Kinų bendruomenės ir kvartalai Vakaruose: kultūrų sąveika, koegzistavimas ar konfrontacija?

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Akultūracija; Dvikultūriškumas; Etninis anklavas; Etninė enklava; Imigrantai; Kinų kvartalai; Kinų miestas; Orientalizmas; Rasizmas; Acculturation; Biculturalism; Chinatown; Ethnic enclave; Immigrants; Orientalism; Racism; Rasism.

ENChinatown could be considered a universal and contradictory symbol of the Western imagination about the presence of the "other", or foreign culture and community in the midst of Western cities and communities. This imagination, innitialy formed in Nothern America after arrival of the first wave of Chinese immigrants and establishment of the first and the most famous Chinatowns, for a long time has been a part and parcel of the Orientalist discourse. It have influenced some theories of biculturalism and the interraction of the culture of origin and the one of dominant majority (or assimilative culture) as well. However, the processes of globalization and commercialization of cultures, the new waves and places of migration of Chinese to the Western countries have changed the landscape and the functions of Chinatowns. They were transformed from the marginalized "ghettos" or "ethnic enclaves" into the multicultural and transcultural spaces, thus challenging the Orientalistic treatment of Chinatown and view of Chinese immigrants as the "marginal humans".The article aims to elucidate the ideological reasons and theoretical basis in the treatment of the relations between Chinese (as immigrant, native) and Western (as host, dominant) culture, as it is reflected in the scholarly literature and popular media. The investigation aims to comprise few perspectives or interpretative discources, namely, the Orientalistic (or one of "Western domination"), sinocentric and transcultural (or global). In the first part, 1 will review the concept and stereotypical treatments of Chinatown, as well as their changes in the popular Western imagination, media and academical studies. In the second part I will discuss some anthropological investigations about the interraction of Chinese and Western cultures in the spheres of religion and Chinese/English language competences among Chinese immigrants, since those spheres are not only the most important for the maintenance and change of their cultural and ethnic identities, but also the revealing in particular the changing relations of Chinese and Western cultures. [From the publication]