Focus on the Fundamentals: Reflections on the State of Ethnic Conflict Studies

Abstract

Our failure to come to consensus on the causes of ethnic conflict stems in part from disagreement on the field’s most basic concept, ethnicity. Yet surprisingly little research directly addresses the fundamental question of what ethnicity is, including whether it inherently involves conflictual behavior. New research is increasingly redressing this problem, but its grounding in social psychology often remains weak. Social scientists are urged to consider a sharper focus on the fundamentals, in particular using systematically contextualized experimental methods that blend the best of psychology with the best of sociology, history, anthropology, and political science.