From Social Servitude to Self Certitude: The Social Organization of Resistance of Racialized Diasporic Women

The relationship between migration incorporation and resistance is a quintessential problematic replete with controversy. As Arabs and Iranians migrate to a Western society, they are confronted by a whole new set of choices and experiences making the adaptation process intricate and challenging (Pedraza, 2000). Notwithstanding the voluminous literature on collective or community mobilization, relatively little scholarship, conceptually and substantively, exists that analyzes the individual self-empowerment of racialized diasporic women. This research seeks to bridge this gap by addressing the efficacy of the exigent need for critical analysis of the stages and processes of individual resistance. My study analyzes the different levels of accommodation / resistance racialized diasporic women especially from Iran use to negotiate various institutions of socializing control. Distance and engagement in terms of deference and defiance are constructed relationally to form the basis or precondition of a politically engaged critique (Bannerji, 1991). Informed by the confluence of anti-racist feminist, post- colonial, critical race theories and interpretive sociology, this dissertation argues that any analysis of the relationship of identity (consciousness) and culture (ideology) warrants a far more comprehensive inquiry into the mediating role of institutions of law, work, family, education and religion especially in reference to racialized diasporic women. This study of self-empowerment is theoretically informed by Fanons (2008:14) mimicry (Hawley, 2001), Bhabhas (1994) hybridity, Foucaults (1990) docile bodies, Gramscis (1971) naturalized common sense, Hill Collinss (1990) matrices of domination, Bannerjis (1995) relational/reflexive method and Hookss (1992) forms of representation. From a Weberian social action perspective (Gerth & Mills, 1946), the concept of movement provides a meaningfully compelling typology. Resistance, as a movement of the self, is socially organized according to clearly discrete stages and identifiable contingencies. Identity, institutions and ideologies impact on this movement, a movement from an imposed and internalized marginality towards a more empowered self- consciousness. Resistance, as disconnecting from oppressive life chances to reconnecting to more authentic self-awareness, is further contextualized in terms of responses to pernicious accommodations to conformity (getting and staying connected to the dominant Western culture). Methodologically, this study employs content analyses, a deep reading of post-colonial, anti- racist feminist and critical interpretive thought and a critical auto-ethnography.