Proposal for Research Workshop, SSRC Program on International
Peace and Security
"Does Ethnic Conflict Exist? Globalization and processes
of identity and violence"
Proposed by:
Darini Rajasingham
Research Fellow at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies,
Colombo, Sri Lanka SSRC-MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow, Program
on Peace and Security in a Changing World
and
Chip Gagnon
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Peace Studies Program, Cornell University,
Ithaca, NY
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Politics, Ithaca College, Ithaca,
NY
SSRC-MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow, Program on Peace and Security
in a Changing World (1993- 1995)
Around the world, from Bosnia to Burundi, India to Iraq, historically diverse, multi-faith, multilingual and multicultural communities are being torn apart or segmented into ethnic enclaves through violence, often glossed as “ethnic conflict.” The proposed two-day workshop will critique the set of assumptions underlying most analyses of such conflicts, which we refer to as the culturalist paradigm, and will propose a new framework within which to understand violent conflicts described and justified in cultural and ethnic terms. Of particular importance in this regard is the central role of culture in the design of “solutions” which in fact lay the groundwork for even more violence.
The goal of the workshop is to stimulate innovative thinking about ways to prevent, moderate and resolve violent conflicts described and justified in cultural terms. To this end the workshop will examine how modern forms of nation-building and socio-political knowledge construct and legitimize ethnicity and conflict; assess the history and adequacy of the concept of ethnicity as an explanation of modern inter-group conflicts; and explore the policy implications of the culturalist paradigm (e.g. ethnic partitions, ethnic homelands, transfers of populations).
All participants will present papers. Contributions will be both theoretical and empirical. We intend that the workshop will lay the groundwork for the publication of a book. The workshop is to be held at the end of May 1997 at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
Not so long ago the New York Times noted that “We are now in a time when ethnic wars seem to have replaced leftist revolutions and rightist coups as the most obvious cause of international instability” (July 11, 1994). This statement reflects the fact that culture, and ethnicity in particular, has displaced the economic, military, and ideological paradigms which dominated post-World War II scholarly, policy, and public thinking about national and international conflict.
Ethnicity, with its racial underpinnings in colonial anthropology and enlightenment ideas of progress, increasingly dominates discussions of international security, and by now seems a natural fault line which explains and justifies violent conflicts and political alignments. The debate on the role of ethnicity in such conflicts has focused on whether ethnicity is primordial (ethnicity as a nonrational, affective identity) or socially constructed (ethnicity as a changeable, instrumental identity). But both primordialist and constructivist positions accept that ethnicity (or culture) is itself the driving force in politics and is a natural (or most efficient) fault line of political mobilization and conflict [Horowitz 1985; Esman 1995; on constructivism as “neoprimordialism” see Comaroff 1996]. Acceptance of this culturalist paradigm has resulted in the current emphasis in the field of international security on “ethnic groups,” “cultures,” or “civilizations” as units of analysis, and partitions along those lines as the only way to ensure peace [Posen 1994; Huntington 1993; Kaufmann 1996].
Close examination of actual cases of violence along cultural lines, however, seriously calls into question the culturalist paradigm. Although conflicts may be described as “ethnic,” and while ethnic identity may indeed play a role in them, ethnicity is perhaps the least important factor in understanding the outbreak of violence [Lipschutz 1996; Gagnon 1994/95]. “Peacekeeping” policies which rely on ethnic separation and partition for their effectiveness only reassert the primacy of ethnicity as a divisive force, and actually support and reinforce the logic of ethnic conflict. This situation is all the more ironic because as the concept of ethnically defined “homelands” and apartheid crumbles in South Africa, the intellectual basis of that racist ideology has come increasingly to dominate European and American security thinking. The precedent of Bosnia--where “solutions” based on ethnic partition have only deepened the tragedy--should be a warning signal for all interested in international peace and security.
In this context, the tendency in academic, journalistic and policy discourses to reify cultures or ethnic groups as if they were homogeneous, neatly bounded and self-evident units, is insidious, because it represents an uncritical adoption of ethno-nationalist logic and ideology.
Just as it is now clear that “interstate” conflict is not always driven by relations between states, so too is it important to recognize that “ethnic” or “cultural” conflicts are not always about relations between “ethnic groups” or “cultures.” Our critique of the culturalist paradigm starts from our empirical findings that ostensibly ethnic conflict is not “about” ethnic identity, culture or community. In many cases demands for justice may be articulated in terms of collective (ethnic, cultural) rights. But is this the expression of the collective will of a relatively homogeneous, stable community, or does it express the hegemony of a discourse of collective rights, community, nation? From the perspective of those who wish to make demands on national governments or the international community, the language of community, ethnic group, and minority identity is one of the only viable ways to gain recognition, power, and legitimacy. Appeals couched in terms of culturally-defined collective rights have receptive audiences. The dominant culturalist paradigm tends to read such identity claims as a reflection of social reality (the clustering of unambiguous, stable, homogeneous ethnic groups, cultures, civilizations) rather than as a representation of a type of social order that is "desirable," validated, and legitimate in terms of the frame that organizes international (and often national) law. Policy solutions which rest on the culturalist paradigm (which itself reflects the logic of difference that underpins the state system, as well as much of social and political theory) cannot bring lasting peace for two reasons: 1) they do not address the underlying causes of what appears to be ethnic conflict and 2) they tautologically support the instrumental logic of the conflict itself. In this regard we will look at the relationship between particular cases of violent conflict and global factors such as human rights, group rights, militarization, the development industry, and the commodification of conflict and violence, as well as processes of globalization.
The participants in the workshop all address these issues in innovative and creative ways, combining theoretical concerns with empirical analyses. The papers in the workshop will focus on historical patterns of ethnic and cultural coexistence in societies seen to be characterized by primordial conflicts; explore the reasons for the outbreak of violent conflict in these societies; and explain why and how ethnic difference became the apparent cause of violence. The goal is to question grand narratives of ethnicity and the culturalist paradigm; to deethnicize academic and policy thinking in the field of security studies and conflict resolution so that proposals for peace may not yet again become blueprints for war; and to synthesize a new approach in which to understand the apparently increased salience of cultural difference for violent conflict.
We foresee the following contributions to the field of peace and security studies:
First, the workshop will establish the basis for ongoing cross-disciplinary exchange and cooperation between participants, each of whom is embedded in different networks within which they can share insights and proposals coming out of the workshop. Indeed, one of the strengths of this workshop is the very different disciplinary backgrounds of the participants, as well as their orientation toward “real world” implications of their work.
Second, the workshop will begin the process of formulating research priorities and suitable methodologies for the study of violent conflicts. The goal here is to put forward a new, alternative framework within which to understand violent conflicts currently glossed as “ethnic.”
Third, and related to the above, our goal is to contribute to the current debate about identity, in particular by problematizing the static notion of identity that underlies the culturalist paradigm, and which is essential for modern practices of nation-building and for simplistic zero-sum solutions to international conflict. We will attempt to formulate an alternative, more dynamic, open-ended approach to understand how identities are constructed, how they are fixed or naturalized, and what the implications of the static conception of identity formation are.
Fourth, the workshop will enable the participants to explore the implications of this rethinking of ethnic conflict for conflict resolution. In particular this provides an opening to think about strategies that preserve the multicultural fabric of national communities while balancing the individual and collective rights of those involved in the conflict.
The workshop participants will also work to communicate their conclusions and proposals to wider audiences of policy makers, researchers and activists, and in particular to sound a warning and to offer remedies regarding the misinterpretation of, and thus misdirected attempts to resolve, “ethnic” conflicts. To this end, in addition to circulating our collective conclusions within each of our own networks, the workshop will lay the groundwork for a book which will include papers presented by participants.
(all participants are confirmed):
(sociology), Senior Fellow, US Institute of Peace, and Assistant Professor, Dept. of Sociology and Center for International and Comparative Studies, Northwestern University; former SSRC-MacArthur Dissertation Fellow, Program on Peace and Security in a Changing World (1993- 1995); work on the Caucasus, Russia, Tatarstan, and Sub-Saharan Africa
(political science), Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Peace Studies Program, Cornell University, and Assistant Professor, Dept. of Politics, Ithaca College; former SSRC-MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow, Program on Peace and Security in a Changing World (1993-1995); work on the relationship between culture and violent conflict and the cases of the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia)
(history), Warren Weaver Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation; former SSRC-MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow, Program on Peace and Security in a Changing World (1994-1996); work on the theory of ethnic partition and the cases of India-Pakistan, Bosnia, Ireland and Cyprus
(political science), Professor, Board of Politics, University of California at Santa Cruz; former SSRC-MacArthur Dissertation Fellow (1985-1987); work on globalization and ethnic and sectarian conflicts, including the case of the United States
(anthropology), Research Fellow at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo, Sri Lanka; current SSRC-MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow, Program on Peace and Security in a Changing World; work on ethnicity and nationalism in Britain and Sri Lanka
(political science), PhD candidate, Dept. of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania; current SSRC-MacArthur Dissertation Fellow, Program on Peace and Security in a Changing World; work on “minority question” in Indian politics and on development of the idea of “minority groups”
(anthropology), PhD candidate, Dept. of Anthropology, Cornell University; Cornell Univ. Peace Studies-MacArthur Fellow (1994); work on law, migration, human rights, and identification, with a focus on post-Cold War Germany
(anthropology), PhD candidate, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Michigan; work on construction of ethnic mobilization and its relation to organized crime in post-Soviet society
(sociology), Assistant Professor, Dept. of Ethnography and Social Anthropology, Aarhus University, Denmark; dissertation work was funded in part by the Cornell University Peace Study Program’s grant from the MacArthur foundation (1993-1995); work on problematizing concepts of collective identity and community, especially as an asumed basis for “regional autonomy”- type solutions to “ethnic” conflicts; long-term case study of Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir), India
Comaroff, John L. (1996). "Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Politics of Difference in an Age of Revolution," in Edwin Wilmsen and Patrick McAllister, eds., The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises in a World of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Esman, Milton (1995). Ethnic Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
Gagnon, V.P. (1994/95). “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,” International Security, vol.19, no.3, pp.130-166.
Horowitz, Donald (1985). Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Huntington, Samuel (1993). "Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs.
Kaufmann, Chaim (1996). "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," International Security, vol. 20, no.4, pp.136-175.
Lipschutz, Ronnie (1996). "Seeking a State of One's Own: An Analytical Framework for Assessing 'Ethnic and Sectarian Conflicts'," in Lipschutz and Beverly Crawford, eds., The Political Economy of Cultural Conflict (manuscript, 1996).
Posen, Barry (1993)."The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival, vol.35, no.1, pp.27-47.
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