Registration is now open for `Diaspora, Empire and the Formation of a Lusophone World`
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Registration is now open for a workshop entitled Diaspora, Empire and the Formation of a Lusophone World, to be held on 25-26 September 2008. The workshop is organised by the Oxford Research Network on Government in Africa (OReNGA) and the Instituto Camões Center at the University of Oxford.
The workshop will be held at the Department of Politics and International Relations in Manor Road, Oxford.
`Our hypothesis for the workshop is that there is a greater connection between empire and diaspora than has been acknowledged so far. From empire to the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), we would like to put forward, and test, the ideas (a) that diaspora have played an important role in the making of the Third Portuguese imperial culture, and (b) that diaspora are playing today a role in the making of a supra-national Lusophone world through its dispersion, network and culture, and (c) that there might be a link between the diaspora of the former colonial world, the Portuguese imperial culture and today`s attempt to create a supra-national Portuguese-speaking identity.
Reality is of course more complex than the analytical categories of migration studies and imperial history suggest and our hypothesis is probably too crude to be accurate. Still, we feel it is important to ask about the role of diaspora in the making of an imperial culture and ask to what degree a past marked by a culture such as this (based on a Catholic identity, a certain culture of politics, food or football) might still influence the individual and collective memory of these diasporas`.
Eric Morier-Genoud & Luisa Pinto Teixeira, 5 June 2008
