Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States

Published by Stanford University Press 1998

Making Majorities

Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States

Edited by: Dru C. Gladney

In the series Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804763967

Overview
Contents

About this book

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?

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Contributors Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: Making and Marking Majorities Dru C. Gladney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Japaneseness
I. Culturalism, Racialism, and Internationalism in the Discourse on Japanese Identity Kosaku Yoshino Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
2. 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 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
PART II Koreanness
3. Who Speaks for Korean Shamans When Shamans Speak of the Nation? Laurel Kendall Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
4. Constructing and Deconstructing "Koreanness" Cho Hae-joang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
PART III Chineseness
5. On Three Definitions of Han Ren Images of the Majority People in Taiwan Hsieh Shih-chung Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
6. Clashed Civilizations? Muslim and Chinese Identities in the PRC Dru C. Gladney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	106
PART IV Malayness
7· Bureaucratic Management of Identity in a Modern State "Malayness" in Postwar Malaysia Shamsul A. B. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
8. Ideological Work in Constructing the Malay Majority Anthony Milner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
PART V Fijianness
9. Aspiring to Minority and Other Tactics Against Violence John D. Kelly Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
10. When 8,870 - 850 = 1 Discourses Against Democracy in Fiji, Past and Present Martha Kaplan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
PART VI Turkishness
11. From Ottoman to Turk Self-Image and Social Engineering in Turkey Selim Deringil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
12. Minority/Majority Discourse he Case of the Kurds in Turkey Kemal Kirişci Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
PART VII Americanness
13. Studying Mainstreams and Minorities in North America Some Epistemological and Ethical Dilemmas Richard Handler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
14. The Illusion of Paradise Privileging Multiculturalism in Hawai'i Jonathan Y. Okamura Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	264
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
References Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 364
Keywords: Anthropology -- Asia; Politics -- Asia

eBook

Published: July 1, 1998
ISBN: 9780804763967