Communication

Theory
340
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
of Diasporic Politics
Communication
Theory
Twelve:
Three
August
2002
Pages
340366
Copyright 2002 International Communication Association
In this essay, we highlight and theorize the dynamic relationship between the
structural and cultural aspects of diasporic politics and its importance for com-
munication studies. In response to the divide between structurally determined
studies of diaspora and cultural studies of celebratory resistance, this essay ar-
gues that understanding the dynamic relationship between the structural forces
(for example, nation-state powers, governmental forces, global economic struc-
tures) and situated cultural practices, is key in understanding the complex ar-
ticulations of diasporic identity, agency, and discourses that may echo exclusivist
nationalist appeals. Throughout our theory-focused discussion, we refer to two
historically specific diasporic formationsthe Polish and Hawaiian diasporas
as case studies to illustrate the ever-changing relationships among the structural
formations and cultural practices which constitute diasporic politics.
At an ever-increasing pace, significant globalizing trendsglobal eco-
nomic shifts, new business alliances, adjusted trade relations, the spread
of information technology, increased airline routes to formerly inacces-
sible parts of the world, changing immigration policies, and political
changehave both encouraged and pressured cultural groups to move
from their homelands to new (national) sites of permanent settlement.
Driven by the momentum of global capitalism and transnational flows
of culture, globalized change is taking place both as a sweeping pattern
across the globe, and as a concentrated move at home or within spe-
cific national boundaries. These dramatic shifts have disrupted and chal-
lenged the presumed certainties of culture (Appadurai, 1990; Clifford,
1997; Dirlik, 1990; Giddens, 1990; Said, 1993). Indeed, cultures have
always been characterized by intercultural connections, exchanges, and
mixing. However, accelerated processes of intercultural exchanges un-
der conditions of globalization have significantly altered the nature of
identity construction among migrating groups and the ways in which
they communicate their identities and engage in communication with
their counterparts in the homeland and in migration sites. Specifically,
cultural groups who experience global changes, political restructurings,
and migration movements, have had to ideologically and strategically
Jolanta A. Drzewiecka
Rona Tamiko Halualani
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
341
redefine who they are in order to preserve and reestablish their his-
torical memory, sense of belonging, and their relationship to the defin-
ing homeland. In addition, such cultural identities are reforged in light
of diasporic conditions so that a groups claims of authenticity consis-
tently meld and correspond with changing definitions of national terri-
tories, structures, communities, and economic powers.
The notion of communication becomes key to analyzing and under-
standing diasporic politics. In particular, three specific forms of commu-
nication are of relevance to diasporic groups. First, in private spheres,
diasporic communities continually create linkages of meanings to en-
code their collective identities, and such linkages change from moment
to moment. Secondly, as a public identity, these groups issue rhetorical
claims of identification and connection to and against the homeland.
Third, diasporic groups construct communication exchanges and inter-
actions among the homeland government (government agencies and of-
ficials), homeland community, and the interregional/cross-national net-
works of diasporic counterparts. Through these communicative forms
diasporic groups invent, reinvent, and reposition themselves in relation
to a changing political and economic context.
In postcolonial studies, scholars have examined diasporic politics
largely by focusing on how individuals and groups renegotiate their iden-
tities in new conditions of existence and the cultural politics that result
from that (see, for example, Gilroy, 1989, 1992, 1993; Hall, 1990).
However, as Aiwa Ong (1999) points out, such a body of work has
typically emphasized either the overdetermining political structures of
the nation-state and global economies (Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1989;
Offe, 1985) or the resistive potential of diasporic groups (thereby dis-
counting the nation-state; see Appadurai, 1990; Bhabha, 1990; Clifford,
1994; Gilroy, 1989, 1992, 1993). In other words, scholars have focused
solely on the structural or cultural dimension of diaspora and have over-
looked the dynamic connections between the two (with the exception of
Ong, 1999).
In communication studies, only a few scholars have focused on
transnational, postcolonial, and hybrid formations in the globalizing
cultural economy (Grossberg, 1993; Hegde, 1998; Kraidy, 1999; Shome,
1996; Wong, 1998). Understanding diaspora as a communicative phe-
nomenon can provide great insights for communication and interdisci-
plinary scholars about the construction of diasporic subjectivities away
from, and in memory of, a nationalist homeland as well as the political
implications of such identity construction. With global shifts, the read-
justments of nation-states, and the fluid unpredictability of identity for-
mations, the challenge for communication scholars is to explore the
multilayered communication discourses of diasporic groups, the embed-
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ded political and structural forces that surround such diasporic groups,
and the dynamic contradictions and coherencies of diasporic identity.
In this essay, we intervene in the theoretical discussions of diasporic
politics. Our goal is to emphasize the structural-cultural dialectical rela-
tionship between diasporic politics, subjectivity, and communication.
Accordingly, we rethink the relationship between the nation-state and
diaspora, and infuse it with the notions of situated cultural communica-
tion practices and collective memory, in order to theorize how subjects
are dialectically constructed through conditions of globalization. More
specifically, we seek to theoretically emphasize the structural-cultural
dialectic of diasporic politics, or the dynamic interplay among seem-
ingly fixed structures (e.g., nation-state formations, law and governance,
local and global economies) and cultural expressions (e.g., narratives
and identity discourses, Halualani, 2000; Hegde, 1998) within shifting
diasporic politics. We posit that both dimensionsthe structural and
the culturalalong with their dynamic and dialectical interrelationship
together help us understand the complexities of diasporic politics.
The structural dimension refers to the nation-state/political/economic
structures and regulative bodies of power that delimit and frame the
formation/dissolution of diasporic communities, their identities (and
claims to a nation), and ways in which they respond to such structures.
The cultural dimension refers to those symbolic expressions and com-
munity practices, identity discourses, and narratives that a diasporic
community creates to unify and maintain their group. If, in the diasporic
context, the political and economic conditions around the nation-state
change, then so too has the way in which the related diasporic
communitys cultural practices should be read and understood. This
makes the cultural dimension unpredictable, multilayered, and hard to
read in-line with a shifting political context. For example, in many cases,
the identity practices and narrative discourses of a diasporic group ap-
pear as exclusivist appeals to a fixed national identity or an indigenous
nativism. Such discourses cannot simply be devalued as nationalist at-
tempts to exert power. In fact, they may reveal the tense negotiation
between an ever-present nation-state and a diasporic groups need to
authenticate their identities (via appeals to the homeland) in a new and
different way ( la the slight and subtle reconstruction of national ethnicity
and membership). This also points to the dynamic possibilities for agency
in the diasporic context, as migratory communities recycle and resignify
nationalistic symbols to simultaneously: prove ethnic or national loy-
alty to a home government, claim ethnic or cultural belonging in a het-
erogeneous environment, and reimagine their community in a new space
among new groups and opportunities.
As yet another type of emerging interrelationship between structural
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
343
and cultural aspects of diasporic politics, the nation-state (the structural)
which has historically rejected or pressured diasporic groups to return,
is now turning towards and courting the diaspora in their sites of settle-
ment (the cultural). National powers are even participating in the
diasporas cultural arenas and practices as a way to reconnect and rees-
tablish their political authority and garner voting and economic sup-
port. For all of these reasons, examining the ever changing, mutually
defining, dialectical relationship among the structural and cultural forces
of diasporic politics extends diaspora studies.
In what follows, we first offer a critical review of diaspora studies. In
this section, we examine the limits of diaspora studies and emphasize
the need for a dynamic approach to the study of diasporic politics. Sec-
ond, we focus on the structural-cultural dialectic of diasporic politics by
theorizing the reemergence of the nation-state in diasporic communities
and its implications for a contextual and dynamic understanding of
diaspora. Our discussion is grounded with examples from our own re-
search on two specific diasporic groups in very different political grounds:
diasporic Hawaiian and Polish communities. Through this discussion,
our goal is to offer a more complex understanding of the dynamic op-
erations of the diaspora that cannot be captured by focusing only on
their resistive potential or by emphasizing only the structural relations
of the nation-state. Rather, we suggest that diasporas must be studied
through an understanding of the context of their production and an
examination of how the structural-cultural dialectic informs those con-
texts in different ways in different national sites.
Critical Review of Diaspora Studies
Diaspora studies have revolved around two extreme poles in conceptu-
alizing culture and politics. The first pole is the celebration of an engrained
diasporic resistance in spite of larger political conditions, and the sec-
ond is the overemphasis of the power of formal political structures with
little room for resistance. In the following section, we review these two
types of works, both of which tend to under-emphasize the other. Lastly,
as a theoretical alternative, we highlight the dialectical relationship be-
tween structural and cultural forces in diasporic politics.
A Necessary Diasporic Resistance
Postcolonial studies have underscored the significance of diasporas in
understanding the global power relations between colonialist regimes,
conditions of modernity, and cultural and ethnic subjectivities. As its
main focus, postcolonial studies interrupt and dismantle imperialistic
discourses that construct the West and the rest (e.g., Said, 1978,
1993; Shome, 1996). Such work continually problematizes the fixed and
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modernist constructions of culture, ethnicity, nation, and identity via
notions of cultural hybridity and diasporic identity (Appadurai, 1990;
Clifford, 1994; Dirlik, 1990; Giddens, 1990; Said, 1993; Shome, 1996).
Thus, within postcolonial studies and critical studies, scholars have un-
derscored the importance of diasporic subjectivities and moving or
borderland cultures in dismantling the essentialized and modernist
notion of the static nation-state (Anzalda, 1987; Appadurai, 1990; Said,
1993). The argument they offer is that subjects who move and live in-
between two cultures form a unique double consciousness that enables
them to reject oppressive nationalist ideologies and recombine new con-
texts with cultural traditions (Anzalda, 1987; Lavie & Swedenburg,
1996). Several scholars have extended this notion further by suggesting
that diasporic subjects always, or necessarily, resist dominant structures
at home as well as in the new site of settlement (e.g., Bhabha, 1990;
Lavie & Swedenburg, 1996).
Contrary to these moves, we suggest that diasporic identifications be
also articulated through interplay of fluidity and fixity. Although the
dispersions of peoples lead to the fragmentation of culture and to fluid
notions of identity, diasporic identities are often built on claims to natu-
ral or original identities with the homeland. These claims usually
compete with and override conflicting rights and the history of others
in the land (Clifford, 1994, p. 308). This is accomplished through dis-
courses employing and promoting exclusions and social divisions in
transnational space, for example, Greeks and Macedonians (Panagakos,
1998). Diasporas strategically construct their identities and positionalities
in such a way as to gain political clout and an ability to influence politics
in both homes. Consequently, differently organized ethnic groups may
compete for the label and status of diaspora, and contest the narratives
of imagined community (King, 1998; Panossian, 1998). Diaspora dis-
courses are grounded in politics of history, territory, and location, and
diasporic individuals strategically employ and mobilize cultural and ethnic
labels (Lavie & Swedenburg, 1996). Such mobilizations allow them to
reclaim lost connections as well as to find a mooring and a springboard
for resistance (Hall, 1990). Appeals to diaspora and the homeland pro-
vide groups with a romantic allure carried by a connection to a different
place. In fact, such appeals reify ethnicity and national culture by repre-
senting them as naturally continuous with diaspora. This, in turn,
promotes ethnic absolutism through the return to cultural myths, and
imposes imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and frag-
mentation (Hall, 1990, p. 224). Thus, a careful analysis of multilay-
ered diasporic discourses needs to examine how diasporas utilize, rein-
force, and reinterpret national symbols. In particular, it is imperative to
examine how diasporas enact structural exclusions, and how these
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
345
diasporic exclusions employ and differ from exclusionary discourses
back home.
In some theorizing, the agency attributed to the resistive hybrid sub-
altern subject is transferred to the diasporic subject, who is seen as op-
posing capitalism and state power (Ong, 1999). Because this can lead to
the political and economic conditions surrounding culture and politics
to become destabilized and uncertain, many have taken this to mean
that such uncertainty will lead to the ultimate dismantling of dominant
nation-state structures. Anthropologists Lavie and Swedenburg (1996)
explain, for example, that diasporic cultures offer new frames of analysis
that resist and transcend national boundaries through their creative ar-
ticulations of practices that demonstrate possible modes of corroding
the Eurocenter by actively Third-Worlding it (p. 15). Thus, the signifi-
cant notion that diasporic cultures can, in certain contexts, create new
possibilities for national identity politics is overshadowed by the theo-
retical leap made by many scholars that diasporas do and will lead to
the eventual overhauling of colonialist regimes and national power. This
focus has constituted one of the dominant trends in diaspora studies
the romanticization of cultural resistance without serious consideration
of the transnational and global mobility of political structures.
The Dynamic Yet Resistant Nation-State
In this section, we review studies that seriously examine the flexible na-
tion-state structures and modes of globalization in understanding
diasporic politics, however these studies do so at the expense of denying
any resistive possibilities of diasporic groups. Structuralist critics have
grown skeptical of the celebratory unraveling of cultures and the con-
tinual mobility of people and capital. David Harvey (1989) explains
in The Condition of Postmodernity that flexibility is exactly the modus
operandi of late capitalism and an adjustment on the part of global capi-
tal and modern forms of governance to manage ethnic loyalties, citizen-
ship, and sovereignty, as well as to reincorporate power relations. He
warns that flexible and mobile power structures can reinstallby way
of its seemingly unbounded movementfixed and dominant political
hegemonies that seem on the surface to be either gone, distant, or changed.
These structural hegemonies, political pressures, and conditions still very
much linger within diasporic cultures, yet, in the literature, such a focus
has been replaced by a celebratory emphasis on diasporic and border-
crossing agency. Thus, we raise the following questions: Where has the
focus on the political structures (e.g., nation-state and economic bodies)
gone? How can we understand diasporic subjectivity and identity dis-
courses without the theorizing of mobile and flexible forms of national
power? In this vein, Tllyan warns that theories that disarticulate the
nation-state from diasporas risks the inadvertent complicity with the
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power of nation-based but resolutely anti-national and anti-statist
transnational capital (1996, p. 5).
Likewise, sociologists and geographers (e.g., Castells, 1996; Harvey,
1989; Offe, 1985) have studied globalization as a dominant economic
rationality that moves through its own logic in the absence of social
actors. Corporations and financial markets move to the beat of
transnational capital, which in turn feeds political hegemonies. These
scholars (Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1989; Offe, 1985) argue the opposite
of the studies reviewed in the earlier section. They discount the possibil-
ity for diasporic agency to be created within the crevices of larger struc-
tures. These works lack an integrated discussion of the ways in which
human agency is delimited by such flexible and centralizing structures
and how diasporic identity practices may be embedded within national-
ist discourses and structures. For deeper insights into diasporic politics,
the dynamic, contextual, and often unrecognizable relationship between
the structural and cultural forces surrounding a diaspora must be theo-
rized so that the surrounding political structures are not taken for granted
nor positioned as impenetrable sites. In the following section, we thus
argue that examining the structural-cultural dialectic of diasporic poli-
tics provides significant insights into the changing role of diaspora and
formation of diasporic identities.
Moving Among the Structural-Cultural
Tensions of Diasporic Politics and
Flexible Nation-State Structures
As one of the oldest transnational formations, diaspora transcends the
confines of a single nation-state in multiple ways, while, at the same
time, the nation-state acts through the diaspora. The prefix trans-
means across, beyond, and through, so as to change. However, the
implications of diaspora formations are both trans-national and trans-
national. In most cases, diasporas are caught up with and defined against
. . . the norms of nation-states (Clifford, 1994, p. 307). Diasporas act
as the Other of the nation-state of both the homeland and the site of
dwelling or as an ally of both (King, 1998; Tllyan, 1996). However,
nation-states often act through diasporas treating them as their interna-
tional representatives and agents, or as an economic resource. Thus, the
relations between nation-states and diasporas are ripe with contradictions.
Appadurai (1990) and Rouse (1991) argue that cultures, ethnicities,
and communities are deterritorialized because territorially defined na-
tion-state boundaries can no longer contain culture, ethnicity, or a sense
of community. Deterritorialized dispersed groups carry with them prac-
tices and memories that mix and fuse with, or contest, new local ways of
life. When dispersed but differentiating and changing groups maintain
their identification through established cultural, ethnic, and national
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
347
labels, the referents of these labels are not uniform but fluid and hetero-
geneous. Thus, diasporas participate in translocal and dynamic processes
of cultural recreation and reinvention. Simultaneously, however, the turn-
ing towards the diaspora reinforces the nation-state as principal politi-
cal and cultural units. For example, diasporas often speak a language of
national, cultural, and ethnic unity with the nation, and they also inter-
vene in national political processes, for example by claiming voting rights.
However, members of a diaspora involved in politics back home have
often also pledged allegiance to another nation-state. Diaspora groups
thus occupy complex positions. Legally, some members are citizens of
both nation-states, others are citizens of only the state in which they
currently reside. Politically and culturally, their positions range from
separation to incorporation, and are based on a variety of ideological
convictions and goals that might be separated from politics back home.
It is from these complex and heterogeneous positions that diasporic
groups engage in advocacy on behalf of the homeland. The groups com-
municative practices are organized within (multiple) nation-state struc-
tures thus undermining the logic of a single national membership. Con-
sequently, in a contradictory fashion, diasporas both reinforce and weaken
the nation-state structures.
On the other hand, in contemporary times, nation-state powers have
also turned towards the diasporas, no longer excluding or opposing them,
but rather pushing for their inclusion back into the nation (symbolically
and politically) and for the extension of rigid ethnic or national bound-
aries. In this way, the increasingly flexible nation-state has moved into
new sites of settlement in an attempt to gain more national subjects,
voting support, and economic power. In order to flesh out and illustrate
our arguments about such structural-cultural dialectics of diasporic poli-
tics, we will discuss and contextualize two case studies. After discussing
both the Polish and the Hawaiian contexts, we examine the turning of
the nation-state towards the diaspora. We illustrate how this turning
demonstrates the political mobility and adaptability of the nation-state
and the ever-changing complexities found within diasporic contexts.
The Polish Diaspora
One example lies in the case of the multiple and fragmented Polish
diaspora. The dynamics of the Polish diaspora have to be understood in
the structural context of the 19th and 20th century struggles for the
independence of the Polish State, the post-Word War II opposition be-
tween Communism and capitalism, and the more recent post-Soviet de-
velopments. Polish Western and Eastern diasporas are distinct. They have
been created in structurally different political, historical, and cultural
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circumstances, and have had different evolving relationships with the
Polish homeland. The Polish diaspora, as a political space of exile (Safran,
1991), was created by Poles who fled Poland
between the Polish insurrection of 1830 and the end of World War I . . . and many who
fled Poland between 1939 and 1944. . . . The diasporic dimension of the Polish nation
was illustrated in a saying that made the rounds during World War II to the effect that
Poland was the largest country in the world, its government was in London, its army
was in Italy, and its population in Siberia. (Safran, 1991, p. 85)
However, most immigrants who came to settle and work soon devel-
oped a diasporic consciousness. At the end of the 19th century, when
emigrants started leaving for the U.S. searching for work in large num-
bers, Poland had been progressively partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and
Austria, in three stages, in 1772, 1793, and in 1795 when it effectively
ceased to exist on the political map.
In this context, Polish immigrant communities in the West became
sites of national consciousness fostered by intellectuals and political lead-
ers who led the struggle to liberate and unify the divided state and Polish
culture under assault from the three enemies. This process culminated in
their self-definition as Polands Fourth Partition (Jacobson, 1995, Lopata,
1994). During that time, a publication of the Polish National Alliance,
Zgoda, wrote that the Pole is not free to Americanize because faith,
language, and nationality in Poland itself had been powerfully torn away
by the enemies. The Pole is not free to Americanize becausewherever
he [sic] ishe has a mission to fulfill (Jacobson, 1995, p. 35). Most
immigrants came to settle and to work and thus, could not be consid-
ered a part of ideal type diaspora (Safran, 1991, p. 84). In this structural
context, many immigrants became ethnically and nationally Polish only
in the U.S. (Jacobson, 1995; Lopata, 1994). Thus, it is the political
structures and elite discourses which shaped Polish American culture.
The historical mission to liberate Poland from oppressors continued
when Poland was subjected to Soviet domination and, in response, the
politics of the Polish American diaspora became virulently anti-Com-
munist (Blejwas, 1996; Lopata, 1994; Snyder, 1998). National conscious-
ness was nourished by subsequent waves of immigrants, although many
Poles arriving to the U.S. following World War II were not strictly flee-
ing any dangers. While there were those who, based on their political
and military affiliations during WWII, had reasons to fear persecution
from the newly established pro-Soviet government, many displaced Poles
chose to immigrate permanently out of antipathy for Communists and
in protest against what they saw as a Soviet Communist take-over
(Jaroszynska-Kirchmann, 1996). Many Polish immigrants to the United
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
349
States were readily given refugee status and political asylum in the 1970s
and 1980s although most of them had come to the U.S. to improve their
economic conditions. Thus, those who successfully obtained political
asylum were actually often economically motivated. They were seeking
better opportunities and taking advantage of anticommunist interna-
tional politics. Poor economic conditions were seen by these immigrants
as legitimate grounds for choosing freedom and seeking asylum
(Jaroszynska-Kirchmann, 1996, p. 173), although they hardly consti-
tuted conditions of true exile. After obtaining residency in the U.S., the
majority of these immigrants were able to move back and forth between
Poland and America. This immigration flow and diasporic identifica-
tion was mobilized through international relations, and broadened the
definition of exile as claims to exile subjectivity became strategies of
gaining legal immigration status and increasing economic status (condi-
tions often considered contradictory to the notion of exile; de los Ange-
les Torres, 1995; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996).
Immigrants anticommunist sentiments continue to define their rela-
tionship to the Polish nation-state. However, the anticommunist diasporic
cause has been lost since Poland began to develop a democratic political
system and free-market economy. Polands impending NATO member-
ship provided an attractive, although short-term, political platform for
ethnic or diasporic institutions (for example, the Polish American Con-
gress and the Polish National Alliance) which lobbied the U.S. Congress
in support of Polands NATO candidacy. Since Polands easy acceptance
to NATO, these organizations have been searching for a new direction
while sounding outdated nationalist slogans and bringing on strong pro-
tests from individual Polish Americans against the institutional leader-
ship. Changing structural conditions force groups to abandon old iden-
tity narratives, such as anti-Communist stances, and search for new nar-
ratives with which to authenticate their identities.
Polish Eastern diaspora resulted in part from WWII resettlements of
Poles by the Soviet Union, which created Polish minority settlements in
Kazakhstan. Additionally, post-WWII agreements moved Polish borders
westward, opening up territories which had been under Polish con-
trol between roughly 1569 to 1772 and 1918 to 1945 to double
(re)appropriation by, generally, Soviet Union, and specifically, Belarus,
Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. The postwar period was marred by re-
patriation on both sides, and ethnic cleansing of territories, which had
been ethnically and nationally mixed for centuries (Kosman, 1998; Snyder,
1998). Although these areas have a very strong place in Polish historical
and national imagination as Kresy (meaning both borderlands and
limits; Kosman, 1998; Kwasniewski, 1999), Polish Eastern diaspora was
ignored by the Polish government dominated by the Soviet Union. Fol-
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lowing the break up of Communism, independent Poland turned back
to its dispersed populations in the East. Descendants of exiles and
deportees who were settled in Kazakhstan have been allowed to repatri-
ate on a limited basis. Although small Polish minority groups in Latvia
and Ukraine do not present a significant international issue, larger groups
in Belarus and Lithuania created strong organizations, self-consciously
maintained Polish culture, and made national demands (Kukalewska,
2000; Snyder, 1998). This recent recognition of the Polish Eastern
diaspora changes Polish subjectivity that had been narrowly defined by
the organs of the communist government as ethnically monolithic and
corresponding to the post-WWII borders. It also expands the notion of
Polish diaspora, which had been primarily situated in the West. While official
Polish discourses were silent about Eastern Poles, Poles and diasporic Poles
in the West carried the historical memory of loss and persecution. By turn-
ing to the Eastern diaspora, the state brought the issues of memory and
its historical sense of victimization to the center of national discourses.
Although diasporic theories privilege the European models of
nation(ality) and diaspora-nation relations, the Polish diaspora does not
neatly fit these paradigmatic parameters. The conceptual and analytic
focus on homeland-diaspora relations, tends to overemphasize the ne-
cessity to flee under duress and overlook the role international relations,
moving borders, and changing nation-state politics (structural condi-
tions) play in the production of diasporic subjectivity. The historical,
political, and cultural differences between Polands two diasporas present
a strong case for a careful examination of structural and cultural factors
in the production of diasporic subjectivity. While Poles in the U.S. have
been assimilated on a variety of different levels, and have created Polish
culture within the parameters of the U.S. ethnic mosaic, they have also
maintained various levels of national consciousness expressed through
material and symbolic links. These links include significant financial aid,
cultural imports, and political affiliations. The western Polish diaspora
had a significant status due to its resources and has been nurtured by the
westerly-oriented Polish state in spite of ideological differences, how-
ever, the Polish Eastern diaspora is coming to the attention of the Polish
state only now (Snyder, 1998). Changing international relations, and
the political position of the nation-state, shape the dynamic develop-
ment of diasporic groups. These conditions present a particularly rich
opportunity for communication scholars to examine changing subjec-
tivity as well as complex intra/intercultural relations as expressed in the
flows of communication among these groups, including legislation, edu-
cation materials, letters, and representations in popular culture. The case
of the Hawaiian diaspora presents a different set of challenges to the
notion of diaspora.
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
351
The Hawaiian Diaspora
While the Polish diasporic case study challenges the European model of
diasporic culture and politics, our second case studythe Hawaiian
diasporaunderscores the dynamic formation of diasporic groups within
the post/neocolonialist U.S. nation-based model of governance, particu-
larly those indigenous groups that claim sovereign belonging to land
that was later colonized by a dominant nation-state. The diasporic Ha-
waiian community in the U.S. stands as a land-based cultural group that
struggles to define itself against the still-present colonial U.S. nation state.
However, identity reconstruction has proven to be difficult for diasporic
Hawaiians in that they have had to recreate their identities while also
residing on the deemed American or White continental U.S. main-
land and away from the authenticating marker of native land. Ha-
waiians represent a (sub)cultural group rarely considered as moving be-
tween two nations: an American one borne of U.S. colonialism, and a
sovereign nation, the historically remembered independent Hawaiian
kingdom prior to 1893. The year 1778 marks the moment in which
Westernization dramatically altered Hawaiian culture (Ii, 1959;
Kameeleihiwa, 1992; MacKenzie, 1991; Malo, 1951). Until then,
Hawaii had been a self-sustaining, organized society, and an indepen-
dent kingdom. After this point, struggles over political governance, sov-
ereignty, native rights, and land rights dominated the next few centuries
(Ii, 1959; Kameeleihiwa, 1992; MacKenzie, 1991; Malo, 1951). Resi-
dents from countries such as Britain, Russia, France, Spain, and America
settled on the islands and demanded naturalized land rights (MacKenzie,
1991). Rapidly, native belonging and residency in Hawaii lost its ethnic
distinction and began to liberally include all residents (see Halualani,
1998). British and later U.S. colonial forces restructured Hawaiian soci-
ety from a stratified cultural system to a capitalist market-driven society
in which land was a commodity and a natural right for all productive
citizens. This did not include Hawaiians who were still reeling and feel-
ing lost from the dissolution of the Hawaiian land-based system to capi-
talist-driven land-based commissions (cf. Ii, 1959; Kameeleihiwa, 1992;
MacKenzie, 1991; Malo, 1951). More and more outsiders and external
business interests flocked to Hawaii as U.S. colonialism overthrew the
independent Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.
Thus, Hawaiians lost any cultural right to land they had previously
held. Gradually, Hawaii became the site of a burgeoning plantation
economy, as sugar and pineapple became big business for plantation
owners who shipped large numbers of such products as exports to the
mainland (Hitch, 1991). Throughout World War II and after, the Ha-
waiian economy refocused on two areas: the visitor industry and mili-
tary defense. Large sections of land were appropriated and seized for
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tourist development and the construction of military bases (Hitch, 1991).
Over time, then, U.S. capitalist and governmental interests displaced
Hawaiians from their land. Tourism also became the economic main-
stay of the islands, presenting a dilemma for Hawaiians who were pres-
sured to take jobs that commodified and exoticized their culture. Trav-
elers from all over the world visited Hawaii, some even buying property
for permanent vacation homes (Hitch, 1991). As Hawaii increasingly
became the site of global access, belonging, and consumption, Hawai-
ians, who had limited access to land and economic opportunities, left
their homeland and settled as far away as Europe, Japan, Mexico, and
the continental U.S.
Home for Hawaiians became a concentrated site of colonial and
globalized interests. In response to the colonization of Hawaii, there
were three waves of Hawaiian out-migration (Barman, 1995; Kauanui,
1999; Wright, 1983). The first occurred when most of the Hawaiian
land was reserved for U.S. military purposes and the plantation economy
disintegrated. The lack of jobs led many Hawaiian men to join the U.S.
military, an amount that was double the national average (Wright,
1983, p. 18). Many were shipped to the mainland (and stationed in both
the Northwest and the South) and never returned to Hawaii; others
returned but had difficulty finding jobs. In the wake of the Hawaiian
Homes Commission Act (HHCA) of 1920 (which established a 50%
blood quantum requirement for Hawaiians) and the increasing chal-
lenges in securing a Hawaiian homestead, it seemed economically better
for Hawaiians to stay away from home. Hawaiian women also sought
out schooling opportunities on the mainland but their migration out-
wards was much more constrained than that of their male counterparts.
Hawaiians moved to British Colombia, Mexico, Europe, and the conti-
nental U.S. mainland (e.g., California, Oregon, Washington, New York,
Texas, Arizona, and Nevada; Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 1996).
The second wave occurred in the 1970s as multinational and foreign
investment in the tourist industry gained momentum and the state agency,
the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, failed to equitably distribute
homestead lands to proven Hawaiians (many died while on the wait-
ing list for land). Hawaiians continued to struggle in locating jobs and
attaining homestead lands in Hawaii. In the 1990s, the third wave of
diasporic migration by Hawaiians occurred, in response to several in-
tensifying pressures, including: the soaring cost of living, the limited sup-
ply of low-wage jobs, and the rising prices of homes. In addition, state
agenciesthe Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) and the Department of
Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL)had continually failed to furnish
Hawaiians with cultural entitlements and land rights. Homestead claims
made by Hawaiians were denied, stalled, or not recognized. Hawaiians
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
353
dispersed to other spaces away from Hawaii to realize a stable, or at
least better, economic living, and to retreat from the ineffective and un-
just local government and its state agencies. As of today, there are ap-
proximately 72,272 Hawaiians living off island on the continental
U.S. mainland in comparison to 138,742 Hawaiians living in Hawaii
(Kauanui, 1999; Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 1996). Diasporic Hawai-
ian communities have settled in northern and southern California, Wash-
ington, Colorado, Florida, Arizona, Illinois, New York, Nevada, Texas,
Utah, Oregon, and Virginia (Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 1996). These
diasporic movements of Hawaiians are due in large part to the concen-
tration of globalized power back at home, with the result of the dispos-
session of Hawaiians. Hawaiians have reconfigured the nature of their
identity across the globe in such a way that a connection with the aina
(living through the land) of Hawaii can be maintained and a claim of
indigeneity can be preserved. The Hawaiians are embroiled in a struggle
for indigenous sovereignty and find themselves imbricated in a tense
discourse that reproduces the modernist concepts of originating home-
land and a return to scientific discourses of ethnicity, such as blood
percentage (Halualani, 1998).
The Hawaiian diaspora has defined itself as against the colonial U.S.
nation-state and instead in-line with the indigenous sovereign nation of
Hawaii that existed before its illegal overthrow by the U.S. in 1893. As
a displaced nation, the diasporic Hawaiian community stands in-between
a Hawaiian nationalist discourse and the racialized hierarchy of identity
positions in the U.S. As noted scholar J. Kehaulani Kaunaui (1999) states,
They [diasporic Hawaiians] are off-island, but not exactly immigrants;
in America but not of America and many Hawaiians refuse an Ameri-
can identity. Hawaiians both on- and off-island hold U.S. citizenship,
complicating the binaries between core and periphery, immigrant and
indigenous (p. 685). Therein exists the primary tension of the Hawai-
ian diasporic movement, which contradicts the notion of indigenous
peoples, or those who are rooted in ones ancestral land base. James
Clifford (1997) explains that
Tribal or Fourth world assertions of sovereignty and first nationhood do not feature
histories of travel and settlement, though these may be part of the indigenous historical
experience. They stress continuity of habitation, aboriginality, and often a natural
connection to the land. (p. 252)
Diasporas of indigenous peoples are framed as oppositional contra-
dictions; to be indigenous is to always be rooted in the land. To be re-
moved from the land presupposes an unnatural and foreign dis-
placement, or the eventual development of a Westernized (or American)
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identity (if the movement is to Europe or the continental U.S. main-
land). How can one arguably to be of the Hawaiian nation without
residing on aina (land)? The tension between an at home tribal or
indigenous identity position and an away settled group, complicates
the cultural analysis of Pacific Islander identity politics and collective
memory. Such definitional disputes and contradictions have fueled the
conflicts and complex relations between on-island sovereignty move-
ment groups and off-island diasporic communities. Sovereignty groups
work hard to achieve a higher number of members or citizens of a Ha-
waiian nation, which is vital in pressuring the federal and local govern-
ment to acknowledge their growing nation. This means that sovereignty
groups in the past were invested in upholding the fixed geographic resi-
dency definition of Hawaiians (that Hawaiians live in Hawaii) and have
marginalized diasporic members as being Americanized or haole-
ified (Whitened). Diasporic Hawaiians, however, continue to appeal to
a sovereign Hawaiian identity (and native rights), even though many
will never return to the land. This example illustrates that theories of
diaspora normatively presuppose the ideal Eurocentric model of home-
land and migration which presumes that (a) the nation is geographically
separate from diasporic sites, and (b) the politics of the diaspora is affili-
ated with that of the nation. Such a model has proven to be ill equipped
in recognizing native (or land-based) diasporic groups that are geographi-
cally located within the nation-state and yet seek to politically separate
themselves from the nation-state.
The Hawaiian community expresses a desire for return only if native
land and rights are restored to Hawaiians, while also claiming that settle-
ment in the continental U.S. mainland was a necessary adjustment for
cultural survival in the face of colonialism and globalization at home.
The notion of return takes on both symbolic and political significance
for Hawaiians who are strongly connected to a collective Hawaiian
memory of independence, pride, and land. Yet they must constantly jus-
tify their migration away from Hawaii. The identity discourses from
diasporic Hawaiians therefore seem contradictory and confusing, for
these discourses express a continuous link to Hawaii and at the same
time, a sense of permanence in their mainland homes. In fact, diasporic
Hawaiian communities in the West narrate a tale of Hawaiian history to
the children of the diaspora, most of whom have never been to Hawaii.
This narrative includes a discussion of the early Hawaiian kingdom,
with sovereign rulers, tracing to the U.S. overthrow in 1893, and the
search for another home. Community members do not emphasize
the replacement of their homeland but instead discuss how they are newly
creating and extending it in different contexts. Home stands as a rela-
tional discourse stretched across an interregional network of Hawai-
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
355
ians. It involves remembering the past and discursively incorporating
and making sense of the presence of diasporic Hawaiians. As many
diasporic Hawaiians state, Hawaii is not for Hawaiians anymore.
Many see their movement from home as an exercise of their political
identities against the U.S. nation and its arm of power, the local state.
Off-island Hawaiians have therefore identified the diaspora itself as
the centralized means for preserving a cultural spirit that is suppressed
at home.
In-between Diasporic Poles and Hawaiians
Taken together, these case study examples represent very different types
of diasporic politics. The Polish diaspora is defined by the European
model of nationalist politics, while the Hawaiian diaspora is defined
from a tribal form of nationalist sovereignty that has been politically
contained within the boundaries of U.S. governance. These different his-
torical and political contexts proffer many insights about the dynamic
structures and practices of diasporic politics, including the continual
pressures in forging a cultural or national identity, and relating to the
homeland or other ethnic members. However, there are also interesting
similarities between these two cases. Diasporic Poles and Hawaiians
formed their politics and communities when their homes were colonized
by a foreign power (the relationship between the Soviet Union and Po-
land has been described as colonization by diasporic communities) and
maintained the claim to the homeland from dispersed locations. Diasporic
Poles continue to question political developments in sovereign Poland,
which suggests that a sense of political estrangement is an important
component of diasporic consciousness. Both diasporic Poles and Ha-
waiians maintain nationalist and culturally fixed images of their home-
lands, although their politics of repeatedly turning back are quite differ-
ent. In both cases, there are tensions between the national or land based
communities and diasporic imagined communities.
Our examples present a strong case for broadening the definition of
diaspora to recognize different forms of dispersed transnational belong-
ings. The changing dynamics of the Polish Western and emerging East-
ern diasporas, and the Hawaiians homeland absorption by the colonial
appetite of the U.S., underscore the importance of inventing a new vo-
cabulary to describe relationships among dispersed and located commu-
nities within their own specific conditions. Our focus on diaspora as a
complex and contradictory flow of communication across material and
symbolic borders adds an important dimension to the understanding of
diaspora as a transnational formation. We deepen our argument as we
move to the unique structural-cultural tensions found in the flexibility
Communication
Theory
356
of the nation-state as it enters and courts the diaspora. The states
turn towards diaspora demonstrates how the changing structural rela-
tionship between the state and the diaspora influences cultural practices
and identities.
The Nation Turns Towards the Diaspora
Transnational and diasporic research tends to either emphasize the de-
mise of the nation-state or focus on the diasporic groups identification
with the homeland. However, we find a newly emerging type of rela-
tionship between the structural and the cultural, as nation-states reach
out to and court their dispersed populations. This move enables them to
expand their symbolic territory, by reaching into the countries in which
the diasporic communities reside. Additionally, this move reinvigorates
cultural and national identifications, as the diaspora is perceived as more
genuine and loyal (Cummings, 1998; Panossian, 1998). This process
supports the state and its international political prominence. States are
represented by their diasporic groups in other places and can intervene
on behalf of their ethnic groups in the name of supporting their
minority rights.
The Polish Nation-State Searches for its
Forgotten Diaspora
Poland has always had strong links to its Western diaspora, especially to
the U.S. Polonia that was able to provide substantial economic assis-
tance to the nation. However, as the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991,
Poland turned to its dispersed populations in the former Soviet repub-
lics, directing funds and programs to support Polish community churches
and schools, and offering other types of financial assistance, as well as
engaging in efforts to strengthen Polish culture. This new interest in
Poles eastward of Polish borders was not possible before the breakup of
the Soviet Union because it would have involved questioning post-WWII
impositions of new borders and would have brought up critical ques-
tions regarding the suppressed history of Polish and the Soviet Union
relations. The new diasporic connections with Ukraine, Lithuania, and
Latvia appeal to the lost grandeur of the Polish federation-state of the
17th and 18th centuries which is nurtured in the Polish collective memory.
Current acknowledgment of, and support for, Poles in Kazakhstan raises
crucial questions about the silenced history of the forcible removal of
Polish families from Eastern Poland by Soviet troops in 1944. By strate-
gically reaching out to these dispersed populations, the Polish state is
establishing international relations with newly independent states of the
former Soviet republics, while at the same time asserting its indepen-
dence and changing diasporic politics. Contrary to the traditional focus
of diasporic politics and studies (with the exception of Israels immigra-
tion politics), Poland now seeks out and acts on the behalf of its diaspora.
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
357
Diasporic consciousness is created jointly by the populations seeking
help from the independent and better off-state and, in turn, by that state
seeking to strengthen its international position. The nation-state has
gained a cause on behalf of populations only recently acknowledged as
Polish. This move of the Polish nation-state towards the diaspora ex-
pands the geographic and historical definition of Polish national iden-
tity. Interestingly, the renewed nation-state relationships with Poles in
the East found wide appeal in Polish society and were used in campaign
platforms in Poland (Snyder, 1998).
The state interests in Polish Eastern diaspora are evidenced by the
creation of a nongovernment organization, Stowarzyszenie Wspolnota
Polska (the Association Wspolnota Polska, Wspolnota means common-
wealth or collectivity, hereafter AWP) financed by the Polish govern-
ment in 1990. AWP has 27 regional branches throughout Poland, each
with independent programs directed towards specific regions connected
to Poland through historic patterns of migration or physical proximity.
The goal of AWP is to unite efforts in strengthening ties between Polonia
and Poles living beyond the borders of the Motherland, her language
and her culture, and bringing aid to satisfy various needs of Compatri-
ots dispersed throughout the world (Stowarzyszenie Wspolnota Polska,
2000). Remarkably, the activities of AWP are based on three postulates,
singleness [italics added] of Polish culture, singleness [italics added] of
education, and the defense of rights of our compatriots (Stelmachowski,
2000, p. 2). AWP supports and facilitates repatriation, provides aid, and
sponsors cultural festivals and other activities. Among other issues, AWP
supports the project Karta Polaka (Poles Card or Poles ID) that seeks to
identify those of Polish origin who for one reason or another do not
have Polish citizenship. The card would entitle its holders to the social
benefits available to citizens and would substitute for a Polish visa where
one is necessary. This idea recognizes that historical processes involun-
tarily left Poles without Polish citizenship and outside Poland, and it
grants them przywilej ojczyzniany (Fatherlands privilege;
Stelmachowski, 2000, p. 8). The monthly bulletin of AWP also contains
reports from diasporic locations and regional branches. Many texts ex-
press sentiments that the government is not doing enough for the dis-
persed Poles who have been neglected for so long. These sentiments tes-
tify to the impatience of dispersed Poles who want to benefit from more
open international relations in areas such as the recent economic boom
in Poland. The politics and activities of AWP are an important example
of the broadening definition of who is Polish, who is entitled to nation-
state benefits, and where Polishness is located. The programmatic pos-
tulate of single Polish culture connecting the nation-state and diasporic
locations creates a national geography that is both fragmented and cen-
Communication
Theory
358
tralized. Nation, culture, identity, and borders no longer coincide. Yet it
is Poland, in its national and geographic borders, that are reinforced as
the legitimate and authentic center of both national and cultural identity.
Poland also recently began enforcing its citizenship and passport laws,
which require every Polish citizen to use a Polish passport when crossing
Polish borders, even if this person is also a citizen of another country.
Poland does not recognize, although does not forbid, double citizenship.
Polish citizenship is based on bloodlines, thus someone born in the U.S.
of parents holding Polish citizenship is considered a Polish citizen, un-
less this person formally renounces Polish citizenship. The new law was
met with outrage from U.S. Poles, who enjoy double citizenship, and
might vote in Polish elections while living permanently in the U.S., but
want the privilege of the U.S. passport when crossing borders. Under
pressure, the Polish government is currently modifying its passport laws.
Passports and double citizenship, not recognized but not banned by ei-
ther Poland or the U.S., are powerful examples of diasporic positionalities
and negotiations. Passports are structural elements that legalize rela-
tionships between individuals and states. Those individuals who have
double citizenship are freer in their travels to Poland, their purchase of
property, and their use of voting and other rights. These structural di-
mensions facilitate development of stronger cultural ties. This example
demonstrates that it is necessary to analyze how nation-states define
and engage with their dispersed populations, and how they promote
the national culture. Attention should be directed at how and what spe-
cific cultural practices, knowledges, myths, and memories are strategi-
cally promoted by the nation-state and how they reestablish their roles.
State Intrusions on the Hawaiian Diaspora
Beginning in the 1990s, both the U.S. nation-state (via pro-Hawaiian
state agencies) and the sovereignty movement collectives became more
mobile and flexible, both moving into diasporic Hawaiian territory. As
more and more Hawaiians migrated away from Hawaii, state agen-
ciesthe OHA and the DHLLundergirded by federal power, attached
onto the burgeoning Hawaiian social civic clubs which were developing
across the U.S. mainland. Local State of Hawaii agency representatives
attended annual festival events and membership meetings, while DHLL
representatives began to conduct workshops on the mainland to instruct
diasporic Hawaiians and their families on how to complete the Hawai-
ian homestead lease application. Such an adaptive move immediately
followed the period in 1994 when Hawaiians were finally granted vot-
ing rights (through the criteria of being ethnic Hawaiians) by state-spon-
sored councils for the Hawaiian Sovereignty Vote, or the referendum to
vote on whether or not Hawaii should be its own sovereign nation. The
establishment of relationships between local State of Hawaii agencies
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
359
and mainland Hawaiian civic clubs serve as strategic and necessary means
for tapping into a growing interregional network of Hawaiians whose
numbers, votes, and political participation officially counted and im-
pacted political decisions at home.
Such a shift in the conceptualization of diasporic Hawaiians from
being foreign outsiders to newly located insiders with a claim to all things
Hawaiian, speaks to the changing diasporic politics. The mainland civic
clubs, which formerly carried a social focus, now operate within the
reformist status quo structure of local Hawaii state agencies. These groups
seek to promote and assist the agendas of the state-funded OHA and the
DHLL, which to date fails to award Hawaiian homestead land leases to
a majority of its applicants. State agencies have even requested perma-
nent mainland branches to serve mainland Hawaiians. This type of
mobility on the part of national and state powers illustrates that the
nation-state makes flexible accommodations to reconsolidate a dispersed
group for political and economic gain. This shows that the notion of
mobility must be politically situated. In response to the mobility of the
nation-state, many diasporic Hawaiians have left the civic clubs or refuse
to join any mainland Hawaiian organization because of a widely shared
perception that the unjust and corrupt state influences have entered the
mainland as well. According to one interviewee (Halualani, in press),
the state has got its claws over here in the mainland too . . . the political
refuge is gone. Diasporic community mobilization has become difficult
as many mainland Hawaiians withdraw and separate themselves from
formal organizations and as diasporic Hawaiians gather within private
family structures as opposed to public community organizations
(Halualani, 1998; in press). Moreover, mainland Hawaiians face the lib-
eralized abstraction of nativism that makes all state residents of Hawaii
Hawaiians, as well as the lingering delegitimization of diasporic Ha-
waiians and the recent state encroachment upon diasporic sites. In re-
sponse to these challenges, mainland Hawaiians have co-opted and made
use of blood quantum discourses as a means to authenticate their own
identities and to recapture the native authority long denied them by fed-
eral and state governments.
Hawaiian nationalist sovereignty movement groups have also entered
the diaspora. Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, sovereignty groups
distanced themselves from diasporic Hawaiians. They did so because of
the pressure to increase the number count of on-island Hawaiians, which
can legitimize the reality of a growing sovereign nation (a recognized
independent nation with its own governance and one that can negotiate
with the U.S. nation). However, in the late 1990s, the Hawaiian Nation
Information Group of Northern California and the Northern Council of
Hui Naauao, Ka Lahui Hawaii (by far the most vocal sovereignty col-
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Theory
360
lective), created eight chapters throughout the U.S. mainland, which re-
quired a major rehauling of the groups rhetoric towards diasporic Ha-
waiians. The once castigated Americanized mainland Hawaiian rep-
resented instead a valuable resource for nationalist groups to increase
their membership and political power. Mainland nationalist groups fought
hard for their identities to be acknowledged by at-home nationalist
branches. Finally, in 1995, Ka Lahui Hawaii representatives passed a
resolution to include diasporic Hawaiians in the elections process. This
has changed the status of mainland Hawaiians, and the agenda of sover-
eign nationalism has been expanded to include the question, Who is
asking to govern whom and from what distance? (Kauanui, 1999).
The Hawaiian diaspora holds several displaced nationalist communities
who debate with nationalist factions at home about the extent to which
they can participate in the sovereignty process and actively contribute to
the larger sovereignty struggle through increasing general membership,
raising funds, educating mainland Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians, and
creating strategic alliances with other native diasporic groups (Kauanui,
1999). It is still unclear how these shifts will impact the sovereignty
struggle as a whole and the degree to which off-island Hawaiians will
be incorporated into the nationalist visions at home. In light of the U.S.
Census 2000 results, in which Hawaiians were designated their own
ethnic category, state and sovereignty structures will continue to speak
to the Hawaiian diaspora as the increasing numbers of Hawaiians across
the U.S. continental mainland are verified.
As political pressures mount for the Polish state and the U.S. state of
Hawaii, the diaspora will continue to be the site of national mobility,
political support, and economic opportunity. State structures, therefore,
prove to be both geographically fixed and fully mobile, which highlights
the power of a dynamic nation-state structure and its continually adapt-
ing moves in-line with migrations, identity negotiations, and collective
memory. The state strategically renews its strength through diasporas,
refusing to give in to globalizing pressures. The Hawaiian and Polish
diasporas thus face the challenge of reinventing their identities to speak
to the specific political moment at hand. These two case studies
demonstrate that diasporic communities have different responses to state
efforts to incorporate them and place different demands on their home-
lands. Consequently, it is necessary to examine how diasporic subjectivities
are rearticulated in negotiations between diasporas and state structures.
Implications
Diaspora theories are undergoing change to fit shifting conditions and
this essay provides some theoretical directions for future diaspora stud-
ies. Our discussion of Polish and Hawaiian diasporic politics highlights
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
361
theoretical gaps in the larger realm of diaspora and postcolonial studies.
First, as demonstrated by the complex configuration of the Hawaiian
diaspora, it is necessary to reconsider the definition of diaspora. Schol-
ars note that diasporas are no longer simply defined by their forcible
removal from the homeland and the desire for return. Indeed, many
diasporas have become embedded in their present homes and turn to
their remembered homelands as a strategy of searching for roots and
enacting specific cultural identities (Fortier, 1998; Panagakos, 1998).
However, it is important not to fall into the extreme of identifying any
displacement as a diasporic displacement, or any im/migrant group as
diasporic. The structural-cultural dialectic suggests that the structural
condition of displacement and the structural relationship between the
displaced groups and the nation-state are the defining characteristics of
diaspora. As the Hawaiian case suggests, diasporas may be displaced
from the homeland by the subsuming nation-state. The Polish Eastern
diaspora case suggests that the displacement may occur by the state re-
treating from its borders under pressure, in this case, Yalta agreements
and the USSR. Additionally, the post-WWII Polish Western diaspora
suggests that displacement may become an element of a groups con-
sciousness and identity even though the political and material condi-
tions no longer support it. However, that consciousness could also be
heightened by international relations, for example, the cold war. The
notion of displacement requires further examination. Diaspora studies
still need to consider hard-to-classify indigenous land-based groups, such
as Native Americans and Pacific Islanders whose identity claims and
historical memories are based on principles of indigeneity and the
rootedness of land (Clifford, 1997). Thus, although we need to retain
the notion of displacement as a defining structural, material, and politi-
cal condition in diaspora, it is also necessary to broaden the notion of
displacement beyond the overly restrictive notion of forced dispersion.
Second, we can also no longer frame the nation-state and its diasporic
settlements through the commonly reproduced center-margins mantra.
Indeed, the homeland is no longer simply a nation-state. Nor can we
assume that the nation-state, which proved to be quite vibrant in differ-
ent mobile forms in both the Polish and Hawaiian diasporas, is dead or
insignificant. As nation-states struggle to cope with undermining pres-
sures of globalization, they reassert themselves by courting and claiming
sometimes forgotten, and sometimes strategically ignored, dispersed
groups. Such groups become an important resource as nation-states can
act on their behalf in their international politics. These connections are
reinvented through specific strategies that reestablish the presence of,
for example, Polish culture in Belarus. In this context, the state interests
change the symbolic means and cultural practices through which identi-
Communication
Theory
362
ties are expressed. Libraries, schools, and museums are funded and es-
tablished, and children are invited to summer camps in the homeland.
These relationships are developed in specific economic conditions. For
example, in case of Polish Eastern diaspora, the impoverished Polish
communities in former Soviet republics not only welcome state inter-
ests, they seek them out and demand more. The examination and theo-
rization of diasporas necessitates consideration of how economic condi-
tions shape the negotiations between nation-states and dispersed groups.
Thus, the changing structural conditionsglobalization and reassertion
of the nation-stateinfluence cultural practices by recentering the na-
tion-state or homeland as the locus of authentic culture and identity.
Our Hawaiian case study presents a different problematic for diaspora
studies. Hawaiian diasporic communities are growing increasingly sus-
picious of the encroaching presence of the state in their public commu-
nity forums. As such, they have withdrawn from diasporic public out-
lets and, instead, retreated into private networks of diasporic Hawaiian
families. The intrusion of the nation-state in the Hawaiian diaspora poses
a challenge for the continued mobilization and unification of the diasporic
Hawaiian community, since many diasporic Hawaiians continue to sepa-
rate themselves from any public Hawaiian activity or group on the main-
land. Will diasporic Hawaiians sever all ties from their counterparts at
home for fear that the state has contaminated all aspects of collective
memory and community life? What does this mean for diasporic com-
munity relations with the homeland and the process of constructing their
cultural, ethnic, and national identity? Such state flexibility and mobil-
ity problematize diasporic community formation and identity.
Consequently, diaspora theories need to rigorously account for the
practice of nationalism, and the role of the nation in diasporic identifi-
cation. In addition, such theories should analyze the role of the nation in
various transnational practices, new forms of citizenship, and appeals to
transnational rights. It is imperative to examine how diasporic groups
redefine the nature of national communities by resorting to
transnationally legitimated rights, for example, acting on double citi-
zenship, employing national myths, and utilizing their economic status
to exert influence over governments at home. Conversely, while we should
be careful not to overestimate and assume a priori the fundamental role
of the nation in diasporic identification, it is necessary to interrogate
rhetorical and discursive strategies used by the nation-state to recreate
connections with its diasporic groups. We need to ask what purposes
such reconnections serve on the international-level and what political
role they play in the proliferation of ethnic identities for the diasporic
community and the nation-state. Conceptualizing the diasporic identi-
ties of groups and their political relations with the homeland in terms of
The Structural-Cultural Dialectic
363
the dialectic of structural and cultural tensions therefore necessitates the
continual development of a broader, yet structurally focused, theoretical
framework informed by critical case studies of diverse contexts.
Third, diasporic identity and politics have to be analyzed by address-
ing both sides of the structural-cultural dialectic. Communication schol-
ars have tended to either focus on textual aspects of identity formation,
or have overlooked the complex processes through which identities are
created by using predetermined categories. This essay has argued that it
is necessary to develop theoretical concepts and methods to address the
symbolic and creative aspects of identity narratives and cultural prac-
tices, and to situate them within enabling and constraining structural
dimensions such as the nation-state. Discourses emanating from a par-
ticular diasporic group have to be analyzed in the context of: (a) dis-
courses produced by the political organs of the defining nation-state, (b)
the specific political situation of that nation-state in its relationship to
the current site of settlement as well as other states, and (c) economic
conditions. The structural-cultural dialectic turns our attention to the
deep interplay between material and political structures which impose
limitations and parameters on human agency and subjectivity, on the
one hand, and the active way of negotiating meaning and positionality
within those structures, on the other. This requires that we take seri-
ously Deetzs (1992) call to examine communication within social, po-
litical, and importantly, economic and legal structures.
Fourth, it is necessary to tease out specific strategies that groups use
to establish their identities without collapsing them as being essentialist
or romantically celebrating fluidity and hybridity. This objective
requires a careful longitudinal understanding of the nation-state and
diaspora processes in order to gain insight into national(istic) system of
representation, and the particular investments that are made in the na-
tional symbols. The construction of subjectivity within the forces of glo-
balization, flexible capital, mobile or accommodating governmental struc-
tures or national powers, and the migration of cultural groups to mul-
tiple settlement sites proves to be uncertain, unstable, and blurred. Thus,
diaspora studies, critical, and rhetorical studies can explore further the
rhetorical discourses surrounding diasporic groups in relation to nation-
based governmental entities and the differential and contested forma-
tions of nation and community. Groups reinvent their identity by collec-
tively reconstructing their past and carrying cultural memories. Exami-
nations of diasporic identities and relations require that communication
scholars attend to conflicted, contested, and multiple histories which
struggle for meaning within selective remembering and forgetting (Hasian
& Frank, 1999). Thus, scholars need to continually rethink relation-
ships between cultures, ethnicities, borders, and forms of belonging. The
Communication
Theory
364
content of being Polish or Hawaiian is heterogeneous and frac-
tured between its different locations, and subject to rhetorical appeals,
with some being based on dominant (exclusionary) modernist claims of
ethnic nationalism. As groups move and migrate across and between
borders, nations, and varied political terrain, they substantially recon-
stitute and reorganize their cultural and communication practices by
renewing and restructuring traditional cultural practices to fit new cir-
cumstances and needs. Moreover, dynamic global and political condi-
tions increase the heterogeneity and internal tensions in settled groups
and communities. This also generates additional levels and circuits of
communication within homelands as well as other communities.
Lastly, our discussion also has implications for communication stud-
ies, namely intercultural communication. Understanding group identi-
ties through the structural-cultural dialectic enables us to move beyond
the predominant conceptualization within intercultural communication
that cultural identity is firmly fastened to a specific geographic place or
nation. Moreover, analyzing diasporic politics impels intercultural com-
munication researchers to reenter studies on identity and immigration.
Diasporic politics provide an important perspective on the dynamic ex-
periences and identities of im/migrants which is different from the theo-
retical focus on cross-cultural adaptation and immigrant models, or the
process of modernizing adaptation and adjustment among migrants
in host countries (see for example Kim, 1977; Kim & Gudykunst, 1988).
Specifically, diasporic members may invoke their new homeland envi-
ronment through their specific cultural framework and a preserved collec-
tive memory, rather than discarding their original culture and assimi-
lating. The challenge now is to explore how culture and cultural
identity have incorporated globalized change and become a shifting
dynamic field that refuses geographic specificity yet remembers a cul-
tural past while also addressing the nation. This also points to the dy-
namic possibilities for agency and identity in the diasporic context. In a
powerful fashion, migratory communities recycle and resignify nation-
alistic symbols and terms to simultaneously prove ethnic or national
loyalty to a homeland government and reimagine their community in a
new context.
Jolanta A. Drzewiecka (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an assistant professor of communication
studies in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Her
main interests revolve around immigrant identity, intergroup relations, transnational studies, and
diasporic politics. Rona Tamiko Halualani (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an assistant profes-
sor of language, culture, ethnography, and intercultural communication in the Communication
Studies Department at San Jose State University. Her main interests involve cultural studies, eth-
nography, culture, identity, and speaking practices, as well as Pacific Studies, Asian Pacific Ameri-
can Studies, globalization, diaspora, and transnational studies. We would like to express thanks to
Raka Shome and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
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