Paper short abstract:

In this talk, I examine the process of minoritization that has accompanied the establishment of nation-states and their supposedly homogenous ‘majorities’ in the 19th and 20th centuries. I argue that such minoritization is regularly, if not always, accompanied by a process of racialization. I take the examples of Dalits and Muslims in India, and African Americans in the USA.

Paper long abstract:

In this talk, I examine the process of minoritization that has accompanied the establishment of nation-states and their supposedly homogenous ‘majorities’ in the 19th and 20th centuries. I argue that such minoritization is regularly, if not always, accompanied by a process of racialization. By this I mean the deployment of a language of radical difference as marking the condition of the minority – a difference that is deeply-rooted, hereditary and not easily dislodged, whether it is phenotypically (or biologically) visible or not.

I take the examples of Dalits (people from the lowest castes, formerly known as Untouchables) and Muslims in India, and African Americans in the USA, to make the point about the marking of minorities and the establishment of a discourse of fundamental difference, whether on grounds of what has been called race, or religion, or other inherited (historical or biological) condition. The proposition about difference, and racialization, is illustrated dramatically by the example of the Jews in 19th century Europe, and again in that of the Irish and Italians in 19th and 20th century North America. While I shall not be able to examine all these cases, it would be interesting to consider in what ways, and to what extent, such racialization marks the history of minorities in other societies and conditions, such as the Burakumin and Koreans in Japan, or, to take an even more unlikely and indeterminate case, the half or more of the world’s population dubbed the ‘minority’ of women in one country after another.

Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I will describe the historical context and theoretical implications of Korea-phobia in Japan, focusing on hate incidents involving a Korean School in Kyoto. An analysis of the hate speech found therein reveals not so much its “newness,” but rather what we might call the historical layers of Korea-phobia in Japan.

Paper long abstract:

In the afternoon on Friday, December 4th, 2009, a group hoisting flags representing the “Citizens’ League to Deny Foreign Residents’ Privileges” (Zainichi tokken wo yurusanai shimin no kai) descended upon an elementary school for Koreans in Kyoto while it was in session. For an hour, they blasted hate speech through a loudspeaker in front of the classrooms, shouting defamatory phrases such as, “You stink of kimchi”, “You are the children of spies”, and “Korean schools, get out of Japan”. In this presentation, I will describe the historical context and theoretical implications of Korea-phobia in Japan, focusing on these hate incidents. An analysis of the group’s hate speech reveals not so much its “newness”, but rather what we might call the historical layers of Korea-phobia in Japan. (“Korea-phobia” is a neologism I have derived from “Islamophobia”.) I will theorize this contemporary Korea-phobia from a historical perspective, critically collating my findings with the “new racism” theory and ethnicity theory of Europe and the United States. Korea-phobia is a historical product that originated in relationships formed under Japanese colonial rule, continued in a reorganized form during the Cold War, and has been regenerated under new conditions found in East Asia and the world.

Paper short abstract:

This paper shares samples from longitudinal ethnographic research concerning global Hiphop movements that engage certain aspects of anti-racial and anti-racialization political projects.

Paper long abstract:

This paper shares samples from longitudinal ethnographic research concerning global Hiphop movements that engage certain aspects of anti-racial and anti-racialization political projects. Hiphop is often cited as providing voice and visibility for expression and concerns of marginalized and oppressed community identities worldwide. Countless examples of Hiphop utilized as a transnational social movement in variant and diverse global spaces exist. Such evidence abounds in ranging literatures, from ethnographic monographs to popular journalism and cultural criticism. In the four decades that Hiphop has entered international popular imaginaries and media, a significant proportion of its focus has embraced Hiphop in trans-Pacific spaces as part of a transnational articulation against "global apartheid" (cf., Harrison 2002). Hiphop ethnographers and artists have documented diverse and historic "invisible" communities that have bore the brunt of unequal social policy, stigma and other forms of discrimination. Examples include festivals celebrating African-descent communities in Pacific Coastal regions of Colombia as well as partnerships through protest art among Okinawan, Korean and mixed-race Japanese nationals. From the Pacific Islands to the deep inlands of Uyghurstan (Xinjiang), Hiphop has been and continues to provide voice and visibility to those disidentifying with dominant culture and "national character" of assumed homogeneous societies. This paper demonstrates how Hiphop facilitates heterogeneity within and against status quo identifications.

Paper short abstract:

In Australia, disavowed racial categories have re-emerged as cultural differences that may be valorized and nurtured by the state, or denigrated and corrected through government intervention, but always in the name of protecting Aboriginal people.

Paper long abstract:

Even as egalitarianism, democracy, multi-culturalism and anti-racism are professed as the reigning ideologies in the world, more entrenched inequalities emerge as if by natural forces for which no-one can be held responsible. Today, disavowed racial categories both reproduce inequality and appear to explain it. Old hierarchies of worth are reformulated to fit contemporary conditions.

Australian governments have increasingly created ‘states of exception’ (Agamben 2005) to the laws and rules of equal democratic rights. Indigenous culture is officially valorized and nurtured, while allegedly “dysfunctional’ Aboriginal communities are subjected to intrusive forms of governance, under the rubric of compassion and care. Policies that aim to normalize recalcitrant citizens and save them from themselves are widely accepted as necessary — even by many anthropologists. Asylum seekers are accused of taking advantage of Australia’s compassion and thus ‘boat people’ are cruelly denigrated and incarcerated outside the reach of Australian legal protection.

This paper will suggest that anthropology should challenge the standard images of racialised peoples as pitiable victims and explore the ways they subvert, transcend or bypass the limitations of their life-spaces.

Paper short abstract:

In contrast to the globalized anti-racism movements, race studies has remained transatlantic-centered. By drawing examples from “invisible races” in East Asia, this paper attempts to explore some potential implications of these cases when juxtaposed with the transatlantic experiences.

Paper long abstract:

In contrast to the globalized anti-racism movements and the ratifications of the anti-racism convention, race studies have remained far less inclusive, drawing theoretical frameworks and empirical data mostly from (post-)colonial experiences in the transatlantic. The academic and social discourse, which has in general associated race with the phenotypic visibility of the human body, has suppressed investigations of racialization and the public awareness of racism surrounding "invisible races," especially outside of the transatlantic world. In European modernity, vision was granted a nearly exclusive privilege and used also for the production of "scientific" knowledge in human classification and subsequent ranking. Today, the visibility of phenotypic "differences" and other sociocultural markers tends to provide the subject of visual consumption in global capitalism. On the other hand, some parts of Asia, especially East Asia, which have traditionally embraced the myth of "raceless societies," may provide interesting case studies in considering the interplay of visibility and invisibility in defining racial distinctions and in the consequent forms of racism against those designated populations. Among others, occupation, location of residence, and nomadic lifestyles have served as visible markers of invisible races such as burakumin in Japan and paekjong in Korea. The discourse of sacred/polluted, civilized/barbarian, and high/low based on blood ideology became particularly intense after the Meiji Restoration in Japan's nation-building and empire expansion (1868). This paper, drawing examples mainly from Japan, Korea, and the United States, attempts to explore in its embryonic stage some potential implications of these cases to juxtapose them with transatlantic experiences.

Paper short abstract:

Revisiting Gerald Berreman’s comparative analysis of race, caste and other invidious distinctions, this paper examines a trajectory of transnational dialogue and networking in which antiracism is conjoined with struggles against related intolerance, notably caste.

Paper long abstract:

During the 1960s, Gerald D. Berreman brought his expertise on India's caste system to bear on an interrogation of race relations in the United States. In response to the debate his writing provoked, he expanded his cross-cultural comparison by examining birth-ascribed stratification of various sorts in not only India and the United States but also Japan, Swat in North Pakistan, and Ruanda. Berreman's comparative analysis followed earlier ethnographic research in the U.S. in which the concept of caste was employed to elucidate the logic and workings of racial discrimination. Within the public sphere, the civil/human rights leaders WEB Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. also addressed Asian-US parallels. In a 1965 speech, King claimed: "Yes, I am an untouchable and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable." This paper revisits Berreman, situates him within a broader intellectual and social history of race and caste comparisons and analogies, and links those streams of theory and public discourse to recent trajectories of transnational dialogue and solidarity-building between Dalits and African-descendants in the U.S. and elsewhere in the transatlantic region. The 2001 UN World Conference against Racism, pre- and post-WCAR activities, and the Declaration of Empathy signed in Washington, D.C. during the 2014 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day observance are the principal moments for critically examining the inter-cultural dialogues and networking between Black and Dalit activists along with others (e.g., Roma) who claim a family resemblance despite differences where racisms and related intolerances intersect.