Jorge Duany

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Jorge Duany (born January 1957) is a theorist on Caribbean transnational migration and nationalism. Since 2012, he has been director of the Cuban Research Institute and Professor of Anthropology at Florida International University, [1] and has held various teaching positions across the United States and Puerto Rico. His research focuses on concepts of nationalism, ethnicity, race, transnationalism, and migration within the Spanish Caribbean and between the Spanish Caribbean and the United States, particularly regarding Cuba and Puerto Rico. [2] [1]

Contents

Biography

Early life and education

Duany was born in Havana, Cuba, but at an early age moved to Panama and eventually to Puerto Rico, where he grew up. [1] He attended college in the United States, obtained a bachelor's degree in Psychology at Columbia University in 1978, and a Master's degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 1979. He earned his PhD in Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with a specialization in anthropology, in 1985. [1] He considers that his experience moving from Cuba to Puerto Rico and the United States made him more qualified for the study of transnational migration and comparison of the experiences of Caribbean peoples. [3]

Career

His college teaching career started in 1980 at the University of the Sacred Heart in Santurce, Puerto Rico, where he taught anthropology, psychology, and social sciences. He also served as teaching assistant for various years at the University of California, Berkeley and later as professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, among others. He has served on various editorial boards of academic journals such as Caribbean Studies, Cuban Studies, Latino Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. [1]

Theoretical Contributions

On Puerto Rican Identity

Duany's most popular and most cited work is his research on Puerto Rican transnational migration and diaspora relations. Michael R. Hall notes Duany's research is at the intersection of three major research themes of recent Puerto Rican studies: the fall of political nationalism, the rise of cultural nationalism, and the migration of Puerto Ricans between Puerto Rico and the United States. [4] One of Duany's most often noted contributions to theorization on Puerto Rican self-identity and migratory history is the inclusion of other migratory waves outside of Nuyoricans, like the Popular Democratic Party's contract farm labor programs in the 1950s and the more recent wave of middle-class Puerto Ricans to Orlando. [5] Another important contribution to note is his positive stance and insistence on the Nuyorican community and Puerto Ricans in the US as being both part of and beneficial to the Puerto Rican cultural identity. [4] [6] Thus, he coined the expression "nation on the move" to describe the constant flow of people, ideas, and cultural practices between Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland.

On Cuban and Dominican Identity and Diasporic Thought

Duany writes about Cuban diasporic identity as one seeking symbolic ties to the homeland, as a majority of the Cuban exiles are opposed to the current political situation of the island. [7] He notes Cubans in Miami often use their Catholicism as a way to deal with their displacement and emotional ties to the island, [8] as a replacement for the disconnect in the political and social realities of Castro's Cuba.

He notes that in the Dominican Republic, the ties between the homeland and the diaspora are much more important politically and economically. Major political contenders frequently depend upon funding and organizational support from Dominican Americans, [7] going as far as to promote dual nationality. Transnationalism in the Dominican Republic thus plays a major role in Dominican political and economic issues on the island and abroad, and migrants are much more connected and valued in the island’s politics in comparison to Cuba and Puerto Rico. [7]

Selected works

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Puerto Ricans</span> People from Puerto Rico or who identify culturally as Puerto Rican

Puerto Ricans are the people of Puerto Rico, the inhabitants, and citizens of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and their descendants.

Latin Americans are the citizens of Latin American countries.

Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico dates back to the beginning of European colonization of the Americas. Immigrants have moved from the territory of the Dominican Republic to its eastern neighbor, Puerto Rico, for centuries. Dominican immigrants have come from various segments of Dominican society, with varying levels of contribution at different times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Puerto Rican Spanish</span> Spanish language as characteristically spoken by Puerto Ricans

Puerto Rican Spanish is the variety of the Spanish language as characteristically spoken in Puerto Rico and by millions of people of Puerto Rican descent living in the United States and elsewhere. It belongs to the group of Caribbean Spanish variants and, as such, is largely derived from Canarian Spanish and Andalusian Spanish. Outside of Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican accent of Spanish is also commonly heard in the U.S. Virgin Islands and many U.S. mainland cities like Orlando, New York City, Philadelphia, Miami, Tampa, Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago, among others. However, not all stateside Puerto Ricans have knowledge of Spanish. Opposite to island-born Puerto Ricans who primarily speak Spanish, many stateside-born Puerto Ricans primarily speak English, although many stateside Puerto-Ricans are fluent in Spanish and English, and often alternate between the two languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dominican Americans</span> Americans of Dominican (Dominican Republic) birth or descent

Dominican Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Dominican Republic. The word may refer to someone born in the United States of Dominican descent or to someone who has migrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. As of 2021, there were approximately 2.4 million people of Dominican descent in the United States, including both native and foreign-born. They are the second largest Hispanic groups in the Northeastern region of the United States and the fifth-largest Latin American group, after Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorans and Cubans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Afro–Puerto Ricans</span> Racial or ethnic group in Puerto Rico with African ancestry

Afro-Puerto Ricans are Puerto Ricans who are of Black African descent. The history of Puerto Ricans of African descent begins with free African men, known as libertos, who accompanied the Spanish Conquistadors in the invasion of the island. The Spaniards enslaved the Taínos, many of whom died as a result of new infectious diseases and the Spaniards' oppressive colonization efforts. Spain's royal government needed laborers and began to rely on African slavery to staff their mining and fort-building operations. The Crown authorized importing enslaved West Africans. As a result, the majority of the African peoples who entered Puerto Rico were the result of the Atlantic slave trade, and came from many different cultures and peoples of the African continent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of Puerto Rico</span> Result of a number of international and indigenous influences

The culture of Puerto Rico is the result of a number of international and indigenous influences, both past and present. Modern cultural manifestations showcase the island's rich history and help to create an identity which is uniquely Puerto Rican - Taíno, Spanish, African, and North American.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stateside Puerto Ricans</span> Ethnic group and nationality and citizens of Puerto Rico in the US

Stateside Puerto Ricans, also ambiguously known as Puerto Rican Americans, or Puerto Ricans in the United States, are Puerto Ricans who are in the United States proper of the 50 states and the District of Columbia who were born in or trace any family ancestry to the unincorporated US territory of Puerto Rico.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caribbean</span> Region to the east of Central America

The Caribbean is a subregion of the Americas that includes the Caribbean Sea and its islands, some of which are surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some of which border both the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean; the nearby coastal areas on the mainland are often also included in the region. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America.

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Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and scholar. Her work is focused on a comparative exploration of coloniality, primarily in Puerto Rico and the United States, with special attention given to the intersections between race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and politics. She is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University in New York City. She has also contributed to the Huffington Post, El Diario/La Prensa, and 80 Grados, and since 2008 has served as a Global Expert for the United Nations Rapid Response Media Mechanism. She is one of the best-known Puerto Rican lesbian artists currently living in the United States.

Caribbean immigration to New York City has been prevalent since the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This immigration wave has seen large numbers of people from Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others, come to New York City in the 20th and 21st centuries. Caribbeans are concentrated in the Bronx, from 211th Street to 241st Street and Gun Hill Road. There are also Caribbean communities in Brooklyn, especially in the neighborhoods of Flatbush and Prospect Heights.

The term Caribbean culture summarizes the artistic, musical, literary, culinary, political and social elements that are representative of Caribbean people all over the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New diaspora</span>

A neo/new diaspora is the displacement, migration, and dispersion of individuals away from their homelands by forces such as globalization, neoliberalism, and imperialism. Such forces create economic, social, political, and cultural difficulties for individuals in their homeland that forces them to displace and migrate.

<i>Blanqueamiento</i> "Whitening" of a race, such as marrying a white person so as to have lighter-skinned children

Blanqueamiento in Spanish, or branqueamento in Portuguese, is a social, political, and economic practice used in many post-colonial countries in the Americas and Oceania to "improve the race" towards a supposed ideal of whiteness. The term blanqueamiento is rooted in Latin America and is used more or less synonymously with racial whitening. However, blanqueamiento can be considered in both the symbolic and biological sense. Symbolically, blanqueamiento represents an ideology that emerged from legacies of European colonialism, described by Anibal Quijano's theory of coloniality of power, which caters to white dominance in social hierarchies. Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter-skinned individual to produce lighter-skinned offspring.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Jorge Duany". Cuban Research Institute, Florida International University. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  2. ↑ "Jorge Duany". Election SOS. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  3. ↑ Stevens-Arroyo, Anthony M. "Book Review of: BLURRED BORDERS: TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION BETWEEN THE HISPANIC CARIBBEAN AND THE UNITED STATES". Centro Journal.
  4. 1 2 Rivera, Angel Rodriguez; Duany, Jorge (November 2003). "The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States". Contemporary Sociology. 32 (6): 718. doi:10.2307/1556654. ISSN   0094-3061. JSTOR   1556654.
  5. ↑ Chomsky, Aviva (September 2012). "Blurred borders: Transnational migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States by Jorge Duany". Latino Studies. 10 (3): 417–419. doi:10.1057/lst.2012.21. ISSN   1476-3435. S2CID   144823218.
  6. ↑ Perez, Ricardo (April 2019). "Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know ‐ by Duany, Jorge". Bulletin of Latin American Research. 38 (2): 237–238. doi:10.1111/blar.12958. ISSN   0261-3050.
  7. 1 2 3 Hoffnung-Garskof, Jesse (2014). "Jorge Duany, Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. xv + 284 pp. (Paper US$29.95)". New West Indian Guide. 88 (3–4): 375–377. doi: 10.1163/22134360-08803034 . ISSN   1382-2373.
  8. ↑ Aguirre, Benigno E.; Cobas, Jose A.; Dunany, Jorge (May 1999). "Cubans in Puerto Rico: Ethnic Economy and Cultural Identity". Contemporary Sociology. 28 (3): 331. doi:10.2307/2654180. ISSN   0094-3061. JSTOR   2654180.
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