What is the future and will it work?

A new spectre is haunting the world - the fear of ethnic conflict and of the ethnic cleansing to which it seems to lead. The end of the cold war, the reunification of Germany, the emergency of a new South Africa, even the cautions steps towards peace between Israel and its neighbors would have seemed like miracles ten years ago.

Unity, Multiculturalism and the American Creed

NPR: At the beginning of this century, America was called God's crucible, the great melting pot. As we approach the end of the century, "melting pot" has been replaced by the buzzword "multicultural", which by some definitions separates us according to race, gender, and ethnic origin.

Tragedy Among the Guarani

The Guarani Indians, numbering 27,000 are the largest Indian people of Brazil, yet local ranchers and government-supported development projects have forced them into the country's smallest Indian areas.

Traditional Aboriginal Hunting in Australia: A cultural heritage issue

An Aboriginal student from Strabroke Island in Australia wrote a noteworthy essay in 1993 on the question "What is cultural heritage?" He wrote that for him, and his people, all this is in the land and all that is in the knowledge about the land and the life of the people is cultural heritage.

The Indian Resurgence in Mexico

The Indian uprising in Chiapas in January 1994 (See Cultural Survival Quarterly, Spring 1994) (See Cultural Survival Quarterly, Spring 1994) took most people by surprise (so much for the predictive value of the social sciences!).

The Burden of Cultural Identity

It is generally assumed that, in settings of cultural pluralism, the traditional ways of life of ethnic minorities, unless protected, face radical transformations if not total extinction.

The Apocalypse in Rwanda

The scenes of mayhem are straight out of the apocalypse. From a distance their bodies look like broken dolls floating down the Akagera River, limbs severed by the hand of an angry child; moving closer to the scene brings into view the horror of a carnage described by one French official as the biggest genocide of the end of the century.

Sovereignty and Indian Gaming in the United States

The development of gaming operations on Indian reservations, and the phenomenal success some tribes have had with these operations, has brought a new dimension to the debate over Indian sovereignty.

Oil Exploration Threatens Burma's Indigenous Peoples

Several major international oil companies have recently come under fire from human rights and environmental groups for their plans to build a natural gas pipe-line in Burma.

Multiculturalism: Some Lessons from Indonesia

While the United States debates what multiculturalism is, what it should be, and whether it is even a desirable goal, Indonesia appears to have gone a long way towards conceptualizing and implementing a national vision of multi-ethnic coexistence.

Language and the Politics of Self-Expression

Between 1978 and 1985, Guatemala was engulfed in intense internal warfare, la violencia as it was called in the country. The poor were caught in the middle. The guerrillas sought to radicalize them, and the army to punish them so they would not collaborate with or join the opposition.

The "New Minorities" in Post-Soviet states

At present most post-Soviet states are being literally torn apart by ethnic conflicts. Possible disintegration, or transformation into confederations of "ethnic/cultural territories" confront Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, and Estonia, not to mention Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Tadjikistan.

Indigenous Peoples, Ancestral Lands and Human Rights in the Philippines

On the night of June 7, 1993, two farmers were shot and killed in Upper Bulacao, Barangay Pardo, Cebu City. The gunman, identified by several at the scene, remains at large, as do those with whom he conspired to commit the murders - for few believe he acted alone.

Perspectives on ethnic Accord in Post-Soviet Space

Ethnicity and nationalism have taken on conflicting forms in the post-Soviet world. Ethnonationalism has contradictory implications for politics and civic life in the region. On one hand, the rise of ethnic identities and ethnopolitics was a major factor behind the disintegration of the unitarian state.

Indigenous Identity Transition in Russia: An international legal perspective

Indigenous Identity Transition in Russia: An international legal. perspective

Prospects for Plural Societies in Central Asia

Landlocked and lying at the heart of the Eurasian continent, Central Asia once served as a vital overland hub in the "Silk Route" that linked East and West for more than 200 years. It was a crossroads for the movement of whole peoples, cultures, and religions. New conquerors would replace old, but each soon absorbed the region's culture and melded with groups already there.

Identity Politics and Multiculturalism in Quebec

CONFRONTING HISTORY

Ethnic Violence and the making of Pluralist Spain

Last June, while visiting the Basque Provinces, I asked Agurtzane Juanena, head bibliographer of the regional library of al Diputación de Gipuzkoa, and an old friend, about the library's holdings on the issue of the pluralism in the Basque Provinces. I immediately realized that the question was a dead end.

Democracy, Fried Chicken and the Atomic Bomb

Is it sacrilegious to recall here Malcolm Bradbury's Doctor Criminale, a novel about a mythical postmodern philosopher, a fictional fusion of Foucault and Derrida?

Nationalism and Pluralism in the Heart of the Balkans: The Republic of Macedonia

Nationalism and Pluralism in the Heart of the Balkans: The Republic of. Macedonia

Kalash Struggle to Protect Ancestral Lands

In 1982, the government of Pakistan began destroying the forests of the remote Himalayan Rumbar Valley, in the northern province of Chitral. This region is inhabited by the Kalash peoples, who have been under pressure to convert to Islam from missionaries. Today, the Kalash are the last polytheistic pagan group of nearly 4,000 people in the predominately Islamic Hindu Kush area.

Defending Burma's Salween River

Rising in the headwaters of Tibet, the Salween is one of the five great rivers of Asia. Her sisters are the Mekong, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers. On her way to the Andaman Sea, the Salween rushes down deep gorges, alternating with broad expanses before emerging at Moulmein in southern Burma.

Dealing With Ethnic Conflict

Ethnic conflict is not a given, either in our genes or in our cultures. How then do we account for the atrocities that flicker daily in our TV news reports? To answer this question, Cultural Survival has, for this issue of the Quarterly, invited distinguished scholars from all over the world to analyze ethnic conflicts in every corner of the globe.