Definition of “ethnic”:
It is a self-conscious and vocalized identity that substantializes and naturalizes one or more attributes – the usual ones being skin color, language, religion, territorial occupation – and attaches them to collectivities as their innate possession and their mytho-historical legacy. The central components in this description of identity are ideas of inheritance, ancestry and descent, place or territory of origin, and the sharing of kinship, any one or combination of which may be invoked as a claim according to context and calculation of advantages. These ethnic collectivities are believed to be bounded and to be self-producing and enduring through time.
336. Involves:
1. substantialization and reification of qualities and attributes as enduring collective possessions
- a. mytho-historical charters
- b. claims of blood, descent, race (“pseudo-speciation”)
2. ethnic boundary-making
Appear intermediate between local kinship groupings and the nation as a maximal collectivity
Bases for mobilization for political action
1. Ethnicity
2. Social class
3. Nation-state
[note: he curiously does not mention religion as a basis for mobilizing for political action.]
336-7: Ethnicity as contemporary phenomenon since 1960s. Why?
- Emergence of ethnic movements in third world and in the industrialized and affluent world
- Not so much minority or marginal groups that would assimilate to national culture, but rather major political collective actors
- In many societies specific ethnic groups are politically dominant
- Frequency and intensity of occurrence of ethnic conflicts
- o Violence
- o Threatened breakup of societies
- o Mass killings and displacements – genocides and ethnic cleansings
- o Violence
337-8: Shifting salience of state institutions: Definition of the state: the authority invested with the monopoly of force. NOT
- International networks of collaboration
- “privatization of war”
- Use of private militias against internal elements by states
- Use of proxies by Cold War principals
- Use of private militias against internal elements by states
- Global media that bring all these conflicts to the same plane of consciousness
338-9: Contrast nature of ethnicity today with that of Barth’s 1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: Barth’s concerns were with the manner in which boundaries were maintained between ethnic groups
- Occupation of niches
- Maintenance and persistence through time
- Part of structured and stable interactions between ethnic groups
- Guided by a “systematic set of rules governing inter-ethnic social encounters” (Barth 1969:16).
339 Contrasts with today’s “politicization of ethnicity”
339: Demographic distribution of ethnic groups that affect the course of ethnic politics
1. Countries that are virtually homogenous in ethnic composition (with 90-100 percent being ethnically the same)_: Japan, Korea, Bangladesh
2. Countries that have a single overwhelmingly dominant ethnic majority that constitutes 75-89 percent of the population: Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Turkey
3. Countries where the largest ethnic group makes up 50-75 percent of the population and where there are several “minority” groups: Thailand, Sri Lanka, Laos, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Singapore, and (probably) Nepal.
4. Countries where there are two large dominant groups of roughly the same size (with or without small minority enclaves in their midst): Malaysia ([Malays 44%, Chinese 36%]) Guyana ([East Indians 50%] and the Creoles); Fiji (Fijians and Indians are nearly the same size); Guatemala (where the Ladinos and Indians are about equal size).
5. Our last category consists of the truly pluralistic countries composed of many ethnic groups where no one or two of them are dominant, and where not all groups may be actively implicated in ethnic politics. Examples here are Nigeria (with Ibo, Yoruba, Hausa and Fulani being the major entities) and countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and India, whose populations are more varied. However, within these complex societies, internal etnic politics may take dualistic forms within regions [Sikhs v. Hindus in Punjab, indigenous ‘hill tribes’ v. Benhalis in Mizoram, India; Christians v. Moros in Philippines.]
- Ranked ethnic groups [Rwanda, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Liberia]
- Unranked or parallel groups divided by vertical cleavages [Malays/Chinese – Malaysia; Sinhalese/Tamils-Sri Lanka; East Indians/Creoles – Guyana; Ibo/Hausa/Fulani/Yoruba – Nigeria; Christian/Moro –Philippines; Thai/Muslims – Thailand]
340: Politicization of ethnicity – transition from the politics of the nation-state to the politics of ethnic pluralism.
- Nation as rooted in modernization in Europe
- “Official nationalism” – European monarchies, based on a national identification projected onto vernacular languages.
- Transferred to colonial context
- Promoted by indigenous elites
- Collided with world capitalist system/dependency
- Promoted by indigenous elites
- 341: The colonial legacy “particularizing and standardizing policies”
- Colonial powers [generally] aggregated people and territory into larger polities than existed before
- Geopolitical competition between imperial powers
- Consolidated existing differences
- Stimulated bodies of people, primarily socially separated, to interact in common areas.
342: Three phases of the era of independence
1. decolonization – power transferred to local elites
2. nation making – national coalition governments
3. eruption of ethnic conflicts since 1960s
343: Politics of ethnicity
- Development of new means of communication
- Evolution of the welfare state & socialist state, both promoting “development”
- Ethnic equalization contra individual freedom and equality [344]
- Ethnic group entitlements - 345
Capacities and “symbolic capital” – education & occupation
Material rewards
“honors” – titles and offices, religious and linguistic precedence and esteem, markers of ethnic or national pride
