Efforts to contend with tensions inherent in multiethnic societies; case studies of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Ethnic conflict, one of the most serious and widespread problems in the world today, can undermine efforts to promote political and economic development, as well as political, economic, and social justice. It can also lead to violence and open warfare, producing horrifying levels of death and destruction. Although government policies on ethnic issues often have profound effects on a country, the subject has been neglected by most scholars and analysts. This volume analyzes different policies governments have pursued in their efforts to contend with the tensions inherent in multiethnic societies. The book focuses on Asia and the Pacific, the most populous and economically vibrant part of the world. The heart of the book is a set of case studies of government policies in sixteen countries: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The studies consider a wide range of political, economic, educational, linguistic, and cultural policies, and how these policies have evolved over time. Using a broad comparative perspective to assess the effectiveness of different governmental approaches, the authors offer policy recommendations that cut across individual countries and regions.

A study of the impact of language policies on ethnic relations in fifteen Asian and Pacific countries.

The expansion of international tourism is changing the relationship between ethnic groups and states around the globe. Yet tourism’s importance for the understanding of ethnicity in the modern world has been generally neglected within the field of ethnic studies. This pioneering volume investigates how international tourism development, state policies of ethnic management, and the active responses of local ethnic groups intersect to reshape ethnic identities and ethnic relations in Asian and Pacific societies. It analyzes the ways in which the very meaning of ethnicity and culture are being contested and reworked in the wake of tourism’s impact. Following an introduction that explores the close but often ambivalent relationship between tourism promotion and state ethnic policies, individual contributors examine tourism’s varied effects in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the island Pacific in rich ethnographic detail.

This important new text examines the crucial social and cultural factors associated with the rise of the Asia- Pacific region at the end of the Twentieth Century. It takes a close look at those areas which have affected the everyday life of the people most directly. These include: * the family * gender relations and the position of women * religion * the arts, with specific reference to film * ethnic relations and population migration * education, and the images of the Asia-Pacific. The authors discuss real tensions between tradition and modernity in different nations of the Asia-Pacific, exploring the effects that economic growth has on powerful traditional cultures.

Asia's rising power and wealth offer its many oppressed ethnic minorities hope for greater political freedom and an end to violence. But the reality of this hope is cast into doubt by acute separatist conflict. This book provides fresh and factual assessments of separatist struggles and prospects for conflict resolution in eight countries of Asia.

The controversial work of Amy Chua argues that, as rapid modernization, industrialization, technological change and globalization bring about fundamental changes in national, ethnic and class identities, especially in developing countries, there is a danger that the laissez-faire capitalist system will cause serious racial conflagration, especially in societies where there is ethnic minority market dominance, combined with ethno-nationalist-type politicians who mobilize support from ethnic majority communities by drawing attention to inequalities in wealth distribution. This controversial work goes on to argue for an authoritarian political system, with curbs against the corporate expansion of enterprises owned by ethnic minorities, until parity in equity ownership among all communities is achieved. This book tests the assumptions behind these arguments, discussing ethnic communities, identity, economy, society and state, and the links between them, in a range of countries in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, and diaspora communities of Asian peoples in the West. It demonstrates that identity transformation occurs as generations of minority communities succeed each other, that old discourses of fixed origins which are assumed to bind ethnic communities into cohesive wholes do not apply, that there are very extensive inter-linkages in the daily activities of people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, that affirmative action-type policies along racial lines can undermine overall societal cohesion, and that there is no case for limiting democracy until economic equity is achieved. This is a rich, important book, with huge implications for economic development and for states throughout the world as multi-ethnic societies world-wide become more extensive and more complicated.

Following significant interethnic violence beginning in 2008, Chinese intellectuals and policymakers are now engaged in unprecedented debate over the future direction of their country's ethnic policies. This study attempts to gauge current Chinese opinion on this once-secretive and still highly sensitive area of national policy. Domestic Chinese opinion on ethnic policies over the last five years is reviewed and implications for future policies under the new leadership of CPC Secretary General Xi Jinping are explored. Careful review of a wide spectrum of contemporary Chinese commentary identifies an emerging consensus for ethnic-policy reform. Leading public intellectuals, as well as some party officials, now openly call for new measures strengthening national integration at the expense of minority rights and autonomy. These reformers argue that divisive ethnic policies adopted from the former USSR must be replaced by those supporting an ethnic "melting pot" concept. Despite this important shift in opinion, such radical policy changes as ending regional ethnic autonomy or minority preferences are unlikely over the short-to-medium term. Small-yet-significant adjustments in rhetoric and policy emphasis are, however, expected as the party-state attempts to strengthen interethnic cohesiveness as a part of its larger agenda of stability maintenance. About the author James Leibold is a senior lecturer in Politics and Asian Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism (2007) and co-editor of Critical Han Studies (2012) and Minority Education in China (forthcoming). His research on ethnicity, nationalism, and race in modern China has appeared in The China Journal, The China Quarterly, The Journal of Asian Studies, Modern China, and other publications.