Iconographies of diaspora: refracted landscapes and textures of memory of South Asian women in London

Diasporic journeys of South Asian women are examined in this thesis as a record of British Asian oral history and migration. Biographical mapping is used as a means to interrogate the complex diasporic relationship between national identity and race. The thesis seeks to investigate the relationships between the racialised body and the experience of dislocation lived through by South Asian women in London. Identity, memory and landscape are core themes that run through the thesis. Remembered landscapes and environmental memories are points of identification. These environments and textures of memory have a multisensory nature. These in turn are refracted as icons in the visual and material cultures of the home. Home as a site of belonging becomes a space through which these women express their relationship with citizenship in Britain, their experience of life in the colony, and their experience of rupture with their birthplace. Relationships between various lands, landscapes, social and cultural iconographies are revealed through a study of cultures in the home. Iconographies of "home" are further investigated in the thesis through a visual project conducted with landscape artist Melanie Carvalho, and the study group. A set of 17 canvases have been painted from the women's descriptions of "home". These are, in turn, analysed as visual representations of remembered, idealised icons of intimate landscapes. This results in an examination of the multiple axes within which the diasporic group practises identification, and through which they are themselves configured. The research study uses a process of grounded theorising by examining biographies, oral histories, and investigating visual and material cultures in the home. These are treated as triggers of identification which operate as metonymical devices of negotiation, resistance and placing

‘Big Brother welcomes you’: exploring innovative methods for research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments.

This article discusses some of the challenges involved in conducting research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments. We respond to the need to develop new child-centred research techniques which move beyond existing power relations among children and adults by anchoring our approach in the idea of mystery. The paper reports on research utilising a mixed-method design which includes one new technique – the Big Brother diary room. We discuss the unpredictable nature of the fieldwork, reflect on the ‘messiness’ of the research process, and critically evaluate our own research design

Rancière and the re-distribution of the sensible: The artist Rosanna Raymond, dissensus and postcolonial sensibilities within the spaces of the museum

Through aesthetics we can articulate affective politics and demonstrate new ways of ‘doing’ progressive politics (Rancière, 2004).The paper explores the politics and practice of dissensus, within the museum with artist Rosanna Raymond. The paper argues that the museum space when critiqued through a postcolonial perspective and artistic practice, can be a vehicle for political change. Using Ranciere's account of 'politics' the paper outlines how a 'redistribution of the sensible' might be possible, that is inclusive of Maori space-time, self-determined cultural values and geoaesthetics

The geographies of cultural geography II: visual culture

Geography is a visual discipline and as such holds a complex relationship with visual culture. In the last two decades the collaborations between geographers and artists has grown exponentially. In an era where public impact and engagement are politically encouraged, there is a risk of collapsing the differences between visual culture as a discipline and the visual as an accessible mode of research communication. This paper reviews the ways in which collaborations between geographers and visual artists have taken shape, and argues for a careful and respectful engagement between them

Food as a matter of being : experiential continuity in transnational lives

This chapter is based on the research project “The Transnational Life of Objects: Material Practices of Migrants’ Being and Belonging,” which promotes a broad interest in how objects constitute transnational social spaces established by migrants and by their counterparts who stayed behind. The question of how people make choices, exercise agency and create continuity in conditions of transnational migration is pursued, with the focus on objects and material practices. Deliberations around the meanings of “the taste of home” are plentiful in the intersected fields of food, migration and material culture studies, and tend to focus on identity and memory. Indeed, food can be interpreted as a material expression of belonging, status or family history, or of social and cultural difference. Food can be central to migrants’ creation of places of remembrance or pride, mourning or celebration, privacy or symbolic communion, or economic connection with the relatives who stayed behind. As the negotiation of belonging often entails communication through objects, food parcels are involved in multifaceted quests and attempts to belong. However, by presenting and discussing some ethnographic examples of sensuous aspects of transnational interconnections in situations of physical separation, I promote a complementary approach that centres on the materiality of food and food-related objects and practices