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Explaining identity formation in Asia
Author(s) -
Liu Amy H.,
Selway Joel Sawat
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
asian politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.193
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1943-0787
pISSN - 1943-0779
DOI - 10.1111/aspp.12564
Subject(s) - salient , ethnic group , identity (music) , politics , cleavage (geology) , identity formation , political economy , political science , set (abstract data type) , sociology , economic geography , gender studies , geography , social science , law , computer science , philosophy , aesthetics , negotiation , geotechnical engineering , fracture (geology) , programming language , engineering
What explains why some identities in a country become politically salient while others do not? This Special Issue crafts a research design to address two core assumptions in the literature on identity formation in select Asian countries. The first is that the area where ethnic groups reside is exogenously demarcated. Yet, the boundaries to any region are inherently political—for example, they can be endogenous to the same processes that drive identity formation. To address this, we take a novel approach by delineating regions exogenously by their cardinal directions in the country (e.g., north), and then, comparing among those regions to see which identities become salient and why. The second assumption is that there is always an alternative cleavage along which ethnic groups can coordinate. Yet, which cleavages are available and how ethnicity maps onto other cleavages (e.g., cross‐cutting) affects political identity. The articles in this Special Issue address this assumption by articulating and mapping a more complete set of cleavages. In doing so, the authors present a novel array of theories explaining the various stages along which identities fall, from absent to stunted, or from slow onset to fully solidified.