1. PO377 Ethnic Conflict and Political Violence
Week 8 Seminar:
Ethnicity, Nations and Nationalisms

2. Seminar Questions
Debate the principle conceptual approaches to understanding ethnicity and nationalism and the relationship between them. What do you find most convincing?
Is ethnic nationalism ‘bad nationalism’?

3. Primordialism vs. Instrumentalism
Ethnicity as primordial
Ethnicity is ‘deeply ingrained in human history and experience’ (Wolff 2006, p. 33). Ethnic bonds are primordial and unlike other bonds: have an over- powering non-rational, emotional quality; are largely inexplicable; are ancient, enduring and recurrent; given, natural and immutable.
Ethnicity as instrumental
Ethnicity is socially and politically constructed over time. Ethnicity is ‘foremost a resource in the hands of leaders to mobilize followers in the pursuit of other interests’ (Wolff 2006, p. 33). Ethnic bonds are related to political and social projects; instrumentally mobilized as a means to gain material goals.

4. Question for discussion
Do you find primordialist or instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity most convincing?

5. Primordialism vs. Instrumentalism (2)
‘[E]thnic identity should perhaps rather be seen as something that has roots in a group’s culture, and historical experiences and traditions, but that is also dependent upon contemporary opportunities that can be a useful instrument for mobilizing people for social, political, or economic purposes that may or may not be related directly to their ethnic origins’ (Wolff 2006, pp ).

6. History and Nature of Nationalism(s)
Civic nationalism
Civic/territorial conceptions of the nation ‘regard it as a community of shared culture, common laws, and territorial citizenship’.
With civic nationalism ‘residence and political participation in a public culture tend[s] to determine citizenship and membership of the nation’ (Smith 1993).
Ethnic or ethno-nationalism
Ethnic conceptions of the nation ‘focus on the genealogy of its members, however fictive; on popular mobilization of “the folk”; on native history and customs; and on the vernacular culture’ (Smith 1993).
Therefore, ethno-nationalism involves the politicisation of ethnicity and usually territorial as well as political claims.

7. Group Activity
Break into two groups and prepare to have a short debate between the two groups. One side is to argue that ethnic or ethno-nationalism is ‘bad nationalism’ whilst the other side challenges this.

8. The Nation-State
Proposition that a nation should have self-government within the same state; ‘assumes a complete correspondence between the boundaries of the nation and the boundaries of those who live in a specific state’ (Yuval-Davis 1997, p. 11).
BUT in most societies are people who aren’t members of the hegemonic nation (in ethnic or civic terms); some members of national collectivities live in other states; some nations have never had a state.
Ethnic nation-states: Pierre van den Berghe (1990): less than 15% of contemporary states are nation-states and most are micro-states. David Welsh (1993): less than 20 of approx contemporary states are ethnically homogeneous.

9. The Nation-State (2)
Civic nation-states: requires difficult nation-building project. Can have ethnic undertones that make minorities feel excluded.
Talk of the ‘nation-state’ is usually uncritical. Effect of the nation-state fiction has been ‘to naturalize the hegemony of one collectivity and its access to the ideological apparatuses of both state and civil society’ (Yuval-Davis 1997, p. 11).
So there are problems with both ethnic and civic conceptualizations of the nation-state.