such contexts, exclusion and violence against minorities are not spontaneous outbursts but projects that create the ‘macabre form of certainty’ needed to restore majority identities that have been made newly vulnerable (Appadurai 2006, 5–7). The point is not to argue that Myanmar’s reencounters with democracy or globalisation make violence inevitable. Indeed this would be too similar to those problematic interpretations of Buddhist-Muslim violence as tragic growing pain and the inevitable dark side of new freedoms, political conflict, or a weak state. Quite the opposite: ‘These account only for the characters,’ Appadurai notes. ‘We need to look elsewhere for the plot. And the plot – worldwide in its force – is a product of the justified fear that the real world game has escaped the net of state sovereignty and interstate diplomacy’ (Appadurai 2006, 43). Appadurai’s theatre metaphor is similar to one employed by Paul Brass, whose study of Hindu-Muslim violence in north India is also instructive (Brass 1997; Brass 2003). For both Brass and Appadurai, violence is a production that must be mobilised, contingent on the construction of ideological scripts of fear and antagonism. These are not ‘age old hatreds,’ though they are historically situated, but narratives that are promoted by organised political forces. This script for fear and antagonism is evident in Myanmar. ‘Fear is not just on the side of the Muslims, but on the side of the Buddhists as well,’ Daw Aung San Suu Kyi told the BBC during an October 2013 interview. ‘There’s a perception that Muslim power, global Muslim power, is very great’ (BBC News 2013). She was pilloried for this interview,13 but her description was important for it summarised a fear that is being mobilised, and located it as both surrounding Myanmar’s borders and embodied in a domestic minority. Organised political forces calling for the protection of ‘race and religion’14 have gained increasing prominence as they have identified Islam as an existential threat to Buddhist nationhood, and Muslims within Myanmar as the vanguard. These groupings have undertaken popular national campaigns calling for the boycott of Muslim-owned businesses, passage of national laws restricting inter-faith marriage, and the restriction of citizenship for Muslims (see Nyi Nyi Kyaw, this volume). Though at times seeking to position themselves as officially non-partisan, they have nonetheless received public support from a wide array of public and political figures, government officials, the state body that oversees Myanmar’s monastic order, and some members of ethnic armed groups. The most virulent examples of this discourse have attracted international attention, such as the rhetoric of U Wirathu, the Buddhist leader whose posts were credited with sparking the July riots in Mandalay and who a TIME Magazine cover story had earlier branded the ‘Face of Buddhist Terror’ (Beech 2013). But a narrative of global threat must be given certitude through circulation and interaction in everyday life. Propaganda and organised campaigning are necessary but not sufficient; they also rely on what Appadurai calls ‘little stories,’ those individual pieces of information and quotidian conflicts that are both interpreted in light of the larger script and fixed within it as the illustrations that imbue it with personalised meaning (Appadurai 2006, 91). The relationship between narratives deployed by organised political forces and circulation in everyday life has become particularly apparent to me over the last two years, as I 13 David Blair of the Telegraph (UK), for example, called her remarks ‘deeply disturbing’ and went on to mock the idea that a Buddhist majority could fear a Muslim minority. See, Blair 2013. 14 These include the ‘969’ movement, named for Buddhist numerology; the ‘Organisation for the Protection of Race and Religion’, often referenced by its Myanmar language abbreviation ‘Ma Ba Tha;’ and a handful of nationalist youth organisations. 10