Contrary to expectations implicit in the image of the “melting pot” that ethnic distinctions could be eliminated in US society, the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the United States and around the world has prompted social scientists to rethink models of ethnicity rooted in assumptions about the inevitability of assimilation.1 Instead, the resiliency of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences among populations has led to a search for a more accurate, less evolutionary means of understanding not only the resurgence of ancient differences among peoples, but also the actual emergence of historically new ethnic groups.2 The result has been the development of a model of ethnicity that stresses the fluid, situational, volitional, and dynamic character of ethnic identification, organization, and action – a model that emphasizes the socially “constructed” aspects of ethnicity, that is, the ways in which ethnic boundaries, identities, and cultures, are negotiated, defined, and produced through social interaction inside and outside ethnic communities.3

Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture

A range of seemingly rival theories attempt to explain why some individuals take extraordinary risks by choosing to participate in armed conflict. To date, however, competing accounts have typically not been grounded in systematic, empirical studies of the determinants of participation. In this article, we begin to fill this gap through an examination of the determinants of participation in insurgent and counterinsurgent factions in Sierra Leone’s civil war. We find some support for all of the competing theories, suggesting that the rivalry between them is artificial and that theoretical work has insufficiently explored the interaction of various recruitment strategies. At the same time, the empirical results challenge standard interpretations of grievance-based accounts of participation, as poverty, a lack of access to education, and political alienation predict participation in both rebellion and counterrebellion. Factors that are traditionally seen as indicators of grievance or frustration may instead proxy for a more general susceptibility to engage in violent action or a greater vulnerability to political manipulation by elites. hy do some individuals take enormous risks to participate as fighters in civil war? What differentiates those who are mobilized from those who remain on the sidelines? What distinguishes those who rebel from those who fight to defend the status quo? In spite of a large literature on the topic, scholars continue to debate the conditions under which men and women take up arms to participate in deadly combat. In this article, we examine the evidence for prominent, competing arguments in the context of Sierra Leone’s civil war, drawing on a unique dataset that records the attitudes and behavior of 1,043 excombatants alongside a sample of 184 noncombatants.

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Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War

concepts developed and the politics of plural societies. We have no intention of resolving this problem in summary fashion. As a result, the next chapter is devoted in its entirety to an analysis of politics in the plural society using the tools and language of this chapter. 58. E. E. Schattschneider, \"Intensity, Visability, Direction and Scope,\" American Political Science Review 51, no. 3 (September 1957): 933-42 (quotation at p. 937).

Politics in plural societies : a theory of democratic instability

(1978). A nation is a nation, is a state, is an ethnic group is a … . Ethnic and Racial Studies: Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 377-400.

A nation is a nation, is a state, is an ethnic group is a … .

Neither nationalism nor ethnicity is vanishing as part of an obsolete traditional order. Both are part of a modern set of categorical identities invoked by elites and other participants in political and social struggles. These categorical identities also shape everyday life, offering both tools for grasping pre-existing homogeneity and difference and for constructing specific versions of such identities. While it is impossible to dissociate nationalism entirely from ethnicity, it is equally impossible to explain it simply as a continuation of ethnicity or a simple reflection of common history or language. Numerous dimensions of modern social and cultural change, notably state building (along with war and colonialism), individualism, and the integration of large-scale webs of indirect relationships also serve to make both nationalism and ethnicity salient. Nationalism, in particular, remains the pre-eminent rhetoric for attempts to demarcate political communities, claim rights of self-determination and leg...

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/U6800/readings-sm/calhoun.pdf

Nationalism and ethnicity

The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World

It has been said that technological and economic development lead ultimately to the decline of communal conflict, and that the emergence of new kinds of socio-economic roles and identities undercuts the organizational bases upon which communal (that is, “racial,” “ethnic,” “religious,” or “tribal”) politics rests. In the past decade, several scholars working in culturally plural societies have challenged this conventional view. They have suggested that communalism may in fact be a persistent feature of social change, and that the dichotomous traditionmodernity models which have often guided our empirical investigations have obscured this theoretical alternative and thereby produced false expectations concerning the direction of change. This paper attempts to synthesize the various elements of this emerging theoretical perspective through the formulation of several propositions which link modernization to communalism. While our discussion will draw primarily upon the Nigerian experience for illustrative material, the propositions are intended to be applicable across societies. “Communalism,” in this paper, refers to the political assertiveness of groups which have three distinguishing characteristics: first, their membership is comprised of persons who share in a common culture and identity and, to use Karl Deutsch's term, a “complementarity of communication;” second, they encompass the full range of demographic (age and sex) divisions within the wider society and provide “for a network of groups and institutions extending throughout the individual's entire life cycle;” and, third, like the wider society in which they exist, they tend to be differentiated by wealth, status, and power.

Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspectve1

Nigeria : modernization and the politics of communalism

After the nationwide general strike of June 1964, workers in Nigeria gained unprecedented political prominence. The timing of the strike had much to do with this, for only five months hence the Federal elections of December 1964 were to be held and Nigerian politicians became keenly aware of the labor movement. Two kinds of politicians began to compete for the labor vote. On the one hand, there were politically oriented labor leaders who wanted to take the opportunity of the strike and of the elections to form a Nigerian Labor party. They made their appeals to the class-consciousness and self-interest of Nigerian workers defined as workers, not as members of this or that ethnic group. On the other hand there were the politicians of the major political parties who made their appeals to the ethnic loyalties of the workers.2 Thus between June and December 1964, and for some months after, workers were crosspressured between their labor and their ethnic loyalties.3 Working against the effect of the

Ideology and Inconsistency: The “Cross-Pressured” Nigerian Worker

In this ambitious work, David D. Laitin explores the politics of religious change among the Yoruba of Nigeria, then uses his findings to expand leading theories of ethnic and religious politics.

Robert Melson

Papers

The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World

Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspectve1

Nigeria : modernization and the politics of communalism

Ideology and Inconsistency: The “Cross-Pressured” Nigerian Worker

Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba