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Yong Chen, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900–1936, Journal of American History, Volume 89, Issue 3, December 2002, Pages 1089–1090, https://doi.org/10.2307/3092437
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Adam McKeown's recent study of the Chinese in Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii is a welcome and important addition to the scholarship of the Chinese diaspora. Intellectually bold and theoretically informed, it offers a blunt critique of what the author calls the “nationbased approaches” of current scholarship and demonstrates convincingly the promise of a transnational and comparative approach in bringing coherence to a fragmented field. The author's insights are particularly helpful for bridging the long-standing gap between two groups of scholars, one trained in Chinese history and the other in Asian American studies.
Chapter 1 of the book outlines the theoretical framework, in which McKeown argues that we should step out of our nation-based disciplinary boundaries and treat Chinese migration as a “global field.” Chapters 2 and 3 take a comparative look at the Chinese diaspora, examining immigration laws and Chinese migration patterns from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. The conditions in South China are discussed in chapter 4. Chapters 5 through 7 are focused on the Chinese communities in Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii, respectively.
