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Ethnic Accommodation in a Historical Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Matthew Holden Jr
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh

Extract

I. The Political Meaning of Ethnic Conflict

If politics “in its broadest sense” is conceived as the “distribution of advantages and disadvantages among people” (Froman, p. 3), then the ultimate penalty is subordination (total exclusion from advantages) and the ultimate reward is dominance (total monopoly of advantages). The effort to change the balance of advantages and disadvantages between groups is the nexus of political conflict. In such conflict, ethnicity is a particularly important variable, precisely because it is one criterion found throughout the world by which groups are regularly assigned superior and inferior places.

Type
Urban Politics
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1966

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References

1 Ethnicity is here used as a collective term for racial, religious, nationality, and cultural identifications which tend to be attached as if the significant traits were genetically transmissible. Thus, by ordinary social experience, one's ethnic group membership is automatic and does not depend on a “decision to participate” (March and Simon, Chapter 4).

2 Emphasis additional. Author.

3 Williamson, Appendix C, pp. 240 and 250.