Ethnic Domination Research Articles

Ethnic dominance damages cooperation more than ethnic diversity: results from multi-ethnic field experiments in India

Research in many societies shows that ethnic diversity correlates with a decline in cooperation at the community level. This literature neglects cases in which ethnic heterogeneity is hierarchically structured. Power and status differences between ethnic groups, or ethnic dominance, may play an important role in determining cooperative outcomes. We test this hypothesis using public goods experiments with caste groups in India in which we manipulate the caste composition of experimental groups. Conservative estimates show that ethnic dominance between high and low ranking castes has a much larger negative effect on contributions in the public goods experiment than does caste diversity. We argue that ethnic dominance interactions such as ethnic discrimination constitute a type of antisocial punishment between groups. We also find that conditional cooperation is limited to within ethnic groups, revealing ethnocentric cooperation preferences. These results confirm the importance of group structure in human cooperative patterns, and help bridge the gap between evolutionary theory and cooperation dynamics in multi-ethnic real world settings.

Red racisms: racism in communist and post-communist contexts

List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Racializing Russia Racial Proletarianization and After: Anti-Roma Racism in Central and Eastern Europe Cuba: The Raceless Nation Racial Sinicisation: Han Power and Racial and Ethnic Domination in China Red Racisms and After: The Promise, The Logics, The Prospects Bibliography Index

Rules of Law

Legal systems or Law Codes are creations of states; but there are different kinds of States: depending on whether political [1] power is based on Divine Right (Theocracy), one man rule (Dictatorship), dynastic rule (Monarchy), elite power (Aristocracy/oligarchy), wealthy elites (plutarchy), a ethnic group dominance (nationalism), or the majority of the people (democracy). Most states usually involve a mix of these elements.

Shah Shuja’s ‘Hidden History’ and its Implications for the Historiography of Afghanistan

The essay uses colonial archival materials from the Archives of the Punjab Province in Lahore to address the thirty-year period between the two reigns of the Durrani Afghan Monarch Shah Shuja (r. 1803-1809 and 1839-1842). Focusing on the 1809-1839 period, the first part of the essay deals with Mountstuart Elphinstone’s 1809 diplomatic mission and Shuja’s flight from Peshawar. The second part of the article considers the communication between Shah Shuja’s primary wife and colonial officials that culminated in Shuja’s receipt of housing and a monthly British pension in Ludhiana in 1816. The third part of the essay treats Shuja’s aborted attempt to recapture Kabul without British support in 1832-1833 and its consequences for him in Ludhiana. Shuja’s lack of Pashto credentials, his dependency on British capital, and his circular migration pattern are viewed as normative rather than exceptional for Afghan rulers, and as such this essay contributes to a revision of the traditional historiography of Afghanistan that views the country through the incompatible lenses of Pashtun ethnic domination of the Afghan state structure and Pashtun tribal resistance to Afghan state formation.1

Democracy unravelled in Kenya: multi-party competition and ethnic targeting

The introduction of competitive multi-party politics in Kenya has led to intense struggles for the ultimate political prize, the ‘imperial presidency’. Given the country's multi-ethnic character which is dominated by five large ethnic communities or tribes, parties tend to be erected on ethnic foundations. Strong political personalities are elevated to represent and advance the interests of their people. Given the power and resources associated with the capture of power, electoral competition becomes a struggle for ethnic dominance. The Kikuyu who were the first community to rise to power after independence see the presidency as belonging to them. The others however seek to marginalize and/or displace the Kikuyu at every opportunity. In 2007, two political titans – Mwai Kibaki of the Kikuyu and Raila Odinga of the Luo – fought a harsh and virulent campaign which ended in a deeply flawed vote count. Kibaki won but Odinga claimed a stolen election. Immediately, severe ethnic violence was wreaked on one community only to be followed by revenge violence on others. The country came perilously close to collapse. The pattern of political violence to wound and destroy ethnic opponents arose in 1992, then in 1997 and finally in 2007. Multi-party electoral competition has brought untold grief to hundreds of thousands of Kenyans. In essence, democracy has become a curse for ordinary Kenyans.

Transnational Ethnic Ties and the Incidence of Minority Rule in Rwanda and Burundi (1959–2003)

This article specifies a novel theoretical framework to explore how rival ethnic groups learn from threats to ethnic kin in a neighboring country and from threats made by nominal rivals at home. We argue that a combination of external and internal threats causes violence domestically. Violence causes casualties, increases interethnic animosity, and generates refugee flows. These outcomes, in turn, contribute to renewed violence, reinforce or undermine disparities in power, and shape patterns of ethnic domination. Among the range of outcomes generated by our framework are those that bear a strong resemblance to the trajectory of ethnic domination in the Rwanda–Burundi dyad. [Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics for the following free supplemental resource: an appendix of the framework's formal aspects and technical details.]

Nationalism and Politics of the Past: The Cases of Kosovo and Abkhazia

AbstractBoth Kosovo and Abkhazia have been riven by violent conflicts which developed to full-scale wars in the 1990s. The central cause to both conflicts was the emergence of strong nationalist movements on all participating sides with a program calling not only for ethnic dominance of one group, but for ethnic homogeneity as such. This article will focus on the symbolic aspect in both cases through which fears, loyalties as well as mass hostilities were produced and reproduced by invoking past historical events. The aim of this article is to provide the reader with evidence that ethnic conflicts—and the humaniarian catastrophes which they cause—are not natural disasters but, rather, man-made and follow the mechanism of politicizing the present through lenses of the past.

Ethnic homogenization of Serbia in the period 1991-2002

The end of the twentieth century can be characterized as the time of having in mind the of ethnicity and “explosion” of national identity of many ethnic communities. During this period, which is characterized by radical political and socio-economic changes, as well as the strengthening of nationalism in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, in Serbia has been an awakening of the national consciousness of the majority nationalities, as well as many members of ethnic minorities. This had resulted in a change of national affiliation which is particularly reflected on ethnodemographic data, thus on population dynamics of many nationalities, as well as change of ethnic structure of population of Serbia. In this article ethnic picture of Serbia will be presented and ethnodemographic changes in the period 1991-2002, caused by migration, natural movement, changed declaration on national affiliation, as well as some political and socio-economic factors. Spatial distribution of population according to nationality is an important aspect of demographic development conditioned primarily by ethnically differentiated natural growth and migrations. In Serbia is present an exceptional concentration and ethnic homogenization of population of certain nationalities. Due to specific territorial distribution and ethnic domination of relevant national minorities in border parts of the country, the question of their status and territorial-political organization gives special severity and significance to the minority question in Serbia.

Ethnic Forces in Collective Action: Diversity, Dominance, and Irrigation in Tamil Nadu

Mounting evidence suggests that ethnic interactions damage cooperation in the provision of public goods, yet very few studies of collective action in common pool resource management have found strong evidence for the effects of ethnic diversity. Research on both public goods and common pool resource management that does find negative ethnic effects on cooperation tend to ignore the importance of interethnic relationships, particularly ethnic inequality, stratification, or dominance. This study presents data from agricultural villages in Tamil Nadu's Palani Hills to test the importance of a range of ethnic effects using caste interactions in a traditional irrigation system. I provide corroborating evidence of a negative cooperative effect of ethnic diversity, but also demonstrate that factors of ethnic dominance such as hierarchical stratification and demographic dominance strongly determine outcomes in collective irrigation management. I argue that the most important measure of equity, irrigation access, is socially, technologically, and institutionally embedded, and demonstrate that the distribution of irrigation channels is explained by measures of inequality, such as wealth inequality, Dalit status, and demographic dominance.

The Final Solution: A Genocide

This is a challenging book with far-reaching implications for our understanding of the Holocaust and its place in the history of the twentieth century. Based upon a careful and judicious reading of the most important literature on the Holocaust, Donald Bloxham seeks to situate the mass-murder of European Jewry between 1941 and 1945 within the broader history of European genocide from 1875 to 1945. In doing so, he takes issue with Steven Katz, and those who insist that the Jewish Holocaust was a unique event in human history, and argues instead that the full meaning of the final solution can only be understood if placed in the larger context of genocide that characterised much of European history from the Congress of Berlin through to the end of the Second World War. The crux of Bloxham's argument is that, with the disintegration and eventual collapse of the three great multi-national empires that dominated the map of central and eastern Europe—the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian empires—and the emergence of new states based upon the principle of ethnic domination, the status of all religious and ethnic minorities, particularly in the shatterzones where the three empires abutted against each other, became increasingly problematic. Those minorities that were suspected either of having loyalties to other territorial states outside the state in which they lived, or of harbouring hopes of becoming part of a state in which their ethnic group was dominant, were particularly vulnerable. For such minorities, the only answer was expulsion and repatriation to states in which the ethnic groups to which they belonged were dominant. Generally this was to be accomplished through population transfer, but in those cases where population transfer was not feasible the answer was often genocide.

Governance and Oil Politics in Nigeria’s Niger Delta: The Question of Distributive Equity

Nigeria’s Niger Delta is the storehouse of petroleum resources, which accounts for more than 80 percent of Nigeria’s revenue and more than 90 percent of the total exports. Unfortunately, the producing region remains poor, ecologically disabled and infrastructurally underdeveloped giving rise to various forms of violent conflicts, kidnappings and restiveness. In this study, we employ the concept of governance to see how oil benefits are distributed as well as its overall impacts on the development of the region. The paper mostly uses statistics from secondary sources to support arguments. The outcome shows that the real oil benefits do not trickle down to the Niger Delta region in a significant amount. We observed that several factors including politicization of benefits, revenue and infrastructural distribution; wrong policies; ethnic domination and absence of transparent and accountable leadership are real deprivers and captors of oil benefits, which continues to keep the region perpetually poor and underdeveloped. Addressing these issues requires thorough understanding of the fundamental questions of governance in Nigeria.

Peasants, power and ethnicity: A bottom-up perspective on Rwanda's political transition

This article analyses over 400 life trajectories of ordinary peasants in order to complement top-down studies of the Rwandan political transition. Changes and differences according to the ethnicity of the respondents shed light on the Hutu–Tutsi bi-polarity which underlies the transition and reveal a reversal in perceived ethnic dominance accompanying the decisive moment in the political transition: the overthrow of the Hutu-dominated regime by the Tutsi-led RPF. This suggests that the experience of the nature of governance and the (perceived) proximity to power lies at the heart of ethnic awareness. The nature of governance at the periphery of society is explored, and the article demonstrates that the instrumental stance on ethnic identity adopted by the post-genocide regime is not only erroneous but counter-productive. Adjusting the socio-political environment in which identities thrive is more important than a direct focus on identity constructs when developing policies to prevent ethnically structured violence.

Cultural Mechanics of Fundamentalism: Religion as Ideology, Divided Identities and Violence in Post-Gandhi India

This study analyses the history of Hindu fundamentalism up to the present time, as it developed since India’s independence. In the course of its rise, Hindutva destroyed the Gandhian symbolism of non-violence, reinterpreted cultural symbols to become political signs and prepared the ground for communal violence. Secularists and the religious out-group, Muslims, became targeted as enemies. During the resulting Hindu ethnic dominance, religion was converted from a faith into an ideology. The sequence of events in the development of this movement repeats the common scheme of a religious fundamentalist movement that serves the nationalist goals of political leaders. It is argued that such groups cannot reasonably be conceptualized in terms of an individual psychology or personality, that is, a trait, but as a cultural movement that unites people sharing membership of a social class, that is, a sociocultural state. Such movements, in contrast to Abrahamic religious fundamentalisms, do not form well-established stable groups over time, but are more like a waxing and waning political movement where membership is determined by social class and ethnic identity. Their politics trigger a heightened awareness of ethnic identity, prime a religiously ideological mindset and, as a consequence, release communal violence.

Identidad y emergencia de los movimientos nacionales como expresión del nacionalismo.

Este trabajo se propone analizar los fundamentos, identidad, predominancia étnica y el simbolismo cultural de los movimientos nacionales. El nacionalismo como factor de identifi cación es el principal aglutinante para la signifi cación y expresión política del poder de movilización en la emergencia de movimientos nacionales. La modernidad permea el nacionalismo en los movimientos nacionales y sus estructuras de oportunidad política y funcionamiento. Se concluye que los movimientos nacionales han sido un factor de cambio social en gran escala.

Dominant ethnicity: from minority to majority

ABSTRACT. This article argues that the world is in the midst of a long‐term transition from dominant minority to dominant majority ethnicity. Whereas minority domination was common in premodern societies, modernity (with its accent on democracy and popular sovereignty) has engendered a shift to dominant majority ethnicity. The article begins with conceptual clarifications. The second section provides a broad overview of the general patterns of ethnic dominance that derive from the logic of modern nationalism and democratisation. The third section discusses remnants of dominant minorities in the modern era and suggests that their survival hinges on peculiar historical and social circumstances coupled with resistance to democratisation. The fourth section shifts the focus to dominant majorities in the modern era and their relationship to national identities. The article ends with a discussion of the fortunes of dominant ethnicity in the West.

Historical Consciousness and the "French-English" Divide among Quebec History Teachers

Teacher historical consciousness influences pedagogical practices in the national history classroom. Its study within the context of societies with ambiguous ethnic dominance like Quebec fosters a better understanding of how teachers signify past inter-group relations for knowing and orienting themselves toward the "Other." Quebec's blurred majority/minority demarcations between Francophones and Anglophones, as well as its common but non-consensual history program for its parallel school system, provides innovative and productive ground for such research. This article discusses a study conducted on inter-group attitudes and mutual in-class treatment between Francophone and Anglophone history teachers when teaching the Secondary Four, History of Quebec and Canada course in Montreal. Whereas most Francophone respondents displayed an indifference to the social realities and historical experiences of Quebec Anglophones, all Anglophone respondents demonstrated a sense of empathy toward the former. As this discrepancy reflects each group's sociological status, it also implies a dissimilarity in how research participants historicize the "French-English conflict" in Quebec's past. In this context, the non-recognition of Anglo-Quebecois moral and historical agency possibly explains the prevalent indifference among Francophone respondents. La conscience historique des enseignants influence leurs pratiques pédagogiques lorsqu'ils enseignent l'histoire nationale. Dans une société à dominance ethnique ambiguë comme le Québec, l'étude de cette conscience permet de comprendre le sens que donnent les enseignants aux relations intergroupes du passé pour mieux se reconnaître et se positionner par rapport à l'Autre. La démarcation majoritaire/minoritaire floue entre francophones et anglophones ainsi que le curriculum d'histoire commun, mais non-consensuel, offre un terrain fertile pour la recherche. Cet article présente les résultats d'une étude sur les attitudes intergroupes et le traitement du programme d'histoire du Québec et du Canada par les enseignants francophones et anglophones respectivement en quatrième secondaire à Montréal. Si la plupart des répondants francophones manifestent de l'indifférence face aux réalités sociales et aux expériences historiques des Anglo-québécois, tous les répondants anglophones manifestent de l'empathie envers les premiers. Reflet du statut sociologique distinct de chaque groupe, cette divergence implique une dissemblance dans la manière dont les répondants historicisent le conflit français-anglais. Dans cette optique, le fait de ne pas reconnaître l'historicité des Anglo-québécois pourrait expliquer l'indifférence des répondants francophones.

Ethnically based enrollment patterns at the University of Cluj/Kolozsvár, 1900–1944

This paper is an assessment of Hungarian and Romanian degree-holder contingents of the Cluj/Kolozsvár university in times of spectacular political change and relative social stagnation. This university has invariably been localized within a higher educational market mostly limited to the needs of the ethnically mixed population of Transylvania, needs that were seldom, if ever, reflected in equitable ethnic enrollment ratios. Local ethnic competition in and through the academe was always conditioned by external centers of political gravitation. The integrative role of the university altered each time the centre changed, and each time it was exerted not so much along socio-economic but along ethno-political lines. The late imperial educational commonwealth before World War I was largely dominated by the Magyar element. The subsequent nation-state framework reversed the situation to the advantage of Romanians in the inter-war period. This was followed by yet another turn-over between 1940 and 1944. All the while the university was less an agent of modernization than a fortress of survival in a continuous struggle for national dominance. Ethnic dominance tended to prevail over reform and social advancement, and repeated failures in the latter were ascribed to the presence of the rival ethnic other in the competition.

Gender, agency and identity, the case of Afghan women in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran

This paper will discuss how Afghan women, as diverse groups, exercised autonomy and agency in diaspora (Iran and Pakistan) and in Afghanistan under US-led invasion. Negotiations between social, political, economic, ethnic, cultural and gender spheres are a constant battle for Afghan women. They have invented different ways of coping with life, under the most extreme forms of coercion, fear and high levels of uncertainties. In diaspora, despite marginalisation, they established women's voices and agency. Exile became an important factor to reshape their identity according to their diverse positions. Under NATO and US-led invasion they are challenging imperialist representation of Afghan women. They are seeking freedom from hierarchical and patriarchal domination. They hope that their active agency will enable them to establish their own identity free from male, ethnic, religious and imperial domination. The paper will draw the attention of the reader to the enormous influence of state policies (Afghanistan/US, Iran, Pakistan), as well as the impact of women's movement in Iran and the NGOs in Pakistan, on the lives of Afghan women and men in Afghanistan and diasporic communities.

Looking through Taiwan: American Anthropologists' Collusion with Ethnic Domination. Keelung Hong , Stephen O. Murray

<i>Looking through Taiwan: American Anthropologists' Collusion with Ethnic Domination</i>. Keelung Hong , Stephen O. Murray

Reshaping the Future: Education and Postconflict Reconstruction

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 17 No. 4 (2007) ISSN: 1546-2250 Reshaping the Future: Education and Postconflict Reconstruction World Bank, (2005). Washington, D.C.: World Bank; 93 pages. ISBN 0821359592. When Burke famously said that “education is the chief defense of a nation,” he hardly would have visualized a situation where education would be the chief instigator of conflict. Rather than preventing war, educational systems have provoked internal dissensions. Surmounting the usual refrain of financial strangulation of educational systems and prevailing over the unvarying emphasis on commercialization of education, this monograph by the Human Development Network Education Hub of the World Bank focuses on the ability of education “in both preventing conflict and rebuilding post-conflict societies.” Specifically, what is the fate of schools after war / conflict? In this study, 52 war-affected or conflict-ridden territories were identified. Alarmingly, about 60 percent of countries rated “low” on the Human Development Index have been involved in some form of conflict since the 1990s. This is an explicit reiteration of the fact that a nation’s stage of development and presence of conflict have a few things in common. This economic concern notwithstanding, a few other factors exacerbated the situation in risk-prone societies, including ethnic dominance, civil war, discrimination and a distorted curriculum. Triggers, Target and Effects Besides bringing down the statue of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis rejoiced at the public burning of textbooks that had pictures of the 431 dictator—a very clear case of using the educational system as an apparatus of propaganda. Impeded access to education is another important trigger of conflict, with Burundi (cultural bigotry) and Kosovo (Kosovo Albanian students forced out of public schools) being testimony to it. Furthermore, the occurrence of shift in the medium of instruction from Tamil to Sinhalese in the 1960s and 1970s in Sri Lanka, along with the reduction in quota for Tamils in Sri Lankan universities, led to the Tamil separatist movement on the island. This is one part of the issue. The other is the strategic importance of a school or a college during conflict, given the incidence of destruction of places of learning. The physical infrastructure of a functioning school is often seen as an appendage of the ruling party’s clout over society, and this often instigates an immediate agenda to destroy the building. Killing of both teachers and the taught, over and above tearing down schools and colleges, is often perceived to be a symbol of weakening a state’s hold over civil society. What is more, such institutions more often than not serve as barracks, places of storage, and temporary shelters for displaced people, becoming, in a conflict event, easy and immediate targets for dissenters. True to form, Iraq has had about 85 percent of its classrooms destroyed, and Kosovo has only 35 percent of its classrooms intact. Timor-Leste has escaped with a paltry five percent of its classrooms unharmed. Loss of life—of teachers and students—is the most explicit of the effects of war / conflict, buttressed by the psychological trauma of the survivors. Survivors are at greater risk in areas of mines and unexploded ordinances; permanent disability is yet another potential facet of a survivor’s life. Reconstruction Environment Post conflict, it is a sanguine aspiration of the people to have more political space, providing greater role for civil society, as witnessed by El Salvador and Guatemala. This is not the case in every nation. Widespread chaos and myopic policies can supplant the earlier regime. In all events, the World Bank study advocates a “sequence 432 in post-conflict reconstruction” of educational systems, on the following lines: a. Let people know that children are returning to school. That is, get the system to function. b. Purge all pre-conflict symbols in schools, e.g., distorted curricula, offensive textbooks, insulting murals and graffiti on walls. c. Develop consensus among people. d. Ensure community participation and introduce stakeholder dialogues. Challenges and Issues The above points may be easier said that done. Nevertheless, there are countries that have re-established a good educational system, post-conflict. In the run-up to this goal, there are many challenges to be met. It is in the...