Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Migration. - Review - book review

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2000 by Nancy L. Eiesland

Finally, the volume provides useful descriptions of disagreements among the researchers: (1) the extent to which previous immigrations to the US and the post-1965 immigrations could be understood as similar; (2) the relative importance of race as a status characteristic among immigrants; and (3) the divergent interpretation of immigration as relatively permanent settlement, or as transnationalism, i.e., multiple connections between host and home countries or indeterminancy of settlement. The delineation of the conflicts is useful in that they provide the reader with multiple interpretive lenses for examining the data. They also allow the researchers to offer an alternative generalization to the one favored by Warner in the introduction. For example, Elizabeth McAlister highlights the role both of race and transnational migration in a group of Vodou and Catholic believers in East Harlem as they construct religious rituals that represent the complexity of their identities. Prema Kurien's research among Indian Hindus in and around Los Angeles underscores the necessity of grasping the politics of India in order to understand the fissures and collaborations experienced by US Indian Hindus.

Gatherings in diaspora is a complicated book with multiple agendas, but careful readers will benefit from the complexity and find a wealth of material for considering some of the most vital questions facing us as sociologists of religion today. How can we both address the particularity of religious groups and acknowledge the need for and limits of generalization? What constellation of theories do we need for interpreting the vast numbers of religious gatherings among new immigrants and others in the US today? We are in the debt of the editors and contributors for grappling with this complexity and offering us this fine book for further reflection. It is a volume that I have taught with excellent response at the undergraduate, seminary, and graduate levels.

(1.) Abu-Lughod, L. 1991. Writing against culture. In Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present, 13 7-162. Santa Fe, NM: School of America Research Press.

(2.) Glover, S. 1999. Casting a critical eye on Church of Castoffs. Los Angeles Times, 1 February A1, A15.