Abstract
An important aspect of the digital city is the malleable virtual space that serves as its infrastructure. To map out a sociological dimension of that cyberspace, the focus of this chapter is on one of its components, virtual diasporic space.1 It is assumed here that the digital city houses lattices of cross-border virtual spatial circuits, and it is not the purpose of this chapter to enumerate or even analyze the properties of them all. By focusing on one of them—virtual diasporic space—including its global apparatus, we will begin to understand its operation and importance in the sustenance of the digital city. The digital city is a multiplex node in a transnational circuit of virtual and nonvirtual nodes, each serving as a pole for distinct social groups and formations. A virtual diaspora is a pole of an existing diaspora. Virtual diasporic space provides us a good entry point to penetrate and conceptualize the characteristics and modus operandi of a virtual diaspora.
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Notes
On the issue of whether or not “space” means the same thing in both reality and virtuality, we lean toward the interpretation provided by Micha Bandini when he remarks that “we use spatial terms as metaphors within the electronic world and that the status of these metaphors is to remind us of ‘the real thing’ to make our use of computer software easier. Thus, place-making-and-belonging is dependent, because of its uniqueness, upon a physical ‘sense of place’ based on both the social interactions and the cultural attributions we give to that place” (Micha Bandini, Urbanism and Dis-urbanism: The Impact of Information Technology on the Construction of Place. In Documentation on the Virtual City. Selected from presentations at the International Making Cities Livable Conferences. Carmel, California: IMCL Council, 1996, p. 17).
Jerry Everard, Virtual States: The Internet and the Boundaries of the Nation-State. New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 51.
Diane Coyle, The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998, p. 163.
David R. Johnson and David G. Post, The Rise of Law on the Global Network. In Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure edited by Brian Kahin and Charles Nesson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999, p. 3.
Roger Burrows, Virtual Culture, Urban Social Polarisation and Social Science Fiction. In The Governance of Cyberspace: Politics, Technology and Global Restructuring edited by Brian D. Loader. New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 43.
David S. Bennahum, United Nodes of Internet: Are We Forming a Digital Nation? In Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias edited by Peter Ludlow. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001, p. 43.
Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999, p. xiv.
Sorin Matei and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, Real and Virtual Social Ties: Connections in the Everyday Lives of Seven Ethnic Neighborhoods. American Behavioral Scientist 45(3), 2001: 550–564, 559.
Michel S. Laguerre, The Global Ethnopolis: Chinatown, Japantown and Manilatown in American Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000;
Michel S. Laguerre, Urban Multiculturalism and Globalization in New York City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2003.
Amit S. Rai, India On-line: Electronic Bulletin Boards and the Construction of a Diasporic Hindu Identity. Diaspora 4(1), 1995: 31–58, 42.
David J. Elkins, Globalization, Telecommunication, and Virtual Ethnic Communities. International Political Science Review 18(2), 1997: 139–152, 150.
There exists a robust political literature on ethnic politics and foreign policies that assesses the effect of diasporic groups on American domestic and foreign affairs (see Sheila L. Croucher and Patrick J. Haney, Marketing the Diasporic Creed. Diaspora 8(3), 1999: 309–330).
This literature is divided into five competitive approaches that can be summarized as follows: the community approach, which focuses on the strength and contribution of ethnic political participation to the democratic process (see David J. Vidal, Defining the National Interest: Minorities and US Foreign Policy in the 21st Century: A Conference report, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996);
the ethnic interest group approach, which advocates the deserving needs of the ethnic community and homeland (see Mitchell G. Bard, The Role of Ethnic Interest Groups on American Middle East Policy. In The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy edited by Eugene R. Wittkopf. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 79–94);
the diasporic approach, which stresses the loyalty of ethnics to both the homeland and the country of residence, thereby expanding American democratic values abroad (see Yossi Shain, Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the US and Their Homeland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999;
Charles King and Neil J. Melvin, Diaspora Politics: Ethnic Linkages, Foreign Policy, and Security in Eurasia. International Security 24 [1999–2000]: 108–138);
the ethnic-identity approach, which sees politics as undertaken for the purpose of reinforcing or preventing the collapse of ethnic identity (see Sheila Croucher, Constructing the Ethnic Spectacle: Identity Politics in a Postmodern World. In The Ethnic Entanglement: Conflict and Intervention in World Politics edited by John Stack and Lui Hebron. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999, pp. 123–140;
Sheila Croucher, Imagining Miami: Ethnic Politics in a Postmodem World. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997);
and the transnational approach, which sees the engagement of the diaspora in the homeland and the host land as part of a cross-border political field (see Michel S. Laguerre, State, Diaspora, and Transnational Politics. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28(3), 1999: 633–651).
Dingxin Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen: State—Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 197.
Yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen: Reform and Reality in Modem China. San Francisco: China Books, 1989, pp. 73–74.
James A.R. Miles, The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996, p. 216.
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Laguerre, M.S. (2005). Virtual Diasporas and Cyberspace. In: The Digital City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511347_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511347_6
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