Containing political instability in a poly‐ethnic society: The case of Mauritius

In a continent whose political record has been largely marred by almost three decades of post‐independence political turmoil verging on genocidal proportions, the small state of Mauritius has devised a sociopolitical system that has largely succeeded in containing some of the worst excesses of bloody political confrontation usually associated with poly‐ethnic societies, for example, the Nigerian Civil War of the 1960s; the Tutsi/Hutu conflict in Burundi in 1988–89, and so on. In this article it is argued that Mauritius has devised and maintained a three‐pronged strategy to safeguard political stability, namely: (1) the adoption of constitutional safeguards to accommodate ethnic divisions; (2) a spoils system of (ethnic) parliamentary representation designed to ensure that no section of the population is alienated, thereby respiting in the politicization of ethnic divisions; (3) a ‘national patronage’ system through which massive social welfare spending has been maintained since independence. This has functioned to dampen the possibility of political violence nourished by general poverty and the resultant alienation. Finally, the commitment of the various ruling coalitions to the parliamentary process has had the effect of impelling the major opposition parties to seek to gain power through peaceful constitutional means rather than through violent political confrontation.     

Great Expectations: Hindu Revival Movements in Java

Based on preliminary ethnographic research in five Javanese communities with major Hindu temples, I explore the political history and social dynamics of Hindu revivalism. I reject formalist approaches to the study of religion, including the notion of ‘syncretism’ and instead, treat the Hindu revival movements as an illustration of how social agents employ religious or secular concepts and values in their strategic responses to the particular challenges and crises they may face in a specific cultural, social, political and historical setting. Expectations of a great crisis at the dawn of a new golden age among followers of the Javanese Hindu revival movement are an expression of utopian prophesies and political hopes more widely shared among contemporary Indonesians. These expectations are set to shape the prospects of Indonesia's fledgling democracy. The paper reflects on the historical conditions under which these and similar utopian expectations and associated social movements may either incite violent conflict or serve a positive role in the creation or maintenance of a fair society.     

Immunoglobulin (GM and KM) allotypes in the Sikh population of India

The populations of India are genetically diverse, both within and between geographic regions; immunoglobulin (GM) allotypes provide important information on genetic differences between populations, since the frequencies of combinations of allotypes (termed "haplotypes") vary dramatically among ethnic groups. As part of a project to assess genetic diversity among defined Indian populations, we have examined eight GM allotypes in a sample of 101 unrelated Sikhs who have migrated to Toronto, Canada: Glm(1, 2, 3, 17) and G3m (5, 15, 16, 21). Sikhs are a religious group that arose in the Punjab about 1500 A.D.; most of the original converts are believed to have been middle to upper-middle caste Hindus. Gm allotyping showed that six Gm haplotypes occurred at polymorphic frequencies (greater than 0.01) in Sikhs: Gm3;5, Gm1,17;21, Gm1,2,17;21, Gm1,17;5, Gm1,17;15,16, and Gm1,3;5. These haplotypes have all been previously reported in Indian populations. The frequencies of the first four haplotypes resembled the published frequencies for lower-caste Hindus of NW India more than upper-caste Hindus. However, the last two haplotypes have been found only in upper-caste Hindus. The frequency of one of these, Gm1,17;15,16 was higher in Sikhs (0.09) than has been reported in any Indian population with the exception of Parsis (who are descended from Iranians). We speculate that the high frequency of this haplotype may have been characteristic of some of the Hindu castes in the Punjab from which Sikhs are descended.     

Religion,ethnicity and politics: Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrants in the United States

This article focuses on the political struggles between Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrant groups in the United States over the definition of "Indianness". Hindu Indian American organizations define India as a Hindu society and are strong supporters of the Hindu nationalist movement in India. Muslim Indian American organizations, on the other hand, view India as a multi-religious and multicultural society. They are striving to safeguard India's secularism and towards this end, have entered into coalitional relationships with lower caste groups. Both types of organizations are working to influence American and Indian politics in line with their respective interests, leading to an exacerbation of the conflict between the two immigrant groups. This article examines the reasons for this development and its implications, both for the development of an Indian American community in the United States and for religion and politics in India.     

Ethnic conflict and the United Nations

The United Nations [UN] is an organization of states. As such it can be expected to represent the interests of its members and uphold a state‐centric view of international politics. For this reason it has been suggested that the organization cannot respond positively to ethnic conflicts within states, or across state borders. However, since such ethnic conflicts can be a threat to international peace and security and to internationally accepted norms of behaviour, the UN cannot always remain indifferent. In fact, it has become involved in ethnic conflicts in several ways. It has dispatched peace‐keeping operations to Cyprus and Lebanon, which try to keep apart the warring factions. The UN has been involved in peace‐making in ethnic conflicts through mediation and Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. It has also engaged in peace‐building, which involves efforts to change both socio‐economic conditions and the mutually hostile attitudes of the parties to violent ethnic conflict. Finally, even though the UN, unlike the League of Nations, has not been prepared to adopt a system of minority‐rights protection, it has been involved in the issue of group rights in at least three areas. These are the Genocide Convention, the work of the Sub‐Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, and the issue of the right of national self‐determination.     

Ethnic intolerance and ethnic conflict in the dissolution of Yugoslavia

The causal link between ethnic intolerance and ethnic conflict is tested using four highly comparable data sets from Croatia that span the time before and after the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia: 1984–5, 1989–90, 1996 and 2003. Though most approaches to ethnic conflict posit a social-psychological dimension critical to violent encounters, our analysis provides an unprecedented empirical examination that dispels the commonly held view that ethnic hatred, hostility, and intolerance are the cause of ethnic conflict. After explaining the events and the shifting social, political and economic landscape that precipitated the war, we examine demographic, social structural and attitudinal changes between 1985 and 2003 that are associated with variation in ethnic intolerance, giving special attention to the connection between religiosity and intolerance. Prior to the war people were slow to translate public tensions into personal animosities. We find strong support for concluding that the events of the war itself and especially elite manipulation of public images of these events, are strongly implicated in rising intolerance during the war, and that the war's residual effect has been slow to dissipate.     

The patterns of ethnic settlement and violence: a local-level quantitative analysis of the Bosnian War

The debate on the link between ethnicity and violence has been raging in political science literature since the end of the Cold War. Often, cross-country quantitative studies dismissed the importance of ethnic heterogeneity as a source of violent conflict. How the patterns of ethnic settlement within a country affect the severity of violence, though, has not yet been studied through similar techniques. In this essay, we build and analyse a data set of major violence-related variables collected at the local level during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. What emerges is that the local distribution of the population, in terms of the number and relative size of the groups, is a key factor in explaining the intensity of violence in the Bosnian municipalities.     

‘Black’ and ‘white’ death: burials in a time of Ebola in Freetown,Sierra Leone

The article examines experiences of the 2014‐15 Ebola crisis in Freetown, Sierra Leone, through an analysis of the performance of burials. While most of the city's residents had no contact with the virus, ‘Ebola’ was inescapable, owing to the onerous state of emergency regulations imposed by national and international authorities. All burials, regardless of the cause of death, were to be performed by newly established official teams operating according to unfamiliar biomedical and bureaucratic protocols. Burials became emblematic of the crisis through presenting a conflict between local practices and novel procedures, which was coded locally in a complex racial language of ‘black’ and ‘white’, recalling a long regional history of violent integration into the Atlantic World. Building on long‐standing anthropological discussion on the relationship between ‘good’ death and social order, the article explores how burials became sites around which opposing ‘orders’ were experienced, negotiated, and reconciled in locally meaningful ways.     

UNO … . What happened to autonomy? Politics and ethnicity on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast

Current debates surrounding the ethnic mobilization of indigenous groups are explored with reference to Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast region. The Autonomy Project, promoted under the revolutionary government of the 1980s, inspired new forms of regional multi‐ethnic forms of mobilization and, in so doing, eschewed nationalistic claims associated with the resurgence of ethnicity elsewhere. The fate of the principle of ethnic autonomy is subsequently examined in the wake of the defeat of the Sandinistas in the elections held in 1990. Evidence suggests that domestic political conditions as well as international political and economic pressure have been crucial in undermining the autonomy process. This, in turn, has had important consequences for ethnic identity formation in the region, since a combination of pressure from international agencies, the United States government and multinational companies in conjunction with the UNO alliance have undermined educational and employment as well as political initiatives built around old and new ethnic groupings. Examples of bilingualism and initiatives to control and protect the region's resources are shown to have suffered directly as a result of the increased activity of multinationals, the privatization programmes of the Chomorro government and efforts to bypass local political structures. A local radio station, which also played a role in promoting multi‐ethnicity in the region, was similarly under threat. In conclusion, and drawing on wider debates, it is argued that Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast provides an important example of the interpenetration of local and global pressures in the development of ethnic politics. The analysis of changes on the Atlantic Coast during the period of the revolution and after the defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990 allows us to assess their impact on changing forms of cultural and ethnic identity in the region. The article argues that the scope for ethnic autonomy, including new and empowering forms of regional multi‐ethnic identity, is seen to be profoundly contingent on political circumstances which themselves cannot be considered independently of wider international and economic conditions.     

Ethnicity,region and nation: Valencian identity and the Spanish nation-state

In the exploration of the relationships between ethnicity, national identity, and symbolic building of the region, this article deals with a key issue: the achievements and limitations of the assimilation of culturally heterogeneous populations by European nation-states. The modern Spanish national identity (at times shown as purely political) has included and still includes cultural elements (above all, the spread of the Spanish language). This meant that the ethnicity of the Valencians (a population with autonomous political structures until their violent destruction in 1707) had to be redefined as a regional identity in order to avoid coming into conflict with national identity. This re-working excluded the Catalan language, spoken by most of the inhabitants of the region, from the political sphere. In the long term, this cultural characteristic became stigmatized, which favoured its undercommunication to the extent that a process of language shift was initiated. This case study highlights the historical analysis of ethnic identity and the instability of its integration into national structures.     

New Poland's old dilemma: The Polish minority of Lithuania

This article seeks to explore the growing problem posed by the Slav/Polish ethnic minority in Lithuania and attempts to place this conflict in the general context of twentieth‐century East European ethnic conflicts. Particular attention is given to explaining the unique historical circumstances that produced this ethnically transitional area between the Byelorus, Polish and Lithuanian societies where throughout their history, the representatives of these ethnic groups as well as a large Jewish community and many other smaller ethnic groups have cohabited together as an intertwined mixture. However, with the spread of the idea of a single ethnic dominated national state, the transitional area in southwestern Lithuania ‐ as well as similar ethnically transitional areas elsewhere in eastern Europe ‐ were destined to be liquidated. Such areas could be liquidated either through some kind of enforceable dispersal of the now ‘undesirable’ ethnic groups from the region or through a state‐driven programme which would impose a new national identity on the ethnic groups involved. With Lithuania being much too weak a society to enforce the dispersal of its Slav minority, and with its élites determined to transform it into a single ethnic dominated national state, the only remaining option was a state policy of ‘Lithuanization’ of the Slav minority. The Slavs’ resistance to such a policy spurred on the growth of ethnic conflict in Lithuania and threatened to spill over into neighbouring countries. This article explores the regional ramifications of this ethnic conflict.     

Citizenship and Resource Competition in Nigeria

This article discusses the growing tension between constitutionally defined citizenship and socially accepted practices of “we–they dichotomies” as a turbulent component of the national question discourse in Nigeria. It examines the adoption of dual citizenship across the country as well as how this generates violent ethnic conflict. Importantly, while citizenship refers to one’s full membership of a sovereign political community acquired either by birth, naturalisation or any other process legitimised and recognised by the supreme law of the state, indigeneship, on the other hand, is a discriminatory policy employed by local or provincial governments for protecting the rights of their so–called indigenous populations to employment, political power and other resources of the regions or states against domination by alien populations and outsiders. It is argued that while such distinctions have been made possible inter alia by Nigeria’s multi–ethnic character, the ensuing struggles and tensions have been driven by the normless competition over resource allocation. These have especially been the case in instances where ethno–territorial cleavages have been the primary beneficiaries and targets of such resource allocation. This article discusses land as a major economic resource over which heated ethnic conflicts have taken place in Nigeria. Drawing on the conflicts between Hausa–Fulani pastoralists and Yoruba farmers in South–Western Nigeria, it examines the question of how disputed access to land and water has underlain an almost permanent basis of conflict in Nigeria as well as their implications for the country’s fledgling democracy. How does the struggle over land affect the articulation of the citizenship question in Nigeria? How have scarcity and competition over resources affected the contest over citizenship and the forging of nationhood among natives and settlers in South–Western Nigeria? How have colonial framings of socially accepted practices of indigeneship entrenched an understanding of the state in Nigeria as a representation of permanently defined subnational conceptions of ethnic citizenship? What role can the state in Nigeria play towards transforming the multiplicities of traditional societies into coherent political societies as a basis for (i) eliciting deference and devotion from the individual to the claims of the state, and ultimately for (ii) increasing cultural homogeneity, political integration and value consensus? Drawing on data generated from an ethnographic study carried out in South–Western Nigeria between October 2009 and March 2015, this study interrogates these questions.     

Regional Maritime Regime Building: Prospects in Northeast and Southeast Asia

Maritime issues are rising to the forefront of Asian security concerns. But maritime management regimes can constrain conflict and create confidence in co-operation. Such regimes can define the range of permissible state behavior and resolve dilemmas stemming from the sharing of common resources. Regimes originate through imposition, spontaneous processes, or negotiation and are supplied when there is sufficient demand for the functions they perform. Integrative forces that support regime formation are the existence of other international arrangements in the region; ethnic, cultural, or historical interstate relationships; and clear indications of benefits to be gained. Often a shock or crisis enhances regime formation or its robustness. Disintegrative forces include political or territorial differences, competition for leadership, and opposition to regionalism. In regional co-operation on maritime issues, Southeast Asia is clearly more advanced than Northeast Asia. However, the absence of robust multilateral maritime regimes in Asia reflects state perceptions that the costs outweigh the benefits. The primacy of dis-integrative factors argues strongly for an ad hoc, issue-specific, evolutionary process for multilateral maritime regime building in Asia.     

Reconstructing the Indian origin and dispersal of the European Roma: a maternal genetic perspective

Previous genetic, anthropological and linguistic studies have shown that Roma (Gypsies) constitute a founder population dispersed throughout Europe whose origins might be traced to the Indian subcontinent. Linguistic and anthropological evidence point to Indo-Aryan ethnic groups from North-western India as the ancestral parental population of Roma. Recently, a strong genetic hint supporting this theory came from a study of a private mutation causing primary congenital glaucoma. In the present study, complete mitochondrial control sequences of Iberian Roma and previously published maternal lineages of other European Roma were analyzed in order to establish the genetic affinities among Roma groups, determine the degree of admixture with neighbouring populations, infer the migration routes followed since the first arrival to Europe, and survey the origin of Roma within the Indian subcontinent. Our results show that the maternal lineage composition in the Roma groups follows a pattern of different migration routes, with several founder effects, and low effective population sizes along their dispersal. Our data allowed the confirmation of a North/West migration route shared by Polish, Lithuanian and Iberian Roma. Additionally, eleven Roma founder lineages were identified and degrees of admixture with host populations were estimated. Finally, the comparison with an extensive database of Indian sequences allowed us to identify the Punjab state, in North-western India, as the putative ancestral homeland of the European Roma, in agreement with previous linguistic and anthropological studies.     

The terms of the debate: Untangling language about ethnicity and ethnic movements

Theoretical debates on ethnicity suffer from a general confusion about the divergent meanings which academics ascribe to key terms. ‘Primordialist’ approaches include biological, psychological and cultural explanations, whose conflation tends to confuse proponents and critics alike. ‘Instrumentalist’ approaches conflate all ethnic movements within a profile of political opportunism, failing to recognize the varying degrees to which underlying social‐institutional incompatibilities may contribute to ethnic conflict. ‘Constructivist’ approaches vacillate between a focus on the influence of intellectual ethnic discourse and an understanding of ethnic identity as developing out of wider bodies of social experience. Greater attention to the varying contribution of ‘deep’ culture to ethnic conflict can clarify why these subschools find such differences among ethnic movements, which can indeed be understood to vary along a spectrum of political functions: at one pole, ethnic movements seek to inflate ethnic sentiment for political purposes; at the other, they seek rather to reconstruct the existing political position of a distinct cultural formation. This distinction can permit more appropriate policy‐making towards the resolution of ethnic conflict, yet raises new challenges to the biases of the researcher.     

“You Can Steal Livestock but You Can’t Steal Trees.” The Livelihood Benefits of Agroforestry during and after Violent Conflict

While violent conflict affects the lives of 1.5 billion people globally, little is known about how such people support and feed themselves. We explore how agroforestry may be used as a livelihood strategy to build livelihood resilience during and immediately after violent conflict. Research was conducted in Burat, Kenya, which underwent violent conflict over local ethnic politics and control in 2012 before the 2013 elections. Research included 13 qualitative case study households and 187 quantitative household surveys. Major livelihood coping strategies during the conflict included aid, help from relatives, and casual labor, with agroforestry as a supplementary livelihood activity for some. Our results are context-specific, but suggest that agroforestry can build livelihood resilience during and after conflict by providing income and food, places to hide from attackers, and construction materials for rebuilding homes.     

Saving face: the emotional costs of the Asian immigrant family myth

Access to resources through ethnic group membership is often presumed to affect the intensity of ethnic identification. We examine this premise using survey data on three ethnic groups in Mauritius: Creoles, Hindus, and Muslims. Two key findings emerge from our research. First, access to material resources explains only a modest proportion of total variation in ethnic identification within each group. Second, the resources that affect ethnic identification differ significantly across groups. Access to political goods through group membership affects Hindu identification but is unrelated to ethnic identification among Creoles or Muslims. Conversely, access to economic goods affects Creole and Muslim identification but has no effect on Hindu identification. Explaining these group differences leads us beyond a basic means–ends instrumentalist model to identify conditions that likely mediate the relationship between individual interests and collective identification including the divisibility of economic goods relative to political goods in Mauritius.     

“One People,One Blood”: Public Health,Political Violence,and HIV in an Ethiopian-Israeli Setting

Between 1984 and 1996, public health authorities in Israel maintained a secret policy of discarding blood donations made by Ethiopian-Israeli citizens and immigrants. Officials later attempted to justify this policy on the grounds that immigrants from Ethiopia were subject to high rates of infectious disease (especially HIV). In 1996, this led to an explosive and violent confrontation between Ethiopian-Israeli protestors and agents of the state, including police and public health authorities. This essay explores the cultural and political context of that confrontation, including the discourse of political violence which it occasioned. The conflict between Ethiopian-Israelis and the state was located within a wider set of political contexts, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was linked to it through a shared trope of spilled blood common to both. Cultural analyses which ignore this dynamic political context are in danger of seriously misrepresenting the meaning of the Blood Affair to its participants. At the same time, this essay also engages a critical analysis of the public health policies which led to the crisis. Public health and nationalist discourse reinforced one another at the expense of Ethiopian immigrants in general, and so-called Feres Mura Ethiopians in particular.     

Emphasizing 'Others': the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a central Indian tribal community

This article is an ethnographic account of the rise of Hindu nationalism in a central Indian 'tribal' ( adivasi ) community. It is a response to the lack of ethnographic attention within wider nationalist discourse to the kinds of social conditions and processes that have contributed to the manifestation of nationalism at the grass-roots level. It is argued that the successful spread of Hindu nationalism in specifically tribal areas is due to the instrumentalist involvement of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindu nationalist organization, in local affairs. The outcome of such involvement is the promotion of the threatening 'Other' and the attachment of ethnic group loyalties to a wider nationalist agenda.     

Minorities policy in the post‐Soviet republics: The case of the Gagauzi

This article explores the obstacles to crafting comprehensive policies for ethnic minorities within the Soviet successor states. It focuses on a case that has been viewed as a model for the peaceful resolution of ethnic conflict in the region: Moldova's devolution of power to its small Gagauz (Christian Turkic) minority. The relationship between the Moldovan government and the Gagauzi reached its nadir in 1990, when Moldovan volunteer forces and Gagauz irregulars stood at the brink of all‐out civil war over the issue of a separate Gagauz political entity. Since then, however, Moldova has created a special administrative unit known as Gagauz Yeri ('the Gagauz land'). In contrast to other ethno‐territorial disputes in the former Soviet Union, the Gagauz case has illustrated that a range of policy options exists between the extremes of maintaining a highly centralized, unitary state structure and the devolution of authority to loosely related confederative units.