Amy Chua, "A World on the Edge"

Questions for Making Connections within the Reading:  

1. Chua opens her essay with a story that engages the reader, but also complicates easy moral judgments by presenting multiple perspectives. Chua tells the story from her own perspective as an American niece of her murdered aunt, but we also glimpse events through other eyes as well. How does the Chinese community in the Philippines look at events of this sort and respond to them? How do the Filipino authorities view such matters? What about ordinary Filipinos-how might they regard the Chinese in their country? Should we understand the murder as one person's response to injustice, or do you regard "injustice" as an inappropriate choice of words? Would it be accurate to describe the Chinese as "oppressing" or "exploiting" the Filipinos, or is the situation more complex than these terms suggest? After all, Americans also qualify as a "market-dominant minority."  

2. According to Chua, all peasants in the Philippines are Filipinos, whereas most members of the merchant class are Chinese. How has this situation developed in the Philippines, and why have similar imbalances arisen in other countries across the globe? Why might peasant-farmers be ill-suited to enter the world of international finance? What contributions to a society are made by "market-dominant minorities"? In what ways does the economic division in societies like the Philippines-with a majority of the native-born living in poverty while immigrants and their descendants dominate high finance-create a vicious circle in which the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor?  

3. Chua identifies three causes of the "explosive violence" we are witnessing around the world: markets, democracy, and ethnic hatred. How exactly do these three causes reinforce one another? To a certain extent, everyone on earth wants the wealth and security that markets bring, and nearly everyone wants democracy. And yet, if Chua is correct in her claim that these two aspirations are unleashing ethnic hatred, then democracy and free markets by themselves cannot be the solution. Do you agree with Robert Kaplan's argument that poor countries need to begin their long march to development with authoritarian governments? Or do you find Chua's own proposals more compelling?  

Questions for Writing:  

1. Are democracy and globalization inherently compatible? Ordinarily, we associate free markets with democracy, and we assume that political democracy will foster greater economic opportunity. On the basis of Chua's evidence, however, would you say that these assumptions will hold true in most cases around the world? Could the rise of markets on a global scale actually strengthen the undemocratic power of local elites, or could it create a new global elite for whom genuine democracy holds very little appeal? Should democracy become the world's top priority, or should democracy take a back seat to the broadening of prosperity? Consider in particular a success story like Mahathir Mohamad's policies in Malaysia.  

2. Americans have tried to solve the problem of ethnic hatred by relying on the influence of education and by asking for support from prominent public figures. The schools teach the value of diversity, while opinion makers in the public eye are asked to speak out against prejudice. Do you believe that such strategies are likely to work if we attempt to apply them on a global scale? Have they worked here in the United States? Are social problems like racism really unsolved economic problems? With the broadening of opportunity, is the problem of ethnic hatred likely to diminish or even disappear?  

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:  

1. In "Second Proms and Second Primaries: The Limits of Majority Rule," Lani Guinier writes about disadvantaged minorities in the United States, whereas Chua's focus in "AWorld on the Edge" is on minorities across the globe who enjoy enormous power and privilege. In spite of these differences, however, Guinier's critique of majority rule might help Chua to imagine another way to break the cycle of violence she describes in "A World on the Edge." Would the legislative changes of the kind Guinier proposes contribute to the protection of groups like the Chinese in the Philippines and Malaysia? How might these changes also benefit the native majorities?  

2. Chua's "AWorld on the Edge" and Beth Loffreda's "Losing Matt Shepard" both begin with the aftermath of a murder that expresses tensions in the larger culture. What are some of those tensions? Matt Shepard's murderers kill him because he is gay, whereas Aunt Leona is targeted because of her Chinese ethnicity, but the commonalities of these victims may extend beyond their shared identity as outsiders or people who are different. In a certain sense, the gay subculture in America is a national, and even global, phenomenon that cannot readily be contained by county lines or national boundaries. Similarly, the Chinese in Southeast Asia belong to an international community. To what degree do both murders and their aftermaths bear witness to a conflict between a local way of life and an intrusive, cosmopolitan culture?

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