Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities

Social and political changes around the world have added an urgency to the study of minorities and minority issues. Globalization, immigration, migration, civil conflict, and ethnic tensions have brought greater public awareness to minority groups and greater academic interest to minority studies. Similarly, the international community's commitment to self-determination, cultural diversity, human differences, and the preservation of traditions has attracted the attention of the public and focused the energies of a worldwide array of scholars working in a range of subject areas.

Reflecting the interdisciplinary and international character of minority studies, the Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities includes the work of over 300 contributors from forty countries specializing in areas as varied as anthropology, cultural studies, ethnography, history, international relations, linguistics, political science, and religion. These scholars work at universities and colleges as well as research centers and organizations around the globe that seek to further our understanding of minority issues and monitor the situation of minority groups. Within this community, the subject is rigorously and often contentiously argued, but the degree of interest and the intensity of debate testify ultimately to its importance. Because the study of minorities involves the difficult issues of rights, justice, equality, dignity, identity, autonomy, political liberties, and cultural freedoms, the discussions in the encyclopedia apply to many areas of public interest and student inquiry.

One of the concepts most vigorously debated by those working in minority studies is the meaning of "minority" itself. This is because the meaning does matter. In the early twentieth century the African-American political thinker W.E.B. Du Bois declared the color line the defining issue of the age. From that time forward the line that demarcates a minority group, acknowledges a minority concern, or defines a minority right has had considerable consequence. The Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities, like minority studies itself, attempts not to finalize this definition but to present its histories and complexities.

Traditionally, a minority group has been understood to have an indigenous relationship to an area-what is called an autochthonous relationship-where it is, at a given time, numerically inferior to another group. Such a group is understood to share a cultural characteristic that one member identifies in another. This shared culture may take the form of ethnicity, race, customs, language, or religion; and it receives larger legitimacy by virtue of its long-standing presence in a region. Although this definition functions within limited contexts and is acknowledged throughout the encyclopedia, it is far from universal, because it fails to account for a surplus of historical issues and influences that we confront today.

For example, according to this orthodox definition of minority, a member of an indigenous group may enjoy a legal relationship to a nation that vastly differs from that of an immigrant, a permanent resident, or a migrant worker, all of whom may share the cultural markers of a minority group but have none of the protections. Governments that secure protections, rights, and entitlements-which may include access to employment, political processes, education, health care, the media, and the judicial system-only for recognized minorities may thereby exclude non-indigenous groups from these same privileges. The encyclopedia presents how minority studies discusses the tensions created by conferring legal privileges to indigenous minorities and withholding them from others.

Although numerical inferiority may seem a reasonable, if only intuitive, way to define minority status, it is not sufficient within minority studies. Slavery in the American South, apartheid in South Africa, and the Baathist system in Iraq-where a numerically inferior group dominated a numerically superior group-all serve to remind us that a consideration of cultural and political non-dominance must enter our understanding of what minority status means. Numerical superiority of one group often enforces cultural and political dominance over another group, but numbers alone do not adequately define minority or fully describe the relative influence and self-determination one group may enjoy.

In this sense minority status has come to define a political relationship rather than an inherent or changeless attribute of a people. The discipline does not agree that minority status requires that a people share immutable characteristics that we often associate with race and ethnicity. Religion and language, for example, are not immutable identities, because they can be acquired or change, but they do figure significantly in minorities' self-identification. Recently, some scholars have argued for a definition that accounts for power and equality, in which a minority is any group that has historically been relegated to a status unequal to that of a dominant group, regardless of distinct cultural or ethnic attributes; this definition would include sexual minorities. The encyclopedia brings these issues to light, presents these arguments, and summarizes broader opinion.

The broad opinion might conclude from these debates that the most inclusive definition of a minority or minorities is preferred. Certainly there is truth in this. Nevertheless, for those attempting to create law and public policy that is responsible to an electorate, a pragmatic approach to minority issues is, however flawed, a fundamental but ever-changing reality. For example, principles such as self-determination and cultural autonomy are universally recognized (at least among democratic nations and those creating law and public policy) yet pragmatically circumscribed to prevent instability and secessionist conflicts where coexistence and integration are possible and preferred. Coexistence, intercultural communication, and civil processes are as important to minority studies as independence, difference, and diversity. Incremental progress is also a valued strategy in the discussion of minority issues. On the one hand, national laws regarding minorities are often more restrictive than international proclamations. Thus individual nations, such as the member states of the European Community, while respecting certain basic rights for all, provide substantial protections, politically and culturally, to those minority groups officially recognized by the state. On the other hand, the United Nations uses a very broad definition of minority status and rights-one that may serve groups as they argue and agitate against political facts-but the protections that this definition guarantees are unhappily too few. The unhappy compromise is often a reality for the world's minorities.

Organization of the Encyclopedia

Calculations and compromises are necessary in the creation of a work that covers such a large subject. The Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities does not contain an entry on every minority group in every nation and region of the world. It presents for the user a thorough resource on minority studies. The information here covers the vast and diverse study of the world's minorities, introducing students to the field while providing an international perspective that enables students to pursue their own interests. To give structure to the scope of such a project, a four-pronged rationale was chosen that creates an accessible architecture for readers of the encyclopedia. This strategy organizes the encyclopedia into four clearly defined entry types: topics, nations, groups, and biographies.

Of the 562 entries in the encyclopedia, 75 Topics entries introduce students to the broad ideas, concepts, and concerns shared by those working on minority issues. Readers will find definitions and histories of such terms as "Autonomy," "Self-determination," and "Nationalism." Entries of this kind also include organizations and institutions, such as Sinn Féin, the League of Nations, and Minority Rights Group International. These entries help to familiarize students with the language of the discipline and to understand how organizations participate in the field and are discussed within it.

Nations entries (173 in total) describe the history of minorities living within national borders, and so explain the political and legal apparatus that states formally create in relation to their minority populations as well as the informal conditions experienced by those groups. In nation entries the reader will find information not only about the dominant group in a country, such as the Swedes in Sweden, but about those other groups that share in the nation-state, such as the Finnish and Saami minorities in Sweden. In this respect, the encyclopedia encourages readers to think outside of categories they commonly associate with the idea of a country-to think of a nation as an assemblage of peoples and cultures rather than as a single, monolithic entity.

Groups entries, comprising the largest category with a total of 251 essays, explain the history of peoples living as minorities around the world. These entries discuss whether the group is a single-nation minority or one living in multiple nations, detailing its language, religion, and political and social conditions. Each group entry also contains up-to-date population data garnered from, among other sources such as national censuses, the 2003 World Factbook published by the CIA for the United States Government. Group entries are of two kinds: one covers groups who, wherever they are found, live as a minority, such as the Roma (Gypsies); the other covers groups who enjoy a dominant place in a homeland but are found elsewhere as minorities, such as the Japanese. This distinction is important to recognize because the notions of identity and cultural legitimacy are so often linked with a place of origin or with a nation that the situation of stateless peoples is often ignored. Similarly, minorities seeking greater protections have often resorted to nationalism to assert political liberties.

Biographies introduce persons who figure significantly in the history of minority communities and who, through their actions or words, have articulated the larger interests of minority peoples. A total of 62 such entries include Marcus Garvey, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Biographical entries credit an individual's importance but also reveal how leaders of minority campaigns and struggles influence one another in vastly different parts of the world, showing that a minority group identifies not always only with itself but also with other minority groups as they look to each other for guidance.

Ultimately, an encyclopedia is a wealth of integrated information that maps an area of interest and provides as many access points to that information as possible. In creating this map, the encyclopedia aims to present fact, not opinion. Its entries describe rather than persuade, explain arguments rather than take sides, present rather than resolve areas of contention. The Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities contains 562 signed scholarly essays about nations, groups, and issues around the world that, written in clear, accessible prose, create a detailed map of a complicated terrain. Each entry includes a selection of further readings and cross-references (listed in "see also" sections at the end of each entry) to other articles for those readers who wish to explore a topic in greater depth. Blind entries serve to guide the reader through the work. A thorough, analytic index provides the reader with a critical tool for accessing the work in its entirety.

Creating an encyclopedia is never a solitary undertaking. I would like to extend my appreciation to the editorial board. Their help in formulating the final table of contents was invaluable. I would especially like to thank Martin Ryle, professor of history, emeritus, the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. His willingness to review the final manuscript in the closing months of the project was nothing short of heroic. His guidance and commitment to the encyclopedia made its publication possible. Finally, I would like to thank the hundreds of contributors whose work here will further our understanding of the world's minorities.

Mark L. Georgiev
Acquisitions Editor
Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities