Political Ethnicity

Homaam Khalilullah| Friday, Aug 09, 2013

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Basically all of the dominant theories of political ethnicity are pioneered by almost different disciplines; therefore they have its own distinctive salient features, merits and demerits that cannot be easily rivaled with each other. For example, political scientist Lucian Pye was a noticeable supporter of Primordial paradigm and Modernization theory, while famous anthropologist Edmund Leach was advocating Situationlist approach, and pioneer of plural society Clifford Geertz was progenitor of the Constructivist paradigm, these all had clarified different aspects of the issue, and their understanding can be applicable in some places in specific period of time. It is obvious that all of these theories cannot be applied across the countries and all the times, but has its own contextual applications. Some of these theories can even coexist with each other at the same time.

Primordialism thinkers believe that ethnicity exists with the nature of human being and it is intrinsic feature of human society. This viewpoint was dominant in 1960s, where the pioneered theorists correlated political situations to the innate ethnic features of that specific country’s habitants. For example, Primodialim proposes that Burmese mothers’ child-rearing attitude caused instability in the behavior of the children and thus ultimately remained with them even they become major and got interest in politics. As a consequence of this negative child-rearing attitude the Burmese are suspicious and distrustful of others, and therefore that affect the political stability. Same correlation is made between the ethnic behavior with political situation in Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia, while in the last case the political culture is linked with Islam as cohesive force that have bound Malays together. Generally Primordialism fails to explain mixed ethnicities, naturalization of migrants, or inter breeding in most of the countries that blur the ethnic identities, and makes the fixed ethnic boundaries dubious and understandable.

In Situationlism, researchers seem ethnicity as a tool used for manipulation of collective political and economic gains. This theory had started in 1991 after maturity and decline of the instrumentalist view of ethnicity in which theorists believed that ethnicity is created to exploit or to be used for maximizing material gains. Based on the ethnic theory of Situationlism, individuals try to maximize the situation in his/her own best interest, and this consequently affects the structure and identity of whole practicing society. For example the changing identity of Thai nation when it face the Thai officials they become “Lao” and when they visit Laos become “Thai”, these changing “adaptive strategies” are at the core of situational ethnicity. This theory fails to explain that in time of crises or ethnic conflicts/tensions why people do not change their identities to easily earn the economic and political gains?

Constructivists and current mainstream politicians think that ethnic identities are socially constructed; on the contrary to those who believed that they are fixed and innate. Such political scientists think that colonial policies shaped the plural society into various sects in order to achieve stability in cost effective way. For example the minorities were created in colonial period as contingency measures where they shall

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support colonialist incase the majority of the population revolt or resist certain policies, and therefore the whole created foundation should not be turned upside down. Furthermore modern and big powers’ politicians also create and then maintain certain tension cleavage between majority and minority so they can distinguish themselves at the time of crises as in Iraq and Afghansitan. Formerly colonial powers placed minorities at the top level in political economy and majority at the bottom, and thus paved the way for future continues rebellions and conflicts after these countries get independence.

Based on the above background analysis, I propose that ethnicity should be studied in contextual sphere in each individual country and in discrete laps of time; and this is why it should not be generalized to make similarities or rivalries in the evolution of ethnic identities. In certain place and time the Primordialism approach will be valid, but for other ethnicities the Situationlist approach will be more appropriate to describe the situation.

Ethnicity as Political Organization

While many definitions exist for ethnicity, this one stands out of the crowd for the purpose of my argument: “Ethnicity is an aspect of social relationship between agents who consider themselves as culturally distinctive from members of other groups with whom they have a minimum of regular interaction” (Eriksen, 2002:12). Based on this definition ethnicity is an aspect of social interaction and not cultural entity by itself, while at the same time it is relational and revolves based on the interaction with ‘others’. Therefore it is contextual and not something fixed as Parimordialist believed.

I am convinced that ethnicity is constructed and then used as political organization for achieving political gains. One question can explain the phenomenon: Why ethnicity exists all the times but it gets importance in the times of political tension or in the era of government formation in developing countries? It is because certain political leaders / social groups want to pursue specific political objectives which are difficult to be achieved through mobilization of other resources except the power of masses. For example, native people in America, indigenous groups in Latin America, Chechens in Russia, Catholic-Irish in Ulster, Quebecois in Canada, Tajiks and Uzbeks in Afghanistan, and several other ethnic groups in various parts of the world try to achieve political share by representing themselves as specific ethnic power to challenge the status quo. Moreover in developed countries, refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants are naturalized and given new ethnic identities as per the government stratification which has no connection with the migrant’s original ethnicity. For example, if an Afghan Pashtun family migrates to US and accepted there for naturalization, under the new citizenship they will become white Americans!

I can also make analogy of political ethnicity with an ordinary type of organization, where organizations are generally created to achieve specific objectives with the help

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of two or more members working together; similarly awareness about ethnic identity is created, developed, and then promoted to achieve certain political ‘organizational’ objectives. This construction can be an internal phenomenon such as rebellions by certain ethnicities to get their rights, or otherwise used by outsiders to stabilize or destabilize political conditions for their own interest.

There are three phases to formation and construction of an ‘ethnic organization’ (Elsevier, 2008), first a ‘shared objective’ is created among the target group which can affect the group collectively. Second, sense of illegitimacy and unfairness is developed among the mass. Third, the mass is organized and strengthened to develop feelings of belonging and affiliation with each other. This process of ethnic identity does not directly fall under the first two categories in the opening paragraphs, but may have some links with the constructivism.

To get into the specific case application in details, we consider the current history of Afghanistan. Until 2001, Afghan ethnic history was full of coexistence, harmony and peace though widespread inequality existed. But the page turned in November 2001, when the Bonn agreement process started over the formation of new government. Here the whole process was revolving on ethnic representation in the formation of new government, and this happened for the first time in the history of Afghanistan. In Bonn Agreement, UN and international society constructed different ethnicities and made them important in this process to show the Bonn meeting as a representative of all of the people of Afghanistan. But beside that, they created ethnicities as various political organizations, then developed and promoted them for other political gains; more particularly to maintain continues tension between Pashtun dominant Taliban and the ethnic Tajik dominant government. Simonsen, refers to the same phenomenon in the context of Afghanistan and uses the phrase “process of ethnicization” (2004:710).

To sum-up the above discussion, I think some of the famous ethnic theories are very narrow and can only apply to specific regions in specific period of time, while few including constructivism can be helpful to understand ethnicity in other regions of the world. In my understanding, ethnicity is constructed same as any organization and then developed and promoted for certain political reasons. In the context of Afghanistan, ethnicity has never been any factor in politics, but since the formation of new government in 2001, it became central to all political decision.

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Note: First page is review and criticism of chapter 9, ‘the study of political ethnicity of Southeast Asia’ of text book (Southeast Asia in Political Science Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis, Edited by Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Dan Slater, and Tuong Vu), therefore I have not used references in that section, mainly because the arguments revolves on the specific chapter.

References:

Eriksen T. (2002), ‘Ethnicity and nationalism, anthropological perspective’ 2nd edition, Pluto press, London

Elsevier (2008), ‘Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict’, Volumes 1-3, Ethnicity and Identity Politics page: 765

Simonsen S. G., Third World Quarterly, ‘Ethnicising Afghanistan?: inclusion and exclusion in post-Bonn institution building’ Vol. 25, No. 4. Carfax publishing, Taylor and Francis group

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Category: Development Politics