The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises in a World of Power

The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises in a World of Power
ISBN-10
0226900169
ISBN-13
9780226900162
Category
Political Science
Pages
210
Language
English
Published
1996-08
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Authors
P. A. McAllister, Edwin Norman Wilmsen

Description

According to most social scientists, the advent of a global media village and the rise of liberal democratic government would diminish ethnic and national identity as a source of political action. Yet the contemporary world is in the midst of an explosion of identity politics and often violent ethnonationalism. This volume examines cases ranging from the well-publicized ethnonationalism of Bosnia and post-Apartheid South Africa to ethnic conflicts in Belgium and Sri Lanka. Distinguished international scholars including John Comaroff, Stanley J. Tambiah, and Ernesto Laclau argue that continued acceptance of imposed ethnic terms as the most appropriate vehicle for collective self-identification and social action legitimizes the conditions of inequality that give rise to them in the first place. This ambitious attempt to explain the inadequacies of current approaches to power and ethnicity forges more realistic alternatives to the volatile realities of social difference.

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