Disaggregating Identities to Study Ethnic Conflict. Issue 1 (1st January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McCauley, John F.
• Is Part Of: Ethnopolitics. Volume 16:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 12
• Page End: 20
• Publication Date: 2017-01-01
• Subjects: Ethnic relations -- Political aspects -- Periodicals; Minorities -- Periodicals; Geopolitics -- Periodicals; International relations and culture -- Periodicals; Ethnicity -- Periodicals; Autonomy and independence movements -- Periodicals; 320.1205
• DOI: 10.1080/17449057.2016.1235348
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-9057

Abstract

Abstract : Research has shown that competition over resources, overlapping identity cleavages, and weak state institutions constitute important causal determinants of ethnic violence. Critical in identifying those factors have been research innovations that treat ethnic identities as political tools rather than primordial divisions. Thus, theoretical developments that consider ethnicity to be fluid and constructed, data sets that account for the actual political importance of group identities, and new methods that add geographic and psychological information to ethnic labels all constitute important breakthroughs. Yet, the study of ethnic conflict remains constrained by a tendency to treat as constant the political interests of actors in very different identity contexts.