Making Majorities

by Gladney, Dru C.

• ISBN13: 9780804730488
• ISBN10: 0804730482
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-10-01
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

Majorities are made, not born. This book argues that there are no pure majorities in the Asia-Pacific region, broadly defined, nor in the West. Numerically, ethnically, politically, and culturally, societies make and mark their majorities under specific historical, political, and social circumstances. This position challenges Samuel Huntington's influential thesis that civilizations are composed of more or less homogeneous cultures, suggesting instead that culture is as malleable as the politics that informs it. The fourteen contributors to this volume argue that emphasis on minority/majority rights is based on uncritically accepted ideas of purity, numerical superiority, and social consensus. Emphases upon multiculturalism can become ways of masking serious political, ethnic, and class differences merely in terms of cultural difference, and affirmative-action policies can isolate, identify, and stigmatize minorities as often as they homogenize, unify, and naturalize majorities. This book analyzes how minorities are made and marked across cultural, regional, and national boundaries from Hawai'i to Turkey, a region that encompasses extraordinarily diverse populations and political developments and that is often regarded as composed of relatively homogeneous majorities. This volume details discourses of majority and minority, allowing exploration of a number of questions of more general concern in the humanities and social sciences, including: How does one become officially "ethnic" in many states in Asia? How are understandings of majority and minority cultures created and shaped in specific political and historical contexts? How does the state shape the way people think of themselves? How do people resist, transform, and appropriate these official representations?

Table of Contents

Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific	p. v
Preface	p. vii
Contributors	p. xiii
Introduction Making and Marking Majorities	p. 1
Japaneseness	p. 11
Culturalism, Racialism, and Internationalism in the Discourse on Japanese Identity	p. 13
A Conceptual Model for the Historical Relationship Between the Self and the Internal and External Others the Agrarian Japanese, the Ainu, and the Special-Status People	p. 31
Koreanness	p. 53
Who Speaks for Korean Shamans When Shamans Speak of the Nation?	p. 55
Constructing and Deconstructing Koreanness""""""""	p. 73
Chineseness	p. 93
	p. 95
Clashed Civilizations? Muslim and Chinese Identities in the Prc	p. 106
Malayness	p. 133
Bureaucratic Management of Identity in a Modern State Malayness"""" in Postwar Malaysia""""	p. 135
Ideological Work in Constructing the Malay Majority	p. 151
Fijianness	p. 171
Aspiring to Minority and Other Tactics Against Violence	p. 173
When 8,870 - 850 = 1 Discourses Against Democracy in Fiji, Past and Present	p. 198
Turkishness	p. 215
From Ottoman to Turk Self-Image and Social Engineering in Turkey	p. 217
Minority/Majority Discourse the Case of the Kurds in Turkey	p. 227
Americanness	p. 247
Studying Mainstreams and Minorities in North America Some Epistemological and Ethical Dilemmas	p. 249
The Illusion of Paradise Privileging Multiculturalism in Hawai'I	p. 264
Notes	p. 285
References Cited	p. 307
Index	p. 341
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