RADICAL EGALITARIANISM: LOCAL REALITIES, GLOBAL RELATIONS Edited by F. Aulino, M. Goheen, and S.J. Tambiah Fordam University Press. 2013 At the Base of Local and Transnational Conflicts: The Political Uses of Inferiorization Emiko Ohnuki-Tiemey Magisterial theoretical contributions, always based on solid and ex- haustive historical and ethnographic data, are what first come to our mind when we think of Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah. But I am now keenly aware that his work, as most evident in his Leveling Crowds (1996), has also been rooted in his passionate concern with injus- tice and inequality in the realpolitik of the past and present, when the forces ofWestern imperialism have not abated after decoloniza- tion but increased in ferocity as the United States has become a new center of imperial domination. Tambiah sees a close connection be- tween political, economic, and cultural inequality in geopolitiCs and violence at the local level. His effort to analyze the factors that cause violence has been driven by his commitment to domestic and inter- national peace. His goal has been to seek "plausible and coherent an- swers" to the question of why ethnicity and ethnonationalism have been "potent bases for collective mobilization and are powerfully at work in many modern contexts at a time when global processes of modernization and homogenization are alleged to be dominant cur- 220