Creating Africa in America : translocal identity in an emerging world city / Jacqueline Copeland-Carson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Copeland-Carson, Jacqueline.

Series:

Contemporary ethnography

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cultural Wellness Center (Minneapolis, Minn.).

African Americans--Minnesota--Minneapolis--Social conditions.

African Americans.

African Americans--Race identity--Minnesota--Minneapolis.

African Americans--Race identity.

African diaspora.

Community life.

African Americans--Social conditions.

African Americans--Services for.

Social conditions.

Minnesota--Minneapolis.

African Americans--Services for--Minnesota--Minneapolis.

Community life--Minnesota--Minneapolis.

African Americans--Social conditions--Case studies.

African Americans--Race identity--Case studies.

United States.

Community life--United States--Case studies.

African diaspora--Case studies.

Minneapolis (Minn.)--Social conditions.

Minneapolis (Minn.).

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 240 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2004]

Summary:

With a booming economy that afforded numerous opportunities for immigrants throughout the 1990s, the Twin Cities area has attracted people of African descent from throughout the United States and the world and is fast becoming a transnational metropolis. Minnesota's largest urban area, the Twin Cities region now also has the country's most diverse Black population. A closely drawn ethnography, Creating Africa in America: Translocal Identity in an Emerging World City seeks to understand and evaluate the process of identity formation in the context of globalization in a way that is also site specific.

Bringing to this study a rich and interesting professional history and expertise, Jacqueline Copeland-Carson focuses on a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization, the Cultural Wellness Center, which combines different ethnic approaches to bodily health and community well-being as the basis for a shared, translocal "African" culture. The book explores how the body can become a surrogate locus for identity, thus displacing territory as the key referent for organizing and experiencing African diasporan diversity. Showing how alternatives are created to mainstream majority and Afrocentric approaches to identity, Copeland-Carson addresses the way in which bridges can be built in the African diaspora among different African immigrant, African American, and other groups.

As this fascinating ethnographic study reveals, the fact that there is no simple and concrete way to define how one can be African in contemporary America reflects the tangled nature of cultural processes and social relations at large. Copeland-Carson demonstrates the cultural creativity and social dexterity of African peoples living in an urban American setting, and suggests that anthropologists give more attention to the role the nonprofit sector currently plays as a forum for creating community and identity in the African diaspora.

Contents:

Preface: On Life Betwixt and Between ix

Prologue to a Diasporan Journey 1

Part I. Reimagining North America's African Diaspora

1. "Africa" in Minnesota 15

2. Ethnographic Grounding 24

Part II. Across Diasporan Space/Time: Who Is "African" in a Global Ecumene?

3. "Three Parts African": Blood, Heart, Skin, and Memory 37

4. Organizing Across Diasporan Crosscurrents 59

5. The African Body Resistant 81

Part III. Creating "Africa": A State of Mind/Body/Spirit

6. Healing the Mind: Embodying an African Epistemology 97

7. Healing the Body: Reactivating the African Habitus 114

8. Healing the Spirit: Embodying an African Historicity 139

Epilogue to a Diasporan Journey 162

Appendix A Research Design, Methods, and Documents 179

Appendix B Cultural Wellness Center and Powderhorn Photographs/Bruce Silcox 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [213]-232) and index.

ISBN:

0812237900

0812218760

OCLC:

54001599