Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-lvwk9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-19T18:56:36.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Temple of Ethnicity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Crawford Young
Affiliation:
Political Science at the University of Wisconsin—Madison
Get access

Extract

In this review essay, recent significant works on the subject of comparative ethnicity are situated in the broader context of cultural pluralism as an emergent interdisciplinary field. The reasons for the crystallization of cultural pluralism as a distinctive field of inquiry are explored. The rise of ethnic studies was obviously triggered by the growing saliency of communal conflict in all regions of the world. The low visibility of such cleavages in the early postwar years may be attributed to conjunctural factors. Important long-term trends include the broadening and deepening of patterns of social communication and competition through urbanization, expanding literacy, mass media, and population movements; these processes are apt to produce heightened communal consciousness and politicization of ethnic cleavages. The great expansion in the scope of state actions raises the stakes in issues of division of the national product and domination of the state apparatus. A large consensus has emerged in the literature as to the situational, contextual, and circumstantial nature of ethnicity. Within the comparative ethnicity literature, an important division has appeared between “instrumentalists,” who stress the pursuit of collective advantage, and “primordialists,” who focus upon the assumed givens of shared culture and the psychological properties of ethnic consciousness.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1983

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

1 Milne, R. S., Politics in Ethnically Bipolar States (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981).Google Scholar

2 Smith, Anthony D., The Ethnic Revival (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

3 Park, Robert, Race and Culture (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950).Google Scholar

4 Fishman, , ed., Language Loyalty in the United States (The Hague: Mouton, 1966)Google Scholar; Fishman, Joshua A., Ferguson, Charles A., and Gupta, Jyotirindra Das, eds., Language Problems of Developing Nations (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968).Google Scholar

5 Isaacs, , Idols of the Tribe (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).Google Scholar

6 Handlin, , The Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951).Google Scholar

7 Myrdal, , An American Dilemma (New York: Harper, 1942).Google Scholar

8 Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press and Harvard University Press, 1963), V.Google Scholar

9 Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, L'empire éclaté (Paris: Flammarion, 1978).Google Scholar

10 Rusinow, Dennison, The Yugoshv Experiment 1948–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

11 I., Lloyd and Rudolph, Suzanne H., The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Brass, Paul R., Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Barnett, Marguerite Ross, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Das, JyotirindraGupta, Language Conflict and National Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Hardgrave, Robert, The Nadars of Tamilnad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Nayar, Baldev Raj, Minority Politics in the Punjab (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weiner, Myron, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Jahan, Rouna, Pakistan: Failure in National Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Phadnis, Urmila, Religion and Politics in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1976).Google Scholar A forerunner of these studies expressed dark forebodings about the future cohesion of India, but did not really plunge into the inner dynamics of language, religion, and caste as political determinants. See Harrison, Selig, India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Kasfir, Nelson, The Shrinking Political Arena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Melson, Robert and Wolpe, Howard, Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalism (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Bates, Robert H., “Ethnic Competition and Modernization in Contemporary Africa,” Comparative Political Studies 4 (January 1974), 457–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Southall, Aidan, “The Illusion of Tribe,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 5 (No. 1–2, 1970), 2850CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Abner, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Olorunsola, Victor, ed., The Politics of Cultural Subnationalism in Africa (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972)Google Scholar; Mazrui, Ali, Cultural Engineering and Nation-Building in East Africa (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Cohen, Ronald and Middleton, John, eds., From Tribe to Nation in Africa (Scranton, Pa.: Chandler, 1970).Google Scholar

13 Despres, Leo, Cultural Pluralism and Nationalist Politics in British Guiana (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967).Google Scholar

14 Berghe, Pierre van den, Race and Ethnicity (New York: Basic Books, 1970)Google Scholar; Berghe, Pierre van den and Primov, George P., Inequality in the Peruvian Andes (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977).Google Scholar

15 Novak, Michael, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (New York: Macmillan, 1971)Google Scholar; Greeley, Andrew, Ethnicity, Denomination, and Inequality (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976).Google Scholar

16 Patterson, Orlando, Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse (New York: Stein & Day, 1977)Google Scholar; Steinberg, Stephen, The Ethnic Myth (New York: Atheneum, 1981).Google Scholar

17 For “minorities,” an excellent recent overview is provided in the special issue of Daedalus on “American Indians, Black, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans” 110 (Spring 1981); on the new immigration, see Bryce-Laporte, Roy Simon, Sourcebook on the New Immigration (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1980).Google Scholar

18 Birch, Anthony, Political Integration and Disintegration in the British Isles (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977)Google Scholar; Esman, Milton, ed., Ethnic Conflict in the Western World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

19 Three collective works are of special importance: Goldhagen, Erich, ed., Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1968)Google Scholar; Azrael, Jeremy, ed., Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices (New York: Praeger, 1978)Google Scholar; McCagg, William and Silver, Brian D., Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979).Google Scholar

20 Connor, Walker, “Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?World Politics 24 (April 1972), 319–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Connor, , “The Politics of Ethnonationalism,” Journal of International Affairs 28 (1973), 121Google Scholar; Enloe, Cynthia, Ethnic Conflict and Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973)Google Scholar; Barth, Frederic, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969)Google Scholar; Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., eds., Ethnicity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

21 Lijphart, Arend, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

22 Kuper, Leo and Smith, M. G., eds., Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).Google Scholar This approach derives from Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice (London: Cambridge University Press, 1948).Google Scholar

23 Hechter, Michael, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).Google Scholar For applications to Ethiopia and the United States, respectively, see Selassie, Bereket, Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Barrera, Mario, Race and Class in the Southwest (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979).Google Scholar

24 Rabushka, Alvin and Shepsle, Kenneth A., Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1972).Google Scholar

25 For insight into extremely important recent developments in scholarly analysis of cultural pluralism in the Soviet Union, see Gellner, Ernest, “Ethnicity and Anthropology in the Soviet Union,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 18 (No. 2, 1977), 201–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a neo-Marxist effort to incorporate ethnicity into class analysis, see Saul, John, “The Dialectic of Class and Tribe,” in Saul, , The State and Revolution in Eastern Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).Google Scholar

26 Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Ethnicity and National Integration,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 3 (October 1960), 129–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Geertz, Clifford, “The New Integration Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in New States,” in Geertz, , ed., Old Societies and New States (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1968).Google Scholar In this pathbreaking statement, Geertz in fact employs “instrumentalist” perspectives as well as contributing a “primordialist” vocabulary. Nonetheless, the article is frequently interpreted as stressing the cultural “givens” of ethnicity.

28 For an extreme version of the instrumentalist position, see Patterson (fn. 16).

29 Isaacs (fn. 5); Epstein, A. L., Ethos and Identity (London: Tavistock Publications, 1978).Google Scholar

30 Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar