Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States 9780804763967

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EAST-WEST CENTER SERIES ON

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Series Editor, Bruce M. Koppel

Making Majorities

Making Majorities CONSTITUTING THE NATION IN JAPAN, KOREA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, FIJI, TURKEY, AND THE UNITED STATES

Edited by Dru C. Gladney

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

1998

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

© 1998 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America CIP

data are at the end of the book

A Series from Press and the East-West Center University Stanford CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Bruce M. Koppel, Editor

A collaborative effort by Stanford University Press and the East-West Center, this series addresses contemporary issues of policy and scholarly concern in Asia and the Pacific. The series focuses on political, social, economic, cultural, demographic, environmental, and technological change and the problems related to such change. A select group of East-West Center senior fellows-representing the fields of political science, economic development, population, and environmental studies-serves as the advisory board for the series. The decision to publish is made by Stanford. Preference is given to comparative or regional studies that are conceptual in orientation and emphasize underlying processes and to works on a single country that address issues in a comparative or regional context. Although concerned with policy-relevant issues and written to be accessible to a relatively broad audience, books in the series are scholarly in character. We are pleased to offer here the third book in the series, Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States, edited by Dru C. Gladney. The East-West Center, located in Honolulu, Hawaii, is a public, nonprofit educational and research institution established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to foster understanding and cooperation among the governments and peoples of the Asia-Pacific region, including the United States.

Preface

THIS volume is based on a conference at the East-West Center sponsored by the former Program for Cultural Studies. I would especially like to thank the director of the Program, Geoffrey White, for encouraging the initial conference and supporting it through the protracted and time-consuming process of bringing this volume to publication. During the conference, staff members at the East-West Center provided tremendous support, especially Anna Tanaka, Sandi Osaki, and Margaret White. Michael Macmillan devoted many hours to an initial copyediting of the volume prior to submission, helping it to achieve a much stronger level of coherence. Elisa Johnston and Carol Wong in the publications office went beyond the call of duty in keeping this volume on track. The editing staff at Stanford University Press, especially Stacey Lynn and the copy editor, Lynn Stewart, helped to shape the final manuscript and clarified many issues of style and content. Several contributors who have participated in many other academic volumes commented on the special attention and thoroughness provided by the copy editor. Finally, I would like to thank the editorial committee of the series on Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific, and especially the series editor, Bruce Koppel, for supporting this project. A collection such as this, spanning several regions and countries in the wider Asia-Pacific region and drawing together a truly international collection of scholars, represents a collaborative effort that is never completely representative of everyone's views. One of the many debates during and after the conference was over the title. While the participants immediately agreed to the main title of the volume, Making Majorities, there was much debate over the subtitle. Since the series in which this volume appears is committed to a comparative, multinational, and cross-regional approach within the Asia-Pacific region, we initially thought to subtitle it "Constituting the Nation in the Asia-Pacific" (there was also disagreement over whether it should be "constituting," "composing," or "constructing" the

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Preface

nation). But given the fact that so much of Asia is left out of the region (and particularly many of the Pacific islands, not to mention other nations bordering the Pacific, such as Chile and Russia), the participants chose to merely list the countries and nations directly discussed, calling into question the nature of the region included in the term "Asia-Pacific." However, merely listing the regions and countries as we have done (Japan, Korea, China, Turkey, and so on) does an injustice to the minorities that are not mentioned (such as the Kurds), even as it privileges the majorities after whom many of the nations are named. Most difficult is the China/Taiwan issue, where there is severe disagreement on whether one should subsume the other. We finally decided that if we allowed a separate mention of Taiwan in the title, then we would need to do so with other groups, such as the Kurds, Hawaiians, and Indo-Fijians. However, space does not allow us to list all the countries and the peoples or regions discussed that are either part of those countries or claim their own independent status. The length of the subtitle has already encountered objections from both editorial committees. It therefore represents a compromise that may only satisfy the search engines of computer indexes, which prefer such an overabundance of information in a title. The authors themselves have been left to raise the issues regarding their subject and regional areas in their chapters. It is to them that I am most grateful for their patient understanding and commitment to this project.

Contents

Contributors

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Introduction: Making and Marking Majorities Dru C. Gladney

I

PART I J a paneseness I.

Culturalism, Racialism, and Internationalism in the Discourse on Japanese Identity

I3

Kosaku Yoshino 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

31

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney PART II Koreanness

3· Who Speaks for Korean Shamans When Shamans Speak of the Nation?

55

Laurel Kendall 4· Constructing and Deconstructing "Koreanness" Cho Hae-joang

73

Contents

X

PART III Chineseness 5· On Three Definitions of Han Ren: Images of the

Majority People in Taiwan Hsieh Shih-chung 6. Clashed Civilizations? Muslim and Chinese Identities in the PRC Dru C. Gladney

95

ro6

PART IV Malayness 7· Bureaucratic Management of Identity in a Modern

State: "Malayness" in Postwar Malaysia Shamsul A. B.

135

8. Ideological Work in Constructing the Malay

Majority Anthony Milner

151

PART v Fijianness 9· Aspiring to Minority and Other Tactics Against

Violence john D. Kelly

173

ro. When 8,870- 850 = r: Discourses Against Democracy in Fiji, Past and Present Martha Kaplan

198

PART VI Turkishness II.

From Ottoman to Turk: Self-Image and Social Engineering in Turkey Selim Deringil

217

12. Minority/Majority Discourse: The Case of the

Kurds in Turkey Kemal Kiri§ci

227

Contents PART

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VII

Americanness 13. Studying Mainstreams and Minorities in North America: Some Epistemological and Ethical Dilemmas

Richard Handler 14. The Illusion of Paradise: Privileging Multiculturalism in Hawai'i

Jonathan Y. Okamura Notes References Cited Index

249

Contributors

CHO HAE-JOANG, a cultural anthropologist in training, is a professor in the Department of Sociology, Yonsei University, Seoul. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her early research focused on gender studies, with special interest in Korean modern history, and her recent work is in cultural studies in the globalflocal and postcolonial context. She is the author of Woman and Men in South Korea (1988), Reading Texts, Reading Lives in the Postcolonial Era, three volumes (1992, 1994), and Children Refusing School, Society Refusing Children (1996). SELIM DERINGIL is Professor of History at Bogazi