The forthcoming article “Grounding the diasporic turn in political theory: Meta-commitment, transnationalism, and political obligation” by Kai Yui Samuel Chan and Anna Closas is summarized by the author(s) below.
The study of diaspora has surged across the social sciences over the past few decades. Curiously, this trend has not spread to the field of political theory. While specific diasporas are occasionally mentioned, diaspora as a broader subject remains largely absent from political theory discussions. This leaves us without the necessary tools to address important normative puzzles that frequent diasporas. Consider the rapidly growing Hong Kong diaspora. The political events in Hong Kong over the past decades have induced not only new waves of emigration but also led many who previously identified as Chinese to now embrace a Hong Kong identity. Should the Hong Kong diaspora be counted as a subgroup within the Chinese diaspora, and if not, how does one distinguish between the members of the Hong Kong and Chinese diaspora? Given the sharp political divides among overseas Hong Kongers, do those who support the Hong Kong Special Administration Region government belong to the same community as those who oppose it? Similarly, if these overseas Hong Kongers, diffused across different countries, are committed to radically different activities – from promoting Hong Kong food and preserving the Cantonese language to advocating for regime change in the city – on what grounds, if any, can they hold each other answerable?
In their paper, Chan and Closas provide the grounds to answer these questions. They identify that the problem has to do with the ontological status of diasporas: since diasporas are neither bounded geographically nor constituted institutionally, we seem to lack the usual grounds to ascertain what kind of group or political community diasporas are, and consequently, to determine which normative and political questions are relevant for diasporas. To overcome this impasse, Chan and Closas develop a meta-commitment framework: individuals constitute a diasporic community by expressing, through disparate practices and narratives, a joint meta-commitment to act as part of that community. Meta-commitments do not require that parties have substantial agreements beyond mutually recognizing each other as part of and contributing to the same community.
The language of commitment implies obligation, which invites the question as to what diasporic members owe to each other. They contend that the meta-commitment to acting as part of a diasporic community entails minimally an obligation of answerability to one’s fellow diasporic members: members owe each other an answer as to how their choices relate to the future of the diaspora. Going back to the case of the Hong Kong diaspora to illustrate the purchase of this framework, once we establish that there is indeed a meta-commitment that makes up the Hong Kong diaspora, then, as long as the otherwise disparate groups recognize each other as sharing this meta-commitment, they have an obligation to answer to each other. For example, they must explain why preserving Cantonese matters to the diaspora and how it impacts their identity. Beyond serving as the groundwork for a diasporic turn in political theory, this framework also contributes to transnational political theory by explaining the conditions under which transnational relations generate obligations.
About the Author(s): Kai Yui Samuel Chan is an Assistant Professor in Politics at Occidental College and Anna Closas is a political theory PhD student at UC Berkeley focusing on Contemporary Political Theory. Their research “Grounding the diasporic turn in political theory: Meta-commitment, transnationalism, and political obligation” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.
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