{"id":2836,"date":"2009-11-06T02:21:34","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T02:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=2836"},"modified":"2011-01-19T02:53:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T02:53:58","slug":"i-define-my-own-identity-pacific-articulations-of-%e2%80%98race%e2%80%99-and-%e2%80%98culture%e2%80%99on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=2836","title":{"rendered":"I Define My Own Identity: Pacific Articulations of \u2018Race\u2019 and \u2018Culture\u2019on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/etn.sagepub.com\/cgi\/content\/abstract\/3\/4\/465\" target=\"_blank\"><em>I Define My Own Identity: Pacific Articulations of \u2018Race\u2019 and \u2018Culture\u2019on the Internet<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ethnicities<br \/>\nVol. 3, No. 4<br \/>\npp. 465-490<br \/>\n(2003)<br \/>\nDOI: 10.1177\/1468796803003004002<\/p>\n<p><strong>Marianne I. Franklin<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>University of Amsterdam<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Most of the participants in the internet discussion forums, the Kava Bowl and the Kamehameha Roundtable, herald from the South Pacific islands of Tonga and Samoa. These forums are part of a cluster of popular online meeting places for the \u2018Polynesian Diaspora\u2019 and other people from the Pacific Islands who live in the USA, Australia and New Zealand for the most part. They have been going strong since the mid-1990s, nearly as long as the worldwide web. One of the most recurring topics in the discussions is the nature of Tongan and\/or Samoan \u2018identity\u2019 and how this relates to \u2018living overseas\u2019. In these discussions, participants &#8211; many of whom are of \u2018mixed race\u2019 &#8211; exchange personal experiences, political opinions, emotional and intellectual expectations about the outer and inner limits of race\/ethnicity, and\/or culture in their everyday lives. This article reconstructs several of the more substantial debates on the meaning and implications of \u2018identity\u2019 that show how these generations of the postcolonial South Pacific Islands are (re)defining what it means to be Tongan, Samoan &#8211; Polynesian &#8211; in a diasporic context. Discussions revolve around several axes; the personal and political issues of race (ethnicity) as everyday embodiments; Tongan\/Samoan and Pacific Island cultures as negotiable rather than fixed practices; ways of turning colonialist categories for Pacific Island societies, such as \u2018Polynesian\u2019, into futurist tropes for communities who are often socioeconomically disadvantaged and discriminated against both \u2018at home\u2019 and \u2018overseas\u2019. As they argue, write, read, send emails and interact with one another on and offline, the creators of thousands of interwoven online texts over the years have been articulating \u2018race\u2019 and \u2018culture\u2019 on their own terms. They have been doing so in the public cyberspaces of the worldwide web, tracing, as they come and go, a nascent postcolonial politics of representation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I Define My Own Identity: Pacific Articulations of \u2018Race\u2019 and \u2018Culture\u2019on the Internet Ethnicities Vol. 3, No. 4 pp. 465-490 (2003) DOI: 10.1177\/1468796803003004002 Marianne I. Franklin University of Amsterdam Most of the participants in the internet discussion forums, the Kava Bowl and the Kamehameha Roundtable, herald from the South Pacific islands of Tonga and Samoa. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,8,4405,394],"tags":[986,994,999,1000],"class_list":["post-2836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-oceania","category-socialscience","tag-australia","tag-ethnicities","tag-marianne-i-franklin","tag-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}