Violence erupted between the ethnically Burmese Buddhist majority and the Muslim ethnic minority Rohingyas in Myanmar in 2012.To see the extent to which group-based differences shape contemporary global conflicts, consider a few less prominent examples from recent headlines: In his view, many of the stresses of globalization, the “collision of cultures brought on by the Internet and social media,” and “scarcities,” some of which will be exacerbated by climate change and population growth, lead to a “default position” to organize by “tribe-us/them, a hostility toward the unfamiliar or unknown,” and to “push back against those who are different.” 2) Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” March 17, 2016, accessed April 1, 2016. In a remarkably candid and wide-ranging recently published interview, US president Barack Obama cited tribalism and atavism as a source of much conflict in the world. 1) Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 149-151 The Mosaic Rooms, Naomi Klein: Let Them Drown-The Violence of Othering in a Warming World, May 4, 2016, posted May 10, 2016, Othering undergirds territorial disputes, sectarian violence, military conflict, the spread of disease, hunger and food insecurity, and even climate change. The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “othering.” In a world beset by seemingly intractable and overwhelming challenges, virtually every global, national, and regional conflict is wrapped within or organized around one or more dimension of group-based difference.

The problem of pain sparknotes