Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:32:08.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tackling tensions and ambivalences: Armenian girls’ diasporic identities in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ulrike Ziemer
Ulrike Ziemer*
Affiliation:
Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies, University College London, London, UK
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Research on diasporic youth identities in the British and American context has stressed hybridity, heterogeneity and multiplicity. This paper draws upon ethnographic research undertaken with Armenian girls to explore some of the tensions and ambivalences of negotiating diasporic identities in the Russian context. Diasporic identities are constructed through gender, and this paper illustrates how research participants negotiate their identities in relation to both belonging to the Armenian community and wider Russian society. At the same time, this paper examines how research participants draw differently on diasporic identifications in order to overcome tensions and ambivalences in their everyday lives. The paper shows that research participants are not inclined to reject their cultural roots in favor of new hybrid identities, but are able to recognize and appropriate different cultures in their identity negotiations.

Keywords

diasporic youth identitiesgenderethnicityArmenianRussia
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 38 , Issue 5 , September 2010 , pp. 689 - 703
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anthias, Floya. Ethnicity, Class, Gender and Migration. Aldershot: Avebury, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Anthias, Floya. “Rethinking Social Divisions: Some Notes.” Sociological Review 30 (2005): 505–35. Print.Google Scholar
Anthias, Floya, and Yuval-Davis, Nira. Women, Nation, State. Basingstoke: Routledge, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Bakalian, Anny P. Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Bhattacharjee, Annanya. “The Habit of Ex-Nomination: Nation, Woman, and the Indian Immigrant Bourgeoisie.” Public Culture 5 (1992): 19–44. Print.Google Scholar
Billson, Janet M. Keepers of the Culture: Women in a Changing World. New York: Lexington, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Brubaker, R. “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora”. Ethic and Racial Studies 28 (2005): 1–19. Print.Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael, and Verdery, Katherine. Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Cohen, Anthony. The Symbolic Construction of Community. New York: Tavistock, 1985. Print.Google Scholar
Dwyer, Claire. “Contested Identities: Challenging Dominant Representations of Young British Muslim Women.” Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures. Eds. Skelton, Tracey and Valentine, Gill. London: Routledge, 1998. 50–65. Print.Google Scholar
Dwyer, Claire. “Contradictions of Community: Questions of Identity for Young British Muslim Women.” Environment and Planning A 31 (1999): 53–68. Print.Google Scholar
Dwyer, Claire. “Negotiating Diasporic Identities Young British South Asian Muslim Women.” Women's Studies International Forum 23.4 (2000): 475–86. Print.Google Scholar
Flynn, Moya, Kay, Rebecca, and Oldfield, John. Trans-National Issues, Local Concerns and Meanings of Post-Socialism: Insights from Russia, Central Eastern Europe, and Beyond. New York: UP of America, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. “Living in a Post-Traditional Society.” Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Eds. Beck, Ulrich, Giddens, Anthony, and Lash, Scott. Cambridge: Polity, 1994. 56–109. Print.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures. London: Serpent's Tail 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. “Papers in Honor of Melville J. Herskovits: Gossip and Scandal.” Current Anthropology 4.3 (1963): 307–16. Print.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “New Ethnicities.” Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Eds. Morley, David and Chen, Kuan-Hsing. London: Routledge, 1996. 441–49. Print.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs Identity?” Questions of Cultural Identity. Eds. Hall, Stuart and Du Gay, Paul. London: Sage, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity, Community and Difference. Eds. Rutherford, Jonathan. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2003. 222–37. Print.Google Scholar
Hann, Chris M. Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Harris, Colette. Control and Subversion: Gender Relations in Tajikistan. London: Pluto, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Ishkanian, Armine. “Armenians.” Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World's Cultures. Eds. Ember, Carol R. and Ember, Melvin. London: Plenum, 2004. 265–73. Print.Google Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. Women, Islam and the State. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Kochergin, Alexei A. “Iazyk Vrazhdy kak Sledstvie Sek'iutizatsii Etnichnosti (Sluchai Krasnodarskogo Kraia).” Iazyk Vrazhdy Protiv Obshchestva. Ed. Verkhovskii, Alexandr. Moscow: Tsentr Sova, 2007. 178–92. Print.Google Scholar
M⊘rck, Yvonne. “Hyphenated Danes: Contested Fields of Gender, Generation and Ethnicity.” Young, Nordic Journal of Youth Research 8.3 (2000). Print.Google Scholar
Osipov, Alexandr G. “Diskriminatsiia po Etnicheskomu Priznaku protiv Migrantov v Rossiiskoi Federatsii.” Bulletin: Anthropology, Minorities, Mutliculturalism 1 (1999): 100–108. Print.Google Scholar
Pallotta-Chiarolli, Maria. “From Coercion to Choice: Second-Generation Women Seeking a Personal Identity in the Italo-Australian Setting.” Journal of Intercultural Studies, 10 (1989): 49–63. Print.Google Scholar
Pilkington, Hilary, and Popov, Anton. “Cultural Production and Transmission of Ethnic Tolerance and Prejudice: Introduction.” Anthropology of East Europe Review 26 (2008): 7–21. Print.Google Scholar
Popov, Anton, and Kuznetsov, Igor. “Ethnic Discrimination and the Discourse of ‘Indigenisation': The Regional Regime, ‘Indigenous Majority’ and Ethnic Minorities in Krasnodar Krai in Russia.” Nationalities Papers 36.2 (2008): 223–52. Print.Google Scholar
Qureshi, Karen. “‘Respected and Respectable’: The Centrality of ‘Performance’ and ‘Audiences’ in the (Re)Production and Potential Revision of Gendered Ethnicities.” Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 1.2 (2004). Print.Google Scholar
Qureshi, Karen. “Trans-Boundary Spaces: Scottish Pakistanis and Trans-Local/National Identities.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 207–26. Print.Google Scholar
Qureshi, Karen, and Moores, Shaun. “Identity Remix: Tradition and Translation in the Lives of Young Pakistani Scots.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 2 (1999): 311–30. Print.Google Scholar
Sahgal, Gita, and Yuval-Davis, Nira. Refusing Holy Orders. Women and Fundamentalism in Britain. London: Virago, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Shakhnazarian, Nona. “Gendernye Problemy Armian Nagorno Karabakha (Sovremmennyi Period).” PhD thesis. Kubanskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Talai, Vered A. Armenians in London: The Management of Social Boundaries. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Tebbutt, Melanie. Women's Talk? A Social History of ‘Gossip’ in Working-Class Neighborhoods, 1880-1960. Aldershot: Scolar, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Ter-Sarkisiants, Alla. Armiane: Istoriia i Etnokul'turnye Traditsii. Moskva: Vostochnaia literatura RAN, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Tolman, Deborah L., and Higgins, Tracey E. “How Being a Good Girl Can Be Bad for Girls.” Women, Sex & Power in the Nineties. Eds. Bauer Maglin, Nan and Perry, Donna. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 1996. 205–25. Print.Google Scholar
Walby, Sylvia. “Is Citizenship Gendered?” Sociology 28 (1994): 379–95. Print.Google Scholar
Watson, Peggy. “Eastern Europe's Silent Revolution: Gender.” Sociology 27.3 (1993): 471–87. Print.Google Scholar
Wolczuk, Kataryna, and Yemelianova, Galina. “When the West Meets the East: Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Eastern Europe.” Nationalities Papers, 36 (2008): 177–95. Print.Google Scholar
Zdravomyslova, Elena and Temkina, Anna. Seksual'nost’ i Gender v Post (Sovetskikh) Obshchestvakh. Sankt-Petersburg, 2007. Print.Google Scholar