Academic Mission To organize, promote and administer interdisciplinary research among faculty and students on the social, political, historical, cultural, and economic experiences of people of African descent. The Center is also committed to facilitating rapport between people of African descent and other people of color as well as with the US population in general. To disseminate the research products and the ideas generated therein through a variety of mechanisms including, but not limited to working papers, edited volumes, special editions of journals, conferences and colloquia. To provide training in interdisciplinary scholarship for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. Public Mission One goal of the Center's research agenda is active engagement in shaping and implementing public policy. Therefore, the academic mission is complemented by a public mission. The Center's research agenda uniquely positions us to provide a critical synthesis of issues of race, social equality and justice. Furthermore, the broader public mission embraces a commitment to community collaboration. This collaboration can take on many forms, including: enhancing communication between the university and the community on issues of mutual concern; facilitating access for the community to university resources; participating in the development and implementation of community based educational and social initiatives; providing co-sponsorship for cultural activities on campus and in the community.

Assistant Professor Dept. of Anthropology and Sociology University College of Cape Breton

Taking its inspiration from the thought and action of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, this essay proposes a comparative analysis of "articulated sites of indigeneity." It explores the advantages and limitations of translating North Atlantic cultural studies approaches into island Pacific contexts. Stuart Hall's articulation theory is proposed as a partial way beyond the stand-offs created by recent debates around the "invention of tradition." The dialectic of indigenous and diasporic histories, roots and routes, is explored with regard to experiences of post- and neocolonial interdependence and pragmatic sovereignty.

This paper presents some of the reflections, projects and results around the topics of multiculturalism and migration attained by the Educational Technology Research Group at the University of Murcia, some of them integrated in the Interuniversity Cooperation programmes promoted by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI). We pretend to analyze how the appropriate use of ICT in educational contexts allows to maintain the cultural characteristics of a community, while helping at the same time to promote a better knowledge and acceptance of other cultures.

In this paper, I will examine the question of the impact of television on the acculturation of indigenous people. Many anthropologists see television as a major causal force in the loss of indigenous culture. Through a research questionnaire, I surveyed 20 Lakota Sioux, and followed this up with unstructured interviews. They were questioned about their TV viewing habits and their interest and involvement in their own culture. I also conducted ethnographic interviews with other reservation residents on their perceptions of television. My findings suggest that TV does not play a role in acculturation of the Lakota people, and that it could even play a role in cultural preservation. This further suggests that anthropologists may need to revise some of their assumptions about technology’s effects on indigenous people.

The media do not cause indigenous people to acculturate to the dominant society, and actually help them resist acculturation.

There’s a story behind this essay. David Silver, who runs the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, requested that I review Nakamura’s book for RCCS. I’d reviewed a couple of books for Silver before, and we were on friendly terms. I agreed, but the review was more negative than he expected. He at first agreed to publish it with a couple of revisions. I made them and resubmitted. Then Silver reversed himself at the last minute. I finally withdrew the essay when he requested yet another revision, with very fuzzy parameters, and no assurance that it would be accepted even then. He doubtless has his own explanation for the rejection, but I think it was a failure of nerve—this is sure to be a controversial piece and not everybody likes to take heat.

Myria Georgiou is currently researching the role of ethnic media consumption for the construction of ethnic identities. She has been examining the particular cases of the British Greek Cypriots in North London and is a doctoral student at the LSE. She has worked as a lecturer in Media and Communication and a journalist for 10 years, in Greece and Britain, for the BBC World Service. This essay is taken from her current research programme which is due for submission October 2000. Myria has completed her PhD.

Combine phenomenal increases in buying power, a growing population, and rising Internet penetration, and find a valuable demographic market. The African-American community is becoming a strong online presence, and creating its own unique identity.

It is arguable that the "gloom and doom" phase, particularly in North American Anthropology, could not have come at a more inopportune time.  The motivation in making this observation stems from the transformation of the realities that ethnographers research into more complex subjects, requiring new methods, broadened analytical frames, and taking us into new fora of communication and cultural and interpersonal interaction.  Ethnography has become more challenging and promises richer insights than ever before as a result of phenomena such as community building in cyberspace and the transnationalization of putatively local, Indigenous communities and issues.  In this paper I examine these subjects through reflections on my twenty-one months of field research among the Caribs of Trinidad (still underway), by moving back and forth between the description of a reconstructed indigenous ritual, and the field methods that are used in gathering the data necessary for the description.  In this ritual I see a renegotiation of symbolic capital that spans local, national, regional and global levels.

Despite the range of challenges in discussing race in online forums, for young people, participating in dedicated social networking sites is especially important because they can be useful vehicles for strengthening their cultural identities, for teaching them how to navigate both public and private dimensions of their racial lives, and for providing them access to a more globalized yet unfixed conversation about their community histories.

Peoples who at some stage in their history migrated from an original homeland and settled in a European country – that is, diasporic groups – is estimated to be between ten and 30 million across a total population in the European Union (EU) of about 380 million. In addition to that millions of members of the older diasporas – for instance, Jewish, Roma, Armenians – have been integral components of the European past and present. Almost five million out of the world’s 20 million refugees are hosted in Europe for longer or shorter periods.

This article engages with the theoretical premise of diasporicity - the local/regional specificities and workings of a given diaspora. Diasporicity is an attempt to extend the vocabulary of the concept of diaspora as an intervention against fixed ideas of race and nation.

The theory of ethnic relations has developed ad hoc on an interdisciplinary basis. It has dealt with ethnicity in small communities, larger ethnic groups or "ethnies", ethnic nations, modernising nation states, subordinate nationalisms, the establishment of empires, post- imperial situations, transnational migrant communities and the political problems facing modernising nation states in dealing both with subordinate nationalisms and with migrant ethnic minorities.

Talking Race and Cyberspace Interview with Lisa Nakamura By Geert Lovink

This paper focuses on the effects of social-structural factors (age, ethnicity and gender) on university students’ use of web based instruction - WBI. The study uses data from registration questionnaires of students at the Open University of Israel. During the period between 1995 and 2002 there has been a continuous increase in the proportion of students who use the Internet and e-mail for study purposes.

The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychological and cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting and high interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study will consist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin communities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews.

The concept of diaspora goes back in human history; it was initially used by the ancient Greeks to describe their spreading all over the then known-world. For the ancient Greeks diaspora signified migration and colonisation. For the Jews, the Armenians and the Africans who later adopted the term, the concept implied more painful meanings of loss of a Homeland, violent deterritorialisation and longing for return (Cohen, 1997). As much as the history of migration and settlement for these populations and for other populations that have moved across the globe has changed, so did the concept of diaspora

This paper presents some of the reflections, projects and results around the topics of multiculturalism and migration attained by the Educational Technology Research Group at the University of Murcia, some of them integrated in the Interuniversity Cooperation programmes promoted by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI). We pretend to analyze how the appropriate use of ICT in educational contexts allows to maintain the cultural characteristics of a community, while helping at the same time to promote a better knowledge and acceptance of other cultures.

Dr Asu Aksoy is a research associate at the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is currently working on Turkish migrant identity and the impact of Turkish satellite television for Tiurkish identity in Europe. This project is part of the ESRC's Transnational Communities Programme. For more on this Programme and the research visit Transnational Communities website at www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk.