Endogenous demography and the political construction of ethnic categories: evidence from the Malay world

Constructivist scholarship on ethnic politics has shown how political incentives affect the salience of ethnic identities, while also acknowledging that ethnic categories themselves are also endogenous to long-term macrohistorical processes. Inspired by recent work in the field of social ontology, the speaker argues that the meaning of and membership in ethnic categories is endogenous to politics. The speaker illustrates his argument using historical, administrative, and survey data from the Malay world, where definitions of ethnic categories and individual membership in these categories are both socially constructed in response to the political incentives created by postcolonial state building.

This research extends the constructivist research program in ethnic politics to contexts where group boundaries and membership cannot be treated as fixed and exogenous in the short term.

Speaker

Thomas Pepinsky is the Walter F LaFeber Professor in the Department of Government and Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He works in the fields of comparative politics and political economy, with a special focus on maritime Southeast Asia.

Image - Istana Maimun, supplied by Thomas Pepinsky

The ANU Southeast Asia Institute Research Seminar Series is a recurring seminar series that showcases the work of scholars working on political, social, and cultural issues in Southeast Asia.

Contact the ANU Southeast Asia Institute Research Seminar Series Conveners: Nicholas Chan at waiyeap.chan@anu.edu.au.

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