Journal Article — Editor’s Note: Migrating Identities and Perspectives — by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

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This is an editor’s note to the Fall 2009 issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, on the theme “Migrating Identities and Perspectives: Latin America and the Caribbean in Local and Global Contexts.” The editor argues–reflecting on his own lack of a sense of identity as a migrant despite being one–that migrating back and forth from the personal to the global, from the international to the domestic and local, from one academic culture and disciplinary tradition to others, from the examination of one social dimension to others, etc., all require an openness to theories and praxes of difference that may come more easily to those who have experienced a physical migratory movement in their own lifetime across cultures, whether or not they have self-consciously internalized the label “migrant” or (in Persian) “mohajer” as an overt part of their multi-faceted identity.

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Abstract

This is an editor’s note to the Fall 2009 issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, on the theme “Migrating Identities and Perspectives: Latin America and the Caribbean in Local and Global Contexts.” The editor argues–reflecting on his own lack of a sense of identity as a migrant despite being one–that migrating back and forth from the personal to the global, from the international to the domestic and local, from one academic culture and disciplinary tradition to others, from the examination of one social dimension to others, etc., all require an openness to theories and praxes of difference that may come more easily to those who have experienced a physical migratory movement in their own lifetime across cultures, whether or not they have self-consciously internalized the label “migrant” or (in Persian) “mohajer” as an overt part of their multi-faceted identity. So, reflecting back, he can see that he has been a migrant or mohajer all along, but not in the narrower sense of a physical experience, but in a broader, multi-faceted, always ongoing and never-ending feeling of not belonging entirely to one culture, perspective, ideology, politics, etc., and being (or trying to always be) on the move. For the above reasons, the editor fully concurs with the apt introductory conclusion of the co-editors Jones and Mielants that issues explored by various contributors herein have much wider significance and implications than its regional focus on Latin America and the Caribbean may suggest. They made him also to realize what a mohajer he has been and continues to be all along, and could not envision any other state of being, subjectively speaking, more appropriate for a humanity that thirsts for integration and unity amid the violences of artificial fragmentations and static identity attachments inherited from the past.

Recommended Citation

Tamdgidi, Mohammad H. 2009. “Editor’s Note: Migrating Identities and Perspectives.” Pp. vii-x in Migrating Identities and Perspectives: Latin America and the Caribbean in Local and Global Contexts (Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge: Volume VII, Issue 4, 2009.) Belmont, MA: Okcir Press (an imprint of Ahead Publishing House).

The various editions of Migrating Identities and Perspectives: Latin America and the Caribbean in Local and Global Contexts can be ordered from the Okcir Store and are also available for ordering from all major online bookstores worldwide (such as Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and others).


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