World on Fire

This article is about the book. For the Sarah McLachlan song, see World on Fire (song). For the Krokus song, see Change of Address. For the Firewind single, see World on Fire (Firewind song).

World on Fire
paperback cover
Author(s)	Amy Chua
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject(s)	international economic relations, globalization, ethnic conflict
Genre(s)	current affairs
Publisher	Doubleday (hardcover) Anchor Books (paperback)
Publication date	2003 (hardcover)
Media type	hardcover, paperback
ISBN	978-0-385-72186-8 (paperback)
OCLC Number	53994907
Dewey Decimal	303.6 21
LC Classification	HF1359 .C524 2004

World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability is a 2002 book published by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua. It is an academic study into ethnic and sociological divisions in regard to economic and governmental systems in various societies.

Summary

In the Philippines, Chua explains, the ethnic-Chinese minority has far greater wealth than the indigenous majority, with the result being envy and bitterness on the part of the majority against the Chinese minority—in other words, an ethnic conflict. She believes that democratization can increase ethnic conflicts when an ethnic minority is disproportionately wealthy. "When free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is backlash. This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority's wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself.".^[1] Also, "overnight democracy will empower the poor, indigenous majority. What happens is that under those circumstances, democracy doesn't do what we expect it to do – that is, reinforce markets. [Instead,] democracy leads to the emergence of manipulative politicians and demagogues who find that the best way to get votes is by scapegoating the minorities."^[2]

According to Chua, other examples of ethnic market-dominant minorities – referred to by other academics as middlemen minorities, include Chinese people in Southeast Asia; whites in Latin America; Jews in Russia; Croats in the former Yugoslavia; and Ibos, Kikuyus, Tutsis, Indians and Lebanese, among others, in Africa.^[3]

In her book, Chua discusses different reasons for the market dominance of different groups. Some groups achieve market dominance because of colonial oppression or apartheid. In other cases, it may be due to the culture and family networks of these groups. For many groups there is no clear single explanation.^[2]

Americans can also be seen as a global market-dominant minority, in particularly when combined with using military might and flaunting political domination, cause resentment.^[3]

Chua states that she is a "big fan of trying to promote markets and democracy globally," but that it should be accompanied by attempts to "redistribute the wealth, whether it's property title and giving poor people property, land reform .... Redistributive mechanisms are tough to have if you have so much corruption."^[4]

Accolades

• Selected one of The Economist Best Books of the Year 2003

Criticism

Amy Chua's other thesis and her conclusions have been disputed by George Leef^[5] of the John Locke Foundation, who proposes that many other factors may account for ethnic violence, including the most simple motivation of pure racism.^[6] Leef includes in his review:

Nothing does more to reduce violence and many other social ills than the rising standards of living that capitalism alone makes possible. What a tragedy it would be if nations were to forego the tremendous long-run benefits of capitalism out of fear that there might be violence in the short-run against those who take advantage of business opportunities the earliest. And proves in the end is that governments cannot be depended upon to prevent violence against people who have been, for whatever reason, demonized by others. That’s nothing new.

Andreas Wimmer and Brian Min, criticizing the book, state:

By contrast, our analysis shows that what has been observed in recent decades may simply be more of the same old story. Although history never repeats itself, the same process patterns may be operating at different times and in different historical contexts (cf. Collier and Mazzuca 2006). The dismemberment of empire and the formation of the nation-state have led to wars since the time of Napoleon. The patterns of warfare in the Caucasus and the Balkans in the 1990s resemble those on the Indian sub-continent in the 1940s, those of Eastern Europe during and after the World War I, and so on. The return of the “Macedonian syndrome,” as Myron Weiner (1971) has called the intermingling of ethnic conflict and irredentist wars, explains such recurrent patterns of war much better than any variant of globalization theory. To treat them as a fundamentally new phenomenon, brought about by the end of the Cold War or increased globalization, represents yet another example of the widespread tendency among social scientists to perceive their own times as unique and exceptionally dynamic (on “chrono- centrism,” see Fowles 1974).

They also note that several studies support a variant of the democratic peace theory, which argues that more democracy causes a general decrease in systematic violence, at least for the most democratic nations. However, intermediately democratic nations do have a higher tendency for conflicts such as civil war than autocracies.^[7]

See also

• Dominant minority
  • Model minority
• Yuri Slezkine's book The Jewish Century (2004)
• Ethnic elite
• Presentism

External links

• Salon.com review By Michelle Goldberg
• The Guardian review By Martin Jacques
• Collected reviews
• Review by George Leef
• Booknotes interview with Chua on World on Fire, February 9, 2003.

References

1. ^ Chua, Amy (2002). World on Fire. Doubleday. ISBN 0385503024. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Harry Kreisler (2004). "Conversation with Amy Chua: Markets and Democracy". UC Berkeley: Institute of International Studies. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Chua/chua-con3.html. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Pat Sewell (February 10, 2003). "Mixing Free Market, Minority Domination and Democracy Results in World On Fire". Yale Global. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/mixing-free-market-minority-domination-and-democracy-results-world-fire. 
4. ^ Harry Kreisler (2004). "Conversation with Amy Chua: Policy Implications". UC Berkeley: Institute of International Studies. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Chua/chua-con5.html. 
5. ^ "Print Columnist". Carolina Journal. http://www.carolinajournal.com/cjcolumnists/display_author.html?id=29. 
6. ^ George Leef (Aug 26, 2004). "No. 152: World on Fire: Government Fails to Protect Society's Scapegoats". John Locke Foundation. http://www.johnlocke.org/news_columns/display_story.html?id=1759. 
7. ^ Andreas Wimmer; Brian Min (December 2006). "From Empire to Nation-State: Explaining Wars in the Modern World, 1816–2001" (PDF). American Sociological Review 71: 867–897. http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Dec06ASRFeature.pdf.