This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Banerjea, K. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Sounds of Whose Underground?

The Fine Tuning of Diaspora in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The piece contrasts the functioning realities of the British Asian diaspora - music, violence, sex, food, life - with the institutionalized production of knowledge about that diaspora, in particular as regards its expressive cultures. It focuses on the emergence of the so-called `Asian Underground' within a contemporary Benjaminian context of `mechanical reproduction' and explores the opportunistic relationship between middle-class elites and their efforts to appropriate a certain radical chic. It goes on to suggest that this is a deliberate process, which not only absolves a voyeuristic whiteness of its hegemonic associations, but also allows the Asian middle class to conjure out of sight class differentials, even as it struggles with its own dependency on the cultural lifeblood of the urban poor or the semiotically disadvantaged.

Key Words: class • clubbing • fetishization • mainstream • multiculturalism • orientalism

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 17, No. 3, 64-79 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/02632760022051220


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. Murthy A South Asian American diasporic aesthetic community?: Ethnicity and New York City's 'Asian electronic music' scene Ethnicities, June 1, 2007; 7(2): 225 - 247. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. Bose Difference and exclusion at work in the club culture economy International Journal of Cultural Studies, December 1, 2005; 8(4): 427 - 444. [Abstract] [PDF]

				J. Connell and C. Gibson World music: deterritorializing place and identity Progress in Human Geography, June 1, 2004; 28(3): 342 - 361. [Abstract] [PDF]

				P. Sweetman Everything Starts with an E: Fashions in Theory, Fashion Theory and the Cultural Studies Debate Theory Culture Society, August 1, 2001; 18(4): 135 - 142. [PDF]