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Reviews
| Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities. By Pawan Dhingra. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. xi + 316 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, appendix, and index. $21.95 (paper).
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The sociologist Pawan Dhingra opens his book with the defining question, "How does an individual make sense of and handle his or her multiple, sometimes conflicting identities?" (p. 1) In this thoughtful and well-written work, Dhingra investigates how Indian and Korean Americans in Dallas, Texas, simultaneously distinguish between and reconcile their ethnic, racial, and American identities in daily life. Though an expansive body of sociological literature has analyzed many perspectives of acculturation and assimilation, few studies focus on these processes as experienced by Asian Americans in the South. Even fewer studies juxtapose the experiences and thoughts of Korean Americans with those of Indian Americans. Though the two groups differ in appearance, religion, and first-generational occupation patterns, Dhingra finds that members of the second generation are similar in both educational and labor-market success. While acknowledging distinctions between the two groups, Dhingra focuses on the areas of overlap, including adaptation and race relations. |
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After explaining why he opted to examine second-generation Indian and Korean Americans, Dhingra divides the remainder of the book into two major parts. Chapters 3 and 4 reveal the development of ethnic and racial identities; chapters 5 through 7 consider the actors' identities in the social spaces of work, home, leisure, and civil society. Moving from micro- to macrolevel forces, Dhingra first discusses the history and demographics of the two communities nationally and locally. Next, he addresses second-generation identity formation in both ethnic and racial frameworks. Dhingra then places actors in social domains to illustrate how they manage their multiple identities. He writes that "their daily identity choices and practices depended largely on the differing cultural codes of the domains of work, home, leisure, and civil society" (p. 226). |
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The concept of "overlap" is fundamental to the central argument of this book. According to previous research, individuals separate their identities between the public and private spheres, moving between identities as necessitated by context. Dhingra asserts that this is not always the case. Instead, actors negotiate their ethnic identities, sometimes concurrently, in what Dhingra refers to as "lived hybridity" (p. 8). Cleanly separating ethnic roles at all times is too simplistic, so actors incorporate "elements of their ethnic, racial, and American lifestyles" (p. 8). The identities that second-generation actors form are layered and complex in ways that are captured by Dhingra's theory of lived hybridity. Rather than situating Asian Americans as marginal to the dominant culture, Dhingra argues that Asian Americans are "margins in the mainstream" (p. 2). That is, they are a part of the same social space yet separated from it. Ultimately, second-generation Korean Americans and Indian Americans neither shield their ethnic identities nor develop a "reactive identity," but "bring their various identities together in daily life" (p. 231). |
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Occasionally, further elaboration of additional topics would have been helpful. For example, though Dhingra draws parallels between the Korean American and Indian American populations, he could have paid more attention to the consequences of historical differences—for instance, Korean immigrants as petty entrepreneurs versus educated, professional Indian immigrants. In addition, how does India's recent success in the information technology sector and its subsequent recognition as a global force impact the identity formation of Indian Americans? Though additional details may occasionally have helped, Managing Multicultural Lives is nevertheless essential to students and scholars of sociology, race and ethnic studies, and Asian American history. In light of the dearth of literature on Korean Americans and especially on Indian Americans in southern cities, Dhingra's perspectives offer fresh insights while expanding upon a growing topic of scholarly interest.
Uzma Quraishi
University of Houston
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