A Critique of Recent Writings on Ethnicity and Nationalism

Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, by Thomas Hylland Ericksen. London: Pluto, 1993. v +179 pp. ISBN 0-7453-0700-0 cloth.

Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the "Dark Forests" of Matabeleland, by Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor, and Terence Ranger. Oxford: James Currey; Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; Cape Town: David Phillip; Harare: Weaver, 2000. xxvi + 290 pp. ISBN 0-325-07032-6 paper.

Ethnicity and nationalism are different expressions of collective public identity. Their core difference lies more in their distinctive records and social foundations, even when both exist simultaneously in the same country. The resultant diverse experiences of ethnicity and nationalism endow each with varying meanings and historical memories. In this sense, the two concepts, while closely related, are not equivalent. Frequently, buried in the heart of each of these phenomena's historical memories are the ugly scars of violence. In the experience of nation-states, violencehasrecurrently served as an instrument of ethniccompetition, and an inescapable harbinger of nationalism. Often, nationalist movements originate from a complex of sentiments around popular resistance to colonial violence, or as a reaction against imperialism and racism (Kedourie 1, 22-27; Irele 121).¹

In international politics, the power of ethnicity has had a largely negative significance since the defeat of communism in 1991 and the subsequent demise of ideological bipolarity created by the Cold War, that epic contest between capitalism and communism. Competition between the super powers has now been replaced by ethnic cleavages and hatreds that have led to bloodshed and repression around the world. Two post-Cold War visions compete for an explanation of what seems to be happening. On the one hand, there is Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations that attempts to make the issues of ethnicity, nationalism and culture the principal planks of post-Cold War international politics. On the other, there is Francis Fukuyama's End of History that claims the end of the Cold War itself marks the global triumph of economic and political liberalism, the end of history. On the basis of current happenings in international politics one is persuaded by Huntington's position. Clearly, the apparent reversion to nationalism, an ideology that overlaps the phenomenon of ethnicity, has tended to cast some doubt on Fukuyama's paradigm. The recent ethnic tensions and civil wars of Rwanda, Burundi, Bosnia, Chechnia, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Albania are constant reminders that while history may be at a turning point, it is far from over (Huntington 31; Moynihan 15-24). The new challenges to world peace are found almost randomly in ethnonational conflicts, and in polyethnic states.²

In such states, citizens tend to have dual political sources of protection, and identities. This suggests that they recognize two sources of coexisting legitimate authority--modern sovereign states and traditional ethnic authorities--for purposes of identity and protection. Therefore, the primary political loyalty of most people may be given not to the legal states, but to their ethnonational groups. As a result, some scholars have warned that one consequence of this type of ethnonationalism is the collapse of some states into smaller and weaker units that will not be able to preserve their sovereignties (Kegley and Wittkopf 551-52; Sklar, "African Polities" 175). Furthermore, the impending balkanization of many states by their constituent ethnonational groups may increase the population of nation-states in the world from its current 200-odd states to 500 according to the United Nations. This resultant new "order" will include peoples that belong to "cultural areas" with common historical backgrounds, philosophical beliefs, and religions that may provoke Huntington's clash of civilizations (Kegley and Wittkopf 552). But wars and rumors of warshould not exhaust the opportunities for the global manifestations of ethnonationalism.

In the field of global political economics, for example, the new theory of postimperialism considers the implications of ethnic solidarity in the organization and dynamics of international business.³ In one important exposition of this thesis, Joel Kotkin...