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Ignatieff M 1993 Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New
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Kaplan D H 1992 Nationalism at a micro-scale: educational
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Kotek J 1999 Divided cities in the European cultural context.
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F. W. Boal
Ethnic Conflicts
1. What is Ethnic?
Ethnicity is ancient and ubiquitous, and commentaries
on ethnic differences have been highly variable over
time and place. The term has been used variously to
signify ‘nation,’ ‘race,’ ‘religion,’ or ‘people,’ but the
central generic meaning is that of collective cultural
distinctiveness. For the present we shall avoid the
popular but awkward and potentially misleading
‘ethnic group’ in favor of the more convenient term
ethny. An ethny here is a culturally distinctive collect-
ivity, larger than a kinship unit, whose members claim
a common origin or descent. The prototype is a local
endogamous population sharing cultural traits that
differentiate it from other collectivities. From such
groupings, more extended ethnies develop by nep-
otism, extended endogamy, fictive kinship, descent
myths, political enclosures, economic linkages, and
territorial expansion. For modern large-scale ethnies
the ‘symbolic’ boundaries can be quite vague and
elastic but the essential retained qualities are ascribed
membership (by birth) and cultural identity (cf.
Williams 1994, pp. 52–3, 57–8).
An elementary but critical distinction, often ignored
in scholarly discussions, is that ethnicity can refer
either to boundary-markers—an ethny’s distinctive
culture 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 more
distinctive ethnies are fighting to control scarce re-
sources (oil, gold, timber, diamonds, water, land,
fishing grounds). The contenders are ethnic but the
4806
stakes are not. But in other cases, the objects of rivalry
or violent conflict are themselves ethnic: language use,
religious practices, marriage customs, domestic law,
ceremonies and holidays, and so on. Especially likely
to lead to severe conflict are situations in which rigidly-
bound ethnies are rivals for political control of
centralized states. Many so-called ethnic conflicts are
struggles over non-ethnic goods, but genuine ‘conflicts
of identity’ are those in which boundaries are rigid and
salient and the objects of contention are cultural.
Much scholarly disputation has centered upon
whether ethnicity is primordial or instrumental. Pri-
mordial ethnicity is seen as closely tied to kinship and
descent, rigidly bound, enduring, emotionally charg-
ed. Instrumental (situational) ethnicity is thought to
be ambiguous, changeable, driven by considerations
of advantage or disadvantage in the pursuit of im-
mediate interests. Indeed, it has long been recognized
that ethnic boundaries are often permeable and
changeable—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 the
inclusive reality is that ethnies are both primordial and
circumstantial—some are fluid, others rigid; some
endure over centuries, others are short-lived. Over the
long run, much change can be observed. But in the
short run, of one lifetime or a few generations, strong
ethnic boundaries are often associated with great
inequalities of social, economic, and political status,
with strongly felt grievances, and with passionate
commitments, solidarities, and conflicts. Today’s
world of vast migrations and rapid economic and
political changes often results in change and merging
of ethnies, and individuals frequently have multiple
ethnic identities. Nevertheless, there is no prospect
that ethnicity will disappear: it might be said, to
paraphrase V. Pareto that those who seek to totally
abolish ethnicity are engaged in cutting holes in the
water. Because membership is an ascribed status,
intra-ethnic relations tend to be diffuse and particular-
istic; for the same reason ethnic politics tends to be
exclusivistic. While ethnies thus look backward into
origins and history, they also look sidewise to persons
who share in communal distinctiveness, and forward
into a future of shared fate.
Struggles over definitions in this field have a long
and complex history. Because the objects of interest
are inherently complex, the search for the One True
Definition will obviously fail.
This consideration also applies to definitions of our
other key term, conflict, which is loosely used in
ordinary discourse. In the present review conflict refers
to social behavior, not to psychological processes or
cultural contradictions; it consists of a struggle in
which an opponent seeks to neutralize, defeat, injure,
or eliminate another. It is not synonymous with
competition, regulated contestation or rivalry. In
particular, the distinctive character of violent conflict

must be recognized. Violence is a qualitatively distinct
form of conflict (Williams 1994, p. 54, Brubaker and
Laitin 1998, p. 426).
2. Recent Changes in Research and Theories
In the first decades after World War II, as overly
simple theories of innate racial differences were dis-
credited, the dominant explanations of ethnic conflict
focused upon prejudice and discrimination—first in
terms of individual personality and then as features of
social location and of institutional norms and prac-
tices. Later research emphasized macrosocial factors
and conditions, including state structures and policies
as well as interstate relations.
For understandable reasons, much research on
ethnicity until recently focused upon domestic
(national) populations and truly comparative studies
were few. Accordingly, many theories have been
concerned with intra-societal processes such as econ-
omic competition, internal colonialism, labor markets,
assimilation, and prejudice and discrimination. Over-
lapping in time, however, and increasingly prominent
have been historical and comparative studies: of ethnic
nationalism and conflict, of multiethnic societies, of
international linkages and interventions, and of demo-
cide and genocide.
As attention has been drawn increasingly to world-
wide perspectives, earlier preoccupations with psycho-
logical factors and anthropological case studies have
receded in favor of systematic comparison and stat-
istical analyses of large data-sets. Frequent and severe
ethnic warfare and large-scale immigration and flows
of refugees from political repression and civil wars
have stimulated both types of research. Since the
1960s, the increasing use of multivariate statistical
modeling of large data-sets has produced many sub-
stantial empirical generalizations. The worldwide
compilation of data by Gurr (1993) indicates that
contention among ethnies for control of central states
is the most deadly form of communal conflict—even
more so than ethnonationalist movements or the
struggles of indigenous peoples. Analysis of many
protests and violent mass actions in the former Soviet
Union during 1965–89, showed that nonviolent pro-
tests tended to come from mobilization of well-
educated urban populations having substantial organ-
izational resources (Beissinger 1992). Protracted eth-
nic civil wars cluster in weak but repressive states in
the Third World and in the peripheries of industrial-
ized countries. Numerous comparative studies show
that ethnic conflicts are more severe in autocratic than
democratic states; democracies have more numerous
but less deadly protests. An exhaustive compilation
and analysis of available records show that genocides
and democides are greatest in non-democratic polities
(Rummel 1994, see Horowitz 1997, Johassohn and
Bjorson 1998).
Ethnic Conflicts
The most recent research has recognized the severe
limitations of case studies and of static correlational
analyses, as well as the hazards of simplified ‘one-
factor’ theorizing. There is increased emphasis on
multivariate studies and upon the timing and sequence
of relevant events and conditions. Correspondingly,
more studies are using the techniques of event history
analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, and in-
genious combinations of narrative accounting to-
gether with newer statistical techniques. Comparisons
are increasingly regarded as essential to reliable
generalizations across time and societal contexts.
There is renewed emphasis upon the need for dis-
aggregation of data along with the equally urgent
specification of concepts to identify the different types
of states, of kinds of ethnicity, of opposition and
competition and rivalry, of grievances, of the diverse
types of conflict and of violence, of processes of
mobilization and de-mobilization. Particular attention
is now directed to the ways in which ethnic relations
are affected by new transnational processes.
3. Characteristics of Violent Ethnic Conflict
Just as ethnies are diverse, so are the forms of ethnic
conflict. The main types are: turmoil, internal war,
democide and genocide. Turmoil includes strikes,
demonstrations, mutinies, sabotage, rioting, and ter-
rorism. Internal war involves armed collective violence
as in coups d’etat, separatist rebellions, civil or guerrilla
wars, and revolutions. Democides are state-organized
or incited mass killings of political opponents and
dissidents; genocides are organized efforts to destroy
a 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. Usually
turmoil is low on all three conditions; revolutions
involve maximal levels of all; democides and genocides
maximize the slaughter of unarmed civilians. Al-
though ethnic wars may not be more difficult to
terminate than other civil wars (Licklider 1993), the
ethnic factor tends to create perceptions of total and
irreversible threat and thus to encourage extraordinary
ferocity and brutality, as attested by the frequent
observation of torture and mutilation of victims
(Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sri Lanka).
In any case, once violent conflicts are under way, they
develop their own dynamics—attracting opportunists,
creating desires for revenge, shifting alliances and bal-
ances of forces, transforming issues. Initial conditions
may not predict outcomes, and limited conflicts that
are easy to start can escalate into protracted warfare.
Complexity and fragmentation frequently charac-
terize ethnic and regional partisans. A clear example is
presented by Basque nationalist movements, which
were criss-crossed by class, rural-urban, linguistic,
4807
Ethnic Conflicts
religious, and ideological cleavages so that they were
both ‘complex and paradoxical’ (Shafir 1995, p. 102);
even the small militant underground organization,
ETA, itself experienced repeated schisms. In Sri
Lanka, the Tamil resistance to the central state
repeatedly divided into opposing factions (Tambiah
1986). In the southern rebellion against the Sudanese
government, tribal and local allegiances as well as
ideological differences have plagued the movement
and its armed forces. In Liberia, state collapse resulted
from factional civil warfare, and in Somalia a central
state splintered into clan fighting.
In the scholarly literature, there is a growing
emphasis on the distinctive characteristics of violence
over nonviolent forms of opposition and protest
(Williams 1994, p. 62, Tambiah 1996, p. 292, Brubaker
and Laitin 1998, pp. 426–7). Indeed Brubaker and
Laitin contend that the study of violence should be
treated as an autonomous phenomenon in its own
right (1998, p. 426). Nevertheless, a rich store of case
studies provide instructive data, as in the growing
literature on Rwanda and Burundi.
4. Sources of Ethnic Conflict
Around the world at the close of the twentieth century
ethnic-related conflicts were frequent and deadly;
nearly all wars in the 1990s were intra-state and most
of these involved ethnic cleavages. How are these
remarkable 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-related
conflicts have been in less modernized countries such
as Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, and Zaire. Nor is the
partial end of the Cold War, allegedly ‘unleashing’
suppressed ethnic antagonisms, a satisfactory account;
the superpowers actually exacerbated many ethnic
confrontations and the upsurge in ethnic conflicts
began in the 1950s and 1960s, long before the
diminution in superpower rivalries. Furthermore,
scepticism is warranted of the notion that the rise of
ethnic warfare results from the release of so-called
ancient hatreds. Long-ago, wrongs are effective insti-
gators of today’s conflicts only when reactivated and
politicized, often as the product of elites’ manipulation
(Gagnon 1994, 1995). Of course, the deadly effects
would not occur unless there were some ethnic
identities and allegiances to which political appeals
could be made. But peaceable neighbors do not
suddenly attack one another merely because their
ancestors once fought. Such ‘general laws’ as that
people tend to more often favor others when the others
are fellow ethnies than when they are not, tells us little
about specific cases in which a wide variety of other
conditions may be involved. So generalized propo-
sitions about how initial conditions of disadvantage
4808
and discrimination can lead to group-level grievances
still leave us searching for additional and\or interven-
ing conditions that convert discomfort into collective
grievances. Undoubtedly sociobiological character-
istics (including propensities for group formation and
conformity) constitute a fundamental substratum for
ethnic solidarities and conflicts (van den Berghe 1981).
Likewise, resource scarcity with the frequent accomp-
animent of incompatible claims (to water, land, any
other resources) must always be taken into account.
But more specific and more proximate conditions
and dynamic processes provide the more convincing
explanations for the numerous violent ethnic con-
frontations we now observe. For example, a theo-
retically significant observation is that severe ethnic
conflicts are most common in recently independent
states that were formerly colonies of major powers or
are successor states resulting from the disintegration
of multiethnic polities. These countries typically are
multiethnic, relatively poor, with weak but repressive
states. Under these conditions, the state is a main
source of wealth and prestige and rivalry for political
control is likely to be intense while ethnic membership
frequently is crucial in political contention. Economic
scarcity and social pluralism thus combine with state
centrality to encourage communal politics. Because
the stakes are high and the outcomes are seen as
irreversible, resorting to violence is tempting. In the
great majority of such severe conflicts, lack of a
common civic culture and of positive inter-ethnic
interdependence, combined with struggles for control
of the state, create intense threats and counter-
mobilizations. Ethnicity is rendered highly salient and
provides an attractive base for political entrepreneurs.
A common result is that ethnic rivals come to see each
other as rigid groupings and membership as crucial to
all life-chances. Every move in that direction escalates
and polarizes. Not surprisingly, then, conflicts among
communal contenders for power are much more
deadly than conflicts involving ethnonationalists or
indigenous peoples (Gurr 1993, pp. 98–9). State
expansion and impositions upon ethnies are likely in
rentier states in which governing elites have sources of
income independent of the potential electorate, as in
Nigeria and the former Zaire. In collapsed states—as
in Lebanon, Somalia, or Liberia—central authorities
lose control over contenders for power and multiple-
armed struggles result. Partisan external support to
states and rebels often has prolonged and intensified
ongoing ethnic-related violent conflicts.
In Gurr’s formulation (1993), the main factors
favoring conflict include strong identity, inequalities
and grievances, political opportunity structures allow-
ing mobilization, provocative state policies, and in-
ternational contagion and diffusion. Many of the
ethnic conflicts reviewed by Esman (1994), Gurr
(1993), and Horowitz (1985) develop into protracted
warfare because one party believes that another seeks
total and irreversible domination: ‘they will enslave

our children and our children’s children,’ ‘they intend
to kill us all.’ Diverse case studies, from Northern
Ireland, to Sri Lanka, to Lebanon, to Rwanda, and
others have emphasized that fear of extinction is far
more common in protracted ethnic conflicts than
previously recognized. In a drastic oversimplification,
it can be said that the most dangerous situations
cluster in multiethnic societies governed by centralized
but weak and repressive states that fail to provide
voice or autonomy to aggrieved ethnic and regional
dissidents. Thus, strongly-bound and relatively large
ethnies seek control in political systems that do not
favor compromise and power-sharing. Particularly
explosive are: (a) situations of lost autonomy in
unstable polities; (b) abrupt impositions of cultural
and economic deprivations by a dominant ethnic state,
(c) intrastate conflicts attracting partisan external
interventions.
5. Why is There Not More Ethnic Conflict?
At any given time only a small percentage of ethnies
are politically mobilized. (cf. Levinson 1991–96, Gurr
1993). Of all ethnic disputes, only a small percentage
result in collective violence and even fewer in civil war.
Most of the world’s ethnies are not fighting each other
or other states within which they reside. Of the some
1600 major cultural groupings, less than 300 have
recently mobilized in politicized protest or rebellion
and only some 30–40 wars are ongoing in a particular
year. To explain the impressive record of peaceful
coexistence, of mutual accommodation, and even of
active cooperation must be the task of future research
and theory-building. Nevertheless some general obser-
vations even now seem justified. First, the reverse of
the factors here adduced to help account for conflict
can aid our understanding of ethnic peace. For
example, we should look for relatively ‘open’ political
systems with non-ethnic parties, lack of imposed
segregation and discrimination, relatively equitable
distribution of opportunities and rewards, and the
presence of an array of conflict-resolution devices and
arrangements.
The most obvious circumstance accounting for the
failure of ethnies to mobilize for conflict is their
members’ relative satisfaction with or accommodation
to the status quo. If ethnic identity carries with it no
acute grievances or severe threats, there is little
incentive to disturb existing relationships. This is an
important but banal and intellectually uninteresting
case. A second case is more provocative: ethnies that
have deep grievances but do not rise up in conflict.
Often their conflict potential is negated by weakness:
lack of resources, internal dissension and social frag-
mentation, lack of a committed elite, small size, and
geographic dispersion. (It must be noted, however,
that weakness is a relative matter and some apparently
weak ethnies do attack much stronger opponents.) A
third factor may be labeled simply as fear—fear of the
Ethnic Conflicts
consequences of protest or rebellion. The apprehen-
sion may be that other ethnies will respond in
oppositional and hostile ways, or that a repressive and
ruthless state with abundant resources will severely
punish a rebellious ethny. External aid, so often
important, may be lacking or perceived as dangerously
unreliable. For these and other reasons, even highly
aggrieved ethnies may avoid the more violent forms of
protest. To more fully understand the necessary and
sufficient conditions for ethnic peace and cooperation
clearly requires additional fine-grained analyses of the
many specific cases that now exist. Meanwhile the
evidence and analyses that are rapidly accumulating
provide favorable prospects for advances in knowl-
edge in this crucial field of deep human concerns.
See also: Conflict Sociology; Discrimination: Racial;
Ethnic Conflict, Geography of; Ethnic Conflicts and
Ancient Hatreds: Cultural Concerns; Ethnic Groups\
Ethnicity: Historical Aspects; Ethnic Identity\
Ethnicity and Archaeology; Ethnic Identity, Psy-
chology of; Ethnicity, Sociology of; Gender, Class,
Race, and Ethnicity, Social Construction of; Identity
Movements; Identity: Social; Race Identity; Racial
Relations; Racism, History of; Racism, Sociology of;
Residential Segregation: Sociological Aspects
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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Ethnic Conflicts and Ancient Hatreds:
Cultural Concerns
The view that ethnic conflicts today can be traced back
to ancient group hatreds is known as essentialism,
sometimes also called ‘primordialism.’ It is very
popular in nonscholarly circles, but has very few
proponents in the scholarly world.
Essentialism relies on two interconnected argu-
ments, sometimes made together. It refers to ‘pri-
mordial’ or ‘ancient animosities’ as a cause of con-
temporary conflict. The animosities are said to be
based on inherent differences of race, religion, or
culture, going back into ancient times; and it is further
contended that individuals acquire the characteristics
of their races, religions, or cultures. A second essential-
ist argument is that ethnicity inheres in human beings,
meaning that all of us inevitably search for, or can
easily be made to care for, our ancestry and blood.
Either way, conflict results, for a rational calculus is
superseded by the emotional ties of blood, or by
ancient hatreds. Human beings live out not only the
positive attributes of the collectivity to which they
belong, but also its prejudices with respect to other
groups. Again and again in history, intrinsic group
differences activate prejudices and trigger violence.
More than any other view discussed below, this
perspective dominates the portrayals of ethnic conflict
in newspapers and magazines. Almost any popular
account of conflict between Hindus and Muslims,
Serbs and Croats, Arabs and Jews, Whites and Blacks,
Catholics and Protestants, Hutu and Tutsi is marked
4810
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
by phrases such as ‘old animosities,’ ‘tribalism,’ and
‘ties of blood’ (Kaplan 1993). In the academic world,
too, this view has had its exponents. Clifford Geertz
(1973) was among the first scholars after the Second
World War to popularize the term ‘primordialism.’
More than Geertz, however, Walker Connor has been
a leading and consistent advocate of the essentialist
view. Man, argues Connor, is a ‘national, not rational
animal’ (Connor 1994). So powerful is the search for
origins in human beings that both Hitler and John Jay,
says Connor, were driven to emphasize common
ancestry to build their nations. ‘Blood binds more
firmly than business,’ argued Adolph Hitler; and the
Americans, contended John Jay, are ‘a people de-
scended from the same ancestors,’ ‘despite,’ adds
Connor, ‘the presence of settlers of Dutch, French,
German,… . Scottish and Irish extraction’ on Ameri-
can soil in the eighteenth century.
Few academic scholars subscribe to the essentialist
view today. On the whole, essentialism tends not to
make a distinction between ethnic (or national) ident-
ity on the one hand and ethnic (or national) conflict on
the other. Though it is a problem not confined to
essentialism alone, as explained below, essentialists do
tend to conflate the two. It may well be that for
building community feelings, leaders tend to, or have
to, emphasize ancestry. Conflict, however, does not
necessarily follow. It is one thing to call up an imagined
common ancestry across ethnic groups, in which case
the attempt would be to build bridges. John Jay’s
example above would illustrate a bridge-building
invocation of an assumed ancestral commonality. It is,
however, something quite different to summon the
common ties of blood explicitly against an ethnically
distinguishable group, in which case the result could
well be ethnic hatred and violence. Hitler’s attempt
would clearly belong to the latter category, not the
former.
That both John Jay and Hitler had to invoke
common ancestry implies neither that man is a
national animal, nor that he is a rational agent—he
could be both. Nor do such attempts inevitably re-
ignite ancient animosities. Ethnic, or national, identity
can well be a source of meaning and security, without
implying hatred for another ethnic or national group.
These two aspects of ethnic or national identity—
positive and negative—are by now well understood
and clearly distinguished (Taylor 1997).
Those who came to be known as ‘instrumentalists’
launched the first systematic attack on the essentialist
view. Indeed, going back to the late 1960s and 1970s,
‘essentialism vs. instrumentalism’ was the first big
theoretical axis around which scholars sought to
formulate their views and understand the virulence of
ethnic animosities and violence (Young 1995). The key
proposition of instrumentalism rests on the purely
instrumental use of ethnic identity for political or
economic purposes by the elite, regardless of whether
the elite themselves believe in ethnicity (Hardin
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7