Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World

Library Journal Reviews
July 15, 2006

by Nadine Cohen-Baker

Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the
World 2 vols. Springer 2005. 1242p. ed. by Melvin Ember & others.
index. ISBN 0-306-48321-1 . $475. REF

Diasporas and emigration lie at the heart of many vital world issues
past and present and therefore figure heavily in high school and
undergraduate research. While there are other reference works on the
topic, this two-volume work is unique in that it provides a worldwide,
comparative perspective on forced and voluntary mass migrations and
the refugee cultures they engender. Thirty-one diasporas, both well
known (e.g., Jewish, African, Palestinian, Armenian) and lesser known
(e.g., Chilean, British, Tuareg), are covered in Volume 1, as well
as 28 relevant topics (e.g., arts in diasporas, diaspora politics
and identity, and types of diaspora).

Volume 2 provides sociocultural descriptions of 58 diaspora
communities. Entries are authored by a team of international
academics and researchers and compiled and edited under the auspices
of Yale’s Human Relations Area Files, the preeminent international
research organization in the field of cultural anthropology. Given
the massive scope of the topic, this work is admirably wide-ranging
and inclusive. Diasporas that do not appear in section titles can
almost invariably be found in the index. Bottom Line One can always
quibble over the amount of attention given to specific topics (e.g.,
pogroms are only fleetingly mentioned in the chapter on the European
Jewish diaspora, and the term does not rate an entry in the glossary,
yet "horticulture" does), but this does not detract from the overall
quality of the work. While the majority of entries are written for the
general reader, a few of the topical entries may be a bit heavy going
for high school students. Nevertheless, this is highly recommended
for high school, college, and public libraries.- Nadine Cohen-Baker,
Univ. of Georgia, Athens