FEAR OF SMALL NUMBERS: AN ESSAY ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANGER
Appadurai Arjun
Duke University Press
2007
Pp.153 + xv
$18.95
Reviewed by SYED ADFAR RASHID SHAH
Arjun Appadurai is an Indian-American academic and writer mostly writing on modernity and globalisation. He currently is a faculty member of New York University’s Media Culture and Communication department in the Steinhardt School. Some of his most important works include Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule (1981), Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy (1990) Found in Modernity at Large (1996), and Fear of Small Numbers (2006).
The title of the book, Fear of Small Numbers is interesting. ‘Small numbers’ represent all those, who, though in utter minority, pose serious fear among majority masses by their fighting tactics like human bombers, guerrillas, a few with new cheap weaponry, etc. and shape up a geography of anger. The book revolves around the role of modernity and globalisation in perpetrating violence for certain reasons, and discusses how globalisation gives boost to geography of anger as it creates polarity among riches and the poor across the world. Also, the major theme of the book is how exercise of brute power and economic encounters via globalisation can breed violence and resentment against the west, especially the U.S.
The book consists of six brief essays, in which the author discusses global chaos, conflicts, terrorism and its repercussions, ethnic encounters and breeding violence under different shades and shadows like that of nationalism, religion, identity, etc. It tries to reflect the violence of globalisation in terms of cultural and ethnic identities and their counter acts. The book is not too old and is based on the events from 1998 to 2004.
The author’s conceptualising violence is of two kinds. One deals with the events which Eastern Europe, Rwanda and India witnessed in early 1990s, which, he argues, showed that the world in 1990s was not entirely progressing. He also introduces the concept of globalisation and argues that this very phenomenon exposed various faults lying in the so-called holy ideologies based on nationhood.
The book is not too small and seems a bit complicated with big jargons employed by the author. The author treats different facts of globalisation as a promoter or, we can say, which can work as fuel to the increasing violent cultural and national fundamentalism. It also reflects present chaos in the contemporary era fostered by the proliferation of terrorism and the impact of globalisation round the world.
In the first chapter ‘From Ethnocide to Ideocide’, he introduces a new term ‘ideocide’, with which he means ideological supremacy or reductionism, which leads to intense rivalry, uncertainty and enmity among different nations or groups and he says terrorism is main source behind these uncertainties. Another term he uses is ‘ethnocide’, which is ethnic cleansing or genocide of ethnic minorities, etc. Similarly, he uses the term ‘predatory identities’, which refers to those identities that for their existence need others as their prey like Jews of Israel and people of Palestine. He argues such identities emerge from clash between majority and national identities. In the very first essay, ‘From Ethnocide to Ideocide’, the author talks of violence which he deems is culturally motivated and widespread in contemporary times.
He further says the inherent ethnicist tendency in all the ideologies of nationalism does not explain why only some national politics becomes the cause for the large scale violence, civil war or ethnic cleansing (p.4). The author is of the view that in the present globalised era, minorities pose threat and severe challenges to national narratives, social integration and homogeneity of a nation. He feels these alienated and angry minorities are a threat to globalisation in terms of its hatred and target at its drivers which is west, particularly the U.S.A.
The other type, he argues, is the violence in the name of “War on Terror” emerged after 9/11 episode. He calls the decade of 1990s as a decade of super violence, which witnessed accumulation of warfare by many countries.
For Appadurai, the masses are the large numbers, who are irrational and are shaped by outer forces like myths, public opinion, leaders, state, etc. He talks of the strong correlation between violence and globalisation. One gets the idea from reading the book that Appadurai tries to discuss globalisation as an agency of breeding violence, which is again the repercussion of economic and social factors prevailing. He talks of the globalisation as a factor impoverishing countries from the control of their own economies and as a product of it, there emerged different disabilities like rampant unemployment, disputed borders, unprecedented mobilisation of workers, especially poor workers, who are its worst-hit victims and that is why he calls globalisation a game.
In the third chapter, ‘Globalisation and Violence’, Appadurai links terrorism with globalisation, as it has given strong basis to it in terms of decentralised industries, trade and mass moments.
Terror, as one understands from the book, is an agency or tool of creating fear among those who have created their economic and power hegemony on the globe as we can exemplify by 50,000 U.S troops still in Iraq and, lakhs of them in Afghanistan, etc. It is a matter of serious disinterest, undesirable, oppressive and uncomfortable for Muslims anywhere. It invites strong resentment, hatred and finally use of terrorism against the United States. It can be further understood if we see drone attacks in Afghanistan, killing civilians like anything, and atrocities on Afghan people who were already brutally harassed and crushed under the Taliban rule. It leads to further terror creation and flourishes terrorism. Similarly in Kashmir, killing of even small kids, day in and day out, is actually an unplanned endeavour of creating violence, disability and terrorism against India. In the region it reflected in recent mass uprising, attacks on bunkers, police, etc. Another thing which the author talks of is violence against civilian populations, what he calls terrorism as a tactic (p.3)., which is witnessed simultaneously in conflict zones right now.
He argues it is the fare which prepares the ground for violence particularly group violence like riots to extended violence. Many scholars think that it is this collective violence accompanied by large scale killing, degradation of human dignity which was the characteristics of what he says totalitarianism like fascism and examples like in Mao’s time in China and in USSR in the time of Stalin and the like.
The author talks of the most recent violence in the form of dramas of violence that are staged in the name of religion, nationality, freedom and identity. He gives examples of the videotaped kidnappings of victims, and their beheading, etc. with the sanction of what he calls militant Islam. But the author should understand the fact that violence perpetrated in Muslim countries or regions will definitely have its retaliation and religion should not be stereotyped or branded for that.
Appadurai says warfare in the civilized zones conducted with a view to eliminating war, by various counts, has outnumbered external wars. He says, the 9/11 attacks were a massive act of social punishment to punish America for its moral travesties around the world, especially in the Islamic world (p.17), is a reality which cannot be denied.
Again, the author’s perspective on power and violence relation is directly proportional like America’s oppression in the name of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. Simultaneous suicide bombers are proving fatal to American troops, and have created panic and fear among forces and powerful countries like U.S. that even now reportedly say they are ready to talk to Taliban. Appadurai, in the same way, talks of terrorism as an element leading to unpredictability and key to constant fear (p. 32).
In the last chapter, Grassroots, ‘Globalization in the Era of Ideocide’ the author argues that Huntington’s views on clash of civilizations, though debatable and controversial, are turning applicable after 9/11 as it is now truly a clash of civilization of the west particularly of the United States and the Muslim world. The author simultaneously criticises the model for it evacuates history from culture, leaving only geography (p.115).
The author introduces yet another “CIDE” what he calls ‘civicide’. He argues Nazi ethnocide and genocide regarding world Jewry was very much the clash of civilizations and should be better called Ideocide or a clash of Civicides (p.117). The author draws heavily upon ethnocide and ideocide in the world as the strained relationships between peace and equity.
Those who perpetrate violence through power invite violence as when fear goes, small numbers even pose a serious threat and use fear as well as killing tactics in return. The book is well balanced in arguments, ‘The geography of anger’ can be understood as all those changes which globalisation has created in terms of various uncertain and complex ways in different geographies of the globe that are not what we call conventional minorities but numbers, perhaps used in the context of jihadists, rebels and human bombers, who pose a big fear even to a powerful majority.
The book is definitely a good read for the students of Sociology and International Relations for it argues about social clashes with violence, and the phenomenon of globalisation and talks of its offshoots, that of terrorism, its role in budding poverty, uncontrolled state economies, etc.
[SYED ADFAR RASHID SHAH is a Dictoral Scholar of Sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He can be reached at [email protected]]