Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T19:27:13.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ethnicity or Religion? A Theory of Identity Choice with Evidence from the Russian North Caucasus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2020

Valery Dzutsati*
Affiliation:
Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Previous research has either equated religion- and language-based group identities or asserted that their social effects are the same. This article proposes a novel differentiation between religious and ethnic self-identification that accounts for in-group income inequality and the social role of the group. The study argues that ethnicity-based identities tend to be associated with economic activities, thereby increasing the demand for income equality within such groups. Religious identities, on the contrary, are centered around noneconomic activities and have the ideological framework for reconciling material inequalities. The observable implication of this distinction is that the high-, low-, and middle-income categories of the multicultural society will display differential association with ethnic and religious identities. Ethnic groups will have lower in-group income inequality as a result of the exclusion of the poor and the departure of the rich. Religious groups, on the contrary, will have higher in-group income inequality due to the capacity of religion to accommodate both poor and rich. Relevant empirical tests from the ethnically and religiously diverse Russian North Caucasus region indicate support for the proposed theory.

Type
Article
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdulagatov, Zaid. 2012. “O Vliyanii Religioznogo Faktora Na Ekstremistskoe Povedenie Dagestanskoi Molodezhi.” Sotsiologicheskie Issledovania 1: 106113Google Scholar
Alesina, Alberto, Baqir, Reza, and Easterly, William. 1999. “Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (4): 12431284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexeev, Michael V., and Gaddy, Clifford G.. 1993. “Income Distribution in the USSR in the 1980s.” Review of Income and Wealth 39 (1): 2336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allison, Roy. 2008. “Russia Resurgent? Moscow’s Campaign to ‘Coerce Georgia to Peace’.” International Affairs 84 (6): 11451171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, Robert J., and McCleary, Rachel. 2003. “Religion and Economic Growth.” Working Paper 9682. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barth, Frederik. 1969. “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: Introduction.” In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Organization of Cultural Differences, edited by Barth, Frederik, 938. Boston, MA: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Bauman, Chad, and Leech, Tamara. 2012. “Political Competition, Relative Deprivation, and Perceived Threat: A Research Note on Anti-Christian Violence in India.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 (12): 21952216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergson, Abram. 1984. “Income Inequality Under Soviet Socialism.” Journal of Economic Literature 22 (3): 10521099.Google Scholar
Blau, Peter M., and Schwartz, Joseph E.. 1984. Crosscutting Social Circles. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bobrovnikov, Vladimir. 2000. “Mythologizing Sharia Courts in the Post-Soviet North Caucasus.” ISIM Newsletter 5 (1): 25.Google Scholar
Bormann, Nils-Christian, Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Vogt, Manuel. 2017. “Language, Religion, and Ethnic Civil War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61 (4): 744771.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Nice, Richard. 1987. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Botero, Carlos A., Gardner, Beth, Kirby, Kathryn R., Bulbulia, Joseph, Gavin, Michael C., and Gray, Russell D.. 2014. “The Ecology of Religious Beliefs.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (47): 1678416789.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brubaker, Rogers. 2013. “Language, Religion and the Politics of Difference.” Nations and Nationalism 19 (1): 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catford, John C. 1977. “Mountain of Tongues: The Languages of the Caucasus.” Annual Review of Anthropology 6 (1): 283314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiswick, Carmel U. 2009. “The Economic Determinants of Ethnic Assimilation.” Journal of Population Economics 22 (4): 859880.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2006. “What Is Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?Annual Review of Political Science 9: 397424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comins-Richmond, Walter. 2004. “Legal Pluralism in the Northwest Caucasus: The Role of Sharia Courts.” Religion, State and Society 32 (10): 5973.Google Scholar
Corstange, Daniel. 2012. “Religion, Pluralism, and Iconography in the Public Sphere: Theory and Evidence from Lebanon.” World Politics 64 (1): 116160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, David B., Scott, David, Roosen, Charles, Magnusson, Arni, and Swinton, Jonathan. 2019. xtable: Export Tables to LaTeX or HTML. R package version 1.8-4. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=xtable.Google Scholar
Dancygier, Rafaela M. 2010. Immigration and Conflict in Europe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Nancy J., and Robinson, Robert V.. 1999. “Their Brothers’ Keepers? Orthodox Religionists, Modernists, and Economic Justice in Europe.” American Journal of Sociology 104 (6): 16311665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Nancy J., and Robinson, Robert V.. 2001. “Theological Modernism, Cultural Libertarianism and Laissez-Faire Economics in Contemporary European Societies.” Sociology of Religion 62 (1): 2350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Nancy J., and Robinson, Robert V.. 2009. “Overcoming Movement Obstacles by the Religiously Orthodox: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Shas in Israel, Comunione E Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 114 (5): 13021349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunlop, John B., and Menon, Rajan. 2006. “Chaos in the North Caucasus and Russia’s Future.” Survival 48 (2): 97114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. (1893) 1960. The Division of Labor in Society. Chicago, IL: The Free Press of Glencoe.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. (1897) 2005. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dzutsev, Khasan. 2012. Etnosotsiologichesky Portret Respublik Skfo Rf [Ethno-Sociological Portrait of Republics in the North Caucasian Federal District of Russian Federation]. Moscow: ROSSPEN.Google Scholar
Feldman, David. 2018. “Antisemitism and Immigration in Western Europe Today: Is There a Connection? Findings and Recommendations from a Five-Nation Study.” Final Report. Berlin: Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility; Future’; London: The Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, University of London.Google Scholar
i Marín, Fernández, Xavier, . 2016. “ggmcmc: Analysis of MCMC Samples and Bayesian Inference.” Journal of Statistical Software 70 (9): 120.Google Scholar
Fuller, Liz. 2011a. “North Caucasus Insurgency Admits Killing Circassian Ethnographer.” Caucasus Report (blog), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. January 10, 2011. http://www.rferl.org/content/north_caucasus_insurgents_ethnographer_murder/2272112.html. (Accessed April 13, 2020.)Google Scholar
Fuller, Liz. 2011b. “Beheading of Poet Fuels Anti-Islamic Feeling in North Ossetia.” Caucasus Report (blog), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. June 3, 2011. http://www.rferl.org/content/beheading_of_poet_fuels_anti_islamic_feeling_in_north_ossetia/24214518.html. (Accessed April 13, 2020.)Google Scholar
Fuller, Liz. 2013. “Insurgency in Daghestan Extorts Funding from State Budget, Businessmen.” Caucasus Report (blog), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. May 2, 2013. https://www.rferl.org/a/daghestan-extortion-insurgency/24975168.html. (Accessed April 13, 2020.)Google Scholar
Galbraith, James K., Krytynskaia, Ludmila, and Wang, Qifei. 2004. “The Experience of Rising Inequality in Russia and China During the Transition.” The European Journal of Comparative Economics 1 (1): 87106.Google Scholar
Gammer, Moshe. 2007. Ethno-nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder . New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. (1983) 2008. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Glaeser, Edward L., and Sacerdote, Bruce I.. 2008. “Education and Religion.” Journal of Human Capital 2 (2): 188215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Theodore P., and Mendelson, Sarah E.. 2009. “Security Through Sociology: The North Caucasus and the Global Counterinsurgency Paradigm.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 32(9): 831851.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 1978. “Group Formation and the Cultural Division of Labor.” American Journal of Sociology, 293318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Henry E. 2008. The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 1978. “Group Formation and the Cultural Division of Labor.” American Journal of Sociology, 293318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 1987. Principles of Group Solidarity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 2000. Containing Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hierro, María José, and Rico, Guillem. 2019. “Economic Crisis and National Attitudes: Experimental Evidence from Spain.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (5): 820837.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hlavac, Marek. 2018. Stargazer: Well-Formatted Regression and Summary Statistics Tables. R package version 5.2.1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=stargazer. (Accessed April 14,2020.)Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California press.Google Scholar
Hosmer, David W. Jr, Lemeshow, Stanley, and Sturdivant, Rodney X.. 2013. Applied Logistic Regression. 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, John D., and Stanig, Piero. 2011. “Church-State Separation and Redistribution.” Journal of Public Economics 95 (7/8): 828836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hungerman, Daniel M. 2014. “The Effect of Education on Religion: Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 104: 5263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Immerzeel, Tim, and van Tubergen, Frank. 2013. “Religion as Reassurance? Testing the Insecurity Theory in 26 European Countries.” European Sociological Review 29 (2): 359372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janssens, Angélique. 2002. Family and Social Change: The Household as a Process in an Industrializing Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 1993. The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2008. “Ethnic Defection in Civil War.” Comparative Political Studies 41 (8): 10431068.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kosta, Ervin B. 2019. “Becoming Italian, Becoming American: Ethnic Affinity as a Strategy of Boundary Making.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (5): 801819.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laitin, David D. 2000. “Language Conflict and Violence: The Straw That Strengthens the Camel’s Back.” European Journal of Sociology 41 (1): 97137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lankina, Tomila V. 2006. Governing the Locals: Local Self-Government and Ethnic Mobilization in Russia. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Lanzillotti, Ian T. 2016. “Historiography and the Politics of Land, Identity, and Belonging in the Twentieth-Century North Caucasus.” Nationalities Papers 44 (4): 503521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeBlanc, Michael, and Fitzgerald, Shawn. 2000. “Logistic Regression for School Psychologists.” School Psychology Quarterly 15 (3): 344358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lopez-Calva, Luis F., and Ortiz-Juarez, Eduardo. 2014. “A Vulnerability Approach to the Definition of the Middle Class.” The Journal of Economic Inequality 12 (1): 2347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marsiglia, Flavio Francisco, Kulis, Stephen, Hecht, Michael L., and Sills, Stephen. 2004. “Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity as Predictors of Drug Norms and Drug Use Among Preadolescents in the US Southwest.” Substance Use & Misuse 39 (7): 10611094.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Masoud, Tarek. 2014. Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, Mervyn. 1985. “Poverty in the Soviet Union.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) 9 (4): 7584.Google Scholar
McAuley, Alastair. 1977. “The Distribution of Earnings and Incomes in the Soviet Union.” Soviet Studies 29 (2): 214237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCauley, John F. 2014. “The Political Mobilization of Ethnic and Religious Identities in Africa.” American Political Science Review 108 (4): 801816.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, Meredith B. 2008. Religion: The Social Context. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Michalopoulos, Stelios, Naghavi, Alireza, and Prarolo, Giovanni. 2012. “Trade and Geography in the Origins and Spread of Islam.” Working Paper No. 18438. Revised June 2017. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michalopoulos, Stelios, Naghavi, Alireza, and Prarolo, Giovanni. 2016. “Islam, Inequality and Pre-Industrial Comparative Development.” Journal of Development Economics 120: 8698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Cerwyn. 2015. “Foreign Bodies: Transnational Activism, the Insurgency in the North Caucasus and ‘Beyond’.” Terrorism and Political Violence 27 (3): 395415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magomedov, Amirbek. 2014. “Kubachinskoe oruzhie – fenomen rossiyskoy khudozhestvennoy kul’tury” [The Kubachi Weaponry – The Phenomenon of the Russian Artistic Culture]. RIA DagesEtan, February 15, 2014. http://www.riadagestan.ru/news/science/kubachinskoe_oruzhie_fenomen_rossiyskoy_khudozhestvennoy_kultury/. (Accessed April 13, 2020.)Google Scholar
Magomedov, Rasul. “In Dagestan, Court Arrests Four Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Caucasian Knot, June 3, 2019. https://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/47372/. (Accessed April 13,2020.)Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., Quinn, Kevin M., and Park, Jong Hee. 2011. “MCMCpack: Markov Chain Monte Carlo in R.” Journal of Statistical Software 42 (9): 121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moskalenko, Sophia, McCauley, Clark, and Rozin, Paul. 2006. “Group Identification Under Conditions of Threat: College Students’ Attachment to Country, Family, Ethnicity, Religion, and University Before and After September 11, 2001.” Political Psychology 27 (1): 7797.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meduza. 2019. “Ongoing Protests in Ingushetia: From the Latest News to the Very Beginning.” April 1, 2019. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/04/01/ongoing-protests-in-ingushetia-from-the-latest-news-to-the-very-beginning. (Accessed April 13, 2020.)Google Scholar
Musaev, Musa. 2011. “Narodnye Promysly Dagestana” [Folk Crafts of Dagestan]. Vesti Kavkaza, March 2, 2011. http://www.vestikavkaza.ru/articles/33713.html. (Accessed April 13, 2020.)Google Scholar
Musaev, Musa. 2013. “Laktsy Obuyut Rossiyan” [The Laks Will Put Shoes on Russians]. Dagestan Segodnya, July 19, 2013. http://dagtoday.ru/novosti/obshestvo/laktsy-obuyut-rossiyan.html. (Accessed April 13, 2020.)Google Scholar
Nichol, Jim. 2011. Stability in Russia’s Chechnya and Other Regions of the North Caucasus: Recent Developments. Collingdale, PA: DIANE Publishing.Google Scholar
O’Loughlin, John, Holland, Edward C., and Witmer, Frank D.. 2011. “The Changing Geography of Violence in Russia’s North Caucasus, 1999–2011: Regional Trends and Local Dynamics in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 52 (5): 596630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Loughlin, John, Kolossov, Vladimir, and Radvanyi, Jean. 2007. “The Caucasus in a Time of Conflict, Demographic Transition, and Economic Change.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 48 (2): 135156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Olzak, Susan. 1983. “Contemporary Ethnic Mobilization.” Annual Review of Sociology 9: 355374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onokerhoraye, Andrew G. 1977. “Occupational Specialization by Ethnic Groups in the Informal Sector of the Urban Economies of Traditional Nigerian Cities: The Case of Benin.” African Studies Review 20 (1): 5369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez, Efrén O. 2013. “Ricochet: How Elite Discourse Politicizes Racial and Ethnic Identities.” Political Behavior 37 (1): 155180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Kathryn. 2008. Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothschild, Joseph. 1981. Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagramoso, Domitilla. 2007. “Violence and Conflict in the Russian North Caucasus.” International Affairs 83 (4): 681705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaefer, Robert W. 2010. The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.Google Scholar
Shariff, Azim F., and Norenzayan, Ara. 2007. “God Is Watching You: Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game.” Psychological Science 18 (9): 803809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siroky, David S., Mueller, Sean, and Hechter, Michael. 2017. “Cultural Legacies and Political Preferences: The Failure of Separatism in the Swiss Jura.” European Political Science Review 9 (2): 303327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Souleimanov, Emil Aslan, Abbasov, Namig, and Siroky, David S. 2019. "Frankenstein in Grozny: Vertical and Horizontal Cracks in the Foundation of Kadyrov’s rule.” Asia Europe Journal 17 (1): 87103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starodubrovskaya, Irina V., Zubarevich, Natalya V., Sokolov, Denis V., Intigrinova, Tatyana P., Mironova, Nina I., and Magomedov, Khabib G.. 2011. Severnyy Kavkaz: Modernizatsionnyy Vyzov. Moscow: Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.Google Scholar
Toft, Monica Duffy, and Zhukov, Yuri M.. 2015. “Islamists and Nationalists: Rebel Motivation and Counterinsurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus.” American Political Science Review 109 (2): 222238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Upadhyayula, Satyasree, Ramaswamy, Megha, Chalise, Prabhakar, Daniels, Jessie, and Freudenberg, Nicholas. 2017. “The Association of Ethnic Pride with Health and Social Outcomes Among Young Black and Latino Men After Release From Jail.” Youth & Society 49 (8): 10571076.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Venables, William N., and Ripley, Brian D.. 2002. Modern Applied Statistics with S. 4th ed. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walters, David, Phythian, Kelli, Kelli, and Anisef, Paul. 2007. “The Acculturation of Canadian Immigrants: Determinants of Ethnic Identification with the Host Society.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 44 (1): 3764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ware, Robert Bruce, and Kisriev, Enver. 2009. Dagestan: Russian Hegemony and Islamic Resistance in the North Caucasus. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe.Google Scholar
Warner, Carolyn M., Kılınç, Ramazan, Hale, Christopher W., Cohen, Adam B., and Johnson, Kathryn A.. 2015. “Religion and Public Goods Provision: Experimental and Interview Evidence from Catholicism and Islam in Europe.” Comparative Politics 47 (2): 189209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. 2002. Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism and Political Change in Egypt. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Wickham, Hadley. 2016. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas, Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Min, Brian. 2009. “Ethnic Politics and Armed Conflict: A Configurational Analysis of a New Global Data Set.” American Sociological Review 74 (2): 316337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Richard, and Ellis, Mark. 2000. “The Ethnic and Gender Division of Labor Compared Among Immigrants to Los Angeles.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24 (3): 583600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yemelianova, Galina. M. 2001. “Sufism and politics in the North Caucasus.” Nationalities Papers 29 (4): 661688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yemelianova, Galina. 2014. “Islam, Nationalism and State in the Muslim Caucasus.” Caucasus Survey 1 (2): 323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeileis, Achim. 2014. Ineq: Measuring Inequality, Concentration, and Poverty. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ineq. (Accessed April 13,2020.)Google Scholar
Zhao, Ruohui, and Cao, Liqun. 2010. “Social Change and Anomie: A Cross-national Study.” Social forces 88 (3): 12091229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhirukhina, Elena. 2018. “Protecting the State: Russian Repressive Tactics in the North Caucasus.” Nationalities Papers 46 (3): 374399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zolberg, Aristide R., and Woon, Long Litt. 1999. “Why Islam Is Like Spanish: Cultural Incorporation in Europe and the United States.” Politics and Society 27 (1): 538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Dzutsati supplementary material

Dzutsati supplementary material 1

Download Dzutsati supplementary material(File)
File 89.9 KB
Supplementary material: File

Dzutsati supplementary material

Dzutsati supplementary material 2

Download Dzutsati supplementary material(File)
File 40.8 KB
Supplementary material: File

Dzutsati supplementary material

Dzutsati supplementary material 3

Download Dzutsati supplementary material(File)
File 42.9 KB