Connection and Separation

Abstract

In the preceding chapter we discussed the ways in which identity, specifically for culturally, politically, and economically powerful groups in each of the three locales, is created through opposition to the secular and conflict-ridden world of the bad neighbor or the sinner, to ethnic “outsiders” and other recent arrivals who lack deep roots and an accompanying concept of collective interests, and to “brainless” people whose repeated appearances in court are taken as evidence of their lack of self-restraint. We argued that narratives of avoidance and involvement construct these oppositions and the hierarchies they encode, positioning people within them in particular