PO377 Ethnic Conflict and Political Violence

1. PO377 Ethnic Conflict and Political Violence Week 8 Seminar: Ethnicity, Nations and Nationalisms

2. Seminar Questions • Debate the principle conceptual approaches to understanding ethnicity and nationalism and the relationship between them. What do you find most convincing? • Is ethnic nationalism ‘bad nationalism’?

3. Primordialism vs. Instrumentalism Ethnicity as primordial • Ethnicity is ‘deeply ingrained in human history and experience’ (Wolff 2006, p. 33). Ethnic bonds are primordial and unlike other bonds: have an over-powering non-rational, emotional quality; are largely inexplicable; are ancient, enduring and recurrent; given, natural and immutable. Ethnicity as instrumental • Ethnicity is socially and politically constructed over time. Ethnicity is ‘foremost a resource in the hands of leaders to mobilize followers in the pursuit of other interests’ (Wolff 2006, p. 33). Ethnic bonds are related to political and social projects; instrumentally mobilized as a means to gain material goals.

4. Question for discussion • Do you find primordialist or instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity most convincing?

5. Primordialism vs. Instrumentalism (2) ‘[E]thnic identity should perhaps rather be seen as something that has roots in a group’s culture, and historical experiences and traditions, but that is also dependent upon contemporary opportunities that can be a useful instrument for mobilizing people for social, political, or economic purposes that may or may not be related directly to their ethnic origins’ (Wolff 2006, pp. 36-37).

6. History and Nature of Nationalism(s) Civic nationalism • Civic/territorial conceptions of the nation ‘regard it as a community of shared culture, common laws, and territorial citizenship’. • With civic nationalism ‘residence and political participation in a public culture tend[s] to determine citizenship and membership of the nation’(Smith 1993). Ethnic or ethno-nationalism • Ethnic conceptions of the nation ‘focus on the genealogy of its members, however fictive; on popular mobilization of “the folk”; on native history and customs; and on the vernacular culture’ (Smith 1993). • Therefore, ethno-nationalism involves the politicisation of ethnicity and usually territorial as well as political claims.

7. Group Activity • Break into two groups and prepare to have a short debate between the two groups. One side is to argue that ethnic or ethno-nationalism is ‘bad nationalism’ whilst the other side challenges this.

8. The Nation-State • Proposition that a nation should have self-government within the same state; ‘assumes a complete correspondence between the boundaries of the nation and the boundaries of those who live in a specific state’ (Yuval-Davis 1997, p. 11). • BUT in most societies are people who aren’t members of the hegemonic nation (in ethnic or civic terms); some members of national collectivities live in other states; some nations have never had a state. • Ethnic nation-states: Pierre van den Berghe (1990): less than 15% of contemporary states are nation-states and most are micro-states. David Welsh (1993): less than 20 of approx. 180 contemporary states are ethnically homogeneous.

9. The Nation-State (2) • Civic nation-states: requires difficult nation-building project. Can have ethnic undertones that make minorities feel excluded. • Talk of the ‘nation-state’ is usually uncritical. Effect of the nation-state fiction has been ‘to naturalize the hegemony of one collectivity and its access to the ideological apparatuses of both state and civil society’ (Yuval-Davis 1997, p. 11). • So there are problems with both ethnic and civic conceptualizations of the nation-state.