The Jerusalem Publishing House

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

PEOPLES OF THE WORLD

‭ ‬

Editor-in-Chief: Prof Amiram Gonen

Consulting Editors: Prof. Marwyn Samuels and Prof Michael Zand

Political and cultural changes throughout the world in recent years—caused by the breakdown of empires, new alliances, and demands for independence or autonomy—have created a need for reliable information on the many and diverse peoples and ethnic groups involved. Never before has the study of peoples and cultures been as popular as it is today. Never before have the names of so many “unknown” groups of peoples been discussed in the media. Many countries are currently locked in intense conflict with minorities fiercely opposed to assimilation into the predominant culture or fighting for political and economic equality. Most of these conflicts are rooted in age-old grievances and unfulfilled aspirations. Such is the decades-long conflict that plagues Myanmar (Burma), where the Karen and the Shan, along with other ethnic groups, seek some form of autonomy in regions of the Burmese nation-state where they have lived for centuries. The recent troubles in Serbia and Macedonia are rooted in the conflict between the Christian Slavic majority of these two countries and the Muslim Albanian minority living in regions adjacent to Albania. The recurrent uprising of has been the case in neighboring Iraq and Iran, where the Kurds form a sizable minority as well.

The Encyclopedia of the Peoples of the World allows us to gain knowledge of the ethnic fabric underlying economic, social, and political change in each country. Such knowledge is essential for assessing the news intelligently and becoming more aware of the cultures that surround us. Edited and written by a distinguished team of international scholars, the encyclopedia contains more then 2,000 entries on all peoples and ethnic groups of the world. The concise and clearly written entries are supplemented with hundreds of illustrations and maps in full color. The color illustrations and photographs depict culture, costume, environment, art architecture, and people, and are spread throughout the book. Many of the maps pinpoint little-known peoples and ethnic groups located in areas that do not correspond to official state boundaries. The maps are invaluable tools for comparing neighboring ethnic groups and locating peoples which have been made famous by evening news.

The Encyclopedia is structured alphabetically by country. Each country is given a separate chapter, which opens with an introductory section surveying the general relationship between peoples and minorities living in it, including a rundown of legislation and public policy concerning these population groups. The introductory section is followed by accounts of the history, culture, and political and economic conditions of the peoples and minorities living in the country, again in alphabetical order. Under this structure of the Encyclopedia, a particular national or ethnic group living in more than one country is dealt with separately for each country. Thus, the Hungarian minority in Romania, for example, is included in the chapter on Romania while the Hungarian minority in Slovakia is discussed in the chapter on Slovakia. A reader interested in Hungarian minorities in all the relevant countries can find them in the Encyclopedia by using the alphabetical index, where Hungarian minorities in different countries are found next to each other.

Editor-in-chief

Amiram Gonen is professor of social and cultural geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A former director of the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies, he currently serves as the head of the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies. He is also the author of numerous books and articles

Consulting Editors

Marwyn Samuels is professor-emeritus of geography at Syracuse University, where he has served as director of the Foreign and Comparative Studies Program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He has served as a consultant for the Government of Jiangsu Province in China. He has published books and articles on geography, focusing largely on China.

Michael Zand is professor of Persian and Tajik studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Formerly a research fellow of oriental studies at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, he is world-renowned in his field and has written books on a variety of subjects.‬

Approx‭. pages

Size 8-1/2 x 11

Fully illustrated

Maps