Diasporic communication: Transnational cultural practices and communicative spaces

This article follows the process of development of academic debate and interest in the concept of diaspora and attempts to situate it within Current analyses of postmodernity and globalisation as well as within developments in cultural studies and social anthropology. Drawing upon the theoretical conceptualisations of diasporas within these fields, the article is suggesting that diasporic cultural practices constitute ways of "imagination," of "institution" of "spaces" that often extend beyond the boundaries of place, of articulation of "imagined" and ''encountered" community and of senses of belonging that straddle the "local versus global" and divide and, in the process, redefine locality and "the global." Crucial in such processes is the development of the "diasporic media spaces" that are increasingly in evidence in transnational and local settings. The article suggests that such spaces of negotiation and exchange are increasingly becoming sites where conflicting claims of belonging as well as common frameworks of identity and solidarity coexist and become articulated.