All modern nations, Appadurai says, attribute their sovereignty at least in part to "some sort of ethnic genius"--that is, a national identity or spirit--a belief that can all too easily lead to a simplified worldview and then to genocide. (pp. 3-4) People who are not perceived as belonging to the ethnic majority pose a challenge to this national self-conception. The book's title is explained here: "Small numbers represent a tiny obstacle between majority and totality or total purity. In a sense

All modern nations, Appadurai says, attribute their sovereignty at least in part to "some sort of ethnic genius"--that is, a national identity or spirit--a belief that can all too easily lead to a simplified worldview and then to genocide. (pp. 3-4) People who are not perceived as belonging to the ethnic majority pose a challenge to this national self-conception. The book's title is explained here: "Small numbers represent a tiny obstacle between majority and totality or total purity. In a sense, the smaller the number and the weaker the minority, the deeper the rage about its capacity to make a majority feel like a mere majority rather than like a whole and uncontested ethnos." (p. 53) Thus, a lone suicide bomber is deeply threatening. Although he is just one man, he is perceived as symbolic of an entire army who has been brainwashed by propaganda (p. 78). In the age of globalization, states have particular fears about "about their own minority or marginality (real or imagined)," and since there is no way to kill globalization, minorities instead become the victims of "ethnocide". (pp. 43-44)



Appadurai says: "I define as predatory those identities whose social construction and mobilization require the extinction of other, proximate social categories, defined as threats to the very existence of some group, defined as a we. ... One of these pairs or sets of identities often turns predatory by mobilizing an understanding of itself as a threatened majority." (p. 51) This is understandable enough--but what if there really is a tangible threat? What if a terrorist's bomb targets the majority group? I imagine Appadurai would clarify that, while the bomb threatens loss of life and property, it doesn't necessarily threaten the majority group's ethnic identity. What the bomb threatens, more precisely, is the majority's self-perception of being "pure" and "uncontested," a perception that they use to ground their right to national sovereignty. And so--if I understand rightly--a social identity is predatory as an identity if it needs to eliminate another identity or category; however, if simple violence does not count as a method of eliminating the other, it is hard to understand what such elimination would consist of. My question, to put it more simply, is whether the majority's perception of threat can ever be well-founded.



Appadurai also makes this curious observation: "In fact, the idea of a minority is in its political genealogy not an ethical or cultural idea but a procedural one, having to do with dissenting opinions in deliberative or legislative contexts in a democratic framework. ... Social and cultural minorities, what we may call substantive minorities, are permanent minorities, minorities that have become social and not just procedural." (pp. 62-63) I wish I knew where to take this observation!

