Ethnic Conflict in the World TodayAuthor(s): Stanley J. TambiahSource: American Ethnologist, Vol. 16, No. 2 (May, 1989), pp. 335-349Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645006Accessed: 05/03/2010 00:42

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ethnic conflict in the world today

STANLEY J. TAMBIAH-Harvard University

A somber reality and disillusionment of our epoch, which emerged from the ashes of the Second World War, is that although there have been successes in the push toward development and modernization, eradication of disease and the spread of literacy, economic and political development programs have generated and stimulated, whether by collusion or in reaction, in

good faith and poor anticipation, massive civil war and gruesome interracial and inter-ethnic bloodshed. The same epoch has witnessed the rise of repressive authoritarianism in both mil-

itary and democratic guises, fortified by Western weaponry, and inflamed by populist slogans and fundamentalist doctrines, and assisted by a flagrant manipulation of mass media which have vastly expanded their reach.

The optimism of sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists who naively foretold the

impending onset of the "integrative revolution" and inevitable decline of "primordial loyal- ties" such as kinship, caste and ethnicity in third world countries, has by now waned and dimmed with disenchantment. The introduction of constitutions and democratic institutions, enshrining human rights, universal franchise, the party system, elected legislature, majority rule and so on, has often resulted in strange malformations that are far removed from the goals of

liberty, justice, tolerance, and freedom that were the ideological supports of Western European and North American "liberal-democratic" syntheses. Something has gone gravely awry with the center-periphery relations throughout the world, and a manifestation of this malaise is the occurrence of widespread ethnic conflict accompanied in many instances by collective vio- lence amongst people who are not aliens but enemies intimately known. My book, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (1986), attempted to grapple with this

problem in my own country. In this essay I hope to address some general issues.'

specification of ethnicity and ethnic identity

Ethnic identity above all is a collective identity: we are self-proclaimed Sinhalese, Malays, Ibos, Thais and so on. It is a self-conscious and vocalized identity that substantializes and nat- uralizes 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 com- bination of which may be invoked as a claim according to context and calculation of advan- tages. These ethnic collectivities are believed to be bounded and to be self-producing and en- during through time.

Although the actors themselves, invoking these claims, speak as if ethnic boundaries are clear-cut and defined for all time, and think of ethnic collectivities as self-reproducing bounded groups, it is also clear that from a dynamic and processual perspective there are many prece- dents for "passing" and the change of identity, for incorporations and assimilations of new

1988 American Ethnological Society Distinguished Lecture

ethnic conflict 335

members, and for changing the scale and criteria of collective identity. Ethnic labels are in

application porous. The phenomenon of ethnicity embodies two interwoven processes which constitute its double helix. One is the substantialization and reification of qualities and attri- butes as enduring collective possessions, made realistic by mytho-historical charters and the claims of blood, descent, and race. This results in what has been aptly called "pseudo-specia- tion," that is, the collectivities in a certain sociopolitical space think of themselves as separate social kinds. The other contrapuntal and complementary process is that ethnic boundary-mak- ing has always been flexible and volatile, and ethnic groups have assimilated and expanded, or, in the opposite direction, differentiated and segmented, according to historical circum- stances and political-economic possibilities. Ethnic identity unites the semantics of primordial and historical claims with the pragmatics of calculated choice and opportunism in dynamic contexts of political and economic competition between interest groups.

Ethnic groups, especially in contemporary times of widespread ethnic conflict, seem to be intermediate between local kinship groupings (such as lineages, class, kindreds, and so on) and the nation as a maximal collectivity. Moreover, especially marked in the modern context, and within that context conspicuous in many third world societies, is the mounting awareness that ethnic affiliation and ethnic identity are overriding other social cleavages and superseding other bases of differentiation to become the master principle and the major identity for purposes of

sociopolitical action. This state of affairs therefore raises the possibility that ethnicity (projected upon the old bases of identity in terms of language, "race," religion, place of origin) as a basis for mobilization for political action has challenged and is challenging the primacy for such mobilization of social class on the one hand and nation-state on the other. Therefore, in a gen- eral analysis two relevant issues that need to be addressed are: to what extent and in what way ethnicity modifies, incorporates, or even replaces class conflict as a major paradigm for inter-

preting social conflict and change; and also in what manner ethnicity has impacted on the aims and activities of nation-making and national integration, which were taken to be the principal tasks of the newly founded third world nation-states. I cannot in this essay take up the matter of class, but will have something to say on the second issue.

the ubiquity of ethnic conflict

Historians of the social sciences are no doubt aware of the manner and circumstances in

which, at different times, certain ranges of phenomena grouped under embracing labels such as "social class," "caste," "race," "gender inequality," "modernization," "the colonial en-

counter," and so on, have become foci of intensified scholarly interest. Then these inquiries fade away not only because of diminishing marginal returns but also because the phenomena themselves, as reflected on the screen of history, either lose their salience or are transformed into other events, which are more revealingly grouped under new labels.

One such label subsuming a range of phenomena with a family resemblance is "ethnicity." It is significant that the term "ethnicity" has come into vogue and found its way into standard

English dictionaries, especially since the 1960s. There is no denying of course that linguistic, national, religious, tribal, racial (and other) divisions and identifications, and competitions and conflicts based on them, are old phenomena, yet the recent salience of the term ethnicity "re- flects a new reality and a new usage reflects a change in that reality" (Glazer and Moynihan 1975:5) on a global scale in the latter half of the 20th century, both in the industrialized first world and the "developing" third world.

It seems that the sudden resurgence of the term ethnicity in the social science literature of the 1960s and early 1970s took place not only to describe certain manifestations in the third

world, but also in reaction to the emergence of ethnic movements in the industrialized and affluent world, especially in the United States, in Canada, and in Western Europe. (See for ex-

ample, Connor 1972, 1973; Esman 1977).

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The late 20th-century reality is evidenced by the fact that ethnic groups, rather than being mostly minority or marginal subgroups at the edges of society, expected in due course to assim- ilate or weaken, have figured as major "political" elements and major political collective actors in several societies. Moreover, if in the past we typically viewed an ethnic group as a subgroup of a larger society, today we are also faced with instances of majority ethnic groups within a

polity or nation exercising preferential or "affirmative" policies on the basis of that majority status.

The first consideration that confirms ethnic conflict as a major reality of our time is not simply its ubiquity alone, but also its cumulative increase in frequency and intensity of occurrence. Consider these conflicts, by no means an exhaustive listing, that have occurred since the sixties (some of them have a longer history, of course):2 conflicts between anglophone and franco-

phone in Canada; Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland; Walloon and Fleming in Bel-

gium; Chinese and Malay in Malaysia; Greek and Turk in Cyprus; Jews and other minorities on the one hand and Great Russians on the other in the Soviet Union; and Ibo and Hausa and Yoruba in Nigeria; the East Indians and Creoles in Guyana. Add to these instances, upheavals that became climactic in recent years: the Sinhala-Tamil war in Sri Lanka, the Sikh-Hindu, and Muslim-Hindu confrontations in India, the Chackma-Muslim turmoil in Bangladesh, the ac- tions of the Fijians against Indians in Fiji, the Pathan-Bihari clashes in Pakistan, and last, but not least, the inferno in Lebanon, and the serious erosion of human rights currently manifest in Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank. That there is possibly no end to these eruptions, and that they are worldwide has been forcibly brought to our attention by a century-old difference that exploded in March 1988 between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis in south- ern USSR.3

Most of these conflicts have involved force and violence, homicide, arson and destruction of property. Civilian riots have evoked action by security forces: sometimes as counteraction to quell them, sometimes in collusion with the civilian aggressors, sometimes both kinds of action in sequence. Events of this nature have happened in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Zaire, Guyana and Nigeria. Mass killings of civilians by armed forces have occurred in Uganda and in Guatemala, and large losses of civilian lives have been recorded in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.

Some dissident ethnic groups have declared secessionist aims that threaten to break up extant

polities, and these aims in turn have invited invasion of one country by another (for example, the Somali invasion of Ethiopia), or armed intervention, as evidenced by India's recent march into Sri Lanka (1987). Moreover, ethnic conflict has also caused massive displacements of peo- ple, many of them being deposited in refugee camps in neighboring countries, as in Africa, the Middle East, India, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Nor, finally, should we forget large-scale expul- sions of people, as happened to Asians in Uganda.4

The escalation of ethnic conflicts has been considerably aided by the amoral business of gun- running and free trade in the technology of violence, which enable not only dissident groups to successfully resist the armed forces of the state, but also civilians to battle with each other with lethal weapons. An account of the Karachi Riots of December 1986 begins thus:

What we saw were bands of men armed with kalashnikoves charging into the homes of communities they have lived with for a generation-killing men, women and children without mercy, burning and looting until entire housing localities [sic] were left in charred ruins [Hussain 1987:1].

The classical definition of the state as the authority invested with the monopoly of force has become a sick joke.5 After so many successful liberations and resistance movements in many parts of the globe, the techniques of guerilla resistance now constitute a systematized and ex- portable knowledge. Furthermore, the easy access to the technology of warfare by groups in countries that are otherwise deemed low in literacy and in economic development-we have seen what Afghan resistance can do with American guns-is paralleled by another kind of in- ternational fraternization among resistance groups-who have little in common save their re-

ethnic conflict 337

sistance to the status quo in their own countries, and who exchange knowledge of guerilla tactics and the art of resistance. Militant groups in Japan, Germany, Lebanon, Libya, Sri Lanka, and India have international networks of collaboration, not unlike-perhaps more solidary than-the diplomatic channels that exist between mutually wary sovereign countries and the

great powers. Another development, not unknown in the past in the form of mercenaries for hire, but today

reaching a sinister significance, is the "privatization of war," that is, the capability of govern- ments with extra-territorial geopolitical aims to fight their foreign wars not by committing their own professional armies, but by farming out contracts for subversive military and political ac- tions to private professional groups willing to be hired, or capable of being mobilized. The

employment of ex-SAS (Special Air Service) veterans by the Sri Lankan government to help the war against the Tamil militants is one of many such examples. Another form of the phenomenon can be stated thus: the lesson that the United States learned in Vietnam is now deployed with zest in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, where local dissidents are trained and armed in the use of

weaponry and the arts of destabilization. The end result is that professionalized killing is no

longer the monopoly of state armies and police forces. The internationalization of the technol-

ogy of destruction, evidenced in the form of terrorism and counter-terrorism, has shown a face of free-market capitalism in action unsuspected by Adam Smith and by Emmanuel Wallerstein. It is thus no exaggeration to say that the ubiquity, the increased frequency and intensity, of ethnic conflict, serviced by modern technology of destruction and communication, and pub- licized by the mass media makes such conflict a special reality of the late 20th century. Faced with recent disturbances in South Russia, Gorbachev was moved to say that [ethnic] national- ism was the "most fundamental vital issue of our society" (Time 1988). And on a recent visit to Yugoslavia, a country that has a long history of tensions between "nationalities," he is re-

ported to have said "Show me a country without nationalist problems, and I will move there

right away" (The New York Times 1988). What a shift there has been in historical consciousness from Victorian times to the computer age of instant information! The Victorian perception of the people of the world was, as we well know, that they could be placed on a ladder of evo- lution and progress, with the Europeans at the summit. Other peoples were not really contem-

poraneous with the West, and archaeological metaphors such as "survivals," the "contem-

poraneity of the noncontemporaneous" (a phrase coined by Karl Mannheim) were used to de- scribe a globe assumed to be both uneven and discontinuous. Edward Tylor gave a vintage expression to this consciousness when he wrote:

The educated world of Europe and America practically settles a standard by simply placing its own na- tions at one end of the social series. The principal criteria of classification are the absence or presence, high or low development, of the industrial arts . . . agricultural, architecture, etc., the extent of scientific knowledge, the definiteness of moral principles, the conditions of religious belief and ceremony, the degree of social and political organization and so forth [Tylor 1873, vol. 1:26].

This Victorian perspective in the main persisted perhaps until the Second World War, and aside from a recent change in paradigms, positing common world historical processes which hold centers and peripheries in one dialectical and interlocked field, there are other specific developments that have contributed to a shift in historical consciousness that makes our present world a global village. The revolution in the media, their instant transmission of visual images and auditory messages, linking metropolitan centers and distant places, and their wide cover-

age of events, such that news broadcasts (whether by NBC, CBS or ABC) present diverse events

occurring at diverse places as a single synchronic and simultaneously occurring reality. These communication processes bind us in a synchronicity of fellow witnesses of world events. We come to feel that the worldwide incidents of ethnic conflict are of the same order and are mu-

tually implicated: the strife in Northern Ireland; the kidnappings in Lebanon; the beatings on the West Bank of Israel; the bombings in Germany; the killing of civilians in Sri Lanka; the riots

against the Sikhs in Delhi; the massing of Korean youth against a rightist government; the at-

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tacks on the "bush negroes" by the townsmen of Suriname, the sniping by the Contras in Nic-

aragua, the explosive tensions between Armenians and Azerbaijanis-all belong to a contem-

porary world suffused by violence. The internationalization of violence and the simultaneity of its occurrences viewed on our TV screens make us all vicarious spectators and participants responding with our sympathies and our prejudices.

I began this section by reminding the reader that the label "ethnicity" has become salient in our discourse only since the 1960s. Let me conclude it by saying that a landmark book, Frederik Barth's edited volume Ethnic Groups and Boundaries published in 1969, which seemed to set a relevant framework for the study of ethnicity, seems now, scarcely two decades later, too

benign and tranquil for the study of the ethnic conflicts accompanied by collective violence that rage today.

The ethnographic essays in that book-dealing with the Fur and the Baggar of Western Su- dan, the Pathans of West Pakistan, and Afghanistan, the mountain tribes of Laos and their re- lations with the dominant Thai, the Ladinos and Indians in Southern Mexico, and the Lapps and Norwegians in northern Norway-as well as Barth's introductory essay, pose the issues of an earlier era when ethnic relations did not manifest as they do today in the eighties, in riots, terrorism and civil war. The preoccupations of Barth's volume were the manner in which boundaries were maintained between ethnic groups, whose occupation of niches, and whose maintenance and persistence over time, were dynamically related to structured and stable in- teractions between them guided by "a systematic set of rules governing inter-ethnic social en- counters" (Barth 1969:16). The central problems posed by our present phase of ethnic conflicts are startingly different, arising out of an intensified "politicization of ethnicity" and issuing in conflicts between member groups of a state and polity, which itself is thought to be in crisis ("the crisis of the state").

ethnic distributions in contemporary plural societies

A distributional chart indicating the number of ethnic groups and their demographic pro- portions in various contemporary countries will be useful for appreciating the ubiquity of ethnic conflicts. Among other things, these distributions crucially affect not only the processes that produce conflict but also the strategies and efficacy of coalitions that are made in plural soci- eties, coalitions ranging from constructive and relatively long-lasting alliances and bargains to temporary and fragile pacts of convenience and opportunism.

The following list constitutes a crude chart that indicates some of the demographic combi- nations that affect the course of ethnic politics.

1. Countries that are virtually homogeneous 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, Paki- stan, 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 (where the Malays make up about 44 percent and the Chinese about 36 percent); Guyana (East Indians, the larger group making up 50 percent) and the Creoles; Fiji (Fijians and Indians are nearly of 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

ethnic conflict 339

being the major entities) and countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and India, whose

populations are more varied. However, within these complex societies, internal ethnic politics may take dualistic form within regions, as in the case of Sikhs versus Hindus in Punjab, and

indigenous "hill tribes" versus Bengalis in Mizoram (India), and Christians versus Moros in the

Philippines. We may include the USSR in this category. The USSR is said to have more than 100 distinct

nationalities and ethnic groups living in 15 republics, and ethnic tensions there are best viewed

in regional terms. Horowitz (1985:30-35) has underscored an important distinction that affects the nature and

dynamics of ethnic conflict, namely whether the groups in question are ranked (in some sort of

hierarchy or stratified scheme informed by asymmetrical valuations) or unranked or parallel

groups divided by vertical cleavages. Some examples of ranked ethnic groups within societies are Rwanda (especially in 1959),

Zanzibar (in 1966), and more debatably, Ethiopia and Liberia. However, by far the most salient

category for a comparative study is the countries containing by and large unranked ethnic

groups, such as Malays and Chinese in Malaysia; Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka; East In-

dians and Creoles in Guyana; Ibo, Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba in Nigeria; Christian Filipino and

Moro in the Philippines; and the Thais and Muslims in Thailand.6 While these contending ethnic groups may find themselves unequal in demographic num-

bers, they nevertheless do not concede inequality in social, cultural and ethnic terms. Political

ethnic conflict in these societies shows certain commonalities.

the politicization of ethnicity

The main issue that I discuss in the rest of this essay is the transition from the politics of the

nation-state to the politics of ethnic pluralism. It is useful at this juncture to take as our point of

reference Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, in order to salute its important contri-

bution and also to go beyond it to take account of newer developments. We are all familiar with the Wallerstein thesis that world capitalism since its inception in

Europe in the 16th century, has spread like a tidal wave released from the metropolitan capitals and gradually innundated the peripheries. The "dependency" theory of world capitalism in all

its variations (Gunder Frank, Paul Baran, Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Claude Meillas-

soux) posits eventually a monolithic historical process in global terms. However, it leaves out

of account another parallel process that consisted of the differentiating, carving out and frag- mentation of the same world in terms of "nation-states." The highlighting of this process is

Anderson's achievement: how the "nation-state" and "nationalism" as modular ideas could

and would be easily pirated by the third world colonial and postcolonial elites. Under colonial

experience, the "historical consciousness" of 19th-century Europe was transmitted to and im-

bibed by local elites subject to the textbook learning propagated by colonial schools.

Anderson's plotting of the rise in Europe of national consciousness in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, inspired by linguistic and vernacularizing revolutions, followed from the mid-

19th century onwards by the promotion and manipulation of "official nationalism" by the Eu-

ropean monarchies based on a national identification projected onto vernacular languages, leads him quite correctly to perceive that the nation-building policies of the new states of the

third world consist of

both a genuine, popular nationalist enthusiasm and a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling of na- tionalist ideology through the mass media, the educational system, administrative regulations and so forth. In turn, this blend of popular and official nationalism has been the product of anomalies created by European imperialism: the well-known arbitrariness of frontiers, and bilingual intelligentsias poised precariously over diverse populations [1985:104-105]

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Anderson's sequence (1985:104-105) could now be taken a stage further: the politics of the

newly independent states, framed initially in terms of "nation-state" ideologies and policies, have by virtue of various internal dialectics and differences led to a new phase of politics dom- inated by the competitions and conflicts of "ethnic collectivities," who question nationalism and "nation-state" dogmas. The politics of ethnicity is indeed a product of the interweaving and collision of the two global processes we mentioned earlier: world capitalism and its operation through multinational corporations, and widespread nation building by liberated colonies now ruled by elite intelligentsias who, however, have to react to their divided civilian constituen- cies. These interacting global processes, while having certain homogenizing effects, have si-

multaneously spawned differentiation and opposition within the new polities, manifested as ethnic conflict.

I have adopted the phrases "politicization of ethnicity" and "ethnicity of politics" as short- hand expressions to characterize and signal some of the primary issues and processes that pro- pel the current wave of ethnic conflicts. As Tagil has put it, the main problem to be explained is "why ethnicity becomes more easily politicizable in modern society and in those societies on the threshold of modernization, as compared with earlier phases of history" (Tagil 1984:36). The present context of politicized ethnicity is distinctly a marked phase in the political and economic history of newly independent countries. If we take the colonial legacy as our point of departure it is possible to identify roughly three sequential and overlapping phases.

the colonial legacy

Let us begin with the colonial experience itself, the British raj in India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaya, the Dutch rule in the Dutch East Indies, the French in Algeria, Indochina, and so on. The colonial experience was of course many-faceted and complex, but for our theme of ethnic conflict the following features of the colonial legacy are relevant.

The colonial powers more often than not aggregated people and territory into larger polities than existed before, sometimes arbitrarily so, at other times by attempting to follow social and demographic constellations on the ground. The whole process was further compounded by geopolitical competition between imperial powers in laying claim to their own territories. In- dia, despite Emperor Asoka and the Mughal Empire, reached its maximal aggregation under British rule; so did Sri Lanka, Malaya, Burma, Nigeria, Kenya, and so on. The Dutch control of Java and Sumatra and the other islands was likewise a unification never known before.

The internal policies of the colonial powers in complex ways both consolidated existing dif- ferences and stimulated bodies of people, primarily socially separated, to interact in common areas. While colonial powers, like the British, codified "regional," "tribal," "caste" or "com- munal" bodies of customs relating to marriage, inheritance, religious practices and so on, for the most part not interfering with these sociocultural differences, they also introduced and standardized colonywide commercial and criminal law codes and regulations. This standard- izing and homogenizing process went hand in hand with imperial economic policies and ven- tures, which brought the colonies in their own dependent manner into the orbit of world cap- italism. The policies related to taxation and preferential trade, and the ventures took the form of plantations, or business firms (agency houses), which in turn stimulated occupations such as those practiced by lawyers, engineers, doctors (in Western medicine), accountants, and so on.

These particularizing and standardizing policies were a double-edged sword, used in the interest both of development and progress and of divide and rule. They produced in diverse tropical colonial contexts from the Netherland Indies to Jamaica varieties of "plural societies" that became the subject of analysis from J. S. Furnivall to M. G. Smith.7 Of the process of the enlargement of territorial horizons and subgroup amalgamations that took place in Asia and Africa in the colonial period, Donald Horowitz has remarked in his recent comprehensive and impressive work, Ethnic Groups in Conflict:

ethnic conflict 341

The colonists often created territories out of clusters of loosely linked villages and regions.... Out of the welding together of local environments a great many new groups appeared, among them the Malays in Malaysia, the Ibo in Nigeria, the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Bangala in Zaire, and the Moro in the Philip- pines. Some such groups were "artificial" creations of colonial authorities and missionaries, who cata- lyzed the slow merger of related peoples into coherent entities [1985:66-67].

It is interesting that the Malays for example, who vociferously claim to be bhumiputra, the sons of the soil, are the outcome of a coalescence not only of a major component from Malaya but also of various groups from as far afield as Sumatra, the Celebes, Borneo and Java. The claim itself is a highly emotive and embracing identity developed vis-a-vis the large numbers of Chinese immigrants who found their way into their midst (see also Nagata 1979).

the three phases of the era of independence

I would like to delineate three phases in the political history of a number of third world coun- tries like India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Guyana and Nigeria, which received their independence soon after the end of the Second World War. The characteristic issues of each phase are stated in terms of the ideological rhetoric and distinctive labels used by politicians and academic commentators alike. (I do not intend these phases to be taken as discontinuous shifts but merely as showing different emphases.)

1. The first stage is the actual "decolonization" process itself, when Western imperial pow- ers, following the Second World War, "transferred power" to local elite groups. While the whole colonial period created certain dislocations, decolonization itself was preceded and ac-

companied by violence when, as was the case with Algeria, the colony fought a "war of lib- eration." In other colonies such as Sri Lanka and Burma the transfer of power was more peace- ful though not entirely without the staging of civil disobedience movements and other forms of

resistance, as, for example, those mounted in India by the Indian National Congress or in Ma-

laya by the Chinese communist guerillas. 2. The second phase, spanning the late 1950s and gathering momentum in the 1960s, was

characterized by optimistic and even strident claims made in these newly independent coun- tries concerning their objectives of "nation making," strengthening "national sovereignty," creating "national culture" and "national identity," and achieving "national integration." The

slogans of the time accented "national" dimensions, and in doing so played down and wished

away internal diversity and social cleavages in favor of the primacy of nation-states as the ac- credited units of the United Nations and the modern world system. Interestingly, Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1968) belongs to this phase with its programmatic celebration of "national consciousness," "national culture" and "national literature" in the African States, newly delivered from the chains of colonialism. Fanon proclaimed that "to fight for national culture means in the first place the fight for the liberation of the nation, that material keystone which makes the building of a culture possible" (1968:233).

This phase of optimistic nation building was enacted as the work of "national coalition gov- ernments," examples of which were Nehru presiding over a monolithic Congress Party; Cheddi

Jagan, an East Asian, and L. F. S. Burnham, a Creole, in the early 1950s heading the People's Progressive party in Guyana; Tengku Abdul Rahman presiding over the Malaysian Alliance, again in the 1950s, and D. S. Senanayake at the same time over the United National Party in

Ceylon. Political parties seemed willing to collaborate rather than emphasize their separate interests and their special constituencies.

This phase was also marked by confident expectations of expanding economic horizons, instanced by faith in economic planning and growth, and the spawning of "five-year plans" funded by foreign aid, whose smooth flow it was hoped would make the world safe for capi- talism and democracy.

3. In a dislocating, and sometimes disconcerting manner this hopeful expansive phase of nation building has been put to the test, seriously questioned, imperiled and even reversed in

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the third phase, from the 1960s onward, by the eruption of ethnic conflicts. The divisiveness has revolved around issues of language, race, religion and territory. Accordingly, there has been a shift again in slogans and concepts. "Ethnic groups" and "ethnic conflict" are the salient labels for talking about these events. The terms "plural society," "devolution of powers," "tra- ditional homelands," "self-determination"-old words given new force and urgency-have begun to frame the political debate and academic analyses. The central political authority, the

state, which in the previous phase of nation building and economic growth was designated as the prime actor and central intelligence in initiating, directing and controlling the country's future and historical trajectory, is now, after years of escalating ethnic divisiveness and plur- alistic awareness, counseled to be a "referee" adjudicating differences and enabling regional cultures and societies to attain their "authentic" identities and interests.

the politics of ethnicity

A part of the answer to the story of the politicization of ethnicity lies in our tracking of the manner in which large numbers of people in the new polities have become, or been made to

become, conscious of ethnic identity, and how in turn they have been energized as collectiv- ities to engage in political action. The awareness that collective ethnic identity can be used and

manipulated in political action is of course related to the increasing possibilities of contact

through the improvement of transport, of the quick adoption and deployment of modern media, and of the raised levels of education and literacy and the spread of what Benedict Anderson has called "print capitalism." Another explanation lies in the proliferation and popularization of street theaters and public arenas, occasions for collective massing of people, ranging from

political rallies and elections and referendums to strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins, and mass pro- tests. All these capabilities for large-scale political action have occurred in tandem with pop- ulation explosions in third world countries, the migration of vast numbers of rural peoples to cities and metropolitan centers, and to locations where industries or where peasant resettle- ment schemes have been established. Another significant factor is the proliferation of schools, colleges and universities, which have provided sites, just as factories had done in the history of industrial development, for the mobilization and massing of activists for engaging in political action.

One of the settings for the politicization of ethnicity is the evolution of the welfare state in the more advanced industrial economies of the world, and the advent of the socialist state, or states committed to welfare policies, in the "developing" third world. In both contexts the state has become "a crucial and direct arbiter of economic well being, as well as of political status and whatever flows from that" (Glazer and Moynihan 1975:8).

The welfare and socialist states appear to be especially responsive to ethnic claims. Within democratic governmental systems there are many occasions at municipal, regional and central levels for like-minded ethnic members to mobilize and make claims on behalf of groups, both small enough and conspicuous enough to experience real gain from concessions made.

This "strategic efficacy" (as Glazer and Moynihan put it [1975:101) of ethnicity in making claims on the resources of the modern state inevitably in turn reinforces and maintains ethnic political machinery-patron/client networks, bossism and patronage structures-through which affirmative actions or pork-barrel distributions are dispensed. As much or more of the monies earmarked for social services and welfare may end up in the hands of those who dis- pense them as those who receive them.

While these considerations apply generally, there is a special chain of circumstances that has led third world democracies in particular to enact their politics on the basis of ethnicity. At the time of decolonization in the Caribbean, in many parts of Africa, and in South and Southeast Asia, the grant of independence and the transfer of power were packaged with constitutions

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that were framed in terms of Western principles of "natural rights," and civil liberties and West- ern procedures and institutions of "representative government." These charters from the West- ern point of view, framed in the secular political language of universal rights and government by representation, conferred on the rural masses and the migrants to fast-forming cities a mas- sive dose of rights, and the opportunity for involvement in the political process (to a degree not

previously experienced). Quickly transformed from a "passive" existence into political actors and voting banks, with the power to elect politicians and vote parties to power, they discovered that they could even demand or extort rewards, reforms and privileges from their elected parties who constituted for a while the "central" political authority.

But increasingly it became clear that the alleged secular constitution and institutions of rep- resentative government predicated on the individual rights of citizens, and the willingness of "one-man-one-vote" citizens to form parties on the basis of competitive interests, did not gen- erate the expected outcomes. Instead, collectivities, which we may call ethnic groups, have become the political actors, seeking affirmative action for the achievement or restoration of

privileges and life chances in the name of ethnic (or racial) equalization. Ethnic equalization rather than freedom and equality of the individual is the principal charter of participatory de-

mocracy in many of the plural and multiethnic societies of our time. It has been the experience in India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia, that once political demands are made on the basis of ethnic affiliation for the distribution of economic rewards, occupational positions, and educational

privileges, the norm of "equality of opportunity" is progressively and irreversibly displaced by the norm of "equality of result."8 It is commonly the case that affirmative action and quota allocations on the basis of depressed or backward status do not speedily produce results

through the ladder of equality of opportunity and increased access to schools and educational institutions. Thus, in time disadvantaged groups push toward equality of results, by fiat if nec-

essary, and for direct redistributive policies in order to equalize income, living conditions and such on a group basis. But equality of result, or redistributive politics, are essentially zero-sum

games, in which there are distinct losers and winners. And inevitably these invidious outcomes lead to more open political competition and conflict. Finally, as a result of the revolution in

rising expectations, the more successful constituencies are in achieving their political rights to

vote, to elect parliaments, to wield the stick of accountability, the more assiduously will they advocate the enjoyment of social rights-such as the right to a job, adequate health care, un-

employment insurance, and so on as entitlements from the state. The equalization on a group basis of opportunities and rewards in the expanding universe of

redistributive politics may equally be the slogans of majorities or minorities in a plural society. The language of claims is best described as that of ethnic group entitlements on the basis of relative comparison and relative deprivation. The entitlement claims of rewards equalization are contentiously sought through a privileged use of one language, or the additional use of a

language so far excluded, or the imposition of special quotas providing privileged access to

higher education, job opportunities, and business entrepreneurship. The "zero-sum" atmos-

phere of these quintessential entitlement claims reflects a restrictive worldview that has sur- faced with a vehemence precisely at a time when certain expansionary and massive move- ments of people to urban places and to peasant resettlement schemes have and are taking place, and when mass educational and literacy programs are being implemented. The futuristic ex- hortation that a national effort of productive expansion, which increases the opportunities and rewards for all, will obviate or mitigate the need for ethnic quotas falls on deaf ears, partly because employment and income levels rise only slowly, and income distribution disparities continue to persist, and because distributive equality on ethnic lines is a politically rousing demand that promises rapid material results. A Weberian might be tempted to say that the post- ponement of present gratification for the sake of future profit, the sterling ethic of capitalism, is less effective than immediate ethnic aggrandizement as the stimulant of the masses.

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In countries engaged in postindependence participatory democracy, and in which the elec- toral process acts as a political marketplace, different scenarios can be sketched regarding the

cleavages and trajectories of ethnic conflict, depending on the ethnic distributions and their relative standing. The relevant factors are how many groups are involved, their demographic proportions, their residential locations, their cultural, legal and institutional distinctiveness, their levels of economic and educational achievements, the degree of their participation in common institutional systems and of their common membership in corporate organizations.

For purposes of systematic discussion the different scenarios and trajectories pertaining to ethnic conflict should be brought within the ambit of an interpretive framework9 that addresses

questions of how ethnic groups in an arena see themselves as acquiring, maintaining, and pro- tecting their claimed-to-be-legitimate group entitlements (1) to capacities and "symbolic cap- ital" such as education and occupation, (2) to material rewards such as incomes and commod-

ities, and sumptuary privileges that enable distinct styles of life, and (3) to "honors" such as titles and offices, markers of ethnic or national pride, and religious and linguistic precedence and esteem. These honors are accorded by the state and/or other authorities who are the prin- cipal arbiters of rank. In this version of invidious and comparative "group entitlements," power, prestige, occupations, material goods, aesthetic judgments, manners and morals, and religious convictions come together and naturally implicate one another.

"Religion" is not purely a matter of belief and worship but also has social and political res-

onances; "language" is not a mere communicative device but has implications for educational

advantage, occupation and historical legitimation of social precedence. We have to compre- hend an arena of politics where, as Horowitz puts it: "Fundamental issues, such as citizenship, electoral systems, designation of official languages and religions, the rights of groups to 'special position' in the polity, rather than merely setting the framework for politics, become the recur- rent subjects of politics" (Horowitz 1985:187). The quests for group worth, group honor, group equivalization, and so on are central foci in the politics of ethnicity, and are a critical ingredient in the spirals of intense sentiments and explosive violence that ensue.

I can envisage three overlapping scenarios which, although they are parts of a larger mural, can be presented as posing different issues and different outcomes. They cover a fair range of

major ethnic conflicts occuring in recent times: 1. Especially applicable to the political economies of colonial countries under British or

Dutch rule in West Africa, East Africa, the Caribbean, Indonesia and so on is the picture of a

plural society that Furnivall and Boeke among others sought to characterize. In these societies certain ethnic groups may occupy special economic and social niches as merchants and traders (Lebanese and Syrians in West Africa, Indians in Uganda, Chinese in Malaya and Indonesia, Indians in Fiji), as plantation labor (indentured Indian labor in Guyana or Sri Lanka), or as "bankers" and financiers (Nattukottai Chettiars in Burma and Ceylon). Again, especially in co- lonial capitals, there could be more complex mosaics: certain trades, certain crafts, certain local "banking" and credit activities being the monopoly of both indigenous and foreign com- munities. The occupation of niches and specialization in certain activities tend to create a seg- mented labor market, and militate against social class solidarities that cut across ethnic lines. Ethnic division of labor stunts working-class action and middle-class associational links.

Such a colonial heritage tends to crystallize expectations of "entitlements" as collective eth- nic privileges. The colonial rulers helped to create these political maps when they distributed status honors, according to their calculations of which groups should be rewarded, protected or encouraged. But these ethnic specializations and expectations, having persisted into the era of independence, have tended to generate ethnic conflicts when certain strains develop to im-

peril the maintenance of boundaries. One such strain occurs when the importation of a cate-

gory of manufactured goods from the industrial West threatens a local craft or makes a local service group redundant and dispensable. A fall in fortunes may threaten the group's ability to have access to the basic consumption goods of everyday life, and it may therefore face famine

ethnic conflict 345

in a market of plenty and a depression in status in a political climate of expanding "develop- ment." But the most severe erosion of niche-equilibrium has come from those governments of the new states that have tried to open up what they consider to be the privileged monopolies of ethnic enclaves, which are accused of restrictive practices as regards recruitment and pro- vision of services. The dispossession of Natukkottai Chettiars in Rangoon, and the expulsions of Indian merchants from Uganda are examples of the new civilian authorities invading what

they consider to be rich preserves to enrich themselves and their civilian supporters. Foreign specialized minorities are thus vulnerable to the policies of forcible ejection and/or disposs- ession by governments promoting the interests of "indigenous" minorities.

2. The second scenario relates not so much to the declining fortunes of well-placed com-

munities, but to the rising expectations and capacities of satellite minorities on the periphery who find themselves under the domination of majorities entrenched at the center, and some- times are in addition faced with the majority advancing into their frontier "homelands." In

Burma, Thailand, Laos and in northeast India, a shorthand phrasing of this collision is "hills

people" or "hill tribes" versus the "valley people." This bifurcation carries other contrasts in

agricultural styles (sedentary versus slash and burn), in written versus oral languages, espousal of Hinduism or Buddhism versus the religion of spirit cults. Sometimes these satellite commu- nities have sought advance through the ministrations of Christian missionaries, and in any case, in the new postindependence polities, they have requested "affirmative action," proportionate to their demographic numbers, with regard to their participation in the task of nation-state mak-

ing and in the education programs of the dominant centers. These satellite ethnic/tribal minor- ities tend to be potential secessionists, and as Horowitz puts it "the largest number of seces- sionists can be characterized as backward groups in backward regions" (Horowitz 1985:36). Examples are Karens and Shans in Northern Burma, Muslims (Moros) in the Philippines, the

Nagas and Mizos in India and the Kurds in Iraq. 3. The third scenario represents the kind of ethnic conflict and tensions with which I am

especially concerned in this essay. I have adapted some concepts coined by M. G. Smith (1969) in order to characterize them.

In a situation in which there exists a fair amount of "cultural pluralism" (the diverse popu- lations have distinctive markers of dress, marriage customs and so on), and a fair amount of "social pluralism" (the ethnic populations have roughly equivalent standings in the polity as a

whole, and for some purposes aggregate as corporations and collectivities such as political parties or religious congregations), political moves may be made by a demographically domi- nant ethnic population to gain advantages over minority groups, and to introduce elements of

sociopolitical and even religious discrimination and asymmetry, and thereby incorporating the

groups into the polity on unequal terms. Smith has discussed how processes of "differential

incorporation" lead to the outcome of "structural pluralism." Plural societies manifest differ- ential incorporation within the larger polity when certain collectivities within it are subject to

sectionally unequal distributions of legal, political, educational and occupational rights and are thus reduced to a subordinate status.

The "second-class citizenship" of a social category identified by common disabilities and disqualifica- tions, whether racial, religious, economic, or other grounds is merely one common mode of differential incorporation. Communal rolls, restrictive property franchises, and similar arrangements also express and maintain the differential incorporation of specific collectivities within a wider society. Such mech- anisms are generally developed to enhance the power of the ruling section [Smith 1969:430].

South Africa and Guatemala are extreme and notorious cases of asymmetrical incorporation, but there are more benign forms; the Malays, the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, are current examples of the majoritarian claims to "affirmative action" defended on demographic strength and leg- itimated by mytho-historical sons-of-the-soil claims. These claims lead inevitably to structural asymmetrical pluralism and are inevitably resisted by the minorities. An instructive example of

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this special pleading on behalf of a majority in place is Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad's

political tract, The Malay Dilemma (1970). Such attempts to subordinate previously unranked and equal groups who wield considerable

capacities and skills, and to incorporate them unequally in the polity as inferior citizens, invite retaliations and counteractions. Alert to the threats of discrimination and subordination, and in the first instance fighting for inclusion within the polity on equal terms, they may gradually as their situation worsens, as has happened in Sri Lanka-gravitate toward the politics of devo- lution, and even secession. Horowitz aptly phrases the options thus: "Unlike ranked groups, which form part of a single society, unranked groups constitute incipient whole societies" (1985:31).

Let me conclude this essay by returning to a general theme that applies to all three scenarios I have outlined. The present plethora of ethnic conflicts, whether viewed negatively as divisive and destructive of the state, or positively as a drive toward realistic devolutionary politics, co- incides with an increasing sense of shrinking economic horizons and of political embattlement.

Many things have gone awry with economic development: the declining terms of trade dictated by the industrialized West; internal bottlenecks; agricultural underemployment and migration to cities; increasing disparities of income distribution; rising unemployment among the ex- pectant participants in the literacy explosion; the visible pauperization of the urban underclass; the feminization of poverty; the entrenchment of bureaucratic interests; the pork barrels of ag- grandizing politicians. Thus the plausibility of "dependency theory" pertaining to the impinge- ment of world-capitalist economic relations coincides with the disenchantment with the "na- tion-state" and "bourgeois democracy" in internal politics, and with charges of "internal co- lonialism" exercised by dominant majorities over minorities. Such resentments in turn motivate politics that are compounded of new and powerful mixes, some of them seemingly contradic- tory and inconsistent. An example is that brand of politics that packages in one parcel left rad- icalism or socialist goals, rightist majoritarian racism and religious fundamentalism. The re- sultant political activism-instanced by strikes, protests, and election rallies-and collective violence-instanced by riots, state terrorism and guerilla counteractions, undermine "parlia- mentary democracy," and the institutions of "law and order" on which rests the "civil society" of liberal thought.

It is obvious that, with regard to the ethnic conflicts under discussion, stark exclusionary dualities-such as stability and continuity versus change and revolution; tradition and its death versus modernity and its birth; primordial sacred realities versus secular modern associational interests-radiate little illumination. Between these options lie the contested middle ground and volatile copresence of both modalities.

Ethnic conflicts manifest and constitute a dialectic. On the one hand there is a universalizing and homogenizing trend that is making people in contemporary societies and countries more and more alike (whatever the actual fact of differential access to capacities, commodities, and honors) in wanting the same material and social benefits of modernization, whether they be income, material goods, housing, literacy and schooling, jobs, recreation, and social prestige. On the other hand these same people also claim to be different, and not necessarily equal, on the basis of their ascriptive identity, linguistic difference, ethnic membership, and rights to the soil. In this latter incarnation, they claim that these differences, and not those of technical com- petence or achievement, should be the basis for the distribution of modern benefits and re- wards. These compose the particularizing and separating trend among the populations of mod- ern polities.

Moreover, in modern political arenas the appeal to old affiliations and distinctions enables a mobilization of people on a scale never known or possible before, partly by the use of modern media of communication and propaganda, by the transmission through printed textbooks of tendentious ideas in proliferating schools, and by the release of energies, both creative and destructive, at levels never before achieved, for deployment in elections and in mass activities.

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These developments are not merely old wine in new bottles, or new wine in old bottles, for there are more potent transformative processes at work by which old categories and definitions of ethnic identity and interests are revalued and given new dimensions and contours. For ex-

ample, for all their appeal to old labels and historical claims, the Sinhalese, the Malays, the

Fijians in their present manifestations, are collectivities formed in the late colonial and post- colonial epochs. Their ethnic labels and boundaries are porous and flexible indeed. At the same time we witness the new values of modernization and progress-industrial employment, professional skills, or the practice of Western medicine-being recategorized as entitlements and sumptuary privileges indexed as quotas assignable to preexisting ethnic or racial or indig- enous groupings. The time of becoming the same is also the time of claiming to be different. The time of modernizing is also the time of inventing tradition as well as traditionalizing in-

novations; of revaluing old categories and recategorizing new values; of bureaucratic benev- olence and bureaucratic resort to force; of participatory democracy and dissident civil war. The time is not simply one of order, or disorder, or antiorder: it is compounded of all three. Ubiq- uitous and violent ethnic conflict is one of the marks of these intense times through which we are living and which we can see only darkly through the looking glass.

In the late 20th century a surprising number of militant and seemingly "irrational" eruptions have occurred. They challenge the confident post-Enlightenment prophecies that the decline of religion was inevitable, or that at best it could only survive in a demythologized form; that

primordial loyalties and sentiments would fade into oblivion as national integration took effect, or be carried away as flotsam by the currents of world historical process. These violent and

ubiquitous explosions also challenge and strain our conventional social science explanations of order, disorder, and conflict. However inadequately, we must cope with the phenomenon of destructive violence that accompanies ethnic conflict today.

notes

'The title of the lecture I actually gave at the Annual Meetings of the American Ethnological Society in March 1988 was "Ethnic Conflict and Collective Violence." The first part of the lecture touched on the widespread distribution of ethnic conflict in the world today and on the "politicization of ethnicity" that lies behind many of these conflicts. The second part dealt with the phenomenon of collective violence frequently engendered by ethnic conflict, and I touched on the behavior of ethnic crowds as collectivities, and on the trajectory of riots and their "ritualized" features, as discerned from some South Asian instances. The lecture thus covered much ground, but what was achieved in an oral presentation in a limited time cannot be done convincingly in a written form in the space allowed in a journal article. I have therefore limited myself in this essay to the substance addressed in the first part of my lecture, though I realize that the second part was theoretically more challenging because it deals with a terrain about which we need to know much more than we do now.

2These instances occurring in Europe have a longer history, and they continue today; the protests of Basques in Spain, the Croats in Yugoslavia; other ethnic minority struggles in Eastern Europe; the rivalries between Flemings and Waloons in Belgium; and the increasingly bitter conflict in Northern Ireland. Some scholars would include the struggles of the blacks against the white discrimination in the United States and in South Africa as falling within the ambit of ethnic conflict.

3The USSR is said to have more than 100 distinct nationalities and ethnic groups living in 15 Republics. The ethnic conflict I am referring to relates to the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh Region, 75 percent of whose population is ethnic Armenian. However, it was included in 1923 in the Soviet Republic of Azer- baijan.

4There are many listings of ethnic conflict as a worldwide phenomenon. For example, see Tagil 1984; and Horowitz 1985.

5Under the caption "Pakistan Arms-dealers Hail God and the AK-47," The New York Times, 8 March 1988, reported that the following wares were on show in an arms store in Darra Adam Khel, an hour's drive south of Peshawar; "In addition to various versions of Soviet AK-47 rifle, the arms dealer said he supplies the [Afghan] guerillas with ammunition, at nine cents a round, and such weapons as Chinese and Soviet rocket launchers, pistols from various countries, Soviet, Chinese and American land mines, and machine guns, largely of Soviet manufacture." The smuggling route is a saga in itself: goods are sent by ship from Europe to Singapore, and from there to the Soviet Union, from whence they are sent by truck to Kabul!

348 american ethnologist

6There are in some of these countries, hill tribe or "aboriginal" minorities-in Thailand, Malaysia, Phil- ippines-which are considered "inferior" in status to the dominant communities that try to inflict on them certain policies detrimental to their survival.

71n his Colonial Policy and Practice (1948:304-305), Furnivall defined plural society as consisting of "different sections of the community living side by side, but separately, within the same political unit.... Each group holds by its own religion, its own culture and language, its own ideas and ways. As individuals they meet, but only in the market place, in buying and selling. Even in the economic sphere there is division of labour along racial lines. Natives, Chinese, Indians and Europeans have all different functions, and within each group, subsections have particular occupations." For a sample of Furnivall and Smith's views see Furnivall 1939, 1948; Smith 1969a,b.

81 have taken these expressions from Bell 1975:146-147. 9This proposal combines concepts taken from the writings of Amartya Sen, Pierre Bourdieu and Donald

L. Horowitz.

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