Download the fantastic book titled No Family Is an Island written by Ilana Gershon, available in its entirety in both PDF and EPUB formats for online reading. This page includes a concise summary, a preview of the book cover, and detailed information about "No Family Is an Island", which was released on 08 May 2012. We suggest perusing the summary before initiating your download. This book is a top selection for enthusiasts of the Social Science genre.
Summary of No Family Is an Island by Ilana Gershon PDF
Government bureaucracies across the globe have become increasingly attuned in recent years to cultural diversity within their populations. Using culture as a category to process people and dispense services, however, can create its own problems and unintended consequences. In No Family Is an Island, a comparative ethnography of Samoan migrants living in the United States and New Zealand, Ilana Gershon investigates how and when the categories "cultural" and "acultural" become relevant for Samoans as they encounter cultural differences in churches, ritual exchanges, welfare offices, and community-based organizations. In both New Zealand and the United States, Samoan migrants are minor minorities in an ethnic constellation dominated by other minority groups. As a result, they often find themselves in contexts where the challenge is not to establish the terms of the debate but to rewrite them. To navigate complicated and often unyielding bureaucracies, they must become skilled in what Gershon calls "reflexive engagement" with the multiple social orders they inhabit. Those who are successful are able to parlay their own cultural expertise (their "Samoanness") into an ability to subtly alter the institutions with which they interact in their everyday lives. Just as the "cultural" is sometimes constrained by the forces exerted by acultural institutions, so too can migrant culture reshape the bureaucracies of their new countries. Theoretically sophisticated yet highly readable, No Family Is an Island contributes significantly to our understanding of the modern immigrant experience of making homes abroad.
Detail About No Family Is an Island PDF
- Author : Ilana Gershon
- Publisher : Cornell University Press
- Genre : Social Science
- Total Pages : 208 pages
- ISBN : 0801464021
- Release Date : 08 May 2012
- PDF File Size : 15,5 Mb
- Language : English
- Rating : 4/5 from 21 reviews
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