A Promised Land in the Diaspora: Christian Religion, Social Memory, and Identity among Banabans in Fiji

Abstract

The conventional understanding of diaspora was very much pegged to the forced emigration, dispersal, and exile of Jews living outside Palestinea concept that is laden with religious connotations. More recently, however, a somewhat expanded diaspora concept has been developed that is becoming the analytic instrument of choice for a broad band of movements, migration processes, transnational connections, and multiple identifications. Several authors have remarked that, ever since this new diaspora concept emerged, religion has rarely been given due consideration (Kokot, Tololyan, and Alfonso 2004, 6). Although quite a number of more recent studies of diaspora would seem to disprove this claim (e.g., Cohen 1997, 1999; Gilroy 1993; Gross, McMurray, and Swedenburg 1996; Pulis 1999; Tweed 1997; Vertovec 1995, 2000; Werbner 2002), certainly there is something to the idea.