Ethnic Attachments and Transnational Loyalties: Romanian Heritage Festivals in the United States
Ethnic Attachments and Transnational Loyalties: Romanian Heritage Festivals in the United States

Summary/Abstract: My study explores the construction and reflection of social and cultural issues salient for the existence of the Romanian community in the United States in Romanian heritage festivals. It analyzes the strategies employed by Romanian-Americans to make sense of their own ethnic identity, while organizing and participating in such festivals. To create and maintain these discursive formations of the Romanian ethos in the United States, the Romanian communities in the United States make sense of and use (references to) emotions or memories in interaction. While looking at how heritage festivals produce versions of Romanian ethnicity, this essay analyzes the extent to which the changing social and cultural contents of Romanian heritage festivals, enacted and performed annually, shape the construction of the Romanian- American collective identity. It also touches on how the concept of heritage is employed by Romanian heritage festivals as a tool for the assertion of grassroots economic and cultural agencies and how festivals can be construed as sites of competition among communities and ethnic organizations, striving to maximize their access to resources, status and representation.

• Details
• Contents