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Transnational America : Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Next Wave: New Directions in Womens Studies)
Transnational America Feminisms Diasporas Neoliberalisms - Next Wave: New Directions in Womens Studies Author:Inderpal Grewal In Transnational America, Inderpal Grewal examines how the circulation of people, goods, social movements, and rights discourses during the 1990s created transnational subjects shaped by a global American culture. Rather than simply framing the United States as an imperialist nation-state that imposes unilateral political power in the wor... more »ld, Grewal analyzes how the concept of America functions as a nationalist discourse beyond the boundaries of the U.S. by disseminating an ideal of democratic citizenship through consumer practices. She develops her argument by focusing on South Asians in India and the United States.
Grewal combines a postcolonial perspective with social and cultural theory to argue that contemporary notions of gender, race, class, and nationality are linked to earlier histories of colonization. Through an analysis of Mattel’s sales of Barbie dolls in India, she discusses the consumption of American products by middle-class Indian women newly empowered with financial means created by India’s market liberalization. Considering the fate of asylum-seekers, Grewal looks at how a global feminism in which female refugees are figured as human rights victims emerged from a distinctly Western perspective. She reveals in the work of three novelists who emigrated from India to the United StatesBharati Mukherjee, Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni, and Amitav Ghosha concept of Americanness linked to cosmopolitanism. In Transnational America Grewal makes a powerful, nuanced argument that the United States must be understoodand studiedas a dynamic entity produced and transformed both within and far beyond its territorial boundaries.« less