Ethnicity & Development
Following the collapse of international communism and the ending of the Cold War, the decade of the 1990s has seen international conflict replaced by internal, largely ethnic, conflict both of a violent and of a nonviolent nature. As a result, ethnicity has become one of the most important issues of the day. The social sciences and development studies have been slow to adopt new theoretical and practical perspectives with which to address this fundamentally changed situation. In traditional...
Search in google:
Following the collapse of international communism and the ending of the Cold War, the decade of the 1990s has seen international conflict replaced by internal, largely ethnic, conflict both of a violent and of a nonviolent nature. As a result, ethnicity has become one of the most important issues of the day. The social sciences and development studies have been slow to adopt new theoretical and practical perspectives with which to address this fundamentally changed situation. In traditional modernisation theory, ethnicity has been seen as an obstacle and claims to ethnic identity as anti-developmental. This book seeks to contribute towards a re-thinking of this position by focusing on the question of how policies of material improvement can be made compatible with the maintenance of fundamental ethnic identities which, in some senses, can even be considered a human right. Its argument is developed in two ways: firstly through a series of geographical studies, which examine the political and the economic contexts of the relationship between ethnicity and development through the consideration of significant national cases, such as South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore; and secondly through overview chapters, which place the case studies both within an appropriate theoretical frame and within a broader practical perspective of ethnicity as a highly significant contemporary global phenomenon. Ethnicity and Development will make essential reading for students of geography, development studies and African studies.
List of Contributors1Ethnodevelopment or ethnochaos?32Ethnicity and development: an elusive relationship153Ethnic identity and language issues in development454Ethnicity and political development in South Africa895Tribe or nation? Some lessons from the Kenyan multiparty elections1156Nationalism, democracy and development in Ethiopia1397Cultural, pluralism and economic development: perspectives from 20th-century Mexico and the Caribbean1598Ethnicity and industrial development in Penang, Malaysia1819The Ibans of Sarawak, Malaysia: ethnicity, marginalization and development19510The people of Isan, Thailand: missing out on the economic boom21511Ethnic differences and public policy in Singapore24912Ethnicity, development and ... geography273Index283
