Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity

This page intentionally left blank Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict Wimmer goes above and beyond the debate o...

Author: Andreas Wimmer

199 downloads 1567 Views 1MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

This page intentionally left blank

Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict Wimmer goes above and beyond the debate on whether nationalism and ethnicity are modern or ancient phenomena. He shows that nationalist and ethnic politics are not only by-products of modern state formation, but that they provide the basis for modernity itself. Democratic participation, equality before the law and national self-determination are offered only to the ethnic group in a privileged relationship with the modernising state. They are denied to those who do not belong to the state-embodying nation. According to the varying geometries of power, these dynamics of exclusion take on different forms. Where nationbuilding is ‘successful’, immigrants and ethnic minorities are excluded from full participation. In weaker states, political closure proceeds along ethnic, rather than national lines. In his chapters on Mexico, Iraq and Switzerland, Wimmer provides extended case studies that support and contextualise this argument. Andreas Wimmer is Professor of Political and Cultural Change, and Director at the Center for Development Research of the University of Bonn.

Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict Shadows of Modernity Andreas Wimmer

          The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom    The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Andreas Wimmer 2004 First published in printed format 2002 ISBN 0-511-03006-1 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-81255-0 hardback ISBN 0-521-01185-X paperback

Contents

Acknowledgements 1 Shadows of modernity I

page vii 1

Theoretical explorations

2 Compromise and closure: a theory of social dynamics

19

3 The making of modern communities

42

II

State-building and ethnic conflict

4 Who owns the state? Ethnic conflicts after the end of empires

85

5 Nationalism and ethnic mobilisation in Mexico

114

6 From empire to ethnocracy: Iraq since the Ottomans

156

III

The politics of exclusion in nationalised states

7 Racism and xenophobia

199

8 Nationalising multi-ethnic Switzerland

222

References Index

269 306

v

Acknowledgements

The chapters of this book have benefited from presentations to different audiences and from comments and suggestions of a substantial number of friends and colleagues. Some pointed out missing links in the argument, others provided me with useful information or suggested further reading, while still others helped with critiques, thus encouraging me to sharpen, reconstruct or abandon some of my arguments. My sincerest thanks go to all of them. Parts of chapter 2 are based on my inaugural lecture as a Privatdozent of the University of Zurich. Various versions have been read at an annual congress of the Swiss Ethnological Society and at the universities of Cologne and Oxford. Helpful comments were received from Kurt Imhof, Verena Tobler Muller, ¨ Steve Vertovec, and from the editors as well as from anonymous reviewers of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (48, 3: 401–25), where large parts of the text were published in German. Alisdair Rogers has carefully edited the English version. Chapter 3 includes sections of papers given at the universities of Neuchâtel and Mannheim, where Hartmut Esser offered a stimulating critique. My talk at the weekly colloquium of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin was largely based on chapter 3. It was received with fervent and thought-provoking criticism from too many co-fellows to be mentioned here individually. Kurt Imhof provided insightful comments on a German version of the chapter. Parts of it have previously been published in French in the Archives Européennes de Sociologie (37, 1: 163–79), other parts in Tsantsa. Revue de la Société Suisse d’Ethnologie (1: 4–18), and the editors of both journals provided stimulating critiques. Stephen Krasner helped to clarify the ideas put forward in the last section of the chapter. Chapter 4 has benefited from detailed comments by Daniel Geiger, Elisabeth Hsu, ¨ Kurt Imhof, Lorenz G. Loffler, ¨ Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Milan Stanek, and from my students at the University of Zurich. Different versions of the chapter were presented at the University of Zurich, at the Congress of German-Speaking Anthropologists in Vienna, and at the vii

viii

Acknowledgements

First Congress of Swiss Social Sciences in Berne. An anonymous reviewer of Nations and Nationalism (3, 4: 631–65), where an English version was published, provided extensive and detailed comments on almost every paragraph of the text. Parts of chapter 5 were read at the universities of Basle and Zurich. Peter Gerber, Jurg ¨ Helbling, Lorenz G. Loffler ¨ and Hans-Peter Muller ¨ commented generously on earlier versions of the argument. Some sections of the chapter are taken from my book Transformationen. Sozialer Wandel im indianischen Mittelamerika (Berlin: Reimer, 1995). Natividad Gutierrez Chong and ‘Professor’ Mauricio Tenorio Trillo were kind enough to go through the entire chapter and to provide most valuable comments and suggestions for further reading. A section of chapter 6 is based on papers given at two international congresses organised by students of the Free University of Berlin. Special thanks go to Georg Elwert and Martin van Bruinessen for their helpful and detailed comments. One of the papers was published in the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (47, 1: 95–113), and this in turn was based on a lecture given before the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Zurich as part of the habilitation procedure. Dale Eickelman has commented upon the present text. Chapter 7 was presented at the University of Zurich, at a COST workshop in Berne, the Joint Congress of the Swiss Societies for Sociology and Ethnology in Berne, a workshop on xenophobia in Freiburg (Germany), and a congress organised by ERCOMER at the University of Utrecht, where it was discussed in a most helpful way. I wish to thank Kurt Imhof, Margrit Kaufmann, Lorenz G. Loffler, ¨ Hans Mahnig and Verena Tobler Muller ¨ for their criticism and comments on earlier versions of the text. I received further suggestions from two anonymous reviewers of Ethnic and Racial Studies (20, 1: 17–41), where parts of the chapter have appeared as an article, and from Jesika Ter Wal and Maykel Verkuyten, who edited a book entitled Comparative Perspectives on Racism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), from which chapter 7 is adapted. Michael Banton provided an encouraging comment on the article published in Ethnic and Racial Studies. The last section of chapter 8 was read at the Congress of the Austrian, German and Swiss Societies of Sociology in Freiburg (Germany). Thoughtful comments were received from Michael Bommes and Jost Halfmann who edited the volume Migration in nationalen Wohlfahrtsstaaten (Osnabruck: ¨ IMIS, 1998), from which this part of the chapter was adapted. The rewriting of these different pieces and their drawing together into a book were made possible by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft which generously supported me with a Heisenberg Research Fellowship.

Acknowledgements

ix

Much of the writing was done during my stay at St Antony’s College of Oxford University. Its Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology provided me with office space and a stimulating intellectual environment. The final version of the manuscript was produced during my term as a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Staff and co-fellows formed an inspiring and supportive communité de savants – had I started writing the book instead of finishing it there, it would undoubtedly have become a much better one. Staff members of the Center for Development Research of the University of Bonn contributed substantially to the editing of the manuscript. Lisa Braukämper was most helpful in bringing order into the bibliography; Isobel Kerr took care of English orthography, grammar and style; Karina Waedt traced quotations in original languages; Veronika Lenarz, Karina Waedt and Conrad Schetter helped to produce the figures. Hilde Hey, Adele Jinadu, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Conrad Schetter, Anja Schoeller-Schletter and Indra de Soysa, all researchers at the Center, as well as Steve Vertovec, made valuable suggestions, both editorial and ˚ substantive, for the introductory chapter. Aleksandra Alund, Rune Johansson, Vjeran Katunaric, Carl-Ulrik Schierup and a group of Swedish postgraduate students discussed the manuscript during a stimulating seminar in Murter, Croatia. I thank all of them. This book is dedicated to my friends and colleagues Rogers Brubaker, Yehuda Elkana, Kalliope Giantroglou, Kurt Imhof, Lorenz G. Loffler, ¨ the late Hans Mahnig, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Yamila Ramirez Bosque, Steve Vertovec and Sarah Zingg, all experts in crossing and transcending national boundaries either in theory or in practice, or both. I hope I will continue to learn from them.

1

Shadows of modernity

Three different points of view dominate the current debate on ethnicity and nationalism (cf. Smith 1998). For some, nations and ethnic groups are genuinely modern phenomena, the by-product of the rise of the territorial state or of industrial development. Others regard ethnic and nationalist politics as transitory phenomena, the birth pains of the modern age that will be forgotten as soon as democracy and civil society have grown to maturity. For still others, ethnicity represents the perennial basis of human history, limiting the range of nationalist inventions and imaginations in modern times. This book goes one step beyond this debate by radicalising the modernist position. It will be shown that nationalist and ethnic politics are not just a by-product of modern state formation or of industrialisation; rather, modernity itself rests on a basis of ethnic and nationalist principles. Modern societies unfolded within the confines of the nation-state and strengthened them with every step of development. On the one side, the modern principles of democracy, citizenship and popular sovereignty allowed for the inclusion of large sections of the population previously confined to the status of subjects and subordinates. On the other, shadowy side, however, new forms of exclusion based on ethnic or national criteria developed, largely unacknowledged by the grand theories of modernity as a universalistic and egalitarian model of society. Belonging to a specific national or ethnic group determines access to the rights and services the modern state is supposed to guarantee. The main promises of modernity – political participation, equal treatment before the law and protection from the arbitrariness of state power, dignity for the weak and poor, and social justice and security – were fully realised only for those who came to be regarded as true members of the nation. The modern principles of inclusion are intimately tied to ethnic and national forms of exclusion.

1

2

Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict

By contrast, pre-modern empires integrated ethnic differences under the umbrella of a hierarchical, yet universalistic and genuinely non-ethnic political order, in which every group had its properly defined place (cf. McNeill 1986; Grillo 1998). This pyramidal mosaic was broken up when societies underwent nationalisation and ethnic membership became a question of central importance in determining political loyalty and disloyalty towards the state. The thesis This politicisation of ethnicity is the result of the overlapping and fusion of three notions of peoplehood, on which the project of political modernity is based. The people as a sovereign entity, which exercises power by means of some sort of democratic procedure; the people as citizens of a state, holding equal rights before the law; and the people as an ethnic community undifferentiated by distinctions of honour and prestige, but held together by common political destiny and shared cultural features: these three notions of peoplehood were fused into one single people writ large – replacing the Grace of God as the central point around which political discourse draws its circles. Democracy, citizenship and national self-determination became the indivisible trinity of the world order of nation-states. The exact relation between the three principles evidently varies according to historical circumstances and the nature of the political process. The French and Swiss states emphasise democracy, deducing nationhood and citizenship from it. Germany, Greece and Israel stress the principle of nationality, from which common citizenship and democratic inclusion flows. The order of the nation-state thus has its own doctrine of trinity, with innumerable variations and much sectarian fighting – nourished, as was the case with theological disputes, by vested political interests. The definition of peoplehood not only varies from country to country, but also over time. In much of Western Europe, the first half of the nineteenth century was characterised by the emphasis on the principles of citizenship. After the gradual extension of voting rights throughout the second half of the century, democracy became the most important defining criterion. The turn of the century, and even more so the outbreak of the First World War, saw the rapid nationalisation and ethnicisation of the notion of peoplehood, a process to be gradually reversed from the seventies of the twentieth century onwards. By the end of the millennium, most Western societies had apparently returned to older, more


3

liberal forms of defining those who belong to its people and those who do not. Variations among countries and over time also characterise developments in the newly founded nation-states after decolonisation or after the dissolution of the Communist bloc. Different patterns of transformation from citizenship to democracy to ethnos/nation as defining elements of the state’s people could be discovered, different time-scales, international environments and domestic political dynamics. In each case, however, this transformation was not linear. The history of nation-building is not a one-way road. However, a unifying motif can be discerned in all these different fabrics of history and context. The fragmentation of modern society into its many national segments, each held together by statehood, democracy, nationality and citizenship, had everywhere a profound effect on the political role played by ethnicity. Since being a part of the sovereign body, and a citizen, became synonymous with belonging to a particular ethnic community turned into a nation, the definition of this community and its boundaries became of primary political importance. Who belongs to the people that enjoy equal rights before the law and in which name the state should be ruled, now that kings and caliphs have to be replaced by a government ‘representing’ the nation? The answer was easier to find where absolutist states preceded national ones and created large spheres of cultural, religious and ethnic homogeneity. Where the ethnic landscape has been more complex – usually the product of empires based on some sort of indirect rule and communal self-government – the politicisation of ethnicity resulted in a series of nationalist wars aiming at a realisation of the ideal nation-state where sovereign, citizenry and nation coincide. Forced assimilation or the physical expulsion of those who have suddenly become ‘ethnic minorities’ and are thus perceived as politically unreliable; the conquest of territories inhabited by ‘one’s own people’; encouraging the return migration of dispersed co-nationals living outside the national home – these are some of the techniques employed in all the waves of nation-state formation that the modern world has seen so far. What we nowadays call ethnic cleansing or ethnocide, and observe with disgust in the ever ‘troublesome Balkans’ or in ‘tribalistic Africa’, have in fact been constants of the European history of nation-building and state formation, from the expulsion of Gypsies under Henry VIII or of Muslims and Jews under Fernando and Isabella to Ptolemy’s night in France or the ‘people’s exchange’, as it was euphemistically called, after the Treaty of Lausanne between Turkey and Greece. Many of these histories have

4


disappeared from popular consciousness – and maybe have to be forgotten, if nation-building is to be successful, as Ernest Renan (1947 (1882)) suggested some hundred years ago. Eventually, this conflict-ridden, warlike process leads to the fully developed nation-state, as we know it from Western societies after the Second World War. It is, indeed, a more inclusive, more accountable, more equitable and universalistic form of politics than humanity has known before – except for those who remain outside the doors of the newly constructed national home and for those who are not recognised as its legitimate owners despite occupying one of its rooms. Political modernity – democracy, constitutionalism and citizenship – had its price, as has every form of social organisation based on strong membership rights. Inclusion into the national community of equals went along with exclusion of those not considered to be true members of the family: those that became classified as foreigners, as ethnic or religious minorities, as guest-workers or stateless persons. As soon as an educated middle class emerges among these groups, sufficiently established to resist pressures for assimilation, they break the silence of subordination and begin to challenge the national bases of the state. Being excluded from the privileged seats in the theatre of society by virtue of their ethnic background, their discourse of injustice develops along national or ethnic lines as well. They thus draw on the ideal of ethnic representativity, of equality before the law, and of the state’s responsiveness towards ‘the people’, in order to demand a ‘just’ representation in government, a recognition of their cultural heritage as part of the nation’s treasures, a treatment as equally valuable and dignified parts of ‘the people’. The vision of a multicultural or plurinational society thus represents a shattered mirror-image of the nationalist project from which they remain excluded. Far from announcing a new age of postmodernism, postnationalism or any other ‘postism’, the politics of recognition and multicultural justice remain tied to the basic principles of political modernity: the idea and practice of a state representing the people in its threefold meaning of nation, citizenry and sovereign. This book explores some of these shadow sides of political modernity: the dynamics of ethnic conflict, exclusions along national lines, and institutionalised forms of xenophobia accompanying the formation of modern nation-states. Expressed as succinctly as possible, it centres around the following three closely connected propositions: r Nationalist and ethnic politics are not merely by-products of modernisation; rather modernity itself is structured according to ethnic and nationalist principles, because


5

r modern institutions of inclusion (citizenship, democracy, welfare) are systematically tied to ethnic and national forms of exclusion. Correspondingly, r ethnic conflicts and xenophobia/racism are integral parts of the modern order of nation-states. The agenda What are the political, moral and intellectual implications of such a view of the modern world? Perhaps it is appropriate to make it clear that a political requital with nationalism or with its excesses is not what I am seeking or what I feel competent to do as a social scientist. In any case, finding a moral balance would involve a series of rather difficult ethical choices. How could one weigh, to take just one example, the sense of dignity that the egalitarian ideology of nationalism gave to the previously despised lower classes (Greenfeld 1992) against the sufferings of the victims of ethnonationalist terror (Malkki 1995)? Following this rather uneasy path of political non-commitment and moral abstinence, this book will not show a way of overcoming the nationstate model. Its agenda is largely an intellectual one: shedding light on what has remained a blind spot in the picture that the social sciences have drawn of modern society. Accordingly, it will perhaps not appeal to the general public of concerned intellectuals and policy-makers. Its audience will be limited, I am afraid, to fellow researchers – scholars from anthropology, sociology, political science and history. In my eyes, discovering and exploring this blind spot appeared to justify the decade-long intellectual enterprise which resulted in this book. As it seems, the fact that nationalist forms of inclusion and exclusion bind our societies together served as an invisible background, not only of political discourse, but also of the most sophisticated theorising about the modern condition. The social sciences too have been captured by the apparent naturalness and givenness of a world divided into societies along the lines of nation-states (Berlin 1998; Beck 2000). What Billig (1995) has shown for everyday discourse and practice holds true for scientific encounters with the social world as well: because it is structured according to nationalist principles, these become so routinely assumed and ‘banal’ that they vanish from sight altogether. This ‘methodological nationalism’, as Herminio Martins (1974: 276f.) termed it, has inhibited a true understanding of the nature and limits of the modern project (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, forthcoming). In sociology, it has produced a systematic blindness towards the paradox that political modernisation has led to the creation of community amidst society.

6


In political science, it has allowed a mainstream theory to emerge which sees the state as a neutral playing-ground for different interest groups – thus excluding from the picture the fact that the modern state itself has been ‘captured’ by the nationalist project.1 Interestingly enough, such nation-blind and sometimes even anti-nationalist theories of modernity and of the modern state were formulated in an environment of rapidly nationalising societies and states, sometimes in the middle of nationalist wars. Are social scientists unable to analyse the fundamental principles of their own society because the lenses through which they see the world are coloured by these very principles – in the same way that looking through, for example, yellow glasses, you cannot distinguish yellow? In any case, instead of melting down communal bonds in the fire of ever more universalistic forms of social organisation, as foreseen by classical and more recent dichotomies contrasting Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, mechanical and organic societies, tradition and rationality, underdeveloped and developed etc., modern societies have created communal institutions with an overwhelming binding power, defining peoples’ access to civil rights, to democracy and welfare, and shaping their feelings of belonging, their notions of just and unjust. The elders of societies we conventionally call ‘traditional’ can only dream of their communities – lineages, villages, guilds – having such capacities to define membership, to enforce loyalty and to guarantee identification. It is only now that the nation-state has lost some of its steering capacities and power to transnational companies, migrants and information flows, that we see, looking backwards, what shape modernity has taken during the last two hundred years, and that it was cast in the iron cage of nationalised states. It is in the works of Brackette Williams (1989), Gérard Noiriel (1991), Rogers Brubaker (1992), Craig Calhoun (1997), Michael Mann (1999) and others that this transformation of perspective has taken shape. Perhaps it was more difficult to see the world in three dimensions when the sun stood at its zenith. In the evening, shadows lengthen and allow us to perceive the contours more clearly. This book thus belongs to the twilight genre of retrospective analysis. I have to leave it to more talented colleagues to read tomorrow’s weather from the colours of today’s sunset. Among the more prominent augurs, Anthony Smith stands heroically alone in maintaining that there will be no alternative way of providing the 1

This is also the central problem of Clifford Geertz’s (1963) approach, otherwise a pioneering text that has, unfortunately, been systematically misread as representing a primordialist, essentialist and statist perspective. See Geertz’s (1993) more recent statement on this.


7

sense of dignity and security that nations and nation-states have so far given to ordinary peoples (A. Smith 1995a). Most other authors recommend their readers to prepare for the postnational epoch on the threshold of which they see us standing. Some envision a future society organised around transnational companies taking over the former political role of states (Ohmae 1990). Others discern a deterritorialised, transnational regime of citizenship rights on the horizon (Soysal 1994; Kleger 1997). The dream of a cosmopolitan world will thus be achieved by transnational law and ethics as well as by postnational forms of governance (Beck 1997; 2000). For still others, a world state is what is expected and hoped for in the future (Held 1995; Albrow 1996; but see Hardt and Negri 2000). This book adopts a rather sceptical stance towards such visions, I am afraid. One should ask if it is at all possible to detach citizenship and democracy from the principle of nationality, with which they have been married. Is divorce an option and at what cost? Can postnational forms of government, such as the European Union, one day become democratic and egalitarian? Or are we heading back to the days of empires, where the price for an ethnically and nationally non-exclusivist political order was hierarchy and inequality? For my part, I would not even dare to speculate on whether there might be a resurgence of the nation-state in new forms after an eventual second weakening or even breakdown of globalising trends, similar to the one following the First World War (cf. Wimmer 2001a). Overview The chapters of this book start from different angles, cross various intellectual territories, employ diverse methods of analysis – detailed case studies, comparative reviews, abstract theorising – and relate to a range of different societies – Mexico, Iraq and Switzerland. In all their diversity, they remain tied to the approach just outlined, developing its themes and hypothesis further, providing empirical ground for its general claims and contextualising its propositions. The book has three parts. The first part presents the theoretical tools employed throughout the rest of the book. Chapter 2 offers a conceptual framework that avoids methodological nationalism on the one hand and the identification of modernity with universalism, post-communal forms of social organisation and non-particularistic politics on the other. A processual theory of social and cultural transformations seems to offer a solution to both problems. It is, as a theory of cultural and social processes, not tied to a typological exercise of distinguishing Gemeinschaft from Gesellschaft,

8


tradition from modernity, or modernity from postmodernity. In this way, it opens a perspective from which we can observe the communal characteristics of modern societies. The most important concepts are those of cultural compromise and social closure. A cultural compromise emerges when the actors sharing a communicative space can agree that certain values are valuable and that certain modes of classifying the social world make sense. Such a process of negotiating meaning does not depend on a convergence of interests, since even from different positions in economic, political and cultural hierarchies, individuals may find – albeit for different reasons – a certain way of looking at the world meaningful. This consent clearly does not take place in the neat and clean world of rational decision-making where all lines cross at a point of enlightened harmony, but is based on already established and internalised modes of meaning-making, a certain habitus in Bourdieu’s words. Indeed, a cultural compromise has no life of its own and exists only in its manifold interpretations and variations, nourished and coloured by the specific experiences and social positions of individual actors. When the balance of power changes, the cultural compromise may dissolve into a series of subcultural variations or even counter-cultures that challenge the hitherto accepted rules of making meaning. The negotiation of a cultural compromise goes hand in hand with a process of community-building. Those that have taken part in the negotiation process stabilise the achieved compromise by closing their ranks, controlling access to the group and marking its boundaries with diacritic elements such as certain dress styles or modes of speaking. A cultural compromise thus entails a certain way of defining the borders between us and them, a blueprint for organising exclusion and inclusion. The realisation of these principles through institutions of boundary maintenance is what I call, following Max Weber, a process of social closure. It can lead to the establishment of ethnic groups, nations, social classes, estates, village communities and so on. Putting these conceptual tools to work, I will show in chapter 3 that the formation of nation-states and the emergence of both ethnic and national groups can be interpreted as the most significant forms of social closure and cultural compromising in modern societies. It thus presents the theoretical core of the book in an integrated context of arguments, comparing its propositions with those of other current theories. It gives a black-andwhite outline of the drawing, the figures of which will be coloured and refined in later chapters. The main emphasis will be placed on the aspects of social closure rather than on the characteristics of the nationalist cultural compromise.


9

Enough has been written during the last decades on the discursive properties of nationalism, but almost nothing on the mechanisms that tie nationalist principles to the institutionalised practices of inclusion and exclusion in modern states. I will maintain that nation-states are the product of four closely interconnected processes of institutional closure: a political one (democracy tied to national self-determination), a legal one (citizenship tied to nationality), a military one (universal conscription tied to national citizenship) and a social one (the institutions of the welfare state linked to the control of the immigration of foreigners). It is further maintained that this process of nationalising the principles of social inclusion and exclusion is not self-generating or consequential on the introduction of modern forms of statehood or, as with functionalist theories, on the rise of the industrial mode of production. It depends on a successful compromise between the new state elites and the various component parts of society: an exchange of loyalty for participation, equal treatment before the law and the symbolic capital associated with the rise from plebs to nation. If the state’s elites are unable to provide these collective goods to the whole population of the national state, we expect similar processes of social closure to develop on a subnational, ethnic basis. The polity will then be compartmentalised and fragmented into ethnic groups perceiving themselves as communities of shared destiny and political solidarity. Politicised ethnic groups and nations are thus likewise children of modernisation. They owe their contemporary appearance and political salience to the hegemony of the nation-state as the modern model of political organisation. Each of the next two parts of the book follows one of these two paths of modernisation: part 2 (chapters 4 to 6) is dedicated to the politicisation of ethnicity and the divisive consequences this often has. Part 3 follows the other line of evolution leading to what I call the full nationalisation of state and society. Chapter 4 outlines the mechanisms of politicising ethnic differences in more detail. We will see how in weak states lacking the resources for a non-discriminatory treatment of its citizens and lacking an established network of civil society, ethnic ties become the channels through which the new elites distribute the collective goods of the modern state in order to legitimise their rule, now that the state should be responsive to the needs of ‘the people’. In this way, the diffusion and rooting of a national identity is undermined, and ethnic groups are transformed into communities of political interest. Two variants of this process of political closure along ethnic lines will be discussed. In the first case, the elite of the most powerful ethnic group takes over the new state apparatus after the end of empire, while the

10


subordinated groups continue to remain on the margin of political life and public culture. However, as soon as an educated middle class appears that is able to develop a discourse of injustice invoking the principles of representational justice and equal access to citizenship, the ethnocratic rule is challenged. Where relations of power and demography are less clear, the new state apparatus becomes quickly compartmentalised on ethnic grounds and a fight erupts over who will be the state’s nation. We will then have to discuss under which political conditions these tensions are more likely to escalate into violence and eventually into armed rebellion or civil war such as in Ethiopia, Sudan, the Caucasus, Rwanda and Burundi, former Yugoslavia and so on. Chapters 5 and 6 contain case studies from Mexico and Iraq. Mexico is an example of a state with a politically dominant ethnic group which has been transformed into a nation. Shiite Arabs and Sunni Kurds contested the hegemony of Sunni Arabs in Iraq soon after the country’s independence. However, these case studies will go beyond a mere illustration of the two variants discussed in chapter 3. They will take into account the specific historical and political contexts of the two societies, thus including issues and themes not addressed by the comparative model. In chapter 5, on Mexico, some emphasis is given to the modes of inclusion and exclusion characterising colonial society. We will see that the universalist ideology legitimising imperial rule – the integration of the Americas into the Christian (that is, Catholic) world and the overcoming of native customs contradicting ‘natural law’ – was combined with a hierarchical distinction among different status groups according to their ‘purity of blood’. This so-called caste system defined the rights and obligations of the subjects towards crown and church. It implied the principles of indirect rule, of legal segregation and paternalist protection with regard to the Indian population. The leaders of the Mexican independence movement adhered to the egalitarian and particularistic ideology of nationalism; they gradually destroyed the transnational structures of Catholic church and Spanish empire, and abolished, in the name of the equality of citizens, the system of indirect rule and all legal provisions that had kept the different groups apart. As a consequence, those groups that remained outside the newly defined nation of Creoles and (socially) white mestizos who enjoyed a privileged access to state power, were rapidly subordinated, marginalised and impoverished. The politics of land reform and clientelist integration of postrevolutionary Mexico laid the basis for a more inclusive cultural compromise encompassing the majority of the population. Criollo elitism was


11

replaced with mestizo populism as the cornerstone of state ideology. However, the Indian population remained excluded from this enlarged field of cultural compromise and institutional closure. They now became regarded as an ‘ethnic minority’ left over by the history of nation-building. They were to be absorbed into the melting-pot of the mestizo nation by a benevolent politics of assimilation. This classificatory divide between majority and minority has become more and more politicised since it was taken up by social movements led by a newly formed Indian intelligentsia. Its members started to challenge the dominant order according to which the Mexican state, its citizenry and the mestizo nation are seen as congruent, and to counter it with their vision of a multinational, pluricultural Mexico. The nationalism and social closure of the majority was finally contested and at the same time mirrored by the mini-nationalism of the excluded. The analysis of northern Iraq, presented in chapter 6, again starts with a discussion of pre-modern political dynamics. Under Ottoman rule, the universalistic, explicitly non-ethnic doctrine of religious integration into the umma was combined with a hierarchical system of ranks defining the rights, privileges and duties of the subjects, the amounts of taxes to be paid or to be received, the degree of political influence they would have, and the economic activities open to them. Contrary to the Spanish imperial model, these estates were not framed in racial terms, but mainly in religious terms. The military administration ruled its domains indirectly, dealing with the notables of the various religious groups – at the end of Ottoman rule the well-known millets – but also of guilds, villages and tribes or tribal confederations. The introduction of nation-states, as was the case with Mexico, led to the politicisation of the dividing lines that had separated the mosaic pieces of imperial society, because the new national elites chose one of them as being the ‘people’ in whose name they would now rule. Millets were turned into ethno-national groups (Maronites, Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Christians and so on), and the leaders of semi-independent tribal confederacies or emirates tried to forge nations out of their former subjects and allies. In post-independence Iraq, the new elites narrowed their concept of the nation to the Sunni Arab population of the country. Accordingly, political closure quickly proceeded along ethno-religious lines. The exclusion from access to the increasingly Arabised state gave rise to a strong and militant Kurdish nationalist movement, which at various points in postwar history was able to secure control over large parts of the northern territories. The Iraqi state was neither willing nor able to respond to the rise of Kurdish nationalism either with a politics of accommodation and

12


power-sharing, redefining the national character of the state by including the Kurdish as one of the state-embodying groups, or one of integration through equal rights and political inclusion, which eventually would have made the nationalist outlook attractive enough to motivate Kurdish speakers to join the Arab nation. Instead, the nationalist movement was received as a dangerous enemy of ethnic others residing within the newly constructed national home. The polity was more and more divided along ethnic lines, the ruling regime becoming ever more exclusive with respect to its bases of recruitment, and ‘minorities’ estranging themselves more and more from the regime. At the end of this process stands a systematic attack on the Kurdish population by the Iraqi army (during the so-called Anfal operation of 1988). The Kurdish population was no longer considered part of the citizenry of the state, but rather an enemy population to be held in check by means of terror and force. Part 3 brings us back to the other path of development leading to the fully nationalised state where integration within and closure towards the outside reinforce each other. The main lines of conflict are therefore not to be found within the state and between different politicised ethnic groups fighting over becoming a state’s nation, but rather between the legitimate ‘owners of the state’ and those excluded from the national ‘we’. Chapter 7 develops this thesis in some detail, showing that xenophobic and racist movements have to be understood as integral parts of political life in fully nationalised states rather than as some pathological back road of development or as an outburst of pre-modern irrationalism. Again, as with the introductory chapter on ethnic conflicts, a systematic review of the empirical literature and a critical discussion of competing theoretical propositions are offered. It will be shown that xenophobia and racism cannot be interpreted as symbolic strategies designed for a struggle over jobs or housing, as rational choice theories would have it. Neither are they mere echoes of the discourse of exclusion formulated by political elites in their attempt to overcome deficits of legitimacy; nor the inevitable consequence of a clash of cultures caused by migratory movements, as in older functionalist theories. Xenophobia and racism are related to the central principles of political modernity in a much more fundamental way. Only when the members of the nation are seen as the legitimate owners of the collective goods of the modern state – such as citizenship rights, access to social security etc. – can a xenophobic discourse gain public acceptance. It is an appeal to the national community formulated by downwardly mobile groups that more than others seem to depend on national bonds of solidarity. Xenophobia and racism are thus enfants naturels of the world order of nation-states,


13

an extreme form of nationalism, revealing in its exaggeration the very principles of communal solidarity on which modern societies are based. Finally, chapter 8 discusses a related aspect of the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion in fully nationalised states: the hidden and somewhat surprising logic that ties the integration of the working classes to the deterioration in the status of immigrants and foreigners. The development of the welfare state represents the last step in the construction of a nationally framed society, and it is accompanied with the gradual exclusion of those who are not members of the national community/citizenry/sovereign. A discussion of the case of Switzerland, a country with one of the highest levels of immigration relative to its population, will serve as an example for exploring this relationship. For the first sixty years of the modern Swiss state, immigrants enjoyed almost the same rights and privileges – except voting rights – as citizens, and naturalisation was seen as a device fostering cultural and linguistic assimilation. With every step of political integration of the working classes and of their incorporation into the nationalist compromise through welfare state mechanisms, the distinction between foreigners and nationals became more and more important. The rights to sojourning and settlement, to free choice of profession and place of residence, to a family life and to free speech were reserved for full citizens. Access to citizenship was made dependent on previous linguistic and cultural assimilation and usually not granted until after a decade of permanent residence in the country. Thus, the political and institutional incorporation of large sections of the population went hand in hand with the legal exclusion of others, the dividing line being defined in terms of national background and membership. While this dialectic can also be observed in other Western countries experiencing immigration, Switzerland is of special interest because it represents a rare case of successful nation-building on a multi-ethnic and multilingual basis. I will take the opportunity to explore, in the first half of the chapter, my hypothesis that such developments are made possible when organisations of civil society have already developed and are firmly rooted within the organisational micro-structures of society before modern state-building starts. I will review in quite some detail the development of associational life and its importance for Swiss nation-building and state formation. The history of Switzerland shows us that political modernisation leads to social closure along national lines, even when the nation is conceived in almost purely political, plural, multi-ethnic terms. One of the most republican, least ethnic, most democratic, least authoritarian state-building

14


experiences of the Western world has given rise to a distinctively hierarchical and segregated relationship between different parts of the country’s population, between nationals and foreigners. As this preview of chapters makes evident, this book covers a wide range of issues and crosses large parts of the history of a rather exotic selection of countries – exotic, that is, to readers from the Anglo-Saxon world. The case studies were chosen not only because they were the most apt illustrations of one point or another in my argument, but also because I was already familiar with these three countries and the respective literature. Mexico was the place where I did my anthropological fieldwork in the mid-eighties and on which I have published quite extensively; I came to know northern Iraq as a consultant to international relief agencies on five different field-trips since 1993; Switzerland has been another focus of interest since I became involved with research on immigration and integration there some years ago. Apart from offering the advantage of previous acquaintance, the three countries are sufficiently diverse to make a good case for the central argument of this book: that political modernisation has different implications according to historical trajectories and political environments, but leads everywhere to similar forms of exclusion. In all three examples of nationstate formation, discrimination on the basis of ethnic or national criteria became institutionalised – be it in distinguishing between national citizens and ‘foreign immigrants’, as is the case with fully nationalised states such as Switzerland, or between national majority and ‘ethnic minority’ as in Mexico, or between a ruling minority and the rest of the population as in Iraq. Choosing such obviously different countries – the explicitly multi-ethnic democracy of Switzerland, the reluctantly multicultural authoritarian state of Mexico, and the ethnocratic dictatorship of Iraq – allows us to go beyond the usual dichotomies between ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ nationalisms and beyond the classification of more- or less-developed forms of the nation-state. Despite their obvious heterogeneity, the different chapters are thus the product of a single movement of thought, meandering through diverse thematic landscapes, but being led by a central question: what does the modern world look like if described in a language not coloured by the selfevidence of its own political and ideological principles? What do we see if we turn the anthropologist’s regard e´loigné (to use Lévi-Strauss’s phrase) to modern societies framed no longer in tribes, kingdoms or empires, but in nation-states? Anthropology traditionally looks at the larger society from its margins – as it is seen by peasants of the hinterland, immigrants living in the shanty-towns of the capital cities, by trading women commuting between towns and villages. Building on such an anthropological


15

perspective, this book provides a new analysis of the emergence of the modern state, of nationalism and ethnic strife. It focuses on the shifting borders separating the included from the excluded, on the new ways of drawing dividing lines that the modern age has brought with it. An anthropology of the modern state thus looks at its subject from the sidelines, from where its shadow sides can be seen more clearly.

Part I


2

Compromise and closure: a theory of social dynamics

This chapter introduces the main conceptual framework that will allow an analysis of modern state formation and the politicisation of ethnicity ‘from the outside’, i.e. without using a terminology already coloured by the basic principles of the contemporary world divided into nation-states. Anthropological theory might be the best starting point to develop such a ‘view from afar’, because its main focus has traditionally been state-less and pre-modern societies. This is not to say that anthropological theory has not been deeply influenced by the master narrative of nationalism or by modes of thinking about statehood derived from experiences with the nation-state. In fact, anthropology’s terminological totem, the concept of culture, bears a family resemblance to the idea of nation as a culturally homogeneous, clearly bound unit persisting over time ( Wimmer 1996a). But still, the close acquaintance with non-modern forms of identity politics has made it easier for anthropology to move away from such essentialising and reifying notions of culture and gradually to develop a theoretical framework within which another reading of social processes became possible. In what follows, I will first discuss the traditional anthropological notion of culture, then go on to briefly describe its main analytical problems, and finally outline a theory of cultural and social processes based on the new consensus that has emerged in post-classical anthropology over the last two decades. The success of ‘culture’: anthropological unease Anthropology’s traditional notion of culture as a complex, integrated whole has never been more popular outside the academic world than at present. Samuel Huntington’s (1993) well-known vision of a ‘clash of civilisations’ after the end of the Cold War is just one best-selling book that relies on a popularised version of the classical notion of culture. Another bestseller from America is Fukuyama’s (1995) Trust. The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. He tries to show that certain cultures, 19

20


notably those of the United States, Germany, Japan and South Korea, enable the formation of large-scale organisations based on trust among people who do not know each other. This in turn provides a necessary condition for sustained economic development. In this way, culture explains the economic success and failure of whole nations. Popularised anthropological notions of culture are equally en vogue in public discussions on how European societies should try to integrate newly arriving migrants from other continents and whether or not this will eventually lead to a ‘multicultural’ society. All contributors to this debate seem to share the basic understanding that the relation between cultures is the core issue, whether they perceive immigrants and their children as threatening Western civilisation like Trojan horses or whether they welcome newcomers as additional ingredients for the postmodern pot-pourri of diversity (see Wicker 1996). Many of these interventions rely on the classical anthropological way of defining culture as a clearly defined unit, a historically lasting and integrated whole. Culture comprises all the non-biological aspects of the life of a group of people, ranging from their technology, social organisation and religion to their typical personality traits. These various cultural fields are integrated by a series of values and norms and so constitute a comprehensive, quasi-organic whole (cf. Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952). In their thoughts, feelings and plans of action, individuals more or less follow the rules prescribed by their respective culture. They are – figuratively speaking – the clay from which culture forms its creatures by enculturating and socialising them. From this perspective, the human world looks like a patchwork of clearly discernible cultures (cf. Malkki 1992). A renaissance of this classical notion of culture can also be observed in the realm of the social sciences. Wolf Lepenies observed what he calls an ‘anthropologisation of social sciences’ (Lepenies 1996). Geertz’s hermeneutical reformulation of the concept of culture serves, to give one example, as the evening star for a whole school of research navigating in the waters of social history (Burguière 1990; Burke 1992a; Groh 1992). In the history of science, to cite a second example, an anthropologisation of some strands of debate can also be seen (Elkana and Mendelsohn 1981). The same holds true for certain branches of management sciences, where Hofstede’s book on cultural variations within a transnational company triggered a series of research projects (Hofstede 1991; Gamst and Helmers 1991), and for migration studies, although here the usefulness of anthropological concepts is contested, to say the least (see Radkte 1996).

Compromise and closure

21

Paradoxically, however, anthropologists seem to be very uneasy with the success of their terminological totem. Many distinguished anthropologists seriously worry about the path culture takes as soon as it leaves the gardens of anthropology (see Hannerz 1993a; Barth 1995; Kaschuba 1995). Some writers, notably Abu-Lughod (1991) or Fernandez (1994), are convinced that nowadays anthropologists should ‘write against culture’, as one widely cited paper of the former’s is entitled. Instead of focusing on the cultural differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the singularity and immediate understandability of every person met during fieldwork should be emphasised, so the argument goes. In this way, notions of cultural difference can be overcome and the gulf separating ‘them’ from ‘us’ is bridged. The most radical writers in the postmodernist and constructivist school take all writing and talking on cultural differences as an attempt to ‘essentialise others’, as ‘ethnicising or racialising differences’ and so on. They think that it should be the future task of anthropology to understand the mechanisms of these discursive machineries in order to be able to undermine the political effects that they presumably entail. This radical position has already produced a countermovement by other anthropologists who feel that the discipline would do better to ride on the wave of its popularity while at the same time trying to move it in a different, less dangerous direction (Bruhmann 1999). There are obvious political reasons for anthropologists’ discomfort with the success of the classical concept of culture. On the one hand, when combined with the political project of nationalism, the idea that cultures are clearly discernible, bounded and integrated wholes becomes exclusionist and potentially dangerous for all those considered to belong to another culture. In fact, there is an interesting and largely forgotten historical relationship between nationalism and cultural anthropology (Wimmer 1996a). Both have common intellectual ancestors in Herder and other writers such as Gustav Klemm. It was Franz Boas who breathed the famous Herderian ‘spirit of a people’ into American anthropology from where it came back to inspire scholars on the Continent. On the other hand, anthropology’s unease with its own success is also due to the fact that it has in the meantime moved far away from the classical notion of culture.1 In the last five decades, anthropological theory has step by step dismantled the traditional way of analysing culture and has developed alternative conceptual tools in order to understand the many forms of cultural practice that can be found around the globe. I shall limit 1

Compare Gupta and Ferguson (1992); Welz (1994); Wicker (1996).

22


myself here to a discussion of four crucial critiques of the classical understanding of culture that have been formulated from different theoretical points of view and have given rise to various strands of anthropological thinking during the last decades.2 Four points of critique on ‘culture’ and a fifth on ‘discourse’ The first point concerns the idea of cultural homogeneity that was implicit in the more theoretical statements of the classical writers themselves, if not in their ethnographic accounts. Intra-cultural variation characterises not only stratified societies with a clearly established division of labour (Barth 1989; Hannerz 1993b; compare in general, Archer 1988: 2ff.), but also so-called simple societies (Bricker 1975). The founding mothers and fathers of anthropology were of course well aware of this fact and pointed it out in several programmatic statements (cf. Bruhmann 1999), but the idea of a somehow homogeneous nature, a single Gestalt of each culture, prevented them from drawing the necessary theoretical conclusions. The functionalist overpainting of the classical concept of culture, as found in British social anthropology of the thirties as well as in the Redfield school of American cultural anthropology (itself heavily influenced by Radcliffe-Brown’s writing), made a thorough analysis of intra-cultural diversity even more difficult, because it provided the previously rather vague notion of integration and cohesion with a solid theoretical foundation. Leach’s study of the Kachin, Turner’s work on the Ndembu and later ethnographic studies slowly undermined or, as one would say nowadays, deconstructed this notion of cultural homogeneity. The cultural territories on anthropology’s imagined globe were dissolved in a raster of differently coloured points. The cultural world seen through contemporary anthropological eyes no longer resembles a picture by Modigliani, but rather one by Kokoschka.3 Secondly, the so-called critical anthropology of the 1970s and 1980s put the classical concept of culture on trial for ignoring those aspects 2

3

This discussion will necessarily have to be selective, since almost every contribution to anthropological theory implies statements on the concept of culture. For overviews, see Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952); Keesing (1974); Service (1985, part 6); Clifford (1988); Alexander and Seidman (1990). In German-language literature, see the contributions of Kohl (1993); Stagl (1993); Drechsel (1984). This was even true for national cultures in Europe which lived through a century of politics of cultural homogenisation by central-state institutions such as school and army ( pace Gellner 1983: 139f.). A whole series of studies on the national character has shown this, although they were originally designed to understand what elements of German, Italian or Japanese cultures made the respective populations prone to Fascism (Shweder 1979).


23

of the production of meaning that are closely related to power relations between women and men, old and young, rich and poor, patrons and clients or even whole societies within the world system. Especially in the 1970s, many anthropologists turned to the theory of ideology developed by the French philosopher Louis Althusser or to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, in order to understand how inequalities of power influence symbolic processes and the production of collective representations. The most radical exponents of this critical anthropology were convinced that the classical notion of culture had served as a terminological tool that helped legitimise (to use a term with wide currency at that time) colonial subjugation and exploitation.4 The third point refers to the theory of action implicit in the classical notion of culture. It somehow assumed that in their way of thinking, feeling and behaving, individuals follow the cultural rules that they learn during their socialisation process. Culture thus writes the script according to which individuals play their role on the stage of society. Critics like Maurice Bloch have called this the model of the oversocialised individual (Bloch 1985; 1991; 1993). Following the research tradition of Piaget, many studies in the last decade have indeed shown that universal cognitive development reaches a final stage, from which the cultural givens can be perceived as just one of several possibilities for thinking, feeling and doing things.5 Anthropological research has shown the limits of the model of the oversocialised individual for the field of human behaviour. The new ethnographic realism, such as developed by British anthropologists of the 1950s in ‘situational analysis’ and the presentation of ‘social dramas’, showed in study after study that the observable behaviour of real-life individuals very often did not correspond to the cultural rules (Fortes 1949; Leach 1954; Turner 1957). Although eminent authors of the classical period, such as Malinowski, had repeatedly noted it, they did not reflect upon the discrepancy between rules and actual behaviour in their theoretical writings. Starting from these early studies and crossing the territory of so-called processual anthropology6 delineated by the early Frederik Barth, Jeremy Boissevain and others, this line of anthropological 4

5 6

For the role of Marxist theory of ideology in anthropology see Asad (1979); Gendreau (1979). The work of Gramsci was especially well received in British and American anthropology (Harris 1992). Apart from rather rudimentary models of ideology as a mechanism of veiling reality, some more sophisticated approaches were developed, notably by Godelier (1984, ch. 3) and Donham (1990, ch. 3). But see the debates in Schofthaler ¨ and Goldschmidt (1984). For reviews, see Whitten and Whitten (1972) with regard to social organisation, Vincent (1978) with regard to political strategies and Barlett (1980) with regard to economic behaviour.

24


discourse has since established itself in the interdisciplinary field of rational choice analysis, where it meets with political science and, of course, with neoclassical economics (see e.g. Schweizer and White 1998). The fourth point of critique follows from the third. If thinking, feeling and acting are completely shaped by cultural rules, then there is no room for cultural dynamics. This problem has, of course, been accentuated by the functionalist colouring of the traditional notion of culture from the 1920s and 1930s onwards. Cultures can, therefore, only be changed by contact with other cultures. Correspondingly, these processes have been the focus of so-called studies on acculturation in American cultural anthropology or of research on culture contact in British anthropology. These studies were limited to descriptions of the colonial encounter, however, and did not take into account the dynamic character of every cultural order (cf. Moore 1987) even outside situations of colonial subjugation.7 To sum up: the classical notion of culture is confronted with four principal theoretical and methodological problems. It does not give an answer to the problem of intra-cultural variation; it cannot help to understand the relation between power and meaning; its concept of human action is largely inadequate; and it does not offer an adequate tool to analyse processes of cultural and social change. Since the Second World War, anthropology has slowly moved away from a notion of culture as an integrated whole.8 The focus has now shifted to questions of individual and subcultural variability, to process and the strategic adaptability of cultural practice.9 Discourse has replaced culture as the master term in much contemporary anthropological writing. Following Foucault and other so-called post-structuralist writers, anthropology tries to understand how in a certain place – a village, a railway station, a neighbourhood – multiple discourses criss-cross each other, overlap, develop into bundles of meaning, dissolve again and disappear. Local and global discourses interact, women pursue different 7 8

9

A history of acculturation theory and its critiques can be found in Wimmer (1995d, ch. 3). A notable exception is Clifford Geertz, who restated the classical concept in hermeneutical terms, following Dilthey and Ricoeur (Geertz 1973). He continues the tradition of classical American cultural anthropology, in so far as he shares its cultural relativism, the notion of cultural homogeneity, a systematic blindness to questions of power and dominance, and the model of the oversocialised individual (compare the critiques of Geertz’s paper on the Balinese cockfight by Roseberry 1982; Shankman 1984; Crapanzano 1986; Watson 1989). This new consensus is documented, for instance, in the collection Assessing Cultural Anthropology edited by Robert Borofsky (1994). As far as German-language social anthropology is concerned, the contributions by Kaschuba (1995), Wicker (1996) and Wimmer (1996c) should be mentioned.


25

discursive strategies to men, colonial discourses are contested by countercolonial ones, ethnographers develop their distinctive discourse, while natives have their own. Notions of multiplicity, hybridity, creolisation and multivocality have replaced the idea of cultural homogeneity and integration (cf. Vertovec and Rogers 1998: 7–14); discourses are now seen as the source and focus of an all-pervasive power, creating and devouring worlds of meaning; emergence, construction and process have replaced stability, functional equilibrium and givenness. The emergence and disappearance of these different discourses, the dynamic of their mutual displacement, is not, however, the object of much analytical rigour. As the social world is synonymous with the coming and going of discourses (see Foucault 1978: 211), notions of economic relations, of social structure, of hierarchies of power etc. are reduced to discourses on economic, social and political relations. Thus, there is no way of determining why one specific construction of the world permeates a certain group and not another, why it is being changed, why it disappears or reappears in another context (cf. Dreyfus and Rabinow 1987, ch. 4). The original project of a comparative, and thus theory-led, anthropology is lost from sight (Foucault 1977: 102ff.). Instead, monograph after monograph documents how the people of this Pacific atoll or that Chinese village become instruments of the evolution of one or other discourse (see Abu-Lughod 1990; Lindstrom 1990; Pemberton 1994; Yang 1994). Moving towards Foucault’s famous state of ‘happy positivism’ (1991: 44), the scientific programme of anthropology is reduced to the ‘ethnography of the particular’ and there is a risk of ending up with the kind of butterfly-collection anthropology that dominated the discipline before the advent of functionalist anthropology and its notion of culture. A look at a recent book of James Clifford (1997) makes clear where this will lead. The postmodern anthropologist travels from place to place, observes how his own, learned discourse meets the many voices of others in a lost village of Alaska (Fort Ross), in a heritage park in California, in Sigmund Freud’s house in London, in a subway of New York or during academic encounters in Honolulu. With considerable skill and elegance, Clifford turns his kaleidoscope, and the fascinated readers see discursive bits and pieces assemble and disperse in ever-changing arrangements of paradoxes, illusions and contradictions. However, the master tells us that we should not ask why we see precisely one discursive formation in this place but not another, because these questions already imply privileging the point of view of the anthropologist and risk reifying or essentialising others. The world is no longer understandable in these terms, since

26


everything has become fuzzy, interconnected, ever-changing. Nowadays, meanings are moving around the globe, and they do this so fast that they can no longer be pinned down on the drawing-board of anthropological analysis (see Geertz 1998). Thus, the anthropologist has to accompany them in travelling round the globalised world. He runs after a discursive butterfly here, follows the washed-out traces of meaning there, stumbles over an analytical paradox over there. What is left of all these adventures in the wonderland of discursive encounters is an admirably elegant travel prose that enchants even the most hard-boiled modernist reader. However, disenchantment quickly follows, and the hangover from drinking too many glasses at too many tables is considerable. Postmodern anthropology’s solution to the four problems of the classical concept of culture comes at too high a price, namely the abandonment of analytical rigour and the burial of the comparative and scientific project altogether. Good literature is no replacement for bad science. What is needed are conceptual tools that can overcome the difficulties of the classical notion of culture without having to give up the scientific aims of classical anthropology altogether. Such a reformulation should be able to integrate the insights gained by processual anthropology, critical anthropology and other currents of the last four decades. In what follows, I would like to present the sketch of a theory, which I think moves in the direction just outlined. At the heart of this theoretical outline stands the notion of culture as compromise that I have developed in a number of recent publications (cf. 1995a; 1996c). I will discuss this concept in some detail in the next section and will then go on and try to show that it is indeed a useful tool in giving an answer to the problems of variation, of power and of cultural change.

Culture as compromise Culture is understood as an open and unstable process of the negotiation of meaning. Three closely related aspects need to be discussed in order to clarify this notion: first, the internalised culture of an individual as a precondition for this negotiating process, because portraying human beings as the pre-cultural, rational men, so central to Enlightenment philosophy and to much contemporary economics, must obviously be avoided; secondly, the generally binding world-view resulting from this process; and thirdly, the cultural practices that mark the boundaries of the social group within which the negotiating process took place.


27

Habitus For the analysis of the internalised culture, I shall use Pierre Bourdieu’s term ‘habitus’. It portrays human beings as strategically competent actors, and thus modifies the image of the oversocialised individual of classical anthropology. Bourdieu presupposes an unequal distribution of economic, political and cultural resources, in other words a social structure. Individuals internalise their position in this structure by gradually developing a habitus tailored to this position. By habitus, Bourdieu understands a system of predispositions that determine action, perception and interpretation (Bourdieu 1992, ch. 3). It is made up of a repertoire of strategies for action and cognitive patterns that have become routinised. The concept of ‘habitus’ can be translated into a more empirical language by identifying it with the term ‘scheme’, which plays an important role in contemporary cognitive anthropology. Schemes are models of prototypically simplified worlds, organised as networks of meaning. They are selectively activated in day-to-day thinking, perception and action.10 These schemes of cognition and action are not imposed on the individual by the overwhelming power of the educational apparatus, as suggested by the classical notion of culture. Individuals do not simply play a role designed by society, but internalise a matrix that is gradually built up from within their own Lebenswelt (or life-world) by means of learning processes. In one decisive point Bourdieu’s concept needs to be modified, however. It contains the idea of a person’s habitus making him or her want exactly what his social position allows him to have, by internalising probabilities and thus making a virtue of necessity. This leads very close to a Marxist theory of ideology (cf., for example, Bourdieu 1993: 58–61). Instead, habitus here is to be understood as being formed on the basis of a universal human competence not determined by specific cultures, namely the competence of assessing pros and cons in given situations in light of one’s own interests. The perception of what one’s own interests are is indeed dependent on primary adjustments to cultural surroundings and one’s own social position. These two are, after all, incorporated in the individual’s habitus. Yet individuals are able, thanks to this universal competence that does not melt away as habitual dispositions grow, to critically assess their own situation and develop strategies which can be at variance to given cultural patterns (cf. Wimmer 1995a, ch. 2). This modified term of habitus will allow a mediating position to be taken between the theory of rational decision-making on the one hand and the 10

An overview of this research tradition is given by Strauss and Quinn (1997).

28


currently fashionable theory of the power of discourse on the other; in other words to steer a middle way between the Scylla of materialism and the Charybdis of idealism. Compromising on collective representations So much for internalised culture, which forms the starting point for the negotiation of meaning. Let us now take a look at this negotiating process itself. As habitual schemes are adapted to the different positions within a society, they produce different classifications and world-views. Yet individuals are also related to one another in an arena of social relations and communication. In this arena, they work out elements that all actors involved can recognise as congruent to their respective long-term interests. The result of this negotiation process is what I call cultural compromise. It is no longer a matter of internal culture, but of collective norms, social classifications and world-view patterns; in other words, of what Emile Durkheim called collective representations. Thus, only where some interests concur will any binding rules for making meaning develop. If the distribution of power is so unequal that no field of common interest can be discerned, a cultural compromise is not expected to emerge. It happens only if all those involved can relate to some elements of the shared discourse in a meaningful way because they can all put forward some of their interests in this language. Thus, a cultural compromise is based on the acceptance by all actors relating to one another in a communicative arena, since moral categories and social classifications have to be validated and accepted. They cannot simply be defined by some centre of power, as is postulated in current discourse theories. They have to make sense from the interest point of view of all those concerned in order to become widely accepted. Neither do cultural patterns of meaning have an existence of their own, moulding generation after generation, as is implied by various cultural theories in the tradition of Durkheim. They have to be reproduced in the everyday cultural practice of strategically competent individuals. The notion of cultural compromise can be elaborated further by making the concepts of negotiation and consent more explicit and by situating them in their corresponding theoretical context. I will start with the idea of negotiation and with those aspects of the process of compromising that can be observed empirically. In everyday interaction the actors negotiate how a situation should be defined, who should play what role, which plans for action should be pursued, and which norms and values are relevant in the specific context. This level of co-ordinating representations was the focus of ethnomethodology. Its protagonists, however,


29

took this perspective to its radical extremes, by excluding the possibility that such a process could lead to an agreement that would transcend a circumscribed situation and thus develop into an institutionalised consensus on the valid rules for action and representation (see e.g. Garfinkel 1967: 33). For Garfinkel, every consensus is necessarily of a fragmentary, local, precarious and decrepit nature. Cultural norms and rules exist only as a problematic and momentary consensus over how to define a situation agreed upon by interacting individuals, who nonetheless are never able to grasp the conditions for the formation of such agreement. The ‘formal structure of practical action’ remains invisible and non-intelligible to those who are the objects of its workings (Garfinkel and Sacks 1976: 164). The so-called ‘dialogic anthropology’ proceeds in a similar way. Following Bakhtin and other literary scholars, it tries to understand ‘how shared culture emerges from [dialogic] interaction’ (Mannheim and Tedlock 1995: 2).11 If the occasional character of cultural processes is overestimated in this way, we lose sight of the fact that these local and situational agreements, if observed from outside and over a longer period of time, reveal enough similarities to reconstruct them as realisations of a general pattern, i.e. as variations over a scheme, which defines the limits of meaningful agreements (see Bourdieu 1976: 149ff.). Only from the point of view of an overdrawn terminological realism does such a reconstruction seem problematic because the pattern obviously only ‘really’ exists in its local variations. According to the view developed here, a cultural compromise is understood as consensus over the validity of norms, classifications and patterns of interpretation that lasts beyond the open process of its production. Research by Robert Bellah and his collaborators shows that such guard-rails of liability even exist in late modern societies such as the United States, where they consist of the triad ‘achievement’, ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’ (Bellah et al. 1992). The concept of compromise thus rests on the idea that normative claims are consented to. How can we grasp this act of consent, without leaving the ground of empirical social science and taking off into a normative theory of social contract? And how can we take into account the fact that this consent never develops in a cultural vacuum – where the precultural rational man of Enlightenment thinking and of much contemporary economy has found his home – but is instead based on an evaluation process that implies already established and internalised norms? The ‘non-contractual element of the contract’, as Durkheim once called it, 11

Some proponents of ‘dialogic anthropology’ recognise the parallels with ethnomethodology. For a discussion of the role of ethnomethodology in anthropology, see Watson (1991).

30


has to be so conceived that we can avoid reifying culture as a being of its own, standing over individuals, while at the same time we have to acknowledge that culture has a collectively binding character that precedes individual acts of thinking and doing (cf. Konig ¨ 1961). An ontogenetic analysis could show us the way here. I will try to do this in discussing briefly Mead’s theory of socialisation, which will also allow me to elaborate further the revised notion of habitus. Mead shows how human beings take ‘the institutions of their community in to their own conduct’ through the mechanism of adopting attitudes (Mead 1968: 204f.). During the first phase, the paternal threat of sanctions and the evaluation of conduct associated with it are increasingly anticipated and thus come to determine the behaviour of the child. While this process is still entirely based on adaptation and minimisation of costs, the second phase is of a different character in so far as the parental norms are now perceived as being part of encompassing social liabilities. This happens by attributing these norms to the perspective of a ‘generalised other’, i.e. the entire group of reference. Again, the mechanism of adopting attitudes forms the basis of this enlargement. Finally, a cognitive scheme is developed according to which the normative order is accepted as valid and relevant for one’s own conduct, independently of the mechanism of sanctioning deviant behaviour and the costs this entails. Accepting and consenting to a normative order are not, however, automatic processes as Mead implies in his variant of the theory of the oversocialised individual and as Bourdieu presupposes with his notion of habitus. The simple fact that conflicts between generations are known in almost all societies shows this clearly enough. Rather, for a norm to be accepted as valid and legitimate, it has ‘to consider the interests of everybody concerned by the matter in need of regulation, and it should embody the will, which all can reflect jointly in their own respective interests, as the will of the “generalised other”’ as Habermas (1981: 64) has formulated it in his reinterpretation of Mead’s theoretical outline. If, on the contrary, an expectation of behaviour or a classification does not meet an individual’s perceived interests in a way which would allow them to express them in these terms, the rules might perhaps be followed in order to avoid sanctions, but are not taken to be legitimate and valid. In this way, the theory of cultural compromise incorporates one insight of Habermas’s theory of communicative action, namely that norms and values can be substantiated through a process of argumentative negotiation and thus in principle can be questioned. However, this is not only feasible in modern societies where the structures of life-world are ‘rationally’ differentiated, as Habermas would have it. Research on political rhetoric


31

in traditional societies (Bloch 1975; Paine 1981) and a series of studies in legal anthropology on procedures for settling disputes (Caplan 1995; cf. Strathern 1985) have clearly shown that the validity of a norm can be questioned not only by referring to universal standards of rationality. Thanks to the heterogeneity of every cultural order, norms can be impeached by referring to other norms and modes of validation, as will be shown in later sections of this chapter. While Habermas takes the fact that norms can in principle be questioned as a starting point for saving the universalistic project of the Enlightenment from its postmodern attacks, my argument is an empirical one: Even in so-called traditional societies, people are not imprisoned in the confines of their own cultural traditions or in discursive strait-jackets. The term cultural compromise should allow us to grasp this negotiability and transformability of cultural forms and thus help to avoid totalising notions of culture without ending up with the occasionalism of interaction theory. But why are these formulae of compromise couched in symbolic terms? According to the argument hitherto developed, a simple negotiation process in sober language would be sufficient to arrive at an agreement.12 It could easily be shown, following the methodology outlined by the theory of speech acts, that it is precisely because of the over-density of symbols offering multiple connections and interpretations that there can be an agreement from different interest positions on such ambiguous meanings.13 12

13

It may be useful to note the difference between the theory of cultural compromise and classical contract theories. The founders of Enlightenment philosophy usually did not think of the social contract as a historical event, but rather conceived it as part of a theory of legitimacy. This theory was thought to be of a normative, rather than an empirical or descriptive character. Contemporary debates that have developed around the work of Buchanan, Rawls and Nozick basically belong to the field of moral philosophy as well: the counter-factual reconstruction of a social contract should help to establish which forms of government and politics could reasonably be regarded as legitimate (see the overview of Koller 1986). The theory of cultural compromise, on the other hand, is not based on the idea of an original state of mankind or on the notion of pre-cultural rationality. Cultural compromise is based on consenting to a social order from different positions of interest, without implying that this order could be based on formal reasoning. On the contrary: individuals eventually consent by weighing different, not universal, interests; their evaluations are not based on abstract standards of rationality, but on habitualised schemes that are grounded in the experience of social and cultural givens. Every institutional order that is not solely based on force thus implies aspects of an ‘implicit social contract’ (cf. Ballestrem 1986). Elements of such a sociologically turned theory of social contract can be found in the work of political scientists ( J. Scott 1990), social history (see Burke 1992b: 87, 157) and dialogue theory (Dermott and Tylbor 1995). The theory of speech acts tries to understand, among other things, the role of symbolisations in situations marked by power difference. According to Brown and Levinson, symbolisations are used when the social distance and power difference between partners of interaction are considerable. Symbols develop through the use of the so-called conversational implicatur: the more powerful people make the statement x but imply that the

32


This can be shown by a first example of such cultural compromise, the nationalist self-description of modern societies, of which later chapters of this book will provide a fuller analysis. For the sake of illustration, I will mention two characteristics of this ideological formula at this point. To begin with, it is based on the now proverbial ‘imagined’ community (Anderson 1991), i.e. the conception of a political community of destiny, based on common origin and historical experience. A new relationship towards territoriality constitutes a second element of this compromise. The immediate surroundings of a settlement, bound by relations of friendship, kinship and profession, are no longer the horizon for expectations of solidarity; the idea of mutual bonds and assistance was extended to the national group. The limits of state territory now form the line beyond which the world of insecurities and dangers begin. Why has this nationalistic self-image and the corresponding political institution of the nation-state been so successful? According to the argument that will be developed in the next chapter, the nation-state does not appear as a functional necessity of highly differentiated societies (contrary to, for example, Gellner 1983). Nor does it automatically result from the rise to power of the bourgeoisie – as Marxists would have it. Rather, it is to be interpreted as the outcome of a successful compromise of interests between different social groups: an exchange of the guarantee of political loyalty for the promise of participation and security. The new state elite can enlarge their power domain in the name of the nation and the wellbeing of the citizen. The population of the nationalised states, for their part, can appeal to the ideal of the national community of solidarity and equality in order to enforce their claims for political participation, free education and, finally, the provisions of the welfare state. In the nationalistic language, many interests can be put forward (Wimmer 1996b). It is precisely because in the national order of things a vast number of different groups are relating to each other that nationalism has to remain ideologically fuzzy and poorly defined. Thanks to its polysemic character, it can make sense from different and varied points of view and incorporate a wide range of claims. Perhaps this explains the apparent paradox (cf. Elwert 1989a) that the most powerful ideology in the history of modernity is at the same time its least substantial one. subordinate understands that they mean y. This helps to avoid the subordinate losing face. Such implicaturs can solidify in the course of time and become standardised, in such a way that the communication process is overpainted by symbolic meaning, as has been shown by the anthropologist Strecker (1988). It should be added that symbolisations can also be meaningful when ambiguity presents the only possibility of overcoming the diverging interests of individuals related to each other in an arena of communication, because symbolic language opens up a semantic field with the most possibilities of interpretation and meaning.


33

More precise and symbolically dense are those cultural compromises developing in small-scale social environments – a fact that played a considerable role in Durkheim’s (1988: 348ff.) theory of the division of labour. An example of this is the ideal of community that until recently prevailed among the Indian groups of Mexico and Guatemala. One’s own commune represents the centre of the moral and geographical universe. In the middle of this social island lies the village. There are no conflicts among its inhabitants; they live the solidarity of the poor, peacefully united under the guardianship of their sages, who balance relationships with the gods and the powers of nature. The patron saint of the village symbolises the common interests of all, the idea of a community of destiny in a hostile and insecure world. This collective representation of the social world allows the local elite to keep competitors for economic and political power away from the social island, because as outsiders they would not have the right to establish themselves in the commune. On the other hand, the members of the community owe political loyalty to the village elite. They can insist on the shared understanding that this obligation is tied to the correct behaviour of the elite’s members, who are expected to commit themselves to the common interests of the village, for example in land disputes, and to take the command of solidarity seriously (see Wimmer 1995a, ch. 4; 1995b). Social closure and cultural distinction Both examples show that cultural compromise also defines the boundaries between participants and outsiders. This leads to the third aspect of the cultural process. The search for cultural compromise is connected to the process of social closure, to use a term of Max Weber (1985 (1922): 23ff.). Social closure means excluding those who are not felt to belong, drawing a dividing line between the familiar and the foreign. Social closure can lead to the formation of classes, subcultures, gender-defined groups, or ethnic groups and nations, as the next chapter will show in fuller detail. The borderlines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are often marked by distinctive forms of everyday cultural practice, for instance wearing certain clothes for a Sunday market where people from different ethnic groups meet, or else by ‘good taste’, which differentiates established members of the upper class from parvenus; by the use of a certain jargon that only anthropologists will understand, or else by the consumption of vast amounts of melted cheese, which only those initiated in a certain national culture are able to digest. I have distinguished here between three closely related aspects of culture. Internalised culture forms the starting point for the negotiation of

34


meaning; it is composed of a system of habitual dispositions, or mental schemes. This is culture on the individual and cognitive level. On the collective and symbolic level, notions about the set-up and workings of society, on what is just and unjust, sacred and profane, are negotiated. Such cultural compromise is achieved if all actors relating to one another in an arena can formulate aspects of their long-term interests in a shared symbolic language. Finally, as a consequence of this compromise, certain cultural markers are singled out in order to reveal and reinforce the distinction between insiders and outsiders – between those partaking in the basic compromise and those remaining on the margins. Trying to summarise what has been said so far in a short formula, culture could be defined as an open and unstable process of negotiating meaning, which has cognitively competent individuals of differing interests and aims relating to one another, and which, in the finding of accepted compromises, leads to social closure and corresponding cultural boundary-marking. Towards a pragmatics of cultural production I admit that this formula is not outstandingly elegant. Its worth has to be measured pragmatically, i.e. whether or not it helps to overcome at least some of the difficulties of the classical notion of culture while avoiding the pitfalls of discourse theory. In the remaining part of this chapter, I should like to address the problem of cultural heterogeneity, the relation between power and meaning, and the analysis of cultural change. Heterogeneity: variations over schemes The problem of cultural heterogeneity and variation dissolves if it is looked at from the perspective of the theory of cultural compromise. Every group and every individual constantly tries to interpret the cultural compromise in ways that seem to justify their own demands, to validate their own actions, and to represent their own private vices as public benefits. This process of adoption and interpretation does not rely on a conscious attempt at convincing or even deceiving others. Rather, it is due to the mechanisms of social perspectivity (Hannerz 1993b, ch. 3), the selective way in which habitual schemes organise perception of the social world. Variations over cultural themes thus emerge, which give every cultural order the character of a conflictive, but nevertheless structured, process. It is this variability and heterogeneity of culture which is so difficult for functionalist notions of cultural integration to grasp and which


35

is, at the same time, overestimated and totalised in postmodern theories of culture as a field of criss-crossing discourses. The idea of social perspectivity can be illustrated with a metaphor. The structural position of a person influences his or her thoughts in a way which is similar to a magnet under a table upon which iron filings have been scattered. I have tried to show this in an empirical study on different versions of a mythical theme. All the versions recount the history of the foundation of an Indian village in Mexico (Wimmer 1995b). The stories vary according to the position occupied by the narrator in the field of political alliances. Their current relations to the local priest or to Protestant sects, to different regional power-brokers and other villages are mirrored in the details of the tale. Nevertheless, all versions agree on a certain basic perspective on the social world; all portray the village as an integrated and egalitarian community of solidarity, an island immersed in a sea of insecurity, moral corruption and hostility.14 The example of mythical variation should make clear that the notion of cultural compromise does not lead back to a functionalist view of society where conflicts and change vanish from sight. A cultural compromise merely limits the horizon of possibilities within which individuals can argue in their search for power and recognition. In this way, a cultural compromise influences the direction in which these battles develop. Max Weber has expressed this relationship in a much-cited paragraph in his introduction to Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen in the following way: Interests (material and ideal), not ideas, determine the actions of man. But the world-views, which have been created by ideas, have often acted as switchmen in defining the pathways along which the dynamics of interests have moved their behaviour. (Weber 1920: 252, my translation)

In the course of this dynamic, we can observe how elements of the cultural compromise are interpreted in new ways by inverting or displacing their symbolic content or by merging them with other elements to create new, syncretic cultural forms (cf. Turner 1967: 27–30; Harrison 1995). In peasant movements all over the world we observe how the image of the good king, part of the cultural compromise of many agricultural societies, is redefined. The ideal of the noble provider of protection and provisions in times of hardship is fused with the religiously defined figure of the redeemer. The image of the king as saviour, who will install a new and 14

Malinowski’s famous metaphor of myth as ‘dogmatical backbone of primitive civilisation’ (Malinowski 1983: 90) might be leading in the wrong direction. Myths are not only mirror-images and charters of legitimacy, but symbolic practices guided by perceived interests, part of the attempt discursively to appropriate a common history for one’s own purposes.

36


more just world order, is thus created (Scott 1977). The workers movement and feminism, to give two examples closer to Western societies, have radicalised the liberal idea of equality of chances into the notion of equality of outcome.15 Which elements of the cultural compromise are chosen and how they are reformulated and transformed depend again on the position in the power structure. Since I will show this in full detail in chapter 5 discussing the Indian movements of Mexico and Guatemala, a brief summary of the argument will be enough here. The state elite that came to power after two decades of revolutionary disorder reformulated Mexican nationalism. They successfully extended their control over the whole of the national territory by constructing an impressive pyramid of patron–client relations controlled by the Party of the Institutionalised Revolution. In the course of their efforts at integrating and assimilating the Indian minorities, a new educated middle class of Indian professionals developed, who soon felt their aspirations to social mobility frustrated. They began to contradict the hegemonic claims of the central state and developed for the first time an Indian ethno-nationalism. It is interesting to observe that the tropes and metaphors on which this counter-discourse unfolded present a mirror-image of the mestizo nationalism formulated by the central elites and adopted by large sections of the Mexican population. They took precisely those elements of the prevailing cultural compromise most open to a reinterpretation that would make sense to the new Indian elite, given their interests. Granting cultural and political autonomy to the different Indian nationalities implies, of course, new opportunities for power, recognition and influence in Indian parliaments and Indian regional executives, in cultural institutes and so on ( Wimmer 1993). By contrast, peasant movements in Chiapas or Hidalgo relate themselves to other elements of the national cultural compromise, namely the revolutionary rhetoric tied to land reform and social justice (cf. Wimmer 1995c). Power and the formation of subcultures This brings us to the problem of power. The Mexican examples show that cultural compromises can entail their own power effects. In limiting the field of legitimate arguments, they force groups that have not participated in the formation of the cultural compromise and entered 15

Mach (1993) and Guha (1983) provide further analysis of such processes of reinterpretation and inversion.


37

the political arena for the first time, to address themselves to the generally accepted forms of collective representations and in that way to enforce their validity and legitimacy. Any way of making sense of the social world that does not at least connect to the prevailing cultural compromise is not understood and quickly marginalised in public debates. Collective representations thus present themselves as an outside force to those who have not taken part in the finding of the cultural compromise and who are nevertheless subject to its results. In this restricted sense, power and discourse are in fact as closely interlocked as Foucault and his anthropological followers would have it. Several examples come to mind, apart from the already mentioned Indian and peasant movements of Mexico. Immigrant minorities, for example, have to relate their claims to prevailing ideas of a liberal, secularised and constitutional society when they want to be heard. Even the most particularistic political projects have to be expressed in universalistic language, such as the right to the maintenance of identity, if the slightest chance of success is to be expected (Soysal 1994). The best example, however, is perhaps provided by the so-called caste system. When the idea of a hierarchy of ritual purity is generally accepted, one can legitimately argue that one’s own caste should rightfully belong to a higher tier of the system. There are in fact many examples of successful castes climbing on the basis of such claims (Bailey 1969: 95–100). But it was almost impossible for untouchables at the bottom of the ladder of ritual purity to question the principle of caste hierarchy in public and in principle (see Moffat 1979). The excluded and marginalised, nevertheless, do not become accomplices of their own discursive disempowerment and subjugation. According to the perspective developed here, discourses are not acting subjects, which make use of human beings in order to realise and diffuse themselves, as implied in much of current writing following in Foucault’s footsteps. Rather, it is individual actors who design discursive strategies in order to serve their perceived interests. Those excluded from the arena of public debate thus develop their own ideas of just and unjust, holy and profane, pure and impure, in and out. Even when they are the objects of an overwhelming sanctioning power, they cannot be forced to accept the legitimacy of a cultural order. When they meet those in power, they might feign consent to the dominant culture. But in those social spaces which are accessible only to them, they develop their own vision of the world, a counter-discourse that James Scott (1990) has called a ‘hidden transcript’. It can be found in the barracks of slaves and guest-workers, in the secret societies of peasants, in churches and mosques controlled by the subordinates where millennarian utopias are imagined, in the slums

38


of global cities where youth cultures flourish, or in the huts of menstruating women in Papua New Guinea, where they symbolically reverse the sexual order of things.16 These counter-discourses can develop into stable cultural forms, a new cultural compromise valuable within the confines of the social spaces in which it has emerged. These patterns of meaning may be termed subcultures, as they usually remain related to the dominant cultural order despite turning its moral appeals on their heads. To be sure, I do not want to make the somewhat romantic point that resistance is everywhere, that you just have to peek behind the curtains and look into the huts of the marginalised and the overcrowded apartments of the poor. Rather, the possibility of subcultural heterodoxy is an important part of the theoretical sketch I am presenting here, because it relates directly to the central notion of cultural compromise. It is important to emphasise that such a compromise does not emerge automatically and may include only small sections of a society. As a cultural compromise is based on a partial concurrence of interests, subcultural differentiations will flourish whenever important claims of the groups involved cannot be formulated in a commonly binding symbolic language. Cultural change A set of conceptual tools has now been developed that should allow the last of the four problems to be addressed: understanding cultural change. It should have become clear that a cultural compromise is embedded in a specific constellation of interests and thus reflects a certain balance of power between the groups involved. This balance of forces can shift, either because one or another group gets or loses access to economic, political or cultural resources (e.g. in the process of becoming colonised) or because the distributional patterns change as a result of the accumulated consequences of previous actions (e.g. the process of inflationary 16

However, in situations of total subordination, the formulation of a counter-discourse becomes impossible and the subjugated tend to adopt the representations of the powerful. The characteristics of total power have been specified by Newby (1975) and J. Scott (1990): there is no counter-elite that offers alliances; uncontrolled social spaces are not available; those in power can control information from the outside world; the only possibility of overcoming the situation of subjugation consists in winning the masters’ favour. In this frontier zone of totalitarianism it is in the perceived interests of the weak to adapt their representations of the world as closely as possible to those of the powerful, because their chances of survival might be increased by anticipating the masters’ expectations. In other words, we are faced with a social constellation where the discourse of those in power indeed assumes the all-permeating power that the early Foucault had observed in prisons and mental homes. We may consider as exemplary cases of totalitarian institutions the concentration camps of the Nazi regime ( Niethammer 1994).


39

devaluation of the worth of academic degrees after the opening of universities to larger sections of the population) (Wimmer 1995b, sect. 7.3). Depending on their changed position in the hierarchies of wealth, power and knowledge, individuals develop new strategies and new perceptions and interpretations. More precisely, the habitualised dispositions produce variations on the hitherto accepted cultural themes, because these no longer make sense from the point of view of those whose changed position of interest lets them see the world through different eyes. Subcultural variations or true counter-cultures may unfold. Because the habitual schemes themselves change only relatively slowly, they provide a certain continuity and a characteristic cultural style to the practices they produce and thus reduce the space of contingency even in moments of historical crisis and change. However, the new variations generated under these circumstances may differ enough from the established modes of thinking and speaking to break apart the existing cultural compromise and dissolve it into a range of variations and counter-discourses. When a new balance of power has been stabilised, new cultural compromises may eventually emerge, according to the transformed distribution of chances to get one’s own view accepted. New cultural forms may emerge according to the new constellation of interest and possibilities for compromise. Depending on these changing structures of inclusion in, and exclusion from, the realms of a cultural compromise, processes of both social closure and social opening can be observed. In this way, social groups dissolve, transform and reorganise. In order to mark the new boundaries, they invent new cultural practices or redefine existing elements of distinction. Throughout these historical transformations, certain patterns can be observed. Shifts in the fabric of power lead to a sharpening of conflicts over the rules of the cultural game, until subcultures start to flourish in the different parts of society and the cultural compromise finally breaks down under the attack of the most varied claims to recognition and validity. As soon as a new constellation of interests and a new distribution of resources stabilise, the horizons of meaning are reorganised around commonly accepted icons, the core of a binding world-view of the future. Seen over time, a structural cycle can thus be observed that starts with the diffusion of a cultural order, reaches maturity when it is most widely shared and culturally elaborated, before entering a crisis of conflictive contests, decaying and eventually giving rise to a reformulated and reconstructed cultural compromise. Showing that this model of cultural change is indeed useful for empirical analysis was the aim of an earlier book (Wimmer 1995a). I tried to explain how in different regions and individual villages of Mexico and

40


Guatemala local cultural forms have emerged and been transformed since the seventeenth century. On the basis of ethno-historical work and a reading of several dozen ethnographic studies and re-studies, I wanted to understand why in certain regions or villages the already-mentioned selfimage of an egalitarian, closed community of solidarity developed and became institutionalised in certain forms of local governance, enshrined in ritual systems, and firmly established in local political discourse, while in other villages and regions this was not the case. In the same way, the further transformations of this local compromise into other concepts of community were explained on a comparative basis. Such a ‘methodology of multilinear evolution’, to use Julian Steward’s (1955) term, is equally useful in understanding the many different forms in which the nation-state has historically appeared in various parts of the world. It will allow us to understand why the introduction of the model of the nation-state had different political consequences according to the prevailing cultural compromises and forms of social closure, without having to resort to a sequential typology distinguishing less- from more-developed nation-states in order to explain certain phenomena such as ethnic conflicts. Political modernisation through the introduction of democracy, national self-determination and citizenship rights can lead to varying forms of cultural compromise and social closure, depending on the exact way in which the balance of forces is changed through the introduction of these institutions and depending on the nature of previous social arrangements. Conclusion With this reformulation of the notion of culture, I have tried to maintain some of the insights of discourse theory, i.e. that culture emerges from discursive practices, which construct and thus influence reality in many different ways. This approach has certain advantages over the notion of culture as a fixed frame of norms and values, as seen through the lenses of classical anthropological and, by the way, sociological theory. But these discourses do not have the quasi-magical power that many postmodern theories attribute to them. Rather, cultural practices depend in a clearly definable way on the intentions of strategically competent actors and on their position in the frameworks of social structure. As soon as we can conceptualise this relation between culture as discourse and the non-cultural aspects of the social world, it becomes possible to trace regularities in processes of cultural transformation, and we can go beyond an anthropology that looks through the kaleidoscope of discourses without ever grasping the logic of its assembling and dispersing patterns.


41

From the perspective of a processual theory such as outlined in this chapter, it does not make much sense to understand the world as a patchwork of cultures in the way classical anthropology did. The metaphor of a cultural landscape of continuous transitions would be more appropriate, such as presented by Tim Ingold (1993: 226ff.; see also Drummond 1980; Rosaldo 1989). In this landscape we can discern topographical features – hills and mountains, valleys and gullies. Different people have shaped these topographies forming different cultural compromises, if one may stretch the image somewhat. However, this topography is in constant motion, and certainly faster than at a geological rate. Whenever the balance of power shifts, conflictive processes of negotiating meaning are unleashed, and new cultural arrangements are to be found. Furthermore, individuals can also travel in this landscape, because they are able to distance themselves from their own cultural inculcation and can reinterpret it in a creative way (see, for example, Schiffauer 1992). What enables human beings to transform this landscape and to travel within it is the universal ability of making meaning and interest concur. I would like to call this the pragmatics of cultural production. Whether it is in our cacophonous media market-place or in the relaxed chatter in the diwan of a Kurdish village; whether in the babble of voices at an Indian community meeting in Mexico or in the lecture programme of an academic conference, we can always discern the same motive: the attempt to establish one’s own view of the world as a valid perspective and thus to form the world in accordance to one’s own notions. As this can only be achieved if others come to accept and share one’s world-view, the formation of a cultural compromise is the implicit aim of the pragmatics of cultural production, and the negotiation of meaning of fundamental importance in order to achieve it.

3

The making of modern communities

How can the theory of compromise and closure enhance our understanding of nationalism, ethnic conflicts and the modern state? The view from afar that these concepts generate when used for describing modern societies helps to overcome methodological nationalisms and allows us to perceive what is usually hidden from the picture. We will see that national and ethnic identities are in no way remnants of tradition which have failed to melt away under the sun of modern republicanism. And they are far more central to the modern project than if they merely compensated for the insecurities and risks brought about by the anonymous and individualised life of our times. The formation of nation-states and the rise of nationalism and ethnicity are the products of a fundamental reorganisation of the main modes of inclusion and exclusion, of a reordering of the basic principles of membership and identity along national and ethnic lines. This chapter contains the theoretical core of this argument, and presents the main hypotheses as they unfold from, and relate to, each other, to form an integrated theoretical framework. The reasoning remains rather abstract, using ideal-types and broad generalisations. Detailed empirical and historical analysis based on specific examples will follow in later chapters. The fallacies of a disciplinary division of labour It has been argued repeatedly that the classical theory of modernity has a blind spot when it comes to understanding the rise of nationstates, nationalism and ethnicity (Esser 1988; Guiberneau 1997; Imhof 1997; A. Smith 1983; Thompson and Fevre 2001). In the eyes of Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Parsons, the growing differentiation, rationalisation and modernisation of society gradually reduced space for ethnic and national sentiments. Most of classical grand theory was constructed as a series of socio-structural types (from feudalism through capitalism to Parts of this chapter have been translated from German and French by Isabelle SchulteTenckhoff.

42


43

communism, from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, organic to mechanical solidarity, traditional to modern society etc.). Ethnicity and nationality were attributed to earlier types on the continuum of social evolution. As traditional, communitarian, ascriptive, bourgeois or pre-rational phenomena they were said to precede the modern, rationalised and individualised class society based on achievement. Nationalism and patriotism were soon to be wiped out by proletarian internationalism (as Marx saw it) or by a post-patriotic ‘idéal humaine’ (Durkheim). In this manner, the study of the rise of nationalism and the nation-state, of ethno-national wars and conflict in nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Europe was delegated to history. For extra-European regions, anthropology and political sciences were called upon, while ethnicity in immigrant societies became the subject matter of so-called migration studies, a heterogeneous discipline, therefore lacking prestige. Here is a most eloquent example of the fallacies of the disciplinary division of labour that has established itself since the beginning of the twentieth century (Wimmer 2001b). It is particularly marked in the social sciences of France (Taguieff 1991: 46) and Germany where the sociologist Otto Hondrich (1992) felt moved to deliver a public nostra culpa for having neglected nationalism as an object of social theory (see Radtke 1996). In the course of this disciplinary division of labour, the fields of anthropology, history and migration studies have yielded innumerable studies. These show that ethnic relations did not – as predicted by the classical theory of modernity – follow a quasi-natural evolutionary law under which they were further and further reduced until they came to evaporate in the crucible of modern republicanism. This applies in particular to the new states of the South and the former Eastern bloc (Moynihan 1993), where the process of communicative integration and post-colonial state formation gave new meaning to ethnic ties – a phenomenon first analysed in a seminal study by Clifford Geertz (1963) (see also Young 1976; Williams 1989). Since then, the study of ethnicity, nation-building and ethno-national conflict has entered the anthropological mainstream – albeit once again with the exclusion of the German and French-speaking schools of thought. A good example is the British approach that evolved from the study of processes of tribal fission and fusion (e.g. by Mitchell) and has been continuously expanded in the work of Geertz, Barth, M. G. Smith, Nash, van den Berghe and other exponents of the theory of ‘plural society’ (Wimmer 1995d, ch. 5).1 Meanwhile, in the field of history, nationalism was not only tackled within the well-established field of the history of ideas, but increasingly 1

See the reviews of Cohen (1978); Williams (1989); Alonso (1994).

44


also in the history of everyday life and the histoire des mentalités. This gave rise to a variety of studies addressing the transformation of ethnic into national identities (Armstrong 1982), the ‘invention’ and propagation of nationalist traditions (Hobsbawm 1991), as well as the uniformisation and standardisation of the cultural landscape through school and army (E. Weber 1979) – including from a comparative perspective (Greenfeld 1992). In the 1970s, migration studies started to address the complex relationship between the integration strategies pursued by immigrants and the opportunity structures they encountered in their host countries. These dynamics eventually gave birth to modes of incorporation that differed markedly from those envisaged under the classic assimilation paradigm: the dissolution of ethnic boundaries and the complete loss of any notion of cultural distinctiveness. With the ‘ethnic revival’ of migrant communities in the 1970s and 1980s, the research community bade farewell to the classic paradigm (but see more recently DeWind et al. 1997; Lucassen 1997; Zhou 1997). Attention now shifted to the significance of ethnic ties for the second and third generation (e.g. Werbner 1990), to political mobilisation along ethnic lines in immigrant cities (e.g. Vertovec 1996), the formation of transnational communities (Schiller et al. 1995) and the role of the state in the discursive ‘ethnicisation’ or ‘racialisation’ of immigrant societies (Silvermann 1992; Miles 1993; Radtke 1996). Four approaches to nationalism and modernity Because of the disciplinary division of labour and the prestige gap that separates ‘applied’ from ‘basic’ research, the theory of modern society has created a bulkhead against these different research trends. Whether we consider Parsons and Merton or Bourdieu, Habermas and Luhmann, we find none of these authors discusses in any systematic fashion modernity’s segmentation into nation-states or the politicisation of ethnicity under modernisation. Rather, new approaches to the old questions were built from the fringes of social theory. In the following, four such approaches will be reviewed. I shall explore for each of them how it conceptualises the relationship between modernisation and the politics of ethnicity and nationalism. The first approach, rational choice theory, does not conceive of such a relationship. Its exponents regard the politicisation of ethnicity as an option that promises maximum return for individuals under certain ‘incentive structures’ unrelated to the mega-trends of modernisation. Secondly, from a neo-romantic perspective ethnicity is portrayed as a constant of social life, making nationalism and the nation-state appear as late manifestations of the eternal quest for cultural autonomy. Thirdly,


45

ethnic and nationalist politics may be regarded as birth pains of modern society, as a transitional phenomenon in the evolutionary process. Lastly, one may argue that the rise of nationalism and the nation-state constitutes a genuine component of, if not the functional prerequisite for, modern society. Each of these four approaches will be described, but since the fourth comes closest to my own position it will be discussed in greater detail. (For an encompassing review of the field, see A. Smith 1998.) Instrumentalism and rational choice In the 1970s, under the impact of a growing number of ethno-regional movements in Western Europe and Canada, as well as in many developing countries, the number of social scientists researching ethnicity and nationalism rose considerably. From the perspective of the then dominant political economy, ethnic politics serves to mobilise socio-economic interest groups. An ethno-national group’s identity is considered relevant only to the extent that it lends itself to being put to such political use. Independently of macro-social trends such as modernisation, this socalled instrumentalist approach considers ethnicity as politically meaningful when mobilisation along ethnic or national lines entails a strategic advantage over other possible political networks. There are variants of this theory, depending on which type of interest group is focused upon: regions (Hechter 1975), class fractions (Olzak and Nagel 1986) or specific occupational groups, such as traders (Bonacich 1973), have been the main candidates so far (see also chapter 4). Most recently, the instrumentalist approach has been refined and formalised by economists who explain ethnicity-based organisation in terms of low transaction costs (e.g. Wintrobe 1995). Esser (1996) and Hechter (1995) have in the meantime also adopted a rational choice perspective to trace the variable geometry of ethno-national boundary-making and mobilisation. Rational choice theory isolates ethnicity and nationalism from the major trends of social development – usually covered under the details of marginal return models, pay-off matrices or multiple regressions. Essentially, these formulae may be reduced to the statement that under conditions of a politicisation of ethnicity, it makes sense for the individual to consider ethnic representations as meaningful when it comes to choosing political alliances. That these formulae do not help to fathom the exuberant patriotism and bitter hatred which appear to supply the emotional fuel to these conflicts (Douglass 1988) may be the price we have to pay for the advantages of a testable model with clear propositions. The more serious deficit is that they do not explain how a politicised milieu has come about and why, by contrast, in certain circumstances ethnicity

46


does not matter for politics. Consequently, instrumentalist approaches may grasp the reproductive dynamics of nationalist representations and actions, and may account for the rationale of escalating ethnic conflict (see Esser 1996; 1999) or containing them (Fearon and Laitin 1996). But they face difficulties in explaining why ethnicity and nation have become central dimensions of politics in the first place2 and why, historically, this is closely linked to the formation of nation-states (Gurr 1994: 347–77). Neo-romanticism The second approach starts with the assumption that ethnicity constitutes a basic factor of social life, ever present across time and space – a late echo of political romanticism, such as Fichte’s idea of educating the nation, and of the earlier humanistic nationalism of Herder (see Wimmer 1995d, ch. 7; Calhoun 1997: 55). The rise of the nation-state is viewed as the last stage in a long process of developing national awareness starting in the early Middle Ages, as illustrated by Armstrong’s (1982) Nations before Nationalism, i.e. long before the emergence of nineteenth-century nationalist movements (see also Hastings 1997). The anthropologist Bruce Kapferer (1989) pushes the starting point of the longue durée even further back. He seeks to identify the primeval and irreducible base of a national culture in its earliest historically known manifestations. A national ideology is grounded in a given concept of the social world and is but a variation on this eternal cultural theme. Modern Australian nationalism, one of Kapferer’s examples, is described as a projection, at the level of the society as a whole, of the traditional model of the bush community united by ties of solidarity between men of equal standing. The most distinguished and prolific exponent of neo-romanticism is Anthony Smith (e.g. 1995a). Ethnic communities have preserved their identity and asserted their political autonomy for centuries on the strength of myths of predestination and the idea of a historic mission. Ethnic groups endowed with such a repertoire of myths are easily turned into nations if they perceive a threat to their communal dignity or cultural survival. Nationalists only reconstruct a cohesive ideological whole out of a pre-existing fund of ethnic myths and legends. Rather than inventing tradition, they resuscitate it through reinterpretation (A. Smith 1995b). Whether for China under the Han, the early Egyptian empires or the 2

Compare the critique of Esser’s (1996) approach by Eder and Schmidtke (1998) and Esser’s (1999) reply. His reply again makes it clear that the fundamental issue of why ethnicity and nation become politically salient in the first place (or, in his words, why a fight over the validity of different forms of cultural capital erupts) is not addressed.


47

current revival of nationalist movements, Smith everywhere discovers the dynamics of reconstitution, revival and enrichment of the ethnic (and subsequently national) community. Thus, the concept of ethnie is being elevated, next to that of society, to the status of a fundamental analytical category endowed with transhistorical and universal validity, and located at a level of abstraction above that at which the theory of modern society deploys its models. By now, the weaknesses of such a dehistoricised and decontextualised concept have been broached repeatedly, inter alia in the critique of the so-called primordialist approach to the study of ethnicity. More specifically, neither the endurance of ethno-national communities nor the power of their ‘mythomoteur’ helps explain why a particular set of circumstances rather than any other brings forth nationalism in a given group and at a given moment in history (see the critique of Brass 1979; Gellner 1983: 50). Similarly, by focusing solely on successful nationalist movements, one forgets that many ethnic communities never arrive at the turning point of nationalist mobilisation although they possess ample mythic material and are held together by strong sentiments of belonging. The inhabitants of Aquitaine in France, who were incorporated into the Grande Nation, the Vlachs of the Balkans (Winnifrith 1993) and the Valsers of Switzerland are cases in point (for non-European cases see Young 1976: 105–10; Wimmer 1995d: 70ff., 219–29). Halfway on the road to modernity The third position regards ethnicity and nationalism as transitional phenomena on the road to modernity. Various models can be grouped under this approach. According to most authors writing in the seventies and eighties, modernisation dissolves corporative and communitarian segregation; the resulting communicative integration brings more and more people into contact and into competition with each other. They now become aware of ethno-cultural boundaries previously irrelevant for everyday interaction.3 Because modernisation spreads neither coevally nor completely, the benefits of modernity are distributed unevenly among the population. This lends itself to being used by political entrepreneurs to mobilise an ethnic following (Horowitz 1985). Only when modernity has permeated a society completely and thoroughly, and when its promises of participation are fulfilled for all regions and for all sectors of society, does the potential for ethnic politics dwindle. Ethnicity becomes one among 3

Compare Bates (1974); Rothschild (1981); A. Smith (1984); Rogowski (1985); Vail (1989); Waldmann (1989); Brass (1991).

48


many other ideological resources for the identity politics of post-modern societies (Esser 1988).4 While the basic scheme of classic modernisation theory is maintained, ethnie and nation are nonetheless localised in a later stage of social evolution than was the case in the work of classical writers such as Durkheim and Tonnies ¨ for whom they belonged to the repertoire of traditional social forms such as tribes and kinship groups. It remains to be seen, however, why it is ethnic subdivisions rather than other traditional dividing lines that are accorded a crucial political role in this transitional phase of modernisation. Moreover, this variant of modernisation theory relies on a utopian rather than an empirical concept of modernity – referring to a fully differentiated, universalist society leaving no room for ascriptive criteria and communal forms of integration. This concept fulfils an epistemological function similar to the economic construct of the free market under conditions of equilibrium, full information and so forth. Although it can never be observed in reality, it is used as a yardstick to measure the ‘modernisation deficits’ (comparable to market imperfections) of a given society. To describe ethnicity and nationalism in terms of transitional phenomena only makes sense if one presupposes an evolutionary teleology towards such an ideal universalist society.

End of the road The fourth approach shifts the position of ethnicity and nationalism further towards modernity on the evolutionary continuum. Nationalism now constitutes an integral part of modern society as it is empirically known to us. Whether the segmentation of modernity into nation-states can one day be transcended and whether the future society will be entirely grounded in functional differentiation is left to the historical process to decide (see Kreckel 1989). Relying on an empirical instead of a utopian concept of modernity, the process of nation-state building is shifted to the centrestage of analysis. 4

Nassehi’s (1990) contribution is based on Luhmann’s system theory. According to this position, ethnicity and nationalism fulfil a compensatory function in the transition towards modernity: ethno-national semantics of difference provide an illusion of communitarian inclusion when, due to functional differentiation, the boundaries of the subsystems traverse each individual who then occupies a ‘position external to the social structure’ (ibid.: 269) and must renounce belonging to any type of community. Under the impact of the growing transnationalisation of the economy (globalisation), the polity (multilateral organisation) and science, these semantics lose their ‘powers of national inclusion’ and become transformed into secondary differences of little social relevance (Luhmann 1980: 27); for unidentified reasons, however, they remain present and can be invoked as one of several other dimensions of identity.


49

Two variants of this approach can be distinguished. An older variant attributes the success of nationalism to the functional needs of a modernising society. Following Anderson (1988) and Deutsch (1985), nationalism serves the communicative and political integration of large population groups within a modern centralised state. According to Ernest Gellner (1983), this facilitates the industrialisation of the economy. Tim Nairn (1977) maintains that nationalism legitimises the elites of the peripheral regions of the world system in their attempts to catch up on the development front. Through primary schooling, military service and the print media, a nation is fabricated where there was none before. Nationalism relies on invented traditions, to take up Eric Hobsbawm’s now classic expression (Hobsbawm 1991), on fabricated legends like that of William Tell (Fahrni 1987), or on newly fashioned folklorist elements like the kilt (Trevor-Roper 1983). The most widely known functionalist theory of nationalism has been formulated by Ernest Gellner (1983). Essentially, it states that industrialisation dissolves spatially confined and corporatively differentiated social orders, leading to the integration of a series of regions and social mini-systems. Thus, it becomes necessary to replace hierarchical and particularistic ideologies with egalitarian and inclusive ones such as nationalism. Nationalism creates the cultural basis for a communicatively integrated mega-space that an industrial division of labour and the commercial exchange of commodities require. The nation-state provides the organisational apparatus that allows for such cultural homogenisation and communicative integration. Like any functionalist argument, Gellner’s thesis raises the two problems of functional equivalents and functional necessity.5 How can one explain why a highly industrialised state like Switzerland can function in the absence of cultural homogeneity? Conversely, how can one explain in functionalist terms the type of nationalist state formation that can be observed in pre-industrial settings, such as at the partition of India? While nobody would deny that nation-state formation and industrial capitalism are intimately linked in the history of Western Europe, it seems wise to treat them as separate, irreducible and functionally autonomous elements of the modernisation process (see Giddens 1985). In this way, we can avoid overstating the functional coherence of social change and teleological reasoning. The more recent variant of the approach is less concerned with the political and economic functions of nationalism but with its cultural aspects. It deals with the manner in which modern state elites produce and 5

For a full discussion and critique of Gellner’s seminal book, see Hall (1998).

50


disseminate a nationalist discourse and how this may be responded to by the counter-nationalism of minorities (for an overview see Alonso 1994). Since the emergence of ethno-national identities is linked here to the rise of the modern nation-state instead of industrialisation, this variant can be described as the statist theory of nationalism, most consistently formulated by Breuilly (1993). It stands in rather sharp contrast to the neo-romantic view discussed above. The analysis centres around the tropes, rhetorical figures and metaphorical expressions through which history is being cast in the nationalist mould. Nationalist historicism portrays the past as a process of finding and liberating the nation’s self, a return to the original state of the closely knit national community, overcoming the schism between society and the state that political modernisation has brought about (Breuilly 1993, ch. 2). Other authors study the symbols propagated by the modern state, its flags, rituals, national anthems and hero statues, through which the imagined national community is being enacted, drummed into the subjects’ conscience (see Connerton 1989) and inscribed into their everyday environment, making nationalism a banal matter, to paraphrase Billig (1995). The statist approach is supported by considerable empirical evidence. Indeed, nationalism is formulated by a modern urban elite and propagated via nation-state institutions to the last recesses of a country’s territory. An eloquent illustration of this process is a village in Lorraine that was parcelled out in 1829, partly to Germany and partly to France. In the 1930s, under massive pressure from both state apparatuses, the people in each part started to adapt culturally and linguistically to the respective national majority, and to adjust their identity accordingly. By now they have become entirely German or entirely French and form separate communities (Lask 1993).6 6

An overview of historical situations where such a process had yet to occur reveals similar trends, as is illustrated by the following two examples. In 1919, the Polish state surveyed the national membership of its inhabitants. In eastern Poland, which had been part of Russia since 1839, 700,000 inhabitants identified themselves as tutjesi, a term that can be translated as ‘local people’. Although they spoke Byelarussian dialects and belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church, they did not declare themselves to be Russians – as nationalists would expect – but rather as members of a given peasant community. The same result was obtained in 1941, at a time when the nationalist virus had already gained the cities (Hroch 1985: 166). While France is regarded as the homeland of modern nationalism and continues to be invoked as a case in point for a homogeneous nation, her peasants were far from having turned into Frenchmen by the end of the nineteenth century, to recall the eloquent title of Eugen Weber’s (1979) well-known study. Rather, popular consciousness in the rural areas did not reach beyond the horizon of a regional identity. Nation-building is a process that takes much longer that one may at first think, as Connor (1990) has underlined.


51

While this and other examples lend themselves to being interpreted in statist terms, others put these into question (cf. the discussion in A. Smith 1998, ch. 4). Indeed, national elites do not always succeed in completing their endeavour, even over a long period of time and with all the required effort. One is immediately reminded here of the failures of nationbuilding in the developing world, such as in Somalia (Rothchild 1995)7 or Guatemala (C. Smith 1990). Closer to home, one notes the failure of Yugoslav (Sekulic et al. 1994) and Czechoslovak (Kirschbaum 1993) nationalism. The statist premises fail to elucidate why in some countries, the state elite succeed in rallying the people under the banner of nationalism, whereas in others even the most elaborate invention of tradition or the most subtle discursive construction of national identity cannot win over the majority of the population. To sum up, existing models of explanation and interpretation can be divided into four groups. For rational choice theory, ethnicity is politicised whenever this allows the actors to maximise political alliances or protection from violence under prevailing incentive structures. While this formula helps elucidate the reproductive mechanism of ethnic and nationalist politics, it sheds little light on the emergence of the constellations that render the ethno-national option attractive. To overcome this situationalism, we must focus on the transformation of the ‘opportunity structures’ brought about by modern state-building. The second group regards ethnicity as a constant factor of human life. Politics has always been a matter of ethnic pride and rivalry. In the modern age, the ethnic community evolves into the nation determining the symbolic and organisational framework within which modern society is meant to flourish. Eternalising ethnicity and nationalism fails to account for ethnic groups that cease to exist, or, on the other hand, for nations that are invented out of the blue but nevertheless manage to achieve deeply rooted identities. Both phenomena can be increasingly observed in connection with the formation of modern nation-states. A third group understands the rise of ethnic and nationalist politics as the birth pains of modern society, as a transitional phenomenon on the road to modernity. However, the completely modernised, functionally differentiated and individualised society will not allow any room for ascriptive ties, such as ethnicity and nationhood. This analysis is grounded in a utopian – rather than an empirical – concept of modernity, neglecting the fact that until now world society has been segmented into national 7

For other African examples, see Cohen (1978: 396s), Macmillan (1989), Anonymous (1989).

52


states that have forced processes of inclusion and exclusion into their current shape, as will be shown in the remainder of this chapter. Finally, the fourth group holds that the politicisation of ethnicity and nationhood constitutes a basic characteristic of, or the functional prerequisite for, modern society. This is the view I favour and from which this book takes its starting point. However, it will also go one step beyond in demonstrating that modernity itself is cast in nationalist and ethnicised forms. It will also have to tackle the two main analytical problems raised by this literature. First, one needs to overcome the functionalist mode of reasoning according to which the nation-state and nationalism are necessary correlates of other processes of modernisation (such as industrialisation or the creation of centralised and powerful state bureaucracies). Secondly, it is important to clarify under what conditions the nationalist view of the social world elaborated by modern state elites actually prevails and how it gradually supplants other identities and other appeals to solidarity. The nation-state as a form of social closure The theory of cultural transformations outlined in the preceding chapter may be helpful in solving these problems, for it offers an anthropological idiom that has not been influenced by the romantic ductus of nationalism, nor indulges in utopian faith in the future progress of modernity. The theory of cultural transformations describes nationalism as the main cultural compromise of modern society, and the formation of nation-states as a process of social closure resulting from, and interacting with, the consolidation and general acceptance of this compromise. In the following, these two aspects will be addressed separately. Imagining the nation The new cultural compromise centres around the ‘imagined community’ of the nation, using Anderson’s (1988) now well-established formula, that is, the concept of a political community of destiny grounded in common origin and historical experience. Despite the differences between nationalisms based on common descent and those inspired by the ideal of political solidarity – amply commented upon since Meinecke opposed ‘Kulturnation’ and ‘Staatsnation’ (cf. Brubaker 1992) – both redraw the boundary separating ‘us’ from ‘them’ according to principles that contrast with the hotchpotch of identities in pre-modern empires (see Schnapper 1991, ch. 1).


53

I want to highlight two aspects of these new principles of boundarymaking. First, the nation is regarded all at once as a social, economic, political and cultural unit, in other words, as an all-encompassing social totality not differentiated by estates or by political divisions of a fundamental nature. The second aspect is that this totality is imagined as a territorial unit with clearly defined borders separating the homogeneous domestic realm from the heterogeneous external one. In the following, I shall exemplify both aspects by referring to the ‘ethnic’ variant of nationalism, which views the nation primarily as a cultural phenomenon, from which society, politics and economics are derived. The same demonstration could be made with reference to the ‘republican’ variant, where culture, community and economics are deduced from a nation imagined in political terms. In nationalist thinking, all streams of social life spring from the nation as the primary source of human culture.8 Polity, economy and society bear the stamps of the nation’s formative powers; they are isomorphic. The nation itself is characterised above all by a specific and unique culture. A national culture expresses the collective spirit or ‘genius of a people’ (Herder), later Germanised by the romantic legal scholar von Savigny into the well-known Volksgeist. The national spirit wafts in purer form through the everyday life of those not yet afflicted by cosmopolitan modernity; it especially permeates the songs and dances, lore and idiom of peasants, guardians of a nation’s folk treasures. This collective spirit makes more out of a nation than a mere assemblage of individuals. All those cut from the same cultural block and transported by the surge of a nation’s heartbeat become members of a single family, related by ties of mutual obligation and solidarity not negotiable or subject to contractual rearrangement. The nation is transformed into a ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft), as the intellectual leader of political romanticism, Adam Muller, ¨ wrote in 1809 (Muller ¨ 1922).9 In the eyes of nationalists, the national community is of an egalitarian nature, because it is derived from the idea of cultural homogeneity: it is made up of all those who share the same culture, independently of their economic situation, their social position or their political standing. For this community to express its culture freely, it must be able to determine its own destiny without outside interference. Only national self-determination can guarantee that the community of likes can be a community of equals, not distinguishing between conquerors and conquered, between foreign rulers and autochthonous subjects. For this 8 9

Greenfeld (1992: 4–12) analyses the historical transformation of the concept of ‘nation’. For an analysis of the political thinking of romanticism, see Reiss (1955).

54


reason, equals must be governed by likes; government must be entrusted to representatives of the nation. Each nation requires its own state to defend the interests of those who are both equal and alike against any outside interference, thus preserving the nation as a distinct political community.10 This state should also guarantee that the production and distribution of economic goods serve the interest of the nation. The economy is the heart of the national body and must provide all its members with energy, while the government represents the head in that it expresses the collective will and co-ordinates the body’s activities. For this energy to circulate freely, all duties and tariffs within the national territory should be abolished and the different regions connected via railways, roads and channels. The strength of the economy not only rests on technical factors, however, but also on the nation’s ‘productive forces’, that is, its level of education, its knowledge and health. Since the publication of Friedrich ¨ List’s masterpiece, Das nationale System der politischen Okonomie (List 1974 (1856)), such economic processes have been referred to in German as Volkswirtschaft, literally ‘the economy of the people’. These three isomorphisms give rise to the second specificity of nationalist thinking, which may be referred to as the territorialisation of its social imagination. For the isomorphism between society, polity and economy entails that all corresponding territorial borders become coincident. In contrast, the sociological imagination characteristic of empires defined the polity in more encompassing terms than the social realm. State ideology was based on a universal religion – as will be shown in the chapters on Mexico and Iraq – and the polity potentially included all the umma, or all of Christianity; however, the social world was made up of multiple religious, occupational and ethnic communities in the case of the sultanates, or estates, corporations and villages in the case of the European empires. In nationalist thinking, border congruence has brought about a much stricter definition of what pertains to the realm, and what falls outside it. The territory occupied by the national community at the same time traces the ideal frontiers of the polity, defines the borderline between social order and disorder and distinguishes between the domestic and foreign economies. This permits nationalists to territorialise the construction of the social world, and to project the nation spatially. The isomorphisms of nationalism and the territorialisation of social boundaries are well illustrated by a quotation from Fichte,11 presenting 10 11

For a similar analysis of the isomorphism between nation and political sovereign in nationalist thinking, see Breuilly (1993: 62, 69f.). Fichte’s nationalist perspective is summarised by Kriegel (1993), among others.


55

his vision of a future ideal state: In diesem Staate sind Alle Diener des Ganzen, und erhalten dafur ¨ ihren gerechten Anteil an den Gutern ¨ des Ganzen. Keiner kann sich sonderlich bereichern, aber es kann auch keiner verarmen. Allen einzelnen ist die Fortdauer ihres Zustandes, und dadurch dem Ganzen seine ruhige und gleichmässige Fortdauer garantiert. . . . Ist es vielmehr der wahre Zweck des Staates, allen zu demjenigen, was ihnen als Teilhabern der Menschenheit gehort, ¨ zu verhelfen und nun erst sie dabei zu erhalten, . . . so muss, damit dies moglich ¨ sei, der nicht zu ordnende Einfluss des Ausländers davon abgehalten werden; so ist der Vernunftstaat ein ebenso durchaus geschlossener Handelsstaat, als er ein geschlossenes Reich der Gesetze und der Individuen ist. (Fichte 1979: 14)

The territorial inscription of the nation is also a consequence of nationalist egalitarianism, as the passage from Fichte makes clear. Using an argument put forward by the anthropologist Louis Dumont (1983), one may say that the model of a just order in pre-modern empires presupposed that the boundaries separating social groups should be horizontal: one differentiated among castes or estates, between priests and laymen, or conquerors and conquered. Nationalist egalitarianism, on the other hand, which emerged as a reaction against this ideology of legitimate hierarchy, no longer permits us to presuppose those categories. Thus, social borders have to be drawn vertically by distinguishing between entities endowed with similar internal structures, as in segmentary kinship systems. Although nationalism imagines the nation to be of common origin, it cannot define this origin in terms of kinship, because the relationship between nation and individual is both direct and complete. It cannot be mediated by other types of allegiance and solidarity (cf. Argyle 1969; Calhoun 1997, ch. 2). It is for this reason that territorial demarcation plays such an important role for nationalism. The distinction between what is alien and what is national is established on a territorial basis, by distinguishing one’s homeland from any other. Nationalists thus make a fetish of national borders, in the same way that pre-modern empires made a cult of the cultural borders separating the social estates.12 The national territory is transformed into a sanctuary that deserves to be defended with the blood of the people, as the life of kings and sultans had to be protected in earlier times. Crossing a national border becomes a long and painful rite of passage, comparable to entering the palace of the overlord in former times (Wilson and Donnan 1998). 12

The shift to territorially fixed boundaries concurs with the rise of absolutism, thus preceding the nationalisation of modern states (cf. Guernée 1986). However, the establishment of frontier posts, the physical demarcation of frontiers and the sacralisation of the national territory are all linked to the emergence of nation-states (Nordman 1996).

56


This nationalist construction of space is mirrored by the world maps of which each family with schoolchildren possesses at least one. The globe’s surface is divided up among the countries of the world. Each country is identified by a different colour and can easily be distinguished from its neighbours. The borders are well defined and identical on nearly all maps published at one time across the world. These maps tell us that each state is inhabited by a nation with well-defined social borders and characteristic cultural colouring (see Calhoun 1997: 12–18). The ideal-type of this new cultural compromise, sketched here in its ‘ethnic variant’, appears in innumerable variations, resulting from endless ideological controversy over the proper interpretation of the national doctrine. Bourgeois republicans, battling against royalists or left-wing internationalists, emphasise the political dimension of the national community. Conservative ideologists defend the cultural interests of the nation but minimise the importance of nationalist egalitarianism. Nationalist labour movements in turn highlight the egalitarian aspects of the national principle and therefore demand state intervention in their favour. Depending on the power structure and the historical conditions, different forms of the cultural compromise impose themselves. The definition of what holds the nation together varies not only from country to country, but also over time. In much of Western Europe, the first half of the nineteenth century was characterised by emphasis on the political principles of equality and democracy. The turn of the twentieth century, and even more so the outbreak of the First World War, saw the culturalisation and sometimes even racialisation of nationalist discourse, as we shall see in the chapter on Switzerland. This process was to be gradually reversed from the 1970s onwards. By the end of the millennium, most Western societies had apparently returned to older, more liberal forms of defining those who belong to the nation and those who do not. Much has been written about the difference between the republican nationalism of France, the United States and Great Britain, and the ethnic nationalism of Germany and Eastern Europe. This difference has generally been overrated while the internal variability and heterogeneity of the individual nationalisms has tended to be undervalued, as Brubaker (1999) and others have recently shown. They uncovered, for example, an ethnic undertone in French nationalism, focused on language issues, and an American nationalism that identifies being American with a specific ethos of work and consumption. On the other hand, the republican dimension of German nationalism has long been underestimated. It had allowed for assimilation and incorporation of large groups of ethnic others, among them immigrant workers of Polish origin. In the present context, I refrain from commenting on this literature, which also allows me to


57

stay clear from the moral implications which distinguishing between the ‘good’ republican and the ‘evil’ ethnic form of nationalism entails (ibid.). Closing the lines Since the nationalist outlook has established itself as a globally valid blueprint for modern state-building, nationalism is more than the bourgeois ideology of Marxist approaches; more than just one mode of describing society, as Luhmann sees it; it is more than a discursive construction of reality, as postmodern terminology has it, or Anderson’s (1991) ‘imagined community’. Rather, the national idea has become the central principle according to which modern society structures inclusion and exclusion, not only in the sphere of culture and identity, but also in the legal, political, military and social domains. In the same manner that nationalist ideology describes different dimensions of human life – economy, polity, society – as expressions of a single entity, different forms of closure – legal, political, military, social – were reorganised along the same set of national principles. In this manner they reinforce each other, making the nationalist representation of the world more and more plausible, as if this were the natural way to think and speak about society, politics, law and so forth. This thesis will now be discussed in detail by reviewing each dimension of the process of closure. Let me begin with the legal aspects. Brubaker’s (1992) path-breaking study has shown that the institution of citizenship is linked to a process of social closure.13 Starting from this insight, I want to demonstrate that this closure is based on nationalist principles. How did citizenship and nationality become linked together? The legal systems of empires defined the unequal rights and duties of social strata, thus consolidating and reinforcing horizontal lines of distinction. Modern states have replaced this hierarchical concept with that of equality before the law. Regardless of their social background, all members of society, poor or rich, noble or commoner, peasant or townsman, male or female, should have the same rights and duties. The economic prerogatives of the nobility or the state elites were abolished; commerce, property and the freedom to choose a profession, among others, became accessible to all citizens. While for some decades the rights of political participation were confined to an educated urban upper class, universal suffrage and the obligation to attend primary school were finally introduced. 13

Similar arguments are presented by Bos ¨ (1997) and Macke (1999).

58


However, this new mode of legal inclusion based on the concept of equality evolved in parallel to a new, vertically structured form of exclusion, for the exercise of these economic and political rights became linked to citizenship. Only citizens of the state were allowed to choose their profession freely, to settle wherever they wanted on the national territory, to hold property, to vote and stand for elections, to speak up in public and express their opinion freely. While at the beginning the concept of citizenship was based on a strictly territorial principle – still in the old tradition of quidquid est in territorio est de territorio – it became gradually linked to the principles of nationhood. In the early nineteenth century all inhabitants of a territory, no matter what their language or ethnic origin, were considered to be subjects of the state. Citizenship became extinguished in case of permanent emigration. In the 1850s this strictly territorial concept was replaced by a linguistic and ethnic one, and citizenship and nationality became synonymous, both in France (Withol de Wenden 1992) and in Prussia (Franz 1992). To be a citizen of a state meant belonging to its nation, a lifelong status difficult to change and to get rid of, as France, Germany, Britain14 and the United States all gradually included – albeit to varying degrees – elements of ius sanguinis in the legal definition of citizenship (Bos ¨ 1997: 139–57). From now on, those born, say, French (citizens) were supposed to be somehow profoundly French and to remain French even when they left France and settled permanently elsewhere. Their children, too, could choose to remain French; so profound was the link between person, citizenship and nationality, that membership status was made transferable to the next generation. In this manner the national community evolved into a ‘legal association’ (Rechtsgenossenschaft), to take up another concept coined by Max Weber (1985 (1922): 23). Equal treatment before the law became a privilege reserved for nationals. The legal discrimination between members of social estates was converted into institutionalised and legally enforced discrimination between citizens and aliens. The particularism of nationally defined citizenship replaced the enlightened universalism of human rights. This legal closure went hand in hand with a political one. The rulers of colonial empires saw themselves as standing at the top of a ladder that distinguished between less and more civilised peoples. This compelled them to help backward peoples in climbing the steps of evolution by implementing a benevolent policy of colonial incorporation. Christian kings 14

In the case of Britain, the shift from an imperial logic (everybody subject to the emperor is a citizen) to a national logic (every member of the nation is a citizen of the state) was not completed until the British Nationality Act of 1981 was passed.


59

and Muslim caliphs and sultans were by their noble birth predestined to execute God’s will on earth and to ensure that commoners could live a decent and peaceful life. Communist cadres ruled over vast empires by virtue of their vanguard role in the revolutionary transformation of the world. Unlike these ‘multicultural’ empires, the modern state apparatus rests on the principle of national representativity. In Western Europe, this was anticipated by the concept of religious representativity that characterised absolutist states (cuius regio, eius religio) (Schilling 1992; Calhoun 1997, ch. 4; cf. also Hastings 1997). While, under absolutism, the population had to adopt the religion of the ruler, in national states the rulers have, following the egalitarian doctrine of nationalism, to adapt to the people. Thus, access to state power is reserved for those who represent the national community (Modelski 1972: 9–108). The rule of Frenchspeaking lords over German-speaking peasants is now regarded as scandalous (Kappeler 1992). Bengali peasants should no longer be governed by British administrators. A ruling class of ‘ethnic others’ like Mamelukes or Janissaries lost all legitimacy. Russian party elites are to be replaced by a government of Lithuanian extraction. Like should rule over like.15 After Wilson launched the idea of national self-determination (Moynihan 1993, ch. 2), it spread around the globe and now forms the ideological, juridical and political backbone of the world order of states (Mayall 1990; Cassese 1995). The claim to national self-determination became closely intertwined with the ideal of democracy in the political thought of early nationalist movements (Hermet 1996; Calhoun 1997, ch. 4). More precisely, the nation defined the group within which democracy was supposed to flourish. The enlightened philosophers never asked how the boundaries between one democratic regime and another should be delineated or if there should be a single democratic world state. Hegel, for example, assumed that existing state borders would remain, without, however, giving much thought to the problem. Others saw nations as ‘natural’ bedfellows for democracy. Despite their disagreements on many other issues, this view was shared by Johann Gottfried Herder, John Stuart Mill and French revolutionaries, as the following quotations well illustrate. Nothing seems more obviously opposed to the purposes of government than the unnatural enlargement of states, the wild mixing together of different human species and nations under one scepter. (Herder 1968 (1784–91): 384)

15

On the principle of national representivity, see Geertz (1977: 249–53); Bendix (1979); Rothschild (1981: 11–16, 227–35); Kedourie (1988).

60


Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities . . . [because] the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with the those of nationalities. (Mill 1958 (1861): 230ff.) The monarchy had good reason to resemble the Tower of Babel . . . In a free people language must be one and the same for all. (Committee of Public Safety 1794, cited in Kohn 1967: 92)

Immediately after the Second World War, when a systematic sociology of nationalism gradually emerged, liberal scholars such as Hans Kohn still acknowledged the relationship that binds democracy to nationalism. After the devastating experiences of almost seventy years of nationalist wars, the relation was no longer taken for granted; there was a moral problem to be solved that Mill had not known. Kohn saved the purity of liberal democracy by distinguishing a good, Western nationalism which peacefully evolved together with democracy, from a bad, non-Western nationalism, a fellow of authoritarianism, ever inclined to violence (see discussion in Chatterjee 1986: 2ff.). Nowadays, the disconnection between nationalism and democracy has been completed. Nationalism is considered to be politically dangerous per se, and is seen as standing in total opposition to liberal, progressive democracy. This view has become common sense among Western scholars and policy-makers disgusted with the nationalist excesses in former Yugoslavia or the Caucasus. In line with this view, the cure recommended for countries torn apart by nationalist violence is a still stronger dose of democracy. The historic and systematic logic tying democracy to nationalism has thus become eradicated from our memories. Most current theories and histories of democracy, especially the treatises of political philosophers, neglect this link. They look at the inner dynamics of the evolving democratic polity and lose sight of what defined its boundaries – with a few exceptions such as Snyder’s (2000) recent book and an essay by the Georgian philosopher Ghia Nodia (1992). Parallel to the political closure along national lines, the role of the military apparatus is successively transformed (cf. Giddens 1995). In pre-modern empires the army was a governing tool in the hands of sultans, kings and princes, who could legitimately wield it both against the armies of other rulers and against rebellious subjects. The ethno-national composition of the troops therefore played no role whatsoever: by comparison with soldiers from home recruited by force, mercenaries from faraway countries were not considered less reliable. As soon as the plebs is transformed into the people and is given equal rights before the law, it is up to each and everyone to defend these rights


61

and the state’s territory against outside aggression. Foreign rule is, in a world of nation-states, the worst of all evils. It contradicts the principles of both national representativity of government and equality before the law. In order to prevent foreign rule, no price is too high to pay and every citizen is called upon to prevent it. It is therefore hardly surprising that universal conscription was first instituted during the French Revolution. It is worth quoting the relevant decree: Publions une grande vérité : la liberté est devenue créancière de tous les citoyens; les uns lui doivent leur industrie, les autres leur fortune, ceux-ci leurs conseils, ceux-là leurs bras; tous lui doivent le sang qui coule dans leurs veines. (quoted after Fuller 1977: 33)

Expressed in less arduous terms, democratic participation and equality before the law come in exchange for an obligation of loyalty whose extreme expression is the sacrifice of the citizen’s life for the independence of the state.16 Conversely, soldiers from other national backgrounds, and mercenaries, are now viewed with distrust since loyalty is now no longer perceived as a matter of fidelity to one’s lord or of good pay, but of national background. The fifth and final step towards the modern nation-state is the reorganisation of the mechanisms of solidarity. In the course of industrialisation, the nationalist ideal of the solidary community was contradicted by the growing discrepancies among social classes. The laissez-faire principle that now governed the economy, as opposed to the constraints and fiduciary obligations of an estate-dominated society, led to the impoverishment of the emerging working class. The political mobilisation of the proletariat was based on the ideal of a world revolution opposing the bourgeois model of the nation-state – perhaps the only serious alternative that has emerged in modern times. However, the integration of the labour movement into the national order of things was eventually achieved through the welfare state (Shalev 1983) that collectivised the risks of poverty, illness and old age by transferring them onto nation-state institutions (de Swan 1993). Following Claus Offe (1987), it should be emphasised that the rise of the welfare state cannot be explained as the cumulative result of individual strategies of risk minimisation, as argued by rational choice theory. Rather, the welfare state was inspired by the idea of a national community of solidarity and could not have evolved independently of the institutional framework of the nation-state. The welfare state transformed the nation into a real, 16

A detailed analysis of the connection between universal conscription and the development of democratic political systems is contained in Andreski (1968) and Dahl (1989: 245ff.).

62


not just an imagined, community of solidarity, a hyper-extended family where everybody cares for the well-being of everybody else. This transition was paralleled by a change in what I call the regime of mobility, i.e. the rules defining who is allowed to enter and settle on the state’s territory. On the one hand, citizens were given the right to choose their domicile wherever they wanted on the entire national territory. And they obtained the right to leave the country and return there at any time without risking the loss of their civil rights – a consequence of the nationalisation of citizenship laws alluded to earlier. On the other hand, aliens were gradually deprived of the free choice of residence within a country and of the right of free entry and exit. This nationalisation of the regime of mobility was rather late to develop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, no state control over migration existed and in most domains of life no discrimination between aliens and citizens could be made. The situation changed dramatically after the First World War when the walls separating one country from another were erected and made more and more robust – another historical fact that has largely disappeared from a popular consciousness that takes current liberalisation of migration regimes within Europe as a singular historical achievement. The deterioration of the status of immigrants is closely connected with the establishment of welfare institutions, as I will show in some detail in the Swiss case study. Control over who enters the territory is seen as mandatory, as soon as the territory becomes a space of obligatory solidarity – precisely because there is a difference between the national citizenry and those who have the right to make claims under the welfare system (cf. Bommes and Halfmann 1994). The process of domestic social integration and closure therefore reaches its zenith with the emergence of welfare institutions and of state control over migration. It entails a restructuring of the basic mechanisms of integration and exclusion. The legal, political, military and social mechanisms of inclusion that used to be organised on the basis of various criteria of belonging are now all adjusted to the principle of national membership, as illustrated in figure 1. Each step towards integration reinforces the political importance of ethno-national categories. It brings forth new categories of people declared aliens and excluded from the realms of the nation. The emergence of national identities is closely associated with that of ‘ethnic minorities’ (Williams 1989). The establishment of consistent models of citizenship runs parallel with the exclusion of vagrants and aliens. The democratisation and nationalisation of government delegitimises ‘foreign

63


Culture and identity Ethnic and religious minorities

Imagined community of the nation

Law

Aliens

Nationally defined citizens

Social security National community of solidarity

Immigrants

THE NATION Politics A government representing the national sovereign

Military National army

Foreign rulers

Mercenaries

Fig. 1. Five dimensions of closure.

rule’, and often leads to the expulsion of state elites belonging to ethnic groups other than the ‘national majority’. The nationalisation of the military tolls the knell of mercenary armies. With the nationalisation of the regime of mobility, the category of ‘foreign worker’ is created, and the legal status of immigrants is eroded (Noiriel 1991). If nation-state building is regarded as a crucial moment of modernisation, one is led to focus on what is usually excluded from ‘grand theories’ of functional differentiation, rationalisation, individualisation etc. The differentiation of functional subsystems was accompanied by a process of de-differentiation. Previously diverging forms of social integration were reorganised according to a single membership criterion. This is not just a projection of former small-scale modes of ‘segmentary differentiation’

64


(such as between village communities) onto a larger scale, as systems theory would have it. Rather, what we observe here is a qualitatively novel phenomenon, the rise of a new, totalising sort of community integrating all major inclusionary modes previously organised on different social levels. In pre-modern polities, village communities or guilds may have organised social solidarity. Legal provisions separated conquerors from conquered, nobles from commoners, peasants from townsmen. Political entities were based on religious distinctions (the Christian empire, the Kalifat) or, at lower levels, on realms of dependence and loyalty (a principality). Seen together, a complex web of criss-crossing definitions of belonging emerges. In the modern age, however, all major modes of inclusion and exclusion are bundled together around the principle of national membership. Defining the terms of legal, political and social inclusion and exclusion, the nation-state appears as modernity’s structuring principle par excellence. Multiple modes and waves of political modernisation The picture drawn so far still suffers from some of the major drawbacks of classical sociological theory, in being unilinear, quasi-teleological and Eurocentric. Evolution towards the modern nation-state, however, is not driven by a telos built into earlier social forms. Departures from the ideal model should not be described as delays, arrears, precocity or imperfections (see Tilly 1975). Rather, we should envisage several routes towards nation-state formation, resulting in a variety of ways to reorganise inclusion and exclusion along ethno-national lines. And we will then have to spell out the conditions under which nationalist cultural compromise and social closure along national lines, such as described so far, actually occur. Two variants of compromise and closure To identify these conditions, it is necessary to shift from a structural perspective to an analysis of process, that is, of the strategic interplay of groups of actors endowed with differing bargaining power. Social closure now has to be described as the result of a specific constellation of actors and their perceived interests. This will also allow to avoid the functionalist fallacy of taking the emergence of nationalism and the nation-state as the necessary correlate of industrialisation or the rise of the modern territorial state – leaving us wondering about how this ‘functional necessity’ ever translated into the perceptions and actions of nationalists and their followers.


65

According to the theory developed in the preceding chapter, a process of social closure results from a specific overlap of interests between different actors. In the case of nation-state formation, it may suffice to distinguish between only two categories of actors, the new state elite and the rest of the population. Why should nation-state formation be an attractive option for both? From the elite’s point of view, acting on behalf of the nation, the progress of the country and the welfare of its citizens allows them to expand further their realm of power. Indeed, the history of nation-state formation is also the history of a spectacular expansion of state power,17 for two reasons. First, the progressive modernisation of governing techniques, for example by observation and control via census, facilitates the bureaucratic penetration of vast territories (cf. Giddens 1995). On the other hand, this expansion of state power is made possible by the novel mode of legitimation. A state elite whose decisions are made ‘for the benefit of the people’ and are controlled via the democratic process, is more legitimated to interfere in the various domains of everyday life than a government acting ‘by the grace of God’.18 Through laws and regulations, nation-states and their elites nowadays influence all possible domains of private and public life; they decide whom we should not marry and who our heirs will be; in what colours we paint our houses; how many shareholders of joint-stock companies can be aliens; how much we pay for repairing different types of teeth; what utterances we can legitimately make in a pub. On the other hand, the population at large gets two advantages from the nation-state model. First, everybody can claim economic rights, political participation, equality before the law, predictable and non-arbitrary treatment by the state, free schooling and finally welfare benefits. The fully developed democratic constitutional state provides its citizenry with a measure of security, predictability and participation that ethnic communities, village associations or corporations can only guarantee to a certain degree and within their narrow limits (cf. Elwert 1998). Under the modern nation-state, these participatory rights are tied to nationally defined citizenship, thus establishing a difference between those who are privileged and those who are not. In the eyes of the population, the model of the nation-state provides access to a space free of discrimination and arbitrary state action. 17

18

See the nuanced analysis of Mann (1993, chs. 11–14), which surprisingly shows that the economic importance of government relative to the entire economy declined during the nineteenth century, while the absolute size showed enormous growth. See Chatterjee’s (1993, ch. 10) description of the expanding government of post-colonial India, acting for the sake of national development.

66


Add to this the gain in symbolic capital which the majority of the population experiences when ‘the people’ no longer means a primitive plebeian mass, to be kept at arm’s length from the centres of civilisation and power, but the ultimate source of political legitimacy and the well-spring of the nation’s culture. The rise from plebs to people provides a sense of dignity, a widely recognised, generally accepted and valued prestige that commoners, peasants and artisans would not even dream of in hierarchically legitimised empires (Greenfeld 1992). The levelling of former status differences and the prestige gain of ‘popular culture’ also implies a devaluation of what is perceived as alien to the nation, following the structural rationale of symbolic hierarchies: it would hardly be possible to move up from the lowest rung of the ladder if no one fills the gap at the bottom. To be proud in one’s Frenchness implies that the nations of Belgians, Germans, Spaniards etc. are somewhat less dignified, less historically relevant, less culturally rich. Nationalist discourse thus gives expression to the interests of a wide variety of social groups. It is for this reason that it could impose itself as cultural compromise accompanying social closure along national lines.19 However, when the exchange of political loyalty for participation, security and freedom fails, an encompassing national identity overarching ethnoregional distinctions is unlikely to emerge. The state elite practises ethnic (or regional, or religious) favouritism by granting equal treatment before the law, allowing the exercise of certain professions, opening channels of political participation only to members of their own group. I call this the ethnicisation of bureaucracy, as opposed to the national closure of the state apparatus in the course of the ideal-typical development described above. Under such circumstances, ethnic ties are reinforced and politicised, given that distribution struggles are being waged via ethnic clientelist networks. Modern state-building, instead of unbinding ethnic ties, strengthens these and gives them new political meaning. ‘The people’, on whose behalf and for whose benefit the elites of modern nation-states are meant to rule, becomes fragmented into different ethnic entities that vie with each other for control over the state. Like nation formation, the emergence of ethnic groups as communities of political solidarity results from a process of social closure accompanying modern state building. The ethnic variant of political modernisation depends on two conditions: first, it is to be expected when the state elites do not have sufficient 19

For a similar argument, see Breuilly (1993: 381–90). He sees nationalism as a major political force of the modern age, because it is able to mobilise different social groups, co-ordinate their political aspirations and interests and legitimise their seizure of state power.


67

political, legal and economic resources at their disposal to allow for a nondiscriminatory integration of the entire population. The national realm of solidarity will not become more attractive than that of the ethnic group, the village, the corporation or the tribe. States located at the periphery of the world system often cannot distribute enough collective goods to motivate the citizens to shift their expectations of solidarity to the central state and to adopt the nationalist discourse. In other words, the nationalist cultural compromise does not happen. Studying cases of ‘successful’ nation-building, for example the fusion of different ethnic and tribal identities (not the Kurdish one, to be sure) in the Turkish nation, yields some ideas on the conditions for achieving such a compromise. Ethnic and tribal units are being incorporated lastingly and extensively into clientelist systems, for example by serving as reservoirs of potential voters for national political parties. The central elites provide, via these clientelist channels, sufficient collective goods, such as legal security, opportunities for political participation or physical infrastructure, to dissolve ethnic particularisms over time. The structure of ethnic ties then comes to resemble that of clientelist dyads resting on loyalty obligations between individuals (cf. Weber Pazmino ˜ 1991). When ethnic groups dissolve in this fashion into a series of personal, negotiable relations, they are prevented from being politicised. While they do not disappear altogether from the map of identities, they do not play a crucial political role. A contrary development is to be expected when state elites include in their clientelist networks mainly persons from their own ethnic or regional background and exclude others, thus relegating them to ‘their own people’ for access to the collective goods of the modern state. Secondly, state formation often preceded the establishment of a democratic civil society with a differentiated network of associations and interest groups. The new state classes then use ethnic solidarity as a basis for mobilising a political following because, faute de mieux, they have to rely on existing political groupings, on networks of dependency and alliance often structured along ethnic or religious lines.20 In this way, the mosaic pieces of of pre-modern polities – millets, tribal confederacies, racial status groups – are transformed into categories directly relating to state power and legitimacy. However, the character and meaning of ethnicity undergoes a profound transformation during this process of politicisation. The pieces of the mosaic do not remain identical, for two reasons. 20

For a fuller treatment of the relation between trans-ethnic networks of civil society organisations and ethnic conflict, see the recent contribution by Varshney (2001). He essentially repeats the older argument of the stabilising effect of what the anthropological authors of the fifties used to call cross-cutting ties between ethnic communities.

68


First, ethnicity becomes a matter of central political importance. In pre-modern empires, ethnicity may have helped to define status groups (such as the castas of colonial Mexico) or the ruling elite (such as the Ottoman elite). But it never provided the principle on which the hierarchy itself was built (cf. Mann 1986). In modern polities, ethno-national representativity is an axiom of central importance for state organisation; violations of this axiom become an object for political scandal and strife. Ethnic membership is no longer a secondary distinction, but a central criterion for discriminating between the in- and the out-group. The borders between groups solidify; the categories are cleansed of pre-modern ambiguity and fluidity (Verdery 1994). Secondly, the level of ethnic distinctions that is politically important may change. Remember that ethnicity is structured into nested segments (cf. Keyes 1976): being a Kurmanci speaker (as opposed to a Sorani speaker), a Kurd (as opposed to an Arab), a Muslim (and not a Christian) and a civilised person (instead of a heathen) are compatible identities situated on different levels of segmentary opposition. Which level of ethnic distinctions becomes politically salient depends on the outcome of the political and symbolic fight among competing ways of organising boundaries of exclusion and inclusion. Previously insignificant ethnic boundaries may become central; former distinctions may be gradually forgotten; new ethnic categories can be invented and become rooted in everyday political practice. Let me give one example for illustration: while clans were the most relevant political units at the court of pre-modern Burundi, the categories of Hutu and Tutsi, previously of no political significance, became the fault lines along which the politicisation of ethnic difference proceeded in colonial and post-colonial times. By contrast, in Somalia, clans and confederations of clans underwent such politicisation. Thus, the neo-romantic school of ethnicity and nationalism is certainly right in emphasising that most ethnic distinctions have a long pre-modern history; but it is the relations of power and the associated possibilities for cultural compromising that determine which of these distinctions become politically relevant when the modern state comes on to the stage of history. So far, I have distinguished between two routes to modernity, leading either to the nationalisation or to the ethnicisation of state and society. These two routes also imply different structures of political competition and conflict. If social closure runs along ethnic lines, conflicts obey an ‘ethnic’ rationale as well, as will be demonstrated at length in the next chapter. State resources are then viewed as collective goods exclusively available to those belonging to the ‘right’ ethnic group. The unequal distribution of infrastructure projects over different regions, to give one


69

example here, is then perceived as ethnic discrimination, because the state apparatus is dominated by an ethnic group that excludes one’s own from its nationalist discourse. People are thus brought to rally on the basis of their ethnic membership and to launch a struggle to be recognised as a Staatsvolk in their own right, and to be represented by ‘their own people’ in the bureaucracy. The politicisation of ethnicity appears in a different guise in completely nationalised states, namely as xenophobic political movements, as will be shown in chapter 7. Here, the nation as a whole is perceived as a community of shared destiny and mutual solidarity. In times of crisis, groups whose social standing is threatened appeal to this institutionalised community of solidarity to ensure their future at the centre of society. The presence of ‘aliens’ becomes a threat, the ‘cultural distance’ separating immigrants or other minorities from the national majority is now perceived as insurmountable. Thus, xenophobia and racism are much more closely related to the central principles of political modernity as is acknowledged in the specialised social science literature or the public debate. Only when the members of the nation are seen as the legitimate owners of the collective goods of the modern state – such as citizenship rights, protection from arbitrary violence, access to social security etc. – can xenophobia gain public acceptance. While xenophobic discourse and violence may be constants of human history, only in modern times have they been directly linked to the central principles of political organisation. Xenophobia and racism are enfants naturels of the world order of nation-states, an extreme form of nationalism revealing in its exaggeration the very principles of communal solidarity on which modern societies are based. It is the homologue of ethnic conflicts in societies that have travelled along the other path of political modernisation. Let me use two anecdotes to illustrate what these two different routes through modernity involve in the everyday life of citizens. The first anecdote is a rather personal one. My father obtained Swiss citizenship in the 1960s. The children also become Swiss automatically. A few years ago I discovered, however, that the German bureaucrats had not taken away from us children our original citizenship, as required at the time by the Swiss naturalisation law. Out of the blue, at the age of thirty, I thus found myself again a German citizen, part of a state to which my only personal link was at that time, the memory of a rheinische grandmother. Soon afterwards, the General Consulate of Germany in Zurich invited me to fetch a new passport – a much-coveted European Union passport. It is the month of February, a sunny but extraordinarily cold and windy day. On the doorstep of the consulate adorned with an immense German

70


eagle, a long queue. Everyone is cold. I move behind a Turkish or Kurdish family. I am just about to take notice of a video camera installed above the entrance door when I hear a voice over the intercom: ‘Are you German?’ Heads turn; eyes bore into me. I feel targeted. I nod, not without hesitation. But the disembodied voice is definitely speaking to me since I am asked to enter. The mass of waiting people parts to let me through. Somewhat embarrassed I walk towards the door, which opens as if by magic. Once across the threshold and inside, where it is nice and warm, I realise that this step symbolised my belonging to a powerful community, a provider of rights and protection; it meant access to the enormous economic space of the European Union, even a right to social assistance and political participation – all these are resources that those left outside, shivering in the cold, cannot claim for themselves. To explain the research in which I am currently engaged to a Ghanaian friend, I used the example of the German consulate. He replied by recounting to me his own adventure at the embassy of Ghana in Berne. Let me explain immediately that my friend did not have to queue to enter his embassy, for Ghana hardly attracts many applicants because of its marginal position in the world system. Rather, his difficulties started once he was inside the building. He nearly failed to have his wife’s passport renewed because his family affairs were somewhat in disarray and because he lacked certain documents. My friend only obtained what he wanted at the end of several weeks, after having met with an employee of the embassy who happened to come from the same region and belonged, like himself and his wife, to the Fanti ethnic group. These two stories illustrate the differences between the two routes to political modernity: the form of institutionalised discrimination that a completely nationalised state indulges in when dealing with those whose passport is of a different colour, can be found in ethnicised states, although within the state borders rather than beyond them.21 Explaining the salience of the nation-state model: a hypothesis So far, my analysis has been limited to a description of the mechanisms of ethno-national closure that accompany modern state formation. There was no explicit discussion of the reasons why the nation-state has become the dominant political form of the modern age. What are the background conditions and causal mechanisms that explain the epochal success of the 21

This clearly appears from the fact that many of these countries lack a system for managing and controlling migratory flows, and experience a percentage of aliens among their resident population that would be inconceivable in European countries.


71

nation-state? Why are we no longer living in a world of empires, city states and tribes? These are extraordinarily difficult questions for anyone who wants to avoid teleological and functionalist reasoning of the type: what happened was necessary because it was the best response to functional necessity x or y and for arriving at the higher steps of evolution where we happen to stand today. Constellations of contingency, the possibility of reversal and devolution, as well as purposeful actions of individuals, have to be taken into consideration when we want to avoid functionalism and teleology. In what follows, I merely sketch some ideas and indicate what road would have to be followed in order to arrive at a non-teleological theory of the rise of the nation-state. This road has been travelled by a small, but significant number of scholars in the past, on whose work we can build. Perhaps a good starting point is Barrington Moore’s (1966) analysis of state formation in Russia, England, Japan, China and Germany. He accounts for the apparently different outcomes of the state-building experiences (the democracy and dictatorship of his book’s title) by referring to specific constellations of class alliances at the very moment the modern state-building project took off. However, his analysis is not geared towards explaining the rise of the nation-state per se. And it is still deeply coloured by methodological nationalism: there is no discussion why a state should become a national one. Our second stop on the road is Charles Tilly’s (1975) comparative volume on the rise of the European nation-state. From his concluding chapter, I should like to derive three important lessons that will lead us one step beyond Moore and towards a causal analysis of the rise of the nation-state. First, the European state-building experience shows that warfare played a central role in this process. More specifically, it was the competitive spiral of military mobilisation among different sovereign powers which made political centralisation, bureaucratic penetration and resource extraction through taxes and conscription worthwhile (cf. also Howard 1976).22 Secondly, this process of centralisation, penetration and resource extraction met the resistance of the population, and was only possible where the constellation of forces, the alliances between the state elite and different interest groups allowed for breaking this resistance. Granting 22

Recently, Spruyt (1994) has enlarged this proposition and cast it in evolutionary terms, showing that in the competition with other political forms such as city states, empires or city leagues, the sovereign state was more efficient in providing enforceable rules for economic and public life, co-ordinating political activities and building reliable alliances with other entities. All this made efficient taxing possible and enabled success in warmaking. This led, eventually, to the military defeat of competing political entities or to the diffusion of the state model through borrowing, learning and imitation.

72


rights and abolishing privileges was part of this politics of alliancebuilding. Thus, historical developments can hardly be described as the unfolding of a modern logic of participation and inclusion, such as most ex post theories would have it. Rather, inclusion and participation were elements in the state-builders’ efforts to build their armies, keep taxes coming in, form effective coalitions against their rivals, hold their nominal subordinates and allies in line, and fend off the threat of rebellion on the part of ordinary people. (Tilly 1975: 633)

Thirdly, contrary to much developmental and functionalist writing on nation-state building, the international power regime plays a central role in shaping the process. Once a system of nation-states that mutually recognised each other had developed out of the wars of the nineteenth century, the modern state became the dominant principle of political organisation mainly because the colonial powers imposed it on the rest of the globe. A child of its times, Tilly’s analysis still suffers from methodological nationalism: it takes for granted that political modernisation somehow implies nation-building and cultural homogenisation. He explains how state modernisation came about, but not why the state became a national one. This also remains a blind spot in later, similar approaches, for example in Anthony Giddens’s (1995) Nation-State and Violence, another well-known variant of the military-centralisation-taxing theory explaining the rise of the modern state (cf. A. Smith 1998: 75–8). A decade after Tilly, the second volume of Michael Mann’s (1993) monumental History of Power began to shed some light on this blind spot. Similar to Moore and Tilly, it is the constellation of actors and their relations of power that determine the course of institutional transformations. The story begins with the rise of the sovereign, military state that compromises with an emerging class of educated and literary petits bourgeois and finally is captured by the nationalist project developed by these new social forces. Thus, Mann observes two separate developments that become closely interlinked: on the one hand, the rise of the sovereign territorial state organised around the war and tax complex that has been the object of Tilly’s and Giddens’s approaches; on the other hand, the emergence of a new constellation of classes in which new demands on the state were formulated and new political ideologies elaborated. The conjuncture of both processes gives rise to the modern nation-state. The class of professionals, intellectuals or members of the minor clergy crystallised from the networks of literacy in vernacular languages produced by the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. These networks were gradually politicised because the state pressed for greater conscription, collected more taxes and forced war loans on the


73

propertied classes, in order to survive in the military competition between European sovereign states. In this way, the penetration of society by the sovereign state and growing demands on economic resources created a feeling of commonality in these circles, a preoccupation with the public sphere that had been absent in pre-modern politics of communal autonomy and self-governance. These proto-bourgeois networks, organised in associations and clubs, such as the ones in early modern Switzerland that will be extensively discussed later, were reinforced through commercialisation and capitalist expansion as well as through standardisation and law-making measures of the centralising state (ibid., ch. 4). Finally, the new social forces succeeded in radicalising the early modern programme of equality and freedom, in mobilising the masses with the cry to national self-determination and the abolition of privilege, and in taking over the sovereign state, transforming it into the modern nationstate. The link between democracy and citizenship on the one hand and national self-determination on the other was reinforced through the Napoleonic Wars. The allies for the causes of freedom had turned out to be oppressive conquerors. In much of central Europe and beyond, this constellation produced an enduring marriage between nationalist and democratic principles. I should like to generalise this part of Mann’s analysis and decontextualise it from the history of the rise and fall of the Napoleonic empire. The link between nationalism and democracy was established in other historical constellations too and would, so I should like to speculate, also have been established if Napoleon’s birthplace Ajaccio had been destroyed by an earthquake on 15 August 1769. What these different constellations have in common, however, is that they were emerging within a political framework where the principles of empires still prevailed. The egalitarianism of nationalist thought, replacing earlier hierarchical conceptions of society, bears a family resemblance with democratic ideals of equal participation in politics. Political practice and discourse mixed the claiming of freedom from ‘foreign’ rule with fighting for popular sovereignty, because both contradicted the principles of imperial rule. Overthrowing kings and lords (or, for that matter, Napoleons) more often than not meant opposing peoples with other ethnic backgrounds, speaking other languages, or ‘belonging’ to other nations. Thanks to this double logic of opposition, democracy and nationalism became the twin principles of modern nation-states. Most probably, the world would look different today if the first nation-states emerged from within a framework of tribal politics or of city states, where such a double logic would hardly have made any sense. It is now time to draw the different threads together and to present a more integrated picture by reformulating the messages of Tilly’s and

74


Mann’s work in the conceptual language developed so far and integrating them into the theoretical framework of this book. Building on one of the lessons learned from Tilly, I will distinguish two stages of the rise of the nation-state to global dominance: first, the appearance of the nationstate out of absolutism in Western Europe; secondly, the globalisation of the model through the break-up of empires and the reordering of the political landscape on a worldwide scale. This distinction is necessary because during the second stage new causal mechanisms will begin to work: already-existing nation-states influence as models and as impostors the formation of others. Describing nation-state formation as cultural compromise and social closure means explaining these developments with a change in the balance of power between different social groups. I will again distinguish among the distributions of political, economic and cultural capital. Following Tilly, Giddens and Mann, the distribution of political power shifted because wars multiplied and intensified. Wars forced the state-building elites to centralise the polity – abolishing communal self-government and indirect rule – and to penetrate society with the help of a new administrative apparatus and new techniques of observation and control. Both allowed for the extraction of the resources necessary for warfare – soldiers and money. However, the state-building elites of early modern times gradually became dependent on the emerging class of literate professionals and bureaucrats in order to enlarge and centralise state structures. The balance of power slowly turned in their favour. The rise of capitalism and commerce strengthened these new groups’ economic basis and their autonomy vis-à-vis those who controlled the regulated and segmented economies of the old regime. The spread of literacy in vernacular languages went hand in hand with these economic and political changes and turned the distribution of cultural capital in favour of the new social forces, since it undermined the monopoly on meaning-making of the clergy. The change in the distribution of political, economic and cultural capital finally resulted in a breakdown of the cultural compromise of the ancien régime (the concept of a legitimate hierarchy) and the corresponding modes of social closure (associated with the mosaic society of premodern times). The new social groups thus ‘captured’ a state whose political centralisation, administrative penetration and resource extraction could no longer be legitimised within the framework of the old cultural compromise. The modernisation of the state would continue under the new regime, since centralisation, penetration and control were now exercised in the name and for the benefit of the people, as the new cultural compromise now describes the social world.


75

In order to make this compromise attractive enough for large sections of the population to agree to it, the new state elite included them through the institutions of citizenship, democracy, the army and the welfare state, with corresponding forms of social closure developing. This has been discussed at length in preceding sections and needs no further elaboration here. The ‘independent variables’ in the whole process are thus political (intensity of warfare), economic (rise of commerce and capitalism) and cultural (spread of literacy in vernacular languages). Together, this constellation of forces leads to a change in the power balance and to a transformation of the cultural compromise and corresponding forms of social closure. The same causal mechanisms can be observed during the second stage of the spread of nation-states. Most of these new states were not heirs of absolutist regimes, but emerged out of the mosaic pieces of imperial polities: religiously defined millets in the case of the Ottoman empire, language-based regions and provinces in the case of Habsburg, administrative provinces in the case of the Spanish and British empires etc. But there were also some absolutist states transformed into nation-states, such as Japan and Thailand. Both emperors and absolutist kings, facing fierce competition for regional and world hegemony, tried to centralise the political system, penetrate society and extract the resources necessary for better armies. Modernising the economy through abolishing guilds and state monopolies, opening borders for trade and commerce, and spreading schools and literacy in order to educate more efficient administrators and officers was the aim of reformers such as Meiji in Japan, the Bourbons in Spain, the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Abdulhamid. They all had the non-intended effects, as we shall see in the chapters on Mexico and Iraq, of producing the class of literati and urban professionals that formed the nuclei of nationalist movements opposing centralisation, penetration and extraction – only to pursue these objectives further, once they had captured the state, in the name of ‘the people’. This second stage can be divided into several waves of nation-state formation. The first started with the demise of the Spanish empire; a second went from 1848 to 1880, with a number of foundations on nonimperial backgrounds (Germany, Italy and Japan) and some breakaways from the Ottoman empire; a much larger third wave came after the First War with the break-up of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, another after the Second War with the decolonisation of the Middle East as well as South and Southeast Asia, and a fifth during the 1960s, when the colonial empires broke apart in Africa and Asia. A sixth wave rolled over the realms of the Soviet and other communist empires during the 1990s. The six waves are clearly discernible in figure 2.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

1780--89

1800--09

1820--29

1821

1840--49

1860--69

1878

1880--89

1900--09

1918

1920--29

1940--49

1945-49

1960--69

1960

1980--89

1991


77

In this second stage, new causal mechanisms appear, arising from the influence of existing nation-states on the formation of new ones. This obviously becomes more important with each subsequent wave. Three such forces can be distinguished. First, there are important learning and imitation effects. The leaders of the second wave of nationalist movements disposed of models for inspiration – and for opposition, since these models were often perceived as ideological hegemonies, linked to expansionist imperial powers, to be broken by inventing new, original forms of nationalist thinking. Liah Greenfeld (1992) has, in her impressive historical comparison of the rise of nationalism in Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, emphasised the role of resentment and jealousy in later nationalist projects, such as the German and Russian ones which opposed and at the same time mirrored the earlier French and British examples. A large part of the literature on ‘postcolonialism’ (Chatterjee 1993), to shift to another epoch and region, deals with the apparent paradox – and, from a national perspective, discomfort – that latecoming nationalists had to cast their claims to independence in ideological forms which were derived from the very power centres against which the national project was directed. The creation of nation-states is facilitated through the possibility not only of ideological borrowing, but also of institutional copying. Today’s state-builders in Croatia, Kazakhstan or Eritrea can choose from a range of constitutions, citizenship laws, institutional designs for democracy and models for armies, and from a whole range of approaches to pension or health insurance schemes. This also holds true for earlier waves of nationstate formation, when such institutional transfers would not be promoted, as is the case today, by international organisations, development agencies, professional consultants and ‘constitutional engineers’, but by colonial officers backed by force. Post-colonial regimes took over modern forms of statehood from the colonial state, including its bureaucracies, courts Fig. 2. Waves of nation-state formation, 1780 to 1999. The island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific are not taken into account. Only states that have survived at least thirty years are included. New state foundations and subsequent splits into smaller entities are counted separately (the foundation of Czechoslovakia is counted separately from the independence of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, similarly with Pakistan and Bangladesh, Sweden and Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, Denmark and Iceland etc.). For Germany and Italy the dates of unification are taken as the foundations of modern nation-states. The following events are taken as crucial moments of transition: for Switzerland, the new constitution of 1848; for Japan, the Meiji restoration; for Canada and Ireland, the achievement of dominion status; for the republics of Central America, the break from Spain (thus disregarding the episode of the Central American Federation); for Spain, Bhutan, China, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iran, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal etc., the abolition of absolutist monarchies and the introduction of modern constitutions.

78


and armies. The result of two centuries of transfer and learning is the ‘institutional isomorphism’ of today’s states, a fairly well researched topic thanks to the efforts of Meyer and his associates (see Meyer et al. 1997). Secondly, we have to account for the ‘domino effects’ that the breakup of empires may entail. As soon as one national group achieves independence, the problem of ethnic minorities arises, for example the Albanian-speaking population of western Greece, the Bulgarian-speaking Macedonians in the north. In a nationalising state, these groups are relegated to the status of second-class citizens, sometimes even denaturalised and forced over the border. They are predisposed to become the diaspora spearheads of nationalist movements of their own groups. Their fate provides a major reason and justification for aspiring to independence, because only the creation of a proper nation-state protects a group from the fate of becoming a subjugated and humiliated minority in somebody else’s state (Helbling 1997). Thirdly and most importantly, from the declaration of Wilson’s fourteen points onwards, the international system has itself become a major promoter of the spread of the nation-state form. The League of Nations and later the United Nations, the OECD, NATO, the European Union etc. are clubs of nation-states that only accept similar entities as members – a considerable incentive to organise a state according to these principles, because only acceptance by the ‘inter-national’ community or, more tellingly, by the ‘family of nations’ would guarantee stability and continuity of the state form. Until recently, it even provided an almost absolute protection from outside interference in the name of ‘national sovereignty’. Mayall (1990) gives the best account of the nationalisation of the international system. He describes it as a compromise between the older principles of state sovereignty and the modern idea of national selfdetermination. The international system has acted both as a major incentive for nation-state formation and as a brake to the infinite multiplication of claims to nationhood and statehood.23 This brake has been released, I should like to add, every time a major imperial polity has been about to be dissolved, the most recent instance being the dissolution of the Soviet empire. The international system of the twentieth century thus imposed the nation-state form on transforming polities and at the same time froze their structure once this transformation was completed, preventing further disintegration along ethno-national lines. 23

Consider the claim of Minahan (1996) that there are an estimated 9,000 ‘stateless nations’ today. He provides the declarations of independence and information concerning the nationalist organisations of over 200 groups.


79

The three mechanisms – learning/imitation, domino and imposition – account for the self-reinforcing character of the spread of nation-states. Even where the initial conditions for the transformation of pre-modern polities into nation-states were absent, which was the case in a good many of the former colonies, the nation-state was the model to be pursued after the end of empire, whether power was taken over from a colonial elite fleeing a country they had left exploited and in disarray (such as in Congo) or whether the transition was prepared during decades of political engineering by the colonial powers (such as in Nigeria). During these different waves of nation-state formation and from one case to another, the values of the equation varied: the exact relations of power between the state elites and the rest of the population was never quite the same as in the first examples, and the sequence of social developments before arriving at independence varied a good deal too. Both together account, as I have maintained in the preceding section, for two different versions of the modern story of nation-state building.24 Where state capacities for equal penetration of the territory and an equal distribution of the benefits of modernity are matched by a pre-existing, well-organised civil society, providing a basis for political mobilisation and legitimacy, the experience of early modern nation-state building is repeated. The nationalisation of the state is completed; nation-building and state formation go hand in hand. Where states were too weak to overcome indirect rule and communal self-government, to penetrate society or override other bonds of loyalty and solidarity, and where a network of civil society organisation had not yet developed, ethnicity was quickly politicised and politics turned into a matter of ethnic justice. The timing of the two processes – state modernisation and the rise of civil society – and the values reached on each scale therefore explain whether the ethnicised or the fully nationalised versions of state formation prevails. Thus, with the help of the same two variables which account for the rise of the nation-state in the first place, we can also understand the difference between the two variants of the process. The fewer variables the better, the economy of thought and the aesthetics of simplicity tell us, and indeed the model presented so far is simple enough to be summarised diagrammatically (figure 3). 24

While a distinction between first and second stage and between two variants of nationstate formation is made, the differences between the various waves is not central to my argument. For a different view, see Tamás (1996), who believes that nineteenth-century ‘liberal nationalism’ contrasts fundamentally with contemporary ‘ethno-anarchism’, for example in the Balkans, because the latter does not include any civilising project of state-building and democratic inclusion.

80

Theoretical explorations Politics: Intensification of warfare

State centralisation, penetration and extraction Empires Changing balance of power Absolutist states

Rise of 'civil society'

Economics: Development of commerce and capitalism

Imposition, imitation and domino effects

Fully nationalised nation-states

Ethnicised nation-states

Culture: Spread of literacy in vernacular languages

Fig. 3. The origin and spread of nation-states: a hypothesis.

The various examples that will be discussed in the following chapters are situated at different points in this model. Switzerland evolved in the middle of the nineteenth century as part of the third cohort that made the transition to the modern nation-state, already heavily influenced by the French experience (learning effects) – and by Napoleon imposing modern forms of statehood. Thanks to the extraordinary strength and reach of a well-established network of civil society at the moment of nation-state formation, Switzerland has become an example of a fully nationalised state maintaining a considerable degree of ethnic heterogeneity. This nicely contradicts the hypothesis that ethno-cultural homogenisation is a functional necessity for economic modernisation as well as the neo-romantic prognosis that each ethnic group is a candidate for nationalist mobilisation. Mexico’s development antedated Switzerland’s, but shares the orientation towards the French model of nation-state building (learning). The Mexican pathway to political modernity led to the politicisation of ethnicity as soon as the Indian minorities, excluded from the modernising state, disposed of the educated and literate middle class that every (ethno-) nationalism rests on – again the products of state centralisation and penetration.


81

Iraq belongs to the fourth wave of nation-state formation and shares with Mexico the background of an imperial past. Here, state-building was oriented towards the German model. More importantly, it was a consequence of imposition from above rather than of conquest from below. Lacking both a strong state capable of centralisation and penetration as well as an established civil society, the politics of state-building proceeded along ethnic lines. Arab unity and Iraqi nationalism remained rather shallow formulae that did not gain the support of the majority of the non-Sunni or non-Arab population. A full comparative account of these differences and similarities, on the basis of the model developed in this chapter, is not what I am seeking. Already the choice of examples is not strategically adequate to illustrate this model. Switzerland is, after all, rather an exception to what I described as the usual path of nation-state formation, because she knew neither absolutist modernisers nor imperial overlords. Nor is it the aim of this book to explain the salience of the nation-state as such. Rather than comparative taxonomy or causal explanation, I want to understand the consequences of the dominance of the nation-state model. It is my aim to show that in all the different waves of nation-state formation (from Mexico in 1821 to Iraq in 1932) and despite all its different forms (from Swiss direct democracy to Iraqi totalitarian dictatorship), political modernisation leads to new forms of exclusions based on ethno-national principles. The remaining chapters will follow the two different routes through modernity that I have identified. Part 2 (chapters 4–6) is devoted to developments leading to the ethnicisation of the modern state. Chapter 4 offers a comparative overview of the dynamics of ethnic conflict, detailing and substantiating the general hypothesis put forward in this chapter. The two case studies on Mexico and Iraq follow. Part 3 describes the other route, ending in the complete nationalisation of the modern state. In this, one chapter analyses the rise of xenophobia and racism as the homologue to ethnic conflicts in fully nationalised states. The other specifies and exemplifies these developments with Swiss material.

Part II


4

Who owns the state? Ethnic conflicts after the end of empires

Since the fall of the Wall, ethno-nationalist conflicts have outweighed all other forms of political confrontation. The intransigence of ethnonationalist politics has led to catastrophe in Bosnia; on the southern borders of the former Soviet Union – in the Caucasus and in Tajikistan – a bushfire of separatist battles has been ignited; Sri Lanka finds no more respite than does Burma’s hinterland or southern Sudan. This list could easily be extended: since the 1950s, the number of ethnic conflicts has continued to increase (Gurr 1993a: 101), and in three-quarters of all wars worldwide between 1985 and 1992 ethno-nationalist factors predominated (Scherrer 1994a: 74). Gurr lists a total of forty-nine fields of ethno-political conflict for the 1993–4 period alone (Gurr 1994: 369–74), when the trend reached its peak. Why are these conflicts so frequent in our times? Most popular authors fall back on the very principles of nationalist thinking and thus naturalise the phenomena they seek to explain. They are being caught by the ideological ‘tyranny of the national’, to use Gerard Noiriel’s (1991) rather drastic term.1 Journalists join bestseller-producing sociologists such as Ulrich Beck (1997) in postulating a universal desire for cultural rootedness, accentuated under current conditions of globalisation and rapid social change. Globalisation makes people search for a secure national homestead and to react with an aggressive nationalism threatening existing state borders. One wonders, however, how earlier waves of ethnic conflict may be explained if ‘globalisation’ represents, according to these authors, a new world historical epoch of declining nation-states and ethno-cultural fragmentation. Another widely held view was most prominently expressed by the late Ernest Gellner (1983) and later by Tom Nairn (1993). It is also quite common, if rarely openly expressed, among Western foreign policymakers disenchanted with the prospects for preventing and settling ethnic conflicts in the East. The new states that issued from the former 1

Cf. also Bourdieu (1993); Wimmer and Glick Schiller (forthcoming).

85

86


Communist bloc are seen as being simply too heterogeneous in terms of ethnic or cultural diversity to be able to function as ‘normal’ nationstates. After the dismantling of the Iron Curtain, the hitherto ‘frozen’ drive for national self-assertion was liberated and will follow its natural course until homogeneous nation-states emerge (cf. Simpson 1994: 465). However, we now know that there is no clear causal pattern linking ethnic heterogeneity to violence.2 A country like Switzerland is the former Yugoslavia’s equal in every way in linguistic and cultural diversity, and has yet managed to avoid a pervasive politicisation of ethnicity, as we will see in the final chapter of this book. Another popular thesis is Samuel Huntington’s (1993) clash of civilisations replacing the competition between communism and capitalism during the Cold War. The thesis has received much attention despite its rather poor empirical performance. Ted Gurr (1994) has shown that the dividing lines in most of the conflicts since 1989 have not run parallel to the civilisational fault-lines that Huntington identified. It is not Orthodox versus non-Orthodox Christians, Confucians versus Christians, Muslims versus the rest, but rather Protestant versus Catholic in Northern Ireland, Muslim against Muslim in Iraq and Turkey etc.3 Other explanations, rarely made explicit but underlying much journalistic writing and debating, are inspired by popular versions of Völkerpsychologie. They point to the ‘violent basic character’ or to the ‘culture of violence’ of those peoples that recently have experienced extreme forms of ethno-nationalist conflict, especially in the ‘ever troublesome Balkans’ or in ‘tribalistic Africa’ (Staub 1989; cf. Bowman 1994). But the ‘culture of violence’ argument runs the risk of merely reproducing the mutual stereotyping between factions at war. Especially in situations 2

3

The dangers of the heterogeneity argument are also exposed by the fact that only 12 of 132 states (in the 1970s) could be seen as largely homogeneous, but by no means all remaining states have experienced ethnic conflict (Connor 1994: 29). Morrison and Stevenson, as well as Barrows, looked at the relations between cultural pluralism and political instability in a sample of thirty-three African countries. The two studies yielded diametrically opposed results. Both are cited by Nelson Kasfir (1979: 386). McRae (1983: 23f.) combined measures of civil strife with indices of the relative religious, racial and linguistic heterogeneity of ninety countries. He found no clear pattern of correlation. The debate has been recently revived with Vanhanen’s (1999) book in which he tries to establish, on the basis of new data, a linear correlation between ethnic heterogeneity and conflict. Bates (1999), however, arrives at a curvilinear relationship for a sample of African countries. Ted Gurr led a research team which gathered information on 227 politically mobilised ethnic groups and attempted to assess the causes of conflict by means of statistical methods. One of the results is that the degree of cultural difference clearly does not correlate significantly with the intensity of political conflicts (Gurr 1993b: 179). In subsequent footnotes I will relate the findings of this study which are most important to the argument presented here.

Who owns the state?

87

of pervasive violence, ethnic others are described as bloodthirsty barbarians barely controlling their cruel instincts. Such perceptions are the consequence of, not the cause for, conflict between minorities and majorities. Thus, both the general public and social scientists are at a loss to understand the spread of ethno-nationalist wars, which arose as if released from Pandora’s box (cf. also Brubaker 1998). Recently, however, we seem to have made some progress in understanding the ‘logic of the infernal machine’ (Kuper 1977: 19) working behind the events in Rwanda or Bosnia. Thanks to the works of Stanley Tambiah (1996), Paul Brass (1996) and Donald Horowitz (2001), it has become clear that ethnic violence is highly patterned. Contrary to appearance, riots and pogroms are driven by a ‘calculated passion’, directed at clearly defined targets in moments of uncertainty and confusion (Horowitz 2001). We still have a long road to go, however, when it comes to understanding how social and political constellations emerge that make such violence possible. While we know much more now about what happens in the eye of the cyclone, if a meteorological metaphor is allowed here, we still do not see clearly what general conditions produce such cyclones. Why did they appear in former Yugoslavia, but not in Switzerland; in Iraq, but not in Jordan? Why, returning to the starting point of this chapter, is ethnic violence so widespread now but was not twenty years ago? According to the model developed in the last chapter, the current wave is to be explained, like the previous waves of the sixties and the twenties of the twentieth century, by the creation of new nation-states and the corresponding changes in the principles of political legitimacy – from sacred, inclusive hierarchies legitimising the rule of kings, caliphs or Communist cadres to the egalitarian ideal of a state governed in the name of ‘the people’ in its threefold meaning of citizenry, nation and sovereign. When the state apparatus is weak and no strong civil society has yet developed, this shift will lead to a politicisation of ethnic difference and to an ethnicisation of political conflicts. It is the aim of this chapter to make this proposition plausible and to analyse in more detail the mechanisms at work. In the first section, I will briefly restate the general argument and give some empirical evidence for the supposed relation between nation-state formation and ethnic conflict. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to a step-by-step analysis of the dynamics of escalation of such conflict. In the second section, the emergence of ethno-nationalist movements opposing the project of state formation and nation-building will be analysed. If such movements spread, ethno-cultural distinctions are laden with conflictive significance and questions of ethnic membership and representation become politicised. In the third section, I will look at the factors

88


that enable such discourse of injustice to fall on fertile ground and thus lead to political closure along ethnic lines, replacing other modes of political contest and alliance. A fourth section will seek what determines escalation of such conflicts. For the sake of simplicity, I will disregard international influences here.4 ‘Like over like’ – political legitimacy in modern nation-states In empires and other pre-modern polities, ethnic distinctions may have played a certain role in defining the hierarchical strata that made up society. The balancing out of relationships between these estates may therefore have entailed some political mobilisation along ethnic lines (see, for example, Vail 1989). Thus, there is no zero hour for the politicisation of ethnic differences, as many authors, especially of the neo-romantic school discussed in the last chapter, have stressed (Armstrong 1982; A. Smith 1996). On the other hand, ethnic relations take on completely new dynamics within the sphere of a nation-state (Young 1976, ch. 3). This is shown by the development of some of the oldest European conflicts that are today classified as being of an ‘ethnic’ character. Safeguarding the autonomy and the privileges that the Spanish crown had once granted to the local communities of the Basque region becomes, as soon as the Spanish state is nationalised, the struggle of a ‘Basque people’ for a state of its own (Heiberg 1989, part 1). Similarly, the conflict in Northern Ireland originally developed within the framework of a medieval relationship between indigenous peasants and conquering overlords and their dependents; as soon as control over a modern nation-state was at stake, the dynamics and lines of conflict were realigned and the contesting groups became ‘ethno-religious’ (O’Sullivan 1986: 34–48; O’Day 1993). The relation between state-building and ethnic conflicts can also be illustrated by aggregated data. Africa south of the Sahara provides good examples, since most of the declarations of independence fall into the time-span where reliable data on the intensity of ethnic tensions are available. Figure 4 shows the change in the intensity of ethnic conflicts (based on Gurr 1993a: 106)5 as well as the number of declarations of independence and military coups (based on Nohlen 1987: 74f.). Without 4 5

See Shiels (1984); Boucher, Landis and Clark (1987); Ryan (1990); Heraclides (1991); Moynihan (1993). Carment (1994) gives an overview. The scales used are described in Gurr (1993a: 95); the index is based on a Guttman scale procedure.

Number of declarations of independence and military coups

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1945--49

1955--59

1960--64

Military coups

1965--69

Fig. 4. Ethnic conflicts and state-building in sub-Saharan Africa, 1945 to 1974.

Declarations of independence

1950--54

Peaceful protest

Violent protest

Rebellions

1970--74

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Change in the intensity of ethnic conflict

Number of declarations of independence

0

5

10

15

20

1950--54

1955--59

1960--64

1965--69

1970--74

1975--79

1980--84

1985--89

1990--94

1995--99

Fig. 5. Ethnic conflicts and state-building in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1945 to 1999.

1945--49

Non-violent conflicts

Rebellions

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Change in the intensity of ethnic conflict

Who owns the state?

91

anticipating too many of the findings of the coming sections, the figure can be interpreted as follows: in the decade before independence, incidents of rebellion as well as of violent and peaceful protests based on ethnic claims began to rise sharply in number. During the years immediately before independence, they became radicalised and more violent (peaceful forms being substituted by violent forms), reaching a peak after the establishment of the independent states. Within a further decade, many conflicts were suppressed by authoritarian regimes, indicated by the rising number of military coups and the declining intensity of ethnic strife. A similar pattern can be seen in the other world region where declarations of independence have been concentrated in a time-span for which aggregate data on ethnic conflicts are available. On the territory of the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe twenty-two new states were founded between 1991 and 1993. The ethnic tensions accompanying the shift to the nation-state model are again patterned in a similar way, as figure 5 shows.6 We see here some evidence, albeit still rather sketchy and indirect, for the propositions developed in the last chapter. When the state should, so to speak, be dyed by a nation’s colour and designate the ‘people’ in whose name it rules over its territory, a wholly new field of tension arises in which political groups form and the state exercises its power. Within this field the meaning of ethnic distinctions changes radically. As the graphs show, in many cases the new elites are not capable of marshalling enough support for their project of nation-building – which in most cases implicitly or explicitly consists in generalising their particular ethnos to the whole population and thus transforming it into the nation. A fight erupts over which ‘people’ the state should belong to, and social closure proceeds along many ethnic lines instead of one national line. Sometimes this contest for the control of the state escalates into ethno-nationalist civil wars, destroying much of whatever social and political cohesion there was. My task is now to determine under which conditions state-building leads to such an outcome. The politicisation of ethnic difference The single most important development is the fact that the new state’s bureaucracy is not representative of the whole population of the country, 6

The data on ethnic conflicts are again provided by Gurr’s research team. They were downloaded from the website of the Minorities at Risk Project (version MARv 99), Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland.

92


but takes on ethnic hues. To be sure, it is not the unequal representation of different ethnic groups in the state apparatus as such that leads to a politicisation of ethnic differences. Only when those in power favour their own ethnic groups to the cost of others is a fertile ground for the politicisation of ethnicity prepared. Two variants can be distinguished. When a majority population with a tradition of political centralisation takes over the apparatus, ethnicisation of the state and bureaucracy occurs automatically.7 In Argentina or Egypt, for instance, it was never debated whether Indian minorities in the pampas or Nubians should be candidates for the states’ nation. The new state classes automatically understood themselves to be Argentinians or Arabs and never really questioned in which nation’s name they exercised power. A similar effect can also be brought about by the introduction of federalism. For example, minority policies in the Soviet Union granted the titular nations preferential access to the bureaucratic-political apparatus of their republics (Roeder 1991; for Nigeria, see O’Connell 1967). In the newly independent countries, the state’s elite stress the fact that they are representatives of this majority ethnic group turned into the state’s nation, and try to show that they do indeed exercise power in the name and in the favour of this people. The minority groups at the peripheries of the state are not taken into consideration when policies of infrastructural development, educational reform, linguistic standardisation, growth promotion and wealth redistribution are designed, since they do not belong to the nation in whose name the state has now to act. Where conditions of majority and power are unclear, ethnicisation of the bureaucracy can occur via the formation of clientelist networks. This second variant is less self-evident and may need a more detailed analysis. A modern state opens up chances to legitimise governmental power which did not exist to the same extent in the courts of pre-modern empires owing to their lesser ability to penetrate the social fabric and control their territories. Modern states are more powerful and have new goods to offer their populations: equal treatment before the law, protection from arbitrary violence, political participation, jobs within a vastly expanding bureaucracy, infrastructure projects promoting the progress of the nation, import and export licenses in a controlled ‘national economy’, public contracts and so on. 7

These cases resemble three closely related types in Young’s (1976, ch. 3) much more sophisticated typology: the colonial states with historical personality, historical states affected by a colonial phase and traditional states. They are characterised by having a single, clearly dominant group and minorities, or a core culture, linked to central institutions, with various groups at the periphery.

Who owns the state?

93

In weak developing states, however, these modern goods cannot be spread equally over the entire population, simply because the state is not strong enough and does not have enough resources to make these accessible to everybody. Where only one freeway can be built on the entire territory, where tribunals cannot handle the mountains of cases they are responsible for, where there are resources only for one reasonably good university, where the police cannot possibly establish a well-staffed post in every neighbourhood of the capital, favouritism solves the problem. It also allows the new elite to create a group of followers and to secure their political support. In other words, the state and the economy8 are pervaded by clientelist relations, further weakening developing states by yielding their autonomy to interest groups (Migdal 1988). Neo-patrimonialism is the term political scientists have created to describe a situation where the state is captured by clientelist networks (Bratton and van de Walle 1994). If these networks form around ethnic solidarities, these gain new political significance.9 But why should civil servants give members of their own ethnic group preferential treatment10 rather than spread their favours over various groups? On the one hand, members of one’s own ethnic group are most likely to be given preference in terms of trust (see Cohen 1974) because according to their own self-understanding ethnic groups represent a kind of extended kinship group whose members are obligated to mutual aid.11 Most importantly, however, the new magistrates are expected to 8 9

10

11

On the politicisation of economic life through bureaucratic measures, see Anne O. Krueger’s (1974) well-known thesis of rent-seeking. Ethno-political conflicts are therefore most frequent and most intense in countries with low GNPs, as Gurr (1994: 359) has demonstrated. Furthermore, Grove’s (1978) crossnational study shows that in countries with high GNPs the income differences between ethnic groups are comparatively small – whatever the policies pursued by governments (affirmative action vs welfare state measures etc.). Unfortunately, I am not familiar with any study that yields direct evidence of this, with the exception of observations made in the minority republics of the former Soviet Union (Roeder 1991: 208), in Indonesia (Brown 1989: 54f.), in Nigeria’s first republic (Young 1976: 467f.), in Iraq (Batatu 1978: 1088ff.) and in Northern Ireland (Leyton 1975, cited in Banton 1983: 179). Grødeland, Miller and Koshechkina’s (2000) study of Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the most detailed research on the issue so far, is entirely based on subjective perceptions of discrimination. They report very widespread suspicion of ethnic discrimination but many fewer actually experienced instances of such discrimination. More is known about discriminating hiring practices in ethnically heterogeneous industrial countries (Banton 1983: 384f.). It can be assumed that ethnic discrimination in societies with large networks of ethnic patron–client relationships is much more marked than in the anonymous industrial workplaces in Western Europe, where comparable obligations of loyalty towards applicants do not exist (Hyden and Williams 1994). Compare here Keyes (1976), Brown (1994: 5–25) or Horowitz (1985, ch. 2) who, however, takes the family analogy rather too literally.

94


take care of ‘their own’ (Sithole 1986; Hyden and Williams 1994), now that the British, the Ottomans, or the Russians have left the place and government should be responsive to the demands of ‘the people’. For these reasons the formation of strategic groups within a bureaucracy12 is likely to occur along ethnic lines, and one observes a general compartmentalisation of institutions on communal grounds (for Nigeria, see Young 1976: 467ff.). This tendency is particularly marked where other, non-ethnic criteria for the selective awarding of modern state goods are lacking because a civil society consisting of parties, associations and other interest groups could not yet be established.13 The sequence of historical developments determines whether this is likely to be the case. Where the colonial state is transformed into a national one before such networks of literati, of learned societies, of bourgeois clubs emerge (van Amersfoort and van der Wusten 1981: 483f.), ethnicity is likely to be used by the political elites in the very process of post-colonial state-building (Enloe 1978). This was not the case in the Christian parts of the Philippines, for example (Young 1976, ch. 9; Geiger 1994). It happened, however, in many developing countries that inherited colonial bureaucracies, and also in the successor states to the former Soviet Union, explaining why the ethnicisation of bureaucracy there has become practically ubiquitous. It is interesting to observe that in the course of this process, pre-colonial clientelist systems of a trans-ethnic character also become rearranged along ethnic lines.14 For example, the pre-colonial kingdom of Burundi owed its stability to the fact that the clans of various ethnic groups were bound together in an all-embracing network of clientelist relationships balanced out by the king. Laely (1994: 28) shows how this clientelist pyramid was restratified: Tutsi elites, systematically promoted by the Belgian colonial administration, began during the course of state modernisation and bureaucratisation to favour members of their own ethnic group and to discriminate against the Hutu majority. The trans-ethnic clientelism among clans and lineages was replaced with an intra-ethnic clientelism among individuals. 12 13

14

On the concept of the strategic group, see Evers and Schiel (1988). Empirical support for this proposition can be found in Varshney’s analysis of ethnic violence between Hindus and Muslims in India. His comparision of different cities with similar demographic structures and broadly comparable socio-economic situations shows that high levels of ‘civic engagement’ between communal groups lead to low levels of violence between Muslims and Hindus. This is not an automatism, however, as is again shown by the example of Philippine political parties: they are structured as powerful, clientelist pyramids, whose buildingblocks originate from the most varied ethnic groups. On the integrative power of transethnic clientelism in Africa, see René Lemarchand (1972).

Who owns the state?

95

So far, I have discussed two variants of how the modern state becomes related to specific ethno-national groups. In the first variant, the state elite starts acting in the name of a ‘national majority’; in the other, less obvious case, the hidden mechanisms of ethnic clientelism produce an ethnic compartmentalisation of the state. In both variants, however, this alone does not lead to a pervasive politicisation of ethnicity. There have to be political entrepreneurs exposing these developments and denouncing them as illegitimate and unfair, and proposing a more just representation of ‘the people’ within the state’s administration. If everybody accepts the state of the state’s affairs, or remains silent about the monopolisation of the state by ‘ethnic others’, public political discourse may remain untouched by questions of ethnic representation and justice. Usually, it is the educated middle classes who are the most interested in the politics of ethnic representation and who suffer the most from ethnic preference politics, since they are the ones who look for employment in government services and state enterprises.15 I will now take a closer look at how such dissatisfied educated classes emerge, again distinguishing between the two variants – ethnically deeply divided societies and societies where a majority has been transformed into the state’s nation. In many ethnically heterogeneous societies, colonial practices of divide et impera gave rise to a disadvantaged educated elite. Members of early Christianised or English-speaking minorities were often given preference in colonial administrations, such as Ibo in Nigeria, Baganda in Uganda, Bengalis in East India, Ewe in Togo, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Sikhs in the British Indian Army and Tutsi in Burundi. During the post-colonial period, middle-class members of other ethnic groups, as latecomers to the struggle for positions within the state apparatus, were often left underrepresented. Basing their claims on the newly established ideal of democratic sovereignty and representation they begin to demand a bigger slice of the state pie. Similar debates can arise in societies divided into a ‘national majority’, usually with a tradition of political centralisation, and several smaller ethnic groups. As part of the nation-building project, the state aims at assimilating the ‘minorities’ through education and language training and thus realising the vision of a unified citizenry, nation and sovereign. Resulting from these endeavours, an educational elite of previously marginalised 15

Research in Trinidad, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the Ivory Coast has shown that at least three-quarters of all secondary-school students strive towards positions in civil service, while only a few envision future jobs as professionals or in the informal sector (Horowitz 1985: 114). This is hardly surprising considering the economic weakness of peripheral countries and the high risk involved in self-employment. According to other studies, ethnic prejudice is most clearly developed among members of those middle classes who have bureaucratic aspirations (Horowitz 1991: 140).

96


ethnic groups may emerge. It enters into direct competition with the established bureaucrats who close ranks, particularly during hard times (A. Smith 1979), and make ‘passing’ into the dominant group through assimilation difficult (cf. Rothschild 1981, ch. 5). The minority elite then begin to protest against discrimination and soon question the ethnonational basis of the nation-state or demand one of their own. The pan-Indian movement in Mexico (see chapter 5), the ethno-nationalist awakenings of the Oromo in Ethiopia (Scherrer 1994b), minorities in the Soviet republics (Roeder 1991) and Christian minority groups in southern Sudan (Gray 1971; Wirz 1982, ch. 2) are good examples of this process. The vast majority of modern ethno-nationalist movements are led by educated middle classes, as numerous studies in the tradition of the instrumentalist approach have emphasised.16 For they can formulate a discourse of protest which refers to the fundamental principles of the modern state: sovereignty of the people and representational justice. And, thanks to their organisational capabilities, they give a political movement the necessary impetus.17 The ethnicisation of political conflicts Less well known, or even systematically overlooked, especially by those taking the instrumentalist perspective, is that successful mobilisation also depends on grassroots support. Many examples show that the minority elite does not always succeed in winning over their co-ethnics to its goals and in generalising its view of the political world. When ethnic elites fail to mobilise their constituencies, their claims may be overlooked in the political arena of the newly established states. The ethnic question might never enter the agenda of ‘high politics’. In fact, history is full of failed, and therefore forgotten attempts at putting ethnicity at the centre of the political drama.18 In discussing the success or failure of ethnic mobilisations, perhaps a reminder is in order. Even when political leaders, warlords and other self-appointed representatives of minorities and majorities successfully 16

17 18

Particularly Rabushka and Shepsle (1972); Brass (1985, 1991); Vail (1989). Modernisation-theory approaches, which focus upon middle-class competition, are found in Bates (1974), Milne (1981) and Rothschild (1981). Other, more complex models that include middle-class competition as a central element are presented by Waldmann (1989) and especially by Anthony Smith (1979, 1984). Esman (1977) discusses the role of political entrepreneurs from the perspective of the theory of relative deprivation. See the so-called resource-mobilisation theory of social movements by John McCarthy and Mayer D. Zald (1977). See Cohen (1978: 396f.); Anonymous (1989); Macmillan (1989); Lanoue (1992).

Who owns the state?

97

mobilise their constituency, their followers never include the entire ethnic group. Sarajevo clearly shows that not all circles of society close ranks along ethnic lines even after the escalation of military conflict. Ethnic conflicts should not be conceived as confrontations between ethnic ‘groups’, but as conflicts where friends and foes are described in ethnic terms. We should be beware of ‘groupism’ in our analysis, as Rogers Brubaker (forthcoming) notes. On the other hand, it would be just as inappropriate to attribute intensification of ethnic conflicts to the manipulations of the political elite alone. The details of conflict escalation often show that many ordinary people define themselves as members of an ethno-national association of solidarity, declaring neighbours of other ethnic groups to be their personal enemies number one (Imhof 1996).19 This leads us to one of the most difficult issues in the analysis of ethnic conflicts (Kasfir 1979; Newman 1991): under what conditions can people who play no direct role in the struggle for bureaucratic posts and sinecures be mobilised for an ethno-nationalist project? Why do they contribute to the spread of conflict or sometimes, for example through their vote (Horowitz 1985, part 3), even give impetus to ethnicising political life? Explaining ethnic mobilisation: economic interests, primordial bonds, psychological needs or the power of ideology? Many answers to this question have been suggested. Some have speculated as to whether the universal desire for self-determination may explain why nationalist discourse often falls on fertile grounds (Varese 1983). Similar to the popular opinions discussed at the beginning of this chapter, this merely borrows from the ideology of nationalist movements without explaining how they come to be.20 Conversely – in a position rarely held today – others have referred to the false consciousness shown by the lower classes, who do not recognise their true interests and follow the siren song of ethnic activists instead.21 Yet four explanatory approaches deserve serious consideration and are discussed in the following.22 Some 19

20 21 22

See examples of massacres reported in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (no. 170, 23/24 July 1994), based upon information from the Bosnian Documentation Centre for War Crimes in Zenica; for escalation of violence in Burundi in 1988, see René Lemarchand (1994, ch. 7). See Elwert (1989b, chs. 1 and 2); Wimmer (1995d, ch. 7). Sklar (1967); D´ıaz-Polanco (1978); Kasfir (1979); Wimmer (1995d: 144–9). My classification of approaches differs from the ones most often found in the specialised literature (e.g. Cohen 1978; MacKay 1982; Bentley 1983, 1987; Young 1983; Horowitz 1985, part 2; A. Smith 1986a; Richmond 1987; G. Scott 1990). Usually a ‘primordial’ is distinguished from an ‘instrumentalist’ and an ‘internal colonialist’ approach. The distinction is somewhat arbitrary, since the person usually credited as having founded the ‘primordialist’ school, Clifford Geertz, is, in his original text of 1963, not a ‘primordialist’ at all, as Young (1983, note 27) remarks. Anyhow, my ‘interest-group approach’

98


have already been introduced in the last chapter, but will be more closely scrutinised here. (1) Most social scientists in the 1970s were convinced that mobilisation along ethnic-national lines could be successful where these lines separate socio-economic interest groups. Various forms of this approach can be found, depending on whether regions, fractions of classes or certain professional groups are seen as corresponding to such groups. Hechter (Hechter and Levi 1979) developed a much-discussed hypothesis, which derives from dependency theory. The process of uneven development experienced by dependent nations also leads, so the argument goes, to political and cultural hierarchisation of regions. Hierarchisation is particularly conflict-laden and high in tension when it places various ethnic groups in opposition to each other. According to a second variant of the interest-group argument, the world market for labour power has torn ethnic groups from the fabric of their traditional cultural environment and placed them in the ethnically segregated labour markets and slums of the fast-growing cities. In this way, class and sectoral interest groups coincide with ethnic communities. Ethnic conflicts are traced to intensified competitive group relations, to a breakdown in older patterns of segregated labour or housing markets.23 Finally, Edna Bonacich (1973) developed a model to explain why trading minorities are so often victims of ethnic violence:24 they are more competitive, because of their ethnic and family relations,25 and they therefore depress the general level of wages, leading to an outbreak of hostility. Why do these different interest groups not organise as labour unions, parties or regional associations based on non-cultural criteria? Abner Cohen’s (1974) answer to this question is that interest groups cannot always formally organise as such, either because this is not tolerated by the central power or because it runs contrary to basic cultural principles (for example in theocracies). In recent times, this argument has been formalised and systematised by economists seeking to explain the advantages of ethnic organisations by their low transaction costs (Wintrobe 1995).26

23 24 25

26

includes the ‘instrumentalist’ and the ‘internal colonialist’ theses; the social-psychologist approach adopted by Horowitz and Anthony D. Smith’s theory are usually classified as ‘primordialist’ (although Smith himself criticised the primordialist school frequently (for example, A. Smith 1986a)). Most of the literature on ethnic elites discussed in the first section would belong to the instrumentalist approach. Bonacich (1974); O’Sullivan (1986); Olzak and Nagel (1986); Olzak (1993). See also Zenner (1987). The usefulness of ethnic relations in trading and business is widely acknowledged today. See Janet T. Landa (1981); Ward and Jenkins (1984); Boissevain et al. (1990); Wintrobe (1995). See with regard to the explanation of ethnic violence, Brubaker and Laitin (1998: 437–41).

Who owns the state?

99

The empirical shortcomings of the interest-group approach are clear by now. It is, after all, rare that all members of a politically mobilised ethnic group find themselves in similar economic positions.27 More specifically, each of the variants above has its own empirical weaknesses: contrary to Hechter’s theory of ‘internal colonialism’, most secessionist movements originated in ethno-regions which would hardly be capable of survival or which – like the Slovak part of former Czechoslovakia – even profit economically from the hitherto common state.28 They strive for independence despite the considerable economic cost this would entail. Conversely, it is not, as claimed by Immanuel Wallerstein (1961: 88) and Peter Gourevitch (1979), always the more wealthy regions which tend towards secessionism.29 And not all economically privileged regions that have a negative balance sheet with respect to the central state develop secessionist desires (Horowitz 1985: 194).30 The automatism of the ‘trading minorities’ model is equally off the mark and fails to fit prominent examples: many trading minorities have lived long without difficulties in their ‘host’ countries, and they are not involved at all in many cases of ethnic conflict.31 Finally, conflicts over jobs or housing frequently disappear just as rapidly as they arise, and activists normally make no demands for change in the basic rules of politics.32 They are easily satisfied.33 Without support from an educated elite such movements apparently lack the political resources with which to form a long-term perspective and to mobilise that large part of one’s own ethnic group which does not see 27 28

29

30 31 32

33

For references regarding this point, see Bentley (1987: 40). Horowitz (1981: 194); compare also Mayall and Simpson (1992); for contemporary Russia, see Graham Smith (1996: 401ff.). For general critiques of Hechter’s model, see also Birch (1978), Page (1978), Brand (1985) and a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies (vol. 2, no. 3, 1979). Furthermore, in multi-ethnic states, secessionist movements trigger a kind of domino effect completely independent of economic cost-balance sheets of the individual group’s relation to the central state: the minorities within those regions fighting for independence attempt either to split from these regions in order to form their own state or to join that region in which their own ethnic group represents the majority. For statistical evidence of the ‘contagious effect’ of ethnic conflicts, see Gurr (1993b: 181). On the choice between secessionism and irredentism facing many ethnic groups, see Donald Horowitz (1985: 281–6; 1992); for further examples of secessionist chain reactions, see Horowitz (1985: 267–70, 278f.). Neither among the Ashanti in Ghana, the Buganda in Uganda, the Yoruba in western Nigeria, nor the German-speaking Swiss was this the case. See examples in Horowitz (1985: 113–24). A critical reformulation of the competition model is presented by Sarah Bélanger and Maurice Pinard (1991). I will endorse this critique on two points: first, ethnic conflicts have more to do with collective than individual goods. Secondly, the perception of illegitimate competition plays a crucial role; the degree of conflict in group relations cannot be derived from objective conditions of competition, as a thorough reading of Olzak’s (1993) most recent study shows (see chapter 7). Taylor (1987: 197ff.); see also examples in Olzak and Nagel (1986, part 1); Moodie (1992).

100


itself at the mercy of competition with other ethnic groups in the struggle for workplaces or customers.34 It seems that ethnic conflicts are less concerned with individual economic goods than with the political, legal and moral goods of the modern nation-state.35 (2) In a second explanatory approach, social psychological research plays an important role. Sherif ’s and Tajfel’s experiments demonstrated that even groups formed arbitrarily for experimental purposes begin to act as rivals. Because ethnic status is given at birth and thus cannot be changed, some see the struggle for group prestige in ethnically heterogeneous societies as inevitable as soon as uneven development fosters rivalry between ethno-regions. Donald Horowitz (1985), who has presented the most extensive and detailed comparative study of ethnic conflict to date, follows this line of argument, usually identified with a ‘primordialist’ approach. The question remains as to why just ethnic distinctions gain this political significance (Banton 1994). Moreover, ethnic categories usually show considerable flexibility, and attribution to an ethnic category does not prohibit passing to another group36 or situational redefinition.37 Social closure along ethnic lines and the concomitant transformation of ethnic categories into ethnic groups seems not to be the starting point, but rather the result of ethnic conflict. (3) In order to explain why ethnic identities can be mobilised for political ends, psychological theories hint at the need for ego stabilisation through group identification, which is especially felt in times of rapid social change.38 Psychological approaches do indeed help to understand the motives or unconscious dynamics behind the devaluation of others. 34

35

36 37 38

Compare also the results of a cross-national statistical analysis by Majstorovic (1995). According to Majstorovic, inequality of the overall income distribution clearly does not relate to the politicisation of ethnic differences. This finding stands in contrast to the thesis that ethnic conflicts are the outcome of a struggle over the distribution of individual goods. Ted Gurr’s statistical analysis of 227 ethnic groups in conflict shows that material inequalities between ethnic groups and economic discrimination had only very weak correlations with ethno-nationalist grievances and rebellions (Gurr 1993b). An empirical study addressing the difference between individual and collective goods in ethnic competition and conflict is provided by Bélanger and Pinard (1991). Compare also the criticism by Williams (1989: 405–13). See references in Elwert (1989: 13f.); Wimmer (1995a, chs. 3 and 4); Baumann (1996: 18). Mercier (1965); Moerman (1965); Wallerstein (1965); Barth (1969); Nagata (1974); Sharp and Boonzaier (1994). See the summary of older approaches in Le Vine and Campbell (1972, part 3) or, more recently, Rothschild (1981), Brown (1994) and Scheff (1994); the crisis management theorem appears also in Bentley (1987: 43–8), who presents it in Bourdieu’s terminology. Rothschild (1981, ch. 2) refers to a ‘Greshamite flow-gradient of stereotypes from social-role to ethnic image pattern’, that gives ethnic identities a superior attractiveness.

Who owns the state?

101

But they cannot explain how one group becomes classified as foreign and another group as one’s own. The boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ can be drawn around family, kinship, class, region, ethnic group, nation or ‘race’. Religion may provide better orientation during times of radical social change than ethnic nationalism. (4) In search of an explanation, some writers have found inspiration in the works of Foucault and other ‘post-structuralist’ philosophers. Connerton (1989), for example, argues that the impressions left on the senses by ritualised public events such as take place on national holidays are stored in an individual’s unconscious and cannot be the object of rational thinking. The discourse of national pride therefore takes on a quasi-natural plausibility, and people find it self-evident that they should defend their nation or ethnic group.39 More recently Anthony D. Smith (1992) also held that the ‘power of ideology’ plays a central role in explaining ethno-nationalist mobilisation: thanks to myths of being a chosen people and visions of a historical mission, ethnic communities can withstand pressure to assimilate for centuries. This explains the ease with which ethnic groups can be mobilised if they perceive the honour of the community or even its cultural survival to be at risk (A. Smith 1995b). As it seems to me, it is not enough to refer to the power of ethno-nationalist discourse without explaining why it proves effective under certain conditions and only for particular groups, while for other conditions and groups ethno-nationalist discourses fall on infertile ground. Looking at successful movements only conceals the fact that many ethnic communities did not experience a nationalist mobilisation, although there would be enough mythical material and pre-nationalist feelings of belonging available (see the examples given in the last chapter). Rather than pointing to myths and symbols of belonging, I would like to suggest that the success or failure of ethno-nationalist movements depends on the precise way in which state-building and social closure along ethnic and national lines interact (cf. Zubaida 1989). Struggling over collective goods According to this hypothesis, ethnic mobilisation and conflict is a consequence of distributing the collective goods of the modern state along ethnic lines: protection from arbitrary violence, equality before the law,

39

He fails, however, to explain the reasons for this hierarchy of appeal or to give empirical evidence for his proposition. Compare also Stack (1986) and Black (1988), who presents a socialisation-theory view; Alonso (1994: 382–90) reviews recent literature from the perspective of cultural constructivism.

102


political representation, social solidarity, economic infrastructure and the symbols of independence and state power. Ethnic constituencies can be mobilised by disadvantaged elites when the state is ethnicised in such a way as to have direct consequences for larger sections of the population: for farmers and craftsmen, small-scale entrepreneurs and workers, when applying for credit, gaining permits, legalising ownership of a piece of land or taking an examination to enter higher education. All involve considerable difficulties when civil servants systematically favour their co-ethnics and only a few of ‘one’s own people’ sit within the apparatus. That ethnic discrimination matters and is perceived as an important reason for ethnic protest and contestation, has been shown by several research projects.40 Prior to the first riots in Sri Lanka, to give one example, many Sinhalese were convinced that Tamil government employees would specially earmark documents of ‘their own people’ so that their requests would be handled with higher priority.41 These concerns about ethnic discrimination and preference are aggravated by the fact that modern states are greatly increasing their eagerness and capacity to interfere in the everyday life of their citizens. Indirect rule through local and regional power-holders, the usual power technique of empires, is replaced by direct administration. Trade and production are now administered closely in order to mobilise the resources necessary for ‘nation-building’. Local educational systems become subjected to harmonisation and standardisation. New and nationwide institutions and laws replace traditional courts and other mechanisms of conflict resolution. Dealings with this expanding bureaucracy are complicated when communication must take place in a foreign language or when use of one’s own language is even prohibited by the nationalising state – as, for example, until recently, the use of Kurdish in Turkey. The language issue very frequently joins the interests of the educated middle classes – whose chances of advancing within the civil services are directly dependent upon the choice of official idioms – to the interests of broader segments of the population. Thus, resources and services dispensed by an ethnicised bureaucracy do not appear to be public benefits available to all, but rather collective goods42 attainable only by those who belong to the ‘proper’ ethnic group. 40 41 42

Horowitz (1985: 194); Hyden and Williams (1994); Grødeland, Miller and Koshechkina (2000). Horowitz (1985: 194), also including references to relevant literature on Malaysia and Nigeria. In strict economic terminology it would probably be more correct to speak of club goods (Buchanan 1965; Sandler and Tschirkart 1980), i.e. goods that are only available to

Who owns the state?

103

Competition for state resources is seen as a matter concerning not just individuals or associations of shared interests but rather whole ethnic groups.43 The boundaries between them harden, and multiple identities become increasingly reduced to a single ethnic dimension.44 Not until the final stage of this process of closure are ethnic categories effectively transformed into political groups of binding loyalty.45 The role of the modern state in the politics of ethnic closure is also shown by examples in which smaller units began to form ethnic groups according to colonial district or other administrative boundaries – in this way often corresponding to the categories of colonial ethnographers (Geertz 1963).46 Many processes of ethnogenesis actually followed the divisions of ethnicised bureaucracy.47

43

44

45

46

47

those who have contributed to their production. In the case of the collective goods of the state, the ‘contribution’ of dominant ethnic groups consists of their sufferings during the struggle for independence and in their efforts at state-building in general; they are thus not exclusively of an economic character, as in Congleton’s (1995) analysis (cf. Williams 1989). It is precisely this effect that active preferential politics of a state bureaucracy can have as well (compare, for example, Nevitte and Kennedy 1986). Very often these policies initially lead to the mobilisation of the excluded or preferred groups, as for example the Ladino movement in Chicago has shown (Padilla 1986). Compare also Nagel (1986) who seeks to derive ethnic mobilisation generally from the bureaucratically administrated structure of political opportunities – a concept which in this form is perhaps too simplistic, as will be seen in the following. The hypothesis that group competition reinforces dividing lines while individual competition weakens them stands at the centre of Michael Banton’s book (1983). This can be expanded as follows: as soon as competition can be regulated politically, politically expedient group membership becomes relevant, and ethnic divisions become reinforced. This thesis is again corroborated by Gurr’s statistical research: violent political conflict (rebellion) is correlated with the political-bureaucratic subordination of an ethnic group, although the direct connection is only weakly significant. Yet active political discrimination against an ethnic group is detrimental to a rebellion (Gurr 1993a: 28); this is probably due to the costs of repression which would be incurred in such a situation. See, for instance, Rajah (1990) on the Karen, in whose ethnogenesis, however, missionaries played the decisive role; on the Bangala, Mongo and others, see Young (1965: 242–52); on the Yoruba, Peel (1989); on the Tsonga, Harries (1989); on Uganda, Kasfir (1976: 98ff.); on Nigeria, Melson and Wolpe (1971: 22–4); on southern Africa, Vail (1989); on the emergence of the ‘Chicanos’, Padilla (1986); on the adoption of the categories indio and ind´ıgena in Mexico and Guatemala, see the following chapter. For other examples of ethnogenesis, see La Fontaine (1969); Hannan (1979); Horowitz (1985: 64ff); Roosens (1989). For a failed attempt at creating ethnic solidarity on the basis of administrative districts, see the example of the Ciskei (Anonymous 1989). Here it can be noted that usually several ethnic identities are structured, as relational concepts of descent, in a segmentary hierarchy (see Keyes 1976). The question as to which of these simultaneously given levels of ethnic divisions will gain political significance also depends upon the structure of administrative-political processes. For example, at the time ethnic divisions first became charged with conflict in Uganda, most ethnic groups in the north joined together as ‘Northerners’ in opposition to the Buganda, who controlled the state apparatus left behind by the British (Kasfir 1976). Later, when this coalition of northern groups had succeeded in grasping power, the ethnic differences among them became politically salient.

104


It is hoped that this discussion has substantiated one of the central hypotheses of this book: that the formation of ethnic groups is comparable to establishing national communities – with the crucial difference that the ethnicisation of bureaucracy prevented a particular ethnos to be generalised, as in fully nationalised states. Ethnic favouritism was more likely to develop where the nation-state remained poor in political power and resources and where it emerged before a strong civil society could take roots. The state elites were neither sufficiently independent from the surrounding social forces nor sufficiently rich in resources to be able to offer social security, legal protection and welfare for all citizens independently of their ethnic background. Only this would have allowed them to transfer their expectations of solidarity to the emerging state and to enter into a nationalist culture compromise. Thus, the once much-discussed nation-building in weak, peripheral states had little chance of going beyond the euphoric conjuration of national unity during the struggle for independence and immediately following its achievement (for Zimbabwe, see Sithole 1980; for Guatemala, C. Smith 1990). Instead, the ethnicisation of the state quickly resulted in the transformation of many ethnic categories into groups of political loyalty, instead of one national entity. Once ethnic identity and political interests bind together in this manner, the public sphere becomes a battlefield for competing ethno-nationalist demands. Bitter struggle takes place over who may speak his own language and whose emblems will appear on the national flag, because these are signs indicating ‘ownership’ of the state (Denich 1994). Who pays the costs? However, there is another aspect in the process of state-building that leads to social closure along ethnic lines and thus reinforces the ethnicisation of political conflicts.48 Up to now, the state has been described as a gigantic dairy cow; fighting over its milk is the preoccupation of the various elite factions in a bureaucracy and their ethnic clientele. But – in a phrase coined by a Basque nationalist – the cow grazes in one field but has her udder in another. The resources of a state are not only distributed but 48

Perhaps it should be mentioned that for reasons of simplicity, I have restricted myself here to those aspects of the mobilisation of ethnic groups which stand in direct relation to ethnic categories. In many conflicts led in the name of ethnic or national sovereignty, political loyalties of another order do indeed play a significant role. Tribal obligations of support, to give an example, are an important factor in the Kurdish movement of northern Iraq, as will be shown in chapter 6; Shan princes can use the allegiance dependent farmers owe them as political and military capital in the war against Burmese central authority (Brown 1994, ch. 2).

Who owns the state?

105

must also be collected. For the broad masses of a population, unequal distribution of the costs of expanding state activities frequently plays a more important role than distribution of the gains. Costs include taxes paid by a particular region, which can be disproportionately high in relation to governmental expenditures profiting that region. Raw materials which are extracted by the state may also be perceived as costs, when locals are deprived of their use; the same holds for land that, in the course of governmental resettlement projects, is lost to outsiders. However, regional distribution of state costs has, at least in principle, nothing to do with ethnic distinctions. We have already seen that political dynamics cannot be predicted from the objective balance sheet of relations between regions and the central state. State costs only become the fuel for ethnic conflicts if they appear to profit ‘others’, because the state ‘belongs’ to another ethnic group which alone enjoys its advantages (Young 1976: 522f.). Conflicts over distributional issues are therefore more apt to be reinterpreted as ethnic conflicts if the state elite engages in a nationalist discourse, which excludes one’s own group from the realms of the national ‘we’ – if, in other words, an encompassing nationalist culture compromise did not emerge. In some cases, there is a long history of such distributional conflicts between the central state and its regions, dating from the expansion of imperial or absolutist states into their hinterland and from the imposition of new taxes. Confronting expanding national states, these histories can be remembered and the corresponding stereotypes of the enemy be revived. Historical memories indeed play an important role in ethnic mobilisation.49 The more intense competition over state resources becomes and the more the situation culminates in a general crisis, the more conflict definitions seem to come under the influence of such historical patterns of defining the ethnic ‘other’ (Imhof 1993). It is at this precise point in the process that the long memory of an ethnie’s history – the favourite subject of an entire research tradition – helps indeed to kindle the fire of ethno-national conflict. The example of Mindanao illustrates this point. From the beginning of the twentieth century, Christian farmers migrated to this island divided between Muslim sultanates and non-Muslim tribes. In the 1950s and 1960s this migration was promoted and organised on a large scale by the government. The original inhabitants – whether Christians, Muslims or ‘animists’ – defended themselves, often in concert, against the intruders. At the beginning of the 1970s, however, perceptions of the conflict and the corresponding alliances changed. No longer was this a matter of 49

See A. Smith (1986b: 30f., 37–41); Atran (1990); Denich (1994).

106


individual land ownership. Rather those involved saw themselves as fighting in a new round of a centuries-old religious war – the struggle of small Muslim states against the Spanish and their heirs, the Christian state of the Philippines (Geiger 1994, based on George 1980). For some groups, the struggle over the state becomes a struggle for survival against the state. This is true for ethnies in whose ancestral territories raw materials are discovered, dams are built or settlement projects carried out. As in the case of Mindanao, tribal groups frequently inhabit these areas.50 In the eyes of the majority population, peoples of the hinterland stick like a thorn of primitiveness in the body of the nation (compare here, on Turkey, Mowe ¨ 1994). To strengthen national self-consciousness, it thus seems legitimate and virtually necessary to subdue ‘the barbarians’, to fill the ‘cultural vacuum’ (Wai 1979: 73), to declare their lands as state property and to populate them with one’s own people. Non-national ‘others’ become the victims of politics, which may be appropriately called ‘state terrorism’ (Harff and Gurr 1989; van den Berghe 1990). Ethnic groups with warfaring traditions are more apt to defend themselves against such policies than are groups that normally react to conflict by withdrawing to more remote regions (see Geiger 1994). West Papua serves as an example of such a region of conflict where tribes attempt to defend themselves against Javanese settlers. In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, various groups speaking Tibeto-Burman languages led a fight against the superior strength of Bengali settlers and troops (IWGIA 1988). Similar situations can be observed in Assam (Paul 1989) or Tripura (Bhattacharjee 1989). More often than not, human rights organisations in the West are the only ones who take notice of genocide and ethnocide. The logic of escalation We have seen how and why in resource-poor countries with weak civil societies, nation-state formation leads to a politicisation of ethnicity and to a process of political closure along ethnic lines. In such a tense environment, small groups of extremists can stir up conflicts and sustain them for longer periods,51 thanks to what one scholar has called the ethnic 50

51

According to Gurr’s analysis often cited above, expanding state apparatuses correlate positively with the frequency of violent uprisings of indigenous groups and ethnonationalists, and correlate negatively with peaceful forms of protest (Gurr 1993b: 183–5). Both the self-evidence of established concepts of the enemy as well as the representativeness of violence explain the extraordinary persistence and durability of inter-ethnic conflicts and are formidable obstacles to their resolution. In Gurr’s analysis of 227 politically

Who owns the state?

107

representativeness of violence:52 when friend–enemy perceptions are polarised along ethnic lines, violent acts can be aimed at any member of an ethnic group. All members thus become potential victims, and the actual victim represents them all. Fortunately, however, the politicisation of ethnicity and the ethnicisation of political conflicts do not inevitably lead to a warlike escalation even when terrorist provocations are aiming at exactly this.53 Neither in Thailand nor the Ivory Coast nor in Switzerland’s Jura conflict did sporadic terrorist violence result in a civil war such as those experienced in Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Sudan. Our already long chain of argumentation must thus be extended with some further considerations. In order to explain when ethnic tension can rip apart all cross-cutting ties (cf. Kuper 1977), the nature of the political system and its reactions to the emergence of ethnic conflicts will now be examined (Young 1976; Jalali and Lipset 1992/3: 597ff.). The structure of this system should itself be interpreted as the product of historical struggles, which means that the outcome of past conflicts determines current reactions to political tensions within the ethnic context. Thus, these reactions cannot be separated unambiguously from the politicisation of ethnic distinctions, because the ethnicisation of bureaucracy, as discussed above, is of course a political process in itself and forms part of the structure of incentives to which ethnic entrepreneurs and their followers react. But political institutions and political processes vary independently of one another and can thus be considered separately. I shall distinguish first of all between formally democratic and authoritarian variants and examine both with regard to their capacity to resolve political tensions resulting from ethno-nationalist mobilisations. According to some of the leading specialists in the field, ethnic conflicts escalate most in a pluralistic, multi-party system with first-past-thepost elections.54 A democratic party system quickly becomes reorganised

52

53 54

mobilised ethnic groups, the strongest statistical correlation shows that groups already mobilised and involved in conflict in the 1970s were still in a similar situation in the 1980s (Gurr 1993b: 182, 186). The concept is taken from Frank Wright (1987), who developed it with reference to the conflict in Northern Ireland. Leo Kuper (1977) analyses the mechanisms whereby the harmful and dangerous elements drive out those which would keep the conflict within bounds. Anthony Smith (1981) explores on a more general level the effects that wars have on ethnic solidarity. For an overview of different approaches to ethnic violence, see Brubaker and Laitin (1998). Compare here Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle (1972) and Horowitz (1985, ch. 7). This contention appears to contradict the results of Gurr’s statistical analysis, according to which a high degree of democratisation correlates with peaceful forms of resolving ethnic conflicts (Gurr 1993b: 183f.). Furthermore, in stable, democratic systems, peaceful

108


along ethnic lines as soon as ethnic distinctions, for reasons discussed in the previous sections, gain paramount political importance. Under such conditions it is rewarding for politicians to found parties which appeal exclusively to the solidarity and shared interests of an ethnic group and demand their ‘fair’ representation in the framework of state institutions. Because the criterion for voting decisions is much clearer for ethnic parties than for parties representing a certain political conviction, sure votes can be gained with little exertion when inter-ethnic relations are strained (Horowitz 1985, ch. 7). If a successful ethnic mass party appears on the political scene, other parties reorganise themselves, in a type of chain reaction, according to ethnic lines. This can be seen clearly in the case of Trinidad. Following independence, a first mass party was formed under the banner of a left-wing nationalist programme. The party was chaired by a Creole but also had some Indian representatives of the urban intelligentsia. The party won the first parliamentary election, as it gained the majority of city votes. An opposition party, also ethnically mixed, won the next election, thanks to rural support. However, this party soon broke apart along ethnic lines, because it became clear that its success was due mainly to the virtually unanimous block of Indian votes. These voters viewed the opposing party as Creole, and they would not have approved concessions to Creole members of their own party’s leadership. Thus Indian party leaders decided to cleanse their ranks of Creoles (ibid.: 312–15). A similar process of the ethnicisation of the party system could be observed in Nigeria before independence (O’Connell 1967; Young 1976: 289–95). According to Horowitz (1985, ch. 8), in an ethnic party system of this kind, political positions very often become radicalised.55 In non-ethnic

55

protest seems to be more intensive. However, Gurr’s sample also contains many Western democracies, which for reasons to be discussed below, are better able to resolve conflict by means of redistribution and decentralisation. Furthermore, Gurr shows that democratisation in the South between the years 1975 and 1986 had the effect – when case examples are studied one-by-one (ibid.: 184f., 187) – of intensifying conflicts and frequently ended in reauthoritarisation of the political system (ibid.: 184f.). The same holds true for ethno-political conflicts in the 1990s, as Gurr’s (1994: 362) new data and analysis show. Snyder’s (2000) book on the relation between democratisation and ethno-nationalist violence confirms that the instability of mass politics in democratising polities can lead to nationalist mobilisations by endangered elites and corresponding counter-mobilisations and violence. Paul Brass (1991, ch. 9) believes, however – in contrast to Rabushka and Shepsle (1972) and Horowitz (1985) – that pluralistic party systems with maximum party competition do not necessarily heighten tensions, as sooner or later even majority ethnic groups split into several competing parties, which makes coalitions necessary, so that finally non-ethnic party alliances arise. While this may be valid in the case of India, where there is an impressive diversity of groups and subgroups and where a strong national non-ethnic party can therefore act as

Who owns the state?

109

party systems, simply speaking, politicians must mainly court the floating voters in the middle of the political opinion spectrum and therefore move away from extremes. In clientelist party systems, one campaigns with diffuse promises to gain the support of voters who are flexible in their choice of patrons.56 An ethnic party, in contrast, seeks its support only within a clearly defined segment of the population, because as ethnic tensions increase, group membership of the individual is hardly subject to debate any more. For this reason, it is worthwhile for ethnic party leaders to take radical positions in order to forestall competition over representation of ‘true’ group interests; moderate votes in an ethnically divided electorate are secure in any case. When the demographic distribution of power is clear and political competition is open, the political subordination of minorities is, after all, permanently fixed. Change can be brought about only through means of force (ibid.: 342–9). In Nigeria, such ethnicisation of the political scene and, after several coups, an everclearer polarisation of political positions resulted in the outbreak of a bloody secessionist war (Diamond 1988). In Burundi as well, elections at the beginning of the 1960s led to rapid ethnicisation of the party system and to the takeover of power by the threatened minority elite (Laely 1994). The introduction of multi-party elections in Estonia resulted in the positions of the parties leaning more and more towards that of the radical nationalists and the denial of citizenship status to people of Russian origin (Metcalf 1996). But it would be simplistic to say that the institution of public voting alone was responsible for such developments (see van Amersfoort and van der Wusten 1981). For under certain conditions, a grand coalition of elites of differing ethnic origins can be formed which negotiates a stable institutional compromise.57 Thanks to ethnic quotas in government and bureaucracy, reciprocal affording of veto rights and regional autonomy, inter-ethnic tension can be appeased and escalation avoided despite the holding of elections. Frequently the most important ethnic groups are represented through their own parties, and any disagreements which develop are dealt with and negotiated upon by party leaders. The common interests of the elite cartel thus prevent escalation of conflicts. This form

56 57

political glue (Young 1976: 308–26), experiences in other countries such as Sri Lanka, Rwanda or Nigeria speak a different language. However, there certainly are cases of small countries like Trinidad and Tobago, where a pluralistic and largely ethnicised party system does not lead to radicalisation of positions, despite the absence of a consociational regime (compare also van Amersfoort and van der Wusten 1981). Much further research is needed to understand the precise relationships between democratic institutions and ethnic tensions (see the contribution by Rothchild, forthcoming). See, among many others, the Indian example discussed by Mayer (1966). Nordlinger (1972); McRae (1974); Esman (1977); Lijphart (1977).

110


of conflict resolution corresponds to the much-discussed ideal-type of ‘consociational democracy’ as characterised by Lijphart (1977).58 Such regimes may be able to function in relatively small and wealthy countries with long traditions of statehood such as Belgium or Switzerland.59 Yet, as already discussed, in many developing countries sufficient state resources to satisfy all groups involved in such an arrangement are lacking. Under such preconditions, it is extraordinarily difficult to set up a consociational regime, as shown by Trinidad’s experiment with a trans-ethnic, multi-party government after 1986 (Premdas 1993). Furthermore, a political culture of moderation and compromise is little developed among the elites of countries where a strong civil society could not develop before the modern nation-state took root.60 Thus, if the educated elite of an ethnic group not yet represented in the elite cartel enters into the field of competition, perhaps as a result of the assimilation policy of the modernising state, or if demographic power relations change, the willingness to renegotiate compromise is lacking, and the consociational regime breaks apart (van den Berghe 1991: 191ff.). In fact, as Simpson (1994: 468) has remarked, ‘the list of cases where consociational arrangements applied reads like an obituary page’. In Lebanon, the ‘magic formula’ of governmental representation by religion had been broken up by the mid-seventies. From the population of Shiites, which for centuries had been made up mainly of illiterate farmers, an urban class of professionals had formed. They soon began to demand a larger slice of the government’s pie for their group, which no longer made up one-fifth, but rather one-third of the population (according to Picard 1986). At present in Ethiopia, an attempt is being made to build a consociational and federalist system. The chances of its success are not very good, as Tigre rebels currently dominating the political scene hardly seem interested in division of power and have formed branch organisations in all regions intended to prevent the development of political dynamics independent of the new centre. Frequently, dictatorial regimes have arisen from broken democratic systems. In ethnically divided societies, the authoritarian state is often dominated by one single ethnic group,61 or most often by one of its subgroups or clans. Given the obvious break with the modern ideal of 58

59 60 61

Arend Lijphart (1977) uses the concept both descriptively and normatively – as a model for resolution of conflicts in ethnically divided societies. Extensive controversy has developed over the two usages; see recent critiques by Paul Brass (1991, ch. 9) and Lemarchand (1994, ch. 9). Older discussions are summarised in Lustick (1979). McRae (1983); but see, for the Swiss case, Steiner and Obler (1977). Nordlinger (1972, ch. 4); Rothchild (1986); Jinadu (1995). Compare Lustick’s (1979) ‘control model’ or the ‘plural society’ of M. G. Smith (1969).

Who owns the state?

111

‘representing the nation’, the strongman can only rely upon a narrow circle of relatives or ethnic acquaintances, which even further reduces his legitimacy and enhances the need for relying on ‘his own people’. And so, in a round dance of coups and palace revolts, ever smaller and more closely knit groups assert themselves. Finally, a small clique holds all the threads of power in its hands, playing one secret service or group of officers off against others and skilfully enacting gestures of paternal care for the people (see Horowitz 1985: 486–501). Ethnic conflicts are not expected to escalate under such conditions. Syria can serve as an example of this type of political regime. Its state apparatus is dominated by the Numailatiyya clan of the Matawira tribe, a small subgroup of Alawites (Batatu 1981). On one hand, the regime severely suppresses any expressions of dissent (for example, from the Sunnite majority) but, on the other hand, seeks legitimacy through panArabian nationalism and Syrian patriotism (van Dam 1979). Similar conditions prevail in neighbouring Iraq, where the al-Begat section of the Al-bu Nasir tribe of the Sunni town of Takrit holds all threads of power in its hands (Batatu 1978: 1088ff.). And finally in Burundi, the Hima, a Tutsi subgroup, gained power following a number of coups and purges. In the official discourse, ethnic distinctions in the Barundi nation are denounced as colonial fantasy and completely denied. The example of Burundi also shows that minority regimes are often only able to hold onto power thanks to ruthless deployment of military and police forces. Yet repression increases the very tensions which it is intended to suppress (Kuper 1977).62 In Burundi during 1972, 1988, and probably also in 1993, a great number of the more educated Hutus were massacred in land-sweeping pogroms as they dared to question the supremacy of the Tutsi elite (Lemarchand 1990; Laely 1994). Political tensions can also escalate when the central power weakens. Kurdish and Shiite rebellions against the Baghdad regime, which was exhausted and debilitated by the Gulf War, are recent examples of this. Multiplying ethnic independence movements in the last years of communist Ethiopia (Fukui and Markakis 1994) represent another. However, not all formally undemocratic regimes should be seen as dictatorships. Less totalitarian, for example, are such one-party systems as seen in Kenya under Kenyatta, the Ivory Coast under HouphouëtBoigny (Rothchild 1986) or Indonesia under Suharto (Brown 1994). These lacked both the state power for authoritarian control of the whole 62

This can lead to the most severe forms of escalation of violence, namely genocides and ‘politicides’: Helen Fein (1993) has shown that most genocides and ‘politicides’ after 1960 were responses to communal rebellions against state policies of discrimination and political exclusion.

112


territory and the conditions necessary for consociational democracy. Representatives of the ethnic clientele negotiate the price for political support behind the scenes – whether in the lap of the monopoly party or the bureaucracy. Thus ethnic clientelism did not manifest itself in public politics, and an aggravation of conflicts caused by agitation of ambitious politicians could be avoided. Donald Rothchild (1986) described this type of political system as the ‘hegemonial exchange model’. However, in times of economic crises, the state resources, which the central elite can pass on via the ethnicised bureaucracy all the way to the heads of individual villages, run dry. Rival leaders will enter the political arena and orchestrate the dissatisfaction of their ethnic following. The resulting conflicts can no longer be held in check by the regime (Rothchild 1986: 74). Similar processes can be observed when a political system is forced to ‘democratise’ by external pressure. Ethnic divisions then turn up in the party system, and positions become more radical. Developments in Kenya and Zaire seem to confirm this thesis.63 Conclusion A violent escalation of ethnic conflicts can occur in all types of political systems discussed, though for different reasons: under conditions of open political competition, an ethnicisation of politics and radicalisation of positions seems likely; consociational democracies often fall because of the rigidity of their quota systems; the attempts of dictatorships to suppress ethnic conflicts can backfire; clientelist one-party systems disintegrate during democratisation or when the state budget shrinks too much. Here too, the struggle over the state may eventually end up by destroying it, leaving what in the technocratic jargon of development specialists is called a ‘failed state’. But before ethnic conflicts develop this destructive force, the population has to be mobilised along ethnic lines so that it perceives the political landscape as being made up of different ethnic groups each sharing a common destiny. It is not difficult to see why disadvantaged educated middle classes adopt such a view. Corresponding analyses predominate in the social science literature as well. It is more challenging to understand why non-elites begin to see politics as a domain where ethnicity matters and begin to involve themselves in the struggle over the state. I have argued that this occurs when the benefits and costs of a modernising state are distributed unequally along ethnic lines. Such ethnic clientelism especially flourishes in the absence of a strong civil society and in weak 63

See also conclusions reached from statistical analysis in Gurr (1993b: 189); for developments in Africa, see Rothchild (1995).

Who owns the state?

113

states that lack the resources for equivocal distribution of the goods of modernity. State resources now appear as collective goods accessible only to those belonging to the ‘proper’ ethnic group, social closure proceeds on the basis of ethnic membership, and political loyalties become a matter of ethnic affiliations. The politics of ethnicity and nationhood are thus not an archaic pattern which modernity has not yet managed to wear away but rather an effect of political modernisation itself. For only when rule by the Grace of God has been replaced by rule by grace of ‘the people’, when like should be governed by like, does the identity of this people matter. Taking this perspective, it is understandable why it is precisely during the past decade that ethnic conflicts increased worldwide: during the political thaw that the end of the Cold War and the new hegemony of democratic state ideals have brought, the last multicultural empires dissolved. They were transformed into modern nation-states before strong civil societies could take root. In the newly nationalising states, politics was quickly transformed into an arena of ethno-nationalist competition.

5

Nationalism and ethnic mobilisation in Mexico

On New Year’s Day 1994, Subcommandante Marcos stepped out of the Lacandon forest and made his first public statements, surrounded by masked men in guerrilla uniforms armed with rifles. He declared that they were the heirs of the Mexican revolution, determined to continue the struggle against the forces of imperialism and to give a final blow to the bourgeois regime that had corrupted the ideals of the revolution. And indeed, the Zapatistas could draw on the support of the peasant organisations who had struggled, since the middle of the seventies, against the monopolisation of land and power by a small elite from Tuxtla Gutiérrez and San Cristobal ´ (Wimmer 1995c; Harvey 1998). One year later, however, the Zapatista army fought for the cultural and political rights of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, for political autonomy of their communities and the official recognition of their culture – a considerable shift of discourse, well received by the national and international audience of NGOs, intellectuals and anti-globalisation groups for whom Marcos and his followers became heroes of the same quasimythical stature as Che Guevara. As it seems, the widespread support for indigenous rights and multicultural justice had led the insurgents to present themselves as an Indian uprising rather than a peasant revolution. The issues of land and power, central to the guerrilla movements of the seventies and eighties, have been relegated to the bottom of the political agenda. The events in Chiapas have brought the so-called Indian question again to the centre of political debate in Mexico. Since the time of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, the relation between the state and the indigenous population has again and again appeared as one of the major issues of contestation. This chapter follows the major lines of historical development and shows how the role of ethnicity changed profoundly as soon as modern principles of political organisation were introduced. The first section describes colonial ethnic relations as part of a universalist and Parts of this chapter have been translated from German by Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff.

114

Nationalism and ethnic mobilisation

115

hierarchical mode of political organisation based on indirect rule and communal segregation. I then describe how this hierarchy was transformed when independence introduced citizenship, democracy and national sovereignty. One of the ethno-racial estates became the national people in whose name the new elite was now supposed to govern. This Creole elite relegated the Indian majority to the status of second-class citizens excluded from the realms of sovereignty. The last sections focus on the more inclusive post-revolutionary project of nation-building through assimilation and integration of the ‘ethnic minorities’. Close attention will be paid to the gradual contestation of this project by social movements claiming political autonomy and cultural rights for the ‘Indian peoples’. This new politicisation of ethnicity finally led to the peculiar form of multi-ethnic nationalism that we find in present-day Mexico. Mexico is thus a case in point for the path of development described in the last chapter, where the domination of the state apparatus by an ethnic majority is contested at a rather late stage of political modernisation. Conforming to our model, only the integration and assimilation endeavours of the fully developed nation-state produced the educated minority elite that finally formulated an anti-nationalist discourse. Prior to the emergence of this Indian intelligentsia, the nationalist project of state penetration and ethnic homogenisation was contested in other ways, less visible in the public space of national politics. These other reactions will also be considered in the corresponding sections. The colonial order The Spanish colonial empire is my first example for the hierarchical and universalist form of political integration characterising pre-modern polities. The parallels to the Ottoman empire and to the Swiss ancien regime are striking, but will not be fully analysed here. Rather, the emphasis will lie on the contrast with the Mexican nation-state that developed on the ruins of the empire. As we shall see, the implications for the political role played by ethnicity are profound. The mosaic society Immediately after the conquest, the Spanish crown attempted to prevent the rise of a landed and politically independent stratum of conquistadores, that is, of a properly feudal class.1 On the other hand, the kings 1

The following five paragraphs are based on Wimmer (1995a), where an extensive bibliography can be found.

116


sought to protect the declining Indian population from overexploitation and displacement by the colonisers. These goals were reached by blocking, through the institution of the encomienda,2 the direct access that Spaniards might gain to land and the indigenous workforce. The administration by royal functionaries was facilitated by so-called reducciones: the indigenous population, which had traditionally lived in widely dispersed settlements, was relocated to permanent villages. This led to the creation of corporate peasant communities, the so-called repúblicas de indios. Each received a piece of land, was expected to maintain, within its boundaries, law and order, and to generate taxes and tributes. This system of indirect rule relied on the pre-colonial stratum of nobles, the principales. Their social standing was reinforced and consolidated over many centuries of colonial rule. The Indian royal dynasties, on the other hand, that had ruled over entire empires, lost, mainly over the course of the seventeenth century, the political prerogatives and territorial possessions initially conceded by the conquistadores. Where no silver was mined and where the Spaniards did not consider it worthwhile to engage in agriculture and animal husbandry, the Indians were not deprived of their land, nor driven away or enslaved. In these areas, the indigenous communities formed the hinterland for a provincial town mainly inhabited by Spaniards and mestizos. According to colonial law, Spaniards and mestizos were given the prerogative of engaging in trade and producing crafts. Under the prevailing system of forced trade controlled by the state (called repartimiento de efectos), they acquired agricultural products such as cochineal, cotton and indigo from the surrounding Indian villages. In political and juridical terms, however, the repúblicas de indios enjoyed considerable autonomy. The principales exercised lower jurisdiction, levied tribute and organised the allocation of communal lands. The royal functionaries appointed in the indigenous regions, referred to as alcaldes mayores, only intervened in case of grave internal conflict or to solve legal disputes between Indian communities and Spanish settlers or mine-owners who, as encomenderos, were entitled to levy an Indian workforce. As in other empires, this system of indirect rule corresponded to a legal segregation of the population into various ethno-cultural strata. 2

Encomiendas were created in the first decades after conquest in the form of a temporary fiduciary title. The crown’s right to levy tribute was ceded to a Spanish conqueror who became entitled to use the Indians’ workforce – but not necessarily the corresponding landholdings – in exchange for his military services. The strict segregation of Indian villages from the residences of the encomenderos figured among the conditions that the crown attached to the granting of encomiendas.


117

Scholastic state theory, which predominated in the Spanish empire until the era of Bourbon reforms, viewed these groupings as parts of the state body: each had to provide its share to ensure the orderly functioning of the whole. Conformingly, social mobility was discouraged, as well as any shifting of lines between the different ethno-cultural groupings. A state-organised process of assimilation and absorption of the Indian or of the black segments of the population was out of the question. Rather, the crown introduced a whole range of laws and regulations to safeguard the separation and stability of the various parts of the state body. Most importantly, a special legal corpus, the Leyes de Indias, and a separate tribunal, the Juzgado General de Indios, were set up at the end of the sixteenth century. They were meant to protect the Indian population from abuses and overexploitation by the conquistadores and their descendants, and especially to defend the land titles granted to the repúblicas. The Leyes de Indias contained a separate legal apparatus for the Indian population, modelled after the special laws of protection for widows, children and the poor which together made up the category of miserables in Spanish law (Borah 1985: 90ff.). Equality before the law was a non-issue in this pre-modern system of ranked rights and privileges. Legal segregation and, accordingly, unequal treatment was the rule. Only in religious matters did the colonial administration and its main ally, the mendicant orders, insist on a process of uniformisation (cf. the classic study by Ricard 1986). From the early sixteenth century onwards, the colonial project centred around conversion to Catholic Christianity by which the Indians were at the same time made vassals of the king. Indeed, only conversion justified conquest in juridical terms, as several papal bulls had established.3 Despite the differences between humanistic and authoritarian-aristocratic tendencies, as they came to the fore in the famous Valladolid debate between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan de Ginés Sepulveda, ´ all colonial ideologists agreed on one point: the Indian’s way of life violated, at least in part, Aristotelian ‘natural law’. Consequently, both voluntary conversion to Christianity (de las Casas) and forceful conquest and submission (Sepulveda) ´ seemed to be justified on the basis of similar scholastic principles (cf. Brading 1991, ch. 4). Like other variants of imperial thinking, but unlike modern nationalism, Spain’s colonial ideology was grounded in a potentially universal and inclusive principle: since the papal bull Sublimis Deus declared the inhabitants of the New World as being endowed with reason and thus, in theological terms, as equals, they were as capable of being included 3

Parry (1974); Pietschmann (1980: 52–75); for later periods of juridical reasoning, see Brading (1991, ch. 10).

118


in the Christian community as the subjects of European princes, provided a wise government preserved them from lapsing into heathenism and barbarity.4 This inclusive and universal ideology was supplemented by a hierarchical graduation and classification of society. Modelled on feudal relations in Spain, the New World society was differentiated into groups by descent and race according to ‘purity of blood’: Spaniards and their Mexican-born descendants (the criollos) stood at the top, the so-called castas of ‘mixed blood’ such as mulattos (and later moriscos) and mestizos (later differentiated into castizos) in the middle, while the vast majority of indios and the black population occupied the bottom of the hierarchy.5 The ‘purer’ the bloodlines of a group, the more it was called upon to serve crown and Christianity and to occupy a privileged position in the colonial edifice. Combined with the notion of racial purity was the idea of a civilising mission. The Spaniards occupied the top of the pyramid because they were given a special mission by God (and his representatives on earth) to spread the gospel and to plant the roots of civilisation in the Americas. To a large degree, membership in these ethno-racial groups determined a person’s legal status – whether he or she had to pay tribute, was able to fill an official post, to exercise certain professions, to carry certain categories of weapons, to be mounted and so forth. But in spite of the ideology of descent and of the frequent use of the term ‘race’, these estates were defined culturally and politically rather than somatically. Many rich Indian princes, if they possessed sufficient political influence and were converted Christians, could have themselves declared Spaniards and enjoy all the privileges attached to this status. Most Creoles of the seventeenth century had some Indian ancestors too. Some nobles in the repúblicas were socially Indian, while being (mostly illegitimate) sons of Spaniards. Chinese and Philippine labourers and traders were classified as ‘Chinese Indians’ and legally treated as Indians (Israel 1975: 61f.). Contrary to modern racism, the estate system did not fixate on somatic traits but rested on the transmission of rights in a hierarchically organised and ethno-culturally segregated society. Group membership could be changed through a formal legal process (or through favouritism or forgery). It was determined by the identity of one’s parents and the 4

5

On the political use made of the papal bulls by the Spanish kings, see Pietschmann (1980: 52–75), who provides a well-stated corrective to the view that the conquest was mainly driven by legal and religious considerations. For the colonial caste system, see Morner ¨ (1967); Israel (1975); Seed (1982); and Aguirre Beltrán (1989); for individual regions of Mexico, see Chance (1978); Farriss (1984); and Carrol (1991).


119

socio-economic status one was able to achieve rather than one’s skin colour. In the final decades of the empire, processes of mobility and group change were even provided for, and actively promoted by, the crown (Chance 1978). They were facilitated because the estates represented elements of a legal-political system of classification but not genuine ethnic groups with consciences of their own – with the exception of the elite of merchants, priests and functionaries born in Spain, to whom fell the task of administering this system, and of the Creoles who felt excluded from elite positions. Consequently, it was rather easy to adapt the caste structure to suit changing circumstances, brought about by social mobility and intermarriage. However, only individuals crossed the boundaries of the tiers of the pyramid – the structure itself was safeguarded with an extended corpus of decrees and laws. The inferiority of the Indian group, for instance, was reinforced and inscribed into everyday practice by etiquette, forms of greeting and address, a detailed dress code, as well as by specific regulations, e.g. that only Spaniards were permitted to use the pavement. Over the centuries, this perpetually renewed pattern of subordination has evolved into a habitus of hostile subservience that determines the behaviour of Indian peasants vis-à-vis outsiders to this day.6 Thus, the ethno-racial strata were important for defining an individual’s social standing, but they did not form communities in the sociological sense of the term: groups with dense networks of relations among their members and a shared sense of solidarity. The strata were fragmented into myriads of small-scale communities, organised into religious brotherhoods, guilds of merchants and artisans, Indian peasant communities, urban neighbourhood parishes etc. These communities all had their symbols of belonging, their privileges of status and autonomy guaranteed by the royal courts, their internal hierarchies and rites de passage.7 Rather than the official ethno-racial categories, it was this densely woven network of overlapping communities that shaped everyday life in the empire and that determined the different perspectives on the social world of its inhabitants. Creole patriotism and historical indigenismo During the last fifty years of the empire, important changes in this political and social fabric occurred. One of these was the development of a Creole patriotism. Criollos and light-skinned mestizos had been put on a relatively 6 7

For inter-ethnic relations under colonial rule, see, for example, Aguirre (1967; 1982) and McLeod and Wasserstrom (1983). See McAlister (1962) and the case studies of Liehr (1971) and Seed (1982).

120


equal footing under the late colonial legal order and had drawn closer to each other in terms of social composition. The criollos had, from the early seventeenth century onwards, dominated the lower rungs of the imperial bureaucracy and become a landed elite with important commercial and mining interests (Florescano 1997: 214f.). During the Bourbon reign, the educated members of this elite founded learned societies, reading circles, clubs of enlightened debate and newspapers and gazettes, mainly inspired by the peninsular, state-controlled version of the Enlightenment movement. The common aim of these circles of ilustrados was to overcome the baroque style of thinking, writing and painting and to replace it with the more disciplined modes of modern philosophy and with paintings and sculptures modelled in the clear-cut style of the classical age and the Renaissance. They experimented with new forms of agriculture based on the most advanced techniques of cultivation and advocated a new system of economics that would free merchants from the royal monopolies. In a parallel movement, they started to discover the richness and diversity of New Spain and to describe its topography, fauna and flora and the populations of the various regions. The summa of this movement was the work of Alexander von Humboldt who, in his Ensajo pol´ıtico sobre el reino de la Nueva España, summarised the knowledge that the criollo literati had produced in the previous decades (Florescano 1997: 297–317). These networks of ilustrados remained, however, confined to the criollo elite. While they developed patriotic programmes for the betterment of human society through knowledge and education, the application of the sciences and a rational system of government, among the vast Indian majority, ‘miracles followed upon each other, new Messiahs appeared, and various signs promised to reinforce the cohesion of the communities’, as Florescano has remarked (ibid.: 302; cf. 317). Conforming to the model outlined in chapter 3, the rise of these literate and learned circles was closely associated with the transformation of the imperial state. The Bourbon kings aimed at remodelling the empire after the absolutist states and especially France, in order to compete more successfully, both on the battlefield and in economic terms, with the rising powers of Northern Europe. The reforms had several pillars, including the abolition of the state monopolies on certain trades and the introduction of mercantilist economic policies; the expulsion of the Jesuits from the empire and the implementation of Jansenist church policies; and, most importantly, administrative centralisation and the replacement of the system of indirect rule in order to enlarge the tax basis of the crown. The alcaldes mayores were replaced by subintendentes who were now entitled to oversee directly the payment of taxes – hitherto a privilege of


121

the gobernadores – and to intervene directly in legal cases opposing Indian parties. In order to overcome the financial crisis of the house of Bourbons, which in turn was related to the high costs of warfare, the crown even dissolved corporate institutions such as the cajas de comunidad, which hitherto had served to finance communal infrastructures. This more centralised form of administration relied on the new forms of knowledge that the ilustrado circles were producing, on better maps and descriptions of the country and on refined techniques of record-keeping and fiscal control, all associated with the rationalist moods of the literate elite. However, the criollos complained bitterly and with rising indignation that they were excluded from the higher echelons of this newly empowered bureaucracy8 and demanded that filling these posts become the exclusive right of persons born in the New World (Brading 1985: 15). The administrative unification, the increased tax burden and their exclusion from the powerful administration fostered their sense of Mexico being more than a mere assembly of provinces, each with its own peculiar balance of power between Creole communities and the royal functionaries. Mexico was now seen as an integrated fatherland, and the Creoles felt more and more responsible for its future destiny. This new spirit of public concern and political responsibility markedly contrasted with the earlier politics of gaining further privileges for one’s brotherhood or neighbourhood parish. Creole patriotism had three pillars: a new concept of the past, elaborated during the eighteenth century by authors such as Clavijero and, later, Teresa de Mier and Bustamante, who saw the conquest as an illegitimate attack on the sovereignty of the Aztec nation, as whose successors the criollos came to understand themselves; secondly, a nationalised, Jansenist Catholicism centring around the veneration of the virgen de Guadalupe, a brown-skinned Mary that allegedly had appeared to an Indio in the sixteenth century; and finally, the liberal vision of a democratic state where the hierarchical organisation of the society into estates and corporations would be abolished in favour of the equality and freedom of all citizens (Florescano 1997: 334–46). The importance of these three strands of thoughts varied over time, as we shall see in what follows. Liberalism developed only when the independence movement was already gaining strength and was principally inspired by the republicanism afrancescado of the Cortes of Cádiz 8

It is not entirely clear whether the new posts of the subintendentes were open to persons born in New Spain, as maintained by Pastor (1987: 195–201, 259–62); see also Farriss (1984, ch. 12). Brading (1985: 15 and passim) seems to hold that the criollos were more and more excluded from the colonial administration.

122


(from 1810 onwards). Historical indigenismo and Guadalupismo, on the other hand, were the most important strands of thought in the earlier popular uprising of Padre Hidalgo against the Spanish empire and ceased to be of political importance after the second declaration of independence of 1821. Historical indigenismo should not be confused with a genuine romantic nationalism that would emphasise the continuity of a people’s world historical mission. It was always clear that the Aztec past, now reinvented as Mexico’s classic age comparable to Greek and Roman antiquity, had ceased to be relevant after the conquest. Its horrors and injustices, usually described with reference to the classic works of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, were to be redressed by handing over the country to the heirs of Bartolomé, the criollos, and not to the descendants of the Aztec princes. Leading intellectual figures such as Teresa de Mier were outspoken aristocrats and resented the idea of popular representation essentially because it would have implied that the ‘Indian race’ would outnumber the Creole population and eventually be led to demand that the injustices of the conquest be redressed, their ancestral lands restituted and that they be made rulers of the country (Brading 1985, ch. 5). The indigenist patriots used the argument of Aztec sovereignty and nationhood, violated by the conquest, to advance the idea of independence. But not even in their dreams would it have occurred to them that the future Mexican nation should be built on the foundation of the Indian majority transformed into a sovereign, a nation and the citizenry (cf. also Lira 1986). They were still too clearly stamped by the colonial view of society and they had too much to lose from such a definition of peoplehood. In words recalling the colonial despisal of the subjugated population, Teresa de Mier later in his life wrote, in the preamble of a proposal for a new constitution, that Mexico was not ‘a village of Aztecs’, and he deplored the fact that ‘more than half of the population is composed of Indians, stupid and ignorant’ (cited in Brading 1985: 62, 90). Historical indigenismo and Guadalupismo were the main ideological driving forces of the popular uprising of Indian peasants and sections of the Lumpenproletariat under the leadership of the lower clergy. The higher tax burdens, the expulsion of the Jesuits, the new influx of Spanish entrepreneurs and settlers and the dissolution of the cajas, among other factors, had provided the fuel for this popular rebellion against the colonial metropolis. The insurgents rallied around the virgen as the symbol of an independent Mexican Catholicism, while messianic expectations of the end of the world and a restitution of just order were circulating among them. The educated leaders of the movement, on the other hand, brought forward natural-law arguments in the scholastic tradition, referring to an


123

original contract between the conquerors and the crown, in order to justify the first declaration of independence of 1813 (ibid.: 43f.). However, the insurgent armies led by Hidalgo, Morelos, Guerrero and others were soon defeated by the criollo-dominated royal troops. Both indigenismo and Guadalupismo became minority trends in the subsequent decade. When, in Spain, the Cortes of Cádiz replaced the absolute monarchy and the Napoleonic troops had finally been defeated, liberalism and French republicanism also became the major currents of thought among the Mexican delegates to the Cortes, and natural-law arguments were quickly replaced by the appeal to the right of national sovereignty. The second declaration of independence, of 1821, which was to initiate the short-lived Mexican kingdom of Iturbide, was still based on indigenismo arguments and protected the church from expropriation and political assaults (ibid.: 56f.). With the fall of Iturbide, however, liberalism and republicanism became the dominant ideological and political trends for almost the next hundred years. A weak current of historical indigenismo was revived only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when a state-sponsored nationalism began to flourish and an ethnicised notion of the Mexican nation appeared. The nationalisation of the state, 1821 to 1910 The process leading to the foundation of the Mexican state thus largely conforms to the model that I have described in chapter 3: competition and war between sovereign states compelled their elites to centralise the administration and to demand higher taxes. The networks of literate circles emerged in parallel and in close connection with the reform of the state and the new economic opportunities that opened as soon as some of the most severe restrictions on trade and commerce were lifted. The ilustrados developed a new idea of Mexico as an independent fatherland. Only national independence would allow it to control the strengthened and unified state administration and submit it to the popular will, rather than continue to finance wars on the old continent. We will find similar historical constellations and transformations in the case of the break-up of the Ottoman empire, described in the next chapter. In what follows, I will show how the introduction of modern principles of government entailed a reordering of the principles of inclusion and exclusion – more precisely, how these principles became tied to ethno-national dividing lines, some of them inherited from the colonial past. Social closure along ethnic or national lines developed at different rates and in different forms in the spheres of law, politics, the military and the systems of social solidarity. In a first step, to be discussed in this section, the notion of citizenry was nationalised and all inhabitants not considered

124


part of the citizenry expelled from the country. This first step was intimately connected to legal and military closure along national lines, paralleling the introduction of equality of rights and duties towards the state. Contrasting with these inclusive dimensions, a political integration of the masses and an encompassing national ideology were not yet achieved – this second step had to await the Mexican revolution. A compromise of interests between the new state elite and larger sections of the Indian population did not develop during the nineteenth century and political closure proceeded along ethnic, rather than national, lines. Thus, the concept of nationhood was narrowed down to one of the ethno-racial estates of colonial society, the criollos. The modern principles of political inclusion were applied to this small segment of the population only, while the large Indian majority were relegated to their former status of subjects, but at the same time deprived of the protected social and economic space that the empire had reserved for them. Liberalism, republicanism and anti-Indianism, 1821 to 1876 While independence certainly brought about the collapse of the colonial system, the fabric of transnational relations inherited from the empire was not immediately cut apart. At the beginning, all Spaniards loyal to the declaration of independence remained in their posts. The royal army that had fought the insurgents of Hidalgo and Morelos became the institutional backbone of the new regime and its generals served as presidents up to the middle of the century. However, principles of exclusion and inclusion were more and more nationalised. The violent pogroms and massacres against Spanish-looking persons during the first independence war were still fought by the royal army under Creole command. After independence, the new elite started to discriminate against their former allies. The Spanish elite was no longer considered the capstone of the colonial edifice, but, rather, the main obstacle on the way to full national self-determination. At the end of the twenties, all persons of Spanish origin not born in New Spain were expelled from the country (Brading 1985: 93). Most former employees of the royal administration left. After the exodus of the hated gachupines, the number of priests had decreased by two-thirds in comparison with colonial times (de la Pena ˜ 1980: 84). The concept of citizenship was now fused with the notion of the national community, and all those not belonging were deprived of the privileges of equality before the law and protection from arbitrary violence – an equality, however, that also entailed the removal of the separate legal status and protection for the Indian population, with disastrous consequences for their social and economic standing, as we shall see later on.


125

While legal closure proceeded along national lines, in the realms of politics the concept ‘sovereign’ was comparatively more narrow and did not include the Indian population. Still at the Cortes of Cádiz, the Mexican delegates firmly opposed the idea, put forward by peninsular liberals, to restrict voting rights in the cross-Atlantic republic they had in mind to peoples of Spanish stock, and to exclude Indians and castas. This would have put the Americans in a perpetual minority in the assemblies of the republic, and was one of the major reasons for the delegates of Mexico embarking upon the course of independence. Thus, at that time, the Mexican people was still conceived as consisting of all inhabitants of the provinces of New Spain – criollos, Indians and castas. However, the more encompassing national ideology of the early independence movement was gradually overlaid and supplanted by an identification of the sovereign nation with the criollos. It was completed with the rise to power of the liberal elite, both intellectual, political and military, after the first years of independence. They even rejected historical indigenismo and identified the corporations of the Indian communities and the church as the two main obstacles to realising the republican project (Brading 1985: 73f.). Not only liberal intellectuals and politicians such as the well-known José Mar´ıa Luis Mora, but also conservatives such as Francisco Pimentel were perfectly clear that the Indians were not suited to be part of the democratic sovereign of the new state. Only a complete process of assimilation, including the loss of language and religious culture, would ever, so Pimentel argued, make a unified and civilised Mexican nation possible (Powell 1968: 21; Florescano 1997: 368f.). Both Mora and Pimentel saw the criollos as the embodiment of the Mexican sovereign, and indeed, it was the criollo elite that monopolised the incipient state apparatus, with the exception perhaps of the governments controlled by the freemasons of the York rite in the late twenties (Brading 1985: 92f.). Why should we observe such a narrowing down of the notion of peoplehood? Why did a trans-ethnic nationalism a` la Suisse not develop, despite the markedly non-ethnic, liberal nationalism of the new elite? Why did their complete ignorance of the writings of Herder and Fichte not help them to build a non-ethnic nation-state? On the one hand, this was a matter of conscious choice, because it was perfectly clear to them that an identification of the sovereign with the Indian majority would have jeopardised their political and economic standing inherited from their privileged position in the colonial edifice. Handing over power to the Indians could only mean, in their eyes, being denied their right of existence and becoming the object of revenge of the formerly colonised (ibid.). The period between independence and the 1870s was indeed a time of numerous rebellions of peasant Indian villages or coalitions of such villages against the encroachments of mestizos and Creoles and against

126


attempts at reducing the autonomy of the former repúblicas in the name of the equality of all citizens. Some of these rebellions evolved into fullscale wars and were sustained over decades, especially in the peripheral regions of the country, in Yucatán and among the Yaquis and Mayos of the sparsely populated north where the indigenous population had maintained a degree of supra-local political organisation and co-ordination not known in other parts of the country. It is telling that these uprisings were not perceived, by the political elite and in the published opinion of newspapers and journals, as protests against the loss of certain rights and protections, but as ‘una guerra de castas’. In their eyes, the Indians were aiming at annihilating the white race, driven by a barbarian thirst for blood and revenge (Florescano 1997: 350–71; 406–16). A racist discourse of exclusion flourished especially after the formidable defeat of Mexican troops in the war against the United States and the loss of large areas of territory in the north. The lack of national unity and the presence of alien ‘nations and races’ amidst the civilised population of Spanish stock was perceived as one of the major reasons for the humiliating experience. With the insurrections and rebellions in the north and in Yucatán gathering momentum, the general fear of a unified Indian uprising and a caste war of national dimensions was becoming widespread. The measures taken to subdue the rebels were accordingly harsh. In the war zones, the Indian population was now even deprived of the status of full citizens, as is shown by the official practice of selling captured Maya Indians in Yucatán as slaves to Cuban sugar planters (ibid.: 396f.). The liberal project of nation-building thus did not aim at integrating the large Indian majority of the country in the national sovereign, but at overcoming the ‘Indian problem’ by eradicating these remnants of the odious colonial past. Characteristic of this mainstream of thought was the liberal thinker and politician José Mar´ıa Luis Mora, who was clear and explicit that the Mexican nation was synonymous with the white race. He proposed to drive the rebellious Indians in Yucatán over the border and to populate the country with immigrants of white, preferably Spanish, stock, thus repeating what he and others perceived as the success story of nation-building in the United States (cf. Hale 1972, ch. 7). However, the exclusion of the Indian population from the realms of politics was not only the result of a simple equation of power according to which Creoles or Indians would become the new rulers and claim to be the people of the democratic state to the exclusion of all others. Conforming with the hypothesis developed in the last two chapters, it was also the consequence of a particular sequence of developments. Independence was won at a point in political evolution when civil society


127

organisations had only just started to appear and still had not permeated and penetrated larger sections of the society. As already mentioned, the literate circles and political clubs, within which the patriotic and later liberal ideas were circulated, remained restricted to the criollo urban elite. No trans-ethnic association spanning the divide between criollo, mestizo and Indian, comparable to the trans-ethnic associations of Switzerland to be discussed in the final chapter of this book, could develop. One of the few truly trans-ethnic organisations remaining after the fall of the empire was the church. And indeed, the first independence movement relied on the organisational infrastructure and the leadership of the church. It was a popular movement, contrasting with the elite circles that gathered for the second declaration of independence in 1821. It is idle to speculate what would have happened if this trans-ethnic movement had won the first wars of independence. Perhaps an encompassing, religiously defined, populist nationalism a` la Grecque would have developed and led to the political integration of the large majority of the population, the Indians, as well as the mestizos and blacks. In reality, however, the ethno-racial groups of the colonial hierarchy were politicised and relations between them changed from an inclusive system of paternalism and deference to competition and exclusion. The national project was embodied by gente de razón (Creoles and socially ‘white’ mestizos), called upon to advance civilisation against the backward Indian barbarians. The segregationist regulations, which had sheltered the different pieces in the mosaic of imperial society, were now abolished in the name of the equality of all citizens and of national progress (cf. Hale 1972). Long before the corresponding laws were passed at the national level, most provinces had followed the liberal credo and – at least on paper – abolished communal land ownership, which was seen as incompatible with the principles of individual freedom (Florescano 1997: 365f.). They hoped that in this way ‘the Indian problem’ would be resolved, the members of Indian communities being converted into individual citizens. They would be freed from the constraints and social control of the repúblicas, their languages and ‘backward customs’ would be forgotten, their ‘low morale’ raised to the high standards of a republican spirit. The Indian problem, in other words, was a remnant of the corporatist and paternalist politics of the empire and would disappear with the emergence of a modern citizenry freed from the bonds of collectivism and superstition. However, the generals of the former royal army that ruled the country were not able to realise this project effectively. They lacked the political power to do so, since the collapse of the colonial administration brought about a pervasive political fractioning of the country. The scene

128


was dominated by caudillos, most of them military leaders who had risen to power and prominence during the independence wars. At times they acted as commanders of state troops, at other times they filled political functions or led rebellions against the central government. Through changing alliances with major conservative Creole landowners or mestizo liberals, they formed a succession of regional power cliques, fought against each other and resisted any attempt to be brought into the fold of the central government (cf. D´ıaz D´ıaz 1972; Florescano 1997: 338–46). In the regions inhabited predominantly by Indians, their ties with the rural population were often crucial for military success and they offered the Indian peasants protection against the expanding state administration or attempts made by hacendados to expand their landholdings to the detriment of Indian communities (e.g. Hart 1988); in exchange, these secured the caudillo a regional power-base, as well as military support in their struggles against other caudillos.9 Thus, the only opportunity for participation by the Indian population was as followers of powerful Creole caudillos. All other channels were closed to them and the centres of power remained in the hands of the Creole elite. However, there was a second moment of closure along national lines when the distinction between criollo and Indian was largely suppressed and partly overcome. Not only were members of both groups regarded as equal before the law and citizens of the new state (excluding Spaniards and other aliens), they were also called upon to defend the fatherland from foreign intervention. The rights of citizens were complemented with the duty to defend these collective goods in times of danger. Military closure along national lines was greatly advanced by the wars against foreign invasions, both by the United States and, later, by the French troops imposing Maximilian of Habsburg as king of Mexico. The regular troops, under caudillo command, were spectacularly defeated by the American army, which even captured the capital city. This led to the formation of the National Guard in 1847, the first army based on universal conscription of all male citizens, modelled after the French revolutionary troops as an ‘armed citizenry’ (Florescano 1997: 400f.). Every male Mexican citizen, Indian or criollo, between 18 and 55 was called to serve in the guardia nacional and lost his citizenship rights if he refused to do so. The new army was to be placed under the strict control of democratically elected authorities, thus trying to overcome caudillismo military practice, where the troops owed loyalty to a particular leader and 9

For almost half a century, Indian communities experienced a degree of autonomy they were never again to enjoy in history (de la Pena: ˜ 83ff.; Pastor 1987, part 3, especially 420ff.; Dehouve 1990: 227ff.). Moreover, in many areas, clerical authority had been dismantled after the expulsion of Spaniards.


129

where the advancement of one’s own political and economic position was considered more important than the defence of an abstract national good (cf. Thomson 1990). Even the officers of the guardia were to be elected democratically every two years. However, amidst factional fights and civil wars, it was impossible to realise the ideal of universal conscription. The participation especially of Indian soldiers was often achieved in exchange for tax exemption or sometimes even the promise of land. The guardia and its popular philharmonic bands were not the only institutions through which a new liberal patriotism was infused to the population. In the sixties, the victorious liberal regime tried to create a junta patriótica in every major village which was supposed to organise the festivities on the newly introduced national holidays celebrating independence as well as two victories over the French troops. This new patriotic spirit took on a distinctively republican character after the liberal victories. The constitution and the reform laws would provide the basis for national integration, so the elite believed. Contrary to the libertarian credo of the first generation, however, they now believed that it was also necessary to educate the people in this republican spirit and to make them accept the constitution as the mantra of national identity. This civic education was advanced by nationalist history books, by the edifying editorials of newspapers, by republican novels and poems, by including a ‘history of our national heroes’ in the curricula of teachers and by teaching the ‘fundamental principles of the republican system’ in all secondary schools (Florescano 1997: 434f.). This nationalism of the reform era was no longer explicitly anti-Indian, as had been the case with the liberals of the preceding generation. In their republican enthusiasm, men such as Ignacio Ram´ırez and Ignacio Manuel Altamirano believed that a national community, including the Indians, would constitute itself through the political will of all citizens and through the defence of the fatherland against the forces of imperialism. According to their view of history, the nation had already been born with the independence movement in an ex-nihilo act of auto-constitution. It did not need, as was the case by the end of the century, a historically thick past and much cultural substance. The indigenism of the Creole patriots of the preceding generation was forgotten (Brading 1988: 126–38). The wars against foreign interventions had also been wars against the conservative forces advocating a colonial paternalism towards the Indian population and reserving a strong role for the Catholic church in educating the population. With the defeat of the conservatives, the reform laws of the fifties were passed, which radicalised the liberal programme and stipulated on the national level what had been foreseen by many provincial constitutions since independence: the abrogation of all protective

130


measures separating Indians from non-Indians, especially the communal property rights on land that had formed the juridical backbone of the Indian communities. Since during the wars it had become clear that the true fatherland of the church was Rome, as one liberal leader had expressed it, the dismantling of the immense land holdings and other corporate possessions of the church became another major aim of the reform laws, following the credo that only individual freedom from all collective obligations would lead Mexico on the path to progress. Progress and early ethnic nationalism, 1876 to 1910 During the last quarter of the century this programme was put into practice on a massive scale. The almost utopian, ethnicity-blind republicanism of the reform era lasted only briefly and was now overlaid by a social Darwinist ideology in which the Indian population again played the role of a backward race to be vanquished by a combination of white immigration, cross-breeding and assimilation through education. The subordination and dispossession of the Indian population by the modernising state was now taking shape and led to its dramatic marginalisation, both political and economic.10 Starting in 1876, the ex-general Porfirio D´ıaz quickly put an end to the decentralisation and regional autonomy that had characterised Mexico since independence. The caudillos were incorporated into a new political and administrative hierarchy or eliminated in battle, the bandit groups were taken over into the mounted constabulary or wiped out by the latter (cf. Vanderwood 1992), the rival upper-class fractions in the capital and the conservative clerical circles were tied into a system of prebends and overlapping alliances. The Indian communities now formed the last link in a chain of authority, reaching from the president via the governors appointed by him in the federal states and the jefes pol´ıticos of the newly created districts down to individual communities. In sharp contrast to the alcaldes mayores of colonial times, the jefes pol´ıticos were authorised to supervise the dismantling of church and Indian landholdings, and to appoint municipal governments more or less openly, for which they chose villagers who were wealthy and spoke Spanish. In ethnically mixed municipalities, mestizos and Creoles now had unlimited access to power, for as members of the nation they were legitimated to fill all important political posts and put an end to colonial segregation and 10

Katz (1986); see also the local studies by Friedrich (1970, ch. 3); Lomnitz Adler (1982); Dehouve (1990: 236ff.); Schryer (1990, ch. 5).


131

self-rule. Through the operation of this political hierarchy, the Indian peasants were compelled to work on the plantations. In many regions of Mexico, they were enticed into debt servitude by employment agents who enjoyed the protection of the jefe pol´ıtico. Capitalist enterprises enormously expanded their production for the world market and extended further and further into the Indian lands (cf. Knight 1987): haciendas with a resident population of farm labourers (the peones), large family farms operating with hired seasonal labour, and plantations run by overseers and masses of migrant labourers from peasant villages. The autonomy of the comunidad ind´ıgena was now jeopardised by the influx of Creole and mestizo merchants and agricultural entrepreneurs, enjoying the protection of the jefes pol´ıticos, by the dissolution of collective land titles under the leyes de reforma and by the colonisation laws enacted under Porfirio D´ıaz, that eventually turned the land of the former repúblicas into an object of speculation.11 The colonisation laws were meant to help to populate ‘uncultivated lands’ with immigrant settlers, preferably from Spain and Europe, and thus to whiten Mexico and solve the Indian problem through racial mixture and upgrading (Powell 1968: 21f.).12 By the end of Porfirio’s reign, almost 90 per cent of the land area held communally at independence (which was approximately 40 per cent of the total) had been transferred into private property (Katz 1986: 48). The land of an estimated 85 per cent of Indian communities was privatised (Hansen 1981), and much of it was lost to the newly established local elite of capitalist farmers, to haciendas and plantations. A large number of villagers became labourers on the coffee, sugar, banana, cotton and sisal plantations, often under conditions of debt servitude. Within a few decades, many lost their Indian identity and culture, and dissolved into the mestizo population. Because of limited demand on the world market the expansion of these farms, haciendas and plantations eventually came to a halt, so that in many regions of Mexico a sort of hostile symbiosis, as Eric Wolf (1957) once wrote, between these capitalist enterprises and the labour-rich Indian communities emerged. 11

12

In 1894, Porfirio D´ıaz abrogated the restrictions governing land acquisition (2,500 ha maximum, and the condition that the land be used for agricultural purposes), and thus encouraged land speculation. Compañ´ıas deslindadoras, mostly foreign stock-holding companies, could declare ‘uncultivated’ land as terrenos bald´ıos and buy it from the state – although such land was often held by Indian comunidades. Attracting immigrants was also a major motivation for the Porfirian government participating at the world fairs of the late nineteenth century in Europe, where potential immigrants could be attracted and convinced of the advantages of Mexico as a country of settlement (Tenorio Trillo 1996, ch. 3).

132


Such economic upheaval had far-reaching consequences for the political life of Indian communities. With the end of communal autonomy, the principales lost their political prerogatives and were no longer capable of monopolising political positions in the Indian communities. Soon their standing was disputed by a new stratum of peasant entrepreneurs who had been able to secure landholdings in the course of the privatisation campaigns or had made their fortune in flourishing trade (cf. Wimmer 1995a, ch. 6). In contrast with the ideology of the first generation of liberals, still sticking, as we have seen, to colonial ethno-racial categories, this political and economic dispossession was now legitimated in modern racist terms. The meaning of the term ‘race’ and the political projects attached to it varied widely (cf. Tenorio Trillo 1996: 88–95). In general, the ‘Indian race’ was held to be intellectually unfit to recognise the signs of the time and to promote progress for the good of the fatherland. According to the prevalent social-Darwinist ductus, this mission was entrusted to the ‘fitter’ Creole people who were therefore warranted in crowding out or assimilating and incorporating the less fit race of indios. The expropriation of the Indian communities and the political subjugation of their inhabitants were justified by asserting that this was the only way to clear the path towards liberating the fatherland from the grip of its colonial past, developing its economic potential as well as setting society in motion and releasing it from the colonial freeze (Powell 1968; Zea 1968: 294ff.). These ideas were developed, among others, by the technocratic presidential counsellors (the so-called cient´ıficos), whose positivist faith in progress distinguished them from earlier generations. Their nationalism was fundamentally a negative one: in their eyes, ‘the Mexican’ was irrational, technically and scientifically backward, had a penchant for romantic utopianism and lacked self-control. Through education, the mentality of the people was to be trained in logic, and a nation was to be shaped that valued scientific rationality and economic efficiency, thus becoming of equal rank with its big northern neighbour. This civilising project was specifically directed at the Indian population and defended against the position that the Indian race was too degenerate to ever escape the stage of barbarism (Powell 1968: 23, 25). Objecting to the degenerationist position, prominent Porfirian writers and politicians maintained that ‘the Indian race’ was indeed suited for civilisation, provided that Indians were properly educated, nourished and trained in hygiene and modern agriculture. Concrete educational plans were, of course, more modest. For all that, D´ıaz enacted a law in 1888 that provided for compulsory primary education at the national level. The enforcement of this


133

law was left to the individual federal states, which discharged their task unevenly.13 It should be emphasised that even those most sympathetic to the indigenous populations had no doubts that Mexico’s ‘Indian race’ had nothing to offer the country’s future. It was a problem to be overcome, a race whose destiny was extinction. Parallel to this racist discourse, interest in the Aztec past was renewed and first attempts were made at scientifically studying its remnants, the contemporary Indian population of Mexico. This was part of a more general trend to provide the Mexican nation with a history of more depth and content than the short-lived republicanism of the reform era was able to do. The scientific search for roots and continuity was characteristic of the more ethnicised notion of the Mexican nation that was now developed and propagated by the Porfirian state. Mexico’s intellectuals thus joined a worldwide trend to find a deep, culturally specific character for each nation, often thought to be embodied in a specific race that would give the nation a biological foundation – an expression of the highly competitive relations between different projects of nation-state building in the pre-war era. Mexican developments paralleled the Young Turks’ attempt to define the substance of the Ottoman empire as being its Turkishness and the Swiss liberal elite’s search for a ‘homo alpinus’ that would provide the multi-ethnic republic with a cultural and biological substance comparable to ones of the surrounding nation-states. In all three cases, the development of an ethnicised nationalism went hand in hand with a drive to political and administrative centralisation. State-building now reached a stage where the central elites were in effective control over the national territory and were in need of a justification for the disempowerment of local and regional elites. The new nationalism was therefore forcefully promoted and promulgated by state institutions. In Mexico, the historical indigenism of the early Creole patriots was now rediscovered, after half a century of almost complete neglect and rejection (the following draws on Florescano 1997: 437f., 445–53). This rediscovery left its stamps on different fields, on urban architecture among others. A good example is the paseo de la reforma, the grand boulevard constructed following the urbanist ideals of Baron Haussmann in Paris. During the reform era and the Porfiriato, the boulevard was decorated with 13

In each major Indian village in Guerrero, for example, at the end of the nineteenth century, the children were taught writing and counting in Spanish (Dehouve 1990: 237f.). Compare Friedlander (1975: 144ff.) for a village in central Mexico. Regarding the establishment of the education system in the Mixteca Alta in the 1850s, see Pastor (1987: 439); for the Huasteca, see Schryer (1990: 95ff.).

134


statues of national heroes. Symbolising the new valuation of the Aztec past and the supposed continuity between the sovereign Aztec nation and the Mexicans of the present, the statue of Colon ´ at one end of the paseo faces the monument of Cuauhtemoc. The former general Vicente Riva Palacio, who authorised the final design of the boulevard, was also the author of a standard work on national history, the monumental Mexico a través de los siglos (1884–9). It was the first major historical work that integrated the pre-Hispanic and the colonial epochs in a longue durée perspective on national history, thus giving to the Mexicans a past equally glorious and profound as that of the great European nations (Florescano, forthcoming). The pre-Columbian cultures were now celebrated as a first step in the evolutionary success story leading to the modern Mexican nation and its achievements in the ‘social, political, religious, military, artistic, scientific and literary’ fields, as the subtitle of the five-volume work announced. The new view on the Aztec past also found expression in a revalorisation of archaeological sites and objects. In 1885 a first institute for safeguarding the grand pre-Hispanic monuments was founded, the Inspeccion ´ General de Monumentos Arqueologicos ´ de la Republica. ´ In a parallel development, Aztec mythology was rediscovered and interpreted in learned books, old codices were rediscovered and deciphered, journals dedicated to the study of the pre-Hispanic past were founded, and the first ethnographic and linguistic surveys of living remnants of that age were produced, for example the Geograf´ıa de las lenguas y carta etnográfica de México of Manuel Orozco y Berra published in 1864 (Florescano 1997: 448). The institutional centre of this new preoccupation with the Indian past and its ethnographic remnants was the Museo Mexicano under the leadership of the historian Francisco del Paso y Troncoso. It was endowed with a research library and later furnished with a teaching branch. In the arts, the so-called Mexican School painted the grand battles of the nation, its founding heroes and the majestic landscapes of the fatherland – while contemporary artists such as Ferdinand Hodler depicted the grand Alpine scenery several thousand miles to the east in Switzerland. New cartographic and lithographic works displayed the vast extensions of the national territory, its rich fauna and flora, its dramatic landscapes and the regional variety in customs and habits in magnificent works such as the Atlas pintoresco e histórico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos of Antonio Garc´ıa Cubas (1885) (ibid.: 452f.). In most of these works of history, art and literature, the Mexican nation was portrayed as being of Creole origin. The reverence to the Indian past and the heroism of the Aztec nation did not lead Porfirian nationalists to include the contemporary Indian population in the national ‘we’. They


135

remained the tolerated, exotic remnants of a glorious national past, not part of the sovereign body of citizens, and a race destined to disappear. Their otherness and insuperable backwardness was documented in the exhibitions, ethnographic texts and atlases of the time. The Indians had helped the nation to come into being, but were later superfluous in reaching the higher echelons of human evolution – they deserved the respect of patriotic Mexicans for their forefathers’ contribution to national history, but were in no way seen as standing on an equal footing with Creoles when it came to define the people of the unified and pacified country. Thus, the archaeological and historiographic project of these days was to provide a ‘real image of a dead people’, as Luis Villoro Orozco y Berra had put it in his Historia antigua y de la conquista de México (1880). Some of the most notable writers and political thinkers, however, such as Vicente Riva Palacio and Justo Sierra, went one step further in the revalorisation of the indigenous side of Mexico. They postulated that only the fusion of the different historical currents in a process of racial and cultural mixture would, eventually, create a unified nation and overcome the segregation into different ethno-racial groups that Mexico was still suffering from (cf. Powell 1968: 26f.). Contrary to the more common solution to the ‘Indian problem’, which consisted of racial ‘upgrading’ and cultural assimilation, their vision entailed the creation of a new, hybridised national culture. This early ideology of mestizaje, however, did not represent the dominant trend among the Porfirian intellectuals and state elite. It was a strand of thinking, however, that prepared the ground for a truly integrative national project, such as was developed after the Mexican revolution. Andrés Molina Enr´ıquez’s Los grandes problemas nacionales, published one year before the revolution, stands as the first elaborated ideology of mixture; it made a strong argument in favour of the virtues of the mestizo, the future people of the Mexican state. To sum up: in the course of the first century of independence, political modernisation led to the implementation of some aspects of the nation-state model, notably to closure along national lines in the legal and military realms. The social hierarchy based on juridically fixed strata was abolished and the principle of equality of all citizens gradually enforced. This legal homogenisation and domestic integration went hand in hand with external closure along national lines: all non-Mexican political institutions, especially the church and the imperial administration and army, were pushed aside and Spanish-born residents denied citizenship and expelled from the country. The military was now based on universal conscription of all citizens and served the defence of ‘national interests’ against outside aggressors and not primarily the suppression of internal rebellions, as in colonial times.

136


In the political sphere, however, no closure along national lines developed. Ethnicity was quickly politicised and led to new forms of exclusion along ethno-national lines. The question ‘who is the nation’ did not find an integrative answer. Rather, the Creole elites that came to power after independence saw their own social group, defined as one of the hierarchical strata of colonial society, as the embodiment of the nation. They were not disposed to share power with the Indian majority of the population and they lacked a network of trans-ethnic civic organisations on the basis of which an encompassing cultural compromise could have been negotiated and which would have provided channels to power for the Indian population. Rather, the criollo elites appealed to notions of white superiority and Indian backwardness in order to legitimate their monopolisation of state power. The politicisation of ethnicity resulted in a series of conflicts and battles that were perceived, described and largely fought as ‘caste wars’ between Indians and non-Indians. Legal and military closure along national lines went hand in hand with a pronounced republicanism, but no nationalism embracing the large majority of the citizenry evolved: nationalist closure had not yet reached the domains of political participation and social solidarity. The overwhelming majority of the population was excluded from effective participation in the national political sphere, despite the formal voting rights granted to all citizens. Political affairs were run as the family business of a small group of criollo clans, with the Indian population de facto being maintained in the status of a conquered people. These clans saw themselves less as representing the ‘Mexican people’ than as the civilising vanguard in a world of pervasive backwardness and racial degeneration. The rise of mestizo nationalism This changed with the revolution of 1910.14 We shall see how nationstate formation was propelled by the revolutionary cataclysm. Both popular participation in politics and the idea of social solidarity organised by a national state were forcefully articulated. In a parallel movement, the definition of the people that embodied the national state was radically changed – no longer the Creole elite but the masses of the mestizo population (cf. Knight 1994: 400ff.). A fully fledged nationalist programme became the official state ideology, now that the state elite was called upon to represent the interests and views of the majority of the population and to implement a policy of redistribution ‘for the benefit of the people’. This project succeeded to a certain extent with the land reform, during 14

My interpretation underlines the discontinuities between the Porfirian past and the postrevolutionary period. For the debate between continuity and rupture in Mexican historiography and a balanced view thereupon, see Knight (1994).


137

which most Indian communities were re-awarded collective land rights (so-called ejidos15 ) previously granted by the colony. This reorientation of state policy towards the ‘interest of the people’ made a new cultural compromise possible that came to encompass vast sectors of the Mexican population.16 Let us now look more closely at how the channels for political participation were widened and how a more inclusive nationalist ideology emerged. As long as the revolutionary central government was too weak to exercise direct control over the rural areas, the strongmen (or caciques) who had imposed themselves during the revolutionary struggles played the role of regional power props for the regime. Under presidents Calles and, especially, Cárdenas (1934–40) the channels of participation between the local population and the central state began to branch out, however. The new masters of the land came to dominate provincial politics through newly created institutions like the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI), the Secretar´ıa de Reforma Agraria, local and regional offshoots of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the farmers’ union CNC. In this manner, they knitted together a fine-meshed network of alliances that connected the most remote rural villages with the centres of power in the capital. With the multiplication of relations of participation and control tying every village to the state capital, the caciques lost their usefulness as political brokers.17 Frequent criss-crossing in this network permitted the optimal use of the techniques of control, co-optation and selective repression, which have turned Mexico into the politically most stable of the larger countries of Latin America – until the reduction of state budgets in the aftermath of the debt crisis limited the space for clientelist integration and led to a crisis of the political regime. 15

16

17

In its broadest sense, the term ejido refers to any type of land allocation to a collective owner in the course of the post-revolutionary land reform (this included the re-granting or confirmation of land rights of comunidades ind´ıgenas based on a colonial title). More strictly speaking, in a formal legal sense, the term refers to a land grant whose beneficiary is a group of landless peasants; the members of the ejidos then share out the usufructuary rights among the families according to certain rules. The plots can be neither sold (for the proprietary rights remain with the ejido) nor leased; but they can be passed on as an inheritance, albeit without partition of the estate. Production is usually organised at the family level, and co-operatives are the exception rather than the rule (see Gutelman 1974, ch. 5). Alan Knight (1994) analyses the fights between different cultural currents that went along with the gradual establishment of this compromise, giving special emphasis to the opposition between the clerical forces and the representatives of the new state ideology. This diversification of political communication between community and nation has been extensively documented in ethnographies: Ugalde (1973); Azoala and Krotz (1976, quoted in Fábregas Puig 1988); del Castillo (1979); de la Pena ˜ (1980: 307–15); Lomnitz Adler (1982). Schryer (1990) analyses a new episode in the diversification of political alliances as a result of radical peasant movements emerging in the 1970s. In some regions of Mexico, the caciques were able to maintain their position to this date (see examples from Oaxaca in Flanet 1977 and Inigo ˜ 1978).

138


This system allowed a measure of political participation that would have been inconceivable in pre-revolutionary times – if in the context of clientelist networks subject to the control of a single party apparatus and its elite, appropriately named la familia revolucionaria. The different structures of trade unions, party organisations and para-state institutions offered a growing class of functionaries and bureaucrats hitherto unthinkable channels for upward mobility. The majority of this new state class was created from the vast urban population that maintained neither a Creole nor an Indian identity. The birth of the mestizo nation The expansion of the clientelist state apparatus was accompanied by the creation of a mestizo national identity. The different understandings of the process of mestizaje – racialised versions with the flair of the nineteenth century and culturalist variants inspired by Boasian anthropology – became slowly standardised into an official ideology. The various regional stories of the revolutionary events were wielded into a single master narrative of ‘the Mexican revolution’ (Alonso 1988), while the contributions of other, vanquished groups to this ‘national’ legacy were left aside. The Mexican revolution thus became the moment of birth of the mestizo ‘nation’, with the new elite taking on responsibility as guardian of this cultural legacy. The new outlook on the social universe is best illustrated with an architectural example. In the middle of the central court of the Museo Nacional de Antropolog´ıa e Historia rises a thin pillar topped by a wide concrete roof, symbol of the Mexican people (the roof) and its historical roots (the pillar): the pillar depicts on the one side Montezuma, the last Aztec ruler, and on the other, Cortés in full military array. The fusion of the Indian and the Spanish cultural heritages produces something new, the pueblo mexicano. By comparison with colonial ideology and law, the idea of mestizohood is considerably expanded. Not only children of a Spanish father and an Indian mother (that is, those with ‘mixed blood’), but all those who consider themselves as the products of the process of cultural fusion, such as symbolised by the architecture of the museum,18 are considered to be mestizos and hence true Mexicans. Formerly a stigma of impurity, mestizohood is transformed into the hallmark of a chosen people combining the best of all civilisations. The main ideologue of mestizaje was 18

For the significance of museum representations for the construction of national identity, see the contributions in Stocking (1985).


139

the philosopher and politician José Vasconcelos. He praised mestizohood as the ‘cosmic race’, integrating the virtues of the black, yellow, red and white races who all had contributed to the rise of human civilisation in the past. The future, however, belonged to the mestizos. The cosmic race would be superior to the white race of the United States that exterminated its Indians and depreciates the blacks and thus is condemned to inbreeding and decay. Revolution and mestizaje are thus the central elements of the new cultural compromise. They are not only ever-present in presidential addresses, newspaper articles and the like but also pivotal in everyday popular discourse (cf. Pérez 1994). La revolución is considered the climax of national history, when the oligarchic social structure inherited from the past was transcended and national autonomy with regard to the United States was regained. Both the government and the people of Mexico strive for the consolidation and ultimate realisation of the ‘institutionalised’ revolution. Mestizohood is identified with the people. Its national character (mexicanidad) is expressed in mestizo popular culture, in specific musical styles as well as in artistic traditions such as the famous murals of Rivera or Siqueiros. Mexican nationalism19 thus no longer relates to the Creoles as the embodiment of the people – as is still the case in Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru20 – but embraces the vast majority of the population. Political closure along national lines and integration through state-organised social solidarity showed their effects. The clientelist structures of political participation and the policy of land reform created the conditions for a new, more inclusive cultural compromise. To speak on behalf of ‘the people’ or to engage in a public discourse on the political affairs of the country, one must now refer to this compromise and accept the apparently legitimate identification between the state and the mestizo nation. Again, this new thrust of political and social inclusion led to new forms of exclusion along national lines. The process of identity formation and national closure now turned Indians into ‘ethnic minorities’ and again excluded them from the enlarged realms of the national ‘we’. For they did 19

20

On Mexican nationalism, see Lafaye (1977) and Brading (1985) for the colonial period and the bibliography in Bartra (1987) for the post-revolutionary period. Stutzman (1981) analyses the ideology of mestizaje in the Ecuadorian context; much of his argument also applies to Mexico. It should be noted that even the early patriotism of the Creole intellectuals was more encompassing than in comparable South American countries. And we have mentioned that mestizos, Creoles and Indians fought side by side during the first independence war. Conversely, the peasant rebellions in late colonial Peru and Bolivia emerged as Indianist, anti-Spanish and anti-western Messianic movements led by Indian nobles (Knight 1992; Mallon 1992).

140


not take part in the historical process of fusion and mestizaje, so that they again appear as remnants of the past – as is borne out by the ethnographic collections of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia y Historia (Shelton 1995: 93f.) or in official school-books up until the 1970s (Gutierrez Chong 1999, ch. 5). The distinction between majority and minority also becomes manifest in the national census which, for the first time since the colonial era, provides special categories for the ethnically ‘other’. Their minority status thus becomes obvious and the state can closely monitor processes of assimilation and demographic development. Realising the vision: the politics of cultural assimilation In colonial times Indians were regarded as part of the state body, to the orderly functioning of which they contributed like all other parts. This hierarchical inclusion was to be replaced by horizontal exclusion with the onset of political modernisation. During the first phase of nationstate formation, Indians personified, as representatives of a lower race less apt to progress, all aspects of Mexican reality that needed to be overcome by a modern bourgeois society. In the post-revolutionary period of inclusive nationalism, they became ‘minorities’ that had so far refused to join the nation. However, it was no longer racial inferiority and lack of civilisational drive that was responsible for the ‘Indian problem’: rather, the Indian peasantry still suffered from quasi-colonial domination by the Creole towns that blocked the natural assimilation processes that would otherwise unfold. Revolution and mestizaje still had not reached these backwater areas of the national territory. The Indian population was thus a constant reminder that the nationalist project still had not achieved a complete melding of citizenry, sovereign and nationhood. The solution to this new ‘Indian problem’ no longer seemed to reside in racial upgrading or advancement through education, but rather, in a benevolent politics of development and assimilation that would overcome the colonial blockades to national integration.21 Only then would the mestizo symbolic claim to all encompassing nationhood come true and the fusion of state and people, as dreamed up by all nationalisms, would finally be accomplished. Among the foremost measures employed to reach this goal was language and education policy. In 1930, the illiteracy rate of federal states with an Indian majority such as Oaxaca or Chiapas was still over 70 per cent (Hymens, quoted in Heath 1972: 9). At that time, more 21

For the history of Mexican indigenismo, see Villoro (1979); Knight (1990).


141

than half of Mexico’s Indian population did not speak Spanish (Valdés González 1988: 40). The post-revolutionary governments started various Spanish programmes to overcome the legacy of colonialism. At the outset, these attempts were still inspired by nineteenth-century positivist thinking. The escuelas rurales for instance, founded in the 1920s under the leadership of Vasconcelos, were to be open to adults also; apart from Spanish, as well as reading and counting skills, they also taught programmes to improve production techniques, hygiene etc.22 With the presidency of Cárdenas, a new start was made towards prying the Indian hinterland from the ‘colonial freeze’ and integrating it into the Mexican nation, not only through isolated pedagogic measures but through integrated development programmes. Government institutions specifically designed to look after the Indian population were created, most importantly the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI). After positive results with bilingual curricula scheduling the teaching of literacy first in the indigenous mother-tongue and subsequently in Spanish, the INI23 established in the 1950s a series of bilingual schools using specially trained teachers called promotores culturales and maestros bilingues who hailed from Indian villages. After initial successes, bilingual education was declared compulsory for all Indian regions in 1970. Within the Ministry of Education, a Direccion ´ de Educacion ´ Ind´ıgena was formed. Although in 1978 still only a quarter of all Indian children were taught by bilingual teachers (Nahmad 1978: 235), the bilingual method seems to have been relatively successful. The percentage of those who did not know Spanish among the Indian population decreased continuously from 53 per cent in 1930 to 23 per cent in 1980 (Valdés González 1988: 40). Nevertheless, the schooling rate often remained relatively low in rural and predominantly Indian areas.24 Political subordination This policy of cultural assimilation was only one of the consequences that the push for nation-state formation entailed for the Indian population. 22 23

24

Compare the local study by Friedlander (1975, ch. 6). For the strategy of INI see Aguirre Beltrán (1967; 1982), the former long-time director of the institute. For a critique of the anthropological and development theories underpinning INI policies, see Warman et al. (1970) and the contributions in Garc´ıa Mora and Medina (1986). In the Indian village of Chamula in southern Mexico, for example, only half of the children of school age went to school. In the rural areas of highland Chiapas, only 1.5 per cent of first-graders completed the six years of compulsory primary education (Modiano 1973: 91ff.).

142


Another consequence was their political subordination in the newly created clientelist state apparatus. Since the process of political integration went hand in hand with the spread of a mestizo nationalism, it also implied – albeit in a manner different from nineteenth-century liberalism – the political exclusion of the population classified as ‘Indian’. All political functions situated above the municipal level, as well as all high posts in the bureaucratic, military and party structures were held by mestizos.25 The few Indian political careerists who reached the anteroom of power, were compelled to negate their Indian ancestry and to adopt the mestizo habitus of language and etiquette.26 For the Indians, the ‘mestizoisation’ of the state apparatus and the political institutions meant that they could only participate indirectly, via political brokers, in national policy-making. Direct access to the network of administrative and political power was impossible for those whose cultural codes and language diverged from the dominant model embodied by the members of the state apparatus, who regarded themselves as the legitimate representatives and agents of ‘the people’. Political closure and exclusion along ethno-national lines also had repercussions in everyday life. This clearly appears from a study by Arizpe (1978) who compared a mestizo village and a Mazahua community. Under the land reform launched by President Cárdenas, both were given an equal amount of land, and both had the same number of inhabitants. Forty years later, the mestizo community was much better off, for it was easier for them, being members of the ‘nation’, to establish links with state representatives. Sharing the culture and language of the state education system, some sons and daughters of mestizo peasants successfully finished their schooling and managed to establish themselves in the outside world. They found work as civil servants, semi-qualified industrial workers or small merchants and could thus reduce pressure on communal landholdings. The Indians only participated in regional politics through the intercession of caciques. Their schools did not provide them with a comparable 25

26

For Totonicapán in western Guatemala, compare Ganther (1993, sect. 4.1.2). As late as the late 1980s, crucial salaried positions (in departmental and municipal administrations, radio, postal services and police as well as in education) were mainly held by mestizos, despite the growing number of Indian academics who have often been compelled to seek employment in the crafts sector of their home villages. The ind´ıgenas of the municipio in question (which also happens to be the county town) were able to elect as alcalde municipal one of their own, but this is the exception rather than the rule in Guatemala (ibid., sect. 4.2.1.2). A similar situation reigns in many regions of Mexico, as is evidenced by numerous studies on the phenomenon of ‘internal colonialism’ (see the overview in Wimmer 1995d, ch. 3 and 5). This is illustrated by the life history of a man referred to in W. Smith (1981: 140ff.), who attended university in Guatemala in the 1970s. Conditions in Mexico are similar.


143

educational background because of language problems. Lacking alternative sources of income, landholdings were further fragmented, and the villagers were obliged to seek work as low-paid day labourers on the plantations. The poorer peasants supported the Indian caciques and identified with them, for they offered a minimum of protection against a hostile mestizo environment. The Indian response: entry, exit and voice Thus, the project of national integration and assimilation pursued by the post-revolutionary state resulted not only in the classificatory exclusion of ‘ethnic minorities’, but also in new forms of political subordination. In the following, I shall turn to the manner in which the Indian population reacted to these developments. Three different strategies can be distinguished. The first consisted in accepting the offer of integration and joining the national family as newly assimilated mestizos. As we shall see, this was only possible where integration and amalgamation represented a valid option in the eyes of the local mestizos as well. The second strategy was diametrically opposed to entering the national society and represented an exit strategy – turning one’s back to the nationally framed society and invoking the solidarity of the local community as a moral counter-project. The third strategy, and the most relevant in the context of this book, was voice: transforming the meaning of the ethno-national divide and opposing the dominant equating of mestizohood and nation with an Indian ethno-nationalism. Entry: assimilation and passing Assimilation meant making oneself invisible as an ind´ıgena and integrating into the majority, so that one could no longer be identified as different and excluded from access to the modern state and its promises: political participation, equality before the law, protection from arbitrary violence. In a sense, it meant accepting the cultural compromise governing the national field and thereby helping to realise the dream of fusing citizenry and sovereign with the mestizo nation. Indeed, aggregate census data show that the percentage of persons selfidentifying as Indians decreased continuously until 1970 – an evolution that can hardly be explained by the different rates of population growth among indios and the rest of the population. Exactly how and where this change of group membership occurred is not self-evident, because at the local level the ethnic boundary in the

144


Table 1. The Indian population in Mexico, 1825–1995

Year

Percentage of Indians in the population (in parentheses: annual growth rate)

1825 1930

54.4 16

1940

1990

14.8 (1.23%) 11.2 (−0.01%) 10.4 (2.16%) 7.8 (0.27%) 9.0a (4.1%) 10.7

1995

11.1

1950 1960 1970 1980

Total population (millions) (in parentheses: annual growth rate) 6.8 16.5 (1.1%) 19.6 25.8 (2.7%) 34.9 (3.3%) 48.2 (3.3%) 70 (2.9%) 81.2 (2.1%) 90.6 (1.8%)

Note: a The increased proportion of Mexicans speaking indigenous languages between 1970 and 1980 is due to political factors, namely the emergence of ethnic movements that brought new meaning to Indian identity and culture, and the redefinition of census methods. Over this period, the number of those who spoke only an indigenous language increased by 3.2 per cent, while the number of bilingual individuals increased by 5.1 per cent; these figures clearly exceed the possibilities of physical reproduction (Valdés González 1988: 41). Source: For 1825: Adams (1967: 471 and 476); for 1930 to 1980: Valdés González (1988: 38); for 1990 and 1995: from the official census.

Indian heartlands – such as highland Guatemala or Chiapas – seems to be as rigid as it used to be in colonial times; it is therefore nearly impossible to change group allegiance.27 Mestizoisation apparently occurred mainly in the urban centres and on the plantations and farms of the lowlands. Colby and van den Berghe (1969, ch. 6) present the most detailed analysis 27

In this regard, however, some differences between Mexico and Guatemala must be noted. In San Cristobal ´ in southern Mexico for example, inter-marriage between Indian domestics and mestizos of modest standing is frequent, and some knowledge of Spanish and sartorial adaptation make ‘passing’ relatively easy. In Guatemala, however, one can only become part of the ladino category by changing one’s residence and dissimulating one’s Indian origin, and inter-marriage is a rare occurrence both in the rural areas and in towns like Quetzaltenango (Colby and van den Berghe 1961: 786ff.).


145

of such ‘passing’ into the mestizo group in Guatemala.28 On the lowland plantations, language barriers prevented the newly arrived migrants from joining the more numerous Indian ethnic group of migrant labourers. As a result, they were classified as ladinos (a Guatemaltecan term similar to mestizos) by the local population. Over time, they abandoned all signs of their Indian origin and sought to adopt the ladinos’ deportment, language and other distinctive traits. ‘Passing’ into the group of mestizos was therefore only possible through individual migration, not through the acculturation of entire groups. It is noteworthy that in the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala the ethnic boundary persisted and remained relatively impermeable despite considerable Indian adaptation to mestizo culture. Tax and Hinshaw (1970), for example, showed in a study addressing social and cultural change in the Guatemaltecan village of Panajachel between 1934 and 1966, that the ethnic boundary remained stable although many Indians had assimilated nearly entirely in dress, occupation, religious practices etc. to the mestizos. Other authors have corroborated this finding.29 Despite the constant flow of individuals across the ethnic boundary and the gradual disappearance of ‘objective’ cultural differences, the ethnic differentiation in the Indian heartlands persisted, thus impeding the realisation of the nationalist utopia of an integrated mestizo nation. Interestingly enough, until the 1970s those responsible for this situation seem to be the local mestizos. Defending the symbolic and political advantages of distinguishing ‘indios’ from ‘mestizos’ made sense if their privileges had to be maintained through political domination. In that case, they depended on their good connections with the state apparatus, which they enjoyed as members of the nation. Thus, the new cultural compromise implying that ‘assimilated Indians’ could become part of the nation made little sense from their point of view. Consequently, they sought to preserve the hierarchical ordering and separation of indios and mestizos inherited from the colonial era and the nineteenth century. To illustrate this thesis, I should like to compare some cases from the anthropological literature, including some from Guatemala. In the western highlands of Guatemala the ethnic boundary is much more sharply drawn than in the northern lowlands. In the Petén, for instance, Schwartz (1990) noted an ethnic differentiation between ladinos and indios, but by comparison with the western highlands, practices of ethnic ascription 28

29

The authors use official census data which indicate a decrease of more than 10 per cent in the Indian population between 1950 and 1960 – erroneously so, as the calculations of Early (1975; 1986) have shown. A realistic estimate would be a decrease of 6 per cent for the same period. Colby and van den Berghe (1969: 173); W. Smith (1975: 228).

146


were much less rigid, and the ethnic boundary was easily crossed; also, group relations showed relatively little hostility and hierarchy. This is because social closure along ethnic lines did not yield any advantage in rubber production, the region’s main economic activity until the 1970s. Indeed, most ladino buyers had to compete freely for the produce of the individuals engaged in rubber tapping, independently of their ethnic status. Moreover, it was difficult to monopolise land politically in this frontier region, and anyone desirous of shaking off the yoke of repression could escape to the bushes. Political control over resource flows was therefore hardly possible. Social closure and the playing out of their privileged relations with the nationalised state apparatus were hardly attractive options for the local ladinos. The same applies to the primary forests in the northern lowlands of Chiapas, that were settled by impoverished smallholders from Indian highland communities and mestizos who used to be plantation workers. The categories of ladino and indio no longer bear much meaning. By now one distinguishes between ‘us and other peasants’, and ‘patrones’ (such as agents of the lumber companies active in the Lacandonian jungle) and ‘government people’. At the core of the new collective identity lies the shared experience in the struggle for the legalisation of the colony (Deverre 1980: 159–204). Conversely, in the highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas, the outcome of conflicts over land is mainly determined by political ties with the regional and national power centres. In this traditionally densely populated area, land disputes take the form of zero-sum games, and mestizos can only acquire land if their political predominance allows them to snatch it from the Indian communities (for Chiapas, compare Wimmer 1995c). Similarly, obtaining one of the few political appointments, being successful as a recruiter of Indian workers for lowland plantations, acquiring a concession for a transport company etc. largely depended on political ties with the state administration. It was therefore to the advantage of the mestizos to close ranks, to represent themselves as outposts of the nation in an alien context dominated by Indians, and to offer their services to the central state as the agents of national interests in the hinterland. When Indians try to escape the stigma of Indian group membership by adopting mestizo modes of life, dress, language, religion etc.,30 their behaviour – the manner in which these elements of distinction are enacted, in which Spanish is spoken, in which they interact and deal with 30

Compare the attempt made by a group of young orthodox Catholics in a Guatemalan community analysed by Warren (1989).


147

outsiders – is nevertheless strongly marked by the habitual dispositions of subordination that has characterised the Indian situation for the past centuries. It is therefore not too difficult for the mestizos to identify an ‘Indio in disguise’,31 or indio revestido,32 and to maintain a symbolic boundary, even though few genuine cultural differences may persist between the two groups.33 Inventing new symbols of distinction, most recently by the acquisition of middle-class consumption goods from North America, may help to secure the advantages of an ethnic hierarchy. Viewed from this angle, the acculturation processes described by American anthropologists since the 1930s (e.g. Beals 1967) resemble a constant chase to catch up for those who try to adopt certain consumption patterns to escape from the discriminating category of indio. Owing to their privileged position in the social space, the mestizos constantly manage to acquire new distinctive goods that Indian peasants still lack, while marking as ‘Indian’ the newly acquired everyday practices of the peasants, thus re-establishing the difference. Ironically, the habits abandoned by the mestizos because of their ‘Indianness’ in this continuing cultural race of distinction are therefore often of Spanish colonial origin.34 Exit: the reinforcement of Indian communities However, assimilation represents the preferred strategy of only a minority of Indians. It may make sense for migrants who leave the sheltered universe of the Indian community and seek to guard against the contempt they risk as indios in the urban or agro-industrial centres. It is also pursued by villages which profited from land reallocation during the revolution, and that could therefore adhere to the cultural compromise of a reformulated Mexican nationalism – like the inhabitants of the settlement colonies in northern Chiapas mentioned above (for details see Wimmer 1995a, sect. 6.3). The majority of the Indian population does not concur with the classification into indios and mestizos and the hierarchy that it implies. Most Indian peasants continue to feel they belong primarily to their local 31

32 33 34

Similarly in India, as shown by Sebring (1969), members of high castes recognise casteless individuals from other regions by their body posture, gestures, demeanour and grammatical peculiarities. In Northern Ireland, according to Easthope (1976, quoted in Banton 1983: 180), nuances in the manner of speaking, behaviour and appearance reveal religious membership. On the subject of revestido or – in the Andean highlands – cholo, see Aguirre Beltrán (1967: 301–11). Compare the case study in Friedlander (1975). See the example given by Pitt-Rivers (1989: 12).

148


communities.35 As we saw earlier, these communities were the product of the colonial era. The cultural compromise that emerged within these social fields depicts the community as an island of solidarity in a hostile environment. This allows the local elite to keep competitors for economic and political power at bay, because as outsiders they do not have the right to establish themselves there. Community members in turn owe political loyalty to the village elite. In exchange for this loyalty, the elite has to defend the common good of the village, for example in land disputes, and practise solidarity in times of economic hardship (for a detailed analysis see Wimmer 1995a, ch. 4). This compromise is accompanied by a marked social closure along communal lines, resulting mainly from the collective land allocation during the colonial era, and again during the land reform of the revolutionary period, and by competitive relations between individual Indian communities. By comparison with neighbouring villages, one’s own is generally regarded as ‘more civilised’ and ‘more peaceful’;36 one’s own patron saints have higher spiritual standing; one’s fiesta for the patron saint is more colourful and cheerful; in land disputes with neighbouring communities, the latter employ dubious means and forge documents; one’s own village band plays the ‘right’ music; the pattern of one’s own traditional dress is more beautiful; one’s own cosmogonic myth that recounts the founding of the village by the ancestors,37 is free from the lies with which the elders of other villages hoodwink their listeners. However, even from such a decidedly localist perspective not all people beyond the village horizon are to be classified without distinction as foreigners. There are also broader categories to organise the social world, such as groups classified on the basis of language. In the prerevolutionary uprisings and rebellions38 and again since the emergence of ethnic movements in the 1970s, they have been of considerable political importance. The distinction between indios and mestizos, by contrast, makes little sense for Indian peasants, be it alone for the pejorative connotation of the term indio. Recognising the distinction would mean accepting the closure practised by the mestizo groups and the distinction between nation and minority. Indians therefore use other forms of classification that make the mestizos appear as just one group among many, thus 35

36 37 38

Often these are rather large villages (up to 30,000 inhabitants) divided in turn into several local groups (hamlets or nuclear villages) that may maintain their own subsidiary identity (see the overview by Hunt and Nash 1967). Compare Leslie (1960) and Nader (1990). See Wimmer (1987) for one of many examples. Reina (1988) assembled a bibliography of the relevant literature.


149

denying them an exclusive relationship to the state. Dividing the social world into language groups produces exactly this effect. In this manner, Ixiles, Quichés, Mixes, Nahuas and Spanish-speakers are situated at the same level of categorical differentiation – a world full of particularities and no clear ranking in terms of political prestige and value.39 Voice: the formation of Indian movements Entry and exit are the age-old strategies that have been deployed by the Indian population since the conquest. During the last three decades, a third way of coping with exclusion and subordination has appeared. It consists in taking up the distinction between mestizos and indios and giving it a new meaning, by turning the symbolic hierarchy upside down – a familiar starting point for many social movements. The project of a homogeneous nation-state is contrasted with the utopia of a multicultural Mexico. Mestizo nationalism is answered with an Indian ethnonationalism, voiced by a newly risen educated elite that presents itself as the vanguard of the ‘Indian people’. Since these movements have successfully entered Mexican public space, a new wave in the politicisation of ethnicity has swept over the country. Post-revolutionary Mexico thus exemplifies one of the two ways of politicising ethnicity discussed in the previous chapter. In nation-states with a dominant majority, the politics of cultural uniformisation and assimilation may eventually lead to the formation of an educated middle class among the ethnic minorities. These may start to question the nationalisation of the state and use the discourse of national self-determination to denounce the lack of representativity of the state. In the following, the emergence and political mobilisation of Mexico’s Indian middle class will be considered more closely. In the early 1970s, the Mexican economic and political crisis also started to affect the rural population. The deterioration of the standard of living in the countryside, the dwindling of agricultural production and the slackening of clientelist integration tested the legitimacy of the Mexican government to a degree unheard of since the 1930s. President Echeverr´ıa reacted, like his predecessor Cárdenas at the time of the 1930s land reforms, by readjusting the national policy to help cover the needs of the poorest. At the same time, the Indian masses were to provide a new basis for the destabilised regime. In 1976, under his so-called policy of democratic opening, Echeverr´ıa created the Consejo Nacional de Pueblos 39

Compare the ethnographic examples provided by Colby and van den Berghe (1969: 179ff.); Iwanska (1971: 99ff.); Friedlander (1975) etc.

150


Ind´ıgenas.40 CNPI was made part of the peasants’ union, and included representatives of all of Mexico’s fifty-six indigenous language groups. These efforts received an unexpectedly positive response. However, the political demands voiced by the Indian representatives became radicalised with time, in a way not foreseen by the architects of the populist integration policy. Next to the state-promoted Indian council, independent, often regionally based Indian organisations emerged, which pursued a wide variety of political goals.41 They claimed the right to political self-determination, control over their own resources (especially land), participation in all government programmes likely to affect them, self-government according to ‘Indian’ political traditions, respect for their customs in the courts, and the recognition of the major Indian languages as official languages; in short, a treatment that might conform to the desired status of autonomous nationalities. Who were the followers of these movements, and how exactly did they mobilise? The first activists came from the educated middle classes that emerged under the impact of postwar integration policies. They included professionals like male nurses, veterinary and agricultural technicians and, above all, the approximately 22,000 bilingual teachers. Paradoxically, most had been trained by the Indian Institute as ‘agents of change’, called upon to promote assimilation. This milieu of Indian professionals and teachers presented a fertile ground for social movements because the aspirations raised by their ascent into the middle classes were curtailed.42 Their possibilities of filling regionally or nationally relevant positions remained rather limited because of their origin and lack of friends in high places. A habitus of hostile subservience, adapted to a position of subordination and symbolic exclusion, did not augur well for a career in the mestizo social environment where everyday life required a delicate balancing act between the aloofness of ornate Castilian etiquette and the intimacy of hobnobbing within ‘old boys’ networks’. Those who did not master the rules of this game stood out, easily identifiable as indios. 40

41

42

This idea was voiced for the first time in 1971 by the leaders of the national peasant unions. Already under Cárdenas Indian congresses had been organised. The first took place in 1935 and was influenced by intellectuals and politicians flirting with communist ideas. They regarded the Indian population as ‘nationalities’ in the sense of Lenin and Stalin. This first wave of mobilisation endeavours came to nothing, however. Many important documents of the independent Indianist movements can be found in the series Civilización published by the Centro Antropologico ´ de Documentacion ´ de América Latina in the city of Mexico, as well as in the collections of Bonfil (1981) and Garduno ˜ (1983). See Bonfil (1982); Barre (1983: 122–36); Medina (1983); Mej´ıa Pineros ˜ and Sarmiento (1987); Kearney and Nagenast (1990); also Argueta and Warman (1993). A study of bilingual Tarascan teachers was undertaken by Mar´ıa Eugenia Vargas (1994).


151

A probably even more important aspect was that the Indian professionals and teachers set out to make their aspirations come true at a time of economic crisis and dwindling state resources, of limitations imposed upon the clientelist mode of integration and the corresponding narrowing of the channels for upward mobility. The already established professional colleagues showed themselves less and less willing to make room for newcomers. In this manner, two forms of discrimination became closely intertwined in the everyday experiences of Indian teachers and professionals: rejection because of their ‘Indianness’ and exclusion from the government apparatus despite a good education. For the Indian elite, the category of indios therefore took on new meaning. Providing it with the status and charisma of a nationality of its own, it became a crucial ideological tool in claiming a more prominent role on the political stage of the country.43 The Indian elite took over the dominant discourse of nationalism and applied it to ‘our own people’. Let us look more closely at how this transformation was achieved. I will restrict myself to analysing the main features of the Indianist discourse without dwelling on its intellectual sources44 and without commenting 43

44

It would be worthwhile investigating how and to what extent these leaders managed to mobilise their following. For instance, the various consejos supremos of CNPI have different ways of becoming active across the local and regional political landscape. In some areas, such as San Juan Guichicovi in south-eastern Oaxaca, council representatives lack local support, and the council only exists at the congresses. Among the Mazahuas, on the other hand, the delegates seem to entertain good relations with the village communities whose demands and strategies they largely reflect. In trying to explain these differences, one is confronted, however, with an entirely new set of circumstances (e.g. the dynamics of village and regional politics with its factionalism, complex clientelist systems and so forth); this requires a different type of analysis than pursued so far (see Wimmer 1995a, chs. 5 and 6). The Indian intellectuals borrow many of their central concepts from anthropologists like Guzman-Bockler ¨ (in Guatemala), Stavenhagen, Bonfil Batalla, Varese, Bartolomé and Barabas (in Mexico). Political reorientation in anthropology came about after the complicity of some of its major exponents with the Vietnam war, among others, came to be known publicly. The Latin American debate on the mission of an anti-imperialist anthropology eventually led to the Declaration of Barbados of 1971 which was signed primarily by Latin American anthropologists. According to the Declaration, the newly ‘decolonised anthropology’ was meant to transmit to ‘the colonised peoples all anthropological knowledge, both regarding itself and the society governing it, to contribute to their liberation’. Moreover, anthropology was called upon to rectify the ‘false representation of Indian peoples that predominates in the national society by unveiling its ideological purpose of justifying colonialism’ (Declaration of Barbados, reproduced in IWGIA 1971). Through the analysis of ‘internal colonialism’, so-called critical anthropology thought to foster the decolonisation of inter-ethnic relations and the ‘liberation’ of the Indian population (for details, see Wimmer 1995d, ch. 6). In the mid-1970s, many ideas shifted from the academic community to the Indianist movements. The concept of ‘ethnic project’ and the nationalist representation of history, for which the anthropologists’ ethno-historical studies provided a scientific basis, also became the guiding ideas for the intellectual leaders of these movements, even though some were seeking to

152


on the accuracy of certain historical views. Two concepts play a crucial role in this political discourse, namely ‘Indian culture’ understood as a culture of resistance, and the ‘ethnic project’ as the historical mission of Indian peoples.45 The fragmentation of indigenous ethnic groups into comunidades is seen as the consequence of the Machiavellian policy of the colonial rulers. Under the surface of localism, however, an encompassing ethnic consciousness, even an identification with the Indian nation as a whole, has survived. Despite the modern state’s attempts to destroy them, Indian identity and culture are alive. The western elements of today’s Indian cultures do not affect their integrity and originality. Acquisitions such as modern technology belong to the common cultural heritage of humanity and should not be attributed to the West. The major accomplishments of Indian cultures, for example in medicine and astronomy, should be rediscovered and given their proper place in the history of humankind. Some cultural elements that are usually attributed to Spanish influence, such as the so-called cargo-system, are in reality indigenous. On account of its resistance character, Indian culture cannot always be observed directly, let alone by outsiders. But the fact that, for example, indigenous languages have survived testifies to the vitality of an ethnic culture capable of resisting overwhelming assimilationist pressures. It is this ethnic culture that must be revitalised and strengthened, by stripping it of its colonial varnish and immunising it against the seductions of acculturation. This goal could be reached, for example, by readjusting educational curricula according to the values of Indian culture. From a long-term historical view that includes the golden age of the pre-Colombian centuries, one can see the ‘ethnic project’ of a specific group, which consists in defending its culture and slowly working towards a re-conquest of political autonomy. The ‘ethnic projects’ of the ‘Indian peoples’ were certainly interrupted by the conquest, but they have by no means been given up. The appropriation of the continent by Spain was no conquest but an invasion that it is high time to repel. Accordingly, Mexico’s history is described as a struggle for the realisation of this ethnic project. The true political aims of Mexico’s Indian peoples were hidden from Western oppressors under the cover of subordination and

45

distance themselves from the ‘white Indians’ (see e.g. the founding document of Frente Independiente de Pueblos Indios). A description and short analysis of the Indianist discourse can be found in Bonfil (1981: 35–49) and D´ıaz-Polanco (1989). The most extended and sophisticated study of Indian intellectuals is provided by Gutierrez (1999). My interpretation is based on the publications of the following Indian organisations: Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Ind´ıgenas, Frente Independiente de Pueblos Indios, Alianza Nacional de Profesionales Ind´ıgenas Bilingues ¨ and Assamblea de Autoridades Mixes.


153

assimilation. They became manifest only during the rebellions against the Spaniards and their descendants. These rebellions must therefore be viewed as signposts for rediscovering and re-appropriating the Indian past from the distortions of colonial and post-colonial historiography. They are not to be interpreted simply as reactions against deeds of the rulers, for instance rising demands for tribute, but rather as manifestations of ethnic consciousness. For the leaders of the Indian movements, ethnicity thus represents the naturally given and eternal foundation of history. History, in turn, can only be written as one of ethnic groups and their oppression by ethnic others. From such a perspective, the ethnie is regarded as a homogeneous totality not divided by any fundamental conflict of interests. It is characterised by a shared culture and exhibits clear territorial boundaries according to which political entities should be organised.46 We have here some of the classic topoi of nationalist thinking analysed in chapter 3 – the same set of political principles on which the mestizo nationalism draws. Nationalism and counter-nationalism There is thus a hidden commonality between the political project of the Indian intelligenzija and the state ideology against which it is directed: both rely on the nationalist principles that have developed as a new cultural compromise in post-revolutionary Mexico. Indian intellectuals choose those aspects of this compromise that allow them to elaborate a discourse of injustice corresponding to their specific interests. Obviously, they also speak for themselves when they demand political and cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities, for such autonomy would yield employment possibilities and would open up new positions of power, for example in the proposed institutes for Indian culture, in development programmes or in parliaments and executive bodies reserved for Indians. The rise of mestizo nationalism and of indigenous movements thus represents two interrelated aspects of the same process: of political closure along national lines and the development of state-organised mechanisms of social solidarity, the last steps towards the fully developed nationstate.47 Once the state apparatus acts on behalf of the ‘national majority’ 46

47

One demand of the Indian movements therefore consists in redrawing the borders of the federal states according to the ethnic composition of the population and to base the jurisdiction of these new political entities on indigenous customary law. My analysis strongly emphasises the internal dynamics leading to the emergence of ethno-nationalist movements, as opposed to the influence of the forces of globalisation that stand at the centre of much of the specialist literature of these days. Undoubtedly, North American Indian movements also played a role as models, while the writings of ‘critical anthropologists’ served as a source of ideas. But it would be erroneous to regard

154


and is being controlled by their representatives, all those who are classified as ethnic others are being excluded because they are not qualified to act and speak on behalf of ‘the people’. Yet, the efforts undertaken at political integration and cultural assimilation – at realising the nationalist dream of fusing the nation, the citizenry and the sovereign – provoke the emergence of a counter-movement led by the educated elite of ethnic minorities. The rejection and exclusion of these minority elites from the nationalised power apparatus is fertile ground for Indian ethno-nationalism. We can only speculate what would have happened if the channels of upward mobility had remained open to them. Perhaps the dominant cultural compromise would have made sense to them and they would have assimilated into the national majority, thus leading, over time, to a fully nationalised state such as described in chapter 3. However, the Indian elite excluded from the national ‘we’ started to elaborate their own discourse of national grandeur, based on the flaunting of the achievements of Indian culture and of their status as victims of colonialism. By revalorising and re-inventing history, the stigma of an ‘ethnic’ minority was being reinterpreted as the sign of a chosen people. Only the new Indian intellectuals could achieve such an ideological work, for only they were capable of moving in the public sphere of modern Mexico, having gone through the national school system – unlike the earlier Indian elite of principales, landowners and merchants. Mexico’s history thus illustrates one of the more paradoxical sides of political modernisation. While promoting the fusion of the sovereign, the nation and the citizenry, nation-state building may bring forth its own counter-movement and the fragmentation of the national idea into various ethnic projects. Although referring to the same nationalist principles, these nevertheless turn them against the hegemonic model and thus orchestrate its demise. Meanwhile, under the pressure of these political forces, the official selfimage of the Mexican state has been transformed. In conformity with the changing global mood, it now salutes the ‘multi-ethnic and multicultural’ character of the Mexican people.48 Thus, nation-state formation did not

48

the Indian movements in Mexico simply as echoes of global trends. By the same token, changes at the international level, especially the elaboration of international standards with regard to the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples should not be viewed as determining such mobilisation. For in the early 1970s the international debate was still in its early stages, and North American developments were little known in Mexico. Moreover, in Guatemala, for instance, an ethno-nationalist revalorisation of Indian identity and history was launched relatively early, notably through the creation, in 1961, of the Academia de la Lengua Maya K´ı-chè. See the manuscript ‘S´ıntesis de las propuestas y comentarios escritos sobre el reconocimiento juridico-constitucional que se pretende para los pueblos ind´ıgenas de


155

lead to the generalisation of the ethnie of a central elite, as in France and other completely nationalised states, but fostered the politicisation of ethnic differences, reinforcing the dividing lines that the nationalist programme was meant to overcome. The politicisation of ethnicity has by now become so pervasive, that a leftist peasant guerrilla group, as soon as it leaves the closed ideological circles of jungle camps and enters the public space of contemporary Mexico, is transformed into an ethnic liberation movement. Far from announcing the end of the nation-state and the demise of nationalist principles, they show how these still structure the political discourse and practice of our times, albeit in new and unexpected ways. The shadows of modernity are still growing. México’, which has been circulating since 1989 and was elaborated by the Secretar´ıa Técnica de la Comision ´ Nacional de Justicia para los Pueblos Ind´ıgenas de México, a national organisation co-ordinated by INI. In 1992, some of these demands were incorporated into the Mexican constitution, which now states in Article 4 that the Mexican nation is of a pluricultural character (the article reads: ‘La Nacion ´ mexicana tiene una composicion ´ pluricultural sustentada originalmente en sus pueblos ind´ıgenas. La ley protegerá y promoverá el desarrollo de sus lenguas, culturas, usos, costumbres, recursos y formas espec´ıficas de organizacion ´ social, y garantizará a sus integrantes el efectivo acceso a la jurisdiccion ´ del Estado. En los juicios y procedimientos agrarios en que aquellos sean parte, se tomarán en cuenta sus prácticas y costumbres jur´ıdicas en los términos que establezca la ley.’). However, the nature and extent of indigenous rights is still a matter of fierce debate between, among others, the government and the Zapatist movement of Chiapas. The latest proposal of the federal government takes up many of the demands of the Indian movements and in particular of the Zapatist Liberation Army, but restricts the notion of ‘self-determination’ to the municipal level. See the ‘Initiativa de reformas constitucionales en materia de derechos y cultura ind´ıgena que presenta el Ejecutivo Federal al Congreso Mexicano’ of 15 March 1998 (this and other proposals can be found on the website of the Secretar´ıa de Gobernacion ´ of the federal government).

6

From empire to ethnocracy: Iraq since the Ottomans

Subcommandante Marcos has become a role model for many insurgent leaders around the world. His professional media management, especially, is much admired, not only by intellectuals but also by the rank and file of ethno-nationalist movements. I one day went into a coffee shop in Kreuzberg where a group of men from northern Iraq sat together. They were smoking and chatting, glancing through the misted window onto the snowy streets of Berlin and from time to time at the television news of MED-TV, a Kurdish satellite television programme produced in Belgium. When Marcos appeared on the screen, giving a speech on the crowded main square of the capital, they discussed his performance, compared it to previous announcements and ended up wondering why the Kurdish uprising led by Mazud Barzani and Jalal Talabani had not recently received a comparable coverage in international news. And indeed, northern Iraq used to be at the centre of international media attention after the end of the second Gulf war, when the Allied forces installed a zone of protection there. The Kurdish guerrilla forces had embarked on a project of state-building amidst an atmosphere of nationalist euphoria. A Kurdish army had been formed out of the different guerrilla forces, a government set up with ministries and cabinet meetings, and customs taken at the borders; even urban professionals had started to wear the Kurdish ‘national’ costume. Wherever in the world there was sympathy for the suffering and plight of the Kurds, there was a welcome for the creation of an ‘autonomous region’ in northern Iraq as an opportunity for the Kurds to finally become masters of their own destiny. Since this euphoria was buried in the wars between Kurdish armed factions, the international media have largely lost interest in the plight of the Kurds and stopped reporting it. The dramatic events in northern Iraq represent, for the time being, the culmination of a decade-long struggle during which Kurdish ethnicity came to play an ever more important political role. After the Iraqi state was founded, it gradually nationalised access to positions of power and 156

From empire to ethnocracy

157

excluded all those not considered members of the Sunni Arab nation in whose name the state began to act, having replaced the last Sultan by representatives of ‘the people’. This politicisation of ethnicity and nationhood emerged from a system of government in which questions of ethnic belonging were of secondary importance only and did not provide a basis for political solidarity. The Ottoman empire thus presents my second example of a pre-modern polity where the principles of inclusion and exclusion followed a rather different logic to that enshrined in the institution of the modern nation-state. In the first section I will present the workings of Ottoman politics in some detail. I will then describe how the ethnic issue was put on the imperial agenda as soon as the Ottoman reformers started to modernise and centralise the empire – a process with striking parallels, as we shall see, to what happened under the Bourbon kings in New Spain. The subsequent section will analyse the ethnicisation of the newly independent state, while the last section will focus on the development of ethno-nationalist movements countering the hegemony of a Sunni Arab ethnocracy, especially on the rise of Kurdish nationalism in the North. Multiculturalism avant la lettre The Middle East under Ottoman rule is regarded as the proto-typical example of a multicultural empire based on the universalistic principles of religion. In contrast to the Spanish empire, the Ottomans never insisted on religious conversion of their subjects. Rather, communities of other scriptural religions were to be respected following Islam’s acknowledgement of the Christian and Jewish faiths as its ancestors. As long as they accepted the suzerainty of the Sultan and the superior role that Muslims were to play on the stage of imperial politics, Christians of the most varied denominations and Jews were accepted as integral members of the mosaic society over which the Sultan ruled. The legitimacy of the Sultan rested on his role as protector of the Muslim faith, of the holy sites of Medina and Mecca, and as conqueror bringing new territories under the rule of law. However, religious legitimacy was of a rather secondary nature during much of Ottoman rule. The theory of government was as much inspired by Sassanian practices of government, some elements of Byzantine imperial doctrine, and most importantly by Aristotelian and Platonic ideas of just government (which also played an eminent role in Spanish imperial doctrine) as interpreted by Muslim rationalist philosophers such as al Farabi or by later writers such as Hasan Kafi (1544–1616). Appropriateness of political behaviour was judged on the basis of what some authors have called the circle of

158


justice, which included a hierarchical division of society into estates and a static view of each component part’s duties.1 The state depended on the army (men of the sword), which was in turn to be nourished by the peasants (men of the soil), who were in theory owned, together with the land, by the Sultan. The peasants could only produce enough to support state and military with their taxes if the rule of law protected them from the arbitrariness of governors, and from thieves and bandits. In the case of Muslims, the administratorjudges (kadis) applied the sharia in courts, with the help of legal experts (muftis), while the imams taught the principles of faith in mosques and their attached religious schools (madrasas), providing guidance, moral stability and order. A similar role was given to the religious notables of other officially acknowledged religions. The order of faith and law over which these ‘men of the pen’ watched was in turn guaranteed and protected by the Sultan as the ultimate ruler over the territory and its inhabitants. The ethnic or linguistic background of rulers and ruled was of little interest as long as these principles of political legitimacy prevailed (Karpat 1972: 7ff.). Many of the Sultan’s bankers, advisers, governors and even grand-viziers were non-Muslims (such as the powerful Greek Orthodox Fanariots of Istanbul). Until the early eighteenth century, the system whereby slaves were taken (devshirme) into the empire’s administrative and military elites guaranteed, at least formally, a non-ethnic, nonreligious mode of government (cf. Grillo 1998: 81–6). Most of the slaves were taken at a young age from the non-Muslim rural population, especially from the Transcaucasus and the European parts of the empire. They were formally converted to Islam (although many of them retained their faith or adhered to syncretistic Muslim-Christian sects, such as the Bektashi prominent among the Janissaries) and taught exclusive loyalty to the Sultan, irrespective of their regional, ethnic, linguistic and religious background – which in some cases did not prevent them from informally favouring their regions of origin or their ethnic groups when in positions of power. Even after the abolition of the system and until the very end of the Ottoman empire, the religious and ethnic background of the ruling elite was extremely diverse and many of its members had a distinctively multicultural background (cf. Kayali 1997). A Christian of Albanian origin brought up in an Arabic environment in Egypt, later converted to Islam, and finally assimilated to the Ottoman elite culture of Istanbul was by no means exceptional. The Ottoman language itself was the 1

See Inalcik (1973: 66ff.); Karpat (1973: 20–31); Yapp (1987: 2ff.); Grillo (1998: 78f.).


159

product and symbol of the multi-ethnic character of the empire: based on Turkish grammar, its vocabulary was a blend of Turkish, Arabic and Persian. This is not to say that ethnicity or religion did not matter at all. On the contrary, religious communities played a very important role under the Ottomans, similar to that played by the officially defined ethno-racial groups in the Spanish empire. The religious communities were the most important tiles from which the mosaic society was assembled. Contrary to a widespread notion, until the advent of the so-called Tanzimat reforms of the nineteenth century, these communities were not defined as encompassing denominations on the level of the entire empire (the famous millets of Orthodox Christians, monophysite Christians, Roman Catholics and Jews).2 The mosaic’s pieces were much smaller and consisted, as was the case with the brotherhoods and parishes of the Spanish empire, of church communities of faith in particular places (often called taifas). Thus, in a particular city such as Mosul, the Armenians with their religious head and their notables would be distinguished from the Assyrians, the Jews, the Chaldeans etc. In most places, these communities would live in their own neighbourhoods, have their own public infrastructure, their own religious schools, their charitable societies and hospitals, and most importantly, were allowed to have virtually complete jurisdiction over their own affairs. This included every aspect of family law (marriage and divorce, inheritance etc.), parts of private law, and even of criminal law if the persons involved in a case all belonged to the same community.3 As in the case of Spanish colonial law and the ethno-racial estates of the Americas, the overarching Islamic law and the Sultan’s decrees protected this system of self-rule and self-governance. The ruling elites had no intention of, or legitimacy for, enforcing cultural homogeneity by assimilating or converting their subjects or by intervening in their dayto-day affairs, as is the case with modern nation-states. To the contrary, the official principles, well received and reinforced by the elites of the communities in question, were those of segregation and indirect rule. But again, as with other imperial systems, this policy and practice of indirect rule was combined with a legally enforced hierarchical ordering of the different component parts of the society – contradicting an over-literal understanding of the metaphor of a mosaic society, such as introduced by Coon (1961). 2 3

Braude and Lewis (1982); for a summary of recent debates on the millet question, see Grillo (1998: 86–93). For Constantinople, see Mantran (1965) and Mansel (1995); for Balkan cities, Todorov (1983).

160


Equality of all subjects before the law was not an issue in the hierarchical system of the empire until the advent of the reform movement of the nineteenth century. The non-Muslim groups faced a series of disadvantages until the Gulhane ¨ Decree of 1839, when legal equality was first stipulated although not then realised. First of all, they had to pay a special tax (the so called jizye) to compensate for the fact that non-Muslims were not recruited to the army. As might be expected, however, the possibilities for exemption were considerable and, according to one estimate (Yapp 1987: 6), only a third of the non-Muslim population actually paid the jizye. Secondly, they were not able to serve certain high functions in government and especially the military unless they formally converted to Islam and were culturally assimilated into the Ottoman elite. Thirdly, Christians could not testify in sharia courts against Muslims, although the actual disadvantage might have been less than this suggests (Grillo 1998: 94f.). Fourthly, they were not allowed to ride horses, carry arms, or own slaves, had to wear certain clothes, build their houses to a certain height only and so on, all regulations with striking similarities to those laid down in the Leyes de Indias. However, religious communities were not the only pieces of the mosaic. In many cities, guilds were an important part of the picture – sometimes, but not always, coinciding with Armenian, Greek or Jewish communities. They were administered through their officially appointed headmen, governed their internal affairs according to their customary laws, and frequently lived in particular streets of certain neighbourhoods. In the countryside, important communities included villages and their headmen (Christian or Muslim) who were responsible for the collection of taxes; different Sufi sects, headed by their respective sheikhs; and a whole range of local and regional political factions gathered around men of importance. The Ottoman bureaucracy usually accorded them official titles and listened to them, compensating its systematic weakness by co-opting, or co-operating with, almost everybody who could marshal the support of a substantial number of followers. Most important among these groups were the tribal chiefs who dominated much of rural Anatolia, the Kurdish-speaking areas, the Arab peninsula, Albania, Montenegro, Libya and Sudan. The Ottoman empire relied very heavily on tribal leaders in these areas and installed a system of indirect rule full of tensions and ambiguities. At various points in the history of the empire, but most notably from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, the central government undertook efforts to diminish the importance of tribal leaders and especially of the confederations headed by semi-independent emirs, who regularly escaped Ottoman


161

authority and posed a continuous threat in the most strategically sensitive border areas of the empire. Cracks in the mosaic: the Ottoman reform period The Ottoman empire made several efforts to reform in order to compete successfully with the rising European powers which began to threaten the empire’s domains from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Starting with Sultan Selim III’s failed attempt to break the power of the Janissaries, a long period of more or less successful reforms unfolded. Despite the different emphases given by the Tanzimat reformers, the Young Ottomans, Sultan Abdulhamid and the Young Turks, these reforms had a common goal: the modernisation of the Ottoman empire and its transformation into a centrally administrated, integrated state of Ottoman citizens replacing the pattern of indirect rule and communitarian segregation which had prevailed before. The foremost aim was to strengthen and modernise the army in order to fight European powers more effectively; some scholars have used the term ‘military-led modernisation’ for this process. Economic development would provide the necessary resources for an expanded military force. Military reform and economic development in turn depended on a centralised and uniform administration capable of collecting taxes effectively. The modernisation of the education system should provide both army and administration with adequately trained staff, which the religious schools of the mosques and churches were clearly not capable of supplying. In many respects, the period from 1839 (the beginning of the Tanzimat reforms) to 1914 resembles the 1786–1821 period in colonial Mexico, during which the Bourbons tried to implement similar reforms in their transatlantic dominions in order to hold the empire together and modernise its political structure according to the principles of an absolute monarchy. Again, these attempts gave rise, together with the introduction of free trade and the emergence of a new stratum of economic entrepreneurs, to new networks of literati, learned societies and patriotic circles supporting the reform projects and providing much of the expertise needed to achieve it. And again, these early patriotic circles became the seeds of nationalist movements opposing the centralising drive of the reforming empire, the increasing taxes and their exclusion from the reinforced and reformed administration. At the end of this process, they were convinced that only national independence could bring the newly empowered state under the control of ‘the people’ and at the same time

162


satisfy their rising aspirations. Thus, the developments to be described in the following again conform to a large extent to the model of nation-state formation that I outlined in chapter 3. The details, however, are perhaps more interesting than the general trend. Modernising the empire The basic principles of political legitimacy were never challenged throughout the Ottoman reform movement. The Osmanian state would remain a Muslim empire held together by the rule of the Sultan who symbolised the just order of law and faith. With the exception of some of the Tanzimat reformers, most modernisers were eager to present their innovations as compatible with sharia and the general principles of Islam. The introduction of a parliament in the 1870s was, for example, justified by Islamist modernisers as a return to the consultations that Muhammad used to have with his closest followers. Abdulhamid (1876–1909), whose ruthless dictatorship was combined with considerable efforts at modernising the economy and the education system (and who is thus reminiscent of his contemporary Porfirio D´ıaz in Mexico), claimed to be a successor to the Abbassayid caliphs. By stressing the double role of the Caliph-Sultan as a prophet-king, never very prominent before his reign, he revitalised Pan-Islamism, a principle which became more and more appealing as the Christian regions of the empire gradually slipped out of control of the Sublime Port. Even the Young Turks, usually blamed for introducing ethnic nationalism into imperial politics, remained firmly tied to the ideals of a reformed, centralised, but still multicultural and multireligious Ottoman state of citizens, as new research has shown (Yapp 1987: 193f.; Kayali 1997). However, major changes were introduced with regard to the role played by the subjects of the Divine ruler. While in pre-modern times every group was governed differently according to its different needs and degrees of power, the new empire should rule over its subjects in a uniform and standardised way. Secondly, the loyalty of the citizens should not exclusively be directed towards the Sultan as the supreme ruler, but towards the Ottoman state and – a major innovation – its territory, now conceived not only as the domain of the Sultan’s power, but as the fatherland of Ottoman citizens. Thus, citizenship, territoriality and central administration were introduced as three key elements of the modern state, a new cultural compromise where increased government intervention in the daily life of the subjects was compensated by the introduction of the first elements, however rudimentary, of participatory politics and equality before the law.


163

The main domains of reform were the army, administration and finances, government, law and education.4 In all these fields the direction of reform was the same: gradual abolition of the separation between Muslims and non-Muslims, replacement of the system of indirect rule by direct administration, and more participation of the population in the political affairs of the empire. Thus, the legal discrimination against nonMuslims was gradually suppressed and replaced by a unified concept of citizenship. The system of millets was centralised and reduced to seventeen religious groups represented by their supreme religious authorities, who became an integral part of the bureaucratic elite of Istanbul. Later on, from the 1860s onwards, the notion of the millet was secularised and much power transferred to non-religious council-men representing regions or professional groups (Karpat 1973: 88ff.). The monopoly of the sharia and its experts was slowly broken down by introducing first a new trade law with its own tribunals, then a civil law and finally a criminal law. These new tribunals gradually took over the role of the sharia courts which, by the end of this process, were left with just family matters. The new courts were integrated into a new hierarchy and together with the sharia courts were controlled by a Ministry of Justice. The military was modernised, the system of slave recruitment abolished and universal conscription introduced (including Christians by the end of the period). The tribal confederacies were overthrown by force and some of the most powerful Kurdish tribes of Anatolia integrated into irregular forces (the Hamdiya regiments) on the model of the Cossack troops used by the Tsar. New districts and sub-districts of administration were introduced and staffed with personnel appointed directly from Istanbul. The intended switch from an indirect to a more direct rule implied a considerable increase in the number of administrators, court officials, scribes, clerical staff and so on. The new administration also took a more interventionist stance with regard to economic affairs. Large parts of the land owned by the state and given (as non-inheritable fiefs) to administrators and soldiers were privatised in order to stimulate agricultural production for export. Railways were built, some of them in regions of agricultural importance, and steamboats introduced. In the realm of politics, the year 1876 saw the first constitution, modelled after the Belgian one, itself a written version of the unwritten British constitution. The parliament was abolished by Abdulhamid two years later but reintroduced by the Young Turks after they seized power in 1904. Elections were run by trans-ethnic political parties, most of them taking 4

The following draws on Lewis (1968); Karpat (1972; 1973; 1985); Yapp (1987).

164


a position along the axis of modernist/secularist versus anti-modernist/ Islamist. The education system underwent radical reforms. First, military and medical colleges were introduced and a university run by the central state in Istanbul was established. Secondly, secondary education was introduced in the provinces, thus breaking the monopoly of religious schools. And thirdly, compulsory and free basic education in state schools was brought in throughout the empire in 1913. While much of this reform remained on paper – as did many other reform projects – a substantial enlargement of the educational system was achieved. The number of upper secondary schools, for example, increased from 39 in 1857 to 386 in 1874 (Karpat 1973: 99). The rise of the ethnic question The introduction of parliamentary institutions and the reform of the educational system put the ethnic issue – as distinct from religion, on which the newly centralised millet system rested – on the imperial political agenda for the first time. According to the thesis presented in chapter 3, when government starts to rule in the name of ‘the people’, the identity and borders of this people have to be defined and questions of representational justice become pre-eminent. This effect is reinforced by the increased power of government and the expansion of the administrative apparatus: who dominates the modernising state, who gets access to its resources and the many positions of power, when sheikhs, notables, tribal leaders and representatives of urban communities are gradually replaced by centrally appointed government officials? The question of language becomes prominent in this realm, because it determines the opportunity for advancing within the bureaucracy, and as soon as parliament was introduced and central government reinforced, Arab complaints about discrimination (in the new administration) and underrepresentation (in the parliament) were raised. The issue of ethnic representation became even more important during the implementation of educational and administrative reforms. It was the aim of the Young Turks to increase the efficiency of the new centralised administration by stipulating that Turkish would be the official language of the empire and of the newly founded primary and secondary schools. Their attempt to replace the highly complicated and formalistic Ottoman by the more understandable and manageable Turkish was in part inspired by their belief that only the education of larger sections of the population in their own language could finally eradicate irrationalism and


165

backwardness.5 This belief was nourished by the same positivist credo of the late nineteenth century that had inspired los cient´ıficos around Porfirio D´ıaz. The fact that the Young Turks, being by coincidence of Turkish origin from Salonika for the most part, had a rather provincial and ethnocentric view on the future language of the empire should not be confused with genuine nationalism. In any case, their plans met with fierce resistance from the Arab-speaking parts of the empire, especially among the elites of Syria, who felt that this would reduce the chances of their children advancing in the newly empowered state apparatus. In the end, the Young Turks had to give in. They appointed Arabs to high positions in the civil administration, withdrew from language reform and realigned electoral districts to give more representation to Arab-speaking regions. As new research has shown (Kayali 1997), neither Young Turk reforms nor Arab responses were nationalist in the true sense of the word – reminding us of the proto-nationalist Creoles and their patriotic zeal, only rarely tied to a clearly formulated project of national independence. And paralleling the rediscovery of the Aztec past and a renewed interest in its civilisatory achievements, from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, everywhere in the Ottoman empire nationalist cultural and literary societies were flourishing, giving rise to a ‘rediscovery’ of Turkish language and literature, of Arab history and writing (mostly by Christian Syrians). Contrary to the Creole patriots, however, these movements were almost insignificant from a political point of view and had little influence either on the Young Turks or on the Arab politicians and notables who denounced underrepresentation and discrimination. Rather, the conflict was over the degree of self-rule in the provinces and thus couched in terms of a conflict between centralists and decentralists. The Arabs remained firmly tied to the ideal of a trans-ethnic Islamic empire, although some of them dreamed of an Arab caliph or looked towards the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy as a new model for the Ottoman state. Nevertheless, the gradual abolition of a system of indirect rule, the establishment of a non-religious system of mass education, and the introduction of popular representation in politics had led to a first wave of the politicisation of ethnicity, which had been absent from the political realms of the pre-modern Ottoman empire for more than half a millennium. In the case of the Christian millets of Rumelia, however, such politicisation had already started to dominate politics at the very beginning of the 5

One influential reformist thinker was Ahmed Riza, close to the Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress (Yapp 1987: 185ff.; Kayali 1997: 41ff.).

166


reform period. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to give an account of the Greek, Serbian, Romanian and Bulgarian nationalist movements with their specific political dynamics, forms of international involvement, their successes and failures. The introduction of the principles of the modern nation-state, with its ideal of congruence between citizenry, sovereign and nation, into a mosaic society with a wide variety of religious communities overlapping and criss-crossing ethnic identities, and tribal and peasant communities of varied origin, led to the well-known catastrophe of endless wars in the name of ‘national unification’, countless episodes of ‘ethnic cleansing’, and millions of refugees expelled from states where they were suddenly considered as ‘foreigners’ although they had been living there for centuries. The tragedy started with the Serbian uprisings of 1804, continued throughout the nineteenth century with a series of other ‘national revolutions’, reached a first climax in the two Balkan wars early in the twentieth century, where the new nation-states divided among them much of what was left of the Ottoman empire in Europe, continued through the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires with ‘population exchanges’ and other means of forcing the mosaic into a national patchwork, and reached a second climax during World War II when the extermination of the ethnic enemy’s civilian population became a widespread technique of ‘resolving the national question’. Temporary relief was provided by the reconstruction of a hierarchical, undemocratic and universalist regime under Communist rule – reminiscent in some aspects of the structure of an empire. After the demise of Communism and the reorganisation of politics on the basis of the principles of the modern nation-state, old ‘national’ memories were revived, forgotten graves reopened, and a new wave of wars of ‘national liberation’, of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and of mass evictions of ‘the enemy within’ the new national borders swept over the Balkans.

The politicisation of Kurdish and Christian ethnicity In Kurdistan, however, the politicisation of ethnicity was to dominate the course of history much later, and the principles of empire – hierarchical and universalist inclusion – remained unchallenged until 1914. The first signs of ethnic awareness with clear political implications can be traced to the end of the nineteenth century.6 6

The following section draws on van Bruinessen (1989: 395ff.); Behrendt (1993: 281ff.); McDowall (1996: 88–101).


167

Ottoman decentralists of Kurdish origin As with the early politicisation of Arab ethnicity, the Kurdish claims first remained tied to the ideology and principles of the Ottoman empire. Kurdish grievances and demands were reactions to the language issue raised by the educational policy of the Young Turks, to the move towards centralisation and to the replacement of indirect rule through notables, sheikhs and tribal leaders. Two of the twelve members of what later became the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) of the Young Turks were of Kurdish background and both had been educated at the newly founded Military Medical School of Istanbul. Other Kurdish associates or, later, members of the CUP included descendants of the emirs of Badr Khan who were overthrown by the centralising Ottoman state in the middle of the nineteenth century, the sons of the powerful sheikhs of Shemdinan (of Eastern Anatolia at the Iranian border) and offspring of the Baban emirs. Most of these Ottoman notables of Kurdish origin belonged to the decentralist camp within the reform movement and advocated the introduction of a certain degree of regional autonomy within which administrative centralisation should proceed, the teaching of Kurdish in the new elementary schools etc. However, the central aims of the Young Turk reform movement were never questioned: the empire should be secularised, the authority of the Sultan curtailed by reopening parliament, the mode of government reorganised and modernised, and equality before the law for all Ottoman citizens reinforced and institutionally realised. The journals that these notables published (such as Kurdistan, Kurdish Mutual Aid and Progress Gazette, Kurdish Sun) and the secret associations and clubs that they formed (such as the Society for the Rise and Progress of Kurdistan, the Society for the Propagation of Kurdish Education) remained tied to the overall aim of reforming and modernising the multi-ethnic empire. Many of these Kurdish decentralists played important political roles within the Ottoman state, under Abdulhamid and thereafter under the Young Turks. Later this small group of men were joined by younger Kurdish nationalists, either offspring of Osmanian notables or sons of the leaders of the tribal Hamdiya regiments. In contrast to the older generation, they had studied at the newly founded universities of Istanbul. In 1910 they formed a students’ association, the Kurdish Hope Society. After the Young Turks had taken power from Abdulhamid in 1908, the new government reinstalled the constitution and called for parliamentary elections. Many of the previously persecuted regional-ethnic associations tied to the ideals of the Young Turks came to the surface; others were newly founded. It became clear, however, that centralist

168


tendencies quickly overcame decentralist ones in the inner circles of power and that the new government was determined to realise the longestablished goal of all Ottoman reformers: to replace indirect rule with direct administration through centrally appointed officials educated in the new state schools. This stern position on the issue of federalism and their determination to suppress all signs of ethno-nationalist agitation in the empire that had just lost further domains in Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria, Bulgaria to independence) immediately met the resistance not only of Arab Ottoman notables and their allies in Syria, but of similar groups of Kurdish origin. As elsewhere in the empire, these elite groups, mostly based in Istanbul and other big cities, had some relationship with the hinterlands inhabited by tribal groups and confederacies. Sheikhs and aghas The tribes reacted to the Young Ottoman efforts at centralisation as they had since time immemorial: by first manoeuvring to remain independent of the centres of imperial power and their outposts in the countryside, and, if this did not work and if power relations seemed to be favourable, by revolting against the new regime. One of the many revolts throughout Kurdish territory that were directed against the direct rule of the Young Turk administration was led by a particular family of tribal sheikhs of what is now northern Iraq. Since this family later produced the uncontested and internationally renowned leaders of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism, the Barzanis, a brief discussion of their role during the Ottoman reform period and the Young Turk regime might be of interest. In order to understand the role of the Barzanis and other famous families of tribal Kurdistan, it is appropriate to mention some of the guiding principles of politics at the tribal margins of the Ottoman empire (for a full discussion see Wimmer 1995e). Tribes are communities of political loyalty, based on the principle of solidarity between men with common patrilineal ancestors who are called to stand together in matters of political conflict, feud and war. The language of family ties and ancestry is, in contemporary anthropology, regarded as a charter for ideal behaviour, which is adapted to political reality where factions are also based on clientelism and other forms of alliance not based on kinship. Relations between tribes, however, cannot be framed in the language of kinship solidarity. It is therefore up to outsiders, who are not part of the web of kinship relations, to act as mediators, arbitrators and peacemakers between tribes and build confederacies among them (cf. Morsy 1984).


169

Until the demise of the semi-autonomous emirates in the middle of the nineteenth century, this role was accomplished by noble families (McDowall 1996, chs. 2 and 3).7 After the centralisation of the empire and the subjugation of the emirates the time of the Sufi sheikhs had come. They were predestined for the role of mediating between conflicting tribes, because as religious leaders they often were charismatic personalities and because, in search of followers, they had settled in regions where they were not bound by kinship ties.8 Depending on their political talent and ambitions, some of these sheikhs managed to build large tribal confederacies and to command a considerable number of armed men in times of conflict and war. Such was the case of the sheikhs of Barzan, a small village in what is nowadays the northernmost part of Iraq. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the sheikh of Shemdinan, who also played an important role in the decentralist camp of Istanbul mentioned above, sent one of his disciples southwards in order to limit the growing influence of the leaders (aghas) of the Zibari tribe. These aghas had filled the power vacuum left by the emirate of Bedinan, had become the governors of the Sublime Port and had started to collect taxes (van Bruinessen 1989: 305). At the outset, the following of the sheikh of Barzan consisted only of his religious disciples and a series of lineages of the surrounding tribes that had lost in factional fights and looked for protection and political fortune elsewhere. The sons of the sheikh managed to enlarge their sphere of influence by mediating between the different groups of the region. In this way, the Barzan coalition, a small confederacy, came into existence and still exists to this day (for details see Wimmer 1995e). During the 1880s Sheikh Ubeidullah of Shemdinan raised a large following of armed tribal fighters and revolted against Istanbul. This earned him a prominent place in the gallery of ancestors of Kurdish nationalists, although the revolt was basically directed against the centralisation efforts of the Ottoman reformers under Abdulhamid, and did not follow a genuinely nationalist programme in the modern sense of the term.9 The rebellion was finally subdued, and the remaining followers gathered around Sheikh Mehmed of Barzan. They declared him mahdi, the Islamic Messiah. He tried to conquer the provincial capital, Mosul, from where he planned to march to Istanbul and overthrow the ‘false caliph’ 7

8 9

Compare with the structure of the confederacy of the Jaf, as described by Barth (1953: 41ff.) in the 1950s. It represented a rudimentary copy of the former confederacies of the Baban emirs (see ibid.: 60f.). Van Bruinessen (1989: 82f., 303ff.); Gellner (1992: 98f.). See the interpretations by Behrendt (1993: 214–22); McDowall (1996: 53–9).

170


Abdulhamid. In the event, they were captured shortly after their entry to Mosul.10 After the end of Abdulhamid’s reign, Mehmed’s son Sheikh Abdussalam the Second allied himself with the Russian Tsar (Nikitine 1925:152), one of the fiercest rivals of the Sultan for regional hegemony, in order to fight the Young Turks’ plans for direct administration of the empire – and thus effectively to break with the principles of indirect rule from which sheikhs and aghas had profited since the end of the emirates. In 1908 Abdussalam sent a petition to Kurdish notables with close connections to the inner circles of the Young Turk movement. His demands show that the position and rhetoric of the decentralist camp had now been adopted by the tribal leaders of the hinterland. Mehmed’s rebellion twenty years before had still been phrased in the terminology of OttomanIslamic principles and was directed against the usurpation of the title of Caliph by Abdulhamid. In Abdussalam’s petition, however, certain elements of a discourse of ethnic representativity appear for the first time in Kurdish history. He demanded the adoption of Kurdish for official and educational purposes in the administrative districts surrounding Bedinan; the appointment of Kurdish-speaking officials; the adoption of the Shafi school of law (dominant among the Kurds); and the administration of law and justice as well as taxation according to the sharia. The rebellion was eventually put down, after some initial victories over the Ottoman troops and their tribal allies. Abdussalam was hanged in 1914 in Mosul (Nikitine 1925: 154f.; McDowall 1996: 100f.). The incident shows that Kurdish ethnicity had become a political issue even in the hinterland, where, as they had done before, tribal confederacies were resisting attempts by the centres of power to curtail their influence and autonomy. Yet, as with Arab nationalism, a fully fledged nationalist programme had not yet developed, yet alone taken root among the majority of the population, including Kurdish-speaking peasants, herders, craftsmen and traders. However, the introduction of political bodies representing the will of ‘the people’, the enforcement of notions of citizenship – and thus the abolition of the prerogatives of nobles and notables – and the far-reaching attempts to introduce a unified administrative system based on transactions in one language, politicised ethnicity for the first time in the history of the Middle East. Thus arose the question of being represented by ‘one’s own people’ in the parliament and within the state apparatus and of having one’s own language recognised as a medium of communication in the expanding 10

Different versions of the story can be found in Nikitine (1925); Nikitine (1956: 221f.); van Bruinessen (1989: 344f.).


171

bureaucracy and educational system. The newly introduced notion of peoplehood, originally cast in purely civic terms as the members of the polity defined by the territorial borders of the empire, gradually took on an ethnic tint. A fight erupted over whose ethnic background, language and culture would be officially recognised as being representative of ‘the people’. For the first time, questions of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ arose, which had not been issues under pre-modern Ottoman rule when selfgovernment at the local and regional level had not yet been replaced by ‘representation’ at the centre and when the hierarchy between rulers and ruled had not yet been undermined by the idea of the ‘equality of citizens’.

From millet to nation: Christian independence movements Political modernisation had an even stronger impact on the politicisation of Christian ethnicity in the eastern part of the empire. Among Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, the introduction of modern political institutions – equality before the law, direct administration etc. – was perceived as a mixed blessing (cf., for the following, Karpat 1973). While on the one hand this opened up new possibilities in the state apparatus and especially in the army, still the backbone of the regime’s power, it meant, on the other hand, that the autonomy of the millets was seriously undermined and indirect rule replaced by direct rule by ‘ethnic others’. This perception of otherness was fostered by the rise of nationalist currents of thought much stronger than among the Arab or Kurdish populations. Throughout the nineteenth century the Christian millets made use of the new opportunities for international trade with industrialising Europe and thus could afford to send their children to European universities where nationalist thinking was at its height. Thanks to this rather privileged position, a merchant class and an educated elite emerged, that distinguishes Christians under Ottoman rule from the situation of Mexican Indians. Lacking an educated elite and a unified political organisation, the latter’s resistance to the abolition of segregation, self-rule and guaranteed landholdings was localised and dispersed, and was not cast in a nationalist language. In the case of the Middle East, however, as in the European parts of the empire some decades before, millets were transformed into nations. This process implied a reinterpretation of the meaning of being Armenian, Assyrian or Greek, a recasting of identity according to the nationalist principles outlined in chapter 3. First, group identities were now territorially defined. While spatial dispersal or concentration did not play a role in the decentralised, deterritorialised Ottoman millet system, the cartographic

172


delineation of national homelands, the drawing of dividing lines between imagined national spaces, became one of the foremost preoccupations of nationalist thinkers. Secondly, the notion of the millet underwent a significant process of secularisation – fostered by the reform of the millet system in the 1860s which gave a greater weight to the representation of guild members and other secular notables. The religious community of adherents of the same faith was transformed into a national community sharing a language (often based on liturgical language), a common history with its martyrs and heroes and a homeland. The nationalised millets could count on the support of missionaries – who played a considerable role in the rediscovery of history, literature and folk culture – and later of Russia, Britain and France, who acted as ‘protectors’ of the Christian minorities and backed their rising aspirations for national statehood. As was the case some decades before in the Balkans, these aspirations met the almost insurmountable problem of forcing an ethno-religious mosaic into a pattern of homogeneous national spaces. Armenian, Assyrian and Greek nationalist desires quickly resulted in a further politicisation of Turkish, Arab and Kurdish notions of ethnic belonging before and during the First World War, as members of all these communities were living side by side throughout the Middle East. The competition of European and Russian colonial powers eager to cut as large a piece as possible out of the dying body of the Ottoman empire stirred up these competitive nationalist projects even more. The tragic culmination of this constellation was the Armenian ethnocide, in which Kurdish tribal militias – the transformed Hamdiya regiments of pre-revolutionary times – played a prominent role. At the end of the First World War, it had become clear that the empire would not survive and that the principle of national ‘self-determination’, as proclaimed by Wilson, would serve as the guideline for the political reordering of the Middle East. The Kurdish decentralists of Istanbul quickly became advocates of independence, and tried to convince the victors of the war, during the conferences of Sèvres and Lausanne, to include Kurdistan in the list of nation-states to be created. For reasons beyond the scope of this chapter, their hopes, nourished by the memories of the de facto autonomous emirates headed by their great-grandfathers, were frustrated as were Arabist aspirations for a unified ‘national home’. The Arabisation of the Iraqi state The newly founded state of Iraq, composed of the former Osmanian provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, owes its existence almost entirely to the constellation of forces among the European imperialist powers


173

at the end of the war. The separation of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq was due to French desires for a sphere of influence in the Middle East. The province of Mosul, although numerically dominated by non-Arabic speakers, was added to the Iraqi state because the British wanted to include the oil-fields of Mosul in their domain and because a Shiite majority in the new state had to be avoided and Turkey’s influence in the region curtailed. The Iraqi state thus released to independence can serve as an example for many other nation-states created after the First World War and for the vast majority of African and Asian countries founded after the Second World War. Its history illustrates how introducing the nationstate model into an ethnically heterogeneous society politicises notions of ethnic belonging in a pervasive and divisive way leading to a compartmentalisation of the polity along ethnic lines. In contrast to the Mexican case discussed in the last chapter, in Iraq there was no clear majority with a virtual monopoly over education and the newly founded state apparatus; rather, there was a multitude of ethnic groups each with an educated elite and a series of politically ambitious notables and religious leaders whose prominence can be traced back to Ottoman times. A state for Sunni Arabs: the mandate and early independence As we argued in chapter 4, the politicisation of ethnicity is especially pervasive and conflictive when two conditions prevail. First, when the central state is weak and poor in resources, both political and economic, it cannot guarantee inclusion into the national community to all of its citizens in a uniform way: by granting access to political power, equality before the law and social security. Selective distribution of these public goods is a way of resolving the problem of scarcity. Secondly, a network of institutions and associations of interests, typical of what we call civil society, not yet having evolved, the new state elite will organise this selective distribution on the basis of an ethnic clientelism, thus creating a new power basis and transforming ethnic categories into groups of political solidarity. Unfortunately, Iraq fulfils both conditions for a pervasive and conflictual politicisation of ethnicity. In the year of independence (1932) its population was made up of 21 per cent Sunni Arab speakers, 14 per cent mostly Sunni Kurdish speakers, 53 per cent Shii Arab speakers, 5 per cent nonMuslim Arab speakers (such as the Baghdad Jews) and 6 per cent other religious-linguistic groups (such as the Sunni Turkmen of northern Iraq, the Christians speaking Assyrian or Chaldean etc.) (Baer 1966, cited in Makiya 1998: 215). Many of these religious-linguistic groups were subdivided into tribes and tribal confederations (especially the Kurds and the

174


Shii). A considerable part of the overall population were nomadic herders (estimated at 35 per cent in 1867 and 5 per cent in 1947) (ibid.). The overwhelming majority consisted of farmers and peasants. One estimate for the turn of the century puts the proportion of traders and artisans, mainly town-dwellers, in the Kurdish-speaking regions at about 5 per cent (Kuchler ¨ 1978, cited in Ibrahim 1983: 177). The literacy rate remained somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent in the Ottoman provinces later to become Iraq (Simon 1986: 81). Politics were still a matter of negotiating a balance between the various leaders of such groups, the authorities of the various religious communities, tribal sheikhs and aghas, urban notables of Ottoman origin with a large political following, consisting of the peasants and tenants of their estates, the heads of guilds etc. Within such a constellation, a state-building process on the basis of a negotiated contract between various networks of civic organisations, trade unions and employers associations, regional or professional interest groups etc. was out of reach. Instead, the new leaders of the state and the various political factions forming in the newly introduced parliament (cf. Simon 1986: 55ff.) had to rely on ethnic, religious and sectarian appeals for solidarity in order to gather a following and legitimise their rule. This process started as soon as the British installed the Hashemite Faisal of the Hijaz, the commander of the Arab forces that contributed to the defeat of the Ottoman armies in the Middle East, as the king of Iraq. He and his ex-Sharifian officers who played a prominent role in the uprising and who formed the nucleus of power in the newly founded state under the mandate of the British crown (1923 to 1932), were stern adherents of the Pan-Arab nationalism that had developed among Ottoman notables. They dominated politics in the first decades of independence, providing almost half of the premiers appointed during the mandate (1921 to 1932) and the monarchy (1932 to 1958) – the rest coming from old Osmanian bureaucratic families (10 per cent) or the Sunni notables of Baghdad (30 per cent) (Batatu 1978: 176). Only four out of the twenty-three individuals appointed at least once as premiers during that period were of Shii background, the rest being Sunni Arabs (10) or almost completely Arabised Kurdo-Arabs (1), Turko-Arabs (1), Seljuq-Arabs (2), Circassian (1), or Kurds (3), all Sunni without exception (ibid.: 186). The new Sunni Arab elite acknowledged that feelings of national solidarity were completely absent in Iraq during the 1920s and the notion of an Arab nation – which should become the ideological basis of the nationbuilding process – was hardly known, even among the Arab-speaking population of the country. According to the elite’s view, the country’s mosaic structure should gradually be overcome and the different pieces


175

melded into a conscious Arab nation capable of defending itself against European imperialists and of placing the Arab heritage at the centre of human history where it belonged (Lukitz 1995: 13ff.). As with the Mexican nation-building project of the second half of the nineteenth century, the main instruments to achieve this aim were schools, the army and a unified administration. The education system came under the control of the founder of modern Pan-Arab thought, the Syrian Satia al Husri (Simon 1986: ch. 4; Makiya 1998: 152–66). The army now introduced universal conscription – irrespective of religion or tribal status – and thus realised the project initiated by the Young Turks. A unified administration of the country by Baghdad-trained officials put an end to centuries of indirect rule that, in this remote corner of the empire, had not been profoundly altered through the Tanzimat reforms or the Young Turk experiments. Unlike the Young Turks, still adherents of an imperial ideology, the new regime envisioned the compulsory assimilation of the different minorities – in fact the large majority of the population – into the mainstream of Arabism and, implicitly, Sunni Islam, which was regarded as the centrepiece of the nation’s cultural heritage and its foremost contribution to world history. The round of coups and counter-coups, palace intrigues and foreign interventions, of civil wars and conflicts with neighbouring states that characterise the history of the Iraqi state is at the same time a history of the steady rise of Pan-Arabism, interrupted only for two brief periods (1936–7 and again between 1958 and 1963), during which Iraqi nationalism and a politics of social reform dominated. During this ascent to power, Pan-Arabism became radicalised and finally took on a fascist hue under the rule of the Baath from 1968 onwards. However, its ultimate goal, the creation of a united Arab (Sunni) nation, was never achieved. The more the regime tried to enforce its vision of society, the fiercer resistance became, giving rise to ever higher levels of repression and domination. This in turn nourished feelings of being ruled and dominated by ‘ethnic others’ among those who refused to meld into the great Arab nation and who were more and more excluded from state power. The institutionalisation of Sunni Arab rule Let us now have a closer look at the mechanisms that account for the rise of Arabism and of the Baath party and ideology after independence in 1932. It is especially challenging to understand why the two rather short-lived experiments with a multi-ethnic Iraqi nationalism, including a recognition of the Kurdish language, Shii religion and other ethnic

176


symbols as part of the nation’s heritage, did not prove to be politically viable. Bakr Sidqi’s regime of 1936–7 was modelled after Kemalist Turkey. He tried to construct an overarching national identity including (in contrast to Kemalist nationalism) a recognition of Kurdish (Makiya 1998: 87ff.). Qassem’s reign between 1958 and 1963 was initially based to a large extent on the Communist Party mobilising large sections of the newly populated suburbs and involving the largest ethnic groups, Sunni Arab, Shii Arab and Kurds, within its Central Committees (Batatu 1978: 996, 1046). The Free Officers were oriented towards social reforms, including a serious attempt at land reform and a break with the principle of indirect rule in tribal areas that the British had reinvented and the first independent governments reinforced. As was the case with Bakr, Qassem had Kurdish roots and understood Iraq as a multi-ethnic national state (Lukitz 1995: 141ff.; Makiya 1998). In his National Council of the Revolutionary Command (the group of Free Officers leading the coup) and the cabinets, Kurds and Shii Arabs were represented, although not in accordance with their respective shares of the overall population (Batatu 1978: 784, 844, 1008). Both regimes were overthrown by Arabist circles in the army, allied with urban notables and a rising class of bureaucrats. They were not principally defeated for ideological reasons, but because their attempts at encompassing nation-building and political integration meant sharing power and privileges with other factions within the army, the bureaucracy and government.11 These factions were based on notions of ethno-national, regional and religious solidarity because organisations of civil society, such as bourgeois clubs, learned societies, trade unions, political parties based on political programmes, professional associations etc., largely did not exist when modern state formation began. Thus, appeals to political solidarity going beyond the immediate circle of friends and followers were almost entirely based on the notion of Arab peoplehood, of Kurdish solidarity, of the defence of Shii religion and the like. Multi-ethnic nationalism lacked, in other words, the necessary social infrastructure of a trans-ethnic civil society – such as we will find in the case of Switzerland discussed in the last chapter. The rise to power of Pan-Arabism therefore implied the Arabisation of the army and of the state apparatus. In fact, the army represented the only institution with a countrywide authority at the time of independence, and it became the first and foremost symbol of national sovereignty and autonomy vis-à-vis British colonial power. The ranks of the army swelled, 11

On the overthrow of Bakr, accused of promoting Kurds and other non-Arabs in the army over Arab nationalists, see Simon (1986:134).


177

especially after the introduction of universal conscription in 1935, from 11,500 at the time of independence to 23,000 in 1936. Most of the soldiers were recruited from the tribal areas (Shii and Kurdish), while the officer corps consisted mainly of urban Sunnis from Baghdad (ibid.: 92). According to one source (Tarbush 1982, cited in Makiya 1998: 215), as early as 1936 only one Shiite and two Christians were to be found in a sample of sixty-one officers. Pan-Arabism quickly became the dominant ideology among these officers, which also had consequences for the recruitment process: although the military college in Baghdad was originally open to all ethnic and religious groups, fewer and fewer non-Sunnis attended during the thirties and forties as their colleagues continuously gauged their feelings of Arabness (Simon 1986: 133). During the 1930s the army developed close links with Germany. This orientation towards Germany and a German notion of peoplehood defined in ethnic terms had been an element of Pan-Arabism from its beginnings and was reinforced by the disillusion with France and Great Britain after the partition of Arabia into several nation-states. During the thirties, Nazi Germany was to become the ideal for many Arabist officers dreaming of building a ‘Prussia of the Middle East’. Paramilitary youth groups were set up after the model of the Hitlerjugend, and a general militarisation of society was observed (Simon 1986). Throughout this period, and especially after the overthrow of the monarchy, the army grew formidably in size and political power. Whereas fewer than 50,000 men were on the payroll of the army in 1958, its size grew to 80,000 in 1966 and to 950,000 at the end of the war with Iran (1988), in addition to a popular army of 250,000 men (Yapp 1996: 245f.) The regime tried to enforce cultural homogeneity and to imprint the new state with a Sunni Arab cultural character by a series of laws regarding public order. The sale of liquor near places of worship was forbidden, as was the public use of tobacco during Ramadan; the sexes had to sit separately during cinema performances; street names and names of hotels were rewritten in Arabic; Arabic subtitles for foreign films had to appear on the film itself; Iraqi young men were enjoined not to marry foreign girls, except those from Arab countries etc. (Simon 1986: 65). Arabisation took different forms in the education system, because the mandate power and the independent government had to fulfil certain obligations towards the League of Nations which made the mandate and the acceptance of a declaration of independence conditional upon the introduction of minority rights, especially with regard to the language issue. These stipulations were in turn a consequence of the fact that the status of the Osmanian province of Mosul was disputed between Turkey and Iraq. The British and the independent governments never lived up to the

178


promises made to the League. They feared that granting autonomy and language rights to the various minorities would endanger Sunni hegemony (and therefore British interests) and the whole project of modern state formation (McDowall 1996, ch. 8). At the end of the Osmanian period, only four secondary schools existed in the territory, one in each main urban centre, with a total of 350 students. Baghdad disposed of a faculty of law with 250 students and a technical school with 70 (Lukitz 1995: 112). The independent government greatly expanded educational opportunities and gradually abolished the system of schools entertained by the millets, which had previously enjoyed an almost complete monopoly over primary education. Immediately after the granting of independence, a centralised public school system controlled from Baghdad was installed (Simon 1986, ch. 4). Arabic was made the first language in all secondary schools, and only one secondary school was established in the Kurdish-speaking North. All others were located in Baghdad, therefore privileging the Sunni urban elite (Makiya 1998: 48). With regard to primary education, Kurdish teachers were allowed in Kurdish-speaking areas, and some school-books were translated into the Sorani dialect spoken in the eastern parts of the Kurdish North (ibid.: 118). But Arbil was administratively controlled by the educational authorities of Mosul, and Suleimaniya and Kirkuk by those of Baghdad, so that no common educational policy could develop, and a standardisation of Kurdish language was inhibited. According to the education law of 1930, local schools of religious communities such as the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Syriacs etc. (totalling around 125,000 children) were to be replaced by state schools teaching in Arabic and oriented towards the new national ideology (Lukitz 1995: 112). All these developments were aggravated in the mid 1930s, when an Arabist former Chief of General Staff was nominated Director of General Education. The consequence was a militarisation and further Arabisation of the school system. A further blow against the educational opportunities and autonomy of those people now regarded as minorities, especially Christian ones, followed in 1940. The remaining private schools were put under strict supervision by central authorities, and only Arab teachers approved by the ministry were allowed to teach Arab history (Makiya 1998: 120). Private schools were forbidden to accept financial aid from outside and the choice of textbooks was restricted. The fragmented, millet-based educational system of the Ottoman empire was finally replaced by uniform compulsory education whereby the youth of the country was to be trained in the national virtues and assimilated into the ethnic culture of Sunni Arabs.


179

According to the local language law of 1931, the official language in courts in many Kurdish districts was to be Kurdish. However, in the towns of Dohuk, Erbil, Kirkuk and Kifri, among others, Arabic was to be used. Furthermore, Kurdish had to be written in Arabic letters, and post, telegraph and health departments were to be run in Arabic throughout the country (ibid.). Kurdish-speaking Arab officials were appointed to administrative posts in the Kurdish-speaking area (ibid.: 46). However, Kurdish officers, descendants of the Kurdish nobility and Osmanian notables of Kurdish origin continued to hold important posts in independent Iraq (Ibrahim 1983: 444). Their influence and numerical strength were nevertheless gradually reduced. Ibrahim (ibid.: 440) shows that the proportion of Kurdish-speaking officials in the higher echelons of the administration still amounted to 15 per cent and at lower levels, 23 per cent, during the time of the monarchy. In the decade after 1958, however, their shares were reduced to 5 per cent and 13 per cent respectively. Other ‘minorities’ were expelled much earlier from the gardens of state power. The Jewish community, still comprising around 15 per cent of the population of Baghdad in 1947 (Batatu 1978: 248), had filled many civil service jobs during the mandate years on account of their longstanding relationships with the British and their high level of education. But they were expelled in a purge of the civilian bureaucracy in 1935 (Simon 1986:192). Being of Sunni Arab descent became more and more an advantage for a career within the expanding state apparatus. The ranks of government employees swelled from 27,000 in the last year of the monarchy to 261,000 in 1973 (Yapp 1996: 244). The multi-ethnic administration of the Osmanian empire was gradually replaced by the ethnocracy of those who declared themselves the state-embodying nation. The ethnicisation of bureaucracy and army further continued under the Baath regime that came to power first in 1963 and again in 1968. The more the regime relied on the forces of repression, on a strict control of every sign of political activity, and on almost complete domination of the state apparatus, the smaller the circle of reliable supporters of those in power became (cf. Makiya 1998). Between 1968 and 1977, the inner circle of power, represented by the Members of the Revolutionary Command Council (the highest state organ), was entirely composed of Sunni Arabs, except for one Arabised Kurd (Batatu 1978: 1090). A similar process of ‘Sunnisation’ of the elite could be observed within the party. While from 1952 to 1963 there were still 54 per cent Shii among the members of the Command of the Baath Party, their share was reduced to 6 per cent during the period from 1963 to 1970 (ibid.: 1080). The same process appears to have taken place in the intermediate and lower layers of the party organisation.

180


Fears of palace coups or the rebellion of sections of the army led the ruler Saddam Hussein to rely more and more on people not only with Arab Sunni roots, but from the same region, the same tribe and ultimately the same family clan (ibid.: 1093ff.). At the end of this process of endless purges, executions, secret murders and forced exile, members of the alBegat section of the Al-bu Nasir tribe of the Sunni town of Takrit had the reins of power completely in their hands (ibid.: 1088ff.). One-third of the Revolutionary Command Council and of the Baath Regional Command in 1987 were men from the tiny town of Takrit (Yapp 1996: 243). The ethnocracy of a Sunni Arab elite had been overlaid by a dictatorship of a few families. Countering the hegemonic project The rise of Pan-Arabism to the status of a national ideology and the Arabisation of the army, the educational system and the administrative apparatus were contested right from the beginning by those who suddenly found themselves in the position of a ‘minority’ vis-à-vis a new state and a military elite. This elite, installed by a foreign power, declared their own cultural background and ethnic characteristics as an ideal for the nation as a whole. The ruling elite had neither the means nor the will to bring the collective goods of the modern state, access to education, basic infrastructure, equal treatment before the law, representational government etc., within the reach of larger sections of the polity. As soon as it became clear that an independent Iraqi state under a British mandate would come into existence, politics was transformed into a matter of ethnicity, and justice was mainly perceived as an issue of ethnic over- and underrepresentation. The new discourse of ethnicity, whose appearance in the region can be traced back to the Young Turk period, spread rapidly among the political elites of those groups that were suddenly transformed into ethnic and religious ‘minorities’. They quickly realised that their own political ambitions, nourished by Wilson’s promise of ‘self-determination’ during the war, were to be disappointed. Religious notables, sheikhs and tribal leaders, as well as Ottoman officers and high officials of Kurdish, Assyrian, Shii and Turkmen origin, feared the dominance of Sunni Arab elites in army and administration, their project of state centralisation and uniformisation, their assimilationist stance towards questions of national identity and culture, and their close alliance with the most influential colonial power in the world. The Assyrians demanded a special status of almost complete internal autonomy on the principles of the millet system; the leaders of the Turkmen, Kurds and Shii asked for autonomous areas within the new


181

nation-state under special British or Turkish protection with far-reaching guarantees. Shii rebellions and the Assyrian question The Shii leadership did what it could to obtain an autonomous area under British or Turkish protection within the new state. At a very early stage, however, it became clear that the mandate power and the newly installed Sunni elite would not allow a fragmentation of the state’s authority over the territory. Throughout the 1920s, rebellions against the new authorities spread across the South. They were usually fought with the help of the Assyrian levies under British command and especially the Royal Air Force (Makiya 1998, ch. 3). The background to these conflicts is rather heterogeneous and complex, including peasant uprisings against land-owning religious and tribal authorities, factional fights between different politicians and their followers, and, most importantly, rebellions against any attempt at replacing the system of indirect rule, which had largely been preserved in this peripheral area of the empire, with modern forms of administration and government. In these rebellions against the new central authority, suddenly so close to Basra and the Shatt-el-Arab, large tribal confederations played a central role, since they could muster impressive numbers of armed and mounted men experienced in fighting. When the political elite of the Shii South finally realised that an autonomous area ruled by themselves was out of the question, they modified their demands and asked for 50 per cent of the posts in parliament, the nomination of Shii state officials in Shii areas, the establishment of Shii courts throughout the country (an innovation with regard to Ottoman practices), the inclusion of the Jafari school of jurisprudence in the country’s judiciary system and an educational system based on Shii values and traditions in the Shii provinces. The most important issue, however, was the ethnic composition of the army, which was to be substantially enlarged and strengthened after independence. The principle of universal conscription was met with great resistance, especially by the tribal leaders who feared losing control over ‘their rifles’ and who quite realistically predicted that they were to deliver the rank and file for an army almost entirely controlled by the Sunni Arab elite of Baghdad. Shortly after the announcement of a decree on universal conscription in 1935, most of the southern tribes rose up in arms and a widespread rebellion shattered the region. It was overthrown in a most brutal way, again with the help of the Royal Air Force. Little distinction was made between the civil population and armed fighters, and men who were or seemed to be leaders of Shii tribes

182


faced summary execution. Politics in the southern region was profoundly transformed and indirect rule through sheikhs and aghas replaced by a close supervision of political activities, mainly through the newly founded Department of Tribal Affairs, and a centralised administration penetrating the hitherto self-ruled countryside. The education system was reorganised along the Pan-Arabist lines defined by Husri and his followers. Shii disaffection with and distrust of the Iraqi state and its ruling elite has become a constant of Iraqi politics ever since (cf. Nakash 1994), notwithstanding different measures for including more Shii ministers in the cabinets (their share rose from 18 per cent under the mandate to 35 per cent during the last decade of the monarchy, according to Batatu 1978: 47) or increasing the number of Shii members of parliament through the mathematics of defining electoral districts. There is another incidence of early independence which shows how quickly and far-reaching the politicisation of ethnicity and the ethnicisation of politics were progressing during these years and how much the newly established regime had to rely on force and violence in order to establish its authority over the entire country. The Assyrian community originally inhabited the south-eastern part of what was to become Turkey. It fled from this region during the First World War in order to reach British (Christian) controlled territory. They were employed by the British as light infantry and special forces to protect the RAF airbases on whose power British rule mainly relied. The Assyrian fighters lived with their families in special camps near the air-bases. Eventually the question arose as to what their place would be after the end of the mandate. Under the political leadership of their religious head, the Assyrians demanded an autonomous homeland with a jurisdiction of its own, Assyrian schools and a special status with regard to the application of laws. In brief, their vision of things to come was that they would maintain their status as a millet, now transformed into a nation bestowed with the right to selfdetermination. The Iraqi government, by contrast, insisted on a mode of inclusion conforming to the principles of modern nation-states: not as a separate community with special rights, but as individual citizens equal before the law. The conflict finally escalated into a general pogrom against Assyrians and a massacre of several thousands of them committed by the newly organised Iraqi army under the command of Bakr Sidqi (Lukitz 1995: 22–33). What is most significant in this story is how it was interpreted by the general public and the ruling elite. It was perceived as the first test of independence, as a proof that Iraq’s only national institution, the army,


183

was capable of fighting the clients of the former colonial power. The troops were greeted as national heroes and Iraq went through one of the very few moments of patriotic euphoria, papering over – albeit only temporarily – the differences between the various Muslim ethnic and religious groups, even between Kurdish notables and the Sunni elite of Baghdad (Simon 1986: 122). In fact, it was the outburst of nationalist enthusiasm over this ‘victory’ that allowed the new regime to pass the law on universal conscription in parliament, the principal instrument of achieving national cohesion in the eyes of the Sunni elite (ibid.: 117–22). Following the Assyrian pogrom the place of the Christian minorities, including Chaldeans, Syriacs and Protestants12 within the new national framework was clearly defined and they pursued a strategy of compliance and concealment or of emigration. The politics of Arabisation, aimed at transforming the speakers of Aramaic dialects into Christian Arabs, seems to have had some success under the Baath regime. Emigration to Palestine was, by contrast, the only solution left to most members of the large Jewish millet of merchants and artisans residing in Baghdad. They fled the country en masse, first after the pogroms of the early 1940s and even more so later in the decade after the issue of Palestine had made their position untenable in an environment where Pan-Arabism flourished. The spread of Kurdish nationalism After the Shii, the second largest group that was not Arab-speaking and/or not Sunni Muslim, and thus excluded from the project of nation-building and state formation, was the Kurds in northern Iraq. Similar to the Shii and Assyrian leaders discussed so far, the Kurdish elite – Osmanian notables, officers, as well as important sheikhs and aghas – resisted the 12

The division of the Christian communities speaking Aramaic dialects in contemporary Iraq arises from two separate fissions, the first occurring in the fifth century, when the monophysite Syriac Church separated from the ‘Nestorian’ Church of the East (dyophysite), itself a heterodox group that did not accept the judgements of the Council of Ephesus of 451. For many centuries, the Church of the East continued to spread throughout Persia, Tartary, Mongolia, China and India. The Church of the East was divided in 1533 into a group remaining independent (Church of the East, nowadays often called Assyrians by themselves under late nineteenth-century Anglican influence, or Nestorians by Rome, i.e. followers of Nestorius, whose ideas had been condemned at the Council of Ephesus) and a group united with Rome (called Chaldeans by themselves and by Rome). Both churches, however, use the same rite (referred to as the Persian, East Syrian or Chaldean rite). Almost all Assyrians in contemporary Iraq migrated from what is nowadays Turkey during and after World War I. They are the only group left from the Church of the East, the others having been converted to Islam or annihilated in massacres (such as the Indian groups).

184


formation of the new state right from the start. They still hoped that a Kurdish nation-state would be cut out of the dying body of the empire, as had been promised by the imperial powers at the end of the war. Ottoman Kurdish notables Eventually it became clear that this was not going to happen. While the status of the northern province of Mosul, largely populated by Kurdish speakers, was still a matter of debate between Turkey, Britain and the League of Nations, Kurdish leaders demanded from the mandate power, as had Assyrian, Shii and Turkmen officials, that Kurdish schools should be established, Kurdish officials nominated, Kurdish become the official language in all those places where Kurdish speakers formed a majority. Because of the uncertain status of Mosul, the British and the Sunnis had to be much more careful and conciliatory than they had been in their previous dealings with the Shii demands so as not to break promises made to the League of Nations. They therefore reintroduced and reinforced the system of indirect rule through tribal leaders and sheikhs left by the Ottomans, appointed new tribal leaders and so contributed to the creation of power-brokers who had hitherto played only a minor role in the political landscape (McDowall 1996, ch. 8). A widely renowned Sufi leader, Sheikh Mahmud from Suleimaniya, was installed as ruler over much of Kurdistan. He managed to build up a large confederacy of various tribal groups. His ambitions, however, went far beyond being a governor at the grace of the British, so he started to court the new Turkish government, which was eager to gain an advantage in the Mosul question. After declaring himself independent he was immediately deprived of power by the British and sent into exile, only to be later reinstalled to stop Turkish troops and their Kurdish allies from advancing in the north-western corner of the mandate territory. After having helped to repel the Turkish forces, however, Sheikh Mahmud declared himself king of independent Kurdistan. He was subdued by force of arms, and exiled again in 1924. After Mosul was finally awarded to the British mandate in 1926, and therefore to the future Iraqi state, there was no large-scale organised resistance in the Kurdish area. It was only in 1932 that another rebellion broke out, again under the leadership of the sheikhs of Barzan that we met in a previous section of this chapter. The Iraqi government, released from the restrictions imposed by mandate rule, tried to expand its authority over the whole national territory. Sheikh Ahmed, son of Sheikh Abdussalam the Second, reacted to the new authorities and most probably also to their


185

plans to settle the Assyrians in the Barzan valley,13 and mobilised armed followers from diverse tribes of his confederacy. They were fought by tribal groups rival to the Barzanis (van Bruinessen 1989: 326) and by the new Iraqi army. They were eventually subdued with the help, once again, of the Royal Air Force (see Longrigg 1953: 194f.; Schmidt 1964, ch. 7). The sheikh’s family was deported and put under arrest in Suleimaniya. The end of Ahmed’s rebellion marked the closing of the first phase of Kurdish resistance against the project of political modernisation, and especially against those aspects most dangerous for the authority of tribal elites: the extension of state control over the entire territory, the end of the principle of indirect rule and, closely linked to this, the introduction of the idea of equality before the law irrespective of military power and hereditary rank. Since the decentralist movement of Ottoman reformers had reached the hinterland, the discourse of the resistance’s leaders ceased to be inspired mainly by Islamic-Ottoman principles of legitimacy and took on an ethno-nationalist hue. It remains highly doubtful, however, whether the leaders themselves, let alone their followers, should be classified as true nationalists. Their main aim was to remain in control of the political affairs of their region and to be independent of central authority – be it Ottoman, Iraqi or Kurdish for that matter. Urban middle-class nationalism From the 1920s onwards, and especially during the thirties and forties, however, a genuine Kurdish nationalism developed. The concept of a Kurdish nation, united by the bonds of language and a common history and culture, and the ideal of political autonomy or even independence for this entity, was gaining more and more followers among the urban sectors of the population. The spread of these ideas was closely linked to the Arabisation of state and army and to corresponding processes of social closure that suddenly left persons of Kurdish origin outside the doors leading to power and influence at the centre, doors through which the influential, rich or gifted had passed without hindrance in Ottoman times. During the second half of the 1920s, urban intellectuals of Suleimaniya founded a series of literary and cultural clubs. They were dedicated to what countless nationalists did and continue to do in other places during the first phase of nationalist awakening: they developed a Kurdish 13

Other sources, especially British ones, maintain that Ahmed had become a heretic, ordered to burn all exemplars of the Koran and to eat pork, or that he even converted to Christianity. He then attacked all those groups in the region that refused to accept the new religion. Ibrahim (1983: 323–8) gives a good interpretation of the different versions.

186


scripture and historiography, purged Kurdish vocabulary of Arab words, rediscovered long-forgotten Kurdish authors etc.14 At this time, virtually no relations existed with the sheikhs and aghas who had led the insurrections against British/Iraqi rule. The Kurdish intelligentsia of Suleimaniya did not co-operate, for instance, in the various rebellions of Sheikh Mahmud. During the 1930s, nationalist thinking spread to a generation of younger intellectuals from urban middle-class families, who had studied at the newly founded universities and colleges of Baghdad. In contrast to the first generation and in accordance with many other nationalists in the colonies, they combined the ideal of nationalist liberation with a socialist programme. Many were members of a Kurdish branch of the Iraqi Communist Party.15 Again during the thirties, a young generation of Kurdish officers of the newly founded Iraqi army came under the influence of Kurdish nationalism. This generation had not served under the Ottomans and was educated at the recently established Military Academy of Baghdad. They founded organisations such as Hizbi Hiwa (Party of Hope), in order to counter the Pan-Arabic parties and groups that enjoyed more and more popularity among their colleagues of Arab origin (Ibrahim 1983: 384ff.). The left-wing faction of Hizbi Hiwa later joined the Kurdish section of the Communist Party and founded Hizbi Rizgari Kurd (Party for the Liberation of Kurds), which formed a kind of reservoir for the young Kurdish intelligentsia. Kurdish nationalism further spread after the ‘revolution’ of 1958 when the Arabisation of the state apparatus advanced quickly and there were fewer and fewer ‘people of our own’ to be found within the administration, even in the Kurdish-speaking region (Ibrahim 1983: 440). For the urban Kurdish middle classes, especially those with college or university education who depended on a state whose power and economic potential increased enormously after the Second World War and the oil boom, Kurdish nationalism made increasing sense. At the end of this process, large sections of the population of cities such as Suleimaniya were adherents of the nationalist programme (ibid.: 271, 294, 340ff.). The lawyers, left-wing officers and officials who led the movement in urban areas added a new element to Kurdish nationalism. Their vision of a better future implied not only liberation from Turkish, Arab and Persian domination, but also emancipation from the power of religious notables and tribal leaders, who were seen as symbols of an outdated ‘feudal’ order 14 15

See Ibrahim (1983: 318); Franz (1986: 43–7); Behrendt (1993, ch. 5). Batatu (1978, part 5) presents a detailed account of the role of Kurdish intellectuals within the Communist Party of Iraq.


187

to be overcome by revolutionary catharsis. In fact, many sheikhs and aghas had become large landowners during the second half of the nineteenth century. The Sublime Port had tried to reform the Osmanian system of land rights according to Western principles, transferring the different forms of state land and fiefs into private property – a goal shared by the modernist dictator Porfirio D´ıaz of late nineteenth-century Mexico. Especially in the valleys and plains many sheikhs and aghas managed to get the landholdings of their peasant followers registered in their names and thus became big landowners. British and Iraqi land reforms completed this process in the 1920s and 1930s (cf. Batatu 1978, ch. 6). The urban nationalists depended, however, on the support of precisely these ‘feudal elements’, because the urban middle classes still represented only a tiny fraction of the overall population in the largely rural areas of northern Iraq. The largest part of the territory to be included in a ‘liberated Kurdistan’ was controlled by tribal leaders and religious notables who continued to command the respect of their followers and who could, importantly enough, mobilise large numbers of armed men in times of conflict or war. In order to give their movement a mass basis and in order to marshal military power, the urban nationalists had to rely on the tribes of the Kurdish hinterlands (Ibrahim 1983: 408f.; Olson 1989: 153).16 Tribal nationalism Among Kurdish peasants and herders who formed the following of aghas and sheikhs, the idea of a national community of solidarity fighting for its liberation from oppression by ethnic others was probably not very widespread and surely not the main motivation for joining the Kurdish guerrilla forces in order to fight against the Iraqi army. The nationalist cultural compromise, according to which the Kurdish nation was the main and most important focus of loyalty, did not make much sense from the point of view of the rank-and-file members of Kurdish tribes. In a region where both the imperial bureaucracy and later the central 16

The dependent peasants and tenants were not regarded as potential allies, because, not belonging to the tribal stratum of Kurdish society, they were not experienced in politics and warfare (Olson 1989: 99) and tended to be more interested in land reform than in a nationalist programme (van Bruinessen 1989: 119). The leftist intellectuals, however, opposed land reform because they wanted to nationalise landholdings in order to collectivise the means of production without taking the detour of a petty bourgeois stage (Gabbay 1982). Land reform began to be implemented in 1958 under Qassem and again in the late sixties under the Baathist regime. In the Kurdish areas it only demonstrated results after the collapse of the Kurdish movement in 1975, and only in those areas where the landlords and aghas had not sided with Baghdad early enough (Ribeau 1980).

188


state never managed to establish itself firmly and where therefore no state monopoly of violence was known and property and personal rights were not guaranteed by a centralised judicial apparatus, lineages, clans and tribes continued to function as associations of mutual support and political loyalty in times of crisis and conflict. The fact that beyond the bonds of religion – binding a family to a certain Sufi sheikh – and of kinship and politics, which held together tribes and tribal confederacies sometimes numbering several hundred thousand individuals, many other such groups spoke Kurdish dialects was not seen as a commonality out of which obligations of mutual support or political alliances would arise. ‘Don’t fight your brother’ meant, according to the logic of tribal politics, fighting with one’s brothers against one’s cousins, with one’s brothers and cousins against other lineages, and with one’s brothers, cousins and other members of the same tribe against other tribes. It did not include the idea that every Kurdish-speaking person should be considered as a brother within an enlarged national family. It is therefore hardly surprising that, to this day, the Kurdish nationalist movement has never managed to build an encompassing ethnic block comprising all sections of the population and including the different tribal and religious leaders within their following. Even in those periods when the Kurdish movement was in complete control of the northern parts of the country, such as between 1958 and 1975 and again since 1992, the embryonic Kurdish quasi-state was never powerful enough, always too poor in political, military and economic resources, and ever too dependent on unreliable outside allies (mainly Iran and the United States), to be able to make the collective goods of the modern state – equality before the law, fair treatment in the courts, an efficient and non-arbitrary administration, political participation, the dignity of being a member of the chosen people – accessible to all sections of the population. Other forms of cultural compromise and social closure along subnational lines thus still dominated the landscape of identities and political alliances. Nation-building remained a dream never realised. The course of events was therefore at least partly dominated by the venerable political logic of tribe–state relations. Tribal leaders and sheikhs used to ally themselves with those forces that seemed to be on the winning side, be it the nationalist movement or the Iraqi state, as long as their autonomy, political power and landholdings were not endangered by an all too powerful state or quasi-state administration. This is clearly shown by the fortunes of the Kurdish movement which fluctuated according to the balance of forces between the regional powers. Let us have a closer


189

look at this by picking up the threads of the history of the Barzanis that we left in an earlier section of this chapter. Autonomy and repression, 1940 to the present During his eight years of imprisonment in Suleimaniya, Sheikh Ahmed’s younger brother, Mullah Mustafa, had come in contact with the urban nationalist circles, especially with Sheikh Latif, son of Sheikh Berzenji, who had founded the Komala of Suleimaniya (McDowall 1996: 290). From then on, the political discourse of the Barzanis and their movement was firmly rooted in modern nationalist language: the Kurdish formed ‘a people’ on the basis of linguistic and cultural commonality, thousands of years of common history, a characteristic personality adapted to the life of nomadic herders and fighters amidst the great mountains of Kurdistan, and their eternal struggle for freedom and self-rule. Kurdish solidarity stood above other cross-cutting religious or tribal bonds. Through a heroic act of existential dimensions, the Kurdish people would be able to break the chains of domination that tied them to Arab, Turkish and Persian rulers unsympathetic to the Kurdish cause and realise their eternal dream of freedom and self-determination. When a homeland for the Kurds was finally established, their culture would flourish again, their children be freed from harassment by Arabic teachers, their women protected from the Islamic rigidities alien to Kurdish Sunni faith, and their men no longer forced to shed their blood in wars that did not serve the interests of their family and nation. In 1940, Mullah Mustafa escaped from Suleimaniya and returned to the mountainous North. There he fought the newly established police posts in the Barzan valley, symbols of the central administration that had established itself in the rural hinterland in the meantime. His confederation was enlarged by some important new allies (McDowall 1996: 292). But the coalition of his enemies also grew, as the rivals of his new allies joined the side of the government. At the same time, the Arabist government tried to increase its room for manoeuvre by negotiating and making some concessions. A minister of Kurdish origin and member of the nationalist party Hiwa (Hope) was given a mandate to negotiate a peaceful solution. A handful of Kurdish nationalist officers serving in the Iraqi army were sent to the North in order to act as liaison men. However, they were gradually drawn into the ranks of the insurgents and did more to stir up the rebellion than to calm it down. At the end of the Second World War, the Iraqi government was given the green light by the British to start a full military offensive, despite

190


possible international complications. The balance of power immediately turned against the Kurdish nationalist coalition and Barzani finally had to flee over the border into Iran with around 10,000 followers. There he established, with Soviet help, the first and only independent Kurdish state, the short-lived republic of Mahabad (Eagleton 1963). The urban intellectuals and the Kurdish liaison officers had come with him. In 1946 they founded the first encompassing nationalist party, the Kurdish Democratic Party-Iraq (KDP-Iraq) with Barzani as its president.17 His tribal allies, with one or two exceptions, abandoned him before then, when the defeat of the nationalist forces appeared to be on the horizon. Siding with the government early enough seemed to be the best way of political survival and of securing privileges, parliamentary seats and landholdings (Edmonds 1957: 51–6). After the 1958 coup against the last king of Iraq, the relations between the Barzani confederation and its enemies changed suddenly. The Free Officers who took power and their Communist allies adhered to a programme of reform and nationalist reconstruction. This programme contrasted with the Pan-Arabist aspirations of preceding and succeeding regimes. Pan-Arabist rhetoric was overlaid by a multi-ethnic nationalism oriented towards achieving the far-reaching goals of social transformation, land reform and economic modernisation. Since the officers were still occupied with consolidating their power, they promised autonomy to the Kurdish nationalists. Barzani and his followers returned from their exile in the Soviet Union and established another confederacy among the tribal leaders of Barzani’s home region. They soon controlled much of the Kurdish-speaking area. In many regions of Kurdistan, his followers staffed the newly founded people’s militia, which was responsible for running police posts and controlling the borders. As soon as the new regime was firmly in the saddle and no longer dependent on an alliance with Kurdish autonomists, it started to give arms and money to the tribes inimical to the Barzanis, such as the Lolan and the Zibaris (Schmidt 1964: 75). The following decade was characterised by the ups and downs of the war between Barzani’s coalition and Iraqi troops with their tribal allies, a ceasefire and new negotiations usually 17

The Kurdish Communist Party and the Rizgari both merged into the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). The leadership of the new party was composed of one sheikh, two tribal aghas, two army officers and the urban intellectuals (mostly lawyers) (Ibrahim 1983: 410f.). After a series of arrests, the party was reorganised in 1951 and 1952 with the result that the Communist elements dominated the party apparatus, among them Talabani, the protégé of Ibrahim Ahmad, who had entered the party with his group in 1947 (ibid.: 415). After 1957 this tendency was reinforced because the Kurdish section of the CPI fused with the KDP after they had argued with the Iraqi section over the issue of Pan-Arabism, to which the latter had turned more and more (ibid.: 426).


191

being arranged as soon as a new group of officers had taken power in Baghdad. During these long years of the so-called Kurdish war, Barzani gained influence and power. His military successes encouraged an increasing number of tribal leaders to leave the sidelines and join Barzani’s cause. Mullah Mustafa became renowned as the only capable leader of the Kurdish nation. With the military and financial help of the Shah of Persia, Barzani and his followers built up a rudimentary army, recruited from among the fighters of different, reliable tribes, and an embryonic administration that started to collect a ‘revolution tax’ from the population. In this way, a shadow state came into being that de facto governed the northern parts of the country. In 1975, however, this quasi-state collapsed under the assault of Iraqi troops, as soon as Iran no longer needed to play the Kurdish card in the struggle for regional pre-eminence, after having settled the frontier dispute with Iraq over the Shatt-el-Arab. Many of Barzani’s followers, notably some tribal leaders and their armed followers, turned their back on Kurdish nationalism and offered their services to the regime, if only to evade the brutal repression that was unleashed in the Kurdish regions, including the complete depopulation of a border zone of 5 to 30 kilometres, the rasing of villages and the deportation or murder of their inhabitants (cf. Dziegiel 1981). A forced policy of Arabisation was developed, the Kurdish faculty of the University of Suleimaniya closed, Kurdish civil servants, policemen and soldiers sent to Arabic-speaking parts of the country, and Arab men given a financial award when marrying Kurdish women (McDowall 1996: 340). The catastrophe led to a split within the KDP-Iraq and the founding of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) under the leadership of the urban intelligentsia. Their relations with Barzani and other ‘feudal’ elements of the party had always been tactically friendly at best, openly hostile at worst and sometimes even characterised by armed confrontations during much of the thirty years of the history of the KDP. At the beginning of the Iraq–Iran war, the sons of Mullah Mustafa, Idris and Masud, and PUK forces under the leadership of Talabani started to rebuild a following in the North and to fight government troops and police stations throughout the region, again with Iranian assistance.18 They achieved control over some border regions.19 At the end of the war against Iran in 1988, the resistance movement again broke down under an assault 18

19

Both forces were present after 1976 in the border region of Turkey and Iraq. The development of the Kurdish movement after 1975 is described by Entessar (1992, ch. 5) and Gunter (1993). Only very few details are known in Western publications (see e.g. Franz 1986: 51).

192


that exceeded in brutality, systematic character and ruthlessness anything that had been known before in the history of the region. The attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, in retaliation for its sympathy with the Kurdish movement and Iran, became a symbol of the genocidal character of the so-called Anfal 20 campaign. Several thousand inhabitants were killed in air attacks with bombs containing mustard gas as well as the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX. The Iraqi army started to destroy all Kurdish villages in the North,21 except for those in regions inhabited by loyal tribes such as the Zibaris, and to deport and resettle the population (estimated at around 800,000 persons) in newly built ‘collective towns’ outside the Kurdish areas, mostly on the edges of the Mesopotamian plain. In these towns, villagers depended largely on the food rations that were distributed through the machinery of the Iraqi welfare state, and on their meagre earnings as casual day labourers in the surrounding grain fields. Arab families were settled in the fertile valleys and plains of Kurdistan. Probably around 150,000 Kurds, notably the tribal families allied to the nationalist fighters, crossed the border into Iranian territory. The systematic methods of repression directed against the Kurdish population, which included the organised slaughter of between 50,000 and 200,000 people (Wahlbeck 1999: 52), contributed to the further spread of nationalist feelings. A state that was capable of gassing some of its people, arbitrarily selected from among the Kurdish inhabitants, was surely not an institution with which one could easily identify and to which feelings of belonging and political loyalty could develop. This was not withstanding the efforts undertaken by the Iraqi government to include the North and its population in its social welfare programmes and the distribution of subsidised basic food, agricultural equipment, cars and so on. The Anfal campaign made it clear to the large majority of Kurdish speakers in the North that Iraq was not ‘their’ state, that protection from arbitrary violence, the guarantee of fundamental human rights, security of law, and the prospects of political participation – in short, the benefits that modern nation-states can bring to their citizens – were out of reach for those not belonging to the dominant Sunni Arab elite of Baghdad. Only an independent Kurdish state or Kurdish 20

21

The Al-Anfal (literally: the spoils of war) campaign took its name from the eighth sura of the Koran, where the warriors are reinforced in their faith, reminded of their duties and encouraged to be merciless with non-believers. See the report on the destruction of the village Koreme, published by Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights in January 1993. The repression, resettlement and terror campaign of 1988 is described in detail by Middle East Watch (1993; 1994).


193

autonomy in the North under international supervision could, in the future, protect the Kurdish population from the abuses of power and the terror issuing from the Iraqi central state and its ruling cliques of Baath Arabists. The process of the gradual inclusion of large sections of the population into the nationalist cultural compromise was reinforced after 1991. At the end of the Gulf War almost the entire population of the Kurdish regions fled over the mountainous borders to Turkey and Iran before the advancing troops of Saddam Hussein could reach them, memories of the Anfal campaign still fresh in their minds. The victors of the Gulf War were forced by Western public opinion to send them back and to install a protection zone for Kurds in northern Iraq. The two nationalist movements quickly filled the power vacuum and established themselves as a de facto government and administration in the North, in the midst of a wave of nationalist euphoria. With the help of Western relief organisations and, later on, various UN agencies implementing the oil-for-food programme, they started to resettle the villages depopulated in 1975 and 1988, to build up ministries, to collect taxes from trucks crossing the border with Turkey, and to recruit young fighters for a standing army.22 If the state-building process could be consolidated and continued at a high level, and if a functioning administration, a system of tribunals and independent judges, and an army devoted to the defence of ‘national interests’ instead of policing the population could be built up, communal and tribal identities would continue to melt away or, to be more precise, to lose political significance and give way to the ideal of a Kurdish nation as the prime focus of political loyalty and identity. Religious or tribal bonds would not be erased from the map of politics, to be sure, but just as occurred in other Near Eastern states, they would be transformed into clientelist networks for the distribution of state benefits and the mobilisation of votes during elections. Events took another turn, however. For reasons beyond the scope of this chapter (see Wimmer 1999b), the autonomous region in the North was soon torn apart in armed clashes between different Kurdish guerrillas fighting for control over the newly established state and its revenues. These fratricidal wars put an end to the dream of Kurdish sovereignty and liberty, and the process of state- and nation-building was halted. The autonomous government split into two regional administrations each dominated by one of the two parties – KDP and PUK. 22

For the situation in northern Iraq since 1992, see Bozarslan (1997); Leezenberg (1997); Wimmer (1997).

194


Both parties are too poor in moral, political and economic resources to continuously nourish their clientele and the tribal groups allied to them, and unable to guarantee within their spheres of influence the rule of law, protection from arbitrary violence and a minimal degree of political participation. Communal and tribal loyalties and identities therefore continue to provide protection and security and to be more useful for everyday survival than the idea of a united Kurdistan. In particular, the military and political functions of tribal leaders remain important. According to the time-honoured logic of tribal alliance-making, they will change sides at the very moment that the balance of power between the two Kurdish semi-independent states and the central government of Baghdad shifts in favour of the latter. Many Kurds fear that when the Kurdish movement is eventually abandoned by its current international allies, for example after the removal of Saddam Hussein, the history of 1975 or even of 1988 will be repeated. Stateless people – the pariah of the modern age We have now reached the end of two centuries of a complex, ramifying and meandering history. The picture I have been drawing was presented, as is every account of history, from a certain perspective, emphasising some of the lines in the web of events and trends while neglecting others. In the previous section, I wanted to shed some light on the mechanisms of politicising ethnicity and ethnicising politics. It showed that when ruling elites are not prepared to include the entire population of the country into the state-embodying nation, those who thereby become ‘minorities’ are excluded from the benefits of political modernity and do not feel inclined to embrace the project of nation-building through assimilation and passing. This in turn led the ethnocrats to rely on terror and pure force in order to control the many, which in turn further alienates the ‘minorities’ from the state and so on. At the end of this spiral of ethnicisation, the polity is compartmentalised in a series of ethnic groups whose members see themselves as communities sharing a common political fate and destiny. Political modernisation leads, in other words, to social closure along ethnic lines and a pervasive fragmentation of political space. The tragic consequence of these developments is that promises of modernity remain out of reach for the majority of the citizens of such states. They become excluded from, and are rejected by, the only institution of our times that is able to guarantee the minimal rights associated with the modern age: the nation-state. Equal treatment before the law, political participation and protection from arbitrary violence are


195

goods inaccessible to Kurds, Christians and Shii in contemporary Iraq, as they are for the ‘minorities’ in southern Sudan, the Hutu in Burundi, Catholics in Northern Ireland until recently, Tamils in Sri Lanka among many others. The case of the Kurds is especially dramatic because there is no state in the world which would rule in the name of their nation, protect the interests of its members living on the territory of other states, or provide a shelter for refugees fleeing terror and suppression by ethnic enemies. While Hindus fleeing Pakistan were received by India, Muslims fleeing India by Pakistan, Jews from all over the world by Israel, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe by Germany, Orthodox Greeks from Turkey by Greece etc., the Kurds are a classic example of a stateless group falling through the net of a world organised into nation-states that tie citizenship rights to nationality. Their fate reminds us of what happened to millions of people after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires at the end of the First World War, of which Hannah Arendt wrote: Nobody had been aware that mankind, for so long a time considered under the image of a family of nations, had reached the stage where whoever was thrown out of one of these tightly organized closed communities found himself thrown out of the family of nations altogether. Civil wars . . . were not only bloodier and more cruel then all their predecessors; they were followed by migrations of groups who, unlike their happier predecessors in the religious wars, were welcomed nowhere and could be assimilated nowhere. (Arendt 1951: 291, 266)

Part III


7

Racism and xenophobia

The Kurdish refugees who are currently arriving in thousands every month in Western Europe have to face a rather hostile environment (cf. Wahlbeck 1999). While asylum law guarantees some protection from refoulement, it assigns them the status of second-class citizens who can be expelled from the territory to a ‘safe third country’, if necessary by force, whose mobility within the country of asylum is limited to one commune or province, whose possibilities of gaining an independent living are severely restricted, and for whom all routes to political participation are closed; in short, a situation that resembles the one from which they fled, except that their physical survival is now guaranteed. The status of refugees is specific on the one hand, but on the other is symptomatic of the fate of other immigrants in the fully nationalised states of Western Europe. While these states are inclusive with regard to their own citizenry, including the ‘minorities’ that may have survived the nation-building process, they exclude non-national others ‘belonging’ to other states systematically and legally. The old medieval principle of quidquid est in territorio est de territorio had been replaced, one-and-ahalf centuries previously, by the distinction between national citizens and aliens. Most refugees and migrants cannot show themselves to be members of the national community on the basis of shared ethnicity and ancestry, as in the case of diasporas ‘returning home’. They are not only faced with the structural discrimination against foreigners characteristic of the fully nationalised states, but with a general hostility in everyday social life. One elderly man from northern Iraq who found shelter in Finland described this experience in the following words: Yes, all the time when you walk on the street you think that perhaps that person hates me. Because it happens sometimes [i.e. racist attacks], which is why you have it with you all the time. We respect Finland and what they have done for us, but we do not know who is against us here. In Kurdistan we knew who the enemy was. (Cited in Wahlbeck 1999: 129) 199

200


To these forms of nationalist exclusion we now turn in the remaining two chapters. We will thus follow the other path of political modernisation, where integration within and closure towards the outside reinforce each other. In fully nationalised states, the main lines of exclusion are not to be found within the state population and between different politicised ethnic groups fighting over becoming the state’s nation. Rather, the legitimate ‘owners of the state’ are opposed to those excluded from the national ‘we’, to immigrants and other groups disturbing the amalgamation of the citizenry, the sovereign and the nation into one single ‘people’. Defining a research strategy There is perhaps no other research topic in the social sciences that is more politicised than racism and xenophobia. This is because they directly relate to the cultural compromise of fully nationalised states, to different ways of conceiving the relation between citizenry, sovereign and nationhood. Many researchers actively promote such politicisation because, according to a widely shared opinion, ‘the efficacy of a theory about race and racism is to be assessed in terms of the ways in which it renders possible resistance to racism’, as Goldberg (1993: 41) has put it. Conformingly, much writing on the subject comes close to witch-hunting in areas most of us had until recently considered to be safe: liberalism’s racist shadow was exposed (Goldberg 1993); multiculturalism was deconstructed until its neo-racist bones lay bare to the sun (Essed 1992); finally, even anti-racism was dismantled as a mirror-image of racism (Taguieff 1995). Racism seems to lurk behind every corner in the postmodern labyrinth of thought. Going beyond this literature of denouncement implies a change of strategy of reasoning, away from the deconstruction of texts, allusions to hidden meanings and revelations of opaque structures, and towards an empirically more solid argument. If this should lead us not only to a better understanding of the dynamics of racist and xenophobic discourse and practice, but also to a new and more effective way of countering them, it would be more than we ever could have hoped for. However, it would certainly be naive to believe that one could remove oneself completely from the battlefield of political meanings. Even simple and apparently purely pragmatic definitions of racism and xenophobia do imply a certain political perspective. It is, to borrow an epidemiological metaphor, in the cracks of the small details that the bacteria of ideology take hold. Despite this, I stick to the somewhat outdated idea that it is not only possible to examine social scientific propositions with regard to their political implications and hidden messages, but also with regard


201

to their empirical plausibility – and that it is precisely this procedure which distinguishes scientific arguments from political discourse. However, statements about the relative validity of an explanation are what can be expected from such a strategy of research, not, as Popper would have it, a decisive experiment allowing a theory to be ‘falsified’ (cf. Wimmer 1995d, ch. 2). In what follows I would first like to discuss the five most prominent explanations concerning xenophobia and racism found in the social science literature and confront them with the results of empirical research.1 The five models derive from rational choice theory, functionalism, sociobiology, discourse theory and phenomenology, respectively. The subsequent section proposes an alternative perspective based on the central hypothesis of this book. Xenophobia and racism will be interpreted as an extreme form of nationalism, a consequence of the ordering of the modern world according to the principle of the nation-state, in which, for the first time, notions of political legitimacy were fused with the idea of national solidarity. Distinctions based on racial and/or ethnonational markers were thus transformed into powerful elements of political discourse and practices of exclusion. Future research should be based on a deeper understanding of this relation between racism and political modernity. Some possible lines along which such a comparative research programme might be developed will be outlined in the final section. It may be useful to define the concepts of xenophobia and racism before starting the discussion. Five tropes of racist discourse should be distinguished.2 First, the fear of being ‘inundated’ by foreigners and estranged from one’s own culture (perception of danger). Secondly, the idea that mixing different cultural or biological entities is harmful (phobia of interbreeding and creolisation). Thirdly, that the marks of certain biological or cultural characteristics are so ‘profound’ that they cannot be changed during the lifetime of an individual or the history of a group (idea of impregnation). Fourthly, a hierarchisation of the different entities in 1

2

Three reservations should be stated at the outset: first, for sake of brevity I will not discuss the historical development of the theoretical positions and the various critiques of these positions, but simply present them in the way they are now put forward. Secondly, the various theories on non-European racist social formations, such as, for example, plantation societies, on the relation between racism and colonialism etc. cannot be discussed here (see the overview of Hall 1980). I will have to confine myself to explanations of contemporary racism and xenophobia in late industrial societies. Thirdly, even this restricted overview can make no claim to giving a comprehensive treatment. Notably omitted are the socio-psychological research on racist prejudice and socio-biological, historical, cultural historical and world system theory/Marxist explanatory approaches. Dittrich (1991) offers a compilation of sociological research in the United States and Germany. Werbner (1996) documents the state of British research. See Miles (1991: 93–103; 1993, ch. 3); Taguieff (1988).

202


which one’s own group comes first. Finally, the perception of a zero-sum game between foreigners and ‘ourselves’. This list of tropes allows us to define xenophobia and racism as two points on a continuum of ever more exclusionist discourses. Perception of danger, a phobia of interbreeding and the notion of a zero-sum game make up for a xenophobic world-view. Biological and ‘cultural’ racism are additionally characterised by hierarchisation of groups and the idea of impregnation. However, both define the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the dangerous and morally inferior groups to be kept at arm’s length, on the basis of the nationalist construction of the social world with its isomorphisms among culture, territory, polity and economy as described in chapter 3. And both have been able to gain legitimacy and plausibility among large sections of the population of fully nationalised states because they are based on the self-evidence and naturalness of a world ordered according to these nationalist principles. Before trying to show this in some detail, I will now turn to the five most prominent contemporary theories of racism and xenophobia. Rational choice theory According to adherents of rational choice theory, xenophobia and racism stem from an intensive rivalry between members of immigrant minorities and autochthons. From the perspective of established inhabitants, migrants compete for residential space and working opportunities especially when jobs and cheap housing are scarce, such as in times of economic crisis.3 According to these authors, racist or xenophobic discourse helps to legitimate one’s own position in the struggle over scarce resources.4 The thesis thus takes the xenophobic vision of a wave of job-seeking foreigners at face value – which does not mean that it would therefore already be implausible. However, if we take a diachronic perspective, we realise that xenophobic fears of foreign domination are not any more virulent when wages drop or unemployment rises – both indicators of intense competition in the job ¨ market. The Swiss case illustrates this point fairly well. An Uberfremdung, a ‘surplus of foreigners’, was first ‘diagnosed’ in the 1880s. Complaints were heard from the working class about competition from Italian immigrants and from the bourgeois about the number of German workmen and journeymen (Imhof 1993). These xenophobic tendencies culminated 3 4

For Germany: von Freyberg (1994) and Castles (1987); for the Netherlands: van Amersfoort (1982); for the USA: Olzak (1993). See Banton (1983); Hechter (1986); van den Berghe (1997).


203

in riots, such as pogrom-style attacks on Italians in the Outer Sihl district, in Zurich, towards the end of July 1896.5 However, this first wave of xenophobia occurred in a time of modest but steady economic growth (Ritzmann-Blickenstorfer 1996). The same applies to the second wave, which peaked around 1917 (Romano 1990). Data for real wages for this period are also available, and show that significant increases were recorded in the building and industrial sector (Ritzmann-Blickenstorfer 1996). Moreover, the percentage of foreigners in the residential population reached its peak in 1914 and dropped continuously after that, from 15.4 per cent to about 5 per cent at the beginning of World War II. Although direct competition for jobs ¨ may therefore also have diminished during this period, the Uberfremdung remained high on the political agenda until the mid 1930s. When voices hostile to immigrants rose again in the mid sixties both the GNP and real wages were on the increase (until 1970), and full employment prevailed for a further decade. However, one could object that such aggregate data say little about the competition in specific industries or regions. Unfortunately, studies which measure competition selectively are still very rare. Indeed, one of the most comprehensive and methodically reliable is a study by Olzak (1993), in which she set out to demonstrate that the ‘ethnic conflicts and protests’ in the USA between 1876 and 1914 could be explained by a competition model. Comparing the frequency of ethnic disputes, as reported in the press, with various measures of competition (occupational segregation, economic depression, status of workforce training, immigration rates etc.) Olzak demonstrated that the immigration rate – which in this period attained its historic peak – had no influence on the amount of ethnic conflicts and protests. But the proportional change in these rates did have such an effect (Olzak 1993: 78f.). On closer examination, however, Olzak’s study disproves rather than verifies the competition thesis: changes in immigration figures had no significant influence on the level or frequency of conflicts with immigrants (almost exclusively white at the time) but rather with those categorised as black or Chinese. Conflicts with ‘blacks’ amounted to 55 per cent; those with white immigrants to only 30 per cent (Olzak 1993: 77, 83), even though only approximately 200,000 ‘blacks’ moved into the industrialising North between 1890 and 1910, and thus became competitors for the indigenous residents there (previous figures were insignificant). This is a paltry figure when compared with the one million people a year 5

Hoffmann-Nowotny (1992: 79f.); compare, for similar events in other European countries, Lucassen (1995).

204


who migrated mainly from Central, Southern and Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1914. At the same time the occupational segregation of ‘blacks’ increased while that of immigrants declined.6 Thus direct competition between long-time residents and ‘blacks’ slackened while that with immigrants intensified. An analysis of the data for cities also shows that the degree of segregation of immigrants had a greater statistical impact on violence against those regarded as ‘black’ than on that against the immigrants themselves, while the degree of occupational segregation of ‘blacks’ did not significantly influence the assaults on them. On the other hand, the percentage of ‘blacks’ in a residential population correlated with the number of acts of violence against them, while the proportion of immigrants did not coincide with the level of hostility towards them (Olzak 1993: 177). Another line of criticism could be developed on the basis of a large number of studies from social psychology and sociology. The vast majority teach us that ‘negative attitudes’ towards immigrants are not especially prevalent among people who are unemployed7 nor among those who fear the loss of their job,8 or who worked alongside foreigners.9 It 6 7

8 9

Olzak (1993: 94, footnote; ch. 8 for the period between 1870 and 1880; ch. 9 for the entire period). Falter (1991, sect. 8.2) reached this conclusion in his analysis of voting behaviour during the rise of the National Socialists in Germany. The lower the rate of unemployment in a region, the more success they had at the polls. In areas with high unemployment, on the other hand, the Communist Party proved very popular. A questionnaire by Sinus (1983, cited in Heitmeyer 1992: 45) measuring unemployed German youths’ perception of competition appears to produce results contrary to my thesis. The percentage of officially or unofficially unemployed youths believing that foreigners took jobs was approximately 20 per cent, approximately double that of employed youths. However, the figures for those youths that consider this belief to be wrong support my thesis: 36 per cent of the short-term unemployed versus 29 per cent of their employed peers. I conclude that there is no clear connection between unemployment and the perception of illegitimate competition. Heitmeyer (1992: 52) also provides a table (based on Baethge et al. 1980 and Rosen 1985) clearly showing that there is no linear connection between youth unemployment and the number of terrorist acts committed by right-wing extremists in the Federal Republic of Germany. The analyses of Hill (1993) and Ganter (1999: 62), both based on large surveys in Germany, leave no doubt whatsoever that there is no systematic relation between xenophobic attitudes and past or present unemployment. Hoskin (1985: 14f.); Silbermann and Husers ¨ (1995: 73–6). Hoffmann-Nowotny (1973: 87); Silbermann and Husers ¨ (1995: 60–3). Hoffmann-Nowotny’s extensive Swiss study from the late 1960s provides empirical data against the thesis that the degree of labour market competition determines the level of hostility to immigrants. Between 1950 and 1960 skilled and unskilled workers faced a quadrupling in the ratio of immigrants to themselves (to 39 per cent). However, they favour workplace discrimination at a comparable level to that of professional workers (about 46 per cent), who experienced the same quadrupling but only to a total of 6.8 per cent. Further, only 28 per cent of skilled workers pleaded for sharp discriminatory measures even though the percentage of foreigners in the total workforce during the course of the


205

should also be noted that, at least since World War II, real competition for jobs between native- and foreign-born has been rather limited. Among economists, to be sure, intense discussion persists on whether immigrants replace or supplement the indigenous workforce. However, Rurup ¨ and Sesselmeier (1993), as well as Tapinos and Rugy (1994), conclude in their overviews that the supplementation thesis must be viewed as the more relevant and clearly the better corroborated.10 Incidentally, the simple competition thesis also fails to account for the xenophobes’ explicit motives, although rational choice theory refers to this specifically. Thus analyses of Swiss voting results show that in the electorate’s acceptance of more restrictive immigration laws or rejection of improved legal status for foreigners, labour market competition plays a much less significant role than generalised fears of loss of social status and identity (Linder 1993: 157). Similar motives also stir up racist football fans, such as those in London’s East End (Cohen 1991: 323ff.). It follows from this that xenophobia and racism do not derive from intense labour market competition. They seem to be based on perceptions of equality and difference, of legitimate and illegitimate competition (Bélanger and Pinard 1991) that cannot be deduced from the structures of competition in the labour market. The true challenge thus rests in understanding the dynamics behind the inclusion of specific groups within the sphere of legitimate competition or, conversely, why competition from certain other groups is perceived as unfair. Functionalism and socio-biology According to a thesis equally widespread at present, though no longer in academic circles, racism and xenophobia are seen as consequences of a clash of incompatible cultures. In contrast to immigrants from Southern or Eastern Europe those from the Third World are seen as incapable of assimilation. They come, as one well-known European researcher has put it, from societies with a ‘mainly agrarian and often semi-feudal or feudal structure . . . which internally is still in part strongly oriented to tribe and clan, perhaps equipped with religions which have not experienced the Reformation and Enlightenment’. In addition to this ‘cultural incompatibility’, low educational qualifications and lack of professional experience are also blamed for the new immigrant’s inability to integrate into the class structure of the host society, and therefore for their ghettoisation

10

decade doubled (excluding seasonal workers, to 28 per cent; 40 per cent if including them) (Hoffmann-Nowotny, 1973: 48, 48f, 118f.). For Switzerland, see Ritschard (1982); for the United States see Borjas (1990).

206


as a marginalised subproletariat. It is especially those who are culturally or even racially different that become favourite targets of the xenophobic sentiments that spread in times of social crisis (Hoffmann-Nowotny 1992: 74, 22f., 24 and 25). Thus, according to this functionalist view, it is the minorities’ inability to integrate into the structure and culture of the host society that gives rise to the majority population’s xenophobic rejection. This, in turn, forces minorities to close their ranks, which again feeds perceptions of cultural incompatibility and so on. Immigrants of the most varied ancestry have heard similar arguments repeatedly during the course of history and have often proved them false. The following passage is taken from a work of no less a person than Thomas Jefferson. It refers to the immigration of Germans to the USA during the eighteenth century and deserves to be quoted at length: It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together . . . Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. ( Jefferson 1972: 84f.)

The Irish and Polish immigrants of the nineteenth century were in the eyes of the British officials equally as incapable of assimilation (Miles 1982). The same holds true for Irish, Jewish and Italian newcomers at the high-water mark of mass immigration to the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. There is ample evidence that native-born whites perceived these immigrants as racially distinct from themselves and incapable of assimilation and that such perceptions blossomed into full-blown racist theorising during that period (Higham 1970; Jacobson 1998). Finally, in an official report from the 1960s, Swiss officials considered Italian migrants security risks because they had ‘an entirely different attitude towards the state and the community’. Especially the poorer and uneducated among them were found to be traditionally ‘more or less hostile to state power’ (cited in Hoffmann-Nowotny 1992: 81). Despite these fears the Germans, Irish, Jews and Italians in the United States, as well as the Irish in Great Britain and the Italians in Switzerland (Hoffmann-Nowotny and Hondrich 1982) were able to integrate themselves into their ‘host’ society. Xenophobic feelings against


207

them have largely disappeared (for the case of the Italians, see HoffmannNowotny et al. 1997). One could retort as follows, giving the functionalist argument a sociobiological overtone. The fear that cultural incompatibility will lead to discrimination against immigrants, ghettoisation and outbursts of xenophobic hatred has indeed been falsely expressed at times. But it applies precisely if the ‘objective cultural distance’ is actually too great or when ‘racial barriers’ divide immigrant and native-born, which has not been the case in the examples given above. At least three cases come to mind that contradict this reformulation. After the independence of Indonesia several hundred thousand individuals of ‘mixed descent’ migrated from the former colony to the Netherlands over a short period of time. Although public opinion and governmental experts regarded them to be culturally completely different, not blessed with a ‘Protestant work ethic’, they could not be refused entry because they possessed Dutch citizenship. Thanks to a remarkable social-work effort, these immigrants were so completely assimilated culturally, integrated into the Dutch labour market and dispersed in mixed residential areas, that by the mid 1970s they were no longer discernible as a minority group (van Amersfoort 1982, ch. 7).11 The example demonstrates that considerable ‘objective cultural distances’ and degrees of ‘racial distinctiveness’ can be overcome simply by defining a group of immigrants as ‘belonging’ to the national ‘we’ and thus entitled to be cared for by the state. Racism is by no means an ‘inevitable’ outcome of the confrontation of culturally and/or racially clearly discernible populations, as implied by some socio-biological approaches for which racism is but an extreme variant of the universal phenomenon of ethnocentrism (van den Berghe 1978). My second example is taken from the history of immigration to the United States. Chinese labourers migrated from California to the Mississippi delta in the 1870s. There they joined free blacks as part of the ‘coloured’ agricultural labour force in the racially segregated society of the American South. The Chinese immigrants and their children managed gradually to cross the racial divide by distancing themselves socially from blacks and adopting distinctive elements from Southern white culture (Loewen 1971). As a last example, I refer to Brazil (see Banton 1983, ch. 3). Despite the recent criticism of the myth of Brazilian racial democracy (Skidmore 1993), it shows that a population of the most varied origins does not 11

Van Amersfoort found that the geographical dispersion and upward mobility of the Dutch-Indonesians effected their dissolution as an ethnic group, a view recently criticised by Willems, Cottaar and Van Aken (1990).

208


necessarily segregate or have to organise itself in a racially defined hierarchy. The contrast with the United States is impressive enough: there, even with upward social mobility, ‘blacks’ find themselves again in black neighbourhoods – this time in the suburbs (Alba and Logan 1993). Incidentally, studies on segregation in the United States also make it clear that this is due less to ‘cultural distance’ than to rejection by the white middle class. After all, in the case of Asian immigrants a spatial desegregation occurs concomitant with their upward social mobility – a phenomenon independent of the degree of cultural assimilation (ibid.). Again the perception of cultural incompatibility must be explained: what leads to social closure along a specific ethnic line if the ‘objective’ cultural or ‘racial’ distinctiveness between the groups thus separated is not the decisive factor? A final argument is of a rather theoretical nature. A static and essentialist definition of culture, as was characteristic of social anthropological discourse until the 1960s, still forms the basis for the concept of cultural incompatibility used by functionalist and socio-biological approaches (see the critique by Castles 1994). Yet in the meantime it is considered to be outdated in this discipline, with discussion focusing on individual and subcultural variability, and the processual character and strategic adaptability of cultural practice (compare chapter 2). These critical remarks should in no way be taken to deny the considerable problems that can be experienced, especially by first-generation immigrants, on account of cultural differences, nor that the presence of immigrants can cause confusion, fear and defensive reactions among the longer-established inhabitants. The issue is in how far xenophobia and racism can be explained by referring to these everyday problems of coping with cultural differences. In view of the evidence of the vastly differing abilities of various countries to ‘absorb’ immigrants from other cultures or ‘races’, we can conclude that processes of social closure are not linked in a straightforward way to objective cultural differences between groups. Again, the real task rests in discovering the mechanism which could account for the exclusion of certain groups at certain points in time and in certain places, while they are included in other circumstances. Discourse theory In the approach that dominates the academic debate at the moment, at least in the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, this critique is radicalised to its extremes. The analytical relevance and even the empirical existence of cultural differences are simply denied. According to the discourse theories currently en vogue, it is no longer the immigrants


209

and their characteristics who should be focused upon but the discourse of those who speak of them. The discursive construction of cultural or racial otherness is said to exclude the immigrants and ethnic minorities from the core social group and to establish domination over them. Above all, it is those in official or semi-official positions of power who create this discourse of exclusion and self-empowerment, and institutionalise it in multicultural social work or in immigration policies. ‘Ethnic minorities’ are thus categorised apart and separated, through administrative practices, from the general population, although they largely share the same culture of mass consumption (Radtke 1990). The resulting ‘sociogenesis of ethnic minorities’ (Dittrich and Radtke 1990; Bukow 1992) allows the consequences of their own politics to be hidden because the ‘culture’ of the immigrants can be made to bear the blame for their exclusion and impoverishment, while xenophobia can be explained as cultural conflict. These discursive practices represent a breeding ground, so the argument goes, in which normal, everyday racism as well as politically organised right-wing extremism can thrive. The multicultural idea that every culture should be allowed its place to flourish is open to reinterpretation as the right of autochthons to defend their culture and homeland against the threat of cultural creolisation.12 In the aftermath of the British study by Robert Miles (most recently, 1993), ‘racist’ immigration discourses and administrative measures in France (Silvermann 1992), the Netherlands (Schuster 1992) and Australia (Castles 1988) have been examined. Critics of the multicultural social policies of the United Kingdom (Anthias and Yuval-Davis ˚ 1992), the Netherlands (Essed 1992), Sweden (Alund 1992), Germany (Radtke 1990), New Zealand (Wetherell and Potter 1993) and Australia (Castles 1988) orient themselves on this theoretical perspective. We owe an important insight to such analyses: official or semi-official discourse offers a structure of opportunity to which immigrant groups can relate, as much as groups hostile to them can. To be sure, these opportunities are not always perceived – or, if so, perhaps with completely different political consequences than the ones intended. Immigrant groups can promote their own views, contrary to those of the entire publishing, political, bureaucratic and economic elite of a country. The ‘ethnic revival’ in the United States, for example, directed itself against the ‘melting pot’ model of the majority population and the state apparatus. The same can be shown for ethnic movements in the United Kingdom (Werbner 1996) and Mexico (cf. chapter five). 12

For France, see Silvermann (1992); for the Netherlands, van Dijk (1991); for Great Britain, Solomos (1988).

210


Equally, the majority’s perception of basic social problems can develop independently of those held by the national elites. Swiss history, for example, shows very clearly that the change in official immigration policy and discourse towards a more restrictive model around 1970 occurred only as a reaction to nationalist and xenophobic social movements that had first developed among unionised members of the working class (cf. chapter 8). The Dutch case illustrates this point even more clearly. Rath (1993) has shown that Dutch official discourse on immigration and the integration of ‘ethnic minorities’ cannot be interpreted as ‘racist’, if one takes the two minimum requirements for a definition of racism to be an acceptance of cultural or racial hierarchy and an anti-assimilationist stance. Nevertheless, there have been racist and xenophobic political movements in the Netherlands just as in other European countries. Thus, we should take into account not only the discourses of those groups holding the power to define official social categories, but those of broader sections of the population as well.13 It is by no means certain that in this field of struggle and contest the views of the powerful always prevail and thus spread within a population. The converse is also to be expected: that official views and policies only react to public sentiments and grassroots protest movements. If, however, institutionalised discourses are credited a` la Foucault with quasi-magic power as is the case in much contemporary writing on racism and xenophobia, the conditions for the rise and fall of racist social movements vanish from sight. To explain such discursive shifts, we need an analytical framework that allows us to explain why certain points of view, classifications and problem definitions are perceived as credible and become generally shared while others do not – a framework such as the theory of cultural compromise outlined in chapter 2. Phenomenology A new sociological approach, which has made the discontinuities in social change the central object of inquiry, tries to explain precisely the periodic recurrence of xenophobic movements in modern societies. To this group 13

This also holds true for the producers of public discourse par excellence, journalists. A quantitative study of the Swiss press (Kupfer ¨ 1994) acquitted the profession of charges of xenophobic coverage. The contributions most hostile to immigrants were found in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section. Only the tabloid Der Blick tends to report often on acts of violence committed by asylum seekers. Van Dijk’s (1991) assertion of a systematic derogation of foreigners in the media is reduced in the case of the Swiss press to the fact of negative coverage, which is characteristic of the media system in general.


211

of authors, hostility to immigrants and racism have less to do with competition on the labour market, the intentions of the bureaucratic elites or the growth of the foreign population than with an overall crisis of the entire society (Romano 1990; Imhof 1993). Such deep-gripping crises occur again and again during intensive phases of modernisation, when the promises of the outgoing societal model – for instance, that of the social welfare state – can no longer be kept and therefore ‘anomic tensions’ spread over all social positions. This leads to a crisis of collective identity so that the calm self-certainty which might enable unproblematic relations with the minorities gets lost. Turning one’s mind back to those basic definitions of self and ‘other’ that are constitutive of a society, to the increasingly objectified nation and its historic myths, promises on the one hand to solve the crisis of identity; on the other hand, it also delivers an explanation of the malaise’s cause, namely the presence of the ‘others’ – of immigrants and minorities excluded from the national ‘we’ (Imhof 1993). According to this phenomenological approach, xenophobia and racism are interpreted as ways of reassuring the national self and its boundaries, as attempts at making sense of the world in times of uncertainty.14 To be sure, many studies have shown that xenophobic or racist attitudes are distributed very unequally over the population – it is not ‘society’ as such that reassures itself of its boundaries through a xenophobic catharsis, but a specific group of actors who follow a specific agenda.15 At the moment, this form of coping with crisis seems to make sense especially for people with little formal education. The latest research on voters for the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany points to the old middle-class Protestants and those members of the rural working class not integrated in the culture of the Socialist Party or in the Catholic milieu as the patrons of National Socialism (Falter 1991).16 This varying social distribution of xenophobia requires an explanation. 14

15

16

Heitmeyer (e.g. 1992) argues similarly in his well-known studies of extreme-right youth, though in connection with Beck’s individualisation thesis. Comparable arguments had already been presented in the late l950s by William Kornhauser (in The Politics of Mass Society) and also play a role in the French discussion on the rise of the Front National, though in this case less reference is made to the American atomisation thesis or to Beck than to Durkheim’s theory of ‘anomie’ (Niedermayer 1990: 578). Furthermore, Silbermann and Husers ¨ (1995: 84ff.) have shown by means of a representative survey that there is no connection between the perception of a general social crisis and the strength of xenophobic attitude that a person shows. Today, according to electoral analyses of Niedermayer (1990) and Betz (1991), a marked correlation can no longer be observed between the support of rightist radical parties and membership of the ‘old’ middle class, perhaps with the exception of Denmark (Niedermayer 1990: 572, but see Betz 1991: 13; for the entire category of self-employed persons in Germany, see also Becker 1993: 145ff.).

212


And why is it precisely on the nationalistic form of stereotyping ‘we’ and ‘them’ that these groups fall back – not on other ways of reducing complexity and anxiety such as are offered by the categories of class, region, profession, sex, age, religion? In order to find an answer to this question, the approach last introduced should be combined with an analysis of power strategies and interest policy to focus precisely on the interplay of ‘ideas and interests in social action’ (Max Weber’s famous formula, 1920: 252) that is at the centre of the theory of cultural compromise. Struggling over collective goods We first have to remind ourselves how notions of culture and identity are intertwined with the political structures of modern societies. It is my central hypothesis that racism and xenophobia are a consequence of the bundling of the ‘interests and ideas’ of members of modern societies in a way that produces highly integrated communities held together by nationalised states. This certainly does not imply that xenophobia – for example in the form of anti-Judaism – did not exist before the rise of the nation-state. It does mean, however, that xenophobic discourses of exclusion can only have gained the degree of legitimacy and political power that they have had in modern times, because politics has become a matter of representing an ethnically defined people in whose interests the state is supposed to act. Let me at this point briefly restate three aspects of the formation of fully nationalised states that have been described at length in chapter 3, before addressing the relationship between this process and racist social movements in more detail. The first aspect consists of the emergence of a new cultural compromise. The hierarchical and inclusive view of society was replaced during the nineteenth century by the egalitarian and exclusive notion of the nation as a community sharing a common origin, historical experience and political destiny. But the new order not only created an ‘imagined community’ of the kind just described, but also a real community of interests – a fact overlooked by most theories of nationalism and by virtually all authors writing on racism and xenophobia. The nation-state became the unit within which, after a long period of internal warfare and revolutionary upheavals, citizens were granted the right to freedom of trade within the national boundaries, equality before the law, democratic participation and, finally, varying social rights. In contrast to the Mexican and Iraqi examples discussed in the preceding chapters, the exchange of political loyalty for


213

participation, legal security and social assistance succeeded because the central power had enough of these goods to make them available to the large majority of the population, and ethnic favouritism and clientelism were much less widespread. The national realm of solidarity therefore becomes more attractive than that of the ethnic group, the village, the corporation or the tribe. The third aspect is the process of political closure along national lines. Access to state power and unlimited access to services of the new bureaucracy were restricted to those who could show themselves to be part of the national community, because the only legitimate form of government had become the rule of like over like. The ideal of popular sovereignty and the claim to national self-determination became the twin principles of modernity’s political order. Seen together, the new cultural compromise and the corresponding social closure along national lines had the effect that the state, the rights of equality, participation and social solidarity are now perceived as belonging to the members of the nation (see Handler 1991; Malkki 1992). They are ‘owned’ by the people who have been united into a national community, and it is precisely this notion of ownership that enables the rise of xenophobia and racism. As has been shown in chapter 3, this new collective representation and its corresponding forms of social closure can be seen as the outcome of a successful compromise of interests between different social groups. In a similar way, the institutional arrangements of the nation-state, a constitution, rules to resolve conflicts, a specific shaping of political and social rights etc., are negotiated between different interest groups and thus reflect the balance of power among them and their varying capacities to enforce their version of the cultural compromise. This social compact between elites and various component elements within society developed only gradually in the course of a long and painful history of struggles over inclusion and exclusion. It is significant that racist constructions were initially used as ideological tools to legitimate the exclusion of peasant and proletarian sections of the society from the new social arrangement, and were not directed against nonnational ‘others’ until a later stage of the institutionalisation of the nationstate, as Robert Miles (1993, ch. 3) has shown. This process of gradual inclusion facilitate[d] the ideological identification of certain social strata within the subordinate classes (which are defined as belonging and therefore as having a natural right of access to scarce rights and resources) with the institutions responsible for

214


the organisation of production and distribution of material resources and political rights (i.e. with capitalism and the institutions of the local and the national state). (Miles 1993: 102)

Periodically the nationalist cultural compromise and the corresponding institutional arrangements experience a crisis; the social contract breaks down because the balance of forces among the different groups has changed in the course of economic and political developments. Clear signs of crisis are rising rates of suicide and criminality, as well as the appearance of various social movements which try to enforce their interpretations of the cultural compromise, underlining certain aspects of it, adding new elements to the existing order of meanings, or reversing legitimate symbolic hierarchies. Their interpretations of the social world can develop, as we have seen, independently of the official discourse and can be directed against the official vision of things, although both have to relate to the established cultural compromise if their voices are to be understood and heard. One of these reinterpretations of the dominant order consists of radicalising and revitalising the nationalist outlook so deeply entrenched in modern political institutions. The ‘natural’ right of members of the national family to a privileged seat in the theatre of society is underlined. Appeals to reinforce national solidarity against the threats of growing political conflicts, social disparities and a general disorientation and confusion are meant to safeguard the rights and privileges of the autochthons that the state is supposed to protect. Whoever has the shortest or most marginalised history of participation in the formation of the nation-state – immigrants or ethnic minorities who have been excluded from the mainstream of national history – appears as an additional threat to the now precarious social union. In the eyes of the xenophobes there is a zerosum game to be played out for the right to the collective goods gained by joint work and suffering, a fight for the promises of solidarity that the nation-state represents and institutionalised. The ‘others’ become strangers, intruders in an ideal community of nation or race – the true cause, even, of the break-up of this communal harmony and therefore those responsible for the many insecurities that the future seems to bring. A kind of ‘moral panic’ spreads, to borrow a term from Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994), the fear of a chaotic breakdown of the social world triggered by a released flood of foreigners. The cultural distance to the strangers now seems to be insurmountable and competition for jobs and housing is seen as illegitimate and unfair – independently, as we have seen, from objective cultural distances and the degree of segregation on the labour market.


215

Rather, it is especially those groups seen as traitors to the national political project who are hardest hit by xenophobic exclusion, as is today the case with Muslim minorities stereotyped as fundamentalists. Immigrant groups with high unemployment rates or asylum-seekers also become targets of xenophobic hatred, because they seem to hinder the state in its true task, namely to look after the well-being of its ‘owners’ (cf. Willems 1995: 517f.). Social workers, liberal big business, advocates of a multicultural society and the state which is seemingly unwilling to take action are seen as traitors to the national cause (see the case study in Goran ¨ 1991; Windisch 1978). In the radicalised, racist versions of this vision the ‘people’ therefore have to take things into their own hands and stop the ‘others’ from ‘invading’ their own territory. A Manichean view of a fight between the morally superior ‘nations’, ‘cultures’ or ‘races’ and the barbarian ones is developed. Since neither accommodation nor assimilation is seen as a desirable or possible solution to this conflict, every measure to segregate the groups and to restore the morally sanctioned hierarchy between them becomes legitimate, even acts of violence or overt discrimination. Such a xenophobic or racist way of interpreting the social crisis does not appeal equally to all members of a society. Shifts in the balance of power threaten the prestige and socio-economic standing of some groups more than others. It is these ‘downwardly mobile’ persons who are most likely to resort to such strategies of ensuring a future because they seem more dependent on mechanisms of solidarity organised by a nation-state.17 17

Most available quantitative studies confirm this thesis. In Hoffmann-Nowotny’s survey of the late sixties, a clear correlation appears between people’s perception as to career opportunities available to them, coupled with their desire for social mobility, on one hand, and a perception of being overrun by immigrants and of losing their national particularity, and an approval of hiring practices discriminatory to foreigners, on the other. The higher a person rates their own professional group’s future chances, as well as his or her ability to achieve their desired upward mobility, the less he or she will show xenophobic attitudes. ‘Estimated future opportunity’ is notably more significant than a person’s professional position in determining the degree of xenophobic attitude a person may have (Hoffmann-Nowotny 1973: 89, 120; see also the results of the Eurobarometer of 1998 dedicated to attitudes towards foreigners; however, Silvermann and Huser ¨ (1995: 63–7) found only a weak correlation between xenophobia and the estimation of one’s own future economic opportunities). Other studies show that it is more those who fear a downgrading, an economic and social marginalisation, or have cause to fear it, who are attracted by right-wing populism or radical politics (Kalinowsky et al. 1985, cited in Heitmeyer 1992: 54; Niedermayer 1990: 573f.). Winkler (1994: 83) cites a German study by Veen, Lepszy and Mnich which shows that Republican voters are deeply uncertain about their future, although he also cites the studies of Roth as well as those of Falter and Schumann which do not confirm this finding. Analysis of voting behaviour further reveals that objectively deprived persons (e.g. long-term unemployed) do not consider rightist radicals’ solutions to problems plausible

216


With the current accelerated growth of the tertiary sector, and especially of the information industry, along with the corresponding decline of other economic sectors (see Klauder 1993), this scenario holds most true for those with weak educational backgrounds. There are many studies on the social distribution of xenophobic attitudes18 and of the composition of the electorate of xenophobic right-wing parties19 that have shown this. Similar conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of past waves of racism. The most advanced research has been done, as already mentioned, on the rise of the National Socialist Workers Party in Germany. Falter (1991) found that it was the established Protestant middle classes and the rural proletariat who formed the foci of support for the Nazis’ political programme. Both groups were clear victims of the industrialisation process and were threatened by a loss of social standing. In the eyes of such groups the territorial dimension of the national community is of special importance (Waldmann 1989); solidarity at the town or village level becomes a mini-model of the nation. The physical presence or visibility of foreigners in these social spaces – and especially their integration in local schools and communal institutions – nurtures perceptions of invasion, inundation and existential rivalry in times when the cultural compromise breaks apart and promises of a future become rare assets (see the case studies of Cohen 1991; de Jong 1989).20

18 19 20

to any greater extent than do others (Niedermayer 1990: 574; Hill 1993). In increasing numbers, on the other hand, skilled blue-collar workers seem to belong to the voter pools of these parties (Betz 1991: 12ff., referring to the election results in Norway, Denmark, France, Germany and Austria. The Norwegian ‘Progress Party’, to be sure, finds especially great support from unemployed youths. Regarding Germany, see Winkler 1994: 81) The correlation between the perception of future opportunity xenophobia appears at the aggregate level as well. Studying the period 1966–7, Liepelt (1967, cited in Heitmeyer 1992: 52) established a clear inverse correlation between the index of private economic expectations in Germany and the election potential of the right-wing radical NPD (Nationale Partei Deutschlands). A study of the winners of the modernisation of the eighties and nineties lends support to this thesis. It included professional service sector employees, whose ‘cosmopolitan self-image’ made them – according to the authors, who had set out to prove otherwise – ‘resistant’ to right-wing ideologies. Some 113 of the 118 respondents found multiculturalism exciting and favoured the motto ‘Foreigners welcome!’ (Grimm and Ronneberger 1994: 106, 123) Hoffmann-Nowotny (1973: 88, 103, 105, 108); Wagner and Schonbach ¨ (1984); Mugny et al. (1991); Becker (1993); Linder (1993); Willems (1995); Ganter (1999). Niedermayer (1990: 572, 576); Betz (1991: 12f.); Winkler (1994). However, this territorial aspect should not be overestimated. Racism can exist where the percentage of foreigners is insignificant (see the Polish ‘anti-Semitism without Jews’ or the marked xenophobic tendencies in Germany’s eastern as opposed to its western states, Castner and Castner 1992) or is hardly identifiable as such (e.g. the Nazi hunt for assimilated Jews who were considered especially dangerous).


217

Xenophobic and racist views therefore do not become acute because they are strategically instrumental in a fight for scarce jobs or housing; nor does it make much sense to interpret them as a result of a culture clash caused by migratory movements across countries and continents; nor are they mere radicalisations of the institutionalised discourse of exclusion and devaluation that political and administrative elites generate in order to overcome deficits in political legitimacy. According to the hypothesis I am developing, xenophobia and racism are linked in a much more fundamental way to the basic principles of modern societies. They are the result of basing collective identities, participatory rights and state institutions on the idea of a national community. In other words, xenophobia and racism are an integral part of the institutional order of the nation-state; or, as Etienne Balibar elegantly expresses it, they are ‘an inner complement of nationalism that always exceeds it’ (Balibar 1988, my translation). Perspectives for future research This is, of course, merely an outline of an explanatory approach. I have included as much empirical research as possible – much of it relegated to the footnotes – in order to establish an empirical base for the argument presented here. The theoretical outline should, however, be further elaborated and refined by future research, perhaps taking into account the following three suggestions. First, a systematic study of the emergence of xenophobic and racist discourses during the process of nation-state formation could tell us much about the difference between pre-modern and modern forms of exclusion and inclusion. Whereas older forms were based on sacred hierarchies of status groups without clear territorial connotations,21 the new ones are constructed around the horizontal distinctions between territorialised ethnic or national groups. Consequently, in pre-modern empires the most crisis-ridden, dangerous and thus most zealously protected ‘border’ was the one between the palace of the nobles and the rest of the town or village. In the new order of nation-states, however, it is the frontiers between national territories that become the focus of an almost ritualised fear of social disorder (cf. Wilson and Donnan 1998). According to the inner logic of these distinctively modern discourses of exclusion, the strangers within the national territory are even more dangerous then the ones lurking on the other side of the frontiers; they 21

See, for example, the persecution of Jews, heretics and lepers in medieval society analysed by Moore (1984, ch. 2).

218


form the demonised fifth column secreted within one’s own group. While the stranger ‘out there’ has become the object of systematised negative stereotyping and the enemy of nationalist wars, the stranger within has been the target of the various waves of xenophobia that have swept most Western countries since the end of the nineteenth century. We would expect racist forms of discrimination and exclusion to flourish exactly at that moment when groups hitherto excluded from the national ‘we’ gain full citizenship status and thus access to the collective goods of the nation. Two of the most virulent and violent forms of racism, those against Jews and ‘blacks’, seem to correspond to this hypothesis. Before the formation of modern nation-states, Jews and black slaves were, in law and in practice, relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy. They were so on the basis of the distinction between Christian and nonChristian and between civilised and non-civilised peoples respectively. It was only after the abolition of slavery and after the so-called emancipation of the Jews, thus after their inclusion into the community of citizens, that modern forms of racial discrimination and hatred developed against both groups (cf. Geiss 1988). Future research from such a historical and comparative point of view would surely lead to a revision of the hypothesis and to a much richer and more finely textured account of the relations between racism/xenophobia and political modernity. Apart from such an analysis of long-term historical change, shorter periods within the modern epoch could be focused on. Xenophobic attitudes spread into and retreat from the public sphere, taking precedence over, or giving way to, other vehicles for enacting the national drama: the developmentalist optimism of the fifties and sixties for example, or fin-desiècle songs of national decay. Such cycles of expansion and contraction have been traced empirically using, for example, longitudinal media content analysis (Imhof 1996). The task for future research would consist of relating these waves of xenophobic discourse to indicators of downward and upward social mobility. According to the theory outlined here, a clear correlation should be discernible between the degree of status loss and the penetration of the public sphere by xenophobic discourses. This relationship would certainly not be a straightforward one, because it is mediated by the formation of xenophobic social movements and the various degrees of access these have to the sphere of public representation where the encompassing cultural compromise is contested and renegotiated (see Statham and Koopmans 1999). The second dimension of a comparative research programme would consist of country or regional comparisons. Two possible strategies come to mind. The first one would consist of comparing the main targets of xenophobic discourses of exclusion. One could ask, for example, why


219

Muslim communities apparently face more xenophobic rejection in France than they do in the Netherlands. According to the approach developed here, which group is perceived as a danger to the national community would depend on the model of social cohesion around which a nationalist cultural compromise has been constructed (cf. Schiffauer 1993). In France, where the nation is conceptualised through republican ideals of democracy, militant Islam with its blending of religion and politics can easily be portrayed as the antithesis of the very raison d’être of the French nation-state. In the Netherlands, the nation has, since the ‘emancipation’ of the Catholic group, been imagined (and organised) as a collection of various, religiously defined social pillars. Hence adding another non-Christian pillar to the Dutch consociational state does not seem to present an insurmountable difficulty (cf. Mahnig 1998). Such comparative perspectives could equally be developed on a regional level. Cole (1997) has shown, for example, that Sicilian members of the working class feel devalued and discriminated against by their fellow countrymen from the North; this explains their rather distant attitude towards the encompassing notion of Italianness and their astonishing openness towards other ‘humble people’ arriving from abroad. In other words, working-class Sicilians do not feel part of the nationalist compromise that has developed around the central state and have consequently held on to other, non-nationalised discourses of belonging (as do other sections of Italian society, albeit for other reasons). A similar study among Northerners from the same social background (or among Sicilian workers who have emigrated to the North) would be of great interest. In any case, much more comparative research is needed in order to understand the logic according to which racist and xenophobic discourses are applied to and shifted around the various possible targets. As a second strategy for regional comparison, we should try to compare the degree of xenophobic rejection among countries or among regions within countries. Why is xenophobia a more common reaction in Rotterdam than in Amsterdam? Why, in the recent Eurobarometer questionnaire, did Belgian citizens choose, much more so than those of any other participating country, to place their crosses in those boxes that researchers take as indicators of xenophobia? According to my hypothesis, these differences should again be explained by the degree of downward social mobility. Revitalising the national community, excluding those perceived as a threat to its solidarity, makes sense for those who see a dark future and are thus prepared to defend their privileges as members of the core national group. Regions of heavy deindustrialisation, such as the port city of Rotterdam (especially when compared to the thriving ‘global city’ of Amsterdam), or Germany’s neue Länder (Castner and Castner

220


1992; Ganter 1999: 41) which suffered a collective loss of status and security after their exposure to market mechanisms, are therefore supposed to be centres of xenophobic activity. It is important to emphasise, as the case of the neue Länder so clearly does, that these mechanisms seem to work independently of demographic processes such as those measured by immigration rates or percentage of foreign-born people. Conclusion Taking the perspective developed throughout this chapter, what can be said about possible ‘solutions’ to the problems of xenophobia and racism? Information campaigns portraying immigrants as cultural enrichments instead of demonising them as dangerous competitors certainly do not change xenophobic attitudes. The sender of such messages is easily identified as being part of the multiculturalist intellectual elite selling a nation’s goods to its enemies (see Windisch 1978). Direct encounters between racists and immigrants do indeed lead to positive personal relationships if status equality and a co-operative setting are ensured, but negative stereotyping is often maintained by simply exempting the persons met from the general judgement. Reducing immigration flows by introducing restrictive laws may cut off the peaks of xenophobic mobilisations, but racist and xenophobic discourse and practice will not disappear – there is, as has been seen, no one-to-one relationship between immigration levels and the scandalisation of immigration in racist discourse. Forcing a politically correct, i.e. ‘non-ethnicising’, language on all institutional actors will not reduce xenophobic movements either, because these are not dependent on official discourse and modes of classification. According to the hypothesis presented here, only a reorganisation of the modern state and its main modes of inclusion and exclusion would help to address the roots of the problem. To attain this end, a transnationalisation of state functions may be useful (see Held 1995), such as the construction of the European Union as a multinational polity. In a distinction similar to that between civilised and barbarian peoples which characterised imperial thought, however, the line dividing Europeans from the rest of the world might become the basis for a transformed discourse of exclusion. Another approach would consist in redefining the bonds which hold a political community together. All those living in a state would then share not a national origin and place of birth but a common political and civil culture (see the ‘constitutional patriotism’ envisioned by Habermas 1993).


221

Attempts to change the course of history in this direction and to deethnicise the political institutions of modern society would be confronted with the fierce resistance of those for whom the national community of solidarity continues to make sense. One of the most difficult tasks therefore would be to find a way to take their ‘interests and ideas’ into account. Then, it is hoped, they would be included in a new cultural compromise as much as those men and women who today suffer from xenophobic and racist violence.

8

Nationalising multi-ethnic Switzerland

Racism and xenophobia are consequences of the social closure that characterise fully nationalised societies. They are homologous to Arab extremists looking forward to the annihilation of the Kurdish population or of mestizo nationalists disdaining ‘los inditos’ in Mexico. In this chapter, another, yet closely related, consequence of ‘successful’ nation-state formation will be examined: the systematic discrimination between foreigners and nationals that is inscribed in citizenship laws and especially in the institutional machinery controlling and restricting migration flows. Thus, we will no longer be concerned with those extreme forms of nationalism, xenophobia and racism, that are nowadays confined to rather marginalised corners of the public sphere, but with the institutionalised, overwhelmingly accepted and legally legitimated forms of exclusion. The discrimination against aliens is so deeply inscribed in the institutional structures of modern states and their legal machinery that it is not perceived as running against the basic principles of political modernity – rather, it is taken for granted as the way ‘things have always been’. Yet historical research shows that immigrants have not always been placed outside the home of modern citizenship. Their exclusion was a gradual process developing from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the mid 1970s. The fate of the so-called Faili Kurds in Iraq, who in the seventies were deprived of Iraqi citizenship and then driven over the border to Iran (McDowall 1996: 30), or of the Banyarwanda in Zaire, who were denaturalised in 1980 following a retroactive nationality law (Lemarchand, forthcoming), is homologous to the precarious legal situation of immigrants in fully nationalised states. Legal discrimination against citizens with a certain ethnic background has a parallel in the second-class status of resident aliens, both being the product of parallel, yet differently channelled processes of closure. I will demonstrate in this chapter that the exclusion of alien immigrants is closely linked to the last step of closure along national lines that I referred to in chapter 3: to the rise of the welfare state and the political incorporation of the working classes accompanying it. 222


223

Introduction Before addressing this relation between the welfare state and immigrant status in the second half of this chapter, I will show how, in the case of Switzerland, political modernisation led to the integration of different ethno-linguistic and religious communities within one overarching nationalist compromise. The Swiss case is of special interest because there was no absolutist kingdom that could have enforced religious and/or linguistic homogeneity, as in France, Spain or England. When the premodern mosaic society was transformed into a modern nation-state of equal citizens, the country was still differentiated into French-, German-, Italian- and Romansch-speaking parts, as well as into Catholic and Protestant regions. With the exception of the period of the First World War, however, political dividing lines were never coterminous with the ethno-linguistic divisions. Why Switzerland?1 Switzerland thus presents a good example of a fully nationalised modern state built on an ethnically heterogeneous basis – contradicting the idea that industrialism or democracy demand cultural and linguistic homogeneity to work properly. The following two sections will give an overview of this rather exceptional history of the formation of a multi-ethnic nationstate. It will then be shown how this went hand in hand with social closure along national lines and the gradual deterioration of the status of immigrants. Thus, even when state formation is based on a multi-ethnic and radically republican concept of the nation, the dynamics of political modernisation lead to a restructuring of the principles of exclusion along national lines. The exclusionary logic of modernity even asserts itself when the modern state is married to an open and culturally ‘thin’ project of nation-building. The paradox of a multi-ethnic nation has continued to puzzle scholars such as Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Ernest Renan, Max Weber, Karl Deutsch and Jonathan Steinberg.2 Surprisingly, however, it has 1 2

This is the title of a book by Steinberg (1996). Their comments are well worth citing: Mais outre les intérêts matériels, l’homme a encore des idées et des sentiments. Pour qu’une confédération subsiste longtemps, il n’est pas moins nécessaire qu’il y ait homogénéité dans la civilisation que dans les besoins des divers peuples qui la composent. Entre la civilisation du canton de Vaud [a French-speaking canton centred on Lausanne] et celle du canton d’Uri [a rural, German-speaking canton] il y a comme du XIXe siècle au XVe : aussi la Suisse n’a-t-elle jamais eu, a` vrai dire, de gouvernement fédéral. L’Union entre ses différents cantons n’existe que

224


attracted only very limited attention from the research community within the country. No monographs have been written on the subject during the last two decades,3 and even the most sophisticated research engines of well-endowed libraries produce only meagre results when asked to find entries on the subject. This neglect is symptomatic of the Swiss situation: it is because the lines of conflict never converged with the ethno-linguistic divide that nobody wonders why this should be the case, albeit almost every citizen is proud of the ‘Swiss model’ and some entrepreneurial experts have tried to ‘sell’ it to Nigeria, Bosnia or the Lebanon (cf. Steiner 1989; Fleiner 1996). How can we explain that ethnicity was never politicised, contrary to the experience of Canada, Belgium, Spain, Northern Ireland, Mexico sur la carte; et l’on s’en apercevrait bien, si une autorité centrale voulait appliquer les mêmes lois a` tout le territoire. (Alexis de Tocqueville 1951 (1834): 171f.) [The] feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and descent. Community of language, and community of religion, greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of its causes. But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past. None of these circumstances, however, are either indispensable, or necessarily sufficient by themselves. Switzerland has a strong sentiment of nationality, though the cantons are of different races, different languages, and different religions . . . Yet in general the national feeling is proportionally weakened by the failure of any of the causes which contribute to it. ( John Stuart Mill 1861: 287f.) Comment la Suisse, qui a trois langues, deux religions, trois ou quatre races, est-elle une nation, quand la Toscane, par exemple, qui est si homogène, n’en est pas une ? (Ernest Renan 1947 (1882): 893) The Swiss are not a nation if we take as criteria common language or common literature and art. Yet they have a strong sense of community despite some recent disintegrative tendencies. This sense of identity is not only sustained by loyalty toward the body politic but also by what are perceived to be common customs (irrespective of actual differences) . . . The pride of the Swiss in their own distinctiveness, and their willingness to defend it vigorously, is neither qualitatively different nor less widespread than the same attitudes in any ‘great’ and powerful ‘nation’. (Max Weber 1968 (1922): 397) In Switzerland deliberations have achieved something remarkable, through a history . . . showing that it is possible . . . to integrate very different regions and linguistic communities and to create over the course of time a common national character, a common political culture, a coherent nation that speaks four languages. And though, there are at the same time four nations . . . (Karl W. Deutsch 1976: 63, my translation) Against the powerful trends toward unified national communities why was Switzerland able to remain a multilingual exception? (Jonathan Steinberg 1996:12) 3

The older ones are still very heavily influenced by the nationalist image of Swiss ‘unity in diversity’ as the expression of a free decision of its citizens to live together and to be Swiss. Cf. Weilenmann (1925); Hunziker (1970).


225

and Iraq? For the neo-romantic theory of nationalism, such as discussed in chapter 3 and applied to the Swiss case by Anthony Smith (1996), Switzerland represents a rather uncomfortable example. There is no a priori reason why a separate nationalism for each of the linguistic regions sharing cultural features, common memories of historical struggles and so on, should not have developed. There were in fact several attempts to develop such mini-nationalisms.4 If an explanation of the Swiss case is sought that is not caught by the quasi-naturalness of its existence, taking national unity and statehood for granted, we should focus on those moments of history when the course of events could have taken another direction, i.e. when a politicisation of French, German and Italian ‘Swissitude’ would have been a feasible political option. As in the chapters on Mexico and Iraq, I will first describe the pre-modern political and cultural landscape. Avoiding a nationalist colouring of history means, in this context, underlining the hierarchical and non-democratic nature of Swiss society before the Napoleonic invasion – thus contradicting the myth of ‘eternal’ Swiss egalitarianism and democracy.

The ancien régime (to 1798) Rather, as was the case in colonial Mexico or in Ottoman Iraq, society was differentiated into officially acknowledged status groups. The polity included systems of direct and indirect rule, of dependence and quasiindependence, of horizontal networks of alliance and opposition with no effective monopoly of violence exercised by a central power. It is certainly true that on Swiss territory no great feudal classes and centralised reigns, like the ones of the surrounding empires, could develop. And this is certainly important for understanding the Swiss history of nation-state formation. On the other hand, pre-modern Switzerland was mirroring late medieval society in France or in Germany, albeit in a reduced form. Swiss society differed in scale from its neighbours, not in principle. 4

Anthony Smith avoids the problem by simply ignoring this possibility and taking the actual nationalist self-description at face value, which by virtue of necessity centres around the topographical icon of the Alps instead of a common cultural-linguistic heritage: It was in no small measure due to the extraordinary geo-political and social impact of a distinctive ethnic geography and terrain, which shaped the collective mentality and shared memories of Swiss peasants and burghers, that the spirit of Swiss liberty and independence flourished. (A. Smith 1996: 258) However, one may wonder why the different ethnic groups living around the Zagros mountains (such as Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians and various Turk-speaking groups) have not developed such a collective mentality and shared memories, although their mountains are probably at least as impressive as the Alps and equally formative for everyday lives.

226


Townspeople distinguished between the patriciate and commoners. The patrician families were, depending on the region, either merchants in Zurich, or magistrates and landowners in Berne, or part of a military elite in the centres of the mercenary system such as Fribourg or Solothurn. Artisans formed the majority of the common population. Citizenship rights were strictly stratified according to the status of a person. In Geneva, for example, one distinguished, according to the number of generations of residence, between the citoyens that sat in the Small Council (with executive powers) and in the General Council (the parliament); the bourgeois (whose sons could eventually become citoyens), who could become members of the General Council; the natifs, who did not enjoy any political rights; and the first-generation immigrants to the city called inhabitants (les habitants) (whose sons would be born into the category of natifs), who were even more disadvantaged and would not be allowed to open their own shop or business or to have their political opinion heard in public (de Capitani 1986: 485f.). The town guilds were very jealous in maintaining their monopolies on certain handicrafts. They also formed the backbone of urban politics, dominating the town councils and the economy of the city, especially where a strong patriciate could not develop, as in Zurich. The notion of equality took, under these circumstances, a meaning different from the modern idea of equal treatment before the law; it meant, following the medieval concept of Billigkeit (or ‘fairness’), the mutual respect and solidarity among persons of the same social standing (ibid: 482). Similarly, the notion of freedom had different connotations. Every city thought of itself as a free republic, which did not imply the modern concept of individual freedom and protection from state arbitrariness, but the freedom of a commune vis-à-vis foreign potentates, more precisely vis-à-vis the ruling families of Burgundy and the houses of Habsburg, Stauffen, Hohenzollern etc. The countryside was legally separated from the city and physically separated by high city walls. The peasants and traders of the villages were only allowed to sell their merchandises on certain days of the week on the urban market-places (ibid.: 472); and they were obliged, as were the lower castas in New Spain and the non-Muslim population of the Ottoman empire, to wear certain clothes, to address townsmen in certain ways and to leave the towns before dawn (ibid.: 509). Rural communities and small towns were stratified following different principles from those applying to urban society. No patriciate imitating the lifestyle of the nobility of surrounding empires could develop here. Political and economic life was dominated by powerful landowning clans. In many of these places, the assembly of male adult citizens, the famous


227

Landsgemeinden still alive in some parts of rural Switzerland, formally constituted the supreme political authority. However, the facts that buying political posts was common practice both in the towns and in the countryside and that only one-fifth of the adult male population had voting rights (ibid.: 488), clearly speak against the idea of eternal Swiss democracy, although, as Deutsch (1976) makes clear, this percentage might be relatively high compared to other regions in Europe. Town and countryside were bound together by various types of relationships. They ranged from levels of subjugation and dependency reminiscent of imperial Europe (e.g. in Berne), to more egalitarian relationships, such as the ones typically encountered in the rural cantons. Here, small towns and villages stood de facto on an equal footing, each jealously guarding its independence vis-à-vis the other. The basic political units above the level of town and village were the cantons, de facto independent mini-states politically dominated by the elite of their capital cities. The cantons were bound together by a complex web of alliances and relations of subordination. At the centre of this web stood the members of the League of Thirteen, who formed a more-or-less stable alliance. They reigned in common over the conquered areas, the Italian-speaking Ticino, south of the Alps, the French-speaking Vaud, north of Lake Geneva, and the Aargau and Thurgau in the northern, German-speaking parts of the country. These subjugated areas were governed according to the principle of indirect rule. A governor (Landvogt) was appointed by the Thirteen to oversee the courts, the rudimentary administration and, especially, the collection of tributes. Other towns and cantons stood in a much looser relationship to the League, as they were allied by treaties with only some of the members of the core alliance (de Capitani 1986: 489).5 The only stable institution that the Thirteen and the eight Allied Places (the Zugewandte Orte) maintained was a permanent assembly of delegates, the Tagsatzung (Diet), which met regularly in order to discuss matters of common interest, especially of war and peace. Every canton had the right of veto, and the Diet represented a confederation of states rather then the nucleus of a state of its own. The contrast with the surrounding absolutist monarchies, especially that of France, where a central bureaucracy and army had evolved, was striking and this constituted the most important element of the common identity of the Confederates. In contrast to modern nation-states, matters of language and culture were not considered to be part of this identity; quite the contrary. The 5

This was the case for the towns of Geneva, Basle, St Gall, Bienne, Mulhouse and Neuchâtel as well as for the mountainous cantons of the Valais and the Grisons, which formed complex federations of local groups in themselves.

228


elite of Berne, for example, those well-known patrician families whose names can still be found on the payroll of the Swiss foreign ministry today, spoke French and were very much inclined towards French culture and customs, while the rest of the townspeople and the peasants of the countryside spoke an Alemannic German dialect, or, as was the case with the conquered territory of the Vaud dominated by Berne, French or French Patois. The canton of the Grisons displayed a mosaic of languages in itself, including German, an Italian dialect and several Romance languages. Comparable to the pre-modern Spanish or the Ottoman empire, culture and language indicated the social standing of individual families, and did not represent a state affair in which the government should intervene. A politics of homogenisation, such as the one pursued by the absolutist powers, was in any case out of reach in a pre-modern polity based on the principles of indirect rule and self-government. Matters were different, however, when it came to religion. Again, the parallels to the Spanish and Ottoman empires are striking. Evidently enough, the Swiss mini-states cannot be compared in size, power and degree of hierarchical organisation to these two world powers, but they nevertheless shared central features of political organisation. Besides the principles of hierarchical order, indirect rule and self-government, the intimate relation between politics and religion comes to mind, since the local potentates of the Swiss cantons legitimated their rule in religious terms as much as the Sultans or the Spanish crown. The competition between Protestant and Catholic regions played a crucial role in Switzerland. The centres of Protestantism, such as the Zwinglian town of Zurich or Calvinist Geneva, were opposed to the Catholic strongholds in the Alpine regions. Defending the true faith from the abhorrent deviations of other denominations was considered to be one of the principal tasks of the ruling town elites. Accordingly, the churches played a prominent political role: the registers of the parishes had a quasi-official function; being a member of a local commune automatically meant membership in a local church; charity was mainly a church affair as was jurisdiction in moral matters and in parts of civil law (especially marriage and divorce). Most importantly, the church was responsible for education. During the last century of the ancien régime public education rapidly expanded under the guidance of the parishes, in Protestant as well as Catholic regions and communities.We may speculate that it was the decentralised nature of the political system, and therefore the limited reach of a politics of cuius regio, eius religio, established in Europe after the Peace of Westphalia, that led to intensified religious competition and therefore to a heightened preoccupation with popular education. In any case, literacy rates in the last decades of the eighteenth century were comparatively very high in the Confederation


229

(ibid.: 498). Networks of civil society, one of the key factors in the rise of the modern state, as discussed in chapter 3, could blossom in such an environment of decentralised rule and widespread literacy. The emergence of a multi-ethnic national state The old regime collapsed when Napoleon’s troops swept over the Jura and conquered the territory of the Confederation. Napoleonic invasion marked the beginning, whilst the period after the Second World War marked the end, of the process of nation-building and modern state formation. Since political history as such is not the focus of this study, but rather the changes in the political, social and cultural principles of organisation, I will sketch only the main historical lines leading to the establishment of a multi-ethnic modern state. Explaining why nationbuilding took this multi-ethnic form and why ethno-linguistic differences never became politicised will then be the task of the following section. Revolution, restoration, regeneration and revolution (1798 to 1848) During French occupation (1798 to 1803) the basic principles of a modern state, modelled after the highly centralised French pattern, were introduced. This is a clear example of the role of imposition in the spread of modern nation-states that I referred to in chapter 3. The distinction between conquered cantons, allied cantons and the thirteen Confederate cantons was abolished and their status reduced to mere provinces; a unified administration over the whole territory was built up; and equality before the law, and freedom of trade and profession were introduced. However, the experiment proved to be short-lived and resulted in extreme instability at the political centre. Subsequently, in the so-called period of restoration, most of the reforms were taken back, universal suffrage was again restricted to the ‘true citizens’ of the towns, and the power of the guilds was restored. This return to the old order paralleled developments in most of the European countries after the Congress of Vienna. The equality of the cantons was maintained, however, and the inner workings of the Diet had to be adapted to the new, enlarged range of veto powers. From the twenties onwards, bourgeois revolutions were successful in canton after canton: universal (male) suffrage was reintroduced, equality before the law was enforced and the feudal cargoes abolished, freedom of trade and profession was reaffirmed and, therefore, the power of the guilds definitively broken. In terms of Swiss nationalist historiography these events are grouped into a ‘regeneration period’. The different pace

230


at which reforms went on in different cantons resulted in a remarkable diversity of political forms. Around 1840 there were direct democracies in the inner parts of the country, semi-direct democracies in Valais, the Grisons, St Gall, Lucerne and Basle, a constitutional monarchy in Neuchâtel and representative democracies in the remainder of the cantons (de Capitani 1986: 617). The structure of political alliances mirrored the tensions between ‘restored’ conservative cantons, where the oligarchies remained in power, and the ‘regenerated’, liberal cantons where bourgeois reforms had been successful. However, the two blocs more and more defined themselves in religious terms and the main bone of contention became the issue of the separation between church and state. The pre-modern, transnationally oriented, Catholic and hierarchically minded conservatives of the inner parts of the Confederation allied themselves into a ‘Special League’ against the nationally minded, liberal Protestants of the central belt of the country, stretching from Geneva to Lake Constance. On both sides of the dividing line, there were French-speaking as well as Germanspeaking cantons and the language issue played absolutely no role in the fights for ideological hegemony (ibid.: 643). The tensions culminated in the last civil war of Swiss history, the complete defeat of the Special League and therefore of any major political force that maintained pre-modern, hierarchical and religiously defined notions of political legitimacy and social justice. The victors in the war laid the foundation for the modern Swiss state with the new constitution of 1848. It was accepted in a popular (male) vote by a majority of the population, the main dividing line again being religious creed – the Catholic population (both German- and French-speaking) was outvoted by a Protestant majority. Laying the foundation for language peace (1848 to 1874) The new state now comprised, for the first time in Swiss history, a central government (the Federal Council) with seven ministries and ministers (federal councillors) as well as a unified, albeit comparatively very small, administration. The constitution abolished all internal customs and road taxes, established the principle of national citizenship with full right of residence for all Christian (from 1866 onwards, also Jewish) citizens on the entire national territory, declared freedom of profession and trade (on the federal level only in 1874), equality before the law, freedom of press and opinion and universal male suffrage. In short, a modern state replaced indirect rule and the hierarchical differentiation of rights and privileges (Ruffieux 1986: 684).


231

Interestingly enough, the language issue was never problematised or politicised. The new state elite came from all parts of the country, including the French- and Italian-speaking communities, the main criterion for recruitment being that they belonged to the liberal movement. In fact, most of them were Protestant, born in the industrialised central belt of the country, and members of cantonal political and administrative elites (34%), lawyers (23%) or entrepreneurs and craftsmen (22% of the members of the first parliament) (ibid.: 649). It is telling that the parliament almost forgot to add a constitutional article that declared all three languages national and official. The delegate of the canton of Vaud raised the issue and a proposal from German-speaking Zurich was then unanimously adopted without further discussion or debate (Weilenmann 1925: 215–24). The same logic of multilingualism was pursued in other fields: two of the seven federal councillors were (and still are) usually from the French-speaking part or from Italian-speaking Ticino, the Latin parts of the country. These are thus overrepresented, as roughly one-quarter of the overall population comes from these areas (27.2 per cent including Romansch speakers in 1910 according to McRae 1983: 50). The federal administration adopted in 1874 the principle of territoriality, i.e. the local branches would communicate with the population in the local language. In the army, the bilingual character of the institution, in place since 1848, was officially acknowledged by a new paragraph in the constitution of 1874. The same went for parliament, the courts and for the only federal educational institution, the Federal Polytechnic University located in Zurich. Pragmatic co-existence and multilingualism at the centre of government is combined with federalist principles at the provincial level. Each canton and, within the plurilingual cantons,6 each commune can choose its own official language which then remains the dominant idiom of the region or place, independent of immigration and other demographic processes (McRae 1983: 122ff.). Minorities are supposed to become fully fluent in the official language of their commune or canton. The federal administration communicates with cantonal authorities in the respective official language while the inhabitants of a canton have to deal with

6

The principle of territoriality was also adopted by the bi- and trilingual cantonal constitutions, although not in bilingual Fribourg, where a German-speaking, conservative patriciate had stood against a French-speaking, liberal population during the period of restoration. The federal model, however, was slowly adopted even in Fribourg, where the fight between pre-modern and modern political forces had taken on an ethnic hue (Ruffieux 1986: 684).

1920, 1968

Year of analysis

1960–4

1848–1981

Non-German speakers overrepresented (37% of councillors and 33% of the years served against 27% of the population)

Federal Council

Source: Based on studies reported by McRae (1983: 126, 127, 131, 133, 134f., 135)

1920, 1968

Almost balanced; non-German speakers slightly underrepresented among chairmen

Balanced

Degree of linguistic representativity

Balanced

Lower house Upper house Parliamentary of parliament of parliament committees

Sector of government

Table 2. Linguistic representation in Swiss government

1936, 1940, 1949, 1959, 1969, 1972, 1982

Non-German speakers slightly underrepresented (23% against 27% of the population)

Central administration (excluding railways and post)

1938, 1955, 1969, 1972

French speakers slightly overrepresented in the most senior ranks and substantially underrepresented in the lowest levels

Central administration (various salary levels)

1964

Non-German speakers underrepresented (12% of the 33 directors against 27% of the population)

Directors of federal offices


233

cantonal authorities in the official language(s) of the canton. The principle of territoriality is also very strictly applied in the school system, with the exception of a French school in Berne which owes its existence to the presence and pressure of French-speaking civil servants in the federal administration. It is important to underline that the Swiss model – a multilingual centre and monolingual provinces – differs fundamentally from a minority protection regime such as developed in other linguistically heterogeneous states that sooner or later, as was the case with Mexico in the 1990s, starts to abandon an assimilationist and mono-ethnic nationalist doctrine. Quite the contrary; probably the most remarkable aspect of language peace in Switzerland is that it is not based on a legal scheme for protecting minority languages. French, Italian and Romansch are not considered to be less ‘typically Swiss’ or less representative of the Swiss nation than German. Politically speaking, Switzerland does not know minorities.7 Following this low legal profile, there are no binding rules with regard to the linguistic composition of the Federal Council, or of the parliament, the administration, the army or the juridical institutions. It was only in 1950 that the Federal Council officially stated the goal of linguistic representativity in the different branches of administration (McRae 1983: 136). Nevertheless, there was from the very beginning a systematic attempt at achieving a balanced representation of the different groups within the state apparatus. These entirely informal efforts have indeed resulted in a remarkably equitable distribution of posts at different hierarchical levels. Table 2 gives some examples, all based on Swiss studies, most of them unpublished, as summarised by McRae (1983). A similarly balanced distribution is not found if we look at religious background and party membership. Studies of the public service in 1938, 1955 and 1969 show a very strong Protestant bias and a clear overrepresentation of the Liberal Party (FDP), especially in the higher ranks of government (ibid.). In the upper pay classes only 25 per cent of the civil servants or even less, depending on the branch of administration, were Catholic, against 42 per cent of Catholics in the population. The situation is only slowly changing. The overall representation of Catholics in the public service increased from 33 per cent to 43 per cent between 1940 and 1969. 7

As one civil servant had put it in the early forties: Our Swiss conception of the state, and the constitution itself, do not recognize the juridical notion of linguistic minorities, nor that of legal protection of these minorities. On the contrary, our public law is founded on the principle of equality of the national languages recognized by the Confederation (Feuille fédérale 1942, cited in McRae 1983: 121).

234


From patriotism to nationalism (1874 to 1914) The pragmatic approach towards the language issue was also an expression of the radically republican spirit of the new elite.8 Belonging to the only successful liberal movement and state in Europe was a matter of considerable pride. That the new constitution implied a ‘solution’ to the language problem was not considered as a remarkable achievement of the new state, since the language issue was not perceived as a fundamental difficulty. Thus, we would miss the lesson of the Swiss state-building experience completely if we asked how the French, the German and the Italian elites managed to find a formula for ethnic peace. First, ethnicity and language simply were not considered matters of political importance. And secondly, there were no ‘French, German and Italian elites’. Elite organisations and networks were not, as we will see later in this chapter, structured along ethnic and linguistic lines, but criss-crossed these from the beginning. From the 1880s onwards, however, an official, state-centred and stateorganised nationalism superseded republican patriotism. The language issue now had to be tackled and a formula for Swiss nationhood elaborated. This was mainly a reflection of, and a reaction to, French, Italian and German nationalisms that flourished during this period and reminded the Swiss that ‘their’ nation was non-existent from the perspective of culture and language (Siegenthaler 1993: 326; Zimmer 2001: 102–7). On the other hand, the rise of nationalist patriotism should also be seen in relation to the introduction of direct democratic institutions. The referendum and the possibility of proposing constitutional articles were both adopted by popular vote in 1874 – a great success for the counter-elite of intellectuals, socialist philanthropists and rural politicians who had emerged during the industrialisation process. As a consequence of these constitutional reforms and the rise of participatory politics, the Catholic regions of the country, representing a large proportion of the overall population, gained in political influence. The liberal Protestant elite was forced to open its ranks, to include members of the Catholic party in the Federal Council (from 1891 onwards) and to elaborate a new nationalist compromise reducing the prominence of liberal and republican ideas (Kriesi 1999: 15). It also meant that the French-speaking cantons became important allies of every main political movement in the country, because a referendum or a proposal for constitutional change had not only to gain the majority of 8

It was surely also helpful that most of the members of the new liberal elite were fluent in another national language besides their mother tongue (Im Hof and Bernard 1983: 15).


235

individual votes, but this in a majority of the cantons too. ‘Il nous faut les Welches’ (we need the French speakers) has become a standard quotation since then, and the French-speaking politicians and voters have played the role of guardians of Swiss federalism that make ethnic majority rule over minorities impossible. The main political dividing line continued to run, however, between Catholic and Protestant regions, not only at the level of the elite, but in popular perception as well, as the vote on the constitutional reform projects clearly showed. Still, at the end of the nineteenth century, to give one example, a patriotic novelist was reporting from his tour of Switzerland how disgusted he was when he crossed the religious frontier in the Greyerzer region of the canton of Vaud and noticed the ‘devotion for black robes’ that the population showed in Catholic villages. The transition from the Francophone to the Germanophone zone, which happens to be situated in the same area, was not even mentioned (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 April 1999: 15). The religious divide was slowly papered over, at least among the political elite, by the new state-organised patriotism. It was based on the idea that the lack of religious, cultural and linguistic homogeneity was not a deficiency, but the very virtue of the Swiss state, and that this divide was compensated for by the collective will to form a nation despite not ‘being’ one. The term ‘nation by will’ (Willensnation), coined by the liberal constitutional lawyer Hilty, became the catchword characterising the Swiss situation – it is still used today in almost every speech celebrating national days. Nationalist thinkers also commenced to sacralise the Swiss situation and to conceive Switzerland as ‘an entity wanted by God and endowed with a special mission, as a designated people of God’ (Hilty, cited by Jost 1998: 69). Nationalist historiography blossomed, portraying late medieval wars as episodes in an eternal fight for independence against the mighty evil lords of the surrounding empires. The Confederation decided to conserve national historic monuments (1886), organised national exhibitions (Zurich 1883, Geneva 1896 etc.), founded the national archive, the national library, a national commission of art, supported festivals to commemorate historic battles such as the one of Sempach of 1386, introduced a national day (1891) etc. However, the national day was received with great scepticism among the cantonal elites and the population. Cantonal and, especially, communal identities were still (as they are today)9 much stronger, and nationalist patriotism the affair of a rather 9

Melich (1991: 34f.) provides the result of a representative survey showing that 38% of respondents felt primarily attached to their commune of residence, 17% only to

236


small elite (Bendix 1992; on the history of the national day, see also Santschi 1991). The appearance of the ethno-linguistic divide (1914 to 1918) However, not even within the elite was republican nationalism the only option. Many were attracted by the blossoming patriotic nationalisms of the surrounding ‘true’ nation-states, and Germanophile circles in the Alemannic part of the country, Francophile groups in the Romandie, and Italophile movements in the canton of Ticino were gaining political ground. While these groups seldom went as far as questioning the statehood of Switzerland and propagating its dissolution along ethnolinguistic frontiers, they nevertheless produced considerable tensions in the public sphere. These tensions produced a serious crisis during World War I, when for the first and only time in Swiss history political alliances became realigned on the basis of language. The linguistic trench first appeared in public debates when the Germanophile Alemannic officer Wille, with family connections to the German emperor, was elected general of the army (a position only filled during wartime). There were several events10 that showed to the French-speaking parts of Switzerland that neutrality was mere lip-service and that in fact the German-speaking elite was leaning towards the Axis. Ethnicisation of politics was not confined to the elite, but appeared also among the rank and file of the army, where French-speaking recruits complained about the Prussian drill on which Alemannic officers tried to insist. On the streets, especially of bilingual cities, small-scale riots broke out and speaking the ‘wrong’ language could be dangerous in certain places at certain times (cf. du Bois 1983: 68, 78). Switzerland as a whole and 11% to their canton of residence, but only 5% to their language group, i.e. less than the 8% that felt they belonged principally to the world. As a second choice of identity, 25% mentioned Switzerland, 20% the canton of residence, 16% the commune, 9% the entire world, 8% the canton of origin and 8% Europe, but only 7% the linguistic region. 10 One-sided secret information services rendered to the German Generalstab (the so-called ‘officers’ scandal’); the drafting of a secret alliance with Germany and Austria (the ‘von Sprecher affair’ after the Chief of General Staff, von Sprecher); the secret attempts by Councillor Hoffmann to negotiate a separate peace between Germany and Russia (the ‘Hoffmann affair’): all these events provoked a storm of indignation from the Frenchspeaking political elite and were responded to by appeasement and a growing concern among German-speaking politicians about the ‘heated’ Latin political temperament and about the questioning of national solidarity in times of war and danger (du Bois 1983: 80ff.; Jost 1986: 764).


237

Mutual distrust and disgust also found its organisational and journalistic expressions. In 1916 Francophile circles founded the Ligue Patriotique Romande, where intellectuals such as Villiam Vogt preached alemannophobic hatred (e.g. in his book Les deux Suisses). The ligue complained not only about the far from neutral position of the national government, but also about growing discrimination against French speakers in the central administration and the army (du Bois 1983: 82). German-speaking nationalist circles quickly responded by founding the Association of the Swiss German Language (Deutschschweizerischer Sprachverein) and mirrored Villiam Vogt’s views, e.g. on the pages of the journal Stimmen im Sturm (‘Voices in the Storm’) (ibid.: 85). However, such radicalism did by no means represent the dominating voice in the debates on Switzerland’s foreign policy alignments during the war; quite the contrary: the elite cartel from all ethno-linguistic groups, which had dominated the federal state since its foundation two generations previously, very quickly moved to an appeasement policy, trying to dampen down emotions and to realign political sentiments along the nationalist axis that they had designed in previous decades. They carefully tried to balance out the perceived imbalance within central government and elected the pro-Entente, French-speaking councillor Gustav Ador after the resignation of the pro-German Hoffmann in 1917 (thus making it three French-speaking councillors out of seven). They were, all in all, rather successful in pursuing this policy of reconciliation, appeasement and compromise, and usually, after the waves of scandal had settled down, there were also signs of popular trans-ethnic patriotism such as expressed by the enthusiastic reception of General Wille in Frenchspeaking towns or of French-speaking army detachments defiling in the German-speaking parts. With the peace agreement of 1918, the discussion about the ‘linguistic trench’ and its political consequences for national sovereignty and security gradually faded away. It was overshadowed by another political conflict that rapidly came to dominate the political agenda. Shortly after the Versailles agreement, the first and only country-wide strike in Swiss labour history shook the political landscape. Initially, an ethnicised interpretation of events prevailed: many French-speaking politicians and journalists saw the largely German-speaking central committee of the strike as an extended arm of German socialism, while the socialist leaders, many of them in fact with a German background, distrusted the ‘undisciplined’ and much less organised French-speaking syndicates and parties. In the end, however, the ethnic question was overlaid by the social divide (ibid.: 88f.). After the strike had been broken with military power,

238


a slow process of integrating the socialist movement into the established political system was launched. The ethnicisation of republican nationalism (1919 to 1945) In 1919, after several decades of debating and campaigning, the election system changed from first-past-the-post to proportional representation. In the ensuing political earthquake, the liberal (Protestant) party lost its almost absolute monopoly of power in the parliament and had to share the seats with representatives of the Catholic conservative party, the peasants’ party and the socialist party. This was only the first step in the gradual integration of the socialists, and of the inclusion of the working classes into the nationalist compromise. Another step was the so-called peace agreement of 1937 between labour unions and employers’ associations which institutionalised negotiations between them. Further milestones included the declaration of support for the Swiss army which ended the socialists’ internationalist outlook and symbolised their integration into the nationalist framework of thinking and acting, and, finally, the inclusion of the first socialist councillor in the council of seven in 1943. Parallel to the opening of the elite cartel of the consociational Swiss regime, the welfare state was gradually established. In 1917, a first centralisation of the hitherto communal and cantonal systems was achieved. This is, however, the topic of sections to come. Suffice it to say here that the establishment and gradual expansion of the welfare state presented the institutional mechanism for integrating the working classes into the nationalist cultural compromise and, in a certain sense, rewarding them for their indisputable loyalty to the national state in times of crises and war. The nationalist compromise, however, itself underwent a very significant transformation now that it not only included the perspective of the liberal and Catholic conservative elites from the different cantons, but also the growing working classes of the agglomerations of Zurich, Winterthur, Brugg, Basle, Geneva etc. This is, however, just one factor explaining the transformation of the republican patriotism praising the ‘nation by will’ into an ethnically conceived nationalism with chauvinist overtones. This mutation was equally an answer to the developments in neighbouring states, and especially to the rise of fascism and Nazism. At the beginning, the Swiss political elite was rather helplessly observing these developments, having obviously no legitimate claim to racial purity or even to cultural and historical essence to offer and to countervail panGerman and pan-Italian movements. While there is much debate nowadays on the degree of collaboration or collusion between the Swiss government and Nazi Germany and on


239

the moral justification for such extensive compromise, there is no doubt that anti-Nazism and, to a certain degree, anti-German feelings became a dominant feature of the popular consciousness by the end of the thirties. The renewed nationalist compromise was meant to unify all parts of the country against the dangers and seductions of Nazi Germany. The French-, Italian- and German-speaking parts, peasants, workers and bourgeois, men and women, Catholics and Protestants were called upon to close ranks and to reinforce national solidarity in times of insecurity and danger. Contrary to the experience during the First World War, this officially conceived and propagated nationalism was extraordinarily successful in generating a spirit of commonality and common destiny among the population. The linguistic trench was no longer an issue. The solidarity of French-, German- and Italian-speaking parts, of all regions, religions and social classes was conceived within the framework of a völkisch ideology (Jost 1986: 758; Kreis 1992). Thus, the defence of Swiss independence and unity was paradoxically supported by an ideology that in certain respects mirrored and paralleled fascist conceptions of society, although the Swiss variant was of necessity a ‘republican’ one.11 This new nationalism was mainly conceived from above. In 1938 councillor Philippe Etter, a member of the Catholic conservative party, coined the phrase ‘the spiritual defence of the country’ (geistige Landesverteidigung). According to his message,12 Switzerland belonged to three cultural spheres of the Christian continent and fused them into one single specifically Swiss culture; federalism, eternal neutrality and basic democracy were the institutional expressions of this Swiss spirit, which has blown though history since medieval times, when free communities of herders and peasants fought for independence and liberty from the surrounding German-speaking empires. The political meaning of the Swiss local dialects changed accordingly. While at the beginning of the century, many educated families in the German-speaking parts had wanted their children to address them in standard German, now speaking a Swiss dialect became a marker of identity, a sign of purity, of belonging to the rustic and somewhat 11

12

The emergence of a republican corporatism with völkisch overtones clearly shows that the distinction between ethnic and republican nationalism is not very helpful in understanding differentiations within the dominant modern ideology (cf. chapter 3). In a certain sense, the new nationalism integrated the Catholic, hierarchical, corporatist vision of society into the dominant self-understanding. Councillor Etter, for example, wrote a pamphlet on ‘La démocratie suisse’ that reminds one of the ideal of the Christian (i.e. Catholic) corporatist state of Salazar or Dollfuss, albeit adapted to Swiss institutional history and decorated with mythological tales of the Alpine herders’ heroism (Favez 1983: 106).

240


unsophisticated, but sincere and democratically minded Swiss nation heroically resisting the dangers brought about by ‘arrogant’, dominant Germany.13 The symbolic role of the Alps, a constant feature of Swiss patriotism and nationalism (Zimmer 2001), was reinforced during wartime by the military strategy of the réduit, i.e. the idea of leaving the central belt to the enemy from the north and retreating into the mountain valleys to organise guerrilla warfare from there. A gigantic effort was made to transform the mountains into a fortress, hundreds of bunkers were built, hospitals and airports crafted into the granite rock, hundreds of kilometres of tunnels constructed, roads in the valley prepared for destruction. While there is disagreement among historians as to the seriousness with which the retreat strategy was pursued by the military elite and whether or not there was a serious danger of intervention from Nazi troops – which again depends on varying opinions as to the degree of collusion and collaboration – there is no doubt that the réduit played, and plays, an important role in popular Swiss national mythology.14 Thus, Switzerland no longer represented the avant-garde of political modernity, having realised the universal ideals of democracy, multi-ethnic tolerance and bourgeois liberties in its ‘nation by will’, but a country of an original political character expressed in direct democracy, federalism and ethnic tolerance. No longer an example for the world to follow, but a single and unique experience owed to the genius of the Swiss nation whose essence is expressed in the free spirit of its herders and peasants in the Alps. This ethnicised form of nationalism remained the dominant current in representing and reflecting about Swiss history and identity, even after the war. It was overlaid and transformed during the Cold War, the brown 13

14

This view of Swiss history and identity was popularised and dramatically enacted at the national exhibition of 1939, a milestone for the development of the new Swiss nationalist compromise. One of the, probably, most impressive halls was transformed into a forest of banners representing every single commune in the countrywide total of over 3,000. The visitor walking under this sky of colours and symbols was very powerfully reminded of the original sense and mission of the country: a free federation of communities united in the will for independence and liberty. Representing Switzerland as a community of communes was also a powerful metaphor helping to overcome the ethno-linguistic divide that had appeared during the First World War. On the other hand, the older notion of the ‘nation by will’ was reinforced through the adoption of Romansch as the fourth national (albeit not official) language by 92 per cent of popular vote in 1938 (McRae 1983: 120). This view of the Swiss situation was also very effectively disseminated by the new propaganda media, the radio and TV stations, supported by a new industry of popular films – which produced the classics of Swiss cinematic history such as Ueli de Pächter (‘Ueli the Tenant’) by Franz Schnyder – and by an enormous range of literature, textbooks and popular leaflets. A new national institute, the Pro Helvetia, was founded in 1939 with the aim of supporting the spiritual defence. It had two sections, dedicated to ‘the people’ and ‘the army’, respectively.


241

enemy being replaced by the Bolshevik revolution and its fifth columns within Switzerland. The Cold War also prevented a critical debate of the country’s role during the Second World War and therefore allowed, as was the case with most European countries except Germany, the representation of war history as a heroic fight against the powers of evil. While the republican and liberal variants of the national compromise never ceased to be important and were from time to time forcefully revitalised, the ethnicised version of the ‘spiritual defence’ period remained powerful especially among the older and less educated sections of the population – a constituency on which new populist movements such as the Zurich wing of the Swiss Popular Party could easily draw in their opposition to rethinking Switzerland’s role during the Second War and to a gradual rapprochement with the European Union. Explaining the Swiss experience: the role of civil society How did this peculiar experience of nation-state building come about and, more specifically, why did ethnic differences not play a political role except, as we have seen, during the First World War? This section represents a privileged opportunity to give an answer to these questions. My hypothesis, perhaps already repeated ad nauseam, holds that nationbuilding will take an inclusive, trans-ethnic form when the networks of civil society organisations are dense enough to allow the new political elite controlling the modern nation-state to legitimise their rule and to mobilise political support without having to resort to an ethnic constituency and the practice of ethnic favouritism and clientelism. It is difficult to ‘prove’ with ‘hard’ data that there was indeed a more dense and more established network of such organisations in Switzerland than in Mexico or Iraq. And establishing historical parallels between developments in such different contexts is admittedly rather risky. However, perhaps I have succeeded in making it plausible that Switzerland before the regeneration period (starting in the 1820s), Mexico before 1821 (the independence date) and the Ottoman empire before its dissolution, bear enough structural resemblances to risk such a comparison. With respect to the point about ‘hard’ data, I hope that the historical arguments to be put forward in the following are impressive enough to compensate for their softness. Webs of friendship: associations, societies and clubs And indeed, the web of associations, bourgeois societies and clubs that emerged thanks to the spread of literacy and thanks to the rise of commerce and early capitalism (recall chapter 3) was impressive. During

242


the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an independent press and a mass of philosophical and scientific books broke the monopoly that the church had held on the print media. Literary societies and reading circles were spreading all over the territory of the Confederation. Interestingly enough, these circles and societies included men from all estates, even peasants and artisans. This provoked lively discussions on whether reading novels and works of adult education represented a danger to public order and, especially, the Christian faith (de Capitani 1986: 502). After Napoleon’s intervention, new press products blossomed, especially in the ‘regenerated’ cantons with liberal constitutions from the 1830s onwards, and the principle of a free press gradually established itself. Censoring every page of written material became morally and technically more and more difficult. Many radical political movements, including early socialism, were widely received and discussed on the territory of what later was to become Switzerland (ibid.: 589). There was no comparable degree of literacy and of public awareness of the written word either in Kurdistan (or, in general, the Ottoman empire) or in pre-independence Mexico, where reading and writing remained confined to a small educated elite and where censorship was still a powerful instrument in controlling public opinion. The reform parties of the Ottoman empire, to give an example, had to publish their journals and newspapers outside of the empire’s domain. The decentralised nature of the polity in Switzerland, i.e. the lack of an absolutist tradition, and the early development of a class of advocates, merchants, doctors etc., as well as the comparatively high literacy rate, explains these differences. Thus, we again find the same three factors that I made responsible for the rise of the nation-state in chapter 3, now in a specific historic constellation: low degrees of state centralisation, penetration and extraction; the early spread of literacy; the rise of commerce and early capitalism. All together account for the extraordinary strength of civil society organisations vis-à-vis the pre-modern state elites, as well, as we shall see in a moment, for the trans-ethnic character of the nation-building experience. Even contemporary observers noticed the blossoming and flourishing of all kinds of bourgeois and enlightened associations.15 The associations functioned as social laboratories where the workings of modern society and politics were elaborated in an environment still dominated by the 15

The Dictionnaire géographique-statistique de la Suisse (1836–7), edited by Jean-LouisBenjamin Leresche in Lausanne, made the ‘instinct of sociability’ responsible for this ‘spirit of association’ and numbered fourteen societies that were active nationally (ibid.: 604f.).


243

principles of social hierarchy, religious dogma and political subordination. Most associations had no restrictions whatsoever with regard to social background. The criteria for recruitment were the contributions that a person had made to a certain cause, to the betterment of agricultural techniques, to the advancement of science, to the knowledge of history, to the reinforcement of the various cantonal armies, to the library of a literary circle. All members elected the organs, such as the president or the council of administration. Relations of family and loyalties of a feudal nature or based on the solidarity of guilds were considered to be improper, while ‘friendship’ between men otherwise not related was praised – and thus a new concept of social life developed: many of these societies were perceived by their members as a prefiguration and anticipation of the ideal bourgeois state (cf. Im Hof and Bernard 1983: 12). In the eighteenth century there were over a hundred such societies. However, the only truly national, cross-regional organisation was the Helvetic Society, founded in 1761 with the aim of uniting all progressive spirits determined to fight against the old order, and to reinforce their bonds across cantonal, religious, regional and linguistic barriers – linking the different pieces of the pre-modern mosaic society. Their patriotic reunions were attended, at the end of the eighteenth century, by around 200 people (ibid.: 504f.; see also Im Hof and de Capitani 1983).16 After the storm of the Helvetic Republic had blown over the federation, new societies sprang into being, inspired by the principles of the French Revolution. Older societies now started to reconstitute themselves as cross-regional, national societies – including German-, French- and, later, Italian-speaking members and sections. In 1806 the Swiss Society of Artists was born and in 1807 the Helvetic Society reconstituted itself; in 1808 the Swiss Association for Pedagogy (which later included such prominent members as Pestalozzi and von Fellenberg) was founded, and in 1810, the Swiss Society for the Public Good (Schweizerische Gemeinnutzige ¨ Gesellschaft); there followed the Swiss Society for Historical Research in 1811, the Swiss Society for Natural Research (1815), the Society of Zofingen (a student association) (1819), the Grand Loge Alpina of the Freemasons (1822), the Swiss Society of Officers (while there was still no national army) (1833), and the Grutli ¨ Association (1838) (Im Hof and Bernard 1983: 10; Andrey 1986: 576ff., 585 and passim). While most of these associations were elite clubs, there were others with a much wider membership. The Federal Association of Riflemen 16

Another cross-regional society was the Swiss Society for Natural Research (Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft), founded in 1797 by scientists from Berne and Geneva, which became active, however, only in 1815.

244


was founded in 1824 and seven years later had 2,000 members (Im Hof and Bernard 1983: 20), a considerable number when compared to an overall population of less than 2 million (McRae 1983: 50).17 Other popular associations were the Swiss Association of Athletics (Schweizerischer Turnverein), founded in 1832 and inspired by the German gymnasts’ movement led by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, and the singers’ movement that was initiated two years later under the name of Le Chant National and transformed into the Federal Singers Association in 1842. Athletes and singers praised brotherliness among free and enlightened men and enjoyed the liberated spirit of revolutionary times, including the corporal expressions of it such as exercises not hindered by the dress codes of the old regime and free expression of every man’s ability to raise his voice and to contribute to the concert of freedom and unity. Trans-ethnic patriotism All these associations were operating on a trans-cantonal basis and all held their annual meetings in different parts of the country every year, mostly in places not known to ordinary citizens. In this way, every member of an association became familiar with large parts of what was later to become the national territory. Most associations carefully ensured that every canton was included in this system of rotating meeting places and the large majority of them – but with important exceptions such as the Society for the Public Good – applied the principle of rotation to the presidency as well. How did they integrate the different ethnic regions into their organisational framework? The Helvetic Society (HS) can be taken as a paradigmatic case (the following draws on Im Hof and Bernard 1983: 15ff.). Before the Revolution, there was considerable resistance to the use of French at the society’s meetings, because it symbolised the French court and therefore the absolutist order against which the Society was determined to fight. Slowly, resistance was fading away, and after the French Revolution, French-speaking members were allowed and the first paper given in French before the assembly was enthusiastically applauded in 1790. Unfortunately, not much is known about the ethnic composition 17

Shooting matches, the main organisational task of the associations, can be traced back to the fifteenth century, when they were part of fairs or carnival festivities. They presented an opportunity for peaceful rivalry among cantonal detachments of militiamen. Sometimes they were specially organised in order to build peace and trust after intercantonal warfare, transforming deadly fights into sporting competitions. With the rise of the mercenary system, which played an important role in late medieval Swiss history, the shooting fairs disappeared, the last being organised in 1683. The new Federal Association of Riflemen revitalised this tradition, fuelling it with the enlightened patriotism and spirit of bourgeois brotherliness typical of the period (after Feierabend 1875: 9–34).


245

of the society’s membership. From the Federal Association of Riflemen, however, records indicate that 1,200 of the 2,000 members in 1829 were Germanophone, while the Society for the Public Good counted 127 Francophones out of a total of 631 members (ibid.: 20). What vision of society was developed in the bosom of these trans-ethnic movements? The so-called Helvetism was nourished by the discovery that the ideals of the Enlightenment might have a privileged growingground on the territory of the old federation. The lack of absolutist and grand feudal states, the mini-laboratory of freedom within the limits of urban citizenry seemed to predispose the Confederation to realise the ideals of the bourgeois revolution. The main impulse for such an interpretation of the Swiss situation came from outside. Rousseau’s portrait of the Swiss herders’ and peasants’ natural democracy, protected by a heroic Alpine landscape, was equally influential, as was Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell of 1804 which became a classic of patriotic playwrights. Helvetism thus combined the ideals of political modernity, equality before the law, democracy and citizenship, with the patriotic idea that these achievements had to be fought for in a common effort by all enlightened men of a country. This patriotism was distinctively republican. The borders of the nation were never defined in ethnic or linguistic terms, but rather according to the logic of historic discourse: all those who had fought and continued to fight against the feudal empires were thought of as belonging to the community of progress that was to bring about a new social order.18 This typically modern notion of history as progress found expression in legends and tales that were canonised and taught by professors of Swiss history in the newly established academies. The Geschichte der Schweizer by Johannes von Muller ¨ became the standard patriotic and progressist work for about a century. Again, associations played a crucial role in the dissemination of this new view on the past. The Society for Historical Research was founded in 1811, and the General Society for Historical Research of Switzerland in 1841.19 18

19

The ‘festival of national unity’ in Sarnen, the plays of the Association of Sempach, the Unspunnen-Festival etc. now commemorated the great wars of the confederates against the Habsburg armies of late medieval times in the light of this new understanding (de Capitani 1986: 506ff.). A second pillar of the new patriotic republicanism was the veneration of the Alps, now transformed from the seat of the forces of magic and evil that they had represented in medieval religious terms into the symbolic heartland of the nation, not least because of the writings of Rousseau and a whole series of enlightened tourists who visited the Alps at Lucerne and other places (cf. Reichler and Ruffieux 1998). Wandering around the territory of Switzerland, especially the Alps, now became part of what the enlightened elite thought as obligatory for a proper patriotic education of young men (Andrey 1986: 577). On the role of the Alps in Swiss nationalism, see recently Zimmer (2001).

246


A nation of citoyens: republican state formation This ideology, to be sure, did not differ fundamentally from the view held by late Ottoman reformers, and it was certainly shared by the liberal elite of the Mexican independence movement and by the Committee for Union and Progress in Thessalonica at the turn of the century. All were inspired by one sort or another of republican patriotism and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. The crucial difference, however, was that the Swiss associational movement was much more deeply rooted in society and was, from the beginning, trans-ethnically organised. Never would it have occurred to the spokesmen of the Helvetic Society or the Federal Association of Riflemen to declare German the only official language when they rose to power and national hegemony in 1848, as the CUP did for Turkish in 1912. Never would these men have dared to portray the Italian-speaking part of the population as backward and to propose a politics of assimilation, or to exclude German speakers from the seats of power because they were less civilised – from the French-speaking point of view of the times – in the way the ‘less civilised’ Indian population was excluded from the Mexican nationalist mainstream.20 German, French and Italian speakers were already part of the grid of associational bonds. When they founded the modern national state of 1848, the elites from all parts of the small country knew each other rather well thanks to the activities of the associations. After their rise to power, they were able to rely on this densely woven network of relations stretching all over the country, penetrating deeply into the society, and transcending class and linguistic boundaries. This network allowed them to mobilise political support when it came to winning an election or a referendum since they could not rely on a party apparatus when they had to communicate with their constituency. Rather, they formed political movements, one ‘radical’ and one ‘liberal’, whose organisational backbones were the associations. The radicals for example were supported by the National Association, founded in 1835, by the cantonal Peoples’ Associations, and, from the fifties onwards, by the veterans of a students’ association (Ruffieux 1986: 682). The appeal to regional or ethno-linguistic solidarity was therefore never an option when raising support was necessary, as it was in postindependence Iraq. The language issue was never perceived as a problem 20

It is equally telling that nobody ever dared to complain about the unequal distribution of state subsidies among the different language regions. In the school system for example, the federal subsidies for the Italian and Romansch regions are roughly seven times and ten times, respectively, the standard rate for other communities. Of licence fees for radio broadcasting, 42% go to the German-speaking system while 24% go to the Italian system, although only approximately 4% of the population speak Italian; for television, the corresponding figures are 45% and 22%, respectively (McRae 1983: 149, 155).


247

because the organisational core of politics was the church on the side of the conservatives and trans-ethnic associations and societies on the side of the liberals and radicals. This set, therefore, a pre-modern, hierarchical and sacralised vision of society against the modern, secularised and egalitarian model – Catholic against Protestant, and not Frenchspeaking against German-speaking. Thus, elite factions never crystallised along language barriers. It would be a serious misreading of the Swiss experience if we looked for a compromise between French-, Italian- and German-speaking elites, such as seen by the theory of consociational democracy that described the Swiss model as a cartel of ethnically defined elites (see the critique by Steiner and Obler 1977). For the same reason, Switzerland would not provide a good example for rational choice theories of ‘inter-ethnic cooperation’ (Fearon and Laitin 1996).21 The major condition for a multi-ethnic nation to develop is, as we have seen, that the networks of civil society organisations emerged before the modern nation-state was formed and before the question of ‘who is the people’ arose for the first time. That ‘the people’ would consist of the already consolidated bourgeois society organised in overlapping networks of associations was self-evident. An ethno-nationalist answer to the question of peoplehood never developed.22 21

22

My argument is also not directly linked to those of Putnam and others maintaining that a strong civil society is a prerequisite for democracy. As Berman (1997) has shown in the case of Weimar, strong civil society networks can be the result of weak and unattractive political institutions and thus contribute to the destabilisation of democratic regimes in a spiral of disenchantment and withdrawal. The democratisation of the Swiss state, which steadily gathered pace from the 1870s onwards, was based on pressures from civil society organisations, albeit not from the ones that had emerged earlier in the nineteenth century and that had gained control of the state at its foundation in 1848. My argument thus remains tangential to this controversy. This is not to say that there was no ethnic consciousness at all. During the period of Napoleonic centralism, cantonal identities, the backbone of political organisation since medieval times, were overlaid by a second tier of identity on the basis of linguistic affinity. In 1814, Philippe Bridel, a folklorist of Herderian inspiration, coined the term ‘La Suisse romande’, which included all French-speaking parts of the country, and in 1834 a Société de l’Histoire de la Suisse Romande was founded. Later on, the term ‘Suisse alémanique’ was invented and popularised (Andrey 1986: 590). However, the Suisse Romande only becomes a relevant category during times of tension such as World War I or during the late 1990s when the relationship with the EU and the economic disparities between the regions were in some circles perceived as an issue of the ethno-linguistic balance of power. But language groups were always conceived as being subgroups of the Swiss nation, and separatist movements on the basis of linguistic commonalities with Germany, France or Italy never arose. There is not even a political association of French-speaking, German-speaking, or Italianspeaking regions or cantonal governments, no political party based on language issues, no representation of the ethno-linguistic groups at any level of governmental organisation, no festivals or associational life of any importance uniting explicitly the Francophone or Germanophone or Italophone Swiss alone. There were and are, however, important processes of politicisation of ethno-linguistic differences at the cantonal level, i.e. in cantons with bilingual populations, especially

248


It is hardly surprising that under such circumstances, posts within the administration, the army, the central government and parliament were fairly distributed with respect to ethnic background. But the distribution was, and still is, unbalanced with regard to representation by religion and party membership. Such an imbalance of power among parties and religious groups (with which many parties are loosely associated) is structurally homologous to ethnic favouritism within the state apparatus of societies where modernisation has led to the politicisation of ethnicity. The crucial role of trans-ethnic associations also appears at moments of crisis when the multi-ethnic model was under strain. Especially impressive in this regard was the role of the New Helvetic Society (NHS), founded in 1914 with the explicit aim of revitalising Swiss nationalism against the growing tide of ethno-nationalist chauvinism and hatred. During the First World War, the NHS developed a consistent programme of counter-action and counter-propaganda, disseminating and reinforcing the patriotic republican ideology of the ‘nation by will’ that had developed in the decades before. In 1915 the NHS began to publish a Sunday newspaper in order to countervail the German Sunday papers that had gained some influence in the Alemannic part of the country. A bimonthly journal Der Schweizer Kamerad addressed the younger public and propagated the same patriotic spirit. A press office was opened that placed around 2,000 articles in local newspapers during the war. The society organised conferences and gatherings all over the country, among others the famous speech of 1914 of the poet Carl Spitteler, who encouraged his fellow countrymen in the Valais/Wallis, Fribourg/Freiburg and Berne/Bern. The tensions that arose there and the mode of conflict regulation, ranging from accommodation and institutional bilingualism in Fribourg (Windisch 1994) to separation and the foundation of a new canton in the case of Jura (Henecka 1972), are beyond the scope of this chapter. Suffice it to say that all these conflicts, which in the case of Jurassian separatism took on an ‘un-Swiss’ violent form, developed against the background of cantonal political structures and identities that in no way mirror federal ones; quite the contrary. As Centlivres and Schnapper (1991) have shown, Switzerland’s republican concept of nationhood at the federal level is in contrast to the ethnic concept of belonging dominating the cantonal level. The cantons are not conceived as ‘mini-nations by will’, but as culturally thick, historically inevitable and durable entities. Innumerable discussions and comments about cantonal mentalities, joking relationships between rival cantons such as Basle and Zurich, high rates of endogamy until the middle of the last century, dialectal variations that are discussed and perceived in cantonal terms in the Alemannic part of the country, and the personal importance of cantonal identity far outreaching that of linguistic group or even of the Swiss nation (Melich 1991: 34f.) testify to this ethnic conception of cantonal identities. Together with a history of ethnic stratification in the bilingual cantons (with a German-speaking elite ruling over French speakers), this constellation has led, as is to be expected, to a politicisation of ethnicity and in some cases an ethnicisation of politics at the cantonal level.


249

to remain united and to remember the spirit of unity of their forefathers. A discussion between a German-speaking newspaper editor and a French-speaking one under the title ‘Let’s remain Swiss’ was widely read, as was the intellectual Konrad Falke’s essay ‘The Swiss cultural will’ published by the NHS. Its President Gonzague de Reynold gave conferences in different parts of the country (Im Hof and Bernard 1983: 70).23 The activities of the NHS contributed in no small way to counterbalancing the centrifugal tendencies that had appeared in political life.24 Another historical detail reveals the role of the associations. As discussed in the previous section, a new ethnicised version of nationalism was created and promulgated before the Second World War, in an attempt to avoid the experiences of the First World War. The former president of the NHS, this same Monsieur Gonzague de Reynold, participated prominently in the drafting of the famous message by councillor Philippe Etter of 1938 (Favez 1983: 107), where the concept of ‘spiritual defence of the country’ was outlined for the first time. Furthermore, the official body to implement this policy of spiritual defence, the Pro Helvetia, based its activities largely on those of cantonal organisations and of various associations, among the most important ones being the New Helvetic Society (ibid.: 105). The deterioration of the status of immigrants It is high time to look at the shadow side of the Swiss ‘success story’ in building a multi-ethnic state. Until now I have described this story as a process of including ever larger sectors of the population into an encompassing nationalist compromise and into the institutional and legal structures of the modern state. Starting from the rather narrow base of a Protestant bourgeois elite in the industrialising central belt of the country, it integrated the Catholic elites and their constituencies, and finally the working class in the fastly growing cities. This process of political integration was paralleled by the development of a trans-ethnic 23

24

However, this role was not well received by Germanophile and Francophile circles, each being suspicious that the apparently neutral position of the NHS disguised a pro-French or pro-German project. Even within the NHS considerable tensions arose and Gonzague de Reynold had to resign because his position appeared in the eyes of French-speaking members as ‘too Swiss’. We ignore completely what the Society did behind the scenes at the level of personal relations between members of the Francophone and Germanophone elites. The effect of a platform for exchange and for maintaining relations of ‘friendship’ across the linguistic divide should not be underestimated. Other associations, such as the Swiss Officers’ Association, the Association for Public Good, the Association of Professors and Lecturers etc., played a similar role, although they did not develop a comparable fully scaled propaganda programme.

250


Table 3. Steps of political closure in Switzerland, 1848–1945 1848–1874

1875–1918

1919–1945

Cumulative steps of political inclusion

Integration of liberal Protestant elite; universal voting rights for men

Integration of conservative Catholic elite; instruments of direct democracy

Integration of working classes; proportional representation in parliament

Transformations of nationalist cultural compromise

Enlightened patriotism (‘Helvetism’)

Republican nationalism (‘nation by will’)

Ethnicised nationalism (‘spiritual defence of the country’)

nationalism, first republican, then in an ethnicised version, and by informal mechanisms guaranteeing a proportional representation of peoples with different ethno-linguistic backgrounds within the centres of political power and within the state apparatus. Table 3 summarises the most important steps of the nation- and statebuilding process discussed so far, showing the different phases of political inclusion and the corresponding transformations of the nationalist cultural compromise. I now turn to other aspects of the process of state modernisation and to the other side of it: the forms of exclusion that the integration along national lines brought with it. I will focus on one specific dimension of exclusion relating to immigrants and aliens, thus leaving aside the fate of Jews, of Gypsies and other peoples that became classified as nonnationals. The basic empirical observation from which to start is that the more sections of the national population were integrated into the ideological, juridical, political and social order of the modern state, the more the status of immigrants and aliens seems to have deteriorated. How did the distinction between national citizens and immigrants arise in the first place and why did it become ever more significant? Why did immigrants became reduced to the status of tolerated aliens having to accept a legal confinement to a certain canton, to show up regularly at immigration offices or aliens’ police stations, to take those jobs that are legally open to them – the ones in which no Swiss citizen showed an interest – to keep silent when it comes to politics, to accept decisions made with regard to them without having their voices heard, and to avoid getting in touch with law-enforcing agencies that may expel alien wrongdoers from the national territory? Why, in short, have the achievements of political modernity remained out of their reach?


251

My hypothesis states that this is explained by the integration of the working classes, brought about by the political ascendancy of the socialist party and by the rise of the welfare state. This integration went hand in hand with a transformation of the cultural compromise and a new dimension of closure based on the distinction between nationals and immigrants/foreigners. The nation is now described as an enormous family of common ancestry, bound together by mutual solidarity, an ethnicised version of earlier, more republican and political notions of nationhood. It is obviously much more difficult, as comparative research has shown (Brubaker 1992), to include immigrants into a national regime of rights and duties when belonging to the nation is defined in familiaristic terms of cultural similarity and common ancestry. On the institutional side, we can observe that the more this vision of national solidarity, replacing older, small-scale networks of mutual support, is realised through the institutional structures of the welfare state, the more it seems necessary to control the entrance doors to this national home of solidarity. A whole range of laws and rules are passed regulating access to the national territory and controlling and channelling migratory movements according to perceived ‘national’ needs. This produces the legal category and the social reality of ‘guest-workers’ with the status of second-class citizens or ‘denizens’, to quote the well-known neologism of Thomas Hammar (1990).25 I will now explore this hypothesis by taking yet another tour through history, this time starting with the foundation of the modern Swiss state. The liberal era (1848 to 1914) As elsewhere in Europe (Bade 1980; Cross 1983; Noiriel 1988) the decades before the First World War were characterised by open borders and only very limited legal discrimination between citizens and immigrants – a liberality almost unthinkable today and largely erased from historical memory.26 During the last decades of the nineteenth century, 25

26

It is only recently that the relation between welfare state and migration has become a focus of research in the social sciences (see Freeman 1986; Bjorklund ¨ 1987; Jenkins 1988; Bommes and Halfmann 1994; Schierup 1994; Faist 1995). Most of these authors discuss the apparent contradiction between the inclusion of immigrant workers into the welfare system, due to their integration into the labour market, and their exclusion on the level of citizenship rights and political participation. Lucassen (1995) was the first to relate the development of the welfare state to the rise of systems of migration control. He developed this hypothesis in a comparison of the institutionalisation of migration control in different European countries. For earlier periods, see Hoffmann-Nowotny and Killias (1993).

252


the Swiss government signed bilateral treaties with twenty-one European and American countries. The treaties stated that citizens of the contracting states enjoyed complete freedom of movement, of settlement and of professional activity on the whole territory (von Waldkirch 1923). With the exception of the duty to serve in the army and voting rights, immigrants from treaty states enjoyed immediately after their arrival the same privileges as citizens (Schlaepfer 1969: 87–98), and thus a degree of freedom that came close to the situation within European Union memberstates today. Swiss authorities were only allowed to expel foreigners from treaty states (around 95 per cent of alien residents) when they committed a severe crime, presented a danger to state security, behaved ‘police-adversely’ or against the laws of ‘health-, vice-, or charity-squads’, as it was expressed in the typical law and order discourse of the time (ibid.: 86). The private sector made use of the unlimited possibilities for recruiting immigrant labour, especially in the decades of high growth before the First World War. The demand within the construction sector as well as the textile and metallurgy industries was apparently high (see Holmes 1988). The proportion of non-citizen residents rose from 3 per cent in 1850 to 15 per cent in 1910 (not including seasonal workers), after Luxemburg the highest percentage of all European countries (Schlaepfer 1969: 8f.).27 The relationship between immigration and the welfare system of the time will now be examined more closely. The constitution of 1848 for the first time guaranteed the citizen’s right to choose a place of residence anywhere in the entire territory. Caring for the poor, however, remained the obligation of the communes, or more precisely, of the commune of which a person was a citizen. In Switzerland, it has to be remembered, one is a citizen of the country via one’s citizenship status in a canton, and one is a citizen of a canton only on the basis of being a citizen of a commune. The communes had to take care of their impoverished citizens and to guarantee their survival at a decent standard of living. Or, alternatively, they had to compensate for those services when provided for one of their citizens by another commune. What happened when immigrants became dependent on public funds? Some of the treaties – and on the basis of the most-favoured-nation clause, almost all others too – prescribed that citizens of both states would enjoy the same rights as nationals when temporarily in need of assistance. 27

One of the distinguishing – albeit almost never acknowledged and rarely discussed – features of Swiss society is the high percentage of foreign-born people. Since the turn of the twentieth century, this has always been higher than in the USA or in Canada.


253

A permanently dependent foreigner, however, would be repatriated, but since a guarantee of acceptance by the country of origin was required, repatriations were very difficult to realise. Because seasonal workers also began to stay during the winter time in Switzerland, the expenditure of communes and cantons to support poor foreign citizens continuously rose (ibid.: 96). Especially the larger cities and cantons started to complain about the burden and demanded a centralisation of the welfare system, or at least financial contributions from the federal state, as well as international treaties that would ease procedures of repatriation – all these demands, however, had not the slightest chance of realisation before the First World War. In general, welfare issues played a rather marginal role in the debate about the so-called ‘foreigners question’; neither was the massive influx of immigrants perceived as bringing illegitimate competitors to the local working classes. The initial reservations of the labour movement gradually gave way to a pronounced internationalism underlining the global solidarity of the working class. Let me remain for a moment with the reactions and perceptions of the labour classes. Within the rank and file of the unions, this political line was not always welcomed, and several riots broke out in workingclass neighbourhoods. The most important of these conflicts culminated in pogroms against the Italian immigrant population in the Aussersihl district of Zurich. Members of local athletic associations had mobilised in order to stop the ‘criminal’, ‘violent’, and generally ‘amoral behaviour’ of Italian immigrants (Schlaepfer 1969: 141). Interestingly enough, the government did not react, as it did after the political integration of the working class, by reorienting official immigration policy on a more restrictive line when confronted with popular resistance, but by sending in troops from the rural parts of the canton who would ‘calm down the mob’. This shows that the interests of the labourers were not yet represented and that their point of view was not yet integrated into a nationalist compromise and the institutional workings of the nation-state. Rather, they opposed the republican nationalism of the state elite and developed a counter-discourse based on a moral economy of decent behaviour and ideals of solidarity among neighbours. Official discourse painted a different portrait of the immigrant question – the moral quality of immigrants or their willingness to integrate into neighbourhood networks was not an issue from this point of view. Corresponding to the republican self-image of the liberal elite, which saw Switzerland as a ‘nation by will’ held together by the ‘everyday plebiscite’ of its citizens, to cite Renan’s (1947) famous expression, political loyalty

254


towards the Swiss state was the central issue of the ‘foreigners problem’. There were concrete worries and fears inspiring this perception: during a time when colonial expansion dominated world politics, the presence of so many immigrants from neighbouring countries might present a pretext for the respective governments to annex parts of Switzerland. The history of the Boer wars in South Africa was often cited as a horribilum (cf. Romano 1996). Consequently, the liberal elite favoured a solution to the ‘foreigners question’ which appears, again, revolutionary when seen through contemporary eyes: the introduction of the ius soli according to the French model invented a few decades before. The ius soli was not seen as a right granted to foreigners, but as a duty imposed on them. That ‘assimilation’ was used almost synonymously with ‘naturalisation’ (e.g. in Addor 1913) shows that in the eyes of the liberal elite, Switzerland did not yet represent a national community based on a shared culture and history. Such an ethnicised version of the nationalist compromise was yet to be developed, as has already been seen in previous sections. Rather, ‘assimilation’ meant being part of the community of citizens, and not a process of becoming similar in terms of language, culture and customs, as from the thirties onwards. After lengthy parliamentary debates, party negotiations, and after having taken note of several expert reports, the Federal Council finally presented a reformed citizenship law in 1914. The subsequent debates showed that the issue of double citizenship – with all the international complications that this might entail with regard to military service – was at the centre of public concern; but the question of support for the poor was also discussed. The urban cantons, especially, feared that the introduction of ius soli would imply rising welfare burdens for their communes. A revision of the constitution in 1903 had made the introduction of the territorial principle of citizenship at cantonal level possible, but not one of the twenty-five cantons had made use of it. Several proposals for solving the issue of public assistance were discussed in order to get the cantons on board for a reform. For example, the introduction of a genuine national citizenship status and, correspondingly, a centralisation of welfare systems; subsidising local and cantonal funds for the poor with federal money etc. However, these and other proposals were quickly forgotten when the First World War broke out, and there was never a popular vote on the issue. It is perhaps time to summarise the situation before the Great War and to give a more coherent interpretation of the different developments and their relationships to each other. I have shown that the process of closure along national lines had already involved the legal domain with


255

the advance of a national citizenship guaranteeing equality before the law, freedom of movement within the national territory and freedom of profession, trade and speech for those who belonged to the Swiss nation. It also encompassed politics with the notion of national sovereignty and the rule of Swiss over Swiss being firmly established – the last element of ‘foreign’, i.e. Prussian, rule overcome by the ‘revolution’ in the canton of Neuchâtel in 1848. With the prohibition of the once thriving mercenary business (in 1815) and the introduction of a genuinely national army under a unified command in 1848, closure along military lines had been completed as well. Closure had not yet reached the economic and social domains though. The systems of social solidarity remained tied to the pre-modern institution of the commune; the cultural compromise was still a ‘thin nationalism’, centring around republican and liberal patriotic ideas and only very weakly associated with notions of cultural essence, durability, historical inevitability etc. At this point in the process of nationalising state and society, the first waves of mass immigration – a consequence of the almost complete economic openness and integration into a globalised capitalist system – were not perceived as a problem for ‘national identity’ or as illegitimate competition on the labour market. Rather, debates centred around the political and military implications of immigration – the fact that large parts of the population did not belong to the citizenry and were therefore seen as unreliable companions in times of conflict and war.28 Accordingly, modifying citizenship laws was perceived as the most adequate solution to the ‘foreigners problem’. As soon as the population of Switzerland and its citizenry could be brought into congruence through ‘forced assimilation’, this problem would disappear by itself. The idea of limiting or controlling immigration was never even discussed.

Welfare state and aliens police (1914 to 1949) This changed immediately after the outbreak of the war. With the first tanks moving over national borders, the policy of laissez-faire towards international migration collapsed (Niederberger 1982; Garrido 1987; Mahnig 1991, chs. 2 and 3; Hoffmann-Nowotny and Killias 1993). Because of the call to arms of the surrounding states, the foreign population in Switzerland shrank considerably. The bilateral treaties were no longer respected and most of them were renounced by the end of the decade (Arlettaz 1988). Basing its action on martial law, the federal 28

For a similar argument with regard to Prussia, see Bommes (1994).

256


government introduced central control over immigration and residence matters hitherto left to cantonal discretion – almost at the same time that France and the Netherlands developed a centralised system of migration control (Caestecker 1995). Granting an immigration or a permanent residence permit was now made dependent on the ‘absorption capacities’ of the country as well as on the characteristics of the potential immigrant (cf. Ruth 1934). The right of settlement was replaced with the right of the newly founded ‘Central Office for Foreigners Police’ to give or to withhold a permit at its discretion. The martial law provisions were introduced in order to prevent saboteurs, spies, deserters and refugees from flooding Switzerland and destabilising the bourgeois political regime – as was especially feared in the case of Russian refugees inspired by or even hired by the Bolsheviks (Arlettaz 1988). However, these new rules were not yet meant to protect the Swiss nation from foreign dominance, since the republican model of Swiss nationality still prevailed and an ethnicised version of the national compromise was yet to be developed. The first popular initiative in the domain of immigration, rejected in a vote in 1919, still saw the immigration issue as a problem of political loyalty. It demanded provisions facilitating the expulsion and preventing the naturalisation of politically ‘dangerous’ immigrants, but still foresaw the introduction of ius soli for aliens born in Switzerland (Garrido 1987, ch. 2). Martial law was legitimated ex post by a new constitutional article, adopted by popular vote in 1925, which declared matters of immigration a domain of federal politics. In 1931 the corresponding law was passed in parliament and has only been slightly modified since. The law introduced a direct link between a work permit and an immigration permit. It no longer entailed any claim to an immigration or residence permit,29 or to free choice of profession and place of residence,30 as it used to under 29

The current version of the Bundesgesetz vom 26. März 1931 uber ¨ Aufenthalt und Niederlassung der Ausländer (ANAG) states in article 4: The authorities decide within the framework of the legal regulations and contracts with foreign countries at their discretion about the authorisation of a stay or permanent residence . . . (My translation) Article 5 then continues with another central statement: The residence permit is always limited; the first period should as a rule not last more than a year. The permit can be made conditional upon certain requirements. (My translation)

30

Article 8 of the current version of the Bundesgesetz vom 26. März 1931 uber ¨ Aufenthalt und Niederlassung der Ausländer (ANAG) states: The residence or permanent residence permit . . . is only valid in the canton that has issued it. The alien is however entitled, without having to register, to stay


257

the bilateral treaties. The ‘spiritual and economic interests as well as the ¨ degree of “overforeignisation” (Uberfremdung) of the country’ now determined, according to the law, the granting, extension and withdrawal of such permits.31 The term ‘overforeignisation’ still had, as when it first appeared in 1910, a predominantly political connotation: it expressed the fear of political instability, greatly encouraged by the events of the war and the tensions among the French-, German- and Italian-speaking parts of the population that had emerged. The law was meant to hinder pan-German, pan-French and pan-Italian activists, supported by their respective countries, or socialist groups challenging bourgeois dominance, entering the country. Besides strict immigration controls, the new law also introduced national closure on the labour market by establishing, for the first time since the foundation of the modern state, a legal distinction between aliens and citizens in the economic domain. Only the latter had the right of free choice of profession and employer. A good impression of the obstacles an immigrant now had to overcome is given by a regulation of 1949 (still valid today) that specifies the conditions for allowing a foreigner to change his job: Aliens who wish to perform a different task than the one for which a permit has been issued, for example handyman on a building site instead of bricklayer, carpenter instead of cabinetmaker, waitress instead of domestic servant, painter instead of interior decorator etc., need another authorisation just as when, without changing their profession, they take on with a certain regularity a second job of a different nature, for example when a domestic servant helps out in a public house by serving, a carpenter paints, a ladies’ hairdresser also works as a barber. Aliens working as employees also need a new authorisation when they start working without a contract, that is when they want to become self-employed. (Vollziehungsverordnung zum Bundesgesetz uber ¨ Aufenthalt und Niederlassung der Ausländer (ANAV) vom März 1949, article 3, my translation)

Both the nationalisation of the regime of mobility and national closure on the labour market32 went hand in hand with the integration of the temporarily in another canton and to be gainfully employed there, providing that there is no transfer of the focus of this work. Should the residence in another canton not be only temporary or should the main focus of this gainful employment be transferred, the permission of the canton concerned must be sought. When the canton does not wish the presence of an alien on its territory, it can apply to the federal authorities for the withdrawal of the residence permit. The canton that issued this must be consulted before the decision. (My translation) 31 32

Bundesgesetz vom 26. März 1931 uber ¨ Aufenthalt und Niederlassung der Ausländer (ANAG), article 16, paragraph 1. At the same time closure proceeded in other economic domains. In 1919 a new law concerning stock-owning companies was passed, prescribing that a majority of

258


working class and its political parties into the ruling compromise. The institutional consequence of this incorporation was the development of a national welfare state (the following draws on Puttner 1983). While a general insurance against illness and accident was introduced to the constitution in 1890, following the Bismarckian model, the corresponding laws were passed in 1914 and 1918. During 1917 the federal government introduced a charity for the unemployed, which granted modest support in cases of hardship. From 1919 onwards, the federal government subsidised already existing funds for the unemployed run by trade unions or private organisations. Five years later, a law legitimising this practice was passed. It foresaw that 40 per cent of these funds should be from federal sources (ibid.: 197ff.). From 1930 onwards, in the middle of the world economic crisis, the central government resumed direct support for the unemployed, but also financed cantonal welfare funds.33 In the domain of retirement insurance and insurances for widows and orphans too, the foundations for a modern welfare state were laid after the First World War by a constitutional article of 1925, with a corresponding law in 1947. It prescribed obligatory membership of the combined ‘retirement and surviving dependent insurance’ (Alters- und Hinterbliebenenversicherung, or AHV) and a fixed retirement pension that would guarantee a minimal standard of living. The institution was seen by its creators as a ‘work of concord among the various political religious and economic currents’ of the country, as a federal councillor had expressed it after the war (note the absence of ethno-linguistic diversity in this list of political schisms). This step-by-step development of a national welfare regime was the consequence of the political pressures exercised by the labour movement, which gradually gained political power and was finally integrated into the political regime: 1919 brought, with the introduction of proportional representation, the end of bourgeois dominance in the parliament; in 1937 there was the peace agreement between labour unions and employers’ associations; and, soon after, the public commitment of the socialist party to the doctrine of armed neutrality. During the Second World War, the first socialist councillor swore his oath to the constitution. The political inclusion of the working class went hand in hand, as we saw, with the development of an ethnicised version of the nationalist

33

shareholders should be Swiss citizens in order to effectively limit what was now perceived as ‘economic overforeignisation’. In general, the state’s capacity to regulate economic processes expanded enormously, and the hitherto free flow of goods across national borders had to overcome ever higher walls of customs and taxes. Until 1982, however, it was up to the cantons to introduce compulsory insurance against unemployment. Around half of the cantons had done this up to 1933.


259

compromise expressed in the programme of the ‘spiritual defence of the country’ during the Second World War. From now on, ‘overforeignisation’ no longer implied a problem of political loyalty towards the Swiss state. Rather, it meant cultural estrangement due to the intrusion of ‘too many’ immigrants, intoxicating the national body with ‘too much’ ethnic difference, and cutting the historic thread that linked the foundation of the Federation by Tell with the traditions of the present. Within this climate, closing borders to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany was not only legitimised by the fear of provoking the all-mighty neighbour to the north; it was also an attempt by the competent authorities, especially the aliens police, at avoiding what they perceived as the danger of cultural-religious mixture and increasing heterogeneity (cf. Picard 1994; Unabhängige Expertenkommission 1999). Characteristically, caring for refugees was not yet considered a duty of the central state – quite the contrary: the refugees from all over Europe were taken care of by Catholic, Jewish and Protestant charity organisations. Sending refugees who were persecuted on grounds of religious background back over the border and having those taken in cared for by private organisations was in accordance with the international refugee laws of the time (Kälin 1999). On the other hand, this practice is also explained by the decline of republican, liberal understandings of Swiss nationhood and the ethnicisation of notions of belonging and identity – which had not existed when Switzerland was still the haven of refugees from all over Europe after the failure of different liberal-bourgeois revolutions in the second half of the nineteenth century. To sum up: the political, legal and military closure of pre-war society was gradually reinforced and complemented by closure and exclusion in the domains of the labour market and, especially, of social solidarity. This process went hand in hand with a new thrust of integration within, which culminated in the political integration of the labour movement and the development of a national welfare state, while the nationalist compromise now centred around a culturally thick, ethnicised concept of the nation. Integration within meant closure against the outside world, a redrawing of the lines of inclusion and exclusion along national lines. Now entry to and settling in the national territory were subject to strict control by the central state. Free movement within, as well as from and to, the national space became reserved for those belonging to the national community. Such nationalisation of the regime of mobility followed from the logic of inclusion and exclusion, and not, as one might think, from an increased ‘migration pressure’ to which the state had to react: the proportion of resident aliens fell continuously after the outbreak of the First World

260


War – largely due to military conscription and a declining labour market – and reached a level as low as 5 per cent before the Second World War. At the end of this process of integration and closure we find the fully developed model of the nation-state, as described in chapter 3. During the first two decades after the Second World War it flourished into a sort of Swiss Fordism. The notion of a special destiny and vocation developed in the late thirties was combined with the anti-communism of the Cold War (Imhof 1994); the new welfare institutions modelled after the Beveridge Plan were supported by, and in turn supported, the dramatic upswing of the export-oriented industries and the service sector; the expansion of mass consumption gave new legitimacy to old patterns of social inequality (cf. Bornschier 1988). The guest-worker model (1948 to 1963) How did this society, cast into a clearly delineated national container, react to the mass immigration of the postwar era? Switzerland’s migration history precedes the patterns followed by other European countries by more or less a decade. This is because Switzerland was not touched by the devastation and destruction of the war, and because there were no immigrants from colonies, such as in the UK or Holland, or refugees expelled after the war, such as in Germany. As early as 1948 the federal government, facing an acute shortage of labour, concluded a bilateral treaty regulating the recruitment of immigrant workers from Italy. The terms of the treaty defined the Swiss version of the postwar guest-worker system. It guaranteed equal salaries and equal working conditions, but made family reunification almost impossible; it excluded immigrants from unemployment and retirement insurances; and it made a change of employer conditional on approval from the competent authorities. How were these forms of discrimination justified? On the one hand, the emerging guest-worker regime conformed to the notion that young Italians did not pursue an emigration project in the true sense of the word, but would only work north of the Alps until they had saved enough, for example, to finance a wedding party; the immigrant workforce would thus have to be continuously replaced (the so-called rotation model) (Haug 1980: 50f., 68f.). On the other hand, and more importantly, postwar immigration policy was the result of a political compromise with the trade unions. They would only sign agreements with the employers’ organisations when job and salary competition with immigrant workers could be excluded by guaranteeing equal conditions at the workplace and equal salaries (Niederberger 1982). They also very much favoured the idea of non-permanent immigration, because they feared that otherwise it would be impossible to reserve jobs for resident


261

labourers and that the welfare system would be overburdened in times of economic crisis. Immigrant labour should thus serve as an economic buffer on the labour market and not swell the ranks of the permanent labour force (cf. Riedo 1976; Niederberger 1982, sect. 2.2; Mahnig 1991: 29ff.; Misteli 1996). Up to 1963, immigration from Southern Europe was largely market regulated and de facto not subject to any quantitative limitations imposed by the federal government. Inclusion on the labour market was complemented by exclusion from most domains of the welfare state.34 The political pre-condition for such an arrangement was the strict control of the immigrated workforce: their professional and geographical mobility was severely restricted, their permanent settlement largely inhibited, and the recruitment of new labourers according to the rotation principle enhanced by bilateral treaties and state-supported recruitment agencies (cf. Hoffmann-Nowotny 1985). The administration and control of the immigrant workforce and its segregation into certain sectors of the economy demanded a specialised bureaucracy, since the proportion of alien residents rose from 5 per cent at the beginning of the Second World War to over 14 per cent in the mid sixties. At the beginning, critiques of this model were largely of an economic nature. The boom-and-bust period and especially the economic overheating of the late fifties and early sixties were explained by the unrestricted importing of labour. But the sending countries also started to criticise the labour conditions of their citizens abroad. A public speech in Switzerland by the Italian foreign minister, in which he encouraged his fellow countrymen to resist bad working and housing conditions, had caused considerable public controversy and was mostly perceived as unfounded and scandalous. Social closure along national lines was by now so firmly entrenched in everyday perceptions, in routines of thinking and acting, that reserving badly paid, dirty and dangerous jobs, as well as the worst housing barracks, for those not belonging to the national community seemed to be perfectly legitimate and ‘normal’. It was equally evident that these ‘guests’ of Mother Helvetia should be excluded from the welfare system, which was meant to protect only her children. Opening the welfare state – limiting immigration (1963 onwards) However, the growing competition between different Northern European countries for labourers from the South finally forced Swiss authorities to 34

According to Freeman (1986), the demand for immigrant labour became even stronger as resident labour became more expensive with the development of the welfare state. The immigration of workers excluded from the welfare regime and the integration of resident workers into this regime thus affected each other.

262


conclude a new treaty with Italy in 1963. It marked the end of the guestworker model and the introduction of an immigration regime that allows for an improvement of the status of an immigrant worker by a series of legal steps, leading eventually to a permanent residence permit: after eighteen months, families were allowed to join seasonal workers; after five years of seasonal work the free choice of a profession within the framework of a year-round permit was granted; and after another five years in this category, finally, permanent residence was granted which included free choice of canton of residence, of profession and of economic sector of activity. Parallel to the treaty, a new agreement with regard to social insurance was concluded.35 It put immigrants on an equal footing with citizens in respect of retirement and health insurance (cf. Meyer 1990), and, after five years of work (i.e. after having been granted a year-round work permit), in respect of unemployment insurance (Breinig 1990: 50ff.). Integration into the economic system was thus complemented by a partial integration into other domains of the nationally framed society. Immigrants had become part of the citizenry in so far as they were granted the fundamental rights of free choice of profession and place of residence, of a family life and of leaving and re-entering the country. They became part of the national community of solidarity thanks to their integration into the welfare system. Following the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion, this partial integration went hand in hand with a further restriction of access to the national territory. A very tight system of state-controlled immigration quotas was gradually put into place. While the agreement with Italy was still under negotiation, the trade unions pressured for a limitation on the number of workers per enterprise, independent of their citizenship, and the administration conformed to their demands (Misteli 1996). Thus, the main purpose of this measure was cooling the overheated economy. The same motivation was behind the regulations introduced when the treaty with Italy was finally signed: the so-called ‘double ceiling’, stabilising and then continuously reducing the number of non-Swiss workers per economic unit (Niederer 1967). For a large majority of the Swiss working class, however, this economic policy did not address the central issue, as in their eyes the treaty with Italy violated the national pact of solidarity, which was being enlarged and deepened precisely during these years: in 1960 an insurance against invalidity was inaugurated; in 1964 the law on medical insurance was revised and the cover considerably enlarged; from 1965 onwards a 35

The agreement is referred to as RO 1964 730 in the Swiss collection of legal documents.


263

supplementary retirement insurance was introduced that would prevent even the poorest pensioners having to look for support from communal welfare institutions (Tschudi 1989). Opening up this national community of solidarity for immigrant workers seemed to be scandalous in the eyes of those who were the latest to join the nationalist compromise and who had given up the internationalist, anti-national programme in exchange for full membership of a national community. In addition, and probably more importantly, the ‘double ceiling’ system had not prevented the percentage of alien residents from continuously rising. The treaty with Italy would, it was supposed, further aggravate the situation since it allowed for family unification and for permanent settlement of the immigration population. Both would worsen the situation on the housing market (Riedo 1976: 210f.) where there was, at the time, a serious shortage of cheap apartments. These perceptions together led to a severe crisis of trust between the government and large sections of the working class that thought that cheap housing was a privilege to be reserved to members of the national community. The opposition to the treaty first developed among the local sections of labour unions. When union leaders and the Social Democratic Party decided, after initial hesitations, to defend the international solidarity of workers, the opposition was taken up by xenophobic movements and newly founded parties that quickly came to dominate the agenda of public debates. Economic policy and labour market policy arguments became more and more intertwined with xenophobic and racist views. A detailed analysis of the discourse of these movements (Windisch 1978: 165–88) shows that their view of the social world represents a radicalisation and sharpening of the nationalist outlook that had developed in the Second World War period under the catchphrase of the ‘spiritual defence’. As is the case with other xenophobic parties and movements (and as discussed in the preceding chapter), those sections of the population most in danger of losing social status during processes of economic modernisation found this view of the social world most meaningful. An analysis of voting patterns reveals that during the sixties this was especially the case for the well-established class of skilled workers (Braun 1970: 340–51, 379–85). In contrast to other European countries, Swiss xenophobic political movements had considerable influence on Switzerland’s immigration policy, because they could make use of the devices of direct democracy. This explains why the turn towards a restrictive policy came, in the case of Switzerland, even before the economic crisis of the seventies (Mahnig 1995). As early as 1964, in the middle of the economic boom with rising wages and full employment, a true cascade of popular initiatives was

264


launched that would have forced the authorities massively to reduce the stream of immigration or even withdraw the residence permits of immigrants already established in the country (Misteli and Gisler 1995, ch. 2). All popular votes turned out against the initiatives and in favour of immigrants, but the first one had such a narrow majority that the federal government was under considerable pressure to reorient its policy in a more restrictive direction. The right-wing parties, however, were not the only ones presenting an alternative to the dominant interpretation of the nationalist compromise. The New Left of 68 equally distanced itself from what I called a Swiss version of Fordism and from the petit-bourgeois culture of hard work and mass consumption associated with it (the car-fridge-cans-TV complex of the fifties and sixties). The general social crisis – typical of times when the social contract breaks down and the cultural compromise dissolves in a variety of diverging interpretations and counter-projects – contributed to a sense of confusion and helplessness among the political elite. With regard to the immigration issue, the federal government feared losing the battle against a second xenophobic initiative and reacted ahead of the voting day by introducing, in 1970, a centralised regime of migration control through a system of annually fixed quotas. It is rather bluntly called the Regulation on the Limitation of the Number of Aliens and represents the main mechanism for migration management in Switzerland. It is, to this day, renewed every year in a process of negotiation between cantons, the federal government, employers’ organisation and trade unions. It fixed a quota for newly issued immigration permits and introduced a strict system of approval by federal and cantonal authorities. Only when it was shown that no Swiss citizen or resident immigrant was available for a job would the employer’s application to hire a new immigrant be approved. The new regulation thus marked a final step in the development of a tight regime of migration control. The first step had been the centralisation of the system of granting permits and the abolition of the free migration regime (1917). In a second step, residence permits had been tied to working permits and the granting of both was made dependent on the interests of the nation (1931). As a last and final step, a tight quota system was introduced and discrimination between new immigrants and established residents on the labour market institutionalised (1970). These policy instruments allowed the federal government to regulate the economic crisis of 1974 and the following years without risking full employment for the resident population: seasonal and year-round permits were simply less applied for or not renewed (Schwarz 1988). Since there was, at that time, no obligatory insurance against unemployment, tens of


265

thousands of immigrant workers had to go back from where they came because their residence permits were tied to their work permits. The ensuing reduction of the per centage of foreign residents – which had become, under the influence of the xenophobic movements, the mantra of official declarations on immigration policy – contributed to a more relaxed atmosphere. The ‘problem of the foreigners’ receded from the political scenery for some time, only to flare up again now and then. In the late eighties, when immigration streams swelled again, like everywhere else in Europe mainly because of family reunification, and when the number of asylum-seekers rose dramatically, immigration was again scandalised. This time, the new arrivals represented a considerable cost factor for the welfare system. They were no longer, as had been the case for immigrant workers of previous decades (see the study of Weber 1993), net contributors to the Swiss welfare system. The relation between inclusion through the welfare state and the control and restriction of immigration becomes obvious. However, it should have become clear that the costs and benefits of immigration for the welfare institutions are not the mechanism linking immigration control with the welfare state. The logic is of a rather more complex nature: including more and more sections of the resident population through welfare mechanisms enforces exclusion of all those not belonging to this national community from access to the state’s territory, now transformed into a space of obligatory solidarity, and from free choice of profession and place of residence. Being an immigrant in Switzerland in the sixties and seventies or an asylum-seeker in the late eighties and nineties was not a very comfortable experience – homologous to the situation of Kurds in Iraq and of Indians in Mexico. They were clearly shown which place was theirs in Swiss society: the one at the bottom, in which they should keep quiet while the citizens argue in public whether or not to throw them out of the country, how many should be sent back to where they belonged, or whether there were better solutions to the ‘foreigner problem’ or the ‘asylum problem’. Pressures for assimilation were still enormous in the sixties and seventies, but complete assimilation could turn out to be even more disadvantageous than showing the obvious signs of a second-class resident such as the typical pidgin German spoken by Italian construction workers. Many older immigrants from Germany, probably the ‘best assimilated’ owing to language proximity, can count stories of overt discrimination, of conversations at the neighbourhood bakery interrupted on their entry, of slashed car tyres, of disgusted faces when addressing somebody in standard German instead of the local dialect.

266


Conclusion I have distinguished between different phases of integrating the population into the frameworks of a fully nationalised state. The granting of social rights through the welfare state represents the last step, after equality before the law, political participation and economic liberties were institutionalised for the citizens of the nation-state. Every step of inclusion, however, was paralleled by new forms of exclusion along national lines. The last step in this story, the establishment of the welfare state, was bound up with the expulsion of immigrants and foreigners from the national community. During the first sixty years after the foundation of the modern state, there had been de facto almost no discrimination against foreigners with regard to sojourn, permanent settlement, economic activity and social welfare. The migration regime evolving after the First World War gradually abolished these rights, by first introducing residence and entry permits (1917), by then linking these to a job offer (1931), by limiting the number of immigrants per enterprise (1964) and finally by establishing a global immigration quota and by legally prescribing discrimination against immigrants on the labour market (1970). How is this development linked to the evolution of the welfare state and to the integration of the working class into the nationalist compromise? Let me briefly restate the main argument. Before the First World War, social closure was confined to the legal, political and military domains and had not yet reached economic and social rights. Systems of social security remained decentralised and tied to the institution of the commune. Mass immigration was not restricted or controlled, immigrants enjoyed the same status as nationals except for political rights and military duties. Accordingly, the ‘foreigners question’ referred to the incongruence between resident population and sovereign. Solutions were sought in easing access to citizenship. This liberal and republican mode of integration was transformed after the outbreak of the war, when the first steps of economic closure were undertaken and the systems of social security nationalised. This proceeded in parallel to the political integration of the labour movement, the gradual construction of a welfare state and the ethnicisation of the nationalist compromise, which was now portraying the nation as an extended family of common culture and descent, bound together by obligations of solidarity and mutual support. This thrust for integration went hand in hand with the nationalisation of the regime of mobility and the fall of immigrants to the status of tolerated foreigners. The universal rights to immigration and settlement were abolished, the newly introduced permits made conditional upon a job offer and so on. At the end of this


267

process of integration and closure stands the fully developed model of the nation-state. This nationally framed society can no longer react to the mass immigration of the postwar period with the liberalism and laissez-faire of the nineteenth century. While the number of immigrants is still determined by market forces, this is now complemented by relegating immigrants to the status of ‘denizens’. They are deprived of the rights to free choice of profession and place of residence, to a family life, to social security, and confined to the least attractive sectors of the labour and housing markets. This guest-worker model becomes impracticable, mainly because of international pressures and competition for immigrant workers. When a partial inclusion of immigrants into the established community of citizens becomes necessary, the entrance doors to the common house are closed. The more rights immigrants are granted – of living with their families, of benefiting from social security, of establishing themselves permanently on national territory and slowly escaping the strict regime of supervision and control – the more restrictive and exclusionist becomes the immigration regime. This process of closure along national lines went almost unobserved by most theories of modernity, as we have seen in chapter 3. Even Marshall’s (1992) ground-breaking analysis of modern citizenship overlooks this aspect (cf. Yuval-Davis 1992). In his paper of 1949, later published as Citizenship and Social Class, he shows how equality before the law, economic rights, political rights and finally social rights are integrated into a coherent model of citizenship. He never mentions that the great majority of humankind remains excluded from this citizenship regime in the great majority of states – in all except the one ‘they belong to’ by virtue of their nationality. Naturalisation is possible, evidently enough, but even in the immigration countries of the New World it is a painful rite de passage, supervised and controlled by a suspicious bureaucratic apparatus. It is this dimension of closure and exclusion, of the formation of modern communities amidst functionally differentiated modern societies that I wanted to bring to the forefront. The example of Switzerland shows that this is not only an ideologically driven process, a deplorable consequence of ‘bad and backward’ nationalism as opposed to good, modern liberalism (cf. Nodia 1992). Even in one of the most republican, least ethnic, most democratic, least authoritarian state-building experiences of the world, based on a strong, trans-ethnically organised civil society, the three notions of peoplehood – citizenry, sovereign and nation – were gradually fused into one single people writ large. Jews, travelling people, foreigners and others not ‘truly’ Swiss came to be placed on the lower rungs of a newly established hierarchy.

268


Such processes of exclusion are structurally homologous to those directed against ethnic minorities in cases such as Mexico and Iraq. Switzerland’s ‘alien residents’ (currently one-fifth of the population), the ‘ethnic minorities’ of Iraq (about 80 per cent non Sunni Arab) and Mexico’s indigenous peoples (approximately 10 per cent) share the same destiny: of being excluded from the promises of the modern age, from protection from arbitrary violence, equality before the law, economic liberty, political participation and social security. They experience the central paradox of modernity: inclusion according to the universalist ideals of the Enlightenment was bound up with new forms of exclusion based on the principle of ethnicity and nationhood. It has been the central aim of this book to outline the inner logic linking modernisation with such closure along ethno-national lines. Hopefully, therefore, it has shed some light on this shadow side of modernity.

References

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. ‘The romance of resistance: tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women’, American Ethnologist 17: 41–55. 1991. ‘Writing against culture’, in Richard G. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Adams, Richard. 1967. ‘Nationalization’, in Manning Nash (ed.), Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. VI: Social Anthropology. Austin: University of Texas Press. Addor, G. 1913. ‘De l’assimilation des e´ trangers en Suisse’, Separat-Abdruck aus dem Schweizerischen Zentralblatt fur ¨ Staats- und Gemeindeverwaltung. Zurich: Orell Fussli. ¨ Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo. 1967. Regiones de refugio. Mexico: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. 1982 (1957). El proceso de aculturación. Mexico: La Casa Chata. 1989. La población negra de México. Un estudio etnohistórico. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Alba, Richard D. and John R. Logan. 1993. ‘Minority proximity to whites in suburbs: an individual-level analysis of segregation’, American Journal of Sociology 98(6): 1388–427. Albrow, Martin. 1996. The Global Age. State and Society beyond Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Steven Seidman (eds.). 1990. Culture and Society. Contemporary Debates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alonso, Ana Mar´ıa. 1988. ‘The effects of truth: re-presentations of the past and the imagining of community’, Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1): 33–57. 1994. ‘The politics of space, time and substance: state formation, nationalism, and ethnicity’, Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 379–405. ˚ Alund, Aleksandra. 1992. ‘Immigrantenkultur als Barriere der Kooperation’, in Institut fur ¨ Migrations- und Rassismusforschung (ed.), Rassismus und Migration in Europa. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. Anderson, Benedict. 1988. Die Erfindung der Nation. Zur Karriere eines folgenreichen Konzepts. Frankfurt: Campus. 1991 (1983). Imagined Communities, revised edn. London: Verso. Andreski, Stanislav. 1968. Military Organization and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

269

270

References

Andrey, Georges. 1986. ‘Auf der Suche nach dem neuen Staat (1798–1848)’, in Ulrich Im Hof et al. (eds.), Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. Anonymous. 1989. ‘Ethnicity and pseudo-ethnicity in the Ciskei’, in Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London: Currey. Anthias, Floya and Nira Yuval-Davis. 1992. Racialized Boundaries. Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Antiracist Struggle. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Archer, Margaret. 1988. Culture and Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Argueta, Arturo and Arturo Warman. 1993. Movimientos ind´ıgenas contemporáneos en México. Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Humanidades (UNAM). Argyle, W. J. 1969. ‘European nationalism and African tribalism’, in Philip H. Gulliver (ed.), Tradition and Transition in East Africa: Studies of the Tribal Element in the Modern Era. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Arizpe, Lourdes. 1978. Migración, etnicismo y cambio económico. Mexico: El Colegio de México. Arlettaz, Gérard. 1988. ‘Les effets de la Première Guerre mondiale sur l’intégration des e´ trangers en Suisse’, Relations Internationales 54: 161–79. Armstrong, John. 1982. Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Asad, Talal. 1979. ‘Anthropology and the analysis of ideology’, Man 14: 607–27. Atlas Naradow Mira. 1964. Atlas Naradow Mira. Moscow: Glavnoe upravlenie geodezii i kartografii pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR. Atran, Scott. 1990. ‘Stones against the iron fist, terror within the nation: alternating structures of violence and cultural identity in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’, Political Sociology 18(4): 481–526. Bade, Klaus J. 1980. ‘Masseneinwanderung und Arbeitsmarkt im deutschen Nordosten von 1880 bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 20: 265–323. Bailey, Fredrick G. 1969. Strategems and Spoils. A Social Anthropology of Politics. London: Basil Blackwell. Balibar, Etienne. 1988. ‘Racisme et nationalisme’, in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (eds.), Race, nation, classe. Les identités amiguës. Paris: Editions la Découverte. Ballestrem, Karl Graf. 1986. ‘Die Idee des impliziten Gesellschaftsvertrages’, in Lucien Kern and Hans-Peter Muller ¨ (eds.), Gerechtigkeit, Diskurs oder Markt? Die neuen Ansätze in der Vertragstheorie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Banton, Michael. 1983. Racial and Ethnic Competition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994. ‘Modelling ethnic and national relations’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 17(1): 1–19. Barlett, Peggy F. 1980. ‘Adaptive strategies in peasant agricultural production’, Annual Review of Anthropology 9: 545–73.

References

271

Barre, Marie-Chantal. 1983. Ideolog´ıas indigenistas y movimientos indios. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno. Barth, Frederik. 1953. Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan. Universitets Ethnografiske Museum Bulletin 7 (Oslo). 1969. ‘Introduction’, in Frederik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. London: Allen & Unwin. 1989. ‘The analysis of culture in complex societies’, Ethnos 3–4: 120–42. 1995. ‘Other knowledge and other ways of knowing’, Journal of Anthropological Research 51: 65–8. Bartra, Roger. 1987. La jaula de la melancol´ıa. Identidad y metamorfosis del mexicano. Mexico: Editorial Grijalbo. Batatu, Hanna. 1978. The Old Social Classes and Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes, and of its Communists, Ba’athists and Free Officers. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1981. ‘Some observations on the social roots of Syria’s ruling, military group and the causes of its dominance’, Middle East Journal 35(3): 331–2. Bates, Robert. 1974. ‘Ethnic competition and modernization in contemporary Africa’, Comparative Political Studies 6: 457–84. 1999. ‘Ethnicity, capital formation, and conflict’, working paper 27, Center for International Development, Harvard University. Baumann, Gerd. 1996. Contesting Culture. Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beals, Ralph L. 1967. ‘Acculturation’, in Manning Nash (ed.), Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. VI: Social Anthropology. Austin: University of Texas Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1997. Was ist Globalisierung? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 2000. ‘The cosmopolitan perspective: sociology of the second age of modernity’, British Journal of Sociology 51(1): 79–105. Becker, Horst. 1993. ‘Einstellungen zu Ausländern in der Bevolkerung ¨ der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Bernhard Blanke (ed.), Zuwanderung und Asyl in der Konkurrenzgesellschaft. Opladen: Leske and Budrich. Behrendt, Gunter. ¨ 1993. Nationalismus in Kurdistan. Vorgeschichte, Entstehungsbedingungen und erste Manifestationen bis 1925. Hamburg: Schriften des Deutschen Orient-Instituts. Bélanger, Sarah and Maurice Pinard. 1991. ‘Ethnic movements and the competition model: some missing links’, American Sociological Review 56: 446–57. Bellah, Robert N. et al. 1992 (1985). Habits of the Heart. Individualism and Commitment in American Life. New York: Harper & Row. Bendix, Regina. 1992. ‘National sentiment in the enactment and discourse of Swiss political ritual’, American Ethnologist 19: 768–90. Bendix, Reinhard. 1979. Kings to People: Power and the Mandate to Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bentley, Carter. 1983. ‘Theoretical perspectives on ethnicity and nationality’, Sage Race Relations Abstracts 8(2): 1–53; 8(3): 1–26. 1987. ‘Ethnicity and practice’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 29(1): 24–55.

272

References

Berlin, Isaiah. 1998. ‘Nationalism: past neglect, present power’, in Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (eds.), Isaiah Berlin. The Proper Study of Mankind. An Anthology of Essays. London: Pimlico. Berman, Sheri. 1997. ‘Civil society and the collapse of the Weimar republic’, World Politics 49: 401–29. Betz, Hans-Georg. 1991. ‘Radikal rechtspopulistische Parteien in Westeuropa’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 44: 3–14. Bhattacharjee, Sambhuti Ranjan. 1989. Tribal Insurgency in Tripura: A Study in Exploration of Causes. New Delhi: Inter-India. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Birch, Anthony. 1978. ‘Minority nationalist movements and theories of political integration’, World Politics 30(3): 325–44. Bjorklund, ¨ Ulf. 1987. ‘Ethnicity and the welfare state’, International Social Science Journal 111: 19–30. Black, Anthony. 1988. State, Community and Human Desire. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Bloch, Maurice (ed.). 1975. Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society. London: Seminar Press. Bloch, Maurice. 1985. ‘From cognition to ideology’, in Richard Fardon (ed.), Power and Knowledge. Anthropological and Sociological Approaches. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. 1991. ‘Language, anthropology and cognitive science’, Man 26: 183–98. 1993. ‘Time, narrative and the diversity of ways of knowing the past’, paper given at the Decennial Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists (Oxford). Boissevain, Jeremy et al. 1990. ‘Ethnic entrepreneurs and ethnic strategies’, in Roger Waldinger et al. (eds.), Ethnic Entrepreneurs. Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies. Newbury Park: Sage. Bommes, Michael. 1994. ‘Migration und Ethnizität im nationalen Sozialstaat’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 23: 356–77. Bommes, Michael and Jurgen ¨ Halfmann. 1994. ‘Migration und Inklusion. Spannungen zwischen Nationalstaat und Wohlfahrtsstaat’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 46(3): 406–24. Bonacich, Edna. 1973. ‘A theory of middleman minorities’, American Sociological Review 38: 583–94. 1974. ‘A theory of ethnic antagonism: The split labor market’, American Sociological Review 37: 547–59. Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo (ed.). 1981. Utop´ıa y revolución. Mexico: Editorial Nueva Imagen. Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo. 1982. ‘Die neuen indianischen Organisationen’, in E. Muller ¨ (ed.), Indianer in Lateinamerika: Neues Bewusstsein und Strategien der Befreiung. Wuppertal: Hammer. Borah, Woodrow. 1985. El Juzgado General de Indios en la Nueva España. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Borjas, George J. 1990. Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants on the U.S. Economy. New York: Basic Books. Bornschier, Volker. 1988. Westliche Gesellschaft im Wandel. Frankfurt: Campus.

References

273

Borofsky, Robert (ed.). 1994. Assessing Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bos, ¨ Mathias. 1997. Migration als Problem offener Gesellschaften. Globalisierung und sozialer Wandel in Westeuropa und Nordamerika. Opladen: Leske and Budrich. Boucher, Jerry, Dan Landis and Karen Clark (eds.). 1987. Ethnic Conflict. International Perspectives. Newbury Park: Sage. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1976. Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 1992. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. ´ 1993. ‘Esprits d’Etat. Genèse et structure du champ bureaucratique’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 96/7: 49–62. Bowman, Glen. 1994. ‘Xenophobia, fantasy and the nation: the logic of ethnic violence in former Yugoslavia’, in Victoria A. Goddard, Josep R. Llobera and Chris Shore (eds.), The Anthropology of Europe. Identities and Boundaries in Conflict. London: Berg. Bozarslan, Hamit. 1997. ‘Kurdistan: Kriegswirtschaft – Wirtschaft im Krieg’, in Carsten Borck, Eva Savelsberg and Siamend Hajo (eds.), Kurdologie. Ethnizität, Nationalismus, Religion und Politik in Kurdistan. Munster: Lit. Brading, David. 1985. The Origins of Mexican Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988. Mito y profec´ıa en la historia de México. Mexico: Editorial Vuelta. 1991. The First America. The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brand, Jack A. 1985. ‘Nationalism and the noncolonial periphery: a discussion of Scotland and Catalonia’, in Edward A. Tiryakian and Ronald Rogowski (eds.), New Nationalism of the Developed West. Toward Explanation. Boston: Allen & Unwin. Brass, Paul. 1979. ‘Elite groups, symbol manipulation and ethnic identity among the Muslims of South Asia’, in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (eds.), Political Identity in South Asia. London: Curzon Press. 1985. ‘Ethnic groups and the state,’ in Paul Brass (ed.), Ethnic Groups and the State. London: Croom Helm. 1991. Ethnicity and Nationalism. Theory and Comparison. New Delhi: Sage. Brass, Paul R. (ed.). 1996. Riots and Pogroms. New York: New York University Press. Bratton, Michael and Nicolas van de Walle. 1994. ‘Neopatrimonial regimes and political transitions in Africa’, World Politics 46: 453–89. Braude, Benjamin and Bernard Lewis (eds.). 1982. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Holmes and Meier. Braun, Rudolf. 1970. Sozio-kulturelle Probleme der Eingliederung italienischer Arbeitskräfte in der Schweiz. Zurich: Eugen Rentsch Verlag. Breining, Joachim. 1990. Arbeitslosenversicherung und Ausländerrecht. Eine Untersuchung der Rechtsstellung ausländischer Arbeitnehmer bei Arbeitslosigkeit. Zurich: Schulthess. Breuilly, John. 1993. Nationalism and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bricker Reifler, Victoria (ed.). 1975. ‘Intra-cultural variation’, American Ethnologist 2, Special Issue.

274

References

Brown, David. 1989. ‘The state of ethnicity and the ethnicity of the state: ethnic politics in Southeast Asia’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 12(1): 47–62. 1994. The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia. London: Routledge. Brubaker, Rogers. 1992. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1996. ‘Nationalizing states in the old “New Europe” – and the new’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 19(2): 411–37. 1998. ‘Myths and misconceptions in the study of nationalism,’ in John Hall (ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999. ‘The manichean myth: rethinking the distinction between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism’, in Hans-Peter Kriesi et al. (eds.), Nation and National Identity. Collective Identities and National Consciousness at the End of the 20 th Centur y. Chur: Ruegger. ¨ forthcoming. ‘Ethnicity without groups’, in Andreas Wimmer et al. (eds.), Facing Ethnic Conflicts: Towards a New Realism. Brubaker, Rogers and David D. Laitin. 1998. ‘Ethnic and nationalist violence’, Annual Review of Sociology 24: 423–52. Bruhmann, Christoph. 1999. ‘Writing for culture: why a successful concept should not be discarded’, Current Anthropology 40 (supplement): 1–13. Buchanan, James. 1965. ‘An economic theory of clubs’, Economica 32: 1–14. Bukow, Wolf-Dietrich. 1992. ‘Ethnisierung und nationale Identität’, in Institut fur ¨ Migrations- und Rassismusforschung (ed.), Rassismus und Migration in Europa. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. Burguière, André. 1990. ‘Historische Anthropologie’, in Jacques Le Goff, Roger Chartier and Jacques Revel (eds.), Die Rückeroberung des historischen Denkens. Grundlagen der neuen Geschichtswissenschaft. Frankfurt: Fischer. Burke, Peter. 1992a. History and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. 1992b (1990). ‘Historiker, Anthropologen und Symbole’, in Rebekka Habermas and Niels Minkmar (eds.), Das Schwein des Häuptlings. Beiträge zur historischen Anthropologie. Berlin: Wagenbach. Caestecker, Frank. 1995. ‘The changing modalities of regulation of international migration within continental Europe, 1870–1940’, unpublished paper for the workshop ‘Regulation of Migration’, Nijmegen University, 14–15 December. Calhoun, Craig. 1997. Nationalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Caplan, Pat (ed.). 1995. Understanding. The Politics of Arguments. Oxford: Berg. Carment, David. 1994. ‘The ethnic dimension in world politics: theory, policy and early warning’, Third World Quarterly 15(4): 551–82. Carrol, Patrick J. 1991. Blacks in Colonial Veracruz. Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development. Austin: University of Texas Press. Cassese, Antonio. 1995. Self-Determination of Peoples. A Legal Reappraisal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture, vol. II: The Power of Identity. Malden: Blackwell. Castles, Stephen. 1987. Migration und Rassismus in Westeuropa. Berlin: EXpress Edition.

References

275

1988. Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nationalism in Australia. Sydney: Pluto Press. 1994. ‘La sociologie et la peur de “cultures incompatibles”. Commentaires sur le rapport Hoffmann-Nowotny’, in Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp and Micheline Fontolliet Honoré (eds.), Europe: montrez patte blanche: les nouvelles frontières du ‘laboratoire Schengen’. Geneva: Centre Europe-Tiers Monde. Castner, Hartmut and Thilo Castner. 1992. ‘Ausländerfeindlichkeit bei Jugendlichen. Hilfe durch Kontakte und Begegnungen’, Das Parlament 51: 34–6. Centlivres, Pierre and Dominique Schnapper. 1991. ‘Nation et droit de la nationalité suisse’, Pouvoirs 56: 149–61. Chance, John K. 1978. Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 1986. Nationalist Discourse and the Colonial World. A Derivative Discourse? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments. Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1997. Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cohen, Abner. 1974. ‘The lesson of ethnicity’, in Abner Cohen (ed.), Urban Ethnicity. London: Tavistock. Cohen, Philip. 1991. ‘Wir hassen die Menschen, oder: Antirassismus und Antihumanismus’, in Uli Bielefeld (ed.), Das Eigene und das Fremde. Neuer Rassismus in der Alten Welt? Hamburg: Junius. Cohen, Ronald. 1978. ‘Ethnicity: problem and focus in anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 397–403. Colby, Benjamin N. and Pierre L. van den Berghe. 1961. ‘Ethnic relations in Southeastern Mexico’, American Anthropologist 63(4): 772–92. 1969. Ixil Country. A Plural Society in Highland Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cole, Jeffrey. 1997. The New Racism in Europe: A Sicilian Ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Congleton, Roger D. 1995. ‘Ethnic clubs, ethnic conflict, and the rise of ethnic nationalism’, in Albert Breton et al. (eds.), Nationalism and Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connor, Walker. 1990. ‘When is a nation?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 13(1): 92–100. 1994. Ethnonationalism. The Quest for Understanding. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Coon, Carleton S. 1961. Caravan. The Story of the Middle East. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Crapanzano, Vincent. 1986. ‘Hermes’ dilemma: the masking of subversion in ethnographic description’, in James Clifford and George Marcus (eds.),

276

References

Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cross, Gary. 1983. Immigrant Workers in Industrial France. The Making of a New Laboring Class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Dahl, Robert. 1989. Democracy and its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press. de Capitani, Fran¸cois. 1986. ‘Beharren und Umsturz (1648–1815)’, in Ulrich Im Hof et al. (eds.), Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. De Jong, Wiebe. 1989. ‘The development of inter-ethnic relations in an old district of Rotterdam between 1970 and 1985’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 12(2): 257–78. de la Pena, ˜ Guillermo. 1980. Heredores de promesas. Agricultura, pol´ıtica y ritual en los altos de Morelos. Mexico: La Casa Chata. de Swan, Abram. 1993. Der sorgende Staat. Wohlfahrt, Gesundheit und Bildung in Europa und den USA der Neuzeit. Frankfurt: Campus. de Tocqueville, Alexis. 1951 (1834). Oeuvres, papiers et correspondances. De la démocratie en Amerique, edited by J. P. Mayer. Paris: Gallimard. Dehouve, Danièle. 1990. Quand les banquiers e´taient des saints. 450 ans de l’histoire ´ ećonomique et sociale d’une province indienne du Mexique. Paris: Editions du Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. del Castillo, Gustavo. 1979. Crisis y transformación de una sociedad tradicional. Mexico: Ediciones de la Casa Chata. Denich, Bette. 1994. ‘Dismembering Yugoslavia: nationalist ideologies and the symbolic revival of genocide’, American Ethnologist 21(2): 367–90. Dermott, R. P. and Henry Tylbor. 1995. ‘The necessity of collusion in conversation’, in Dennis Tedlock and Bruce Mannheim (eds.), The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Deutsch, Karl W. 1976. Die Schweiz als ein paradigmatischer Fall politischer Integration. Berne: Haupt. 1985 (1966). ‘Nation und Welt’, in Heinrich August Winkler (ed.), Nationalismus. Konigstein: ¨ Athenäum. Deverre, Christian. 1980. Indiens ou paysans. Paris: Le Sycomore. DeWind, Josh, Charles Hirschman and Philip Kasinitz (eds.). 1997. ‘Immigrant adaptation and native-born responses in the making of Americans’, International Migration Review 31(120), Special Issue. Diamond, Larry. 1988. Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria. The Failure of the First Republic. New York: Syracuse University Press. D´ıaz D´ıaz, Fernando. 1972. Caudillos y Caciques. Mexico: El Colegio de México. D´ıaz-Polanco, Héctor. 1978. ‘Indigenismo, populismo y marxismo’, Nueva Antropolog´ıa 3(9): 7–32. D´ıaz-Polanco, Héctor. 1989. ‘Etnias y democracia nacional en América Latina’, América Ind´ıgena 49(1): 35–55. Dittrich, Eckhard. 1991. Das Weltbild des Rassismus. Frankfurt: Cooperative. Dittrich, Eckhard and Frank-Olaf Radtke (eds.). 1990. Ethnizität. Wissenschaft und Minderheiten. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Donham, Donald. 1990. History, Power, Ideology. Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

277

Douglass, William. 1988. ‘A critique of recent trends in the analysis of ethnonationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 11(2): 194–206. Drechsel, Paul. 1984. ‘Vorschläge zur Konstruktion einer “Kulturtheorie” und was man unter einer “Kulturinterpretation” verstehen konnte’, ¨ in Ernst Wilhelm Muller, ¨ René Konig, ¨ Klaus-Peter Koepping and Paul Drechsel (eds.), Ethnologie als Sozialwissenschaft. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 26. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Paul Rabinow. 1987. Michel Foucault. Jenseits von Strukturalismus und Hermeneutik. Weinheim: Beltz/Athenäum. Drummond, Louis. 1980. ‘The cultural continuum: a theory of intersystems’, Man 15: 352–74. du Bois, Pierre. 1983. ‘Mythe et realité du fossé pendant la Première Guerre mondiale’, in Pierre du Bois (ed.), Union et division des Suisses. Les relations entre Alémaniques, Romands et Tessinois aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Lausanne: Editions de l’Aire. Dumont, Louis. 1983. Essais sur l’individualisme une perspective anthropologique sur l’ideologie moderne. Paris: Editions du Seuil. ¨ ´ Durkheim, Emile. 1988. Uber soziale Arbeitsteilung. Studie u¨ ber die Organisation höherer Gesellschaften. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Dziegiel, Leszek. 1981. Rural Community of Contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan Facing Modernization. Studia i Materialy 7 (Cracow). Eagleton, William.1963. The Kurdish Republic of 1946. London: Oxford University Press. Early, John D. 1975. ‘The changing proportion of Maya indian and ladino in the population of Guatemala, 1945–1969’, American Ethnologist 2(2): 261–9. 1986. ‘Una encuestra demográfica de los mayas guatemaltecos contemporáneos’, in Carl Kendall, John Hawkins and Laurel Bossen (eds.), La herencia de la conquista. Treinta años después. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Eder, Klaus and Oliver Schmidtke. 1998. ‘Ethnische Mobilisierung und die Logik von Identitätskämpfen: eine situationstheoretische Perspektive jenseits von “Rational Choice” ’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 27(6): 418–37. Edmonds, Cecil John. 1957. Kurds, Turks, and Arabs. Politics, Travel and Research in North-Eastern Iraq, 1919–25. London: Oxford University Press. Elkana, Yehuda and Everett Mendelsohn (eds.). 1981. Sciences and Cultures. Anthropological and Historical Studies of the Sciences. Dordrecht: Reidel. ¨ Elwert, Georg. 1989a. Ethnizität und Nationalismus: Uber die Bildung von WirGruppen. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch. ¨ 1989b. ‘Nation und Ethnizität. Uber die Bildung von Wir-Gruppen’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 41: 440–64. 1998. ‘Deutsche Nation’, in Bernhard Schaefers and Wolfgang Zapf (eds.), Handwörterbuch zur Gesellschaft Deutschlands. Opladen: Leske and Budrich. Enloe, Cynthia. 1978. ‘Ethnicity, bureaucracy and state-building in Africa and Latin America’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 1(3): 336–51. 1986 (1972). Ethnic Conflict and Political Development. Lanham: University Press of America. Entessar, Nader. 1992. Kurdish Ethnonationalism. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

278

References

Erikson, Thomas H. 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism. Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press. Esman, Milton J. 1977. ‘Perspectives on ethnic conflict in industrialized societies’, in Milton J. Esman (ed.), Ethnic Conflict in the Western World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Essed, Philomena. 1992. ‘Multikulturalismus und kultureller Rassismus in den Niederlanden’, in Institut fur ¨ Migrations- und Rassismusforschung (ed.), Rassismus und Migration in Europa. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. Esser, Hartmut. 1988. ‘Ethnische Differenzierung und moderne Gesellschaft’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 17(4): 235–48. 1996. ‘Die Mobilisierung ethnischer Konflikte’, in Klaus J. Bade (ed.), Migration, Ethnizität, Konflikt: Systemfragen und Fallstudien. Schriften des Instituts fur ¨ Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien, no. 1. Osnabruck: ¨ Universitätsverlag Rasch. 1999. ‘Die Situationslogik ethnischer Konflikte. Auch eine Anmerkung zum Beitrag “Ethnische Mobilisierung und die Logik von Identitätskämpfen” von Klaus Eder und Oliver Schmidtke’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 28(4): 245–62. Evers, Hans-Dieter and Tilman Schiel. 1988. Strategische Gruppen. Vergleichende Studien zu Staat, Bürokratie und Klassenbildung in der Dritten Welt. Berlin: Reimer. Fábregas Puig, Andrés. 1988. ‘La antropolog´ıa pol´ıtica’, in C. Garc´ıa Mora and M. Villalobos Salgado (eds.), La antropolog´ıa en México, panorama histórico, vol. IV: Las cuestiones medulares (etnolog´ıa y antropolog´ıa social). Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropolog´ıa y Historia. Fahrni, Dieter. 1987. An Outline History of Switzerland. Zurich: Pro Helvetia. Faist, Thomas. 1995. ‘Ethnicization and racialization of welfare-state politics in Germany and the USA’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 19: 219–50. Falter, Jurgen ¨ W. 1991. Hitlers Wähler. Munich: C. H. Beck. Farriss, Nancy M. 1984. Maya Society under Colonial Rule. The Collective Enterprise of Survival. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Favez, Jean-Claude. 1983. ‘Tu m’as dis d’aimer, j’obéis . . . Quelques remarques sur les relations entre Alémaniques, Romands et Tessinois durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale’, in Pierre du Bois (ed.), Union et division des Suisses. Les relations entre Alémaniques, Romands et Tessinois aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Lausanne: Editions de l’Aire. Fearon, James D. and David D. Laitin. 1996. ‘Explaining interethnic cooperation’, American Political Science Review 90(4): 715–35. Feierabend, M. August. 1875. Geschichte der eidgenössischen Schützenfeste von Gründung derselben im Juni 1824 in Aarau bis und mit der Jubelfeier im Juli 1874 in St. Gallen nebst einer geschichtlichen Einleitung u¨ ber das schweizerische Schützenwesen früherer Jahrhunderte. Aarau: Sauerländer. Fein, Helen. 1993. ‘Accounting for genocide after 1945: theories and some findings’, International Journal on Group Rights 1: 79–106. Fernández, Miguel Mej´ıa. 1973. ‘La tenencia de tierra entre los grupos ind´ıgenas de México’, América Ind´ıgena 33(4): 1071–94. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 1979 (1800). Der Geschlossne Handelsstaat. Ein philosophischer Entwurf als Anhang zur Rechtslehre und Probe einer künftig zu

References

279

liefernden Politik mit einem unbekannten Manuskript Fichtes ‘Ueber Staatswirthschaft’. Hamburg: Meiner. Flanet, Véronique. 1977. Viviré si Dios quiere. Un estudio de la violencia en la Mixteca de la costa. Mexico: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. Fleiner, Thomas. 1996. ‘Legal instruments and procedures to prevent and solve ethnic conflicts: experience of the Swiss constitution’, in Lidija R. Basta and Thomas Fleiner (eds.), Federalism and Multiethnic States. The Case of Switzerland. Fribourg: Publications de l’Institut du Fédéralisme. Florescano, Enrique. 1997. Etnia, estado y nación. Ensayo sobre las identitades colectivas en México. Mexico: Aguilar. forthcoming. ‘La construccion ´ de la nacion ´ y el conflicto de identidades’, in Enrique Florescano, Memoria mexicana, new edn. Fortes, Meyer. 1970 (1949). ‘Time and social stucture: an Ashanti case study’, in Meyer Fortes (ed.), Time and Social Structure. New York: Humanities Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Sexualität und Wahrheit, vol. I: Der Wille zum Wissen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 1978. Dispositive der Macht. Michel Foucault u¨ ber Sexualität, Wissen und Wahrheit. Berlin: Merve-Verlag. 1991. Die Ordnung des Diskurses. Frankfurt: Fischer. Franz, Erhard. 1986. Kurden und Kurdentum. Zeitgeschichte eines Volkes und seiner Nationalbewegung. Hamburg: Deutsches Orient Institut. Franz, Fritz. 1992. ‘Das Prinzip der Abstammung im deutschen Staatsangehorigkeitsrecht’, ¨ in Institut fur ¨ Migrations- und Rassismusforschung (ed.), Rassismus und Migration in Europa. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. Freeman, Gary P. 1986. ‘Migration and the political economy of the welfare state’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 485: 51–63. Friedlander, Judith. 1975. Being an Indian in Hueyapán: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico. New York: St Martin’s Press. Friedrich, Paul. 1970. Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Fukui, Katsuyoshi and John Markakis (eds.). 1994. Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa. London: Currey. Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust. The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. London: Hamish Hamilton. Fuller, John Frederick Charles. 1977. The Conduct of War 1789–1961. London: Eyre Methuen. Gabbay, Rony. 1982. ‘The Iraqi Communists’ agrarian programme: from dialecticism to temporal conformism’, in Steven Jones, P. C. Joshi and Miguel Murmis (eds.), Rural Poverty and Agrarian Reform. New Delhi: Allied Publishers. Gamst, Frederick C. and Sabine Helmers. 1991. ‘Die kulturelle Perspektive und die Arbeit: Ein forschungsgeschichtliches Panorama der nordamerikanischen Industrieethnologie’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 116: 25–41. Ganter, Stephan. 1999. Ursachen und Formen der Fremdenfeindlichkeit in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bonn: Forschungsinstitut der Friedrich-EbertStiftung.

280

References

Ganther, Peter. 1993. ‘Das Ende der kolonialen Situation? San Miguel Totonicapán im Wandel’, unpublished master’s thesis, Seminar of Ethnology of the University of Zurich. Garc´ıa Mora, Carlos and Andrés Medina (eds.). 1986. La quiebra pol´ıtica de la antropolog´ıa social en México. Mexico: UNAM. Garduno ˜ Cervantes, J. 1983. El final del silencio. Documentos ind´ıgenas de México. Mexico: Premiá Editora. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall. ¨ Garfinkel, Harold and Harvey Sacks. 1976. ‘Uber formale Strukturen praktischer Handlungen’, in Elmar Weingarten, Fritz Sack and Jim Schenkein (eds.), Ethnomethodologie. Beiträge zu einer Soziologie des Alltagshandelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Garrido, Angela. 1987. Le début de la politique fédérale a` l’égard des e´trangers. Histoire et Société Contemporaine. Etudes et mémoires de la section histoire de l’Université de Lausanne 7. Geertz, Clifford. 1963. ‘The integrative revolution. Primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states’, in Clifford Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States. The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa. New York: The Free Press. 1973. ‘Thick description: towards an interpretative theory of culture’, in Clifford Geertz (ed.), The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. 1977. ‘The judging of nations. Some comments on the assessment of regimes in the new states’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie 18(2): 245–61. 1993. ‘ “Ethnic conflict”: three alternative terms’, Common Knowledge 2(3): 54–65. 1998. ‘Deep hanging out’, New York Review of Books 35(16): 69–72. Geiger, Daniel. 1994. ‘Guns ’n Rosaries. Ethnische Gruppen, ihre Beziehungen und der Staat auf den Philippinen’, in Hans-Peter Muller ¨ (ed.), Ethnische Dynamik in der aussereuropäischen Welt. Zurcher ¨ Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie 4. Geiss, Immanuel. 1988. Geschichte des Rassismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1992. Der Islam als Gesellschaftsordnung. Munich: DTV. Gendreau, Andrée. 1979. ‘Pour une théorie des idéologies en anthropologie’, Anthropologica 21: 123–42. Giddens, Anthony. 1995. Nation-State and Violence. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Godelier, Maurice. 1984. L’idéel et le matériel. Pensée, ećonomies, sociétés. Paris: Fayard. Goldberg, David Theo. 1993. Racist Culture. Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell. Goode, Erich and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 1994. Moral Panics. The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell. Goran, ¨ Rystad (ed.). 1992. Encounter with Strangers. Refugees and Cultural Confrontation in Sweden. Lund: Lund University Press.

References

281

Gourevitch, Peter. 1979. ‘The reemergence of “peripheral nationalism”: some comparative speculations on the spatial distribution of political leadership and economic growth’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 21: 303–22. Gray, Richard. 1971. ‘The Southern Sudan’, Journal of Modern History 1: 108–20. Greenfeld, Liah. 1992. Nationalism. Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Grillo, Ralph. 1998. Pluralism and the Politics of Difference. State, Culture, and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grimm, Sabine and Klaus Ronneberger. 1994. ‘Weltstadt und Nationalstaat. Frankfurter Dienstleistungsangestellte a¨ ussern sich zur multikulturellen Gesellschaft’, in Institut fur ¨ Sozialforschung (ed.), Rechtsextremismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit. Studien zur aktuellen Entwicklung. Frankfurt: Campus. Grødeland, Ase B., William L. Miller and Tatyana Y. Koshechkina. 2000. ‘The ethnic dimension to bureaucratic encounters in postcommunist Europe: perceptions and experience’, Nations and Nationalism 6(1): 43–66. Groh, Dieter. 1992. Anthropologische Dimensionen der Geschichte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Grove, D. John. 1978. ‘A test of the ethnic equalization hypothesis: a crossnational study’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 1(2): 175–95. Guernée, Bernard. 1986. ‘Des limites féodales aux frontières politiques’, in Pierre Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire, vol. II: La nation. Paris: Gallimard. Guha, Ranajit. 1983. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guiberneau, Monserrat. 1997. ‘Marx and Durkheim on nationalism’, in HansRudolf Wicker (ed.), Rethinking Nationalism and Ethnicity. The Struggle for Meaning and Order in Europe. Oxford: Berg. Gunter, Michael Martin. 1993. The Kurds of Iraq. Tragedy and Hope. New York: St Martin’s Press. Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson. 1992. ‘Beyond “culture”: space, identity and the politics of difference’, Cultural Anthropology 7: 3–129. Gurr, Ted R. 1993a. Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflict. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press. 1993b. ‘Why minorities rebel: a global analysis of communal mobilization and conflict since 1945’, International Political Science Review 14(2): 161–201. 1994. ‘Peoples against the state: Ethnopolitical conflict in the changing world system’, International Studies Quarterly 38: 347–77. Gutelmann, Michel. 1974. Capitalismo y reforma agraria en México. Mexico: Ediciones Era. Gutiérez Chong, Natividad. 1999. Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities. Indigenous Intellectuals and the Mexican State. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Habermas, Jurgen. ¨ 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, vol. II. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 1988. Nachmetaphysisches Denken. Philosophische Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 1993. ‘Anerkennungskämpfe im demokratischen Rechtsstaat’, in Amy Gutman (ed.), Multikulturalismus und die Politik der Anerkennung. Frankfurt: Fischer.

282

References

Hale, Charles H. 1972. El liberalismo mexicano en la e´poca de Mora, 1821–1853. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno. Hall, John A. (ed.). 1998. The State of the Nation. Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1980. ‘Race, articulation and social societies structured in dominance’, in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism. Paris: UNESCO. Hammar, Thomas. 1990. Democracy and the Nation-State. Aliens, Denizens and Citizens in a World of International Migration. Aldershot: Avebury. Handler, Richard. 1991. ‘Who owns the past? History, cultural property, and the logic of possessive individualism’, in Brett Williams (ed.), The Politics of Culture. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hannan, Michael T. 1979. ‘The dynamics of ethnic boundaries in modern states’, in John W. Meyer and Michael T. Hannan (eds.), National Development and the World System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hannerz, Ulf. 1993a. ‘When culture is everywhere: reflections on a favorite concept’, Ethnos 1–2: 95–111. 1993b. Cultural Complexity. Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning. New York: Columbia University Press. Hansen, Roger D. 1981. La pol´ıtica del desarrollo méxicano. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Harff, Barbara and Ted R. Gurr. 1989. ‘Victims of the state: genocide, politicide and group repression since 1945’, International Review of Victimology 1(1): 23–41. Harries, Patrick. 1989. ‘Exclusion, classification and internal colonialism: the emergence of ethnicity among the Tsonga-speakers of South Africa’, in Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London: Currey. Harris, David. 1992. From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure. The Effect of Gramscianism on Cultural Studies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Harrison, Simon. 1995. ‘Four types of symbolic conflict’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1: 255–72. Hart, John M. 1988.‘The 1840s Southwestern Mexico peasants’ war: conflict in a transitional society’, in Friedrich Katz (ed.), Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution. Rural Social Conflict in Mexico. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harvey, Neil. 1998. The Chiapas Rebellion. The Struggle for Land and Democracy. Durham: Duke University Press. Hastings, Adrian. 1997. The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haug, Werner. 1980. ‘. . . und es kamen Menschen’. Ausländerpolitik und Fremdarbeit in der Schweiz, 1914–1980. Basle: Z-Verlag. Heath, Shirley B. 1972. Telling Tongues. Language Policy in Mexico. Colony to Nation. New York: Teachers College Press. Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1986. ‘Rational choice theory and the study of race and ethnic relations’, in John Rex and David Mason (eds.), Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1995. ‘Explaining nationalist violence’, Nations and Nationalism 1(1): 53–68.

References

283

Hechter, Michael and Margaret Levi. 1979. ‘The comparative analysis of ethnoregional movements’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2(3): 260–74. Heiberg, Marianne. 1989. The Making of the Basque Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heitmeyer, Wilhelm. 1992. Rechtsextremistische Orientierungen bei Jugendlichen. Empirische Ergebnisse und Erklärungsmuster einer Untersuchung zur politischen Sozialisation. Weinheim: Juventa. Helbing, Jurg. ¨ 1997. ‘State dominance and ethnic nationalism’, in Hans-Rudolf Wicker (ed.), Rethinking Nationalism and Ethnicity: The Struggle for Meaning and Order in Europe. Oxford: Berg. Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order. From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press. Heraclides, Alexis. 1991. The Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics. London: Frank Cass. Herder, Johann Gottfried. 1968 (1784–91). Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Sämtliche Werke, vol. XIII, edited by Bernhard Suphan. Hildesheim: Olms. Hermet, Guy. 1996. Histoire des nations et du nationalisme en Europe. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Higham, John. 1970. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860– 1925. New York: Atheneum. Hill, Paul B. 1993. ‘Die Entwicklung der Einstellungen zu unterschiedlichen Ausländergruppen zwischen 1980 und 1992’, in Helmut Willems et al. (eds.), Fremdenfeindliche Gewalt. Einstellungen – Täter – Konflikteskalation. Opladen: Leske and Budrich. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1991 (1990). Nationen und Nationalismus. Mythos und Realität seit 1780. Frankfurt: Campus. Hoffmann-Nowotny, Hans-Joachim. 1973. Soziologie des Fremdarbeiterproblems. Eine theoretische und empirische Analyse am Beispiel der Schweiz. Stuttgart: Enke. 1985. ‘European immigration policy: Switzerland’, in Thomas Hammar (ed.), European Immigration Policy. A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Chancen und Risiken multikultureller Einwanderungsgesellschaften. Swiss Council on the Sciences Report no. 119. Berne: Swiss Council on the Sciences. Hoffmann-Nowotny, Hans-Joachim and Karl-Otto Hondrich (eds.). 1982. Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Schweiz. Segregation und Integration: eine vergleichende Untersuchung. Frankfurt: Campus. Hoffmann-Nowotny, Hans-Joachim and Martin Killias. 1993. ‘Switzerland: Remaining Swiss’, in Daniel Kubat (ed.), The Politics of Migration Policies. Settlement and Integration. The First World into the 1990s. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Hoffmann-Nowotny, Hans-Joachim et al. 1997. Das ‘Fremde’ in der Schweiz – 1969 und 1995. Eine Replikationsstudie. Final report of the NF-funded research project ‘Das Fremde in der Schweiz’, Institute of Sociology, University of Zurich. Hofstede, Geert. 1991. Cultures and Organisations. Software of the Mind. London: McGraw-Hill.

284

References

Holmes, Madelyn. 1988. Forgotten Migrants. Foreign Workers in Switzerland before World War I. London: Associated University Press. Hondrich, Karl Otto. 1992. ‘Wovon wir nichts wissen wollten’, Die Zeit, 25 September. Horowitz, Donald. 1981. ‘Patterns of ethnic separatism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23: 165–95. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1991. A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1992. ‘Irredentas and secessions: adjacent phenomena, neglected connections’, in Anthony D. Smith (ed.), Ethnicity and Nationalism. Leiden: Brill. 2001. The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hoskin, Marylin. 1985. ‘Die offentliche ¨ Meinung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die ausländischen Arbeitnehmer’, in Marita Rosch (ed.), Ausländische Arbeitnehmer und Immigranten – Sozialwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Diskussion eines praktischen Problems. Weinheim: BeltzVerlag. Howard, Michael. 1976. War in European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hroch, Miroslav. 1985 (1971). ‘Das Erwachen kleiner Nationen als Problem der komparativen Forschung’, in Heinrich August Winkler (ed.), Nationalismus. Konigstein: ¨ Athenäum. Hunt, M. Eva and June Nash. 1967. ‘Local and territorial units’, in Manning Nash (ed.), Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. VI: Social Anthropology. Austin: University of Texas Press. Huntington, Samuel. 1993. ‘The clash of civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs 72: 22–49. Hunziker, Guido. 1970. Die Schweiz und das Nationalitätenprinzip im 19. ¨ Jahrhundert. Die Einstellung der eidgenössischen Offentlichkeit zum Gedanken des Nationalstaates. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. Hyden, Goran and Donald C. Williams. 1994. ‘A community model of African politics: illustrations from Nigeria and Tanzania’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1): 68–96. Ibrahim, Ferhad. 1983. Die kurdische Nationalbewegung im Irak. Eine Fallstudie zur Problematik ethnischer Konflikte in der Dritten Welt. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Ihonvbere, Julius. 1994. ‘The “irrelevant” state, ethnicity, and the quest for nationhood in Africa’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 17(1): 42–60. Im Hof, Ulrich and Nicolai Bernard. 1983. ‘Les relations des communautés linguistiques au sein des associations nationales suisses avant la création de la nouvelle Confédération de 1848’, in Pierre du Bois (ed.), Union et division des Suisses. Les relations entre Alémaniques, Romands et Tessinois aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Lausanne: Editions de l’Aire. Imhof, Kurt. 1993. ‘Nationalismus, Nationalstaat und Minderheiten. Zu einer Soziologie der Minoritäten’, Soziale Welt 44(3): 327–57. 1994. ‘Medienereignisse als Indikatoren sozialen Wandels. Ein Beitrag zu einer Phänomenologie der “offentlichen ¨ Meinung” anhand einer Analyse der

References

285

Relevanzstrukturen und Inhalte politischer Kommunikation in der deutschen Schweiz zwischen 1910 und 1960’, unpublished habilitation thesis, University of Zurich. 1996. ‘Die Semantik des Fremden in sozialen Krisenphasen’, in Hans-Rudolf Wicker et al. (eds.) Das Fremde in der Gesellschaft. Migration, Ethnizität und Staat. Zurich: Seismos. 1997. ‘Nationalism and the theory of society’, in Hans-Rudolf Wicker (ed.), Rethinking Nationalism and Ethnicity. The Struggle for Meaning and Order in Europe. Oxford: Berg. Inalcik, Halil. 1973. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Ingold, Tim. 1993. ‘The art of translation in a continuous world’, in Gisli Pálsson (ed.), Beyond Boundaries: Understanding, Translation and Anthropological Discourse. London: Berg. Inigo, ˜ Laviado. 1978. Los caciques de la sierra. Mexico: Editorial Jus. Israel, Jonathan Irvine. 1975. Race, Class and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610– 1670. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Iwanska, Alicja. 1971. Purgatory and Utopia. A Mazahua Indian Village of Mexico. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman. IWGIA. 1971. Declaration of Barbados. IWGIA-Documents no. 1. Copenhagen: International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs. IWGIA–Schweiz et al. 1988. Bedrohte Zukunft. Bergvölker in Bangladesh. Zurich: Volkerkundemuseum ¨ der Universität and IWGIA–Zurich. Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 1998. Whiteness of a Different Color. European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Jalali, Rita and Seymour Martin Lipset. 1992/3. ‘Racial and ethnic conflicts: a global perspective’, Political Science Quarterly 107(4): 585–605. Jefferson, Thomas. 1972 (1787). Notes on the State of Virginia, edited with an introduction and notes by William Peden. New York: Norton. Jenkins, Shirley (ed.). 1988. Ethnic Associations and the Welfare State. Services to Immigrants in Five Countries. New York: Columbia University Press. Jinadu, Adele. 1995. ‘Federalism, the consociational state, and ethnic conflict in Nigeria’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism 15: 71–100. Jost, Hans-Ulrich. 1986. ‘Bedrohung und Enge (1914–1945)’, in Ulrich Im Hof et al. (eds.), Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. 1998. ‘Der helvetische Nationalismus. Nationale Identität, Patriotismus, Rassismus und Ausgrenzungen in der Schweiz des 20. Jahrhunderts’, in Hans-Rudolf Wicker (ed.), Nationalismus, Multikulturalismus und Ethnizität. Berne: Haupt. Kälin, Walter. 1999. Rechtliche Aspekte der schweizerischen Flüchtlingspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Supplement to the report ‘Die Schweiz und die Fluchtlinge ¨ zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus’. Berne: EDMZ. Kapferer, Bruce. 1989. ‘Nationalist ideology and a comparative anthropology’, Ethnos 53(3–4): 161–99.

286

References

Kappeler, Andreas (ed.). 1992. The Formation of National Elites. Comparative Studies on Governments and Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups in Europe, 1850– 1940, vol. VI. Dartmouth: New York University Press. Karpat, Kemal. 1972. ‘The transformation of the Ottoman state, 1789–1908’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 3: 243–81. 1973. An Inquiry into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman State. From Social Estates to Classes, from Millets to Nations. Princeton: Center of International Studies. 1985. ‘The ethnicity problem in a multi-ethnic national state: continuity and recasting of ethnic identity in the Ottoman state’, in Paul Brass (ed.), Ethnic Groups and the State. London: Croom Helm. Kaschuba, Wolfgang. 1995. ‘Kulturalismus: Vom Verschwinden des Sozialen im gesellschaftlichen Diskurs’, in Wolfgang Kaschuba (ed.), Kulturen – Identitäten – Diskurse. Perspektiven europäischer Ethnologie. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Kasfir, Nelson. 1976. The Shrinking Political Arena. Participation and Ethnicity in African Politics with a Case Study of Uganda. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1979. ‘Explaining ethnic political participation’, World Politics 31: 365–88. Katz, Friedrich. 1986. ‘Mexico: restored republic and Porfiriato: 1867–1910’, in Leslie Bethel (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. V: 1870– 1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kayali, Hasan. 1997. Arabs and Young Turks. Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kearney, Michael and Carol Nagenast. 1990. ‘Mixtec ethnicity: social identity, political consciousness, and political activism’, Latin American Research Review 25(2): 61–91. Kedourie, Elie. 1988. ‘Ethnicity, majority and minority in the Middle East’, in Milton Esman and Itamar Rebinovitch (eds.), Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the Middle East. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Keesing, Roger M. 1974. ‘Theories of culture’, Annual Review of Anthropology 3: 73–97. Keyes, Charles. 1976. ‘Towards a new formulation of the concept of ethnic group’, Ethnicity 3(3): 202–13. Kirschbaum, Stanislav J. 1993. ‘Czechoslovakia: the creation, federalization and dissolution of a nation-state’, in John Coakley (ed.), The Territorial Management of Ethnic Conflict. London: Frank Cass. Klauder, Wolfgang. 1993. ‘Die kunftige ¨ Veränderung des Beschäftigungsprofils: Prognosen zum Arbeitsmarkt’, in Bernhard Blanke (ed.), Zuwanderung und Asyl in der Konkurrenzgesellschaft. Opladen: Leske and Budrich. Kleger, Heinz (ed.). 1997. Transnationale Staatsbürgerschaft. Frankfurt: Campus. Knight, Alan. 1987. The Mexican Revolution, vol. I: Porfirians, Liberals and Peasants. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1990. ‘Racism, revolution, and indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940’, in R. Graham (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940. Austin: University of Texas Press.

References

287

1992. ‘The peculiarities of Mexican history: Mexico compared to Latin America, 1821–1992’, in Tulio Halper´ın Donghi (ed.), The Colonial and Post-Colonial Experience. Five Centuries of Spanish and Portuguese America. Quincentenary Supplement, Journal of Latin American Studies 24. 1994. ‘Popular culture and the revolutionary state in Mexico, 1910–1940’, in Hispanic American Historical Review 73(3): 393–444. Kohl, Karl-Heinz. 1993. Ethnologie – die Wissenschaft vom kulturell Fremden. Eine Einführung. Munich: C. H. Beck. Kohn, Hans. 1967. Prelude to Nation-States: The French and German Experience, 1789–1815. Princeton: Van Nostrand. Koller, Peter. 1986. ‘Theorien des Sozialkontrakts als Rechtfertigungsmodelle politischer Institutionen’, in Lucien Kern and Hans-Peter Muller ¨ (eds.), Gerechtigkeit, Diskurs oder Markt? Die neuen Ansätze in der Vertragstheorie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Konig, ¨ René. 1961. ‘Einleitung’, in René Konig ¨ (ed.), Emil Durkheim: Die Regeln der soziologischen Methode. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Kreckel, Reinhard. 1989. ‘Ethnische Differenzierung und “moderne” Gesellschaft. Kritische Anmerkungen zu Hartmut Essers Aufsatz in der Zeitschrift fur ¨ Soziologie’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 18(2): 162–7. Kreis, Georg. 1992. ‘Der “Homo alpinicus helveticus”. Zum schweizerischen Rassendiskurs der 30er Jahre’, in Guy P. Marchal et al. (eds.), Erfundene Schweiz. Konstruktionen Nationaler Identität. Zurich: Chronos. Kriegel, Blandine. 1993. ‘La Nation chez Fichte: universalisme et relativisme’, in Gérald Berthoud et al. (eds.), Universalisme et relativisme. Contributions a` un débat d’actualité. Studia Ethnographica Friburgensia 19 (Freiburg). Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1999. ‘Introduction: state formation and nation building in the Swiss case’, in Hanspeter Kriesi et al. (eds.), Nation and National Identity. The European Experience in Perspective. Chur: Ruegger. ¨ Kroeber, Alfred L. and Clyde Kluckhohn. 1952. Culture. A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 47. Krueger, Anne O. 1974. ‘The political economy of the rent-seeking society’, American Economic Review 64(3): 291–303. Kuper, Leo. 1977. The Pity of it All: Polarization of Racial and Ethnic Relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kupfer, ¨ Renato. 1994. ‘. . . darunter zwei Asylbewerber’. Eine quantitative Inhaltsanalyse von Schweizer Tageszeitungen zur Asylthematik. Berne: UNESCO. La Fontaine, Jean Sybil. 1969. ‘Tribalism among the Gisu’, in Philip H. Gulliver (ed.), Tradition and Transition in East Africa: Studies of the Tribal Element in the Modern Era. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Laely, Thomas. 1994. ‘Ethnien a` la burundaise’, in Hans-Peter Muller ¨ (ed.), Ethnische Dynamik in der aussereuropäischen Welt. Zurcher ¨ Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie 4. Lafaye, Jacques. 1977. Quetzalcóatl y Guadalupe. La formación de la conciencia nacional en México. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´

288

References

Landa, Janet T. 1981. ‘A theory of the ethnically homogenous middleman group: an institutional alternative to contract law’, Journal of Legal Studies 10: 349–62. Lanoue, Guy. 1992. Brothers. The Politics of Violence among the Sekani of Northern British Columbia. Oxford: Berg. Lask, Tomke Christiane. 1993. ‘Création et entretien de l’identité nationale dans un village franco-allemand’. Mimeo., Laboratoire d’Anthropologie de la Communication, Université de Liège. Le Vine, Robert and Donald Campbell. 1972. Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behaviour. New York: Wiley. Leach, Edmund R. 1954. Political Systems of Highland Burma. A Study of Kachin Social Structure. London: Athlone Press. Leezenberg, Michiel. 1997. ‘Irakisch-Kurdistan seit dem Zweiten Golfkrieg’, in Carsten Borck, Eva Savelsberg and Siamend Hajo (eds.), Kurdologie. Ethnizität, Nationalismus, Religion und Politik in Kurdistan. Munster: Lit. Lemarchand, René. 1972. ‘Political clientelism and ethnicity in tropical Africa: competing solidarities in nation-building’, American Political Science Review 66: 68–90. 1990. ‘Burundi: ethnicity and the genocidal state’, in Pierre van den Berghe (ed.), State Violence and Ethnicity. Niwot: University Press of Colorado. 1994. Burundi. Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. forthcoming. ‘Exclusion, marginalization and political mobilization: the road to hell in the Great Lakes’, in Andreas Wimmer et al. (eds.), Facing Ethnic Conflicts: Towards a New Realism. Lepenies, Wolf. 1996. ‘Die Sozialwissenschaften nach dem Ende der Geschichte’, in Claudia Honegger et al. (eds.), Gesellschaften im Umbau. Konflikte, Identitäten, Differenzen. Zurich: Seismos. Leslie, Charles. 1960. Now We Are Civilized: A Study of the World View of the Zapotec Indians of Mitla, Oaxaca. Detroit: Wayne State University. Lewis, Bernard. 1968. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London: Oxford University Press. Liehr, Reinhard. 1971. Stadtrat und städtische Oberschicht von Puebla am Ende der Kolonialzeit, 1787–1810. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Lijphart, Arend. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press. Linder, Wolf. 1993. ‘Migrationswirkungen, institutionelle Politik und politische ¨ Offentlichkeit’, in Walter Kälin and Rupert Moser (eds.), Migrationen aus der Dritten Welt. Ursachen – Wirkungen – Handlungsmöglichkeiten. Berne: Haupt. 1994. Swiss Democracy. Possible Solutions to Conflict in Multicultural Societies. New York: St Martin’s Press. Lindstrom, Lamont. 1990. Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Lira, Andrés. 1986. ‘Los indigenas y el nacionalismo mexicano’, in IX Coloquio de Historia del Arte. Nacionalismo y el Arte Mexicano. Mexico: UNAM. List, Friedrich. 1974 (1856). National System of Political Economy. New York: Garland.

References

289

Loewen, James W. 1971. The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lomnitz Adler, Claudio. 1982. Evolución de una sociedad rural. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Longrigg, Stephen H. 1953. Iraq. 1900 to 1950. A Political, Social, and Economic History. London: Oxford University Press. Lucassen, Leo. 1995. ‘The Great War and the end of free migration in Western Europe and the United States (1880–1920)’, unpublished paper for the workshop ‘Regulation of Migration’, Nijmegen University, 14–15 December. 1997. ‘The gulf between long term and short term approaches in immigration studies. A reassessment of the Chicago School’s assimilation concept’, IMISBeiträge 5: 5–24. Luhmann, Niklas. 1980. Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik. Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lukitz, Liora. 1995. Iraq. The Search for National Identity. London: Frank Cass. Lustick, Ian. 1979. ‘Stability in deeply divided societies: consociationalism versus control’, World Politics 31(3): 325–44. Mach, Zdzislaw. 1993. Symbols, Conflict, and Identity. Essays in Political Anthropology. Albany: State University of New York Press. Macke, Jurgen. ¨ 1999. Kampf um Zugehörigkeit. Nationale Staatsbürgerschaft als Modus sozialer Schließung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Macmillan, Hugh. 1989. ‘A nation divided? The Swazi in Swaziland and the Transvaal 1865–1986’, in Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London: Currey. Mahnig, Hans. 1991. ‘La politique suisse a` l’égard des e´ trangers’, unpublished master’s thesis, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. 1995. ‘Between economic demand and popular xenophobia: the Swiss system of immigration regulation’, unpublished paper for the workshop ‘Regulation of Migration’, Nijmegen University, 14–15 December. 1998. Integrationspolitik in Grossbritannien, Frankreich, Deutschland und den Niederlanden: eine vergleichende Analyse. Forschungsberichte des Schweizerischen Forums fur ¨ Migrationsstudien 10 (Neuchâtel). Majstorovic, Steven. 1995. ‘Politicized ethnicity and economic inequality: a subjective perspective and a cross-national examination’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1(1): 33–53. Makiya, Kanan. 1998. Republic of Fear. The Politics of Modern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1983. Magie, Wissenschaft und Religion. Und andere Schriften. Frankfurt: Fischer. Malkki, Liisa. 1992. ‘National geographic: the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees’, Cultural Anthropology 7: 24–44. 1995. Purity and Exile. Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mallon, Florencia. 1992. ‘Indian communities, political cultures, and the state in Latin America, 1780–1990’, in Tulio Halper´ın Donghi (ed.), The Colonial and Post-Colonial Experience. Five Centuries of Spanish and

290

References

Portuguese America. Quincentenary Supplement, Journal of Latin American Studies 24. Mann, Michael. 1986. The Sources of Social Power, vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1993. The Sources of Social Power, vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1995. ‘A political theory of nationalism and its excesses’, in Sukumar Periwal (ed.), Notions of Nationalism. Budapest: Central European University Press. 1999. ‘The dark side of democracy: the modern tradition of ethnic and political cleansing’, New Left Review 235: 18–45. Mannheim, Bruce and Dennis Tedlock. 1995. ‘Introduction’, in Bruce Mannheim and Dennis Tedlock (eds.), The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Mansel, Philip. 1995. Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924. London: John Murray. Mantran, Robert. 1965. La vie quotidienne a` Constantinople au temps du Soliman le Magnifique. Paris: Hachette. Marshall, Thomas H. 1992. Bürgerrechte und soziale Klassen. Zur Soziologie des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Frankfurt: Campus. Mart´ınez Peláez, Severo. 1987. La patria del criollo. Ensayo de interpretación de la realidad colonial Guatemalteca. Puebla: Universidad Autonoma ´ de Puebla. Mayall, James. 1990. Nationalism and International Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayall, James and Mark Simpson. 1992. ‘Ethnicity is not enough: reflections on protracted secessionism in the Third World’, in Anthony D. Smith (ed.), Ethnicity and Nationalism. Leiden: Brill. Mayer, Adrian C. 1966. ‘The significance of quasi-groups in the study of complex societies’, in Michael P. Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies. London: Tavistock. McAlister, Lyle N. 1962. ‘Social structure and social change in New Spain’, in Howard F. Cline (ed.), Latin American History. Essays on its Study and Teaching, 1893–1965, vol. II. Austin: University of Texas Press. McCarthy, John and Mayer D. Zald. 1977. ‘Resource mobilization and social movements: a partial theory’, American Journal of Sociology 82: 1212–41. McDowall, David. 1996. A Modern History of the Kurds. London: Tauris. McKay, Jay. 1982. ‘An explanatory synthesis of primordial and mobilizationist approaches to ethnic phenomena’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 5(4): 395–420. McLeod, Murdo and Robert Wasserstrom (eds.). 1983. Spaniards and Indians in Southeastern Mesoamerica. Essays in the History of Ethnic Relations. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. McNeil, William. 1986. Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McRae, Kenneth. 1974. Consociational Democracy: Political Accommodation in Segmented Societies. Toronto: MacClelland and Stewart. 1983. Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Switzerland. Waterloo: Wilfried Laurier University Press.

References

291

Mead, George H. 1968. Geist, Identität, Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Medina Hernandez, Andrés. 1983. ‘Los grupos e´ tnicos y los sistemas tradicionales de poder en México’, Nueva Antropolog´ıa 5(20): 5–30. Mej´ıa Pineros, ˜ M. C. and S. Sarmiento. 1987. La lucha ind´ıgena: Un reto a la ortodox´ıa. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno. Melich, Anna (ed.). 1991. Les valeurs des Suisses. Frankfurt: Lang. Melson, Robert and Howard Wolpe. 1971. ‘Modernization and the politics of communalism: a theoretical perspective’, in Robert Melson and Howard Wolpe (eds.), Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalism. Michigan: Michigan State University Press. Mercier, Paul. 1965. ‘On the meaning of “tribalism” in Black Africa’, in Pierre L. van den Berghe (ed.), Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company. Metcalf, Lee Kendall. 1996. ‘Outbidding to radical nationalists: minority policy in Estonia, 1988–1993’, Nations and Nationalism 2(2): 213–34. Meyer, Jean. 1990. Le statut des travailleurs immigrés dans la sécurité sociale suisse. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. Meyer, John et al. 1997. ‘World society and the nation-state’, American Journal of Sociology 103(1): 144–81. Middle East Watch. 1993. Genocide in Iraq. The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds. New York: Middle East Watch. Middle East Watch. 1994. Bureaucracy of Repression. The Iraqi Government in its Own Words. New York: Middle East Watch. Migdal, Joel. 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States: State Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Miles, Robert. 1982. Racism and Migrant Labour: A Critical Text. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1991. Rassismus: Einführung in die Geschichte und Theorie eines Begriffs. Berlin: Argument-Verlag. 1993. Racism After ‘Race Relations’. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mill, John Stuart. 1861. Considerations on Representative Government. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn. 1958 (1861). Considerations on Representative Government. New York: Liberal Arts Press. Milne, Robert Stephen. 1981. Politics in Ethnically Bipolar States. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Minahan, James. 1996. Nations Without States. A Historical Dictionary of Contemporary National Movements. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. Misteli, Roland. 1996. ‘Bestimmungsgrunde ¨ gewerkschaftlicher Ausländerpolitik in der Schweiz während der sechziger Jahre’, unpublished manuscript, Institute of Sociology, University of Zurich. ¨ Misteli, Roland and Andreas Gisler. 1995. ‘Uberfremdung. Karriere und Diffusion eines fremdenfeindlichen Deutungsmusters’, unpublished master’s thesis, Institute of Sociology, University of Zurich. Modelski, George. 1972. Principles of World Politics. New York: Free Press. Modiano, Nancy. 1973. Indian Education in the Chiapas Highland. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

292

References

Moerman, Michael. 1965. ‘Ethnic identification in a complex civilization: who are the Lue?’, American Anthropologist 67(5): 1215–30. Moffat, Michael. 1979. An Untouchable Community in South India: Structure and Consensus. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moodie, T. Dunbar. 1992. ‘Ethnic violence on South African gold mines’, Journal of Southern African Studies 18(3): 584–613. Moore, Barrington. 1966. The Social Origin of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press. Moore, Robert I. 1984. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250. Oxford: Blackwell. Moore, Sally F. 1987. ‘Explaining the present: theoretical dilemmas in processual ethnography’, American Ethnologist 14: 727–36. Morner, ¨ Magnus. 1967. Race Mixture in the History of Latin America. Boston: Little Brown. Morsy, Magali.1984. ‘Arbitration as a political institution: an interpretation of the status of monarchy in Morocco’, in Akbar Ahmed and David Hart (eds.), Islam in Tribal Societies. From the Atlas to the Indus. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mowe, ¨ Ilona. 1994. ‘Nationalstaat und Ethnizität in der Turkei’, ¨ in HansPeter Muller ¨ (ed.), Ethnische Dynamik in der aussereuropäischen Welt. Zurcher ¨ Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie 4. Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. 1993. Pandaemonium: Ethnicity and International Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mugny, Gabriel, Margarita Sanchez-Mazas, Patricia Roux and Juan A. Pérez. 1991. ‘Independence and interdependence of group judgments: xenophobia and minority influence’, European Journal of Social Psychology 21: 213–23. Muller, ¨ Adam Heinrich. 1922 (1809). Die Elemente der Staatskunst. Mit einem noch unveröffentlichten Bildnis des Verfassers nach Gerhard v. Kügelgen; mit einer Einführung, erklärenden Anmerkungen und bisher ungedruckten Originaldokumenten versehen. Jena: Fischer. Nader, Laura. 1990. Harmony Ideology. Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Nagata, Judith. 1974. ‘What is a Malay? Situational selection of ethnic identity in a plural society’, American Ethnologist 1(2): 331–50. Nagel, Joane. 1986. ‘The political construction of ethnicity’, in Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel (eds.), Competitive Ethnic Relations. New York: Academic Press. Nahmad Sitton, ´ Salomon. 1978. ‘La educacion ´ bilingue ¨ y bicultural para las regiones interculturales de México’, in Instituto Nacional Indigenista (ed.), Instituto Nacional Indigenista 30 años después. Revisión cr´ıtica. Mexico: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. Nairn, Tim. 1977. The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-nationalism. London: New Left Books. 1993. ‘All Bosnians now?’, Dissent Fall: 403–10. Nakash, Yitzhak. 1994. The Si’is of Iraq. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nassehi, Armin. 1990. ‘Zum Funktionswandel von Ethnizität im Prozess gesellschaftlicher Modernisierung’, Soziale Welt 41(3): 261–82.

References

293

Nevitte, Neil and Charles H. Kennedy (eds.). 1986. Ethnic Preference and Public Policy in Developing States. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Newby, Howard. 1975. ‘The deferential dialectic’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 17: 139–64. Newman, Saul. 1991. ‘Does modernization breed ethnic political conflict?’, World Politics 43: 451–78. Niederberger, Josef Martin. 1982. ‘Die politisch-administrative Regelung von Einwanderung und Aufenthalt von Ausländern in der Schweiz – Strukturen, Prozesse, Wirkungen’, in Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny and KarlOtto Hondrich (eds.), Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Schweiz. Segregation und Integration: eine vergleichende Untersuchung. Frankfurt: Campus. Niederer, Arnold. 1967. ‘Unsere Fremdarbeiter volkskundlich betrachtet’, Wirtschaftspolitische Mitteilungen 23: 1–19. Niedermayer, Oskar. 1990. ‘Sozialstruktur, politische Orientierung und die Unterstutzung ¨ extrem rechter Parteien in Westeuropa’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 21(4): 564–82. Niethammer, Lutz (ed.). 1994. Der ‘gesäuberte’ Antifaschismus. Die SED und die roten Kapos. Dokumente. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Nikitine, Basil. 1925. ‘Les Kurdes raconté par eux–mêmes’, L’Asie fran¸caise 25(231): 148–57. 1956. Les Kurdes: e´tude sociologique et historique. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Nodia, Ghia. 1992. ‘Nationalism and democacy’, Journal of Democracy 3(4): 3–22. Nohlen, Dieter. 1987. ‘Autoritäre Systeme’, in Dieter Nohlen and Peter Waldmann (eds.), Pipers Wörterbuch zur Politik, vol. VI: Dritte Welt. Munich: Piper. Noiriel, Gérard. 1988. Le creuset fran¸cais. Histoire de l’immigration XIX–XX siècles. Paris: Seuil. 1991. La tyrannie du national. Le droit d’asile en Europe (1793–1993). Paris: Calmann-Lévy. Nordlinger, Eric A. 1972. Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies. Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Nordman, Daniel. 1996. ‘Des limites d’état aux frontières nationales’, in Pierre Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. New York: Columbia University Press. O’Connell, James. 1967. ‘Political integration: the Nigerian case’, in Arthur Hazlewood (ed.), African Integration and Disintegration. Case Studies in Economic and Political Union. London: Oxford University Press. O’Connor, Mary. 1989. Descendants of Totoliguoqui. Ethnicity and Economics in the Mayo Valley. University of California Publications in Anthropology 19. O’Day, Alan. 1993. ‘Rural catholic mobilisation in Ireland, 1850–1922’, in David Howell (ed.), Roots of Rural Ethnic Mobilisation. Comparative Studies on Governments and Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups in Europe, 1850–1940. Aldershot: Dartmouth. O’Sullivan, Katherine. 1986. First World Nationalisms: Class and Ethnic Politics in Northern Ireland and Quebec. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

294

References

Offe, Klaus. 1987. ‘Democracy against the welfare-state? Structural foundations of neo-conservative political opportunities’, Political Theory 15(4): 501–37. Ohmae, Kenichi. 1990. The Borderless World. New York: Harper Collins. Olson, Robert Williams. 1989. The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925. Austin: University of Texas Press. Olzak, Susan. 1993. The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Olzak, Susan and Joane Nagel (eds.). 1986. Competitive Ethnic Relations. New York: Academic Press. Padilla, Felix. 1986. ‘Ladino ethnicity in the city of Chicago’, in Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel (eds.), Competitive Ethnic Relations. New York: Academic Press. Paine, Robert (ed.). 1981. Politically Speaking: Cross-Cultural Studies of Rhetoric. St John’s, Newfoundland: ISHI. Parry, John H. 1974. The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Octagon Books. Pastor, Rodolfo. 1987. Campesinos y reformas: La Mixteca, 1700–1856. Mexico: El Colegio de México. Paul, Madan C. 1989. Dimensions of Tribal Movements in India. A Study of Udayachal in Assam Valley. New Delhi: Inter-India. Peel, J. D. Y. 1989. ‘The cultural work of Yoruba ethnogenesis’, in Elizabeth Tonkin, Maryon McDonald and Malcolm Chapman (eds.), History and Ethnicity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pemberton, John. 1994. On the Subject of ‘Java’. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pérez Montfort, Ricardo. 1994. Estampas de nacionalismo popular mexicano: ensayos sobre cultura popular y nacionalismo. Mexico: CIESAS. Picard, Elisabeth. 1986. ‘Political identities and communal identities: shifting mobilization among the Lebanese shˆı’a through the years of war 1975–1985’, in Dennis Thompson and Dov Ronen (eds.), Ethnicity, Politics, and Development. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Picard, Jacques. 1994. Die Schweiz und die Juden, 1933–1945. Zurich: Chronos. Pietschmann, Horst. 1980. Staat und staatliche Entwicklung am Beginn der spanischen Kolonisation. Munster: Aschendorff. Pile, Steve and Nigel Thrift (eds.). 1995. Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pitt-Rivers, Julian. 1989. ‘The dynamics of ethnic status’, L’Uomo 2(1): 7–22. Powell, Taylor G. 1968. ‘Mexican intellectuals and the Indian question, 1876– 1911’, Hispanic American Historical Review 48(1): 19–36. Premdas, Ralph. 1993. ‘Ethnic conflict in Trinidad and Tobago: domination and reconciliation’, in Kevin Yelvington (ed.), Trinidad Ethnicity. London: Macmillan. Puttner, Helmut. 1983. ‘Wohlfahrtsstaat und Foderalismus ¨ in der Schweiz’, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Bamberg. Rabushka, Alvin and Kenneth Shepsle. 1972. Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability. New York: Merrill. Radtke, Frank-Olaf. 1990. ‘Multikulturell – Das Gesellschaftsdesign der 90er Jahre?’, Informationsdienst zur Ausländerarbeit 4: 27–34. 1996. ‘Fremde und Allzufremde. Zur Ausbreitung des ethnologischen Blicks in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft’, in Hans-Rudolf Wicker, Jean-Luc Alber,

References

295

Claudio Bolzman, Rosita Fibbi, Kurt Imhof and Andreas Wimmer (eds.), Das Fremde in der Gesellschaft. Migration, Ethnizität und Staat. Zurich: Seismos. Rajah, Ananda. 1990. ‘Ethnicity, nationalism, and the nation-state: the Karen in Burma and Thailand’, in G. Wijeyewardene (ed.), Ethnic Groups Across National Boundaries in Mainland Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Rath, Jan. 1993. ‘The ideological representation of migrant workers in Europe: a matter of racialisation’, in John Wrench and John Solomos (eds.), Racism and Migration in Western Europe. Oxford: Berg. Reichler, Claude and Roland Ruffieux (eds.). 1998. Le voyage en Suisse. Anthologie des voyageurs fran¸cais et européens de la Renaissance au XXe siècle. Paris: Robert Laffont Bouquins. Reina, Leticia. 1988. ‘Las rebeliones ind´ıgenas y campesinas (periodo colonial y siglo XIX)’, in Carlos Garc´ıa Mora and Mart´ın Villalobos Salgado (eds.), La antropolog´ıa en México, panorama histórico, vol. IV: Las cuestiones medulares (etnolog´ıa y antropolog´ıa social). Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropolog´ıa y Historia. Reiss, Hans Siegbert. 1955. The Political Thought of the German Romantics, 1793– 1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Renan, Ernest. 1947 (1882). ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’, in Oeuvres complètes, vol. I. Paris: Calmann-Levy. Ribeau, P. 1980. ‘Structures foncières et réformes agraires en Irak’, in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (ed.), Sociétés paysannes du tiers-monde. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille. Ricard, Robert. 1986. La conquista espiritual de México. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Richmond, Anthony H. 1987. ‘Ethnic nationalism: social science paradigms’, International Social Science Journal 111: 3–17. Riedo, René. 1976. ‘Das Problem der ausländischen Arbeitskräfte in der schweizerischen Gewerkschaftspolitik von 1945–1970’, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Berne. Ritschard, Rolf. 1982. ‘Die makroregionale Verteilung ausländischer Arbeitskräfte in der Schweiz und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny and Karl-Otto Hondrich (eds.), Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Schweiz. Segregation und Integration: eine vergleichende Untersuchung. Frankfurt: Campus. Ritzmann-Blickenstorfer, Heiner. 1996. Historische Statistik der Schweiz. Zurich: Chronos. Roeder, Philip G. 1991. ‘Soviet federalism and ethnic mobilization’, World Politics 43: 196–232. Rogowski, Ronald. 1985. ‘Causes and varieties of nationalism: a rationalist account’, in Ronald Rogowski and Edward Tiryakian (eds.), New Nationalism of the Developed World. Boston: Allen & Unwin. Romano, Gaetano. 1990. ‘Mehr Fremde – mehr Fremdenangst? Bemerkungen zu einer gängigen Argumentation’, Asylon (Bundesamt fur ¨ Fluchtlinge) ¨ 6: 2–7. ¨ 1996. ‘Zeit der Krise – Krise der Zeit. Identität, Uberfremdung und verschlusselte ¨ Zeitstrukturen’, in Andreas Ernst and Erich Wigger (eds.), Die

296

References

neue Schweiz? Eine Gesellschaft zwischen Integration und Polarisierung (1910– 1930). Zurich: Chronos. Roosens, Eugeen E. 1989. Creating Ethnicity: The Process of Ethnogenesis. Newbury Park: Sage. Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon. Roseberry, William. 1982. ‘Balinese cockfights and the seduction of anthropology’, Social Research 49: 1013–28. Rothchild, Donald. 1986. ‘Hegemonial exchange: an alternative model for managing conflict in Middle Africa’, in Dennis Thompson and Dov Ronen (eds.), Ethnicity, Politics, and Development. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. 1995. ‘Ethnic bargaining and state breakdown in Africa’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1(1): 54–72. forthcoming. ‘Liberalism, democracy and conflict management’, in Andreas Wimmer et al. (eds.), Facing Ethnic Conflicts. Towards a New Realism. Rothschild, Joseph. 1981. Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework. New York: Columbia University Press. Ruffieux, Roland. 1986. ‘Die Schweiz des Freisinns (1848–1914)’, in Ulrich Im Hof et al. (eds.), Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. Rurup, ¨ Bert and Werner Sesselmeier. 1993. ‘Einwanderung: die wirtschaftliche ¨ Perspektive’, in Friedrich Balke et al. (eds.), Schwierige Fremdheit. Uber Integration und Ausgrenzung in Einwanderungsländern. Frankfurt: Fischer. Ruth, Max. 1934. Das Fremdenpolizeirecht der Schweiz. Zurich: Polygraphischer Verlag. Ryan, Stephen. 1990. Ethnic Conflict in International Relations. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Sandler, Todd and John Tschirkart. 1980. ‘The economic theory of clubs: an evaluative survey’, Journal of Economic Literature 18: 1481–521. Santschi, Catherine. 1991. Schweizer Nationalfeste im Spiegel der Geschichte. Zurich: Chronos. Scheff, Thomas. 1994. ‘Emotions and identity: a theory of ethnic nationalism’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Scherrer, Christian. 1994a. Ethno-Nationalismus als globales Phänomen. Zur Krise der Staaten in der Dritten Welt und der früheren UDSSR. INEF (Institut fur ¨ Entwicklung und Frieden der Universität-GH-Duisburg) Report 6. ¨ 1994b. ‘Ethnische Strukturierung und politische Mobilisierung in Athiopien’, in Hans-Peter Muller ¨ (ed.), Ethnische Dynamik in der aussereuropäischen Welt. Zurcher ¨ Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie 4. Schierup, Carl-Ulrich. 1994. ‘The right to be different: multiculturalism and the racialization of Scandinavian welfare politics; the case of Denmark’, Innovation 7(3): 277–88. Schiffauer, Werner. 1992. Die Migranten aus Subay. Türken in Deutschland, eine Ethnographie. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. 1993. ‘Die civil society und der Fremde – Grenzmarkierungen in vier politischen Kulturen’, in Friedrich Balke et al. (eds.), Schwierige Fremdheit.

References

297

¨ Uber Integration und Ausgrenzung in Einwanderungsländern. Frankfurt: Fischer. Schiller, Nina Glick, Linda Basch and Christina Szanton Blanc. 1995. ‘From immigrants to transmigrant: theorizing transnational migration’, Anthropology Quarterly 68(1): 48–63. Schilling, Heinz. 1992. Religion, Political Culture, and the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History. Leiden: Brill. Schlaepfer, Rudolf. 1969. Die Ausländerfrage in der Schweiz vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Zurich: Juris Druck+Verlag. Schmidt, Dana Adams. 1964. Journey among Brave Men. Boston: Brown. Schnapper, Dominique. 1991. La France de l’intégration. Sociologie de la nation en 1990. Paris: Gallimard. Schofthaler, ¨ Traugott and Dietrich Goldschmidt. 1984. Soziale Struktur und Vernunft. Jean Piagets Modell entwickelten Denkens in der Diskussion kulturvergleichender Forschung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Schryer, Frans Jozef. 1990. Ethnicity and Class Conflict in Rural Mexico. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Schuster, John. 1992. ‘Der Staat und die Einwanderung aus Asien’, in Institut fur ¨ Migrations- und Rassismusforschung (ed.), Rassismus und Migration in Europa. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. Schwartz, Norman B. 1990. Forest Society. A Social History of Petén, Guatemala. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schwarz, Heinrich. 1988. Volkswirtschaftliche Wirkungen der Ausländerbeschäftigung in der Schweiz. Chur: Ruegger. ¨ Schweizer, Thomas and Douglas R. White (eds.). 1998. Kinship, Networks, and Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scott, George M. 1990. ‘A resynthesis of the primordial and circumstantial approaches to ethnic group solidarity: towards an explanatory model’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 13: 147–71. Scott, James C. 1977. ‘Protest and profanation: agrarian revolt and the little tradition’, Theory and Society 47: 1–38; 4: 211–46. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Yale: Yale University Press. Sebring, James M. 1969. ‘Caste indicators and caste identification of strangers’, Human Organization 83: 199–207. Seed, Patricia. 1982. ‘Social dimensions of race: Mexico City, 1753’, Hispanic American Historical Review 62(4): 569–606. Sekulic, Dusko, Garth Massey and Randy Hodson. 1994. ‘Who were the Yugoslavs? Failed sources of a common identity in the former Yugoslavia’, American Sociological Review 59: 83–97. Service, Elmar R. 1985. A Century of Controversy. Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960. Orlando: Academic Press. Shalev, Michael. 1983. ‘The social democratic model and beyond: two “generations” of comparative research on the welfare state’, in Richard F. Tomasson (ed.), The Welfare State, 1883–1983. Greenwich: JAI Press. Shankman, Paul. 1984. ‘The thick and the thin: on the interpretative theoretical program of Clifford Geertz’, Current Anthropology 25: 261–79.

298

References

Sharp, John and Emile Boonzaier. 1994. ‘Ethnic identity as performance: lessons from Namaqualand’, Journal of Southern African Studies 20(3): 405–16. Shelton, Anthony A. 1995. ‘Dispossessed histories: Mexican museums and the institutionalization of the past’, Cultural Dynamics 7(1): 69–100. Shiels, Frederick (ed.). 1984. Ethnic Separatism and World Politics. Lanham: University Press of America. Shweder, Richard A. 1979. ‘Rethinking culture and personality theory’, Ethos 7: 255–78. Siegenthaler, Hansjorg. ¨ 1993. ‘Supranationalität, Nationalismus und regionale Autonomie: Erfahrungen des schweizerischen Bundesstaates – Perspektiven der Europäischen Gemeinschaft’, in Heinrich A. Winkler and Hartmut Kaelble (eds.), Nationalismus – Nationalitäten – Supranationalität. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Silbermann, Alphons and Francis Husers. ¨ 1995. Der ‘normale’ Hass auf die Fremden. Eine sozialwissenschaftliche Studie zu Ausmass und Hintergründen von Fremdenfeindlichkeit in Deutschland. Munich: Quintessenz. Silvermann, Maxim. 1992. Deconstructing the Nation. Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Simon, Reeva. 1986. Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Implementation of Nationalist Ideology. New York: Columbia University Press. Simpson, Mark. 1994. ‘The experience of nation-building: some lessons for South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies 20(3): 463–74. Sithole, Masipula. 1980. ‘Ethnicity and factionalism in Zimbabwe. Nationalist politics 1957–79’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 3(1): 17–39. 1986. ‘The salience of ethnicity in African politics: the case of Zimbabwe’, in Anand Paranjpe (ed.), Ethnic Identities and Prejudices: Perspectives from the Third World. Leiden: Brill. Skidmore, Thomas E. 1993. ‘Bi-racial U.S.A. vs. multi-racial Brazil: is the contrast still valid?’, Journal of Latin American Studies 25: 373–86. Sklar, Richard L. 1967. ‘Political science and national integration – a radical approach’, Journal of Modern African Studies 5(1): 1–11. Smith, Anthony D. 1979. ‘Towards a theory of ethnic separatism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2(1): 21–37. 1981. ‘War and ethnicity: the role of warfare in the formation, self-images and cohesion of ethnic communities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 4(4): 375– 97. 1983. ‘Nationalism and social theory’, British Journal of Sociology 34(1): 19–38. 1984. The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1986a. ‘Conflict and collective identity: class, ethnie and nation’, in Edward E. Azar and John W. Burton (eds.), International Conflict Resolution. Theory and Practice. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. 1986b. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell. 1992. ‘Chosen people: why ethnic groups survive’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 15(3): 436–56. 1995a. Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. 1995b. ‘Gastronomy or geology? The role of nationalism in the reconstruction of nations’, Nations and Nationalism 1: 3–24.

References

299

1996. ‘Culture, community and territory: the politics of ethnicity and nationalism’, in Claudia Honegger et al. (eds.), Gesellschaften im Umbau. Konflikte, Identitäten, Differenzen. Zurich: Seismos. 1998. Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Smith, Carol A. 1990. ‘Failed nationalist movements in 19th-century Guatemala: a parable for the Third World’, in Richard G. Fox (ed.), Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. Smith, Graham. 1996. ‘Russia, ethnoregionalism and the politics of federation’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 19(2): 391–410. Smith, Michael G. 1969. ‘Institutional and political conditions of pluralism’, in Leo Kuper and Michael G. Smith (eds.), Pluralism in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Waldemar R. 1975. ‘Beyond the plural society: economics and ethnicity in Middle American towns’, Ethnology 14: 225–44. 1981 (1977). El sistema de fiestas y el cambio económico. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Snyder, Jack. 2000. From Voting to Violence. Democratization and Nationalist Violence. New York: Norton. Solomos, John. 1988. Black Youth, Racism and the State: The Politics of Ideology and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoglu. 1994. Limits of Citizenship. Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The Sovereign State and its Competitors. An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stack, John. 1986. ‘Ethnic mobilization in world politics: the primordial perspective’, in John Stack (ed.), The Primordial Challenge: Ethnicity in the Contemporary World. New York: Greenwood. Stagl, Justin. 1993. ‘Der Kreislauf der Kultur’, Anthropos 88: 477–88. Statham, Paul and Ruud Koopmans. 1999. ‘Comparing public mobilisation over ethnic difference in Britain and Germany: theoretical, methodological and analytic considerations’, in Jesika Ter Wal and Maykel Verkuyten (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Racism. Aldershot: Ashgate. Staub, Ervin. 1989. The Roots of Evil. The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. 1969. Las clases sociales en las sociedades agrarias. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno. Steinberg, Jonathan. 1996. Why Switzerland? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steiner, Jurg. ¨ 1989. ‘Power-sharing: another Swiss export product?’, in Joseph V. Montville (ed.), Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies. Lexington: Lexington Books. Steiner, Jurg ¨ and Jeffrey Obler. 1977. ‘Does the consociational theory really hold for Switzerland?’, in Milton J. Esman (ed.), Ethnic Conflict in the Western World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Steward, Julian. 1972 (1955). Theory of Culture Change. The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

300

References

Stocking, George W. (ed.). 1985. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Strathern, Marilyn. 1985. ‘Knowing power and being equivocal: three Melanesian contexts’, in Richard Fardon (ed.), Power and Knowledge. Anthropological and Sociological Approaches. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. Strauss, Claudia and Naomi Quinn. 1997. A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Strecker, Ivo. 1988. The Social Practice of Symbolization: An Anthropological Analysis. London: Athlone. Stutzman, Ronald. 1981. ‘El mestizaje: an all-inclusive ideology of exclusion’, in Norman E. Whitten (ed.), Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador. New York: Harper and Row. Taguieff, Pierre-André. 1988. La force du préjugé. Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles. Paris: Editions la Découverte. 1991. ‘Le “nationalisme des nationalistes”. Un problème pour l’histoire des idées politiques en France’, in Gil Delannoi and Pierre-André Taguieff (eds.), Théories du nationalisme. Paris: Editions Kimé. 1995. Les fins de l’antiracisme. Paris: Michalon. Tamas, ´ Gáspár M. 1996. ‘Ethnarchy and ethno-anarchism’, Social Research 63(1): 147–90. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1996. Leveling Crowds. Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press Tapinos, Georges and Alain de Rugy. 1994. ‘The macroeconomic impact of immigration: review of the literature published since the mid-1970s’, in SOPEMI, Trends in International Migration: Annual Report 1993. Paris: OECD. Tax, Sol and Robert Hinshaw. 1970. ‘Panajachel a generation later’, in Walter Goldschmidt and Harry Hoijer (eds.), The Social Anthropology of Latin America. Essays in Honor of Ralph Leon Beals. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Taylor, Robert. 1987. The State in Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Tenorio Trillo, Mauricio. 1996. Mexico at the World’s Fairs. Crafting a Modern Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thompson, Andrew and Ralph Fevre. 2001. ‘The national question: sociological reflections on nation and nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism 7(3): 297– 315. Thomson, Guy P. 1990. ‘Bulwarks of patriotic liberalism: the national guard, philharmonic corps and patriotic juntas in Mexico, 1847–1888’, Journal of Latinoamerican Studies 22(1): 31–68. Tilly, Charles. 1975. ‘Western state-making and theories of political transformation’, in Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Todorov, Nikolai. 1983. The Balkan City, 1400–1900. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Trevor-Roper, Hugh. 1983. ‘The invention of tradition. The highland tradition of Scotland’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

301

Tschudi, Hans Peter. 1989. Entstehung und Entwicklung der schweizerischen Sozialversicherungen. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. Turner, Victor W. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ugalde, Antonio. 1973. ‘Contemporary Mexico: from hacienda to PRI, political leadership in a Zapotec village’, in Robert Kern (ed.), The Caciques. Oligarchical Politics and the System of Caciquismo in the Luso-Hispanic World. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz – Zweiter Weltkrieg. 1999. Die Schweiz und die Flüchtlinge zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Berne: EDMZ. Vail, Leroy. 1989. ‘Introduction: ethnicity in Southern African history’, in Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London: Currey. Valdés González, Luz Mar´ıa. 1988. El perfil demográfico de los indios Mexicanos. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno. van Amersfoort, Hans. 1982. Immigration and the Formation of Minority Groups: The Dutch Experience 1945–1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Amersfoort, Hans and Herman van der Wusten. 1981. ‘Democratic stability and ethnic parties’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 4(4): 476–85. van Bruinessen, Martin. 1989. Agha, Scheich und Staat. Politik und Gesellschaft Kurdistans. Berlin: Parabolis. van Dam, Nikolaos. 1979. The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics, 1961–1980. London: Croom Helm. van den Berghe, Pierre. 1978. ‘Race and ethnicity: a socio-biological perspective’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 1(4): 101–11. van den Berghe, Pierre (ed.). 1990. State Violence and Ethnicity. Niwot: University Press of Colorado. van den Berghe, Pierre. 1991. The Ethnic Phenomenon. New York: Elsevier. 1997. ‘Rehabilitating stereotypes’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 20(1): 1–16. van Dijk, Teun A. 1991. Racism and the Press. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Vanderwood, Paul J. 1992. Disorder and Progress. Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources. Vanhanen, Tatu. 1999. Ethnic Conflicts Explained by Ethnic Nepotism. Stamford: JAI Press. Varese, Stefano. 1983. Proyectos e´tnicos y proyectos nationales. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Vargas, Maria Eugenia. 1994. Educación e ideolog´ıa: constitución de una categor´ıa de intermediarios en la comunicac´ıon interétnica. El caso de los maestros bilingües Tarascos (1964–1982). Mexico: CIESAS. Varshney, Ashutosh. 2001. ‘Ethnic conflict and civil society. India and beyond’, World Politics 53(April): 362–98. Verdery, Katherine. 1994. ‘Ethnicity, nationalism, and post-modernism: Ethnic Groups and Boundaries past and future’, in Hans Vermeulen and Cora Govers (eds.), The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’, Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. Vertovec, Steven. 1996. ‘Multiculturalism, culturalism and public incorporation’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 19(1): 49–69.

302

References

1999. ‘Conceiving and researching transnationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2): 447–62. Vertovec, Steven and Alisdair Rogers. 1998. ‘Introduction’, in Steven Vertovec and Alisdair Rogers (eds.), Muslim European Youth. Reproducing Religion, Ethnicity, Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate. Villoro, Luis. 1979. Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno. Vincent, Joan. 1978. ‘Political anthropology: manipulative strategies’, Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 175–94. von Freyberg, Thomas. 1994. ‘Ausländerfeindlichkeit am Arbeitsplatz. Zur Untersuchung ethnischer Konflikte zwischen deutschen und ausländischen Beschäftigten’, in Institut fur ¨ Sozialforschung (ed.), Rechtsextremismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit. Studien zur aktuellen Entwicklung. Frankfurt: Campus. von Waldkirch, Eduard. 1923. ‘Die Grundsätze des Niederlassungsrechts der Fremden in der Schweiz’, Zeitschrift für Schweizerisches Recht 42: 56–95. Wagner, Ulrich and Peter Schonbach. ¨ 1984. ‘Links between educational status and prejudice: ethnic attitudes in West Germany’, in Norman D. Miller and Marilynn B. Brewer (eds.), Groups in Contact. Orlando: Academic Press. ¨ Wahlbeck, Osten. 1999. Kurdish Diasporas. A Comparative Study of Kurdish Refugee Communities. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Wai, Dunstan M. 1979. ‘Revolution, rhetoric, and reality in the Sudan’, Journal of Modern African Studies 17(1): 71–93. Waldmann, Peter. 1989. Ethnischer Radikalismus. Ursachen und Folgen gewaltsamer Minderheitenkonflikte am Beispiel des Baskenlandes, Nordirlands und Quebecs. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1961. Africa: The Politics of Independence. New York: Vintage. 1965. ‘Ethnicity and national integration in West Africa’, in Pierre L. van den Berghe (ed.), Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company. Ward, Robin and Richard Jenkins. 1984. Ethnic Communities in Business: Strategies for Economic Survival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warman, Arturo et al. (eds.). 1970. De eso que llaman antropolog´ıa mexicana. Mexico: SEP/Instituto Nacional de Antropolog´ıa y Historia. Warren, Kay B. 1989. The Symbolism of Subordination. Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town. Austin: University of Texas Press. Watson, Graham. 1989. ‘Definitive Geertz’, Ethnos 54: 23–30. 1991. ‘Rewriting culture’, in Richard G. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology. Working in the Present. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Weber, Eugen. 1979. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernisation of Rural France, 1870–1914. London: Chatto and Windus. Weber, Max. 1920. ‘Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen’, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. I. Tubingen: ¨ Mohr. 1968 (1922). Economy and Society, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.

References

303

1985 (1922). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Tubingen: ¨ Mohr. Weber Pazmino, ˜ Gioia. 1991. ‘Klientelismus: Annäherung an das Konzept’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Seminar of Ethnology, University of Zurich. Weilenmann, Hermann. 1925. Die vielsprachige Schweiz. Eine Lösung des Nationalitätenproblems. Basle: Im Rhein-Verlag. Welz, Gisela. 1994. ‘Die soziale Organisation kultureller Differenz. Zur Kritik des Ethnosbegriffs in der anglo-amerikanischen Kulturanthropologie’, in Helmut Berding (ed.), Nationales Bewusstsein und kollektive Identität. Studien zur Entwicklung des kollektiven Bewusstseins in der Neuzeit, vol. II. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Werbner, Pnina. 1990. The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings Among British Pakistanis. Oxford: Berg. 1996. ‘Essentialising essentialism, essentialising silence. Debates on ethnicity and racism in Britain’, in Hans-Rudolf Wicker et al. (eds.), Das Fremde in der Gesellschaft. Migration, Ethnizität und Staat. Zurich: Seismos. Wetherell, Margaret and Jonathan Potter. 1993. Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press. Whitten, Dorothea S. and Norman E. Whitten. 1972. ‘Social strategies and social relationships’, Annual Review of Anthropology 1: 247–70. Wicker, Hans-Rudolf. 1996. ‘Von der komplexen Kultur zur kulturellen Komplexität’, in Hans-Rudolf Wicker et al. (eds.), Das Fremde in der Gesellschaft. Migration, Ethnizität und Staat. Zurich: Seismos. Willems, Helmut. 1995. ‘Right-wing extremism, racism or youth violence? Explaining violence against foreigners in Germany’, New Community 21(4): 501–23. Willems, Wim, Annemarie Cottaar and Daniel Van Aken. 1990. ‘Indische Nederlanders. Van marginale groep tot succescolle migranten?’, in D. van Arkel et al. (eds.), Van Ost naar West. Racisme als Mondiaal Verschijnsel. Baarn: Ambo. Williams, Brackette F. 1989. ‘A class act: anthropology and the race to nation across ethnic terrain’, Annual Review of Anthropology 18: 401–44. Wilson, Thomas M. and Hastings Donnan. 1998. Border Identities. Nation and State at International Frontiers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, Andreas. 1987. Historias y Leyendas de San Juan Mazatlán, Mixe. Oaxaca, Mexico: Gade A. C. 1993. ‘Ethnischer Radikalismus als Gegennationalismus. Indianische Bewegungen im sechsten Jahrhundert nach Kolumbus’, in Peter Gerber (ed.), 500 Jahre danach. Zur heutigen Lage der indigenen Völker beider Amerika. Chur: Ruegger. ¨ 1995a. Transformationen. Sozialer Wandel im indianischen Mittelamerika. Berlin: Reimer. 1995b. ‘Variationen uber ¨ ein Schema. Zur Infrapolitik des Denkens am Beispiel eines Mythos der Mixe’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 120: 51–71. 1995c. ‘Die erneute Rebellion der Gehenkten, Chiapas 1994’, 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 3: 59–68.

304

References

1995d. Die komplexe Gesellschaft. Eine Theorienkritik am Beispiel des indianischen Bauerntums. Berlin: Reimer. 1995e. ‘Stämme fur ¨ den Staat. Tribale Politik und die kurdische Nationalbewegung im Irak’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 47(1): 95–113. 1996a. ‘L’héritage de Herder. Nationalisme, migrations et la pratique théorique de l’anthropologie’, Tsantsa. Revue de la Société Suisse d’Ethnologie 1: 4–18. ´ 1996b. ‘L’Etat-nation – une forme de fermeture sociale’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie 37(1): 163–79. 1996c. ‘Kultur. Zur Reformulierung eines ethnologischen Grundbegriffs’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 48(3): 401–25. 1997. ‘Stammespolitik und die kurdische Nationalbewegung im Irak’, in Carsten Borck, Eva Savelsberg and Siamend Hajo (eds.), Kurdologie. Ethnizität, Nationalismus, Religion und Politik in Kurdistan. Munster: Lit. 1998. Zurich’s Miami. Transethnic Relations of a Transnational Community. Transnational Communities Working Paper Series 7. Oxford: Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology. 2001a. ‘Globalizations avant la lettre. Isomorphization and heteromorphization in an interconnecting world’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(3): 435–66. 2001b. ‘Verwischte Grenzen. Zum Verhältnis zwischen Soziologie, Ethnologie und Volkskunde’, Annali di Sociologia – Soziologisches Jahrbuch 14 (1998/9): 311–26. 2002 (forthcoming). ‘From subject to object of history: the Kurdish nationalist movement in Northern Iraq since 1991’, Kurdische Studien. Wimmer, Andreas and Nina Glick Schiller, forthcoming. ‘Methodological nationalism and beyond. Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences.’ Windisch, Uli. 1978. Xénophobie? Logique de la pensée populaire. Lausanne: L’âge d’homme. 1994. Alltagsbeziehungen zwischen Romands und Deutschschweizern am Beispiel der zweisprachigen Kantone Freiburg und Wallis. Basle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. Winkler, Jurgen. ¨ 1994. ‘Die Wählerschaft der rechtsextremen Parteien in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949 bis 1993’, in Wolfgang Kowalsky and Wolfgang Schroeder (eds.), Rechtsextremismus. Einführung und Forschungsbilanz. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Winnifrith, Tony. 1993. ‘The Vlachs of the Balkans: a rural minority which never achieved ethnic identity’, in David Howell (ed.), Roots of Rural Ethnic Mobilisation. Comparative Studies on Governments and Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups in Europe, 1850–1940. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Wintrobe, Ronald. 1995. ‘Some economics of ethnic capital formation and conflict’, in Albert Breton et al. (eds.), Nationalism and Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wirz, Albert. 1982. Krieg in Afrika. Die nachkolonialen Konflikte in Nigeria, Sudan, Tschad und Kongo. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

References

305

Withol de Wenden, Catherine. 1992. ‘Fragen der citoyenneté’, in Institut fur ¨ Migrations- und Rassismusforschung (ed.), Rassismus und Migration in Europa. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. Wolf, Eric. 1957. ‘Closed corporate peasant communities in Mesoamerica and central Java’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13(1): 1–18. Wright, Frank. 1987. Northern Ireland. A Comparative Analysis. Dublin: Gill and MacMillan. Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. 1994. Gifts, Favors, and Banquets. The Art of Social Relationships in China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Yapp, Malcolm E. 1987. The Making of the Modern Near East, 1792–1923. London: Longman. 1996. The Near East since the First World War. A History to 1995. London: Longman. Young, Crawford. 1965. Politics in the Congo. Decolonization and Independence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1976. The Politics of Cultural Pluralism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1983. ‘The temple of ethnicity’, World Politics 35: 652–62. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1992. ‘Die Frauen, ethnische Prozesse und der Staat’, in Institut fur ¨ Migrations- und Rassismusforschung (ed.), Rassismus und Migration in Europa. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. Zea, Leopoldo. 1968. El positivismo en México. Nacimiento, apogeo y decadencia. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica. ´ Zenner, Walter. 1987. ‘Middleman minorities and genocide’, in Isodor Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski (eds.), Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. New York: Greenwood Press. Zhou, Min. 1997. ‘Segmented assimilation: issues, controversies, and recent research on the new second generation’, International Migration Review 31: 975–1008. Zimmer, Oliver. 2001. ‘Forging the authentic nation: Alpine landscape and Swiss national identity’, in Alain Dieckhoff and Natividad Gutiérrez (eds.), Modern Roots. Studies of National Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate. Zubaida, Sami. 1989. ‘Nations: old and new. Comments on Anthony Smith’s “The myth of the ‘modern nation’ and myths of nations”’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 12(3): 329–39.

Index

Note: Page numbers in bold refer to tables and figures. Abdulhamid, Sultan, 161, 162, 163, 169–70 Abdussalam the Second, Sheikh (of Barzan), 170, 185 absolutism, decline of, 74–5 Abu-Lughod, Lila, 21 action, theory of, 23, 24 Africa, ethnic conflict in, 86n, 88, 89, 91 Ahmed, Sheikh, 185, 189 Al-bu Nasir tribe, Iraq, 180 Albanians, in Greece, 78 aliens legal discrimination against, 222, 251 rights of mobility and residence of, 62, 199, 218 see also immigrants Alps, symbolic significance for Swiss nationalism, 225n, 240, 246n Altamirano, Ignacio Manuel, 129 Althusser, Louis, 23 Anderson, Benedict, 32, 52, 57 anthropology, 15, 25 critical, 22–3 cultural (American), 22, 24 dialogic, 29 influence on ethnic nationalism, 151–2n, 154n notion of culture, 19–22 processual, 23 social, 22 anti-racism, 200 Arabs in Ottoman Empire, 165 see also Pan-Arab nationalism; Shiite Arabs; Sunni Arabs Arendt, Hannah, 196 Argentina, 92 Armenians, 171, 172 Armstrong, John, 46

306

army in Iraq, 175, 176–7, 181–2, 186 Ottoman, 161, 163 royal Mexican, 124, 127–8 Swiss, 236–7, 236n, 244n, 255 Assam, 106–7 assimilation forced, 3 of immigrants, and cultural difference, 206–7 Iraq, 183, 193 Mexico, 125, 130, 135, 140–1, 142–3 Switzerland, 254, 256, 266 associations (civil and social), 73, 94 Iraq, 175 trans-ethnic (Switzerland), 242, 243–4, 245–6 Assyrians, 171, 172, 183 demand for autonomy (Iraq), 180–1, 182 asylum-seekers Switzerland, 265, 266 see also immigrants; refugees Austro-Hungarian Empire, 165, 166 Aztecs, cultural legacy reclaimed, 121, 122, 133–4, 138 Baath party in Iraq, 179–80, 187n and Pan-Arab nationalism, 175, 176 Bakr Sidqi, prime minister of Iraq, 176, 183 Balibar, Etienne, 217 Balkan wars, 166 Barbados, Declaration of (1971), 151n Barth, Frederik, 23 Barzan, sheikhs of, 168, 169, 185, 189 Barzani, Mazud, Kurdish leader, 156, 190–2 Barzani, Mullah Mustafa, Kurdish leader, 189–91

Index Basque region, 88 Beck, Ulrich, 85, 211n Bedinan, emirate of, 169, 170 Belgium, 110, 220 Bellah, Robert, 29 Berzenji, Sheikh, 189 Bloch, Maurice, 23 Boas, Franz, 21 Boissevain, Jeremy, 23 Bolivia, 139, 139n Bonacich, Edna, 98 Bosnia, 85 boundaries and boundary-making, 8, 52, 119 ethnic, 103–4 principles of, 53–4 social, 55 see also territorial boundaries Bourdieu, Pierre, 26–7 Brazil, racial democracy, 208 Breuilly, John, 50, 66n Bridel, Philippe, 247n British Empire, 75 Brubaker, Rogers, 57, 87, 97, 251 bureaucracy and distribution of state goods, 93, 102 ethnicisation of, 66, 91–2, 107–8, 179 and expansion of state power, 65 inherited colonial, 94 Ottoman Empire, 160 preferential treatment by, 93, 93n, 102, 103n see also centralisation; immigration policy Burma, 85, 106 Burundi, 94–5, 109, 111–12, 195 cantons (Swiss) allegiance to, 236, 236n, 247–8n alliances of, 227 autonomy of, 231, 257n and elite organisations, 234 capitalism, rise of, 73, 74, 75, 242 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 137, 141, 142, 149, 150n caste system, 37 colonial Mexico, 117–18 Catholic church Jansenist Catholicism, 121 in Mexico, 127, 129–30 papal bulls, 117–18, 118n Caucasus states, 85 caudillos (Mexico), 128 censorship, 242 centralisation, 102 administrative (Mexico), 120–1, 123, 130

307 and modernisation, 161–2 Ottoman Empire, 162–3, 168 and state formation, 71–2, 74 see also bureaucracy Chaldeans, Iraq, 183, 183n Chatterjee, Partha, 65n, 77 Chinese, immigrants in USA, 208 Christians independence movements, 171–2 in Iraq, 183, 183n, 195 under Ottomans, 157 see also Catholic church; millets Church of the East, 183n churches Ottoman Empire, 159, 172, 183n political role (Switzerland), 228 see also Christians; millets; religion cientificos (technocrats), Mexico, 132 citizenship, 1, 58, 73 exclusive nature of, 58, 250–1 and nationality, 57–8, 123–4 naturalisation, 268 nature of Swiss, 253, 254–5 as principle of modern state, 2, 3, 162, 267–8 and process of social closure, 57 and right of mobility, 62, 222, 260 and shared interests, 213 civil society, 9, 248n in Iraq, 175 in Mexico, 126–7 and state modernisation, 67–8, 79, 80–1, 80, 113 in Switzerland, 228–9, 241, 242–4, 247–9 and trans-ethnic networks, 67n, 244–6, 248 see also associations; literacy; literary and learned societies class professional, 72, 216–17 and xenophobia, 212, 215–17 see also elites; middle class; working class clientelism, 66–7, 92–3 ethnic, 113, 173–4 in Kurdistan, 194 Mexico, 137–8, 141 pre-colonial, 94 and political parties, 109 trans-ethnic, 94–5, 94nn and tribal relations, 168–9 see also elites Clifford, James, 25

308

Index

closure, 9 and nationalist ideology, 57–64 see also legal closure; military closure; political closure; social closure cognitive development, 23 Cohen, Abner, 98–9 Cold War, 86, 241, 260 Cole, Jeffrey, 219 collective representations, 28, 36–7, 213–14 colonialism, 58–9, 72, 75, 95 ethnic relations under Spanish, 114, 115–23 ‘internal’, 142n, 152n political principles of, 117–18 see also empires commerce, development of, 73, 74, 75, 242 communal self-government, 74 communes (Swiss) and choice of official language, 231 focus of identity, 236, 236n responsibility for welfare, 253, 255 communicative action, Habermas’s theory of, 30 Communist party, in Iraq, 176, 186 community autonomy under indirect rule, 116, 128 construction of, 8, 33 and cultural homogeneity, 53–4 and identity, 50 imagined, 32, 52–7 as model of nation, 217 competition distinction between group and individual, 103n labour market, 203–5 for state goods, 212–17 Connerton, Paul, 101 conscription, universal Iraq, 181–2 Mexico, 128 consensus, in cultural compromise, 29 consent, to normative order, 30–1, 31n consociational democracy, 109, 110, 110n, 111; see also Netherlands; Switzerland Counter-Reformation, Catholic, 72 Creole patriotism (Mexico), 119–23, 139n creolisation, fear of, 202 criollos (descendants of Spaniards), 118 excluded from administration, 121, 121n identified with sovereign nation, 125, 130, 131, 134–6 see also Creole patriotism Croatia, 77 cultural compromise, 8, 26, 28–34 and changes in balance of power, 74–5, 214–15

and exclusion, 213 and integration of working class, 251 and interpretations of nationalism, 56 Iraq, 186–7 Mexico, 139 power effects of, 36 and social contract, 31n cultural heterogeneity and variation, 34–6 cultural homogeneity, 22, 24n, 53–4 Iraq, 177 cultural incompatibility, 208–9 racism and, 202, 206 cultural markers laws imposing, 160 and social closure, 33–4 cultural relativism, 24n cultural transformation, 24, 38–40, 52 processual patterns of, 39, 41 culture anthropological notion of, 19–22 critiques of classical notion of, 22–4 and discourse, 24–6, 40–1 and habitus, 26–8 national, 21, 53 as negotiated meaning, 28, 34 sub-cultures, 37–8 Czechoslovakia, 51 de Capitani, Fran¸cois, 226–7, 228, 230 democracy, 1, 4 and citizenship, 73 and ethnic conflict, 108–9, 108n, 109n institutional designs for, 77 as legitimising power of elite, 65 and Mexican National Guard, 128–9 and national self-determination, 9, 53–4, 59–60 and nationalism, 60 and obligations of loyalty, 61 as political principle, 2, 3, 56 in Switzerland, 2, 110, 230, 240 Denmark, 212n dependency theory, 98 Deutsch, Karl, 223, 224n, 227 dialogic anthropology, 29 diasporas, 199 dictatorships, 111–12 differentiation, functional, 63–4 discourse, 24–6, 40–1 and counter-discourse, 37–8 of exclusion, 209, 212 of injustice, 4, 10, 113 of racism and xenophobia, 209–11, 212 division of labour, Durkheim’s theory of, 33

Index ‘domino effects’ of break-up of empire, 78, 79 of secession movements, 99n Dumont, Louis, 55 Durkheim, Emile, 28, 29, 33 Eastern Europe, ethnic conflicts, 56, 90 Echeverr´ıa Alvarez, Luis, 149 economy as factor in ethnic conflicts, 99, 100 and nation-state formation, 53, 54, 65n rise of capitalism and commerce, 73, 74, 75, 242 state control over, 103 education, 75, 102 Arabisation of (Iraq), 178–9 compulsory primary, 57, 132, 164 Iraq 175, 177–9 Mexico, 129, 132–3, 140–1, 142–3 modernisation (Ottoman Empire), 161, 164 Switzerland, 228–9, 246n see also literacy egalitarianism in Mexico, 127, 135 nationalist, 53–4, 55, 56 see also equality Egypt, 92 elites benefiting from nation-state formation, 65 and civil society organisations, 241 and clientelism, 66–7, 92–3 coalition of interests, 110, 214 criollos in Mexico, 120 and ethnicisation of bureaucracy, 66, 91–2 expulsion of foreign, 63, 73, 124 and imperial hierarchy, 58–9 Iraq (Sunni Arab), 174–5 Ottoman Empire, 158 patrician families (Switzerland), 225–6, 227–8 Spanish (in Mexico), 124 Swiss liberal (republican), 231, 234, 246, 254 in weak states, 66, 104, 173 see also clientelism empires dissolution of, 74, 75, 196 legal systems of, 57, 74, 117–18 multicultural character of, 58–9 political principles of, 7 see also Austro-Hungarian Empire; colonialism; Ottoman Empire; Spanish Empire

309 employment, see labour markets encomiendas, 116, 116n Enlightenment philosophy of, 26, 29, 31n in Spain, 120 in Switzerland, 245 equality of outcome, 36 political principle of, 56 Swiss notion of, 226 equality before the law, 57, 58, 61, 160 Iraq, 183 Ottoman Empire, 162 see also hierarchies Eritrea, 77 Essed, Philomena, 200, 210 Esser, Hartmut, 45 Estonia, 109 Ethiopia, 96, 111 ethnic conflicts, 85–8 competition for state goods, 102–4 escalation of, 107–12 mobilisation of support, 96–102 persistence of inter-ethnic violence, 107n role of historical memories in, 105–6 see also violence ethnic groups, 2, 78, 106 as communities of political solidarity, 66 and concept of ethnie, 47, 48, 155 and historical memory, 106, 153 language classification, 148–9 and nationalist movements, 78, 101–2 non-nationalist, 47 and trans-ethnic networks, 67n and tribal alliances, 105n in weak states, 104, 104n see also ethnic conflicts; ethnicity; Kurds; Mexican Indians; minorities ethnicity, 3, 43, 68 in immigrant societies, 44 and majority perceptions, 210–11 and nationalism, 46–7 neo-romantic theory of, 46–7, 51, 68 in rational choice theory, 44, 45–6, 51 symbols of, 146–7 as transitional, 47–8, 51 see also ethnic groups ethnicity, politicisation of, 1, 9, 44, 195 to define status groups, 68, 92 and ethnic conflict, 100–1 Iraq, 173–4, 180–1, 195–6 Kurdish, 166–71 Mexico, 127, 136 middle class role in, 4, 75, 95–6 Ottoman Empire, 166

310

Index

ethnicity, politicisation of (cont.) and principles of modernity, 1, 5, 44–5 and state formation, 1, 3–4, 52, 67–8, 69 in Switzerland, 236–8 and xenophobia, 69 see also ethnic conflicts; ethnicity ethnogenesis, 104, 104n ethnographic realism, 23 ethnography, of Mexico, 134, 140 ethnomethodology, 28–9 Etter, Philippe, 239, 239n, 249 European states, perception of immigrants, 20, 219–20 European Union, 7, 78, 221–2 exclusion, 1 discourse of, 209, 212 of immigrants, 250–1 legitimated, 222 from modern nation-state, 4, 199, 267–8 and process of social closure, 33, 57, 62–3 see also closure; inclusion; racism; welfare state; xenophobia and racism expulsion of minorities, 3–4 failed states, 51, 112 Falke, Konrad, 249 Falter, Jurgen, ¨ 204n, 212, 216–17 al Farabi, 157 federalism, 92; see also Switzerland Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 45, 54–5 First World War, 3, 172, 196 effect on migration policy, 62, 252–3, 254–5, 256 Swiss linguistic divide, 236–8 Foucault, Michel, 24, 25, 101 France, 2, 229 and Middle East, 172, 173 migration policy, 256 militant Islam in, 219 nationalism in, 50, 50n, 56 Revolutionary, 59, 60 freedom, pre-modern concept of (Switzerland), 226 Fukuyama, Francis, 19–20 functional differentiation, 63–4 functionalism, 22, 25 theory of nationalism, 49, 64 theory of xenophobia and racism, 205–7 Garc´ıa Cubas, Antonio, 134 Garfinkel, Harold, 29 Geertz, Clifford, 1, 6n, 20, 24n, 43 Gellner, Ernest, 49, 85

General Society for Historical Research of Switzerland, 246 genocide, 107, 111n Germans, as immigrants in Switzerland, 203 Germany, 75, 204n, 212 eastern Länder, 217n, 220 ethnic nationalism, 2, 56 see also Nazism Giddens, Anthony, 65, 72, 74 Ginés Sepulveda, ´ Juan de, 117 globalisation, and ethnic conflict, 85 Goldberg, David, 200 goods, collective state distribution of, 93, 102–4 xenophobic competition for, 212–17 Gourevitch, Peter, 99 Gramsci, Antonio, 23 Great Britain British Nationality Act (1981), 58n mandate over Iraq, 174, 181, 182, 184–5 and Middle East, 172, 173 nationalism in, 56 see also Royal Air Force Greece, 2, 4, 78 under Ottoman Empire, 171, 172 Greenfeld, Liah, 77 Guadalupismo (Mexico), 122–3 Guatemala, 33, 36, 51, 139 ethnic differentiation, 145–6 Indian assimilation, 144n mestizo domination, 142n guest-workers, legal status of (Switzerland), 251, 260–2 guilds in Ottoman cities, 160, 172 in Swiss towns, 226, 229 Gulf War (1991), 156, 193 Gulhane ¨ Decree (1839), 160 Gurr, Ted, 85, 86, 86n, 100n, 103n, 106n Gypsies, 4 Habermas, Jurgen, ¨ 30–1, 221 habitus, 26–8 Habsburg Empire, 75 Hammar, Thomas, 251 Hechter, Michael, 45, 98, 99 Hegel, G.W.F., 59 hegemony, concept of (Gramsci), 23 Heitmeyer, Wilhelm, 204n, 211n Held, David, 221 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 21, 46, 53, 59 hierarchies, 37, 55 in colonial Mexico, 115, 116, 118–19 and horizontal distinctions, 218

Index legitimated, 57, 74 in Ottoman Empire, 158, 159 relationship to ethnicity, 68, 88 in Swiss pre-modern society, 225–6 see also equality before the law history and ethnie, 105–6, 153 and national identity, 133–4 and study of nationalism, 43–4, 50 Swiss, 235, 240, 243, 244–6 Hobsbawm, Eric, 49 Hoffmann-Nowotny, Hans-Joachim, 204–5n, 206, 207 Hondrich, Otto, 43 Horowitz, Donald, 47, 87, 95n, 100, 109 Humboldt, Alexander von, 120 Huntington, Samuel, 19, 86 al Husri, Satia, 175, 182 ideology Marxist theory of, 23, 23n, 27 power of (in ethnic conflicts), 101–2 ilustrados, intellectual elite (Mexico), 120, 123 ‘imagined’ community, 32, 52–7 and common interests, 213 Imhof, Kurt, 203, 211, 219 immigrants, 37 assimilation and cultural difference, 206–7 and modern nation-states, 6, 199 perceptions of, 20, 203–5, 219–20 as threat, 204, 214–15 see also aliens; asylum-seekers; guest-workers; refugees; xenophobia and racism immigration policy, 62, 222 and discourse of xenophobia, 210–11, 220–1 and welfare state, 9, 13, 61–2, 251–2n, 262–6, 267–8 imposition of nation-state form, 78–9, 80, 81, 229 inclusion, 1–2 and equal rights, 58–9, 214 and integration, 2, 12, 250 in Spanish colonial ideology, 117–18 in Swiss state, 250 see also closure; exclusion India, 94n, 95, 109n, 146n indigenismo, historical (Mexico), 121–3, 129, 133 indirect rule, 74, 128 in colonial Mexico, 115–18 in Ottoman Empire, 159–60, 162

311 replaced by central administration, 102, 163, 182 in Switzerland, 227 through tribal chiefs, 160–1 individual internalised culture (habitus), 26–8, 33–4 oversocialised, 23, 30 individualisation theory, 211n Indonesia, 112, 207 industrialisation, 61, 64 information flows, 6 injustice, discourse of, 4, 10, 113 instrumentalist approach to ethnic politics, 45 integration and political closure, 12, 250 in pre-modern states, 2 inter-marriage in Mexico, 144n xenophobic fear of, 202 interest group approach to ethnic conflict, 98–100 international relations, and state formation, 72, 78–9 Iran, and Kurdistan, 191 Iran–Iraq war, 192 Iraq, 10, 11–12, 81, 176 Al-Anfal campaign, 112, 192–3 Arabisation policy, 176–9, 183, 190, 191 Baath party, 175, 176, 179–80, 187n British mandate over, 174, 181, 182, 184–5 dictatorship, 111, 180 education, 175, 177–9 Free Officers, 176, 190 independence (1932), 176 land reforms, 187, 187n, 193–4 minorities expelled from administration, 179, 186–7 minority rights obligations, 177–8, 179 monarchy overthrown, 177, 190 as nation-state, 173, 175, 176 politicisation of ethnicity, 173–4 resistance to Sunni nationalism, 175, 180–2 Revolutionary Command Council, 179–80 Sunni Arab rise to power, 156–7, 174–5 Sunni Arab rule institutionalised, 176–80 United Arab Republic, 190 see also Kurdistan; Kurds; Ottoman Empire Irish, as immigrants, 206

312

Index

Islam and Ottoman reforms, 162 toleration of Christianity and Judaism, 156 Israel, 2 Italians, as immigrants, 206 in Switzerland, 203, 207, 253, 260 Italy, 75, 219–20, 262, 263 Iturbide, Mexican kingdom of, 123 Ivory Coast, 107, 112

limited autonomy for, 184–5, 189–91, 194 republic of Mahabad, 190–1 Kurds, 193, 199, 222 as ‘a people’, 189, 195–6 in Iraq, 174, 192 in Ottoman Hamdiya regiments, 163, 167, 172 politicisation of ethnicity, 166–71 within decentralists’ camp, 167–8

Janissaries, 161 Japan, 75 Jefferson, Thomas, 206 Jews, 4 expelled from Iraq, 179, 183 in Switzerland, 206, 218 under Ottomans, 157 journalists, and xenophobic discourse, 210n jurisdiction autonomous religious (Ottoman Empire), 159 in colonial Mexico, 116, 117 just government, concept of (Ottoman Empire), 157–8

labour markets ethnic segregation of, 98, 215 immigrant competition in, 202–5, 205n Swiss, 258, 260–2 labour movement integrated through welfare state, 61–2, 260 internationalism, 263 Laely, Thomas, 94 land reform in Iraq, 187, 187n, 193–4 in Mexico, 131, 136–7, 137n, 142 in the Ottoman Empire, 163 language, 60, 75 Arabic, 165, 179 bilingualism (Switzerland), 234n, 247n and centralised administration, 170–1 divide (Switzerland) (1914–18), 236–7 factor in ethnic discrimination, 103, 148–9 indigenous (Mexico), 140–1, 142, 145, 152 Ottoman, 158–9, 164 policy in Switzerland, 224n, 227–8, 231, 232, 233, 246, 246n Romansch, 231, 240n Turkish, 164–5 used by Swiss associations, 245 see also Kurdish language; literacy las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de, 114, 117, 122 Latif, Sheikh, 189 Lausanne, Treaty of (1923), 4, 172 League of Nations, 78, 177, 184 Lebanon, 107, 110, 173 legal closure, 9, 57–8 Mexico, 124–5, 135 legitimacy of democracy, 65 of modern states, 88, 91 of Ottoman Empire, 157–8, 162 of social hierarchies, 57, 74 Lepenies, Wolf, 20

Kafi, Hasan, 157 Kapferer, Bruce, 46 Kazakhstan, 77 Kenya, 112 kingdoms, centralised, 55n kings, and image of noble provider, 35–6 kinship, 55, 93–4, 168–9 Klemm, Gustav, 21 Kohn, Hans, 60 Kurdish Communist Party, 190n Kurdish Democratic Party-Iraq (KDP-Iraq), 190, 190n Kurdish Hope Society, 167 Kurdish language, 103, 176, 178, 179, 186 Kurdish nationalism, 12, 180–1, 184, 193–4, 195–6 demand for independent state, 172, 193 Hizbi Hiwa (Party of Hope), 186, 190 Hizbi Rizgari Kurd, 186, 190n Ottoman tribal leaders, 184–5 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), 192, 194 tribal elements in, 105n, 188–9 uprising, 112, 156 urban middle-class, 185–7 Kurdistan and Iraqi Arabisation, 178–9, 191

Index liberalism, 56, 200 in Creole patriotism (Mexico), 121 during Mexican reform period, 124–9 in Switzerland, 230, 231, 252–3 List, Friedrich, 54 literacy, 72, 74, 75 Iraq, 174 Mexico, 141–2 Switzerland, 228–9, 242 literary and learned societies, 73, 94, 120 Iraq, 175 Kurdistan, 186 Ottoman Empire, 161, 165 Switzerland, 243–4 see also associations; civil society; literacy Lorraine, 50 Luhmann, Niklas, 48n, 57 Macedonians, in Greece, 78 McRae, Kenneth, 231, 233, 240 Mahmud, Sheikh, ruler of Kurdistan, 184 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 23, 35n Mann, Michael, 72, 73–4 Marcos, Subcommandante (Zapatista leader), 114, 156 Marshall, Thomas, 267–8 Martins, Herminio, 6 Mayall, James, 78 Mead, George H., 30 media and Swiss nationalism, 240n, 246n and xenophobic discourse, 210n Mehmed, Sheikh (of Barzan), 170 mercenaries, 60, 61 mestizaje, ideology of, 135, 138–9 mestizo nationalism, Mexico, 136–8, 139 mestizos expanded definition of, 138–9 status of (Mexico), 118 methodological nationalism, 6, 71, 72 Mexican Indians, 140–1, 142–3, 144 assimilation strategies, 143–7 Chiapas uprising, 114, 155n communal autonomy, 128, 132 ‘ethnic project’, 152–3 ethno-nationalist movements, 36, 121–3, 153–5 excluded from nation-building process, 125–7, 130–3, 134–5, 153–5 and land reform, 136–7 laws of protection (Leyes de Indias), 117, 124, 160 loyalty to community, 147–9 peasant rebellions, 125–6

313 political mobilisation of middle class, 149–53 political subordination of, 141–2 repúblicas de indios, 116 transformed into ‘ethnic minority’, 139–40 Mexican School of art, 134 Mexico, 10–11, 36, 80–1, 96 centralisation of administration, 120–1, 123, 130 clientelism, 137–8, 141 colonial social and racial hierarchy, 118–19 colonisation laws, 131, 131n compulsory primary education, 132–3 Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Ind´ıgenas, 150, 151n declaration of independence (1821), 123, 127 economic crisis (1970s), 149–50 generals of independence wars (as new elite), 124, 127–8 Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 137, 141 mestizo nationalism, 36, 136–9, 141–3, 153–4 National Guard, 128 nationalisation of history, 133–5, 153 nationalisation of society, 123–36, 153–5 Party of Institutionalised Revolution, 36, 137 reform era, 129–30 regional factions, 7, 128 revolution (1910), 136 role of community, 33, 116 Spanish colonial rule, 115–19 war with United States, 126, 128 see also Mexican Indians Meyer, John, 78 middle class, educated aspirations of, 95n, 150–1 and discourse of injustice, 4, 10, 113 emergence of, 72–3 Kurdish, 185–7 Mexican Indian, 149–53 racism and xenophobia of, 208, 212, 212n role in ethno-nationalist movements, 15, 75, 95–6, 149–51 Mier, Teresa de, 121, 122 migration, see immigration migration studies, 43, 44 Miles, Robert, 206, 209–10, 214 military closure, 9, 60–1 Mexico, 128–9, 135 Switzerland, 255 see also conscription

314

Index

Mill, John Stuart, 59, 60, 223, 224n millets (religious groups), 11, 75, 159 educated elites, 171 nationalism in, 171–2 secularised, 163, 172 Mindanao, ethnic conflict in, 106 minorities, 4, 92, 95, 96 counter-discourses of, 37–8, 50, 96, 153–5 and cultural difference, 206–7 educated middle class among, 4, 95–6, 149–51 and ethnicisation of bureaucracy, 92, 179–80 expelled, 3–4, 195 immigrant, 37 as threat, 214, 215 trading, 98, 99 see also ethnic groups minority claims, 37–8, 38n missionaries, 172 mobility regulation of spatial, 62 social (and xenophobic discourse), 219, 220 social (Mexico), 118–19, 154 modern societies, communal character of, 6, 8 modernisation centralising tendencies of, 161–2 and ethnicisation, 80, 81, 195 Mexico, 130–3 and nationalisation of society, 67–8, 81 Ottoman Empire, 161, 162–4 political, 14, 65–6, 70, 195, 200 and rise of civil society, 67–8, 79, 80, 113 unintended effects of, 75 modernity, 1–2 classical theory of, 42–3 significance of ethnicity in, 47–8, 52 utopian, 48, 51 Molina Enr´ıquez, Andrés, 135 Moore, Barrington, 71 Mora, José Mar´ıa Luis, 125, 126 Mosul, 170, 173, 178, 184–5 mulattos (mixed blood), 118 Muller, ¨ Adam, 53 Muller, ¨ Johannes von, 245 multiculturalism, 4, 200 in discourse theory, 209 Muslims, expelled from Spain, 4 myth, 35n, 46–7 mythical variation, 35–6 Nairn, Tim, 49, 85 Napoleonic Wars, and democracy, 73

nation as cultural phenomenon, 53, 133 as imagined community, 52 nation-state, 4, 5, 50, 52 in classical theory of modernity, 42–3 as compromise of interests, 32, 213–14 and discourse of xenophobia, 212 economic capacity, 53, 54 failures of, 51, 112 and formation of identity, 50, 50n, 172, 211 in functionalist theory, 49 future of, 6–7 mechanisms of solidarity, 61–2, 214 model of rise of, 70–5, 80 principles of, 2 see also nation-state formation; nationalism nation-state formation centralisation, 71–2 and civil society, 67–8, 79, 80–1, 80 expansion of, 65, 92 institutional copying, 77–8 and international power regime, 72, 78–9 mechanisms of, 77–9, 213 and political modernisation, 65–6, 70, 195 and politicisation of ethnicity, 1, 3–4, 67–8, 69, 195 post-Communist, 3 relationship to ethnic conflict, 87, 88–91 role of warfare, 71, 74 waves of, 75, 76, 77, 77n, 80 see also nation-state; pre-modern states; weak states national representativity, 59, 61 national self-determination, see self-determination nationalism aggressive, 85 and culture, 21, 49–50 and democracy, 60 and dimensions of closure, 57–64, 63 ethnic and republican variants of, 56–7 and ethnicity, 46–7 functionalist theory of, 49 ideological borrowing, 77, 80 integral to modern society, 48, 50, 57 isomorphisms of, 53–5 study of, 43–4 success of, 32, 49 as transitional, 47–8 see also Kurdish nationalism; mestizo nationalism; Pan-Arab nationalism

Index nationalist movements ethnic minorities, 78, 101–2 middle classes and, 75, 95–6 nationalist politics and the social sciences, 5–6 and structure of modernity, 5, 44–5, 51–2 nationality, 32 and citizenship, 57–8 as principle of modern state, 2, 63–4 NATO, 78 natural law, invoked in Mexican rebellions, 122–3 naturalisation, 268 Nazism (National Socialist Workers Party), 204n, 212, 216–17 influence in Iraq, 177 Switzerland and, 238–9 negotiation, in cultural compromise, 28, 34 neo-classical economics, 24 neo-romanticism, nationalism and ethnicity in, 44, 46–7 Nestorian Christians, 183n Netherlands Indonesian immigrants, 207, 207n migration policy, 256 racist and xenophobic discourse, 210, 219, 220 Nigeria, 95, 107, 108, 109n Nodia, Ghia, 60 Noiriel, Gérard, 6, 63, 85 Northern Ireland, 88, 146n, 195 OECD (Organisation for European Cooperation and Development), 78 Offe, Claus, 61 Olzak, Susan, 203–4 Orozco y Berra, Luis Villoro, 135 Orozco y Berra, Manuel, 134 Ottoman Empire, 11, 75, 173 first constitution (1876), 163 language issue, 164–5 legitimacy of Sultan, 157, 158, 162 modernisation of state, 161, 162–4 multicultural character of, 157–61 nationalist movements in, 166, 170 parliament, 162, 163–4 principles of just government, 157–8, 162 secularisation, 167 Tanzimat reform period, 161–2 tribal confederacies, 169–70 Palestine, Jewish emigration from Iraq to, 183

315 Pan-Arab nationalism, 174, 180–1, 190–1 in Iraqi army, 177 radicalised, 175 Papua, West, 106 Paso y Troncoso, Francisco, 134 patriotism Creole, 119–23, 139n Swiss, 234–6, 244–6 people, the benefiting from nation-state formation, 60–1, 65–6 ownership of political rights, 74, 213 popular perception of ethnic movements, 210–11 redefined (Mexico), 136–7 redefined (Ottoman Empire), 164–5 peoplehood, definitions of, 2–3 Peru, 139, 139n phenomenology, theory of racism and xenophobia, 211–12 Philippines trans-ethnic clientelism, 94, 94n see also Mindanao Pimentel, Francisco, 125 plebs, transformation to ‘people’, 60–1, 66 Poland, national identity in, 50n Poles, as immigrants, 206 political closure, 9, 58–60, 213 and ethnic boundaries, 103–4 and politicised ethnicity, 10, 12 political participation in Mexico, 136 in Ottoman Empire, 162, 163–4, 165 rights of, 57, 65, 213 in Switzerland, 227, 229, 259 political parties clientelist, 109 coalitions, 109n and ethnic conflict, 108, 113 political science, assumptions about nationalist politics, 6 Porfirio D´ıaz, Jose de la Cruz, 130–1, 131n, 132, 133, 162 post-Communist states, 3 postmodernism, and discourse, 24–6 power access to state, 59 and cultural compromise, 36 and formation of subcultures, 36–8 ideology of, 101–2 international regime of, 72, 78–9 and meaning, 23–4 pre-modern states hierarchies in, 57, 58–9, 64, 88 integration in, 2, 64

316

Index

pre-modern states (cont.) sovereign, 72 use of mercenaries, 60 see also empires press, principle of freedom of (Switzerland), 242 Qassem, president of Iraq, 176, 187n quota systems in consociational models, 110, 112 Swiss immigration, 263, 264–5 racism, see xenophobia and racism Ram´ırez, Ignacio, 129 Rath, Jan, 210 rational choice theory, 23, 44 of ethnicity, 45–6, 51 of xenophobia and racism, 202–5 rationality, pre-cultural, 26, 29, 31n Reformation, Protestant, 72 refugees status of, 199 to Switzerland, 259 see also asylum-seekers; immigrants regions comparative perspectives, 219–20 hierarchisation of, 98, 99 taxation of, 105 religion, 54, 59, 101, 156 and political allegiance (Switzerland), 228, 230, 233, 234–5, 238 in Spanish colonial Mexico, 117 see also Catholic church; Islam religious communities in Mexico, 119 role in Ottoman Empire, 159, 172 in Switzerland, 228 see also churches; millets Renan, Ernest, 4, 223, 224n representativity of government linguistic (Switzerland), 232, 233, 237 national, 59, 61 religious, 59 repression, in dictatorial regimes, 111–12 republicanism and Mexican nationalist reforms, 129–30 nationalism and, 56–7 Swiss, 234, 245, 246–9 Reynold, Gonzague de, 249 rights of citizenship, 57–8, 214 military defence of, 60–1 of mobility and residence, 62, 199, 218 of political participation, 57, 65, 213 Riva Palacio, Vicente, 134

romanticism, political, 53 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 245, 246n Royal Air Force, and Iraq, 181, 182, 185 Rumelia, 166 Russia and Ottoman Empire, 170, 172 see also Soviet Union Rwanda, 109n Saddam Hussein, dictatorship of, 180 Sarajevo, 97 Schiller, J.C.F. von, Wilhelm Tell, 245 Scott, James, 37 secessionism, 99 Second World War, 4 Switzerland and, 239, 240, 241, 259, 260 segregation of labour markets, 98, 215 legal (Mexico), 117, 118, 119, 127 legal (Ottoman Empire), 159–60 racial, 208 self-determination and cultural homogeneity, 53–4 and exclusion of foreign elites, 63 and political closure, 9, 73, 213 as principle of modern state, 2, 59–60, 172, 180 self-empowerment, discourse of, 209 Selim III, Sultan, 161 Serbian uprisings (1804), 166 Sèvres, Treaty of, 172, 178 sharia law, in Ottoman Empire, 158, 160, 163 sheikhs, tribal confederacies, 168–70, 184–5 Shemdinan, sheikhs of, 169 Shiite Arabs in Iraq, 174, 176, 195 rebellion, 112, 181–2 situational analysis, 23, 59 slave recruitment, Ottoman Empire, 158, 163 slavery, abolition of, 218 Smith, Anthony D., 46, 98n, 101, 225n social change, 8, 24 and ethnic conflict, 101 periods of crisis, 211, 214 and recurrence of xenophobia, 211, 218–19 social closure, 8, 14, 33, 57 and community of solidarity, 61–3, 213 and politicisation of ethnicity, 67–8, 113, 195 see also exclusion; welfare state; xenophobia and racism

Index social contract, 29, 31n social Darwinism, 130, 132 social movements, 149 social organisation forms of, 6, 8 see also community; culture social perspectivity, 34–5 social psychology, 100, 101, 205 social sciences, 5–6, 20 politics of racism and xenophobia research, 200–1 socialisation, 23, 30 socialist movement, in Switzerland, 235, 238, 251, 259 socio-biology, xenophobia and racism and, 207–9 solidarity, 4, 61–3, 66, 214 as collective goods, 213 Swiss social, 259–60 Somalia, 51 sovereignty, popular, 1, 2, 213 Mexico, 124–5 national (Switzerland), 255 Soviet Union dissolution of, 75, 78, 85–6, 90 minority policies, 92 see also Russia Spain, 88 and colonial Mexico, 115–19, 123 Spanish Empire, 75, 159; see also Mexico speech acts, theory of, 31, 31–2n Spitteler, Carl, 249 Spruyt, Hendrik, 71n Sri Lanka, 85, 95, 102, 107, 109n, 195 state costs and taxation, 105–6 and demands on resources, 73 distribution of collective goods, 93, 102–4, 213 state ‘capture’, 74, 75 state formation, see nation-state formation Steinberg, Jonathan, 223, 224n Sudan, 85, 96, 107, 195 Suleimaniya, 184, 185, 186, 191 Sunni Arabs cultural hegemony in Iraq, 177–9 ethnocracy in Iraq, 156–7, 175 as minority in Iraq, 173–4 Swiss Association of Athletics, 244 Swiss Association for Pedagogy, 243 Swiss Comrade, The, 249 Swiss Officers’ Association, 244, 249n Swiss Society of Artists, 243

317 Swiss Society for Historical Research, 243, 245–6 Swiss Society for Natural Research, 243–4 Swiss Society for the Public Good, 243, 244, 245, 249n Switzerland, 110, 223–5 Association of the Swiss German Language, 237 bilateral treaties, 252, 253, 256, 262 citizenship law (1914), 254–5 civil war, 230 and Cold War, 241, 260 constitution (1848), 230, 252–3 constitution (1874), 234 declining status of immigrants, 250–66 economic regulation, 258n, 261–2, 263, 265 ethnicised nationalism, 238–41 Federal Association of Riflemen, 244, 244n, 245 Federal Council, 230, 233 Federal Singers Association, 244 French occupation (1798–1803), 229 guest-workers, 251, 260–2, 267 immigrant labour, 252, 260–2 immigration controls, 13, 256–8, 261, 263–6 immigration quotas, 263, 264–5 Jura conflict, 107, 247n La Suisse Romande, 247n labour market competition, 205n labour relations (1919 strike), 237–8 League of Thirteen (cantons), 227 liberalism, 230, 231, 252–3 Ligue Patriotique Romande, 237 martial law (1914), 256 as ‘nation by will’ (Willensnation), 235, 240, 240n nation-building, 13–14 nationalism of ‘spiritual defence’ period, 239–40, 239n, 249, 259 New Helvetic Society, 243, 244–5, 248–9, 249n official multi-lingualism, 231, 232 political closure, 250 political organisation, 247–8 pre-modern, 225–9 primacy of democracy, 2, 110, 230, 240 Pro Helvetia Institute, 240n, 249, 249n regeneration period (to 1840s), 230, 242 religious affiliation, 228, 230, 233, 234–5, 238, 248 residence permits, 257, 257n, 262, 265, 267 role of civil society, 241–9

318

Index

Switzerland (cont.) and Second World War, 239, 240, 241, 259, 260 social closure, 266–7 Social Democratic Party, 263 Special League, 230 state formation, 80, 230–1, 233 ‘surplus of foreigners’ perception, 203, 257 trans-ethnic patriotism, 234–6, 244–6 völkisch ideology, 239, 239n welfare centralisation, 253, 266–7 work permits, 257, 258, 265, 267 xenophobic movements, 263–4 see also cantons; communes symbols of ethnic distinction, 147, 169 role of, in cultural theory, 31n of statehood, 50, 240nn Syria, 111, 173 system theory (Luhmann’s), 48n Tajikistan, 85 Talabani, Jalal, Kurdish leader, 156, 190n Tamás, Gáspár, 79n taxation jizye (on non-Muslims), 160 as source of conflict, 105–6 and state efficiency, 71n, 161 territorial boundaries, 32, 54–6, 62, 172 and citizenship, 58, 162 physical demarcation of, 55n, 56 territoriality, principle of (Switzerland), 231, 233 terrorism, in ethnic conflicts, 107 Thailand, 75, 107 Tilly, Charles, 64, 71–2, 73–4 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 223, 223n Togo, 95 totalitarianism, adaptation to, 38n towns, Swiss, 226 traditional societies, cultural compromise in, 30–1 traditions, invented, 49 transnationalism, 6, 7, 48n, 221 tribal allegiances, 105n Iraq, 174–5, 180–1 and Kurdish nationalism, 187, 188–9 Ottoman Empire, 160–1, 168–71 Trinidad and Tobago, 108–9, 109n, 110 Tripura, 107 trust, 20 Turkey, 4, 176, 183n and collapse of Ottoman Empire, 173, 178 use of Kurdish language, 103 Turkmen, in Iraq, 181, 184

Uganda, 95, 104n unemployment, see labour markets United Nations, 78, 193 United States, 56, 208 immigrants, 203, 206–7, 208 Mexican war with, 126, 128 universal suffrage, 57 universalism, 48 in imperial ideology, 117–18 religious, 156 van Amersfoort, Hans, 207, 207n Varshney, Ashutosh, 67n, 94n Vasconcelos, José, 139, 141 violence culture of, 86–7 ethnic representativeness of, 107 see also ethnic conflict Vogt, Villiam, 237 Völkerpsychologie, 86 Volksgeist, 53 Volksgemeinschaft, 53 voting behaviour analysis, 216n Wallerstein, Immanuel, 99 warfare, role in state formation, 71, 74 weak states, 9 and distribution of goods, 93, 102 ethnic conflict in, 104 Weber, Max, 8, 33, 35, 58, 223, 224n welfare state compulsory insurance, 258–9, 262, 263 and immigration controls, 9, 13, 62, 262–6 institutional structures of, 251, 265 and national community of solidarity, 61–2, 260 relationship to migration, 251n, 261n and Swiss labour market, 261–2 Switzerland, 238, 251, 253, 254–5, 258–9 Wilson, Woodrow, national self-determination, 59, 172, 180 Windisch, Uli, 220 working class integration of, 13, 61–2, 238, 250, 251, 258 internationalism of, 253–4, 263 racism and xenophobia in, 212 see also guest-workers; labour markets xenophobia and racism biological racism, 202 and colonialism, 201n comparative research on, 217–20 competition for state goods, 212–17

Index in discourse theory, 209–11, 212 during Mexican reform era, 132–3 as extreme form of nationalism, 12–13, 69 and political modernisation, 200 and politicisation of ethnicity, 69 possible ‘solutions’ to, 220–1 and presence of foreigners, 217, 217n, 218 rational choice theory of, 202–5 and rise of nation-state, 212 social distribution of, 211–12, 215–17, 215n, 263 in social science research, 200–1 theories of, 201–2, 217–20

319 voting behaviour analysis, 216n see also immigrants; immigration controls Young Ottomans, 161 Young Turks, 161, 162, 163–4 and centralisation, 168 Committee for Union and Progress, 167 Kurdish members of, 167 and language reform, 164–5 Yugoslavia, 51, 86 Zaire, 222 Zapatistas, 114, 155n Zibari tribe (Kurdistan), 169, 191, 192

Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity

Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

International Ethnic Networks and Intra-Ethnic Conflict: Koreans in China

Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective

Ethnic Identity and National Conflict in China

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia

Mutual Accommodation: Ethnic Conflict and Cooperation

Handbook of Ethnic Conflict: International Perspectives

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Myth of “ethnic conflict”: politics, economics, and “cultural” violence

Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India

Ethnic Conflict and International Politics: Explaining Diffusion and Escalation

Federalism and Ethnic Conflict Regulation in India and Pakistan

Evolutionary theory and ethnic conflict (Praeger studies on ethnic and national identities in politics)

Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict (Praeger Studies on Ethnic and National Identities in Politics)

Globalization and Social Exclusion

Education, Exclusion and Citizenship

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina: ethnic conflict and international intervention

Globalization and Social Exclusion

Ethnic conflict and international politics in the Middle East

Contested Cities in the Modern World (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Education in Divided Societies (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Spaces of Social Exclusion

Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Communist World

Democracy and Ethnic Conflict: Advancing Peace in Deeply Divided Societies

Philosophies of Exclusion

Causes of Exclusion

Geographies of Exclusion

Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity

Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

International Ethnic Networks and Intra-Ethnic Conflict: Koreans in China

Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective

Ethnic Identity and National Conflict in China

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia

Mutual Accommodation: Ethnic Conflict and Cooperation

Handbook of Ethnic Conflict: International Perspectives

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Myth of “ethnic conflict”: politics, economics, and “cultural” violence

Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India

Ethnic Conflict and International Politics: Explaining Diffusion and Escalation

Federalism and Ethnic Conflict Regulation in India and Pakistan

Evolutionary theory and ethnic conflict (Praeger studies on ethnic and national identities in politics)

Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict (Praeger Studies on Ethnic and National Identities in Politics)

Globalization and Social Exclusion

Education, Exclusion and Citizenship

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina: ethnic conflict and international intervention

Globalization and Social Exclusion

Ethnic conflict and international politics in the Middle East

Contested Cities in the Modern World (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Education in Divided Societies (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Spaces of Social Exclusion

Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Communist World

Democracy and Ethnic Conflict: Advancing Peace in Deeply Divided Societies

Philosophies of Exclusion

Causes of Exclusion

Geographies of Exclusion

Recommend Documents