Introduction
More than a century ago, Marxists theorists predicted that the social class would replace some primitive basis of political relationship as language and ethnicity. But at the beginning of a new millennium, ethnicity is still a virulent and resilient political force, extending its tendrils to totalitarian states, developing nations, as well as peaceful democracies. There is no part of the world that has not been rocked by ethnic conflict, from North America to Asia. In Africa for example, ethnic conflicts involving the Tutsi and Hutu tribes led to the worst genocide ever to be witnessed in modern times. The Tamil-Sinhalese conflict has disrupted both India and Sri Lanka in Asia. In more established countries, the presence of foreign workers has created a lot of anxiety and controversy in France and Germany. No conflict has captured the world’s attention more than the Arab-Israeli conflict, while African Americans in the US have been engaged in a civil rights battle since the 1860’s. (Forbes, 1997).
Scholars and policy makers have all along attempted to explain the root causes of ethnic conflicts that continue to rock many parts of the world. Many have looked for institutional or structural explanations to ethnic conflicts while completely ignoring the culture factor (Hutchinson & Smith 2000). Not so long ago, many ethnic conflicts around the world were blamed on competition for scarce resources or politics. But on careful scrutiny, it has been found that culture is at the centre of ethnic conflicts around the world, and especially in Africa. Scarce resources in many countries are distributed along cultural boundaries. When one group feels cheated in the distribution, ethnic tensions abound. Politics, especially in Africa, Latin America, and Asia is inherently tied to culture as people vote along cultural lines. This has brought many ethnic conflicts in Africa than all the other factors combined (Eller, 1999). Thus I can reasonably argue that culture is a central factor in causing ethnic confrontations around the world today.
Understanding culture and ethnic conflict
The concept of culture has been defined differently by many scholars depending on the context of use. For the purposes of this discussion, culture is defined as a cumulative deposit of experience, knowledge, values, beliefs, attitudes, hierarchies, meanings, spatial relations, roles, notion of times, spatial relations, material objects and possessions, and concepts of the universe acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through group as well as individual striving. Culture can also be defined as a system of communication and knowledge shared by a relatively large group of individuals. More importantly, culture can be defined as the sum total of the learned behavior of individuals that are universally considered to be the tradition of those individuals and are transmitted from one generation to another (Li & Karakowsky, 2001).
The above definitions of culture are enough evidence to show that the culture of a people is enough to ignite passions that can lead to ethnic conflict. This is because it is a concept that is held in high esteem by the people who prescribes to it. In Culture, people share similar values, beliefs, attitudes, material objects, and possessions (Hutchinson & Smith, 2000). In politics, the sharing of cabinet portfolios has brought ethnic tensions in Kenya and Zimbabwe as different ethnic groups compete for the positions. Here, the positions are perceived as material objects and possessions which different cultures in the two countries see as key to their survival. Such ethnic conflicts are therefore caused by cultural considerations more than any other factor. In Kenya for example, it is common practice to see political leaders hiding behind their cultural cocoons to make glaring assertions that their tribes are being left out in sharing of government positions. This has often ignited tribal passions.
An ethnic conflict can be defined as a war between different ethnic groups that often result from ethnic nationalism. Ethic conflicts usually occur in countries where the political class put tribal interests ahead of national interests. Africa can be cited as the best example to show how the political leadership has destroyed many nations by putting tribal interests ahead of nationalistic interests. The tribal interests and widely informed by the culture of a group and thus the association (Wolf, 2006). Ethnic conflicts have been prevalent in the world since the era of the cold war. They have often resulted in grisly war crimes such as the genocide that has been witnessed in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda.
Explaining the association between culture and ethnic conflicts using theoretical comparisons
Scholars and policy makers have developed many theories in their attempts to explain the various ethnic conflicts that the world has witnessed. These conflicts have the ability to decimate whole tribes as witnessed in Rwanda when the Tutsi and the Hutu tribes participated in ethnic cleansing. Many of the ethnic conflicts witnessed so far are all entrenched in cultural undertones, where an individual’s cultural identity has deep consequences on his and his tribe’s political status, physical safety, and economic prospects (Forbes, 1997).
Not all aspects and assertions of culture are conflictual to the extent of bringing ethnic conflict. Many cultures around the world have co-existed peacefully for generations without falling into the trap of ethnic confrontations. It is only when particular cultures want to take advantage of other cultures that ethnic passions are ignited. In many instances, when the passions are ignited, ethnic confrontations tend to escalate as far as they can go, and only end when resources are exhausted or when one cultural grouping is eliminated. This has often resulted in enormous and irreparable damage on both cultures. There are a number of theories that attempt to address the issue of ethnic conflict. Below I attempt do compare and contrast a few of them in relation to the influence of culture on ethnic conflicts.
The causes of ethnic conflict generally fall into three broad schools of thought; primordialist, constructivist, and instrumentalist. Each one of the three broad categories has its own strengths and weaknesses in portraying culture as a vital contributor to ethnic conflicts. This is because culture is engrained in the lifestyles of people and in their day to day association with others.
Primordialist accounts
Those who advocate for primordialist accounts of ethnic conflict argue that nationalities and ethnic groups exist because there are traditions of action and belief towards primordial objects such as territorial location and biological features. These accounts rely on the concept of kinship among people of an ethnic group. Its main contributor, Mr. Donald Horowitz believes that kinship facilitates members of a particular ethnic group to think in terms of family resemblances. Here, culture has a unique hold on the members as it is through culture that members share a common value and belief system. It is on this backdrop that members of a particular tribe sharing the same culture gangs up to protect their interest from Perceived enemies that come from different cultural orientations (Forbes, 1997).
Through this account, ethnicity is seen as fixed characteristics of communities and individuals. Concurrently, it doesn’t matter whether ethnicity is deeply rooted in centuries of past practice now beyond the ability of groups or individuals to alter (Culture) or inherited biological traits; what matters is that one will invariably be perceived as a Zulu, a Serb, or a Chechen (Lake & Rothchild, 1998). Therefore, ethnic confrontations are natural and will be with us as long as we belong to various cultural groupings. To the primordialists, ethnic conflict flows from the cultural differences of members of a particular country and therefore does not need any explanation.
The primordialist accounts can best be used to describe the segregation of the former Soviet Union along ethnic lines. Many Russians viewed themselves along ethnic territorial boundaries as ethnic Georgians, Albanians, Chechens, and the like, without having a national identity. The result was the ethnic conflicts witnessed in the former nuclear power and its disintegration. During those ethic wars, it was not uncommon to hear the Russian policy makers and journalists argue their cases through crude stereotyping of ancient hatreds to promote a specific regional or global security framework (Hughes & Sasse, 2001).
These theories have three crucial shortcomings. First, they assumes that individuals have fixed identities while infact it is known that culture is not static and have been known to change with time and exposure. Secondly, this theory has failed to account for different variations of the level of ethnic conflict that have been witnessed over time and place. Thirdly, it has failed to account on why some cultural groupings have co-existed happily even after the theories proposes that ethnic conflict is natural (Lake & Rothchild, 1998).
Instrumentalist accounts
These theories came into prominence in the 1960s and sought to portray ethnic conflicts under the scope of community and political leaders who turns to their cultural groups and mass-mobilize them in their quest for resources and power. The leaders turn to their cultural groups because the groups are more effective than their social classes. Here, race and ethnicity are viewed as instrumental identities organized as a means to particular ends through the account of ethnic identification (Hutchinson & Smith, 1994).
Though the primordialist accounts have contributed to ethnic confrontations, it is the instrumentalist accounts that seem to carry the day as far as ethnic conflicts and culture is concerned. This is especially so in Africa where the political leadership likes to hide under the cultural banner whenever they are standing for office and whenever they have committed wrongs. This has tended to ignite ethnic passions pitying various cultural groupings against each other and has often resulted to impunity and ethnic conflicts. In Kenya for example, when corruption allegations are leveled against some members of the political class, they turn to their respective cultural groupings and mobilize them under the banner that the corruption allegations are meant to “wipe out” the community from active politics. This ignites ethnic tensions, in some cases resulting to full-fledged tribal wars.
According to the instrumentalists, ethnicity is a cultural tool used by groups, individuals, as well as the political elites to obtain some material ends inform of political power and resources. To them, ethnicity has no independent standing of its own outside the political procedures through which collective ends are sought (Lake & Rothchild, 1998). For a political leader to be able to incite a particular group to give him backing in defensively thwarting the ambitions of others or to achieve an end of his own, he must be sharing some set values, beliefs, and attitudes with the group. In other words, he must belong to the culture of the group. This argument argues that ethnicity is primarily a set of some symbolic ties that are often used by influential people for political gains. Therefore, culture is again crucial in causing ethnic conflicts. There are several instrumentalist theories that can further be expounded to bring out the role of culture in ethnic confrontations. These include:
Security dilemma theories
These theories indicate that ethnic conflict in many parts of the world escalates out of hand because individuals from one cultural orientation perceives themselves as threatened and therefore takes measures to protect themselves from other mainstream cultural groups. This perception is either real or imagined, but it has contributed to ethnic conflicts along cultural lines (Zartman, 1998). For example, during the hotly contested 2007 presidential elections in Kenya, members of several cultures ganged up against the dominant culture – The kikuyu – and slaughtered its members on the premise that the culture was threatening their survival. This brought the worst bloodshed ever witnessed in the country.
During the scrutiny that followed after the clashes through various tribunals set to investigate the causes of the ethnic conflict, it was revealed that cultural perceptions had everything to do with the conflicts. It was agued that people from one culture – the kikuyu – wanted to localize the presidency at the expense of other tribes. The competition for the presidency really got nasty and violent as other cultures perceived that the Kikuyu tribe was locking them out of the presidency. This confrontation left many dead and served to heighten cultural tensions in that country.
Ethnic nepotism theory
The founders of the theory came up with a suggestion that people hire their own kind to promote their own survival, thereby leading to distributive conflicts. Nepotism is a cultural concept in which people in authority have always wanted to advance the interests of their own tribesmen thereby resulting to conflict. This theory can perhaps best explain the many ethnic conflicts that have rocked Africa (Zartman, 1998).
In Africa for example, the leadership in many countries reward their cultural kinsmen with executive positions in government. Cultural and tribal interests are put before national interests. Positions are distributed depending on the cultural group in power thereby leaving the other tribes with nothing at all. This imbalance in sharing of national resources has ignited cultural passions, often leading to cultural tensions. The difference between this theory and the Security dilemma theories is that it views ethnic conflict as resulting from imbalances while the security dilemma theories views it as coming from perceived threat of annihilation by the dominant culture. But both agree that culture is a crucial factor in causing ethnic animosity.
Power transition theory
When given systems of order and authority breaks down, the probability of a momentary surge of ethnic conflicts is more real than ever. The breakdown of the political order is posited as the cause of ethnic conflict, not the consequence (Zartman, 1998). This was recently witnessed in Kenya when the mandated electoral body failed to announce the presidential elections. Due to the breakdown of order, cultural groupings rose against one another and the government of Kenya had to act fast to avert a fully-fledged ethnic conflicts pitying major tribes against each other.
Revolutionary theory
This theory, drawn from Aristotle’s Motor posits that inferior members of our society who have the desires to lead turns themselves into revolutionaries in order to be superior members of society (Zartman, 1998). This can perhaps explain the violent takeovers of governments in Africa by renegades who have nothing else to offer to the citizens but ethnic confrontations.
Though the instrumentalist accounts explain the role of culture in ethnic conflicts better than the primordialist approaches, they still have their pitfall in that, ethnicity cannot be carried in the same weight as political parties to the extent that it can be decided by individuals at will. It is entrenched and controlled by the larger society.
Constructivist accounts
The proponents of this theory argue that ethnic groups are socially constructed and imagined. The theorists draw much of their strength on the Anderson’s concept of imagined community. An ethnic group can be socially constructed by other people who may be outside of the cultural grouping and who may have limited knowledge on the group. As such, cultural groupings may either be constructed as superior or inferior. For example, the Belgian colonial power codified the Tutsi tribal group in Rwanda as superior to their Hutu counterparts in the 1930s on the basis of physical measurements, cattle ownership, and church records. This codification resulted in a genocide that has never been witnessed anywhere else in modern times in 1994 (Eller, 1999).
Constructivists emphasize on the social-cultural origins of ethnic confrontations rather than individual origins. To this extent, ethnic conflicts can neither be completely open nor immutable. In the same vain, the theorists argue that ethnicity is socially constructed from the intense web of cultural interactions. Ethnicity is therefore a cultural phenomenon, not an individual attribute. An individual’s cultural identity remains beyond the control or choice of that individual. It therefore follows that ethnic conflicts cannot be stimulated by political elites who mobilize the concept of ethnicity in pursuit of some narrow self-seeking interests like it is the case in the instrumentalists’ view. Rather, constructivist’s school of thought views ethnic conflict as being caused by some types of pathological social-cultural systems rather than individuals (Lake & Rothchild, 1998).
The constructivist’s accounts of ethnic conflict are somehow generalized to the culturally constructed groups and cleavages, including religious, clan, nationalist, or regionalist cultural groupings. However, this excludes material-based and class-based conflicts that more likely border on individual interests. There are two constructivists’ theories that can be discussed in this section to bring out the role of culture in fueling ethnic conflict.
Social identity theory
The proponents of social identity theory suggests that unequal distribution of resources is a recipe for conflict when a subordinate cultural group rebuffs a previously accepted unconstructive self-image together with its status quo and start building a positive group identity (Zartman, 1998). This again points to the direction of culture as the likely culprit of causing ethnic conflict in that it is culture that informs the various values, beliefs, and attitudes that are held and shared by a group of people. Once they realize that their cultural identity is being used by other cultures for their detriment, they will attempt to give themselves a new identity thereby bringing about ethnic conflict.
Due to globalization and increased flow of information, people from cultures that were in the past seen as inferior are rising up against the dominant cultures in an attempt to have a say in the distribution of resources. In various occasions, people from perceived inferior cultures have ganged up together under the leadership of elitist leaders from their tribes to demand for their rights. This has often led to ethnic confrontations like it has been the case in Sudan, where Southerners have fought the Northerners for twenty years to demand for their freedom. The Muslim dominated north Sudan perceives the Christian and animist dominated south as inferior.
Development theory
This theory denotes the fact that an established pecking order among various cultural groupings will be called into question when new opportunities to achieve mobility that the old order never allowed. The new opportunities are brought about by exogenous changes in society. The dominant groups are therefore more likely to engage in ethnic confrontations because they view the newly liberated cultural grouping as a threat to their positions (Zartman, 1998).
Conclusion
Through the various theories employed above, it has been possible to exemplify the fact culture have had a bigger role in perpetration of ethnic conflict than most of the scholars have ever stopped to ponder. Human beings are at best cultural beings who are known to revert back to their respective cultural backgrounds for support when all is not going well. Though this is less prevalent in established democracies of the west, it is a major contributor of the many ethnic wars that are going on today in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The situation is really terrible in Africa where political elites have the tendency of rallying the masses along cultural lines when they want to achieve their individualistic desires (Forbes, 1997).
If not well taken care of, the issue of culture in igniting ethnic tensions is threatening to consume whole regions of the African and the Asian continents. In Africa, the Rwanda genocide of 1994 is still fresh on peoples’ mind. The Somali and the Darfur conflicts are still ongoing. All these conflicts are based on ethnicity drawn out along cultural boundaries. We have the tendency of looking at people downwardly or using a negative perception since they come from the ‘other’ cultural orientations. Whole regions in countries around Africa are left undeveloped since they belong to some cultural groupings which are perceived enemies of the establishments. This has helped to raise ethnic temperatures to a point whereby dangerous ethnic passions are the rule rather than the exemption. Instead of culture being used as an asset that is inherently held by the various tribal groupings, it has been used in Africa and other parts of the world as a rallying call to kill and maim other citizens that do not belong to the dominant culture. This situation needs to be reversed (Hutchinson & Smith, 2000).
There are people who argue that the root causes of many ethnic confrontations witnessed in the world today stem from institutional, economic, and political factors rather than cultural factors. But they should be made to understand that culture is at the centre of all those institutions, may they be political, economic, or institutional. It is the culture of the leaders in these institutions that drives and informs them and therefore its importance can never be ignored.
References
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Forbes, H.D. Ethnic conflict: Commerce, Culture, and Contact Hypothesis. Yale University Press (1997). ISBN: 9780300068191.
Hughes, J., & Sasse, G. Ethnicity and Territory in the Former soviet Union: Regions in Conflict.
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Hutchinson, J., & Smith, A.D. Nationalism: Critical Concepts in Political science. Routledge (2000). ISBN: 0415217563.
Lake, D.A., & Rothchild, D.S. The International spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation. Princeton University Press (1998). 2008. Web.
Wolf, S. Ethnic conflict: A Global Perspective. OUP Oxford (2006). ISBN: 978-0192805874.
Zartman, W.I. “Managing Ethnic conflict: The Perlmutter Lecture on Ethnic conflict.” The Journal of Ethnicity, vol.6, no.5 (1997).