Ethnicity and Nationalism

Saturday school. The room has been set out as a horseshoe. One of our Quaker friends has brought her own kettle, milk, cups, coffee and tea and offers it round. This never happened in the other classes.

Today the topic is Ethnicity and Nationalism and how they contribute to violent conflict with reference to Burton’s ‘human needs theory’, ‘democratic peace theory’ and ‘democratisation’ as a theory and practice.

We start with different perspectives on ethnicity. There is the ‘primordialist’ view, discredited in academic circles, but beloved of certain US politicians. Remember? “Those people in the Balkans: who can explain their animosities? It’s useless to try to help, they are trapped in an ancient feud dating back centuries.” The view that hatreds between groups are somehow part of their fundamental genetic makeup: in their blood. (Irene mentions that ‘Balkan Ghost’, a book endorsing this view, was the one chosen by Bill Clinton to educate himself on the region.)

We academics prefer to see it as ‘ethno-political’ conflict. An ‘intrumentalist’ view. Ethnicity is used and manipulated by politicians for their own political goals. Seems about right to me.

Irene proceeds to distinguish between ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ groups. A group may share common origins, language and customs but only a ‘national’ groups also aspires to their own TERRITORY (and have this aspiration recognized by other nations). So the Roma (Gypsies) are considered an ‘ethnic’ group, but not a ‘national’ group. It seems this distinction is one of terminology not of kind. Various native American groups fought long and hard for their territory: they failed. Is a ‘national’ group just a successful ‘ethnic’ group? (Israelis and Jews). An ‘ethnic’ group just a failed ‘national’ group? (The Sioux Nation and native Americans).

Oh, and now the ‘state’ thing. The ‘nation-state’. France is popular in this regard. They say it became one ‘state’ before it became one ‘nation’. (Benedict Anderson says nations are ‘imagined communities’ fostered by the print revolution.) Irene suggests maybe only in Iceland is the ‘state’ and the ‘nation’ coextensive (cover exactly the same area); even there, of course, there is a sense in which the Icelandic nation is not entirely discrete. Iceland, as a nation, has long been part of a greater Scandinavian cultural entity.

Now we get to the problem cases. Serbia and its expansionist agenda: ‘Greater Serbia’; the aspiration to unite all Serbs in the territory of former Yugoslavia. (Irene refers us to Michael Ignatieff’s Blood and Belonging.) Peoples’ right to ‘self-determination’ was promulgated in the UN Charter 1945. (The language unspecific. The British Empire still a reality: the US ideologically opposed to Empire but pragmatic.) But what about Chechnya? Kosovo? Quebec? The English speaking minority in Quebec? (It's not by chance that Thomas More’s Utopia was an island.) [As we discuss city-states, empires, post-modern states, post-colonial states, the EU I am reflecting that smaller states, surely, only exist by virtue of an over-arching international system under the auspices of, in our time, the US. Like Timor-Leste.] States come into existence because they are recognized by other states; can therefore form treaties.

We move on to consociational or power-sharing democracy. (Arendt Lijphart’s the man.) Lebanon… power sharing but changes in relative population of different groups threaten stability or justice of prior fixed agreements. Switzerland… Malaysia (the system broke down)… Burundi (more and more groups rebelled and gained seats at the table.

Time's up.