I have struggled to find a topic to focus on for my\nhistoriographical essay. I have wrestled with terms of identity, hybridity and\nstruggled to pinpoint definitions this week. Identity, I have been told, is a\nhard to think to write about and research because it is such a difficult\nconcept to nail down and quantify. It cannot be measured because everyone\u2019s is\nunique and different. People identify as nationalities, genders\/sexes, they see\nthemselves as belonging to races and yet no two people\u2019s combinations will be\nexactly the same. As Bernhard rightly pointed out to me, this makes it difficult\nto research. However, this seems to only fuel my fascination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I read an article this week called Negotiating Hybridity:\ntransnational reconstruction of migrant subjectivity in Koreatown, Los Angeles.\n<\/em>It focuses on the physical space that Koreatown occupies as well as what it\nhas come to represent both within its communities and those outside of it. The\ncommunity within LA\u2019s Koreatown is one of the largest outside Korea, and the\nauthors argue that it should be seen as a hybrid space rather than one that is\nstrictly homogenous as Koreans abroad. This article caught my eye because I\ngrew up close to San Francisco, which hosts the \u2018largest Chinese enclave\noutside Asia\u2019. This grouping of Asian identities into almost ghettos (for lack\nof a better word, meant in terms of a minority group) is echoed in many other\ncities and countless other minorities in all parts of the world. The article\ngave great insight to why ethnic identities intensify when people migrate\nelsewhere. As they are seen as different, they forced to cling to what these\nare. Ethnic identity is not a natural phenomenon. It is a social identity, that\nis created deep within the psyche of self and other. To identify yourself is to\nsee yourself in comparison to other people. My parents have recently moved to\nMannheim, where they see the same thing with Vietnamese and Persian communities.\nNo one place is ethnically\/culturally homogenous anymore, which is something\ninherently positive. We all love greater food options, exposure to other\ncultures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I really enjoyed reading Lee and Park\u2019s personal take on\ntransnationalism. Both Korean, this article was written while Lee was a\nvisiting scholar in Ohio. Their interest emphasized that transnationalism is\nbounded to local places, and the opportunities and constraints of the people\nthat occupy them. They quote Bhabha in that \u2018all forms of culture are continually\nin a process of hybridity\u2019, and from this that Koreatown is not aptly named. Chinatown\nin San Francisco falls victim to this as well. It is not internally homogenous,\nbut rather is home to multiple Asian and minority identities, and does not even\nencompass the same ones that it did half a century ago. They call this an \u2018imagined\ngeography\u2019, which harks back to sub-honours IR and history constantly throwing\nAnderson\u2019s Imagined Communities<\/em> on the reading lists. Identity here is forced\nupon a physical geography and space, but the identity is constantly adapting,\nas are the parameters of \u2018Korean-ness\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe it\u2019s because I struggle with my own identity, proving\nBernhard\u2019s point that it is hard to define. Perhaps identity cannot be\nquantified, but that does not mean there isn\u2019t scholarship attempting to draw some links\nbetween the spaces, our backgrounds and the way in which we interact. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have struggled to find a topic to focus on for my historiographical essay. I have wrestled with terms of identity, hybridity and struggled to pinpoint definitions this week. Identity, I have been told, is a hard to think to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-r2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1678,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}