Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home

by Alison Blunt

Overview

Domicile and Diaspora investigates geographies of home and identity for Anglo-Indian women in the 50 years before and after Indian Independence in 1947. Theoretically informed and substantively grounded, the book draws on interviews and focus groups with over150 Anglo-Indians, as well as archival research. Key themes include: imaginative geographies of Britain as fatherland and India as motherland before Independence; the establishment of Anglo-Indian homelands; Anglo-Indian migration under the British Nationality Act of 1948 and the White Australia Policy; and the spatial politics of home for Anglo-Indians today in India, Britain and Australia.

As well as exploring what it means to be Anglo-Indian, Domicile and Diaspora makes a distinctive contribution to debates about home, identity, hybridity, migration and diaspora.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781444399189
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	07/22/2011
Series:	RGS-IBG Book Series , #82
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Alison Blunt is Reader in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the author of Travel, Gender and Imperialism (1994), the co-author of Dissident Geographies (2000), and the co-editor of Writing Women and Space (1994), Postcolonial Geographies (2002) and Cultural Geography in Practice (2003). She was awarded the Gill Memorial Award by the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers in 2002 and a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2003.

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Table of Contents

List of Figures.

Series Editors’ Preface.

Acknowledgements.

1 Domicile and Diaspora: An Introduction.

Domicile.

Diaspora.

Home, Memory and Nostalgia.

Methodology.

Chapter Outline.

2 At Home in British India: Imperial Domesticity and National Identity.

Imperial Domesticity.

Nationalist Domesticity.

Domicile and Domesticity.

‘Land of our Mothers’.

Home, Identity and Nationality.

Conclusions.

3 Home, Community and Nation: Domesticating Identity and Embodying Modernity.

Domesticating Identity.

Embodying Modernity.

Domestic Transgression.

Home, Community and Nation.

Conclusions.

4 Colonization and Settlement: Anglo-Indian Homelands.

Homelands and Settlements.

Anglo-Indian Colonization and Settlement.

Colonizing McCluskieganj.

Anglo-Indian Home-making.

Dreams of the Future.

McCluskieganj Today.

Conclusions.

5 Independence and Decolonization: Anglo-Indian Resettlement in Britain.

Migration and Resettlement.

Britishness, Whiteness and Mixed Descent.

Documenting Paternity and Recolonizing Identity.

Unsettled Domesticity.

Embodied Identities and the Limits of Familiarity.

Conclusions.

6 Mixed Descent, Migration and Multiculturalism: Anglo-Indians in Australia since 1947.

Anglo-Indians in White Australia.

HMAS Manoora.

Anglo-Indian Migration in the Wake of HMAS Manoora.

From ‘Race’ to ‘Culture’.

From White Australia to Multiculturalism.

Anglo-Indians in Multicultural Australia.

Conclusions.

7 At Home in Independent India: Post-Imperial Domesticity and National Identity.

Staying on in India.

Nationality and Community.

Anglo-Indian Women in Independent India.

Dress.

Home and Work.

Marriage.

Conclusions.

8 Domicile and Diaspora: Conclusions.

Bibliography.

Appendix 1 Archival Sources.

Appendix 2 Interviews and Focus Groups.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘This is a first rate book. Alison Blunt studies a community that has been reinventing ‘itself’, and its senses of home and belonging, in the period since 1947. She shows how these reinventions have been pursued in different ways by different community leaders, including in the run-up to India’s independence, and how another set of reinventions is playing out around the dress and marriage choices of Anglo-Indian women.’
Stuart Corbridge, Professor/Doctor Geography & Regional Studies, London School of Economics

'Alison Blunt has defined and shaped this research area. Perceptive accounts of Anglo-Indian women's lives are woven through a scholarly analysis of community and identity in India and a wider diaspora through the twentieth century. She has produced an absorbing and refreshing book.'
Morag Bell, Professor of Cultural Geography, Loughborough University

"This is an accessible and clearly written book and would be useful for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses on cultural and postcolonial geographies"
The Geographical Journal

"Alison Blunt's latest offering Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home provides a rich and flavourful repast of the betwixt and in-between people of part-British and part-Indian descent... Blunt delivers a cogent, deeply historicized, and creatively theorized account of the cultural and spatial contours of Anglo-Indian domesticity."
The Journal of Black Canadian Studies

Editorial Reviews

‘This is a first rate book. Alison Blunt studies a community that has been reinventing ‘itself’, and its senses of home and belonging, in the period since 1947. She shows how these reinventions have been pursued in different ways by different community leaders, including in the run-up to India’s independence, and how another set of reinventions is playing out around the dress and marriage choices of Anglo-Indian women.’
Stuart Corbridge, Professor/Doctor Geography & Regional Studies, London School of Economics

'Alison Blunt has defined and shaped this research area. Perceptive accounts of Anglo-Indian women's lives are woven through a scholarly analysis of community and identity in India and a wider diaspora through the twentieth century. She has produced an absorbing and refreshing book.'
Morag Bell, Professor of Cultural Geography, Loughborough University

"This is an accessible and clearly written book and would be useful for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses on cultural and postcolonial geographies"
The Geographical Journal

"Alison Blunt's latest offering Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home provides a rich and flavourful repast of the betwixt and in-between people of part-British and part-Indian descent... Blunt delivers a cogent, deeply historicized, and creatively theorized account of the cultural and spatial contours of Anglo-Indian domesticity."
The Journal of Black Canadian Studies

From the Publisher