Even where the historic connections between ethnicity and nationalism have been exposed to scholarly inquiry, as in the work of Anthony Smith and John Hutchinson, little sustained attention is directed toward the contemporary dynamics of dominant-group ethnicity. Other references to dominant ethnicity do not extend beyond one or two articles, encyclopaedia contributions and cursory references to ‘charter groups’, ‘homeland nationalisms’, or ‘staatsvolks’.

Gladney’s work inadvertently – because he is largely unware of the gaps in the existing literature – contributes toward our understanding of majority ethnies. Instead, Gladney and his contributors advance a different agenda, which emerges from their background in anthropology and Asia-Pacific studies. Their mandate, as outlined by Gladney, is threefold: to problematise the notion of ‘majority’ groups, to challenge the widely held view that Asian nations are ethnically homogeneous, and, finally, to interrogate Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ paradigm. That this volume succeeds despite this somewhat chaotic menu and the homage paid to post-modernist icons (i.e. ‘alterity’, ‘Other’) is a tribute to the richness of the core contributions and the originality of Gladney’s focus on majorities.

There are fourteen contributions to this book, in addition to Gladney’s introduction. The contributions are grouped in seven pairs corresponding to the title’s cases: Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey and the United States. These broadly address the majority ethnic group in each case, though in nearly half the contributions, the focus is primarily on ethnic minorities and their interaction with the state. Articles tend to provide a history of the development of majority discourse (i.e. dominant-group ethnogenesis) and the changing boundaries of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ over time. In some of the contributions, historical material is complemented by ethnographic or documentary analysis. Unfortunately, there is no conclusion to tie together the pieces, which is a weakness of the text.

With the exception of the American example, I came away with an improved understanding of the cases in question, and a sense of thematic coherence. The authors cleave to a constructivist approach in an attempt to deconstruct the ‘naturalness’ of majorities and minorities, but generally do not allow their iconoclastic enthusiasms to run too far away from the evidence. The pieces by Yoshino on Japanese cultural nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s, Kendall on Korean Shamanism and cultural revivalism, Shamsul and Milner on the construction of the Malay majority, Kaplan on Fijian ethnic dominance, and Kirisçi on the shifting boundaries of Turkishness/Kurdishness are particularly outstanding.

These contributions tend to follow the Gellnerian proposition that pre-modern societies in Asia were organised as imperial or dynastic polities, with localised and religious identity for the mass of the peasantry, and cosmopolitan identity for the elite. There is also an emphasis upon the fluidity of pre-modern cultural constructions – hence the curiosity that an early nineteenth-century Malay ethno-nationalist was of Arab–Indian origin, while an early articulator of Turkish ethnicity in the Ottoman empire was of Albanian descent (pp. 155, 219). The authors tend to contend that ethnogenesis in these cases was typically a modern, and often a twentieth-century, construction driven by the nationalising state or colonial administrators. They often discuss the range of competing ethnic narratives (i.e. Greater v. Lesser homelands) and the political circumstances which shaped the choice of a particular option.

This is not a new perspective, but the array of facts marshalled to support it is impressive. Even so, one may legitimately ask, if constructions are wholly contingent, why it is the case that elites appealed to ancestry rather than status in many of the cases considered. Why, for instance, would the Fijian or Malay elite not enter into an alliance with wealthy minorities – as occurred in numerous pre-modern situations? Why were colonialists unsuccessful in creating strong imperial identities? Clearly, a purely constructivist account cannot provide the answer to these questions.

In fairness, a number of authors admit that modes of identity in pre-modernity, notably in Malaysia and Turkey, did include notions of time and place that influenced later acceptance of ‘invented’ myths. But they might also have made reference to the suggestive role of pre-modern polities such as the Javanese or Chinese empires, which (temporarily) united large swathes of territory and thereby introduced the idea of a Javanese or Chinese political memory – thus furnishing the basis for subsequent constructions.

Overall, Gladney must be credited with setting a coherent and original structure for the book that delivers, though, as noted, the volume omits the direct comparative analysis that is usually provided by a conclusion. It also loses focus by including less relevant American material. On this note, Handler’s theoretical exegesis and Okamura’s Hawaiian case seem to have been tacked on as an afterthought. Handler’s work combines a standard American cultural critique with an attempt to theorise the problematic of the book – neither of which comes off well. Okamura’s piece is more interesting, but fails to engage with similar comparative cases (i.e. Fiji) or broader theoretical horizons in nationalism theory. One bizarre result is Okamura’s advocacy of Hawaiian ethnic nationalism over multiculturalism – a stance which runs directly counter to that of this volume’s other contributors, particularly as regards Fijian and Malay ethnic hegemony. This would not be so problematic if it were made explicit, but, since the volume lacks a conclusion, we have no way of knowing whether it is intended to complement or confront the book’s general perspective.

In summary, this compilation, though somewhat unsatisfactory at the theoretical level, provides an important contribution to debates in the field of ethnicity and nationalism and is therefore well worth the purchase price.