Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce Minorities in Europe and India.

• Author: Riley-Adams, Ann
• Position: GENERAL STUDIES - Book review

Tripathy, Jyotirmaya, and Sudarsan Padmanabhan, eds. Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce Minorities in Europe and India. London: Sage Publications, 2014.

Becoming Minority: How Discourses And Policies Produce Minorities in Europe and India is a collection of essays on the topics of minority and minoritization, which include issues such as inclusion and exclusion, ethnicity, and identity. Editors Jyotirmaya Tripathy and Sudarsan Padmanabhan have limited the scope of the book to Europe and India. They have divided the essays into three general sections: The Making of Minority, The European Experience, and The Indian Experience. Since Europe and India are some of the most culturally diverse regions on the planet, this book attempts to understand how both areas deal with the issues of minority and diversity through policies, politics, and social reform. Both Tripathy, who specializes in cultural studies, and Padmanabhan, who specializes in social and political philosophy, are professors in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India.

In Part 1, The Making of Minority, three essays address the development and contextualization of minority categories in society. Tripathy and Padmanabhan discuss the development of the concept of minority and its current celebration in modern democracies. Barbara Franz looks at the contextualization of minority and its essential elements of naming and labels. She points out the individual versus group mentality, or sameness versus difference, in the development of religious and ethnic minorities in Europe. Lajwanti Chatani discusses the pursuit of minority rights and recognition in modern India. Throughout this section, the authors propose that we move beyond traditional modes of analyzing minority in society and instead use approaches that are more modern, such as self-determination.

Part 2, The European Experience, covers seven geographical areas. Abdoulaye Gueye explores how blacks and Arabs are being recognized as minorities in modern France. Ulf Morkenstam discusses the discursive colonization of the Sami culture in Sweden and the policies designed to protect this indigenous minority culture. Identity in contemporary Scotland is the topic of Sherrill Storschein's contribution, which addresses the use of rhetoric to outline differences between Scots and English during the 2014 Scottish Independence campaign. Apostolos Agnantopoulos...