Immigration and National Identities in Latin America
Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, an influx of Europeans, Asians, and Arabic speakers indelibly changed the face of Latin America. While many studies of this period focus on why the immigrants came to the region, this volume addresses how the newcomers helped construct national identities in the Caribbean, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. The essays, from some of the most respected scholars of migration history, examine the responses--some welcoming, some xenophobic--to the newcomers. The contributors also look at the lasting effects that Jewish, German, Chinese, Italian, and Syrian immigrants had on the economic, sociocultural, and political institutions. They explore themes of assimilation, race formation, and transnationalism to enrich our understanding not only of migration to Latin America but also of the impact of immigration on the construction of national identity.
Vikings in Brazil: the Iceland Brazil Association shaping Icelandic heritage
Abstract The Iceland Brazil Association (AISBRA) was established in 1996 by a group of Brazilians of Icelandic descent, more than 100 years after the first generation of immigrants settled in Brazil in the nineteenth century. The association was the first organisation in Brazil to collectively emphasise and celebrate Icelandic heritage. The association caters to a disparate group of people that had, in many cases, little knowledge about their historical links to Iceland. In spite of the fragmented activities of AISBRA since its establishment, the number of participants has increased, reflecting their growing interest in their Icelandic past. This paper examines how the members of Iceland Brazil Association produce their heritage independently, outside the state recognised heritage, within the Brazilian national context. We analyse how identities are re/shaped in new ways to engage with the past and how values from the past are extracted and turned into contemporary economic, social, and political values. This paper stresses heritage-making as a social imaginary used to define collective identity, which, while based on ancestry, also intersects with ideas of race and class. Representations of their Icelandic heritage allow the members of the Brazil Iceland Association to emphasise their ‘Europeanness’ and thus their associations with whiteness in contemporary post-colonial Brazil.
Mathematical Time and Physical Time in the Theory Of Relativity
In the Theory of Relativity time is an imaginary quantity that can not be observed; it is a multiplication of a number that indicates duration of material change and number i that is an imaginary number. i on the square is -1. Time i⁄t is a mathematical time that describes the speed and the duration of material change. In the Universe one can observe physical time only as a stream of material change. It is not that change run in physical time, change itself is physical time.. Distinction between imaginary mathematical time and visible physical time opens some new perspectives into interpretation of Theory of Relativity. c