the individual matter. This intentional divide between the public and the private is central to the theory of the multicultural society as constructed by sociologists and anthropologists. A multicultural society is different from a plural society. In the public domain, there is a single or unitary culture based on equality between individuals, on law, politics, economics and education, which transmit the values of a civic, public culture from one generation to another. In contrast, the private domain is where folk culture and community life prevail, where diversity is safeguarded and where moral education, primary socialisation and inculcation of religious beliefs occur. The private sphere is composed of ethnic associations and societies, as well as family and kin networks that stretch as far back as one’s ancestral land or ‘homeland’. The private domain is the site of a moral community, the anchor of a spiritual home, the source of personal and ethnic identity. Family and community are where people have the right to be separate and different from the larger society—where people can ‘let their hair down’ and be themselves. To Parsons and Bales (1956), the strain of trying to abide by abstract moral principles and function in the competitive public arena is psychologically possible only if individuals have the option of a retreat, a refuge, a place for ‘pattern maintenance and tension management’. Family domesticity thus offers the ‘psychological gold’, stabilising the adult personality who has to make it in the world out there, which is a jungle, a rat race. Adult life is possible only if private intimacy and domesticity console and compensate, providing a ‘haven in a heartless world’. The public and the private then support each other, making each other viable. This public/private divide is not merely an academic question. Many modern men and women try to conduct their lives as if it were true: while at work, they behave as if their

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

124

family life does not matter and, while at home, they pretend they do not worry about their work, enacting the myth of the separation of public and private, ignoring the spillover of one into the other. Social theory and everyday life may collude to distort ‘reality’.

The myth of the public/private divide As the public/private divide is traceable to social theory, it is ironic that this divide is at odds with mainstream sociological and anthropological thought in the writings of Malinowski, Radcliffe Brown and even Talcott Parsons himself (Rex 1985:5). Childhood socialisation links the individual and society, private and public, what is internal to family and community and what is outside them. Functionalism in sociology sees all systems as interconnected within a larger social system. On a typical day, the individual walks through and past a myriad of private and public sites, in a flow of experience, each experience lingering in a subsequent one, affecting, interrogating and contaminating it. The cognitive compartmentalisation of life into private and public forces a separation between them, and imposes an artificial order onto everyday life, which otherwise is experienced as something fluid, or entangled. The divide between public and private is thus ‘willed’, not ‘experienced’ (Sennett 1970). The British psychiatrist R.D.Laing (1967) coined the phrase ‘the politics of experience’ to describe this situation, when the mind does violence to one’s experience. Laing has reminded us how society and culture chop the world into separate chunks of outside and inside, good and bad, friend and foe, desirable and repugnant and so on—a schizophrenia that springs from the mind’s attempt to dichotomise the world into irreconcilable halves. But the family is not entirely private. The individual often mediates between the family and society: as the individual internalises the values of society so that he can participate in it, he transmits the society’s values to the family. In this way, society’s values are passed from one generation to another, such that society can continue. In the process, the ‘outside’ society is in full view; the public is clearly implicated in the private.

Gender and generation politics in the Chinese immigrant family In immigrant families, it is the children who socialise their parents into the values of the larger society. Children act as cultural brokers, shuttling between the private and the public to bring society’s values into the family, and the family’s values into society. The life cycle or developmental approach in the sociology of the family views children, especially the eldest child, as those who usher in the next stage of family development. The first child is an agent of change. Assigning new, challenging developmental tasks to the family, the first child brings the family to the edge of the unknown and the unfamiliar, to the frontier. For an immigrant family, the ‘frontier’ is the society outside of family, kin and community; it is the so-called public site, the world out there where strangers encounter each other and re-invent themselves.

Epilogue

125

Some of the fiercest battles fought within Chinese immigrant families are between generations, between tradition and change. Migration ushers in an ‘experiential chasm’ (Bennis and Slater 1968:41) that divides generations. The Chinese youth perceive the family, and the ethnic community, as authoritarian and oppressive. The family is then experienced as a Goffmanian total institution, a Laingian prison. Migration has also released women from their former round of housework and childcare through participation in the Canadian labour force. A woman may experience an upward shift in her family status relative to her husband’s downward shift, as many men cannot find work in Canada comparable to the work they did before migration. This relative shift in status sometimes expresses itself as a dramatic role reversal, which throws the traditional Confucian division of labour between the two sexes off balance— which, being an unstable condition, in turn sets the stage for family change and growth. But what is good for the individual is not necessarily good for the family, and vice versa. Migration sets in motion feminine and adolescent demands for modernity and democracy. While youth and women work on their biculturality and integration into Canadian society—and are therefore primarily forward-looking and future-oriented—the family, as an abstract entity and as an ideology intent on maintaining tradition and heritage, looks backward to the past. The Chinese immigrant family is thus a site of feminine and adolescent discontent, a battleground of generation and gender politics. Women and children have a quarrel with multiculturalism because, first, it privatises and isolates the family, keeping family politics hidden from the public eye and maintaining the public/private divide; and, second, it perpetuates conservatism rather than revisionism, and authoritarianism rather than democracy, as retention of a heritage is articulated as synonymous with the multicultural ethos itself. In a more democratised family, the social distance between parent and child, and husband and wife, is relatively smaller than before, the exercise of parental (especially the husband’s) authority is milder, and wives and children tend not to be seen as possessions. Of course, democratisation is not lineal and unidirectional, and it is not without strains. Identity construction has its own moments of contradiction. It looks forwards and backwards simultaneously.

Critiques of multiculturalism It is not only in Canada that the stated goal of multiculturalism masks the reality of its practice. In 1991, J.Rath criticised the multicultural policy in the Netherlands for ‘minimising’ individuals, marking them out for unequal treatment for their differences. In his 2001 essay ‘From homogeneity to difference’, Guiseppe Sciortino wrote that the societal spotlight is now on what we call ‘difference politics, community politics, politics of recognition, cultural wars, identity polities’. Yet, he questioned the popular belief that immigrant societies in the west show a significant increase in cultural and ethnic heterogeneity, and argued that the empirical evidence for such an idea is far from adequate. Sciortino pointed out that most national surveys and comparative research projects merely show variations in a ‘common value system—democracy, equality of opportunity, social mobility, human rights, up-to-love marriages, religious pluralism and separate rooms in the house for growing children—rather than the proliferation of

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

126

radically divergent or mutually excluding lifestyles’. He went on to assert that migrants are ‘far from being characterised by their active “resistance” to assimilation’, and that the US data show ‘increasing spatial dispersion away from enclaves, loss of [native] language in later generation, and increasing intermarriage’ (2001:6). To Sciortino, the assumption that ethnic groups remain intact after immigration is partly due to the fact that ethnic migrant culture is continuously being ‘revitalised’ by new arrivals. In Europe, difference- or identity-based arguments over immigrants ‘seem to be more popular with—and full of implications for—receiving societies’ elites and public opinions than they are with the immigrants themselves’ (2001:7). John Rex (1995:32) has pointed out that many young people from immigrant groups are ‘forming syncratic links with members of both immigrant communities and the indigenous society’. He added that there may well be some members of immigrant communities who wish to move away from their traditional culture and to work with or in both indigenous and ethnic organisations. This is not merely a case of ‘living between two cultures’ and breaking down under the strain; some individuals have chosen to belong to different social groups and different cultural systems simultaneously and are used to the fact of multiple identities… It is a normal part of social and political life. Rex (1995:32–3) More recently, Rex (2003) pointed out that the Swedish government had been accused of choosing traditional leaders, usually elderly men, to represent immi-grant communities, leaving the younger members under-represented. The critics of the Swedish government, Schierup and Alund (1987), argued that these young people tended to form cross-ethnic alliances as well as connections with dissident Swedish youth, creating new syncratic cultures. Rex pointed to several examples of such new, shared culture: cuisine, literature, music and other creative arts. The later generations in immigrant families may well deflect from their own communities and become assimilated, which suggests that the problem of integrating immigrants in society may well be more temporary, and easier to ‘solve’, than advocates of multiculturalism care to admit. In another critique of multiculturalism, Yunas Samad (2002) examined gender and generation politics in Muslim communities in the UK. Multiculturalism, in its assumption of sameness within an immigrant community, hides deep divisions and ignores suffering within that community. In this case, it is young women who are abused within the community and unprotected by the host society, and who run away from their own families. Arranged marriages made with young women who are imported into England preserve the community’s status quo and traditions, despite the runaway women. Older men and women in the Muslim community collectively deny the use of force in marriages, while older women pressure their own daughters into arranged marriages. The male elders refuse to engage in debate about intra-community politics. The disempowered younger generations, acculturated by the English educational system, have developed a profound distrust of their elders. The Muslim communities of Oxford and Bradford are divided by gender and generation, tradition and change, past and future. Yet to outsiders, these communities seem calm and peaceful.

Epilogue

127

In his critique of what he called ‘the cult of multiculturalism in Canada’, Neil Bissoondath (1994:111) stressed the undeniable distancing [from their own ethnic cultures] of the next generation…who will in all likelihood shrug off the restraints of ethnicity… acquire friends of various backgrounds who share their experience, some of them will intermarry, and most if not all will blend into the mainstream of the society around them, itself already irrevocably changed. The young people will integrate as ‘it is the only way to get on with one’s life, the only way to take full advantage of the new possibilities’ (Bissoondath 1994:111). Migration is not about givens, but about possibilities, not about tradition, but about renewal. Migration moves the immigrants’ cultural orientation away from their ethnic ghettos and towards the new world, but multiculturalism puts them right back where they came from. They take one step forward, but multiculturalism pushes them two steps back.

Multiculturalism as ethnic containment Under the guise of preserving an ethnic heritage, the elite in the host society finds it politically expedient to collaborate with the conservative constituents in im-migrant communities, who are bent on perpetuating cultures of departure rather than on acquiring the culture of arrival. In the case of most Chinese communities overseas, these constituents are elderly men who own ethnic businesses. Denied access to the inner political circles of the host society, these men compensate by appropriating power in Chinatowns. Without a political role to play in society at large, the economic elite of the Chinese community becomes the cognitive and even intellectual elite who, to safeguard their own business interests, do not hesitate to commodify ethnic culture, champion ethnic retention and promote the preservation of their heritage. In the context of an official endorsement of multiculturalism as public policy, ‘tradition’ suddenly becomes cultural capital with a monetary value. Merchants in Chinatowns are working in their own interests when they turn streets and back alleys, parks and gardens, restaurants, grocery and book stores, herb halls and schools into museums of exoticism. Lurking behind this re-invented, fantasised orientalism is an economic motive: the commodification of ethnicity. At celebrations such as the Chinese New Year or the MidAutumn Festival, a frozen-in-time, pre-packaged ethnicity is re-heated and served up like a TV dinner, for the consumption of insiders and outsiders alike. The collusion between the political elites of the host society and the powerful, elderly men in an immigrant community acts to control ethnic minorities. Seen in this way, multiculturalism as public policy is not merely about culture or ethnicity in its traditional anthropological sense. It is about economics because it benefits the Chinese merchants, and about politics because it eliminates the dynamics of gender and generation discontent within the immigrant community. Multiculturalism is not mere rhetoric to Chinese youth and women; it is one more obstacle in their struggle to have a

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

128

voice, and it is all the more destructive because it has found a stronghold within their own ethnic space. Through multiculturalism, outsiders have infiltrated intra-ethnic politics and dictate the battle from within. The Chinese immigrant who leaves Hong Kong for Canada is probably no more conscious of his race or ethnicity than of his class or religion. He is probably not even conscious of being ‘Chinese’, as that implies difference from other people. Many years later in Canada, he may well express his ethnicity. In a dramatic way, ethnicity is invoked in the new country—ethnicity is made in Canada, not Hong Kong. Multiculturalism has lumped together all Chinese, on the presumption that they are the same. A Chinese community deeply divided by gender, class, generation, religion and so on is now whitewashed, or yellow-washed, by skin colour, imputed or imposed culture and ethnicity. While racism is a blatant discrimination against an individual because he is a member of a group and presumed to share all the alleged and unfavourable characteristics of that group, multiculturalism ethnicises people by reminding them of the intrinsic value of their culture and rewarding them as long as they maintain it and remain ‘Chinese’. In that sense, ethnicisation by multiculturalism is as confining as racism—or is just another side of racism. While racism imposes on an individual a negative stigma, ethnicity attaches a ‘positive’ cultural mask. Under the multicultural policy, Chinese in Canada have orientalised themselves, becoming even more Chinese than when they first set foot in Canada. Using chopsticks and speaking Chinese at home have now become a moral issue, an ethnic compulsion, and not a matter of personal choice. The Chinese have embraced an identity imputed to them by others, and colluded in their own minimisation. Talcott Parsons (1975) would certainly not be able to sell his idea of ‘optional ethnicity’ in multicultural Canada. The myth of the public/private divide, and the manufacturing of ethnicity, ensure the marginalisation of the Chinese, and the public policy of multiculturalism thus keeps the immigrant ‘in the dark’, and in the dark that he is in the dark, to borrow an expression from R.D.Laing (1971). An immigrant does not migrate to a distant place to ‘find’ his ethnicity; the very cost of migration is the risk of being handed an ethnicity by bureaucrats intent on politicising and commodifying identity. A Chinese in Canada is seen as a Chinese first and foremost, and almost never as a Canadian. The hyphen between the words ‘Chinese’ and ‘Canadian’ is not a meaningless symbol, but an accurate representation of an existential divide.

Towards a new urban social theory The idea of multiculturalism is based upon the imaginary divide between the public and the private, between the ‘outside’ institutions of indigenous society such as law, education and the marketplace and the ‘inside’ institutions of immigrant communities such as family and kinship networks. This imaginary divide is in turn supported by the myth of separation between the public sphere of production and the private sphere of consumption. Robert Park (1925) provides an alternative social imagery: that the city is ‘a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate’. The city is imagined as a bazaar, or series of little islands, of mixed- and multiple-use spaces. In this alternative imagery, borders or boundaries have a double meaning: they separate spaces even as they connect them; thus, spaces may be relational and interactive as well as separate and

Epilogue

129

different. The typical day of an immigrant urbanite can be portrayed as a continuous walk through a number of sites of human activities, from private to public to private. The urbanite recognises the subtle differences that mark these spaces, but without being fully conscious of them; so he mixes them up, and they blur together in his memory. The city is perceived, then, not as a series of discrete, separate parts, but as a flow of experience. The divide between private and public remains a mental construct, a willed, not an experienced divide. And this divide is constantly re-built by bureaucrats espousing multiculturalism, to ghettoise immigrants both physically and mentally. In his book The Promise of the City, Kian Tajbakhsh (2001) put forward an alternative urban social theory consisting of three main ideas: spacing, overdetermination and hybridity. The idea of spacing is intended to be constitutive of, but also to transcend, physical spaces. Tajbakhsh writes that spacing ‘reflects the active, unfinished, and layered quality of the spaces we inhabit (and that inhabit us), the spaces within which we create meaning’ (2001:164). The individual walks through the many neighbourhoods of the city, sensing ‘the fluidity of boundaries and the instability of objects…becoming rather than being’ (2001:28–9). The idea of overdetermination, following Freud, Althusser (1977) and Castells (1977), first means that ‘phenomena’ cannot be attributed to a single cause, but are ‘the result of multiple determinations’ (Tajbakhsh 2001:52); and, second, that the meaning of an element or identity is not contained fully within itself or its boundaries. An identity is formed in its relations with identities outside of it, which are essential to its being what it is (Tajbakhsh 2001:52). Thus, the inside is ‘filled in’ by the outside, and the outside makes the inside vital, real and meaningful. (Because what is inside the boundaries is constituted by its transactions with what is outside it, any divide is a man-made construct.) Moreover, what occurs is shaped or determined by what is desired, expected or imagined; and an identity forms itself by intention and fantasy, as well as by past experiences. The first two ideas of spacing and overdetermination culminate in the third, postmodernist idea of hybridity, which Tajbakhsh sees as the core of the urban experience. The urbanite crosses boundaries that are themselves overlapping and unstable because they are processes rather than fixed entities—and, in so doing, he encounters otherness as a commonplace. He engages in ‘the modernisation of the soul’ in that he must learn to confront the strangeness in others and the stranger within himself (Kristeva 1991). It is through this process—of confronting strangeness both without and within—that the urbanite becomes a hybrid. The modern urbanite must be the author of his own autobiographical narrative and, in so doing, learns to reconcile the confusions and contradictions of Park’s many little worlds.

Imagining the city As we have seen, multiculturalism is essentially a strategy of ethnic containment and appeasement, a way of managing ethnic relations and communities in a pluralistic society. As a policy, multiculturalism asks people to be fascinated and enchanted by the immigrant communities’ exotic cultural displays, but marginalises them in the larger,

Chinese identities, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism

130

public arena of resources. Multiculturalism begins and ends with separate ethnic communities. As a policy, it strengthens the dividing walls by ossifying and hardening cultures, one at a time. But social theorists such as Robert Park, Jane Jacobs (1965), Richard Sennett, Manuel Castells and Kian Tajbakhsh suggest a radically different way of imagining the city. Instead of talking about an old-fashioned democracy based on maximising the participation of people from all walks of life in key public institutions, in the hope of improving political and bureaucratic decisions, this new urban theory calls for a governance that creates institutions and a public space where ethically inclined citizens will encounter and confront each other and themselves, to resolve the contradictions formerly outside themselves but now in the innermost corners of their minds. Already living in mixed-use neighbourhoods, the new urbanite is to participate actively in a multiplicity of public institutions, to get used to coupling one point of view with a contrary point of view, until it becomes a form of inner deliberation. The establishment of such public institutions and spaces has one goal: to contribute to an urban sensibility that not only tolerates but also creates something new and exciting out of difference—and so becomes a hybrid sensibility. An urban social theory of such nature envisages Utopia not as a multicultural society, but as a society made up of multicultural personalities, or multiculturalism within each person. Such a person is capable of a ‘multiperspectival’ (Tajbakhsh 2001:178) frame of mind, which is conceptually akin to the ‘inner turmoil’ suffered by Park’s (1928) marginal man or Schuetz’s (1944) and Simmel’s (1908) stranger (see Prologue). Park constructs his marginal man as a person ‘on the margin of two cultures and two societies, which never completely interpenetrated and fused’, and it is the conflict between the two cultures that causes inner turmoil—the wavering between the old self and the new, the restlessness, the intense selfconsciousness. But Park sees intelligence as an incident of action, and restlessness as ‘the first and most elementary response to a problematic situation that requires reflection’. The conflict of the two cultures in which the marginal man is caught by fate may be arrested if it is internalised by him. It then becomes his obsession to resolve the conflict, first for himself, then for his race. If he succeeds, he has enhanced his intelligence and enriched his mental life—and he has also achieved hybridity.

Conclusion Any attempt to assess the response of the Chinese communities in Canada and elsewhere to multiculturalism as a social idea or public policy must grapple with the likelihood that individuals in these communities will have had different experiences, and therefore will have different responses. A sociology of the Chinese overseas is by and large an inadequate and deficient sociology of the economic elite of merchants, who are typically elderly men speaking ‘on behalf of women and youth, thus muffling female and adolescent voices and discontents. The collusion of government bureaucrats with the Chinese community leaders in heritage preservation serves political ends for the former, and commercial ends for the latter. In order for this perceived homogeneity of the

Epilogue

131

Chinese community to continue unabated, the powerful community leaders co-operate with the even more powerful outsiders to espouse a bureaucratic version of multiculturalism that privileges a public/private divide, ethnic retention and heritage preservation and an ossification of all things past. But the youth and the women of the Chinese communities, although disgruntled, have lived in a new world and wish to force open their families and communities to include this world. They want their identities to be defined by things that reside outside themselves and beyond their ‘traditions’. The generation and gender politics within Chinese families and communities, muffled and disguised as they are, point to a future characterised by syncretism, fusion and hybridisation of cultures. Multiculturalism is thus at loggerheads with the future that some people in the communities desire. On the theoretical front, multiculturalism presents a myopic view of culture, identity and even human nature. The time when immigrants, ethnic associations and Chinatowns were locked into nostalgia for a golden past is long gone. Chinese immigrants and Chinatowns are best seen in terms of their relentless attempts at adaptation, or even integration, into the host society (often in spite of racism), thus transforming themselves and others around them, including the host society itself. Multiculturalism has failed. The city deserves something better, the promise of which lies in debunking the neat and tidy divide between private and public, on the one hand, and in creating, on the other hand, spaces in which city dwellers can make meaning out of life’s many moments of contingency, ambivalence, conflict—and pleasant surprise. In such a city, where one may dwell in the spaces between oneself and the image of the other (Tajbakhsh 2001:7), identity is always at risk, but the reward is excitement, delight and even renewal. In that sense, the immigrant may be the ultimate forerunner in the evolutionary game of cultural and civilisational transformation.

Notes Prologue 1 In this prologue, I use ‘he’ most of the time, instead of ‘he or she’, which I find cumbersome. 2 It may be better to talk in terms of ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’, following the language of international airports or bus and railway terminals, rather than ‘origin’ and ‘destination’ because the former expressions conjure up an image of serial ongoing mobility within one’s lifespan, which in the end blurs and absolves the origin/destination distinction of its absoluteness. 3 In my writings on the Chinese in Thailand, I have argued against the American anthropologist Skinner’s prediction that, by the fourth or fifth generation, all Chinese in Thailand will have been assimilated and become, for all intents and purposes, Thai. See Chapters 1 and 2 of this book. 4 Personal communication with Meena Alexander. 5 Personal communication with Meena Alexander. 6 Here, Nestor Garcia Canclini quoted Stuart Hall, who was responding to the former’s text presented at the University of Stirling, UK, in October 1996. See Garcia Canclini’s ‘The state of war and the state of hybridization’ (2000). 7 See Rita Laura Segato ‘Alteridates Historicas/Identidades Politicas: Una Critica a las Certezas del Pluralismo Global’, which was presented to the Simposio Central del VIII Congreso de Antropologia in Bogota, and quoted in Garcia Canclini (2000:46). 8 Nussbaum discusses the idea of self-examination extensively in Cultivating Humanity (1997b). See also Ulrich Beck (2000). 9 Poem entitled ‘Moving world’ by Meena Alexander in her book River and Bridge (1996).

1 Rethinking Chinese ethnicity 1 Skinner’s contribution to the study of the overseas Chinese in South-east Asia is indisputable. His use of historical analysis, particularly in his works on the Chinese in Thailand, still remains the standard methodological tool for interested scholars. Skinner was among the first to attempt a comparative analysis of the Chinese overseas. He advocates the need for a cultural analysis, adopting a holistic approach rather than reducing everything to economic and political factors. He derides as social mythology the general belief that the Chinese in South-east Asia can be seen as a general category of people. More than anyone else, Skinner has rekindled interest and discussion in the study of the Chinese in South-east Asia. 2 This study was conducted using qualitative fieldwork methods. Three field trips to Thailand in 1984,1989 and 1991 were made. Two major interview methods were used: (1) open-ended and semi-structured interviews guided by an interview schedule; and (2) casual, ‘everyday life’ conversations during the fieldwork. The interview schedule consisted of questions pertaining to, among other things, children’s Chinese/Thai education and schooling, acquisition and use of Thai and Chinese languages, personal and family life histories, the meaning of being ‘Chinese’, ethnic prejudice and social contacts between Chinese and Thais.

Notes

133

Generally conducted in Mandarin or Teochew, some during visits to families to allow observations of parent-child, between-generation interactions, these interviews lasted between half an hour and one and a half hours. We made notes during and after these interviews.

A total of forty informants and respondents were interviewed: eighteen businessmen, four journalists from Chinese dailies and the rest comprising clan leaders, taxidrivers, civil servants and students. The ‘snowballing’ sampling process was based on recommendations and referrals made by informants and respondents during different stages of the fieldwork. When interviewing the ten (out of the total sample of forty) non-Chinese-speaking Thai respondents, an interpreter was used, who also assisted in translating Thai archival materials at the library of Chulalongkorn University—a site housing many valuable and rich materials on the Chinese of Thailand. We also went through old issues of English newspapers and archival records at Chinese schools and clan associations; we managed to deepen, check and counter-check our analysis through discussions with Thai scholars. We would like to thank, specifically, Professors Charnwit Kasetsiri, Suvanna Kriengkraipetch and Walwipha Burusratanaphand. 3 Boonsanong divides his respondents into three groups: Group One—less educated, nongovernment employees; Group Two—more educated, non-government employees; and Group Three—government employees. He suggests that there are differential rates of assimilation among the three groups. Although his findings are significant, his selection of respondents falls into a tautological trap. He purports to indicate that government employees show the greatest assimilation. But the very fact that they are government employees could be taken to mean that they have already been assimilated into Thai society. 4 A distinction between perception and reality is necessary. There is a stereotypical perception that the Chinese in Thailand are rich and have achieved this status through exploitation of the Thai people. Statistics available in the 1960s showed that, in reality, the average income of the Chinese was significantly lower than that of the Thai. These data, however, will not alter ethnic perceptions.

2 Civic identity and ethnicity 1 A note on the transliteration of non-English words is in order here. The transliteration of Thai words in this chapter is based on the Marry Hass Thai-English Dictionary transliteration system. The system provides a set of pronunciation symbols that represent the actual Thai pronunciation and not the spelling of the words. A few particular symbols are, however, omitted and replaced with the more familiar ones. Specific Thai names (of cities, people, historical period, for example) are transliterated according to the more familiar system based on ‘Notification of the Royal Institute concerning the transcription of Thai characters into Roman’ (Journal of the Thailand Society Vol. 33, Part 1, pp. 49–65, 1941). The reason for

Notes

134

the variation is that such names have long been transliterated in the latter system and have become familiar among western and Thai readers as the specific names.

Words originating from Pali and Sanskrit that have been adopted by the Thai language are transliterated in the same manner as Thai words. Words and names originating from Chinese dialects are also transliterated in the same way. Chinese words in Mandarin are, however, transliterated according to the official Chinese Pinyin system. The major part of the fieldwork in Wang Thong was carried out by Tarkulwaranont during July 1984-January 1985, while living with a Chinese (Hainanese) family in the market town. The first month in the town was spent observing the general daily activities in the market and making personal contact with Chinese and Thai families introduced by the landlord. Through these initial introductions, he was subsequently introduced to other traders and villagers in the nearby areas. Although he frequently accompanied some traders to the villages in the more remote parts of the district, most of his time was spent talking to people in the market town and its satellite villages. During this period, he attended most of the local festivals and ritual events. It was from these conversations and close observations that most of the information was gathered. In January 1987, he returned to Wang Thong for one month to record the event of a major festival, the Buddha’s Footprint Festival at Khaw Samokhlaeng. He also stayed in Wang Thong and carried out more interviews, particularly on the issues of local history and myth. A considerable amount of information used in this chapter is derived from Kuwinpant’s (1980) previous study of Wang Thong. During our fieldwork in 1984, conversations with local Chinese in the market and the surrounding villages on the topic of Chinese ethnicity were recorded. Three groups of Chinese were interviewed: twenty-six immigrant Chinese, fifty-two local-born Chinese and fiftyfour Sino-Thai. The first group were immigrant Chinese who came to Thailand during the years 1923–49 and were then aged from fortynine to eightyone years. The second group were local-born Chinese of two Chinese parents and were then from twenty-one to fifty-three years of age. The third group were local born Sino-Thai (one Chinese parent, usually the father) aged between eighteen and sixtyone years.

Notes

135

These respondents were taken as samples from different occupational and residential groups. 2 In contrast to what has been published in some earlier studies on the Chinese, most of these Chinese were Taoist, not Mahayana Buddhist, before they came to Thailand. 3 This is the Thai term for the local Chinese goddess. There is no Chinese name for the goddess, and the written Chinese characters above the front door of the goddess’s shrine coincide with the pronunciation of this Thai name. 4 This attitude towards Chinese festivals differs greatly from the Thai in other regions. In the studies of the Chinese community of Bangkok, it was found that most Thai people identify similar kinds of festivals as belonging to Chinese traditions. 5 In some parts of the country, the Thai villagers seem to have a stronger ethnic consciousness and ethnic stereotype of the Chinese. For example, in the central and north-eastern region, the terms phoo kha ciin or pho kha cek (Chinese trader) are common among Thai and Lao villagers. In addition, Kuwinpant (1980:72) reports that the Chinese are known as cek among the Thai. However, during our fieldwork, such a term was rarely mentioned by the Thai. 6 For more details on patron-client relationships, see Kuwinpant (1980:16–17, 216–19). 7 The Chinese also use these Thai kinship terms to address their Thai fellows and sometimes members of their families in the case of intermarriage families. However, among themselves in private conversation, the Hainanese kinship term of koo (older brother) and the Teochew term of hia (older brother) are more commonly used. 8 It cannot be determined whether the Hainanese were the dominant group in Ban Saam Ryan market at that time. During our visit to the place in 1984, however, there was no sign of Hainanese domination in any sphere. 9 Kuwinpant (1980:83) mentioned that nobody knows the exact original story of the Caw Mae. However, in our fieldwork, it was found that most of the older generation Hainanese agree on the story that is presented here. 10 The River Wang Thong adjoins Nan River in the Bang Krathum district. All the towns mentioned here are on the Nan River. 11 There are many other smaller events, for example, several Buddhist festivals, the Thai New Year and the Chinese New Year. However, none of these has ever drawn much of the attention of the whole community. Even the Chinese New Year, the biggest event in any Chinese community, does not have much significance here. 12 Shui Wei Niang means Goddess of the Lower Stream; the goddess is said to protect those who earn their living on the boats and along the rivers. 13 There seems to be little agreement regarding when the goddess was renamed and why this name was chosen. Some older generation Hainanese outside Wang Thong say that the name was adopted when the first shrine of the goddess was built in Bangkok. Because the image of the goddess was made of red stone, local people then gave her a Thai name, Caw Mae Thab Thim, the Ruby Goddess. However, as Thab Thim can also mean pomegranate tree, the other versions of the story claim that the name Caw Mae Thab Thim was chosen because the pomegranate is the goddess’s favourite tree. It is also regarded as a sacred plant in general Chinese belief. 14 The story was translated into English as All Men are Brothers by Pearl S.Buck in 1933 and as The Water Margin by J.H.Jackson in 1937. The story is said to have been compiled by Shi Nai’ an in the thirteenth century from an earlier popular legend. It recounts the exploits of the hero Song Jiang and his fellow outlaws who fled to the Liang Shan region and mounted a campaign against the central government, which was dominated by corrupt ministers during the reign of Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty (1101–25). Already seen are similar forms of Teochew folk dance in the religious festivals of many other Chinese communities in the central region of Thailand.

Notes

136

15 As the procession leaves the shrine and makes its way to the marketplace, the market people and those whose houses are on the route prepare to receive the goddess and the procession. At the front of their stores and houses, they place food, flowers and burning incense on small tables. The procession stops for a few seconds at each of these stores and houses for the owners to worship the goddess. This ritual is said to bring good luck to the households and stores. During the procession in 1984, it was observed that virtually every household that had anything to do with the business in the market took part and had its reception table awaiting the procession. Even Thai petty traders in the morning marketplace collectively prepared their reception table in front of the marketplace. 16 The term wad in Thai means temple or a Buddhist monastery. The terms wad, temple and monastery are used interchangeably. 17 The Buddha’s Footprint, as known in Thailand, is an enshrined block of natural or man-made stone bearing a footprint. Legend has it that the Gotama Buddha himself travelled in this region, which was then known as Buuraphaa Thawiib (the eastern continent) in the classical Indian world. Native people did not welcome his preaching on Buddhist doctrine and challenged him with their gods. In order to convert the natives to Buddhism, the Buddha performed a miracle by leaving his divine footprints on the ground at several sites. 18 The ritual is said to derive from the ancient Buddhist practice of meditation. It is also believed that the Buddha himself recommended this practice to his followers as a basic method for meditation and a strategy for solving meditation problems. When it was passed on to later generations, the Thaksinawadtara was transformed into a ritual symbolising paying respect to Buddha and to sacred places and objects. 19 An assembly is divided into several groups that will take turns to perform the Phithong ritual. The monks who have just finished their daily Tham Watara Yen form a procession and head for the Mondob housing the Buddha’s Footprint. The Phuuwarachakan Cangwad, senior officials and leading traders invited as honoured guests join in the procession. When the procession reaches the Mondob, monks individually enter the Mondob, place the flowers, candle and incense sticks in the holders in front of the Footprint and then use the gold leaves to gild the Footprint. 20 Although the market is presently still located next to the river, it is clear that most of the transportation has shifted to the highways, not the river. 21 The point here is that changing social conditions in Thailand have given the Chinese a viable alternative to being completely assimilated into Thai culture and society, yet also peacefully integrated as a part of modern Thailand society. After the second Phibun government in 1957, the Chinese have not seen any serious threat from the succeeding governments. The end of significant Chinese immigration and the success in minimising communist activities in the countryside have made the governments less concerned with the Chinese. Moreover, the growing economic development and industrialisation inspired by western countries gave birth to a new elite class of wealthy businessmen who have increasingly been recognised by the public and, more or less, share equivalent weight in power, prestige and privilege with the traditional Thai elite. Social mobility for Chinese descendants is more likely to be inside their own family business and may not necessarily be acquired by being (culturally) a Thai.

3 The migrant family drama 1 Males’ social networks are largely tied to work while women are primarily in charge of the kinship linkages. This, however, is not always the case. 2 Teaching Chinese is one major source of income for women migrants from China, especially the newly arrived. Few of them were formally trained in teaching the Chinese language

Notes

137

before. The sister-in-law of one of our respondents teaches Chinese despite having been trained to teach English at the secondary school level in China. 3 Le told us that he was expecting his daughter to be there as well. His wife decided that it would be inconvenient to bring her along. Le thought that his wife might be tired of taking care of the girl and wanted a break from childcare. 4 In China, Zhen worked in a bank for five years and held a middle management position at the time she decided to leave her job. Her proficiency in the English language explains why she was able to obtain a job in Singapore with ease. 5 Poston and Yu (1990:480–1) divided the emigration history of China into four periods: the ancient period from thousands of years ago to the mid-Qing dynasty in the eighteenth century; from the decline of Imperial China to the Republican period in the 1940s; the first three decades of the People’s Republic of China to the late 1970s; and the contemporary period. A brief overview of this emigration history in relation to South-east Asia is provided by Skeldon (1992a, 1992b) and Pryor (1979). 6 Such as those in North America (Kung 1962; Sung 1967), Europe (Broady 1958), Australia (Gao and Liu 1998), the Middle East (Ling 1984) and South-east Asia (Skinner 1957b; Purcell 1965). 7 For instance, Min, a 35-year-old single woman, told us, ‘The people here speak English, but I don’t. I speak Chinese. I guess that’s the difference’. She communicated this idea in English. As a Canadian citizen who had spent about ten years in Canada and, before that, five in Norway, both times in English-speaking communities, Min speaks English fluently. Her statement should be read as part of a construction of her ‘authentic’ Chinese identity, which she uses to distinguish herself from the local Chinese people in Singapore. 8 Simmel offers this sketch of the stranger: ‘The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every human relation is organised, in the phenomenon of the stranger… distance means that he who is close by is far, and strangeness means that he who is also far is actually near… He (the stranger) is fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries. But his position in this group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he does not belong to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it, which do not and cannot stem from the group itself (Wolff 1950:402). 9 This is a substantial amount of the total value of world trade, second only to the trade in crude oil (Russell and Teitelbaum 1992:29 as cited in Russell 1992:269). In the same article, the term ‘remittances’ is used to refer to ‘the portion of migrant workers’ earnings sent back from the country of employment to the country of origin’ and remittances are described as ‘central to the links between migration and development’ (Russell 1992:267).

In Asia, specifically, ‘although the exact estimates of remittances from workers are notoriously unreliable, remittances clearly play an important role in the economies of many Asian countries. It has been estimated that in 1981 more than 2.5 million Asian workers remitted $7.9 billion to their home counties’ (Demery 1986 as cited in Stahl 1986:899). 10 As many countries receive migrants, the impact of newcomers on these countries alone has contributed to a plethora of migration studies. As many countries send migrants, the ‘development’ brought about by out-migration has also attracted research interest. The adoption of terms such as ‘development’, which is sometimes intended to suggest unproblematically linear continuity, suggests a false image of movement originating from a starting point and going towards an end-point. The word ‘development’ as used here refers to change that is not necessarily for the better.

Notes

138

11 As discussed in Daugherty and Kammeyer (1995:112). 12 That is, if present value of net benefits=Σ[(Bjt−Bot)/(1+r)t−C], where Bjt—the utility derived from the new job, j, in the year, t; Bot=the utility derived from the old job, o, in the year, t; T=the length of time (in years) one expects to work at job, j; r=the rate of discount; C=the utility lost in the move itself (direct and psychic costs); Σ=summation of yearly discounted net benefits over a period from year 1 to year T (Ehrenberg and Smith 1994:327–8). 13 These ties might not be lost after all with advances in the technology of long-distance communication. However, the costs involved in using these technologies to keep up these ties require vigorous and meticulous estimation. 14 An extract from a primary 5 textbook used in almost all the primary schools in Singapore. On the same page is the chorus of the song ‘Heart of the Nation’:

Family is everything The joy, the hope, a home can bring. Family’s a living light To guide you through the darkest night. The heart and soul of your life is the love You always find when you’re safe at home. It’s the strength of a new generation It’s the heart of the nation. The song was composed to mark the First International Year of the Family in 1994. The ‘effectiveness’ of the ideology of the family comes about precisely as a result of this kind of continual construction and reinforcement of the ‘reality’ of the family through institutions such as education and the state, as well as through the family itself. 15 This idea of Arnold Gehlen was further developed by Peter Berger (1963:104–6). 16 Besides this sexist bias, Eichler (1997) raised six other biases, namely monolithic bias, conservative bias, ageist bias, racist bias, heterosexist bias and microstructural bias, in the conventional family literature. These biases should be taken into consideration in any discussion of the family. 17 For many of the Chinese migrants in our study, a huge sum of money, used either for applying for jobs or to universities or for getting visas, is needed to move. When funds are lacking, help is often sought in the family, in the extended kin network or even among others in the same village. For example, in Jiao’s case, her husband returned to his home town to raise money before using the recruiting agency. 18 In his preface to Madness and Civilization (1971), Foucault argues that, until the mad person speaks the language of the sane, he will continue to be perceived as mad. There is a need to go back to an original zero point just before the divide between the mad and the sane came into being. 19 All interviews except five were conducted in Mandarin. The language used does matter, as shown by one interview session with Zhang. Initially, there were long pauses in the conversation while Zhang thought about what he wanted to say, until the language was switched from English to Mandarin, at which point Zhang responded easily.

Notes

139

20 Although most were willing to talk about their own migration history, personal questions proved offensive to two interviewees, Pan and Liang. Pan, who had training in the hard sciences, could not understand the use of the individual experience, finding it a waste of time. Towards the second half of the hour-long interview, he became less uneasy and more willing to talk about his and his family’s migration experiences. Liang was willing to answer general types of questions but hesitant about telling his own story throughout the interview. 21 Zeng arrived four years ago, and his wife joined him six months later. Now his parentsin-law also live with them and help his wife, who has stopped working, look after their son. 22 Ao came about ten years ago as a bachelor. Now he is married to a Singaporean woman. 23 Ling is currently a student. She worked for a tuition centre when she first came and later through the principal got a job in a Chinese publication department. After working there for about a year, she found the pay structure to be highly discriminatory and unfair to her, so she quit. She now shares a five-room rented flat with another couple from China. 24 Xing, 36, has been in Singapore since 1993. Like Jian, she came from China to join her husband, Feng, who was then working as an architect here. She brought along her son, then four. She is now a teacher in a childcare centre. She is inexperienced in this area, given her professional training in advanced mathematical calculations with applications in satellite initiation. She is the only one in the family who still holds a Chinese passport while Feng, her son and her younger daughter, who was born here, already have their Singapore citizenship. 25 Jiao lives with her husband and her ten-year-old daughter. Her parents came to visit them ten months ago and are still around. But, according to her, they will not stay much longer as they cannot adjust to the lifestyle and cannot find other old folks to talk to. They speak only the Fujian dialect but their neighbours do not. 26 These ‘facts’ are not easily assessed, however. Much of the detail had been lost due to the lapse of time between the actual migration and our research. The major events as narrated were sanitised accounts of their moves. 27 Mei, 32, came to Singapore alone, on a student pass, leaving her family in China. Her son was then seven. Her husband, Mo, is a dentist; Mei is an engineer, which is perhaps why she was the initiator of the migration. Mei came on a scholarship for a postgraduate position in a local university. This job provided for her living expenses and later Mo’s. Mo came over six months later, also on a student pass. Owing to the difficulty in securing a place in the medical school, he enrolled in a Master in Business Administration course instead. Her son has been in Mei’s parents’ care since she left. As Mei and Mo are on student passes, neither can apply for their son to come over. At the time of this study, her case had been on hold for a year. 28 Ling is not the only one who insisted that children are forgetful. One of our respondents even asserted that young children can be taken anywhere as long as their toys are with them. Another mother said that, once children start going to school and making friends, they will not remember anything back in China. 29 Such conversations go like this: ‘How’s everyone been?’; ‘How’s your health?’; ‘Any problems?’. 30 It is usually the wives who make the phone calls, not the husbands.

Notes

140

4 The ethnicity paradox of immigrants 1 For a detailed account of the methodology of this study, see Ng (1991:6–8, 67–71). I am grateful to Ng for allowing me to attempt a re-analysis of her interview data. 2 The report on the study is entitled A Survey on How Hong Kong Immigrants are Adapting to Life in Singapore (as of December 1992), Social Integration Management Service (SIMS). 3 These ideas have been developed most clearly by the Chicago school of sociologists, particularly Lai (1987) and Blumer and Duster (1980). 4 See Blumer and Duster (1980). 5 For a critical review of the literature on immigrant adaptation, see Chapter 1 of this book. 6 See Warner and Burke (1969) and Yancey and Ericksen (1979). 7 See Rex (1973) and Rex and Josephides (1987). 8 This idea of dualism brought about by migration was first formulated by Park in his classic essay on the ‘marginal man’ in the late 1920s (Park 1928). 9 De Vos (1982:24) calls this fluid process ‘identity flow’. 10 These variables were identified by Yinger (1984). 11 See van den Berghe (1981). 12 For a detailed analysis of migrants writing letters and making long-distance telephone calls, see Ng (1991:55–9). 13 See Ng (1991:61–4), Little (1973) and Skeldon (1976).

5 One face, many masks 1 See Bock (1976) for a discussion of this concept. 2 Daedalus published in spring 1967 a special issue on the salience of colour in social relations, which includes essays by Edward Shils, Harold R.Isaacs, Kenneth J.Gergen and E.R.Braithwaite. 3 See Isaacs (1975) and Levi-Strauss (1966) for an incisive treatment of names and naming. 4 The major religions of the Chinese are Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism as well as other popular religious beliefs such as worshipping ancestors and praying to spirits. However, most religious beliefs and practices of the Chinese do not fall neatly into these known categories. For many Chinese, the ‘formal’ religious labels simply do not matter, and their practices represent a mixture of several religious traditions. Many Chinese cannot and do not distinguish these religious categories, often mixing, for example, Buddhism and Taoism. As Topley (1956:76) noted, ‘the popular religion of the Chinese people is characterised by its syncretic and catholic nature. It is an amorphous mass of beliefs and practices from various sources including the greater systems of religion and philosophy’. 5 The term disembedding was used by Anthony Giddens (1991) in describing how modern institutions are in various key respects discontinuous with premodern culture and ways of life. He suggests that modernity is characterised by the separation of time and space and the disembedding of social institutions, that is the lifting out of social relations from local contexts and their re-articulation across indefinite tracts of time and space. We use the word disembedding in the context of lifting out and separation.

Notes

141

6 Migration, dispersal and the cosmopolitan 1 In this chapter, I use ‘he’ most of the time in reference to the migrant or immigrant, partly because international migration of the Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, of necessity, almost wholly a male phenomenon. I acknowledge the relatively recent appearance of women as members of the new Chinese overseas. I avoid the usage of ‘he or she’ because I consider it a cumbersome expression. 2 In this chapter, I focus on the historical and contemporary experiences of the Chinese migrants and immigrants to Canada and the United States for three reasons. First, I am most familiar with these experiences, having studied them and lived in Canada for close to two decades. Second, the Chinese experiences in Canada and the United States have close chronological and political parallels. In fact, they are best seen as two closely related histories—a scholarly analysis of which is yet to be attempted. Third, the bulk of the theoretical and empirical literature on the experience of the ethnic Chinese overseas that I draw upon for this chapter is Canadian and American based. I am, of course, fully aware of the limits of generalisability of my analyses to ethnic Chinese elsewhere. For me, the degree of fit between theory, experience and data is considerable and attractive. The astronaut families of Hong Kong were chosen as a case which is illustrative of modern-day dispersed families among the ethnic Chinese overseas. Many such families are made up of the resource-rich, hypermobile ‘transilients’ whom I attempt to delineate in this chapter. Not at all coincidentally, Canada, the United States and Australia are their favourite countries of adoption. Hong Kong has lately been under the watchful eye of the world. The sheer magnitude of its emigration compels me to examine the astronaut families thus created. 3 These remittances were usually sent through the occasional returning migrants or through one of the many brokering agencies set up by Chinese merchants or family and clan associations in Chinatown districts. 4 I owe the analogy of the kite to a discussion with Professor Taban Lo Liyong on 27 May 1994 at National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan. 5 Race riots punctuate the history of Indonesia, the latest as recently as May 1998. In 1965, Chinese stores were looted; ‘killing communists’ was often synonymous with killing Chinese. The Chinese were forced to send their children to Indonesian language schools, culminating in the closure of all Chinese-medium schools in 1966. Today, there are no Chinese schools in Indonesia. Ill-feeling and distrust continue to exist between the Chinese and the Indonesians. In May 1998, Chinese were the targets of organised destructive attacks: their shops and homes were looted and burned down; many Chinese were injured or killed, and many Chinese women were raped. It was reported that about 100,000 Chinese had fled the country.

Bibliography Adamic, Louis (1938) My America. New York: Harper and Row. Alba, Richard D. (1990) Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. New Haven: Yale University Press. Alexander, Meena (1993) Fault Lines: A Memoir by Meena Alexander. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Alexander, Meena (1996) River and Bridge. Toronto: Toronto Review Press. Althusser, Louis (1977) For Marx. London: New Left Books. Amyot, J. (1972) The Chinese and National Integration in Southeast Asia. Institute of Asian Studies Monograph. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University. An, Zuozhang and Keqi Wang (1992) ‘The Yellow River culture and the Chinese civilization’. Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy 4; ‘Huanghe wenhua yu zhonghua wen ming’. Wen Shi The, 43–13. Ang, Ien (1993) ‘To be or not to be Chinese: diaspora, culture and postmodern ethnicity’. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 21 (1), 1–17. Appadurai, A. (1981) ‘The past as a scarce resource’. Man (N.S.) 16, 201–19. Appiah, Kwame Anthony (1998) ‘Cosmopolitan patriots’ in Cheah, P. and B.Robbins (eds.). Cosmospolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 91–114. Aronson, Elliot (1972) The Social Animal. New York: W.H.Freeman & Co. Asiaweek (1989) Suddenly a great escape. 28 July 1989. Bao, Jiemin (1995) ‘Sino-Thai identity: married daughters of China and daughters-in-law of Thailand’. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 23 (1), 57–77. Also in Tong, Chee-kiong and Chan, Kwok-bun (eds.) (2001) Alternative Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, and Singapore: Times Academic Press, 271–98. Barth, F. (1969) ‘Introduction’ in Barth, F. (ed.). Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 9–38. Beck, Ulrich (2000) ‘The cosmopolitan perspective: sociology of the second age of modernity’. British Journal of Sociology 51 (1), 79–106. Becker, Howard S. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press. Benjamin, Geoffrey (1976) ‘The cultural logic of Singapore’s multiculturalism’ in Hassan, Riaz (ed.). Singapore: Society in Transition. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 115–33. Bennis, Warren G. and Philip E.Slater (1968) The Temporary Society. New York: Evanston; London: Harper & Row. Berger, Peter L. (1986) Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. Bernades, Jon (1993) ‘Responsibilities in studying postmodern families’. Journal of Family Issues 14, 35–49. Bissoondath, Neil (1994) Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. Toronto: Penguin. Blumer, H. and T.Duster (1980) ‘Theories of race and social action’ in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism. Paris: UNESCO, 211–38. Bock, G. (1976) The Jewish schooling of American Jews. PhD Dissertation, Harvard University (Graduate School of Education).

Bibliography

143

Boonsanong, Punyodyana (1971) Chinese-Thai Differential Assimilation in Bangkok: an Exploratory Study. Data Paper 79. Ithaca: Southeast Asian Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University. Boonsanong, Punyodyana (1976) ‘The Chinese in Thailand: a synopsis of research approaches’. The Philippines Sociological Review 24, 57–61. Botan (1977) Letters from Thailand, translated by Susan Fulop Morell. Bangkok: D.K. Books. Boyd, Monica (1989) Family and personal networks in international migration: recent developments and new agendas. International Migration Review 23 (3), 638–70. Broady, M. (1958) ‘The Chinese in Great Britain’ in Fried, M.H. (ed.). Colloquium on Overseas Chinese. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations. Canclini, Garcia (2000) ‘The state of war and the state of hybridization’ in Gilroy, Paul, Lawrence Grossberg and Angela McRobbie (eds.). Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart Hall. London: Verso, 38–52. Castells, Manuel (1977) The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chan, Kwok-bun (1991) Smoke and Fire: The Chinese in Montreal. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Chan, Kwok-bun (2002) ‘Both sides now: culture contact, hybridization, and cosmopolitanism’ in Vertovec, Steven and Robin Cohen (eds.). Conceiving Cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 191–208. Chan, Kwok-bun and Claire Chiang (1994) Stepping Out: The Making of Chinese Entrepreneurs. Singapore: Centre for Advanced Studies/Prentice-Hall. Chan, Kwok-bun and Tong, Chee-kiong (2001) ‘Positionality and alternation: identity of the Chinese of contemporary Thailand’ in Tong, Chee-kiong and Chan, Kwok-bun (eds.). Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand. Leiden: Brill; Academic Publishers, and Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1–8. Chase, Malcolm and Christopher Shaw (1989) ‘The dimensions of nostalgia’ in Chase, Malcolm and Christopher Shaw (eds.). The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1–17. Cheal, David (1993) ‘Unity and difference in postmodern families’. Journal of Family Issues 14, 5–19. Chiew, Seen Kong (1983) ‘Ethnicity and national integration: the evolution of a multi-ethnic society’ in Chen, P. (ed.). Singapore: Development Policies and Trends. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 29–64. Clammer, John (1981) ‘The institutionalization of ethnicity: the culture of ethnicity in Singapore’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 5 (2), 127–39. Clammer, John (1983) ‘Chinese ethnicity and political culture in Singapore’ in Lim, Linda Y.V. and L.A.Peter Gosling (eds.). The Chinese in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Maruzen Asia, 266–84. Clifford, James (1993) ‘Sites of crossing: borders and diasporas in late 20th century expressive culture’ in Cultural Currents 1. Program for Cultural Studies, East-West Centre, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 3–4. Cohen, Abner (1974) ‘Introduction’ in Cohen, A. (ed.). Urban Ethnicity. London: Tavistock, ix–xxv. Cohen, Robin (1994) Notions of diaspora: classical, modern and global. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on Global History. Robert Black College, University of Hong Kong, January 1994. Compani, G., C.Maurizio and S.Palidda (1987) ‘Italian immigrant associations in France’ in Rex, J., D.Joly and C.Wilpert (eds.). Immigrant Associations in Europe. Aldershot: Gower, 166–200. Cooley, Charles H. (1956) ‘Human nature and the social order’ in Cooley, Charles H. (ed.). Two Major Works: Social Organization and Human Nature and the Social Order, rev. edn. Glencoe, IL: Free Press (1902), 102. Coughlin, R.J. (1952) ‘The status of the Chinese minority in Thailand’. Pacific Affairs 25, 378–89. Coughlin, R.J. (1955) ‘The Chinese in Bangkok’. American Sociological Review 20, 311–16.

Bibliography

144

Coughlin, R.J. (1960) Double Identities: the Chinese in Modern Thailand. Westpoint, CT: Greenwood Press. Court, Catherine (1997) Introduction to Sociology. Wirral, Merseyside: Tudor. Daughterly, Helen Ginn and Kenneth C.W.Kammeyer (1995) An Introduction to Population. New York: The Guilford Press. Day, Lincoln H. and Ahmet Icduygu (1997) ‘The consequences of international migration for the status of women: a Turkish study’. International Migration 35, 337–61. DeJong, Gordon F, Brenda Davis Root and Ricardo G. Abad (1986) ‘Family reunification and Philippine migration to the United States: the immigrants’ experience’. International Migration Review 20, 598–611. Delphy, Christine and Diana Leonard (1992) Familiar Exploitation: A New Analysis of Marriage in Contemporary Western Societies. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. De Vos, G. (1982) ‘Ethnic pluralism: conflict and accommodation’ in De Vos, G. and L. Romanucci-Ross (eds.). Ethnic Identity: Cultural Identities and Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 5–41. De Vos, G. and L.Romanucci-Ross (1982) ‘Ethnicity: vessel of meaning and emblem of contrast’ in De Vos, G. and L.Romanucci-Ross (eds.). Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 363–90. Ehrenberg, Ronald G. and Robert S.Smith (1994) Modern Labor Economics: Theory and Public Policy. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers. Eichler, Margrit (1997) Family Shifts: Families, Policies and Gender Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fanon, Frantz (1970) Black Skin, White Masks. London: Paladin. Fawcett, James T. (1989) ‘Networks, linkages and migration systems’. International Migration Review 23, 671–80. Fawcett, James T. and Fred Arnold (1987) ‘Explaining diversity: Asian and Pacific immigration systems’ in Fawcett, James T. and Benjamin V.Cariño (eds.). Pacific Bridges: The New Immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands. New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 453–73. Femminella, Francis X. (1961) The impact of Italian migration and American Catholicism’. American Catholic Sociological Review Fall, 233–41. Femminella, Francis X. (1980) ‘Societal ramifications of ethnicity in the suburbs’ in Gumina, S.La (ed.). Ethnicity and Suburbia: The Long Island Experience. Garden City, NY: Nassau Community College, 9–14. Fishman, J.A. (1977) ‘Language and ethnicity’ in Giles, H. (ed.). Language, Ethnicity and InterGroup Relations. London: Academic Press, 9–31. Foner, Nancy (1997a) ‘The immigrant family: cultural legacies and cultural changes’. International Migration Review 31, 361–74. Foner, Nancy (1997b) ‘What’s new about transnationalism? New York immigrants today and at the turn of the century’. Diaspora 6, 355–75. Foster, B. (1977) ‘Mon commerce and the dynamics of ethnic relations’. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 5 (1–2), 111–22. Foucault, Michel (1971) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Tavistock Publishers. Franke, W. (1965) ‘Problems of Chinese education in Singapore and Malaya’. Malaysian Journal of Education 2 (2), 182–93. Gans, Herbert (1979) ‘Symbolic ethnicity: the future of ethnic groups and cultures in America’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, 1–20. Gao, Mobo C.F. and Xi’ an Liu (1998) ‘From student to citizen: a survey of students from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Australia’. International Migration 36 (1), 27–44. Geertz, C. (1966) Person, Time and Conduct in Bali: An Essay in Cultural Analysis. Yale Southeast Asia Program, Cultural Reports Series No. 14. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Bibliography

145

Giddens, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Glazer, N. and D.P.Moynihan (1970) Beyond the Melting Pot. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Golomb, L. (1978) Brokers of Morality: Thai Ethnic Adaptation in a Rural Malaysian Setting. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Gopinathan, S. (1980) ‘Language policy in education’ in Afendras, E.A. and E.C.Y.Kuo (eds.). Language and Society in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 175–202. Gordon, M. (1964) Assimilation in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press. Gray, C.E. (1986) ‘Thailand: the soteriological state in the 1970s’. PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago. Griffin, K. (1976) ‘On the emigration of the peasantry’. World Development 4, 353–61. Guskin, A.E. (1968) ‘Changing identity: the assimilation of the Chinese in Thailand’. PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan. Hall, Stuart (1990) ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’ in Rutherford, Jonathan (ed.). Identity: Community, Culture and Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 222–37. Hall, Stuart (2002) ‘Political Belonging in a world of multiple identities’ in Vertovec, Steven and Robin Cohen (eds.). Conceiving Cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 26–31. Hamilton, W.D. (1964) ‘The genetic evolution of social behaviour’. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7, 1–52. Handlin, Oscar (1953) The Uprooted: The Immigrant in American History from the Old World to the New. London: Watts & Co. Hassan, Riaz and Geoffrey Benjamin (1976) ‘Ethnic outmarriage and sociocultural organization’ in Hassan, R. (ed.). Singapore: Society in Transition. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 205–20. Hendrix, L. (1979) ‘Kinship, social class, and migration’. Journal of Marriage and the Family 41, 339–407. Hoadley, M.C. (1988) ‘Javanese, Peranakan, and Chinese elites in Cirebon: changing ethnic boundaries’ The Journal of Asian Studies 47 (3), 503–18. Hodder, B.W. (1953) ‘Racial groupings in Singapore’. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 1, 25–36. Horowitz, D.L. (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hugo, Graeme (1995) ‘International labor migration and the family: some observations from Indonesia’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 4, 273–97. Isaacs, Harold R. (1975) ‘Basic group identity: the idols of the tribe’ in Glazer, N. and D.P.Moynihan (eds.). Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 29–52. Jacobs, Jane (1965) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Harmondsworth: Penguin. James, William (1992) ‘On a certain blindness in human beings’ in Meyers, Gerard E. (ed.). William James Writings 1878–1899. The Library of America, 841–60. Kallen, H. (1924) Culture and Democracy in the United States. New York: Arrow Press. Kamiar, M.S. and H.F.Ismail (1991) ‘Family ties and economic stability concerns of migrant labour families in Jordan’. International Migration 29, 561–70. Khaled, Louhichi (1995) ‘Migration and women’s status: the Jordan case’. International Migration 33, 235–43. Kibria, Nazil (1993) Family Tightrope. The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kirk, G.S. (1970) Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kristeva, Julia (1991) Strangers to Ourselves, translated by Leon S.Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Kritz, Mary M. and H.Zlotnick (1992) ‘A migration system approach’ in Kritz, M.M., L.L Lim and J.H.Zlotnick (eds.). International Migration Systems: A Global Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bibliography

146

Kung, S.W (1962) Chinese in American Life. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kuo, Eddie and Riaz Hassan (1979) ‘Ethnic intermarriage in a multiethnic society’ in Kuo, E. and A.K.Wong (eds.). The Contemporary Family in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 168–88. Kuwinpant, P. (1980) Marketing in North-Central Thailand: A Study of Socio-Economic Organization in a Thai Market Town. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute. Laing, R.D. (1967) The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Harmonds worth: Penguin. Laing, R.D. (1971) The Politics of the Family. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Laing, R.D. (1972) The Politics of Family and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books. Lai, B.B. (1987) ‘The Chicago school of American sociology, symbolic interactionism, and race relations theory’ in Rex, J. and D.Mason (eds.). Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 290–8. Lam, Lawrence (1994) ‘Searching for a safe haven: the migration and settlement of Hong Kong Chinese immigrants in Toronto’ in Skeldon, Ronald (ed.). Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese. Armonk, NY: M.E.Sharpe, 163–82. Landon, K.P. (1941) The Chinese in Thailand. New York: Russell & Russell. Reprinted 1973 by the Asian Mass Communication and Information Centre. Leach, E. (1954) Political System of Highland Burma. London: LSE. Lee, Everett S. (1969) ‘A theory of migration’ in Jackson, J.A. (ed.). Migration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, Kuan Yew (1978) ‘Mandarin: Lingua Franca for Chinese Singaporeans’. Speeches. Singapore: The Publicity Division, Ministry of Culture, 1–8. Lee, Leo Ou-fan (1991) ‘On the margins of the Chinese discourse: some personal thoughts on the cultural meaning of the periphery’. Daedalus 120, 207–26. Lee, S.M. (1988) ‘Intermarriage and ethnic relations in Singapore’. Journal of Marriage and the Family 50, 255–65. Lever-Tracy, Constance and David Ip (1996) ‘Diaspora capitalism and the homeland: Australian Chinese networks into China’. Diaspora 5, 239–73. Levi-Strauss, C. (1963) Structural Anthropology, translated by Jacobson, Claire and Brooke Grundfest Shoepf. New York: Basic Books. Levi-Strauss, C. (1966) The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levi-Strauss, C. (1967) The Scope of Anthropology, translated by Paul, Sherry Ortner and Robert A.Paul. London: Jonathan Cape. Li, Peter S. (1983) ‘Minority business and ethnic neighbourhood: some observations on Chineseowned firms in Vancouver’. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, 1–3 June, Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 24 pp. Li, Peter S. (1999) ‘The multiculturalism debate’ in Peter S.Li (ed.). Race and Race Relations in Canada, 2nd edn. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 148–77. Lian, Kwen Fee and Rajah Ananda (1993) ‘The ethnic mosaic’ in Evans, G. (ed.). Asia’s Cultural Mosaic. Singapore: Prentice-Hall, 234–59. Lian, Kwen Fee and Rajah Ananda (2002) ‘Race and ethnic relations in Singapore’ in Tong, Cheekiong and Lian, Kwen Fee (eds.). The Making of Singapore Sociology. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Light, Ivan (1980) ‘Asian enterprise in America’ in Cummings, S. (ed.). Self-Help in Urban America. New York: Kennikat Press, 33–57. Light, Ivan and Carolyn Rosenstein (1995) Race, Ethnicity and Entrepreneur ship in Urban America. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Lim, Linda (1992) ‘The emergence of a Chinese economic zone in Asia’. Journal of Southeast Asian Business 8, 41–6. Ling, L.H.M. (1984) ‘East Asian migration to the Middle East: causes, consequences and considerations’. International Migration Review 18, 19–36.

Bibliography

147

Little, K. (1973) ‘Urbanization and regional associations: their paradoxical function’ in Southall, A. (ed.). Urban Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies of Urbanization. New York: Oxford University Press, 407–23. Liu, Xiao-feng (1994) ‘A case study of the labour market status of recent mainland Chinese immigrants, Metropolitan Toronto’. International Migration 34 (4), 583–95. Lowe, Lisa (1991) ‘Heterogeneity, hybridity, multiplicity: marking Asian American differences’. Diaspora 1, 24–44. Lowenthal, David (1985) The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyman, Stanford M. and W.A.Douglas (1973) ‘Ethnicity: strategies of collective and individual impression management’. Social Research 40, 344–65. Ma Mung, Emmanuel (1993) ‘Economic arrangement and spatial resources: elements of a diaspora economy’. Paper presented at the International Conference on Overseas Chinese: Luodi Shenggen, the Legal, Political and Economic Status of the Chinese of the Diaspora, Ethnic Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, 24 pp. Malinowski, B. (1926) Myth in Primitive Psychology. New York: W.W.Norton Co. Mallory, W.H. (1956) ‘Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia’. Foreign Affairs 34, November, 258–70. Marlowe, D.H. (1979) ‘In the mosaic: the cognitive and structural aspects of Karen-other relations’ in Keyes, C.F. (ed.). Ethnic Adaptation and Identity: The Karen on the Thai Frontier with Burma. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 165–214. Mead, George Herbert (1934) Mind, Self and Society. Morris, Charles W. (ed. and introduction). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merton, Robert K. (1988) ‘Some thoughts on the concept of sociological autobiography’ in Riley, Matilda White (ed.). Sociological Lives. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 17–21. Mincer, J. (1978) Family migration decisions. Journal of Political Economy 86, 749–73. Morokvasic, Mirjana (1984) ‘Birds of passage are also women…’. International Migration Review 18, 886–907. Nagata, J.A. (1974) ‘What is a Malay? Situational selection of ethnic identity in a plural society’. American Ethnologist 1 (2), 331–51. Nagata, Judith (1985) Religion, ethnicity and language: Indonesian Chinese immigrants in Toronto. Paper presented at the Symposium on Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese Since World War II, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, June 1985. Nagata, Judith (1991) ‘Local and international networks among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and Canada’ in Matthews, Bruce (ed.). Quality of Life in Southeast Asia. Montreal: Canadian Asia Studies Association, 255–81. Ng, Lai Fun (1991) Hong Kong Immigrants in Singapore. Honours thesis, National University of Singapore, Department of Sociology. Ngo, Hang-yue (1994) ‘The economic role of immigrant wives in Hong Kong’. International Migration 32 (3), 403–21. Nussbaum, Martha C. (1997a) ‘Kant and cosmopolitianism’ in Bohman, James and Mattias LutzBachmann (eds.). Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitanism Ideal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 25–58. Nussbaum, Martha C. (1997b) Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ohki, S. (1967) ‘Singapore: the balance sheet’ in Ooi, J.B. and H.D.Chiang (eds.). Modern Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Ossapan, P. (1979) ‘The Chinese in Thailand’ in Dhiravegin, Likhit (ed.). Reader on Minorities in Thailand. Bangkok: Phraephittaya. Pakir, Anne (1993) ‘Two tongues tied: bilingualism in Singapore’. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 14, 73–90. Pan, Lynn (ed.) (1998) The Encyclopaedia of the Chinese Overseas. Singapore: Archipelago Press, Landmark Books.

Bibliography

148

Park, Robert E. (with Ernest W.Burgess) (1921) Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 3rd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Park, Robert E. (1925 [1967]) ‘The city: suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the urban environment’ in Park, Robert E. and Ernest W.Burgess. The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behaviour in the Urban Environment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 40. Park, Robert E. (1928) ‘Human migration and the marginal man’. American Journal of Sociology 33, 881–92. Park, Robert E. (1937) ‘Introduction’ to E.V.Stonequist, The Marginal Man. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, xiii–xviii. Park, Robert E. (1950) Race and Culture: Essays on the Sociology of Contemporary Man. New York: Free Press. Park, Robert E. (1966) ‘Reflections on communication and culture’ in Berelson, Bernard and Morris Janowitz (eds.). Reader in Public Opinion and Communication. New York: The Free Press, 167–77. Parmar, P. (1984) ‘Gender, race and class: Asian women in resistance’ in University of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain. London: Routledge, 236–75. Parsons, Talcott (1975) ‘Some theoretical considerations on the nature and trends of change of ethnicity’ in Glazer, N. and D.P.Moynihan (eds.). Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 53–83. Parsons, Talcott and R.F.Bales (1956) Family: Socialization and Interaction Process. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pearse, A. (1970) ‘Urbanization and the incorporation of the peasant’ in Field, A.J. (ed.). City and Country in the Third World: Issues in the Modernization of Latin America. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Pedraza, Silvia (1991) ‘Women and migration: the social consequences of gender’. Annual Review of Sociology 17, 303–25. Peel, J.D.Y. (1984) ‘Making history: the past in the Ijesha present’. Man (N.S.) 19, 111–32. Perez, Lisandro (1986) ‘Immigrant economic adjustment and family organization: the Cuban success story re-examined’. International Migration Review 20, 4–20. Pessar, Patricia R. (1998) ‘Engendering migration studies: the case of new immigrants in the United States’. The American Behavioral Scientist 42 (4), 577–600. Pohjola, A. (1991) ‘Social networks—help or hindrance to the migrant?’ International Migration 29 (3), 435–44. Porter, John (1965) The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Portes, Alejandro, Luis E.Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt (1999) ‘The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, 217–37. Postiglione, C.A. (1983) Ethnicity and American Social Theory: Towards Critical Pluralism. Lonham: University Press of America. Poston, Dudley L. and Mei-Yu Yu (1990) ‘The distribution of the overseas Chinese in the contemporary world’. International Migration Review 24, 480–507. Pry or, Robin J. (1979) Migration and Development in Southeast Asia: A Demographic Perspective. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Purcell, Victor (1965) The Chinese in Southeast Asia. London: Oxford University Press. Rath, J. (1991) ‘Minorisering: de sociale constructe van ethnische minderheden’. PhD thesis, University of Utrecht. Ravinestein, E.G. (1885) ‘The laws of migration’. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 2 (48), 167–227.

Bibliography

149

Rex, John (1973) Race, Colonialism and the City. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rex, John (1987) ‘Introduction: the scope of a comparative study’ in Rex, J., D.Joly and C. Wilpert. Immigration Associations in Europe. Aldershot: Gower, 1–10. Rex, John (1995) ‘Ethnic identity and the nation state: the political sociology of multicultural societies’. Social Identities 1 (1), 21–34. Rex, John (2003) ‘Multiculturalism and political integration in modern nation state’ in Rex, John and Gurharpal Singh (eds.). Governance in Multicultural Societies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Rex, John (1985) The Concept of Multi-cultural Society. Occasional Papers in Ethnic Relations, No. 3. Warwick: Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, 16 pp. Rex, John and Sasha Josephides (1987) ‘Asian and Greek Cypriot associations and identity’ in Rex, J., D.Joly and C.Wilpert. Immigration Associations in Europe. Aldershot: Gower, 11–41. Richmond, Anthony H. (1994) ‘International migration and global change’ in Ong, Jin Hui, Chan, Kwok-bun and Chew, Soon Beng (eds.). Asian Transmigration. Singapore: National University of Singapore, Centre for Advanced Studies and Prentice-Hall, 33–48. Robertson A.F. (1973) ‘Histories and political opposition in Ahafo, Ghana’. Africa 43, 41–58. Rosaldo, R. (1988) ‘Ethnic concentrations: the Ilongots in upland Luzon’ in Rambo, A.T., K.Gillogly and K.L.Hutterer (eds.). Ethnic Diversity and the Control of Natural Resources in Southeast Asia. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan, No. 32. Published in co-operation with the EastWest Centre, Environment and Policy Institute, Honolulu, Hawaii, 161–71. Rouse, Roger (1991) Mexican migration and the social space of postmodernism. Diaspora 1, 8–23. Rushdie, S. and G.Grass (1987) ‘Writing for a future’ in Bourne, B. et al. (eds.). Writers and Politics. Nottingham: Spokesman Hobo Press, 52–64. Russell, Sharon Stanton (1992) ‘Migrant remittances and development’. International Migration 30 (3/4), 267–87. Sagar, Aparajita (1997) ‘Homes and postcoloniality’. Diaspora 6, 237–51. Samad, Yunas (2002) ‘Muslims, gender, generation and multiculturalism’. Paper presented at the conference on Governance in Multicultural Societies: Comparative Lessons in Public Policy, 7–10 February, at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, UK. Sapir, E. (1968) ‘Contributions to cultural anthropology’ in International Encyclopaedia for the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. Sassen-Koab, A. (1983) ‘Labor migration and the new international division of labor’ in Nash, J. and M.Fernandez-Kelly (eds.). Women, Men and the International Division of Labor. New York: State University of New York. Schierup, C.U. and A.Alund (1987) Will They Still be Dancing? Integration and Ethnic Transformation amongst Yugoslav Immigrants in Sweden. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Schiller, Nina Glick, Linda Basch and Christina Szanton Blanc (1999) ‘From immigrant to transmigrant: theorizing transnational migration’ in Pries, Ludger (ed.). Migration and Transnational Social Spaces. Aldershot: Ashgate. Schuetz, Alfred (1943–44) ‘The stranger, an essay in social psychology’. American Journal of Sociology 49, 499–507. Schuetz, Alfred (1944–45) ‘The homecomer’. American Journal of Sociology 50, 369–76. Sciortino, Giuseppe (2001) ‘From homogeneity to difference? Multiculturalism as a description and as a field for claim-making’. Unpublished manuscript, 17 pp. Sennett, Richard (1970) The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life. New York: W.W.Norton. Shihadeh, E.S. (1991) ‘The prevalence of husband centred migration: employment consequences for married mothers’. Journal of Marriage and the Family 53, 432–44. Siddique, Sharon (1990) ‘The phenomenology of ethnicity: a Singapore case study’. Sojourn 5 (1), 35–62. Siegel, B. et al. (1953) ‘Acculturation: an exploratory formulation’. American Anthropologist 55, 973–1002.

Bibliography

150

Simmel, Georg (1908) ‘The stranger’ in Simmel, Georg Soziologie. Leipzig: Duncker and Humbolt. Simon, Rita James and Caroline B.Brettel (eds.) (1986) International Migration: The Female Experience. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanhead. SIMS (n.d.) Serving New Immigrants. Singapore: SIMS. Sjaastad, L.A. (1962) ‘The costs and returns of human migration’. Journal of Political Economy 70, 80–93. Skeldon, Ronald (1976) ‘Regional associations and population migration in Peru: an interpretation’. Urban Anthropology 5, 233–52. Skeldon, Ronald (1990) Population Mobility in Developing Countries: A Reinterpretation. London: Belhaven Press. Skeldon, Ronald (1992a) ‘On mobility and fertility transitions in East and Southeast Asia’. Asia and Pacific Migration Journal 1 (2), 220–48. Skeldon, Ronald (1992b) ‘International migration within and from the East and Southeast Asian region: a review essay’. Asia and Pacific Migration Journal 1 (2), 19–59. Skeldon, Ronald (1994a) ‘Singapore as a potential destination for Hong Kong emigrants before 1987’ in Ong, Jin Hui, Chan, Kwok-bun and Chew, Soon Beng (eds.). Asian Transmigration. Singapore: National University of Singapore, Centre for Advanced Studies and Prentice-Hall. Skeldon, Ronald (1994b) ‘Hong Kong in an international migration system’ in Skeldon, R. (ed.). Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese. New York: M.E.Sharpe, 21–51. Skeldon, Ronald (1994c) ‘Reluctant exiles or bold pioneers: an introduction to migration from Hong Kong’ in Skeldon, R. (ed.). Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese. New York: M.E.Sharpe, 3–20. Skinner, G.W. (1957a) ‘Chinese assimilation and Thai polities’. Journal of Asian Studies 16, 238. Skinner, G.W. (1957b) Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Skinner, G.W. (1958) Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Skinner, G.W. (1964) The Thailand Chinese: assimilation in a changing society. Lecture presented at the Thai Council of the Asian Society. Skinner, G.W. (1973) ‘Change and persistence in Chinese culture overseas: a comparison of Thailand and Java’ in McAlister, J.T. (ed.). Southeast Asia: The Politics of National Integration. New York: Random House, 399–415. Smolicz, J. (1981) ‘Core values and cultural identity’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 (1), 75–89. Sowell, Thomas (1996) Migrations and Cultures: A World View. New York: Basic Books. Stahl, Charles W. (1986) ‘Overseas workers’ remittances in Asian development’. International Migration Review 20, 899–925. Stark, Oded (1995) ‘The sharing and distribution of the returns to migration in developing countries’ in Ong, Jin Hui, Chan, Kwok-bun and Chew, Soon Beng (eds.). Crossing Borders: Transmigration in Asia Pacific. Singapore: Prentice-Hall, 101–6. Stockwell, A.J. (1982) ‘The white man’s burden and brown humanity: colonialism and ethnicity in British Malaya’. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 10 (1), 44–68. Stonequist, Everett V. (1937) The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture Conflict. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons. Sung, B.L. (1967) Mountain of Gold: The Story of Chinese in America. New York: Macmillan. Suryadinata, Leo (1985) China and the ASEAN States: The Ethnic Chinese Dimension. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Szanton, C.B. (1983) ‘Thai and Sino-Thai in small town Thailand: changing patterns of interethnic relations’ in Gosling, L.A. and L.Y.C.Lim (eds.). The Chinese in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Maruzen Asia.

Bibliography

151

Tajbakhsh, Kian (2001) The Promise of the City: Space, Identity and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tan, Chee Beng (1993) Ethnic groups, ethnogenesis and ethnic identities. Paper presented at a Conference on Meeting Point of Cultures: Macau and Ethnic Diversity in Asia, organised by Institute Cultural de Macau, Macau. Tang Yijie (1990) ‘The principle of harmony in difference and its value origins’ in Tang, Yijie Not Full, Not Empty (‘He’ erbutong de jiazhi ziyan’ Feishi feixu ji). Beijing: Huawen Chubanshe, 249–55. Teske, R.H.C. Jr and B.H.Nelson (1974) ‘Acculturation and assimilation: a clarification’. American Ethnologist 1 (2), 351–67. Thomas, W.I. and Florian Zananiecki (1918–20) The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Vols I-II, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Vols III-V, Boston: Badger Press. Tong, Chee-kiong (1988) Trends in Traditional Chinese Religion in Singapore. Singapore: Ministry of Community Development. Tong, Chee-kiong (1992) ‘The rationalization of religion in Singapore’ in Ban, K.C., Anne Pakir and Tong Chee-kiong (eds.). Imagining Singapore. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 276–98. Topley, Marjorie (1956) ‘Chinese religion and religious institutions in Singapore’. Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29 (1), 70–118. Trocki, C.A. (1992) ‘Political structures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ in Tarling, N. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 79–130. Turner, Bryan S. (1987) A note on nostalgia. Theory, Culture and Society 4, 147–56. van den Berghe, P.L. (1978) ‘Race and ethnicity: a sociobiological perspective’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 1 (4), 401–11. van den Berghe, P.L. (1981) The Ethnic Phenomenon. New York: Elsevier North Holland. Vertovec, Steven (1999) ‘Conceiving and researching transnationalism’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, 447–62. Wang, Gungwu (1993) ‘The Chinese entrepreneur and his cultural strategies’. Paper presented at the Second World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention, Hong Kong, November 1993. Wang, Ling-chi (1991) ‘Roots and changing identity of the Chinese in the United States’. Daedalus 120, 181–206. Warner, S.B. Jr and C.B.Burke (1969) ‘Cultural change and the ghetto’. Contemporary History 4, 173–87. Watson, James L. (1975) Emigration and the Chinese Lineage. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weber, Max (1992) Economy and Society. New York: Bedminster Press. Wee, V. (1988) What Does Chinese Mean? An Exploratory Essay. Working Paper no. 90. Singapore: Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. Whitten, N.E. and D.S.Whitten (1972) ‘Social strategies and social relationships’ in Siegel, B.J. (ed.). Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 1. Palo Alto: Annual Review Inc., 247–70. Wickberg, E.G. (1994) ‘Overseas Chinese adaptive organizations, past and present’ in Skeldon, R. (ed.). Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese. New York: Sharpe, 68–84. Wickramagamage, Carmen (1992) ‘Relocation as positive act: the immigrant experience in Bharat Mukherjee’s novels’. Diaspora 1, 171–200. Wills, R. (1980) A State in the Making: Myth, History and Social Transformation in Precolonial Ufipa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wispe, Lauren G. (1968) ‘Sympathy and empathy’ in Sills, David (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 15, New York: Macmillan, 441–7. Wolff, Kurt H. (1950) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Wong, Siu Lun (1992) Emigration and Stability in Hong Kong. Occasional paper No. 7. Hong Kong: Social Science Research Centre and Department of Sociology, University of Hong Kong.

Bibliography

152

Yancey, WL. and E.P.Ericksen (1979) ‘The antecedent of community: the economic and institutional structure of urban neighborhoods’. American Sociological Review 44, 253–62. Yancey, W.L., E.P.Ericksen and R.N.Juliani (1976) ‘Emergent ethnicity: a review and a reformulation’. American Sociological Review 41, 391–403. Yang, C.K. (1970) Religion in Chinese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yinger, J.M. (1984) Thinking about assimilation. Unpublished ms. Zangwill, Israel (1909 [1917]) The Melting Pot. New York: Macmillan. Zwingmann, Charles (1973) ‘The nostalgic phenomenon and its exploitation’ in Zwingmann, Charles and Maria Pfister-Ammende (eds.). Uprooting and After. New York: Springer-Verlag, 19–47.

Index abstraction of ethnicity 43 adaptation by migrants 78; adaptive organisations 88 adjustment problems 82–3 Alexander, Meena 10–11, 140n alternation, culture contact and 2 An Zuozhang 7–8 Arthur, Chester A. 119 ascriptive aspects of ethnicity 93–5, 98–102 assertion of ethnicity 33 assimilation: culture contact and 5–6; and ethnicity 15–17, 21–3, 35, 37–8, 59 associational life: and ethnicity paradox 86–89; of migrants 84–5, 121–2 astronaut families from Hong Kong 122–5, 128 attention/inattention, selective 6 Australia 122 Bacon, Francis 93 Bangkok 21–3, 25–6, 27, 31–3, 127 Bangkok Post 28–9 Becker, Howard 8 behaviour and ethnicity 19–20 bilaterality of references 83 bilingualism, bicultural education and 23–6, 34 birth/bloodline as markers of ethnicity 98–102, 109–10 Bissoondath, Neil 134 boat race in Wang Thong 56–8, 61 boundary maintenance 100 Buddha’s footprint in Wang Thong 52, 54–6, 61 Buddhism 30–1, 52, 54–6, 57, 61, 103 Canada 118–19, 122; multiculturalism in 129–39 Castells, Manuel 137 Caw Mae Thong Kham 52–4, 60 change: cultural change and family 121–2; and ethnicity 96–7; see also urban social theory

Index

154

Chen Yingue 7 Chicago school of sociologists 13 children in migration 75 China: cultural dialectic 6–7; history of family dispersal 117–19; migration saga of Chinese 7–8; social history of 13 Chinese cosmopolitanism 122–5, 125–7 Chinese cultural identity in Wang Thong 61–2 Chinese economic domination in Wang Thong 61 Chinese ethnicity: rethink on 15–35, 140–1n; in Wang Thong 42–3, 58–63 Chinese Exclusion Acts, Canada and US 119 Chinese in Thailand 21–3; Skinner’s view 21–3, 130, 140n Chinese New Year 31–2 Chinese story in Wang Thong 48–50 Chineseness 28, 30, 33, 43, 95–9, 102, 104–5, 109–13, 126 Christianity 103–5 Chun Yuan festival 31 circulatory international system of migration 124–5, 128 civic identity and ethnicity 36–63, 141–4n coercion and ethnicity 18–19 community fragmentation 112–14 Compani, Giovanna 83 compartmentalisation 2 concept discovery and invention 6–7 Confucius 6, 11–12 control of ethnic minorities, multiculturalism and 135, 137 conversion through culture contact 2–3 corporeal malediction 95 cosmic harmony 11–12 cosmopolitanism: astronaut families from Hong Kong 122–5; dispersal and the cosmopolitan 116–28, 147–8n; as emergent Chinese identity 125–7; transnationalism and 1–2, 13–14, 59, 116–28 critiques of multiculturalism 133–4 cross-representation 27–8, 34 cult of multiculturalism 134 cultural change and family 121–2 cultural dialectic 6–7 cultural erosion of ethnicity (ethnicity drift) 94 cultural/linguistic contrast, Hong Kong with Singapore 84–5 cultural pluralism 20 cultural transnationalism 2–6 culture building activities of migrants 82–4, 84–6 culture contact: alternation through 2; assimilation 5–6;

Index attention/inattention, selective 6; compartmentalisation through 2; concept discovery and invention in 6–7; conversion through 2–3; cosmic harmony 11–12; dialectic of 2–6; difference, respect for 12; displacement in 6; essentialisation through 2; harmony in diversity 7; homecoming and culture shock of 10; hybridisation through 3; innovation through 3–4; nostalgic fixation/illusion 11; ossification through 2; poetical expression of the stranger 10–11; polarisation through 2; selfless love 6; stranger, dark side of 8–10; sympathy, the way forward 11–12; territoriality 4–5; voluntary segregation 5 definitions: Chinese ethnicity 42–3; family 68, 80; Wang Thong 39–40 demography, the Wang Thong setting 39–40 depluralisation 106 dialectic of culture contact 2–6 diaspora 91, 113, 114, 117, 122, 126, 127 diaspora economy 126–7 difference, respect for 12 differential belonging 83–4 diffusionism 38 disembedding 113–14 dispersal and the cosmopolitan 116–28, 147–8n displacement in culture contact 6 diversity, harmony in 7 division of labour 28, 29 dual identity 1–2; see also ethnicity; migration dynamics of ethnicity 33–5 economic integration in Wang Thong 45–6 education: assimilation and 23–4, 25–6; and ethnicity 105–10 elderly migrants 75–6; conception of ethnicity 110–12

155

Index

156

embeddedness, simultaneous 77 emergent ethnicity 94 essentialisation through culture contact 2 ethnic boundaries 17–20, 34, 94–5, 100 ethnic containment, multiculturalism and 137 ethnic entertainment, multiculturalism as 134–6 ethnic identification, religion and tradition 30–3, 34–5 ethnic identity 17, 18, 33–5, 96–115 ethnic relations in Wang Thong 36–9, 43–6, 58–63 ethnic stereotypes 28–9, 34 ethnicity: abstraction of 43; ascriptive aspects of 93–5, 98–102; assertion of 33; assimilation and 15–17, 21–3, 35, 37–8, 59; associational life and ethnicity paradox 86–89; behaviour and 19–20; bilingualism, bicultural education and 23–6, 34; birth/bloodline as markers of 98–102, 109–10; boat race in Wang Thong 56–8, 61; boundary maintenance 100; Buddha’s footprint in Wang Thong 52, 54–6, 61; Chinese ethnicity, rethink on 15–35, 140–1n; Chinese ethnicity in Wang Thong 42–3, 58–63; Chinese in Thailand, Skinner’s view 21–3, 130, 140n; Chinese story in Wang Thong 48–50; civic identity and 36–63, 141–4n; coercion and 18–19; community fragmentation 112–14; complex nature of 93–115, 147n; cross-representation 27–8, 34; cultural erosion of (ethnicity drift) 94; cultural pluralism 20; cumulative over time 17; definitions of Chinese 42–3; demography, the Wang Thong setting 39–40; depluralisation 106; disembedding 113–14; division of labour 28, 29; dynamics of 33–5; education, assimilation and 23–4, 25–6; education, contested terrain of 105–10; elderly migrants conception of 110–12; emergent 94; ethnic boundaries 17–20, 34; ethnic identification, religion and tradition 30–3, 34–5; ethnic identity 17, 18, 33–5, 96–115; ethnic relations in Wang Thong 36–9, 43–6, 58–63; ethnic stereotypes 28–9, 34; ethno-demographic structure in

Index

157

Wang Thong 40; expressive 18–20, 34; family life 32–3; in flux 96–7; generational differences in conception of 110–12 goddess, ritual display of 52–4 heterogeneity of ethnic identity 96–7, 114–15; history, the Wang Thong setting 39–40, 46–7, 58–63; homeland and 110–11; identity, co-existence and 36–7; inclusive fitness and 16; individualism and 104–5; instrumental 18–20, 34; integration and 20; intermarriage and 32–3, 101–2; kinship and 16, 18–19; language acquisition and 25–6; language as contested terrain 105–10, 111–12; language use as marker of 112; Lao story in Wang Thong 50–2; localism in Wang Thong 43–6, 58–63; motivation for assimilation 16; multiculturalism and 20, 97; multiethnic association 41–2; multiplicity of ethnic identity 96–7, 114–15; myth and ritual in Wang Thong 46–7, 52–4; objective approach to 93; occupational differentiation 29–30; optional ethnicity 136; paradox of immigrants 81–92, 147n; primordial characteristics as markers of 98–102; reciprocity and 18–19; religion, tradition and ethnic identification 30–3, 34–5; religious bifurcation 102–5; ritual display of the goddess 52–4, 60–2; self-selective aspects of 93–5; situational view 17; ‘snowman’ of 93; social-economic organisations 27–9, 34; socialisation, bilingualism and 23–4; structural assimilation 27–8, 34–5; study of complexity of: conclusion 114–15; informants’ experiences 96–114; preamble 93–5; research methods 95; subjective approach to 93; symbolic 94, 97; Thai story in Wang Thong 47–8; tradition, religion and ethnic identification 30–3, 34–5;

Index

158

transnationalism and 2–6; voluntary 94, 97; see also migration, urban social theory, Wang Thong ethno-cultural elements in Wang Thong oral history 52 ethno-demographic structure in Wang Thong 40 evolutionism 38 experiences of migrants 69–76, 78 exploitation 67–8 exploitation, discrimination and 74, 76 expressive ethnicity 18–20, 34 failure of multiculturalism 136–39 family: associational life of migrants 121–2; astronaut families from Hong Kong 122–5, 128; cultural change and 121–2; definition of 68, 80; dispersal and migration 116–17; drama of 64–79, 144–6n; ethnicity and family life 32–3; functionalist theory of 66–7; historical perspective on dispersal 117–19; idea of 77; ideal of 76, 80; importance of 66–8, 73; migrant community and 121–2; re-establishment of ties with 77–8; role in migration 119; social institution of 66; urbanisation of 116–17 Friends of Hong Kong 86–7 gender politics 132–3, 134 generations: generation politics 132–3, 134; generational differences in conception of ethnicity 110–12 gift exchanges 77 global economic energy 126–7 globalisation 1 goddess, ritual display of 52–4 group allegiance of migrants 83 Hall, Stuart 13, 140n Handlin, Oscar 118 harmony: cosmic 11–12; in diversity 7 heritage, multiculturalism’s insistence on 129 heterogeneity of ethnic identity 96–7, 114–15

Index

159

history: of Chinese family dispersal 117–19; ethno-cultural elements in Wang Thong oral history 52; of multiculturalism 130–1; social history of China 13; the Wang Thong setting 39–40, 46–7, 58–63 home 1, 10, 14, 18, 24–5, 34, 47, 67, 69, 73–80, 83–91, 97, 100, 111, 117–19, 121, 122, 125–31, 135 ‘homeland’: and ethnicity 110–11; home contacts by migrants 88–89; homecoming and culture shock 10; and multiculturalism 131; transnationalism and 77–8 Hong Kong 2, 127; astronaut families from 122–5, 128; cultural/linguistic contrast with Singapore 84–5; migrants to Singapore from 81–2, 84–92 hybridity: hybridisation through culture contact 3; in the mind and multiculturalism 129–39; in urban social theory 136, 137 hybridization 2, 4, 13, 129, 138 hypermobility 92 identity: Chinese cultural identity in Wang Thong 61–2; civic identity and ethnicity 36–63, 141–4n; co-existence and 36–7; cosmopolitanism and emergent Chinese 125–7; dual identity 1–2; ethnic identity 17, 18, 33–5, 96–115; heterogeneity of ethnic identity 96–7, 114–15; imposition of 95; multiplicity of ethnic identity 96–7, 114–15, 133; Thai cultural identity 59; of transnational Chinese bourgeoise 122–5, 125–7; transnationalism and 2–6; types of Chinese 125–6 inattention/attention, selective 6 inclusive fitness and ethnicity 16 individualism and ethnicity 104–5 innovation through culture contact 3–4 instrumental ethnicity 18–20, 34 integration and ethnicity 20 interethnic relations in Wang Thong 44–5 intermarriage 32–3, 101–2 invention, concept discovery and 6–7 irrational migration 72, 74, 76 Islam 104, 105

Index

160

Jacobs, Jane 137 Jakarta 127 James, William 11 Jewishness 94 Kallang, People’s Association in 87 Karen people 114 kinship and ethnicity 16, 18–19 Kowloon Club 87 Laing, R.D. 131, 136 language: acquisition of 25–6; and ethnicity 105–10, 111–12; marker of ethnicity 112 Lao story in Wang Thong 50–2 Lee Kuan Yew 82 Li Qingzhao 8 life process, migration as part of 68 linguistic/culturall contrast, Singapore with Hong Kong 84–5 localism in Wang Thong 43–6, 58–63 London 2, 127 love, selfless 6 macro-conditions, influence of 70–1, 79–80 The Marginal Man (Stonequist, E.V.) 10 marginal man, concept of 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 20, 122, 138, 147n8 marginality 122–3 Mead, George H. 4 middle-class international migrants 122–5, 125–7 migration: adaptation by migrants 78; adaptive organisations 88; adjustment problems 82–3; associational life of migrants 84–5, 86–89; bilaterality of references for migrants 83; children in 75; Chinese in Thailand 21–3; circulatory international system of 124–5, 128; culture building activities of migrants 82–4, 84–6; decision to move 69–71, 72–3; differential belonging 83–4; dispersal and the cosmopolitan 116–28, 147–8n; elderly migrants 75–6; embeddedness, simultaneous 77; ethnicity paradox of immigrants 81–92, 147n; experiences of migrants 78; exploitation, discrimination and 74; exploitation and 67–8; family, drama of 64–79, 144–6n; family, ideal of 80;

Index

161

family, importance of 66–8, 73; family role in 119; gift exchanges with migrants 77; group allegiance of migrants 83; home contacts by migrants 88–89; housing arrangements for migrants in Singapore 90; hypermobility 92; Indonesian immigrants to Toronto 122; irrational 72, 74, 76; macro-conditions, influence of 70–1, 79–80; middle-class international migrants 122–5, 125–7; migrant community and family 121–2; opportunities, access through 71; oppression and 67–8; other as migrant 1; part of a life process 68; private lives of migrants in Singapore 89; public lives of migrants in Singapore 89; push-pull theory of 70; reasons for 71–7; resettlement, transition and 84; return trips by migrants 77–8; saga of China 7–8; self-inclusion processes 85- 6; social bonds between sending and receiving countries 78; social distance 65; social relations, multistranded 77; study of: family perspective on 64–79; interview sample 68–9; methodological issues 65–6; theoretical issues 65–6, 82–4; ‘trailing spouses’ and 79–80; transmigration 76–9; transnational perspective on 79–80; women and 67–8, 72–6, 79–80; workplace integration 90. see also cosmopolitanism; ethnicity; transnationalism motivation for assimilation 16 multiculturalism 20; in Canada 129–39; control of ethnic minorities through 135, 137; critiques of 133–4; cult of 134; ethnic containment and 137; as ethnic entertainment 134–6; and ethnicity 97; failure of 136–39; gender politics and 132–3, 134; generation politics and 132–3, 134;

Index

162

heritage, insistence on 129; history of 130–1; ‘homeland’ and 131; hybridity in the mind and 129–39; multiple identities and 133; optional ethnicity and 136; pluralism and 130; private/public divide and 130–1, 131–2, 136; racism and 135; reality and 133–4; see also urban social theory multiethnic association 41–2 multiplicity of ethnic identity 96–7, 114–15, 133 myth and ritual in Wang Thong 46–7, 52–4 New York 2, 127 New Zealand 122 Ngann Phraphudthabaad Khaw Samokblaeng 54–6, 61 nostalgic fixation/illusion 11 Nussbaum, Martha C. 14 occupational differentiation 29–30 opportunities, access through migration 71 oppression and migration 67–8 optional ethnicity 136 ossification through culture contact 2 overdetermination in urban social theory 136–7 Paris 2 Park, Robert 8, 10, 136–7, 138 Parsons, Talcott 131, 136 pluralism and multiculturalism 130 poetical expression of the stranger 10–11 polarisation through culture contact 2 The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Zananiecki, F.) 117–18 Porter, John 130 primordial characteristics as markers of ethnicity 98–102 private lives: of migrants in Singapore 89; private/public divide and multiculturalism 130–1, 131–2, 136 The Promise of the City (Tajbakhsh, K.) 136 public lives: of migrants in Singapore 89; public/private divide and multiculturalism 130–1, 131–2, 136 push-pull theory of migration 70 Qing Ming festival 31 racial purity 94 racism and multiculturalism 135

Index

163

reality and multiculturalism 133–4 reasons for migration 71–7 reciprocity and ethnicity 18–19 refugee, other as 1 religion: religious bifurcation 102–5; tradition and ethnic identification 30–3, 34–5 resettlement, transition and 84 return trips by migrants 77–8 Rex, John 133–4 ritual display of the goddess 52–4, 60–2 Samad, Yunas 134 Schuetz, Alfred 9–10 Sciortino, Guiseppe 133 segregation, voluntary 5 self-inclusion processes 85–6 self-selective aspects of ethnicity 93–5 selfless love 6 Sennett, Richard 137 Shanghai 2, 127 Shui Wei Niang 52–3, 62 Simmel, Georg 8–9 SIMS (Social Integration Management Service), Singapore 82, 86, 87–8, 90 Sing Sian Re Pao, Bangkok 32 Singapore 64–5, 70, 73–4; associational life in 86–89; Chinese in 95–115; Hong Kong migrants in 81–2, 84–92; housing arrangements for migrants in 90; linguistic/cultural contrast with Hong Kong 84–5; modification of immigration policy 81–2; National University of 95; private/public lives of migrants in 89; religious institutions 86 Skeldon, Ronald 88, 91 Skinner, G.W. 21–3, 27, 30, 33, 36, 37, 130, 140n ‘snowman’ of ethnicity 93 social bonds between sending and receiving countries 78 social distance 65 social-economic organisations 27–9, 34 social history of China 13 social integration in Wang Thong 45–6 social relations, multistranded 77 socialisation, bilingualism and 23–4 spacing in urban social theory 136–7 Stepping Out (Chan, K.B. and Chiang, C.) 119 Straits Times 82 stranger 2, 4, 8, 9–14, 65, 132, 137, 138, 144n8; dark side of 8–10

Index

164

structural assimilation 27–8, 34–5 study of complexity of ethnicity: conclusion 114–15; informants’ experiences 96–114; preamble 93–5; research methods 95 study of migration: family perspective on 64–79; interview sample 68–9; methodological issues 65–6; theoretical issues 65–6; see also migration symbolic ethnicity 94, 97 sympathy, the way forward 11–12 Taiwan 32 Tajbakhsh, Kian 136–8 Taoism 103–5 territoriality 4–5 Thai story in Wang Thong 47–8 Thailand 21–3, 23–6, 27–30, 30–3; Phibun governments in 37; Thai cultural identity 59; see also Wang Thong Tiananmen Square incident 81–2 Tokyo 2 Toronto 127; Indonesian immigrants to 122 tradition, religion and ethnic identification 30–3, 34–5 transmigration 76–9 transnationalism 77–9; cosmopolitanism and 1–2, 13–14, 59, 116–28; cultural transnationalism 2–6; and ethnicity 2–6; and identity 2–6; imagination, fantasy and 78–9; problems of 79, 80; transnational Chinese bourgeoise 122–5, 125–7; transnational perspective on migration 79–80 United States 118–19, 123 Universal Press, Bangkok 32 Uprooted (Handlin, O.) 118 urban social theory: hybrid sensibility and 137–8; hybridity in 136, 137; looking beyond multiculturalism 136–7; multiperspectival mindsets 138; overdetermination in 136–7; spacing in 136–7 urbanisation of family 116–17

Index

165

voluntary ethnicity 94, 97 voluntary segregation 5 Wang Keqi 7–8 Wang Thong: boat race 56–8, 61; Buddha’s footprint 52, 54–6, 61; Chinese cultural identity in 61–2; Chinese economic domination 61; Chinese story in 48–50; definitions of 39–40; economic integration in 45–6; ethno-cultural elements in oral history 52; ethno-demographic structure 40; history (local), myth and ritual 46–7, 58–63; interethnic relations 44–5; Lao story in 50–2; local Chinese ethnicity 42–3, 58–63; localism, ethnicity and ethnic relations 36–9, 43–6, 58–63; multiethnic association 41–2; mythic elements in oral history 52; ritual display of the goddess 52–4, 60–2; setting, history and demography 39–40, 58–63; social integration in 45–6; Thai story in 47–8 women and migration 67–8, 72–6, 79–80 workplace integration 90 Xin Qiji 8 Zananiecki, Florian 117–18