Ethnic Tension of the Bangladeshi Santal

This chapter aims to do a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of ethnic tension in Bangladesh and the constitutional provisions on the Santal Indigenous community in establishing social justice. First, why are Indigenous groups instead ethnic groups in Bangladesh, and how many are groups? This chapter then tries to answer who is justifying whose social justice in ethnic tension, and, essentially, what is the guiding philosophy. This chapter picks education policy and the constitutional provision of state inventions policy on ethnic groups in Bangladesh the Santal's space in it. Along with CDA, the argument leans on bio-politics, historical ontology (Foucault), Indigenous research paradigm. The findings show that this community is historically subjugated under ontological guidance and understanding. So, it recommends adopting Santal Indigenous standpoint for establishing a right-based harmonized society.

Facilitating Policy: Redefining Terraced Housing in Malaysia

<p>The multi-ethnic tension among the three main ethnics in Malaysia has a great impact on tolerance and political unity. The Bumiputera Policy gives privileges to the Malay ethnicity, which further strains this issue, dividing the nation. Recognising this, the government introduced the 1Malaysia Policy as a possible solution to mitigate this issue to promote equality and attaining unity in diversity. This ultimate purpose is to integrate Malaysians to cooperate in a mutually respectful manner, towards the development of Malaysia. The inevitable consequences of short sighted government policy, development and westernisation in Malaysia have negatively affected the cultural uniqueness of the three main ethnic communities. In domestic architecture, terraced houses have been a direct translation of western terraced housing. The influences from the West have diverted Malaysia’s sense of Asian culture. The objective of this study is to support the aims of this current 1Malaysia Policy, by finding a solution to terraced housing, through the design of the 1Malaysia Home. This thesis looks at an adaptable home for multi-cultural families to live and practise their unique cultures in a multi-ethnic community. The implementation of this design, is through research on case studies of the respective traditional houses of Malaysia’s three main ethnic groups. The main design consideration of this flexible home is through a negotiated spatial organisation, in regards to the aims of the theories that informed the traditional houses. This study further explores the cluster design of terraced housing in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood community. The traditional programmes of shop house and other multi-cultural activities in Malaysia are reinstated for a common sense of belonging in the neighbourhood, which ultimately preserves Malaysia’s unique Asian culture and supports its international branding as ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’.</p>

Facilitating Policy: Redefining Terraced Housing in Malaysia

<p>The multi-ethnic tension among the three main ethnics in Malaysia has a great impact on tolerance and political unity. The Bumiputera Policy gives privileges to the Malay ethnicity, which further strains this issue, dividing the nation. Recognising this, the government introduced the 1Malaysia Policy as a possible solution to mitigate this issue to promote equality and attaining unity in diversity. This ultimate purpose is to integrate Malaysians to cooperate in a mutually respectful manner, towards the development of Malaysia. The inevitable consequences of short sighted government policy, development and westernisation in Malaysia have negatively affected the cultural uniqueness of the three main ethnic communities. In domestic architecture, terraced houses have been a direct translation of western terraced housing. The influences from the West have diverted Malaysia’s sense of Asian culture. The objective of this study is to support the aims of this current 1Malaysia Policy, by finding a solution to terraced housing, through the design of the 1Malaysia Home. This thesis looks at an adaptable home for multi-cultural families to live and practise their unique cultures in a multi-ethnic community. The implementation of this design, is through research on case studies of the respective traditional houses of Malaysia’s three main ethnic groups. The main design consideration of this flexible home is through a negotiated spatial organisation, in regards to the aims of the theories that informed the traditional houses. This study further explores the cluster design of terraced housing in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood community. The traditional programmes of shop house and other multi-cultural activities in Malaysia are reinstated for a common sense of belonging in the neighbourhood, which ultimately preserves Malaysia’s unique Asian culture and supports its international branding as ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’.</p>

Turning discontent into votes: Economic inequality and ethnic outbidding

Ethnic outbidding, where parties adopt ever more extreme positions to capture electoral advantage, has become an increasingly common practice among ethnic parties. As economic issues have often served as a catalyst for ethnic tension, increasing levels of economic inequality should lead parties to adopt more extreme positions in an attempt to outbid one another. Furthermore, as their economic and ethnic platforms will appeal to the same ethnically defined constituency, ethnic outbidding should be more effective where inequality is high. Using a sample of over 150 ethnonational parties in Europe between 2011 and 2017, this paper finds that inequality is linked to increasing ideological extremism along a number of policy dimensions. Employing local-level voting data for Romania and Slovakia, we show that higher inequality makes adopting a more ideological extreme position a more successful electoral strategy, especially where economic issues are ethnically salient.

Conflict Dynamics between Two Neighbours: Looking Beyond Federalism

Ethiopia is a multicultural and multilingual country. The Oromo and Somali communities are found in the same linguistic community, that is, the Cushitic language. Historically, Somalis and Oromo have a long tradition of co-existence and strong socio-cultural interactions, as well as antagonistic relationships and intermittent conflicts. Traditionally, the major sources of conflict between the two communities were competition over scarce resources, territorial expansion, livestock raids and counter raids, kidnapping for marriage purposes and the revenge tradition. However, this time the conflict took a different nature, form and bigger scale causing devastation never seen in the history of communal conflict in the country. The study has utilised primary and secondary data collection and employed narration and content analysis to realise the objective of the paper. The findings of this study reveal that the causes of the Oromo–Somali conflict are complex and dynamic. This urges the need to carry out a deeper investigation beyond the federal arrangement. Thus, fundamental and triggering factors including the involvement of internal and external forces, the collapse of social norms and prevalence of moral anarchism, socio-economic issues, competing interests among public and military officials, poor leadership and governance system, competing interests over resources, aspects of local cultural institutions in regulating inter-ethnic relationships are identified in fuelling ethnic conflict in the studied area. Since the conflict in the region is much more complex than the dominant narrative of resource scarcity and ethnic politicisation, open democratic dialogue, genuine consultation and negotiation at a different level with various interest groups, stakeholders and community representatives, militant groups operating in the area is of paramount importance to ease the increasing ethnic tension and political crisis in order to build sustainable peace in the region.

Identities are no joke (or are they?): humor and identity in Vivek Mahbubani’s stand-up

Using the lenses of humor studies and narrative analysis, this paper discusses the stand-up comedy of Vivek Mahbubani, a Hong Kong-born stand-up comedian of Indian descent. Mahbubani uses humor about ethnicity-related issues to highlight the irrationality of racial discrimination and stereotypes. Specifically, Mahbubani challenges people’s preconceived ideas about the speakerhood of Cantonese and the local identity. The present study demonstrates how this comedian has effectively built humor into his narrative as a response to oppression, thus engaging the local, ethnically Chinese audience to reflect on the social and ethnic tension felt by minorities in Hong Kong. This study further argues that Mahbubani’s comedy reflects a more general trend in stand-up comedy: humor as a vehicle for a more inclusive and progressive grand narrative across different cultures; this trend stands in stark contrast to earlier ethnic jokes that often made minorities the target of verbal humor.

Culture and Contracts: The Historical Legacy of Forced Labour

Can divide-and-rule colonial policy be responsible for contemporary ethnic tension? This paper empirically investigates the role of a divisive and extractive colonial policy on Hutu-Tutsi discord in Rwanda and Burundi. It shows that Hutu with a family history of subjugation to forced labour by Tutsi chiefs are less trusting of Tutsi today and less willing to partner with Tutsi for a cooperative task. This may have implications for agriculture insurance agreements since Hutu are more agrarian and Tutsi are more pastoral. Indeed, Hutu with a forced labour family history make fewer inter-household insurance agreements and are more likely to experience default.

Social Change and Modernity: Identity Crisis of the Bonda Tribe in Pratibha Ray’s The Primal Land

Pratibha Ray’s anthropological novel The Primal Land (1993) documents the history of India’s endangered Bonda tribe dwelling in the secluded mountains of Koraput, Odisha. Not free from the interferences of the outside world, the Bondas face the threat of losing their tribal identity. This complicated position and their struggle between existence and identity, an intersubjective reality, was triggered by oppressive internal and external surroundings due to the pressures of modernity. The discussion focuses on their inherent cultural practices causingconstant internal feuds and the government’s intrusion with development plans leading to exploitation, cultural dilution, and socio-ethnic tension. Thus the paper decodes the difficulties of the Bondas and concludes that their existence cannot be ensured without the loss of primal identity.

The Political Boundaries of Ethnic Divisions

We use a policy experiment in Indonesia to show how local political boundaries affect ethnic tension. Redrawing district borders along group lines reduces conflict. However, the gains in stability are undone or even reversed when new boundaries increase ethnic polarization. Greater polarization leads to more violence around majoritarian elections but has little effect around lower-stakes, proportional representation elections. These results point to distinct incentives for violence in winner-take-all settings with contestable public resources. Overall, our findings illustrate the promise and pitfalls of redrawing borders in diverse countries where it is infeasible for each group to have its own administrative unit. (JEL D72, D74, J15, O15, O17, O18)

Ethno-consolidating role of art in sustainable development of cross-border regions

This article explores the capacity of art in consolidation of the society on ethnic grounds. This affects the sustainability of regional development, results of the exchange of sociocultural experience between the generations of culture bearers and, and overcoming severe socioeconomic and sociopolitical problems in general. The subject of this research is the ethno-consolidating role of art. The theoretical-methodological framework of leans on the trend of ethnic art studies. The article is based not only on the theoretical consideration of the indicated vector, but also on the results of empirical research, such as expert survey of administrative employees of the cultural, art and educational institutions (cross-border regions of Russia: Altai Krai, Altai Republic, Kemerovo Region, Kazakhstan: Pavlodar and East Kazakhstan Regions, n=120); expert survey of the government officials and local self-governance that are responsible for implementation of regional and municipal programs aimed at preservation and development of ethno-national cultural assets in cross-border regions of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan (n=65). The following conclusions were formulated: 1) ethnic consolidation of culture bearers in cross-border regions can be effectively realized through the phenomena of traditional and indigenous art; 2) the current processes of assimilation of cultural values and norms, ethnic tension, intercultural dialogue, and the phenomenon of multiculturalism as a whole can blunt the effect of art upon ethnic consolidation of the society, although not affecting the pace of intergenerational interaction, in which the important role is allocated to art; 3) art carries out a consolidating role in the society based on continuity of values and norms.