Ethnic Conflict, Geography Of

Ethnic Cleansing, History of demonstrate just how difficult it is to gain international consensus for intervention. The Russian involvement in Chechnya might well end in ethnic cleansing; only the most tepid of protests are registered on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of innocent refugees from the conflict. Even when intervention takes place, it is very difficult to separate nations peaceably who have experienced the ravages of ethnic cleansing. One of the fallacies of those who justify ethnic cleansing is that peace is advanced by forceably creating homogeneous nation-states. Instead, long-term animosities and national traumas are engendered that can explode into violence and war. Especially in the former communist world, there are numerous countries with weak state structures, underdeveloped civil societies, and struggling economies. Where political elites are willing to play the ‘nationalist card’ in order to mobilize populations on behalf of the modernizing nation-state, ethnic cleansing might well occur. Under similar circumstances, countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia could also be vulnerable to attacks on minority nations. See also: Anti-Semitism; Ethnic Conflict, Geography of; Ethnic Conflicts; Ethnic Conflicts and Ancient Hatreds: Cultural Concerns; Ethnic Groups\ Ethnicity: Historical Aspects; Genocide: Anthropological Aspects; Genocide: Historical Aspects; Holocaust, The; Race: History of the Concept; Racism, History of; Xenophobia

Bibliography Ahmed A S 1995 Ethnic cleansing: A metaphor for our time? Ethnic and Racial Studies 18(1): 1–25 Allen B 1996 Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia– Herzego
ina and Croatia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN Bartov O 1996 Murder in our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation. Oxford University Press, New York Baumann Z 1989 Modernity and the Holocaust. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY Bell-Fialkoff A 1996 Ethnic Cleansing, 1st edn. St. Martin’s Press, New York Brubaker R 1996 Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK Cigar N 1995 Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, 1st edn. Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX Gutman R 1993 A Witness to Genocide. Macmillan, New York Hayden R M 1996 Schindler’s fate and Balkan tragedy of the 1990s: Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and population transfers. Sla
ic Re
iew 55(4): 727–48 Kuper L 1981 Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT Lemberg H 1992 ‘Ethnische Sa$ uberung’: Ein Mittel zur Lo$ sung von Nationalita$ tenproblemen? Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parlament B 46(92): 27–38 [‘Ethnic cleansing’: A means for the solution of

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nationality problems?’ From Politics and Contemporary History: A Supplement to the Weekly, The Parliament] Martin T 1998 The origins of soviet ethnic cleansing. Journal of Modern History 70(4): 813–61 Melson R 1992 Re
olution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Naimark N 2001 Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA Scott J C 1998 Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Impro
e the Human Condition Ha
e Failed. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT Stiglmayer A 1994 Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia–Herzego
ina. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE Ther P 1998 Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ\DDR und in Polen 1945–1956 [German and Polish Deportees: Society and Deportee Policy in the SBZ\GDR and in Poland 1945–1956]. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Go$ ttingen, Germany Vujacic V 1993 Communism, Nationalism, and Democracy in Russia and Serbia: 1985–1993, draft manuscript

N. M. Naimark

Ethnic Conflict, Geography of Ethnic conflict is a worldwide phenomenon. Much of it is territorially based, entailing disputes over the control of space. It occurs over a wide range of spatial scales, from the interstate level to the urban neighborhood. Violence takes place at the extreme, though a significant amount of ethnic conflict is characterized by nonviolent behavior. Causal factors can range from material welfare concerns to identity issues. A range of territorially based solutions or at least attempts at conflict regulation have been put forward.

1. Spatial Scales It is possible, from a geographical perspective, to classify ethnic conflicts into three categories—the interstate, the intrastate and the micro-scale or intraurban. However it must be stressed that there are powerful linkages between the various scales. Events at the interstate scale can reverberate down into the individual states and may even have consequences at the level of urban neighborhoods. Likewise, conflicts at the urban micro-scale can impact at the larger spatial scales, even as far as triggering ill-feeling or worse, in the ‘international’ arena.

1.1 Ethnic Conflict at the Interstate Scale The geographical distributions of many ethnic groups do not conform neatly to existing state boundaries (the

Ethnic Conflict, Geography of Basques and the Kurds provide clear examples of this). The misfit between state and ethnic group boundaries may generate claims. As Donald Horowitz (1985) has put it ‘if irredentism is conceived as a movement to retrieve ethnic kinsmen and their territory across borders, the common disjunction of group boundaries and territorial boundaries offers scope for irredentas aplenty.’ Horowitz further notes that a decision to attempt to forcibly retrieve ethnic group members across a border is, in the main, a government decision. This contrasts with secession, which is an ethnic group decision to break away from the state that the group currently finds itself penned into. Secession may involve an attempt to form a separate state, or it may mean breaking away from one state and joining another. Stanley Lieberson (1972) has stressed that an ethnic group has the possibility of reducing or eliminating any disadvantage it may suffer, by opting for political separation. As he points, out such a strategy is not available to other disadvantaged groups in a stratified society (for instance those disadvantaged on grounds of gender, age or economic position). Thus, as Lieberson outlines it, the most fundamental difference between ethnic and other forms of stratification lies in the fact that the former is nearly always the basis for the internal disintegration of the existing boundaries of the state. Since the objective is most likely to be the formation of a new state, the best way to describe such secessionist groups is to refer to them as ‘ethnonationalists.’ Such attempts at the disruption of existing states will not be greeted favorably by existing governments. Thus secession is likely to be pursued and to be resisted by the use of violence. Interstate ethnic conflict also manifests itself through the roles of ‘external national homelands’ (Brubacker 1996) and ethnic diasporas. With the former a state may feel an obligation towards its fellow ethnics in one or more other states. This obligation may translate into attempts to influence those other states’ policies towards the homeland state’s co-ethnics, or to the offering of immigration and citizenship privileges for returning members of the ethnic diaspora. Involvement, however, may extend to irredentist claims. Ethnic diasporas, on the other hand, may express concerns about circumstances in their original (real or mythical) home countries. In this case elements in the diaspora communities will press their ‘own’ government to adopt policies that are perceived to be advantageous to fellow ethnics in the ‘old country’ or ethnic homeland. Irish Americans vis-a' -vis Ireland, Jewish Americans vis-a' -vis Israel and Arab Americans vis-a' -vis Palestine are clear instances of this. Indeed some of these groups may well adopt stances that are more extreme that those taken by their fellow ethnics ‘back home,’ or as Samuel P. Huntington has put it, they may be ‘more Catholic than the Pope’ (Huntington 1997). He also observes that diaspora communities become particularly active in the age of

electronic communication: ‘the commitments of diasporas are reinvigorated and sometimes polarized by constant contact with their former homes.’ Ethnic conflict at the interstate level is also evident in what Samuel Huntington labels ‘fault line wars.’ While these wars erupt at the interfaces between ‘civilizations’ (labeled by Huntington ‘Western,’ Islamic,’ African’ etc.), they frequently involve localized ethnic groups, acting, as it were, as the standard bearers of their respective global-scale groupings. Of course, some of these fault-line wars occur at the intrastate level. In either case they are struggles for control of people and of territory. Population transfers play a significant role in many interstate ethnic conflicts. If borders cannot be adjusted,peoplesmaybe‘adjusted’instead.Sometimesthe ethnic territories are ‘purified’ by agreement, as with the transfer of Greeks and Turks in the early 1920s. Frequently, however, transfers are achieved by expulsion or—the ultimate savagery—by genocide. Finally, it can be noted that some transfers are associated with what John McGarry (1998) calls ‘demographic engineering’ on the part of states. Here ‘agents’ may be moved in, being populations allotted special roles on behalf of the state concerned; on the other hand some groups perceived as ‘enemies’ may be moved out, enemies being defined as groups whose present locations pose problems for the authorities and an obstacle to their goals (these goals generally being ones of territorial control). As with all types of population transfer, these movements can occur both within and between states.

1.2 Ethnic Conflict at the Intrastate Scale Gurr and Harff (1994), in their book on ethnic conflict in world politics place ethnic groups into four categories—ethnonationalists, indigenous peoples, communal contenders and ethnoclasses. Ethnonationalists are relatively large and regionally concentrated ethnic groups, which live within the boundaries of a single state or straddle several adjacent ones. They are likely to be seeking a greater degree of autonomy or even independent statehood. Indigenous peoples may also be seeking some degree of autonomy, but are particularly concerned about the discrimination and exploitation experienced at the hands of the more technologically advanced peoples who, by and large, control them. Communal contenders, unlike ethnonationalists, do not seek separation or secession, rather, they seek to share power in the governance of the state they reside in. As with communal contenders, ethnoclasses seek equality. Unlike them, however, they are usually spatially dispersed, rarely having a well-defined territorial base (for example, where ethnic entrepreneurs operate in specialized, spatially dispersed economic niches). Consequently, in their case, strategies aimed 4803

Ethnic Conflict, Geography of at secession from the existing state or at seeking some degree of autonomy within it are not relevant. Thus, while some ethnic group conflicts impinge at the inter-state level, many are contained within the one state and do not spill over ‘international’ boundaries. The roles played by dominant groups in these situations are crucial—they set the context for the other ethnic groups present. What Hennayake (1992) calls majority ethnonationalism can generate a reaction in a situation he refers to as interactive ethnonationalism. In a similar vein Brubacker (1996) writes of ‘nationalizing states’ where dominant elites promote the language, culture, demographic position, economic flourishing or political hegemony of their own group, creating an environment disadvantageous to the cultural aspirations and material interests of the other ethnic groups present within the state. Indeed here issues of inclusion and exclusion are met, seen at their most general in the distinction between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ nationalism. With the former, the nation is ethnically inclusive of all those who subscribe to the nation’s political creed. With the latter the claim is made that an individual’s deepest attachments are inherited, not chosen (Ignatieff 1993). National identity is defined by ethnic identity—ein Volk: ein Staat. The maintenance of political and social cohesion in multi-ethnic states will be possible under three contrasting circumstances: first, where we find civic nationalism to be dominant, second, where one ethnic group is dominant and third, where an external power exerts hegemony. This latter situation has been particularly prevalent where imperial powers have operated—from the British, French, German, AustroHungarian and the Russian empires of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to what Michael Ignatieff (1993) refers to as the Soviet and American joint imperium after World War II. However with the collapse of all but one of these, the lid of the pressure cooker has been lifted and apparently solid states have fragmented (the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia being the most notable instances). This has led to the (re-) emergence of previously suppressed or slumbering ethnic groups. Such a reawakening has threatened the fabrics of many states, generating movements that call for varying degrees of separation (from secession to regional autonomy). Ethnic struggles at the intrastate level, from time to time, have been characterized both by what may be called ‘census wars’ and by ‘symbolic strife.’ With reference to the former Donald Horowitz (1985) has coined the phrase ‘winning the census’—here there are concerns about existing (ethnic) demographic balances and future trends. As he puts it ‘numbers are an indicator of whose country it is.’ Census watching becomes an obsession; arguments occur regarding the accuracy of census enumerations, and in some cases ethnic numeral balances are so sensitive that the census is abandoned (as happened, for instance, in Lebanon). 4804

Matters of symbolism also take on a huge importance in states with internal ethnic conflict. Raymond Breton (1984) argues that the symbolic order is a key component in constructing and maintaining a collective entity. A dominant ethnic group will attempt to impose its symbolic order on the state—flags, official language, anthems, etc. Other ethnic groups may resist this process, with the consequence that many symbols become contested and contribute to disunity. Ethnonationally contested spaces, in particular, are notable for their symbolic discensus. Of course symbols may well help create unity within a particular ethnic group, but in terms of inter-ethnic relations they divide. Within-state ethnic conflict may arise between indigenous or well-rooted populations, on the one hand, and recent, less well-rooted immigrants on the other. If the immigrant flow is overwhelming (numerically or technologically) the indigenous ethnic group(s) will find themselves marginalized (as was the case in North America). However many immigrant flows have to accommodate themselves to the preexisting social and political environment. In this case, conflict will be over equality of treatment—the immigrant will not expect (or presumably wish) to take over the state that receives them.

1.3 Ethnic Conflict at the Micro-scale Ethnic conflict gains its greatest intensity at the small scale—here individuals and small groups interface with each other as part of the daily round. Rural, relatively low population density environments can experience intense conflict (as well as day-to-day coexistence), but it is usually in the urban, big city environments that ethnic antagonisms can achieve a peculiarly focused, ‘molecular’ nastiness. In the urban context, foreign origin migrants attempt to establish themselves as do those from within the state, some of which may also have their origins in ethnically differentiated regions. While conflict is not necessarily an inevitable outcome, it is of frequent occurrence, as the migrants compete with each other and with the receiving society for scarce resources of housing, employment, educational opportunities and so on. In these circumstances many ethnic newcomers experience a degree of residential segregation, part based on the wishes of the immigrant and migrant ethnics themselves, part based on the somewhat hostile response of those who see themselves as the ‘hosts.’ From a bottom-up perspective, ethnic groups may be seen to cluster together residentially for reasons of physical defense, from a wish to distance themselves from the embarrassment of contact with ethnocentric others, and, indeed from a wish to have a base for organizing politically and thereby gaining a say in the decision making in the wider society through judicious use of the electoral system. In the more extreme

Ethnic Conflict, Geography of conflict environments, the segregated residential cluster can provide a base for organizing physical attack against a wider society that is seen to be oppressive. This is where the urban guerrilla is most likely to thrive. Finally segregation can provide a context for cultural preservation, one where the ethnic culture can be tended and, indeed, transmitted to future generations. Some of this clustering is for very positive reasons, but conflict can also be a key generating factor (Boal 1987). From the viewpoint of the encompassing society, segregation also has its merits—it provides a means of containing ‘alien’ populations, it insulates host culture from what may be perceived as undesirable influences, it provides a means of manipulating and minimizing the electoral impact of the immigrant ethnics and, at the extreme, it sets up the ethnic clusters as readily definable targets for attack. Beyond the urban scale, Nurit Kliot (1986) refers to intermingled ethnic clusters in Lebanon as ‘hostage situations.’ The same situation can apply at the urban scale. Much ethnic conflict at the urban scale is relatively low key, entailing competition for access to the resources of everyday life and frictions over cultural matters. However, some cities become cockpits of ethnonational strife. In this situation, local conflicts and competition become embroiled in issues of sovereignty, and are thereby greatly intensified. Meron Benvenisti (see Bollens 2000) has labeled such cities ‘polarized,’ while Joe$ l Kotek (1999) has applied the term ‘frontier’. According to him, frontier cities are above all disputed places because they are subject to contradictory and opposing sovereignty claims. For Kotek, a frontier city is ‘a territory for two dreams.’ The urban encapsulation of ethnonational conflict may be seen as the city merely mirroring wider conflicts over sovereignty, secession, irredentist claims and desires for regional autonomy. More accurately, cities displaying ethnonational encapsulation are, in reality, actually key players in the conflicts in their own right. Examples, such as Jerusalem, Belfast, Brussels, Montreal, Nicosia and Sarajevo make the point. Indeed some of these cities are the epicenters of the wider conflict and are the focus of particularly intense ethnonational disputation. Jerusalem stands out in this regard.

2. Conflict Regulation and Resolution Solutions to ethnic conflicts can take a number of forms—territorial approaches, dominance approaches and mutuality approaches. Territorial solutions entail actions that increase the ethnic homogeneity of specified territorial spaces. The most extreme approaches involve the removal—by genocide or by forced population transfer—of one or more ethnic groups, producing what might be called ‘purified’ spaces. More acceptably, territorial approaches can involve the creation of separate states for each ethnonational

group (partition or secession), or for cantonal or federal arrangements within the one state. Of course processes of integration\assimilation can also remove difference within a given state. If these occur by consent, then inter-ethnic relations are likely to be positive; if they occur in a coercive manner the consequences will be alienation and the consequent storing up of future conflict. Dominance is where hegemonic control is exerted by the most powerful group present in a multi-ethnic environment. It is unlikely to provide a long term solution to inter-ethnic conflict—rather it suppresses it, leading to a situation where one is likely to find reluctantly acquiescent ethnic minorities at best, considerable alienation at worst. Mutuality is where ethnic groups in conflict reach a point where they are prepared to enter into a process of mutual recognition and acceptance. Consociational\power sharing arrangements within the state will be the outcome. In this situation we would find what has earlier been referred to as civic nationalism. Space is shared in a process of mutual accommodation (see discussions in O’Leary and McGarry 1995 and in Boal 1999). See also: Conflict Sociology; Ethnic Cleansing, History of; Ethnic Conflicts; Ethnic Conflicts and Ancient Hatreds: Cultural Concerns; Ethnic Groups\ Ethnicity: Historical Aspects; Ethnicity: Anthropological Aspects; Ethnicity, Sociology of; Ethnocentrism; Ethnonationalism: Cultural Concerns; Racial Relations; Racism, History of; Racism, Sociology of; Tribe;

Bibliography Boal F W 1987 Segregation. In: Pacione M (ed.) Social Geography: Progress and Prospect. Croom Helm, London, pp. 90–128 Boal F W 1999 Seeking the common ground. Geopolitics 4: 239–61 Bollens S A 2000 On Narrow Ground: Urban Policy and Ethnic Conflict in Jerusalem and Belfast. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY Breton R 1984 The production and allocation of symbolic resources: an analysis of the linguistic and ethno-cultural fields in Canada. Canadian Re
iew of Sociology and Anthropology 21: 123–44 Brubacker R 1996 Nationalism Reframed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK Connor W 1994 Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ Gurr T R, Harff B 1994 Ethnic Conflict in World Politics. Westview Press, Boulder, CO Hennayake S K 1992 Interactive ethnonationalism: an alternative explanation of minority ethnonationalism. Political Geography 11: 526–49 Horowitz D 1985 Ethnic Groups in Conflict. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA Huntington S P 1997 The Clash of Ci
ilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon and Schuster, London

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Ethnic Conflict, Geography of Ignatieff M 1993 Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism. BBC Books, London Kaplan D H 1992 Nationalism at a micro-scale: educational segregation in Montreal. Political Geography 11: 259–82 Kliot N 1986 Lebanon: a geography of hostages. Political Geography Quarterly 5: 199–220 Kotek J 1999 Divided cities in the European cultural context. Progress in Planning 52: 227–37 Lieberson S 1972 Stratification and ethnic groups. In: Richmond A H (ed.) Readings in Race and Ethnic Relations. Pergamon, Oxford, UK, pp. 199–209 McGarry J 1998 Demographic engineering: the state-directed movement of ethnic groups as a technique of conflict regulation. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21: 613–38 O’Leary B, McGarry J 1995 Regulating nations and ethnic communities. In: Breton A, Galleotti G, Salmon P, Wintrobe R (eds.) Nationalism and Nationality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK Waterman S 1987 Partitioned states. Political Geography Quarterly 6: 151–70

F. W. Boal Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 collectivity, 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 nepotism, 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 resources (oil, gold, timber, diamonds, water, land, fishing grounds). The contenders are ethnic but the

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 rigidlybound 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. Primordial ethnicity is seen as closely tied to kinship and descent, rigidly bound, enduring, emotionally charged. Instrumental (situational) ethnicity is thought to be ambiguous, changeable, driven by considerations of advantage or disadvantage in the pursuit of immediate interests. Indeed, it has long been recognized that ethnic boundaries are often permeable and changeable—because of territorial intermingling, continuous variations in cultural traits, interethnic interactions, 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 particularistic; 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

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