Ethnoreligious Othering in Times of Crisis, Breakdown, and Threat: A Comparative Study of Southeast Asia

Using interpretive process tracing method, I develop and apply a causal mechanism framework that traces and explains the process of ethnoreligious othering in territorially bounded pluralistic polities. As I argue and demonstrate throughout the paper, this unseen, albeit existing three-stage causal mechanism is the motor driving the ethnoreligious othering of minority groups, which chauvinistic state and non-state actors routinely employ as a defense security strategy in times of crisis, breakdown, and threat. More specifically, the ethnoreligious othering framework explains how the hostile emotive effects, hostile symbolic predispositions, and hostile perceptions of ethnoreligious identity and territory (emanating from the amalgamation of religious and nationalist factors/influences) are weaponized by members of competing ethnoreligious factions as a means of securing their respective identities and territories, along with their ideal version of the nation-state in question. To illustrate how this causal mechanism works in actual cases, I comparatively examine ethnoreligious othering in the predominantly Islamic Indonesia, Buddhist Myanmar, and Catholic Philippines. Drawing on these theoretical and empirical analyses, I conclude that ethnoreligious othering is the preferred defense strategy used by powerful chauvinistic entities against security issues perceived to threaten the conceptual and material survival of contemporary nation-states in Southeast Asia. It proceeds in three progressive stages: cultivation of the hostile emotive effects of ethnoreligious nationalism; securitization of the othered ethnoreligious groups using hostile symbolic predispositions; and sacralization of indivisible ethnoreligious identities and homelands.