Transnational Modernity/Coloniality: Linking Punjab’s Canal Colonies, Migration, and Settler Colonialism for Critical Solidarities in Canada

This paper offers a transnational analytical framework to inform contemporary anti-racist solidarity building in what is now called Canada by engaging with migration, colonialism, and indigeneity. In particular, I trace the historical entanglements of modernity/coloniality from the British Empire’s Canal Colonies project in Punjab to colonial policies in what is now called British Columbia while centring land and Indigenous sovereignty.

The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930

This book takes a fascinating look at the iconic figure of the Native American in the British cultural imagination from the Revolutionary War to the early twentieth century, and examining how Native Americans regarded the British, as well as how they challenged their own cultural image in Britain during this period. The book shows how the image of the Indian was used in English literature and culture for a host of ideological purposes, and reveals its crucial role as symbol, cultural myth, and stereotype that helped to define British identity and its attitude toward the colonial world. Through close readings of writers such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and D. H. Lawrence, the book traces how the figure of the Indian was received, represented, and transformed in British fiction and poetry, travelogues, sketches, and journalism, as well as theater, paintings, and cinema. It describes the experiences of the Ojibwa and Ioway who toured Britain with George Catlin in the 1840s; the testimonies of the Indians in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; and the performances and polemics of the Iroquois poet Pauline Johnson in London. The book explores transatlantic conceptions of race, the role of gender in writings by and about Indians, and the complex political and economic relationships between Britain and America. The book argues that native perspectives are essential to our understanding of transatlantic relations in this period and the development of transnational modernity.

Finding God through Yoga

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952), a Hindu missionary to the United States, wrote one of the world’s most highly acclaimed spiritual classics, Autobiography of a Yogi, which was first published in 1946 and continues to be one of the best-selling spiritual philosophy titles of all time. In this critical biography, David Neumann tells the story of Yogananda’s fascinating life while interpreting his position in religious history, transnational modernity, and American culture. Beginning with Yogananda’s spiritual investigations in his native India, Neumann tells how this early “global guru” emigrated to the United States in 1920 and established his headquarters, the Self-Realization Fellowship, in Los Angeles, where it continues today. Preaching his message of Hindu yogic philosophy in a land that routinely sent its own evangelists to India, Yogananda was fueled by a religious nationalism that led him to conclude that Hinduism could uniquely fill a spiritual void in America and Europe. At the same time, he embraced a growing belief that Hinduism’s success outside South Asia hinged on a sincere understanding of Christian belief and practice. By “universalizing” Hinduism, Neumann argues, Yogananda helped create the novel vocation of Hindu yogi evangelist, generating fresh connections between religion and commercial culture in a deepening American religious pluralism.

Malay women, non-Western soap operas and watching competencies

Soap opera is a potent cultural site for Malay women to imagine the meanings of modernity. Initially the Malaysian government promoted non-Western soap operas to circulate the state’s vision of alternative Asian-style modernities. Now the authorities have voiced a concern that some images and discourses of transnational modernity articulated even in non-Western soaps pose a threat to the cultural integrity of Malay women. This paper studies the significance of non-Western soaps to an understanding of gendered expectations and the progressive re-territorialization of the socio-political order in the context of an ethos of mediatized cultural globalization. Our referent is patriarchal Islamist state Malaysia. We conduct an empirical case study exploring Malay Muslim women’s negotiation and understanding of non-Western soap operas in Malaysia. Results from a series of guided in-depth interviews with 12 rural and urban Malay women enable us to understand how they negotiate their position as viewers of these non-Western soaps, given the criticism about the supposed immorality of these programs. We argue that Malay women act as strategic audiences who mobilize sophisticated viewing tactics that we call ‘watching competencies’ to negotiate the pleasures and potential conflicts of their access to non-Western soaps. This research indicates that Malay women are neither passive, vulnerable consumers of foreign soap, nor easily manipulated by those who claim authority; rather, they confidently assert their autonomy as consumer-citizens of a modern Islamic state.