ABSTRACT
Although the concept of a diaspora has been recognized in the social sciences for about 40 years, its preconceptual history is much longer and not very well known. Despite some thorough studies devoted to either the whole period (Dufoix 2017) or only a part of it (Baumann 2000; Edwards 2001; Krings 2003; Tromp 1998; Van Unnik 1993), a few factual errors keep being transmitted from text to text, thus impeding an accurate vision of the different processes that uses of the word have undergone historically. First, diaspora is undoubtedly a Greek word (διασπορά) encompassing the idea not only of ‘dispersion’ but also of ‘distribution’ or ‘diffusion’, and, as such, does not carry a negative connotation. Second, in Greek it has never been used to describe Greek colonization in the Mediterranean. Third, it is not a translation of the Hebrew words galuth or golah, meaning ‘exile’ or ‘community in exile’. In this chapter, I address the evolution of the uses of the word from its Greek origins to the mid-1970s when it started to become an academic concept.
