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F. W. Boal
Ethnic Conflicts
1. What is Ethnic? 
Ethnicityisancientandubiquitous,andcommentarieson ethnic differences have been highly variable overtime and place. The term has been used variously tosignify ‘nation,’ ‘race,’ ‘religion,’ or ‘people,’ but thecentral generic meaning is that of collective culturaldistinctiveness. For the present we shall avoid thepopular but awkward and potentially misleading‘ethnic group’ in favor of the more convenient termethny. An ethny here is a culturally distinctive collect-ivity, larger than a kinship unit, whose members claima common origin or descent. The prototype is a localendogamous population sharing cultural traits thatdifferentiate it from other collectivities. From suchgroupings, more extended ethnies develop by nep-otism, extended endogamy, fictive kinship, descentmyths, political enclosures, economic linkages, andterritorial expansion. For modern large-scale ethniesthe ‘symbolic’ boundaries can be quite vague andelastic but the essential retained qualities are ascribedmembership (by birth) and cultural identity (cf.Williams 1994, pp. 52–3, 57–8).Anelementarybutcriticaldistinction,oftenignoredin scholarly discussions, is that ethnicity can refereither to boundary-markers—an ethny’s distinctiveculture or lines of social closure—or to the content of the issues (or ‘stakes’) in ethnic confrontations. Thus,an ‘ethnic conflict’ can mean that two or moredistinctive ethnies are fighting to control scarce re-sources (oil, gold, timber, diamonds, water, land,fishing grounds). The contenders are ethnic but thestakes are not. But in other cases, the objects of rivalryor violent conflict are themselves ethnic: language use,religious practices, marriage customs, domestic law,ceremonies and holidays, and so on. Especially likelytoleadtosevereconflictaresituationsinwhichrigidly-bound ethnies are rivals for political control of centralized states. Many so-called ethnic conflicts arestrugglesovernon-ethnicgoods,butgenuine ‘conflictsofidentity’arethoseinwhichboundariesarerigid andsalient and the objects of contention are cultural.Much scholarly disputation has centered uponwhether ethnicity is primordial or instrumental. Pri-mordial ethnicity is seen as closely tied to kinship anddescent, rigidly bound, enduring, emotionally charg-ed. Instrumental (situational) ethnicity is thought tobe ambiguous, changeable, driven by considerationsof advantage or disadvantage in the pursuit of im-mediate interests. Indeed, it has long been recognizedthat ethnic boundaries are often permeable andchangeable—because of territorial intermingling, con-tinuous variations in cultural traits, interethnic inter-actions, intraethnic diversity, and state interventions(Levine and Campbell 1972, Chap. 7). But theinclusiverealityisthatethniesarebothprimordialandcircumstantial—some are fluid, others rigid; someendure over centuries, others are short-lived. Over thelong run, much change can be observed. But in theshort run, of one lifetime or a few generations, strongethnic boundaries are often associated with greatinequalities of social, economic, and political status,with strongly felt grievances, and with passionatecommitments, solidarities, and conflicts. Today’sworld of vast migrations and rapid economic andpolitical changes often results in change and mergingof ethnies, and individuals frequently have multipleethnic identities. Nevertheless, there is no prospectthat ethnicity will disappear: it might be said, toparaphrase V. Pareto that those who seek to totallyabolish ethnicity are engaged in cutting holes in thewater. Because membership is an ascribed status,intra-ethnicrelations tend tobe diffuseand particular-istic; for the same reason ethnic politics tends to beexclusivistic. While ethnies thus look backward intoorigins and history, they also look sidewise to personswho share in communal distinctiveness, and forwardinto a future of shared fate.Struggles over definitions in this field have a longand complex history. Because the objects of interestare inherently complex, the search for the One TrueDefinition will obviously fail.This consideration also applies to definitions of ourother key term, conflict, which is loosely used inordinarydiscourse.Inthepresentreviewconflictrefersto social behavior, not to psychological processes orcultural contradictions; it consists of a struggle inwhich an opponent seeks to neutralize, defeat, injure,or eliminate another. It is not synonymous withcompetition, regulated contestation or rivalry. Inparticular, the distinctive character of violent conflict4806
Ethnic Conflict, Geography of 
 
must be recognized. Violence is a qualitatively distinctform of conflict (Williams 1994, p. 54, Brubaker andLaitin 1998, p. 426).
2. Recent Changes in Research and Theories
In the first decades after World War II, as overlysimple theories of innate racial differences were dis-credited, the dominant explanations of ethnic conflictfocused upon prejudice and discrimination—first interms of individual personality and then as features of social location and of institutional norms and prac-tices. Later research emphasized macrosocial factorsand conditions, including state structures and policiesas well as interstate relations.For understandable reasons, much research onethnicity until recently focused upon domestic(national) populations and truly comparative studieswere few. Accordingly, many theories have beenconcerned with intra-societal processes such as econ-omiccompetition,internalcolonialism,labormarkets,assimilation, and prejudice and discrimination. Over-lapping in time, however, and increasingly prominenthavebeenhistoricalandcomparativestudies:ofethnicnationalism and conflict, of multiethnic societies, of internationallinkagesandinterventions,andofdemo-cide and genocide.As attention has been drawn increasingly to world-wideperspectives,earlier preoccupations withpsycho-logical factors and anthropological case studies havereceded in favor of systematic comparison and stat-istical analyses of large data-sets. Frequent and severeethnic warfare and large-scale immigration and flowsof refugees from political repression and civil warshave stimulated both types of research. Since the1960s, the increasing use of multivariate statisticalmodeling of large data-sets has produced many sub-stantial empirical generalizations. The worldwidecompilation of data by Gurr (1993) indicates thatcontention among ethnies for control of central statesis the most deadly form of communal conflict—evenmore so than ethnonationalist movements or thestruggles of indigenous peoples. Analysis of manyprotests and violent mass actions in the former SovietUnion during 1965–89, showed that nonviolent pro-tests tended to come from mobilization of well-educatedurban populationshavingsubstantialorgan-izational resources (Beissinger 1992). Protracted eth-nic civil wars cluster in weak but repressive states inthe Third World and in the peripheries of industrial-ized countries. Numerous comparative studies showthat ethnic conflicts are more severe in autocratic thandemocratic states; democracies have more numerousbut less deadly protests. An exhaustive compilationand analysis of available records show that genocidesand democides are greatest in non-democratic polities(Rummel 1994, see Horowitz 1997, Johassohn andBjorson 1998).The most recent research has recognized the severelimitations of case studies and of static correlationalanalyses, as well as the hazards of simplified ‘one-factor’ theorizing. There is increased emphasis onmultivariatestudiesanduponthetimingandsequenceof relevant events and conditions. Correspondingly,more studies are using the techniques of event historyanalysis, qualitative comparative analysis, and in-genious combinations of narrative accounting to-gether with newer statistical techniques. Comparisonsare increasingly regarded as essential to reliablegeneralizations across time and societal contexts.There is renewed emphasis upon the need for dis-aggregation of data along with the equally urgentspecification of concepts to identify the different typesof states, of kinds of ethnicity, of opposition andcompetition and rivalry, of grievances, of the diversetypes of conflict and of violence, of processes of mobilizationandde-mobilization.Particularattentionis now directed to the ways in which ethnic relationsare affected by new transnational processes.
3. Characteristics of Violent Ethnic Conflict
Just as ethnies are diverse, so are the forms of ethnicconflict. The main types are: turmoil, internal war,democide and genocide. Turmoil includes strikes,demonstrations, mutinies, sabotage, rioting, and ter-rorism.Internalwarinvolvesarmedcollectiveviolenceasin
coupsd’etat
,separatistrebellions,civilorguerrillawars, and revolutions. Democides are state-organizedor incited mass killings of political opponents anddissidents; genocides are organized efforts to destroya whole cultural, religious, or racial population(Rummel 1994). These types represent different com-binations of: (a) the extent of mass mobilization; (b)the degree of centralized organization and control;and (c) the amounts and kinds of violence. Usuallyturmoil is low on all three conditions; revolutionsinvolvemaximallevelsofall;democidesandgenocidesmaximize the slaughter of unarmed civilians. Al-though ethnic wars may not be more difficult toterminate than other civil wars (Licklider 1993), theethnic factor tends to create perceptions of total andirreversiblethreatandthustoencourageextraordinaryferocity and brutality, as attested by the frequentobservation of torture and mutilation of victims(Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sri Lanka).In any case, once violent conflicts are under way, theydeveloptheir owndynamics—attracting opportunists,creating desires for revenge, shifting alliances and bal-ances of forces, transforming issues. Initial conditionsmay not predict outcomes, and limited conflicts thatare easy to start can escalate into protracted warfare.Complexity and fragmentation frequently charac-terize ethnic and regional partisans. A clear example ispresented by Basque nationalist movements, whichwere criss-crossed by class, rural-urban, linguistic,4807
Ethnic Conflicts
 
religious, and ideological cleavages so that they wereboth ‘complex and paradoxical’ (Shafir 1995, p. 102);even the small militant underground organization,ETA, itself experienced repeated schisms. In SriLanka, the Tamil resistance to the central staterepeatedly divided into opposing factions (Tambiah1986). In the southern rebellion against the Sudanesegovernment, tribal and local allegiances as well asideological differences have plagued the movementand its armed forces.In Liberia,state collapse resultedfrom factional civil warfare, and in Somalia a centralstate splintered into clan fighting.In the scholarly literature, there is a growingemphasis on the distinctive characteristics of violenceover nonviolent forms of opposition and protest(Williams1994,p.62,Tambiah1996,p.292,Brubakerand Laitin 1998, pp. 426–7). Indeed Brubaker andLaitin contend that the study of violence should betreated as an autonomous phenomenon in its ownright (1998, p. 426). Nevertheless, a rich store of casestudies provide instructive data, as in the growingliterature on Rwanda and Burundi.
4. Sources of Ethnic Conflict
Around the world at the close of the twentieth centuryethnic-related conflicts were frequent and deadly;nearly all wars in the 1990s were intra-state and mostof these involved ethnic cleavages. How are theseremarkable facts to be explained?Some popular interpretations are not convincing.Collective ethnic violence is not primarily due to‘modernization’ (urbanization, commercialization, in-dustrialization): some of the most lethal ethnic-relatedconflicts have been in less modernized countries suchas Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, and Zaire. Nor is thepartial end of the Cold War, allegedly ‘unleashing’suppressedethnicantagonisms,asatisfactoryaccount;the superpowers actually exacerbated many ethnicconfrontations and the upsurge in ethnic conflictsbegan in the 1950s and 1960s, long before thediminution in superpower rivalries. Furthermore,scepticism is warranted of the notion that the rise of ethnic warfare results from the release of so-calledancient hatreds. Long-ago, wrongs are effective insti-gators of today’s conflicts only when reactivated andpoliticized,oftenastheproductofelites’manipulation(Gagnon 1994, 1995). Of course, the deadly effectswould not occur unless there were some ethnicidentities and allegiances to which political appealscould be made. But peaceable neighbors do notsuddenly attack one another merely because theirancestors once fought. Such ‘general laws’ as thatpeopletendtomoreoftenfavorotherswhentheothersare fellow ethnies than when they are not, tells us littleabout specific cases in which a wide variety of otherconditions may be involved. So generalized propo-sitions about how initial conditions of disadvantageand discrimination can lead to group-level grievancesstill leave us searching for additional and
\
or interven-ing conditions that convert discomfort into collectivegrievances. Undoubtedly sociobiological character-istics (including propensities for group formation andconformity) constitute a fundamental substratum forethnicsolidarities and conflicts (vanden Berghe1981).Likewise, resource scarcity with the frequent accomp-animent of incompatible claims (to water, land, anyother resources) must always be taken into account.But more specific and more proximate conditionsand dynamic processes provide the more convincingexplanations for the numerous violent ethnic con-frontations we now observe. For example, a theo-retically significant observation is that severe ethnicconflicts are most common in recently independentstates that were formerly colonies of major powers orare successor states resulting from the disintegrationof multiethnic polities. These countries typically aremultiethnic, relatively poor, with weak but repressivestates. Under these conditions, the state is a mainsource of wealth and prestige and rivalry for politicalcontrol is likely to be intense while ethnic membershipfrequently is crucial in political contention. Economicscarcity and social pluralism thus combine with statecentrality to encourage communal politics. Becausethe stakes are high and the outcomes are seen asirreversible, resorting to violence is tempting. In thegreat majority of such severe conflicts, lack of acommon civic culture and of positive inter-ethnicinterdependence, combined with struggles for controlof the state, create intense threats and counter-mobilizations. Ethnicity is rendered highly salient andprovides an attractive base for political entrepreneurs.A common result is that ethnic rivals come to see eachother as rigid groupings and membership as crucial toall life-chances. Every move in that direction escalatesand polarizes. Not surprisingly, then, conflicts amongcommunal contenders for power are much moredeadly than conflicts involving ethnonationalists orindigenous peoples (Gurr 1993, pp. 98–9). Stateexpansion and impositions upon ethnies are likely inrentier states in which governing elites have sources of income independent of the potential electorate, as inNigeria and the former Zaire. In collapsed states—asin Lebanon, Somalia, or Liberia—central authoritieslose control over contenders for power and multiple-armed struggles result. Partisan external support tostates and rebels often has prolonged and intensifiedongoing ethnic-related violent conflicts.In Gurr’s formulation (1993), the main factorsfavoring conflict include strong identity, inequalitiesand grievances, political opportunity structures allow-ing mobilization, provocative state policies, and in-ternational contagion and diffusion. Many of theethnic conflicts reviewed by Esman (1994), Gurr(1993), and Horowitz (1985) develop into protractedwarfare because one party believes that another seekstotal and irreversible domination: ‘they will enslave4808
Ethnic Conflicts
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