Kinship & diasporas in international affairs /

Shain (Georgetown Univ. and Tel Aviv Univ.) is an influential scholar of the role of exiles and diasporas in international politics. This volume combines previously published but revised articles with new material to offer an analysis of the impact of diasporas both on the homelands from which exiles emigrated and on the foreign policies of the new homelands in which exiles settled. Shain's analysis of the impact of diasporic funds, ideas, and actions on the ways in which the parameters of national identity are reformulated in homelands is an important contribution. His discussion of national identity (on whose nature and definition there is no consensus in the several disciplines concerned with it) is also very helpful, though oddly embedded within a discussion of diasporic financial flows. The book offers a good discussion of the ways in which strong diasporas, such as the Jewish and Armenian, can act in ways that complicate the tasks of those who formulate their originating homelands' foreign policy. A brief appendix points to ways in which Israel's sense of responsibility to the security of Jews in diaspora may result in novel forms of action. A valuable addition to undergraduate collections and indispensible for research institutions. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All undergraduate, graduate, and research collections. K. Tololyan Wesleyan University