Review Essay - INCORE · Review Essay Explaining Ethnic Protest: The Case of the Middle East by...

initiative on conflict resolution and ethnicity

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Contents

Review Essay

Explaining Ethnic Protest: The Case of theMiddle Eastby Emile Sahliyeh Page 4

Reviews

Identity and Nationalism

William Safran & Ramón Máiz (eds.), Identityand Territorial Autonomy inPlural Societiesreviewed by Edward Newman Page 11

David Miller, Citizenship and National Identityreviewed by Billy Leonard Page 11

Patrick G. Coy and Lynne M. Woehrle (eds.),Social Conflicts and Collective Identitiesreviewed by Oliver Richmond Page 12

Navnita Chadha Behera, State, Identity andViolence: Jammu. Kashmir and Ladakhreviewed by B.M. Jain Page 13

Georg Elwert et al. (eds.), Dynamics of Violence:Processes of Escalation and De-Escalation inViolent Group Conflictsreviewed by Nils Zurawski Page 13

Thiven Reddy, Hegemony and Resistance:Contesting Identities in South Africareviewed by Audie Klotz Page 14

Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions ofNational Revival in Europereviewed by Nick Baron Page 15

Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions ofNational Revival in Europereviewed by Andrew Duttlinger Page 15

Detlev Claussen, Oskar Negt, Michael Werz (eds),Kritik des Ethnonationalismusreviewed by Nils Zurawski Page 16

Valerie Kennedy, Edward Said: a CriticalIntroductionreviewed by Susan Godfrey Page 17

Stephen Castles, Ethnicity and Globalisationreviewed by Nils Zurawski Page 17

Richard Falk, Predatory Globalisation: A Critiquereviewed by Marina Arlati Page 18

Conflict Resolution

Hugh Miall, Oliver Ramsbotham, and TomWoodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management andTransformation of Deadly Conflictreviewed by R. Averell Manes Page 19

Johan Galtung and Carl G. Jacobsen, Searching for Peace: The Road to TRANSCENDreviewed by John Darby Page 19

Christine Bell, Peace Agreements and Human Rightsreviewed by Roger Mac Ginty Page 20

Tom Woodhouse and Oliver Ramsbotham (eds.),Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolutionreviewed by Mari Fitzduff Page 21

Erwin Schmidl (ed.), Peace Operations BetweenWar and Peacereviewed by Raimo Väyrynen Page 21

International Relations

James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and itsLimitsreviewed by SAKAI Kazunari Page 22

Richard N. Haass, Intervention: The Use ofAmerican Military Force in the Post Cold WarWorldreviewed by Brendan Howe Page 23

The Emirates Center for Strategic Studiesand Research, The Balance of Power inSouth Asiareviewed by Apurba Kundu Page 23

Lora Lumpe (ed.), Running Guns: The GlobalBlack Market in Small Armsreviewed by Sam Kona Page 24

Misargh Parsa, States, Ideologies, andSocial Revolutions: A Comparative Analysisof Iran, Nicaragua and the Philippinesreviewed by Robert Grant Page 25

Nikki Craske, Women and Politics in LatinAmericareviewed by Lucy Taylor Page 25

Religion and Conflict

Marc Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon:The Future of World Religions, Violence, andPeacemakingreviewed by Larissa Fast Page 26

R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of theSacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliationreviewed by Andrew Rigby Page 26

Prejudice and Politics

Paul M. Sniderman, Pierangelo Peri, Rui J. P. deFigueiredo, Jr and Thomas Piazza, The Outsider:Prejudice and Politics in Italyreviewed by Arthur Cassidy Page 27

Allan Pred, Even in Sweden: Racisms, RacializedSpaces, and the Popular Geographical Imaginationreviewed by Christer Grenabo Page 27

Paul Hainsworth (ed.), The Politics of the ExtremeRight: From the Margins to the Mainstreamreviewed by David Brown Page 28

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, Challenges to Democracy:Essays in honour and memory of Isaiah Berlinreviewed by Edward Newman Page 28

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Human Rights

Linda Hancock and Carolyn O’Brien (eds.),Rewriting Rights in Europereviewed by Richard Burchill Page 29

Kristin Henrard, Devising an Adequate System ofMinority Protection. Individual Human Rights,Minority Rights, and the Right to Self-Determinationreviewed by Stefan Wolff Page 30

Ted Robert Gurr, People Versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Centuryreviewed by Sam Kona Page 31

Aid and Refugee Issues

Frederick L. Ahearn, Jr., Psychosocial Wellness ofRefugees: Issues in Qualitative and QuantitativeResearchreviewed by Stephanie Donlon Page 32

Joanne van Selm (ed.), Kosovo’s Refugees in the European Unionreviewed by Hilde Haug Page 32

International Committee of the Red Cross, War,Money and Survival: Forum Seriesreviewed by Hugo Slim Page 33

Ann C. Hudock, NGOs and Civil Society:Democracy by Proxy?reviewed by Graham Holliday Page 34

Alan Fowler, Civil Society, NGDOs and SocialDevelopment: Changing the Rules of the Gamereviewed by Steve Williams Page 34

Narrative and Conflict

An Crann/The Tree, Bear in Mind: Stories ofthe Troublesreviewed by Sarah Alldred Page 35

Soo-Young Chin, Doing What Had To Be Done:The Life Narrative of Dora Yum Kimreviewed by Alan Hunter Page 36

Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, MamphelaRamphele, and Pamela Reynolds (eds.),Violence and Subjectivityreviewed by Christopher T. Timura Page 36

Europe

Jagdish Gundara and Sidney Jacobs (eds.),Intercultural Europe: Diversity and Social Policyreviewed by Billy Leonard Page 37

Andrew C. Janos, East Central Europe in theModern World: the Politics of the Borderlandsfrom Pre-to Postcommunismreviewed by Nick Baron Page 38

Morton Abramowitz (ed.), Turkey’sTransformation and American Policyreviewed by Oliver Richmond Page 38

Brendan O’Brien, The Long War: The IRA andSinn Féinreviewed by Martin Campbell Page 39

Sean Farrell, Rituals and Riots: SectarianViolence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784-1886reviewed by Anna-Kaisa Kuusisto Page 40

The Balkans

Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The Warin Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Interventionreviewed by Sumantra Bose Page 40

Jan Briza, Minority Rights in Yugoslaviareviewed by L. Kendall Palmer Page 41

Nebojsa Popov, The Road to War in Serbia:Trauma and Catharsisreviewed by Wim de Haar Page 41

Zlatko Isakovic, Identity and Security in Former Yugoslaviareviewed by Thomas J. Hegarty Page 42

Rusmir Mahmutcehajic, Bosnia the Good:Tolerance and Traditionreviewed by Florian Bieber Page 43

Howard Clark, Civil Resistance in Kosovoreviewed by Gordon Peake Page 43

Alice Ackermann, Making Peace prevail.Preventing violent conflict in Macedonia,reviewed by Josette Baer Page 44

The Middle East

Aharon Klieman, Compromising Palestine:A Guide to Final Status Negotiationsreviewed by Ann-Sofi Jakobsson Hatay Page 45

Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled (eds.), TheNew Israel: Peacemaking and Liberalizationreviewed by Kirsten E. Schulze Page 45

Neill Lochery, The Difficult Road to Peace:Netanyahu, Israel and the Middle East Peace Processreviewed by Marina Arlati Page 46

Richard Isralowitz and Jonathan Friedlander,Transitions: Russians, Ethiopians, and Bedouins in Israel’s Negev Desertreviewed by Rose Hanke Page 47

Africa

Colin Legum, Africa Since Independencereviewed by Mohamed Awad Osman Page 47

John Daniel, Roger Southall, and Morris Szeftel,Voting for Democracy: Watershed Electionsin Contemporary Anglophone Africareviewed by David Carwell Page 48

The United States

Azza Salama Layton, International Politicsand Civil Rights Policies in the United States,1941-1960reviewed by Audie Klotz Page 49

Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race andthe American State during World War IIreviewed by Renford Reese Page 50


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The Ethnic Conflict Research DigestVolume 4, Number 1; Editorial

Welcome to Volume 4 Issue 1 of the Ethnic ConflictResearch Digest. Once again we have been able to reviewa wide range of books in the field of ethnic conflict andconflict resolution. As in the previous edition of the Digestthe reviews are structured thematically, again with theproviso that many reviews could quite easily have founda home under two or more of the chosen themes.

A number of books under review deal with the complex,but related, issues of ethnicity, identity and nationalism.The majority of these deal with the contested nature ofidentities and the relationship with violence. We alsoreview some important new books on the theme of conflictresolution and as usual a number of books on the broadtheme of human rights. Related to this theme there are anumber of books that deal with issues of prejudice,particularly in various European countries. In part theseproblems reflect tensions caused by migration which, ofcourse, is often a result of war and conflict. Events in theBalkans region have been at the centre of these inter-relatedissues over recent years and a large number of books havebeen written which examine various aspects of the conflictsin the area. A selection of these books is reviewed in thisissue.

Our review essay in this issue has been written by Dr EmileSahliyeh of the University of Texas. In his paper, DrSahliyeh examines the development of scholarly work thathas attempted to theorise ethnic protest. He then looks atthis scholarship as it applies to the Middle East andconcludes that there is no consensus on the causes of ethnicconflict in this area. Finally he calls for the type ofempirical analysis and rigorous hypothesis testing that can,‘enrich the scholarship on ethnic protest in the Middle Eastand contribute to the broader theoretical debate on thecause of ethnic political activism.’

Let me take this opportunity to thank all the reviewerswho are ever willing to contribute to the Digest. Thanksalso to Lyn Moffett for her work on the production of theDigest. Finally let me thank the publishers who providethe material for review and particularly those who havesupported us through advertisement. Anyone who isinterested in advertising in future issues should contactme at the address below.

As always your comments, on any aspect of the Digest,are most welcome. Those wishing to review for the Digestare encouraged to get in touch, specifying your area(s) ofinterest.

The Digest on the INCORE website

Finally let me draw your attention again to the INCOREwebsite. All the reviews are available at http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/ecrd/index.html

The Digest can be downloaded at this address in pdfformat. Individual reviews are also available here and thissection is continually updated. Therefore reviews areavailable here, in some cases months, before the hardcopyedition is published.

You may also be interested in perusing our Conflict DataService (CDS) which can be found at http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/cds/index.htmlThe CDS is an information provider on ethnic conflictand conflict resolution. Our country guides are particularlypopular and we have recently added new guides on ElSalvador, Guatemala and the Basque Country. We alsohave a section on peace agreements that includes theoriginal texts of over 200 agreements. These texts are allavailable to download in pdf format.

Liam O’Hagan, EditorINCORE, Aberfoyle HouseNorthland RoadDerry/LondonderryN Ireland, UKBT48 7JATel: +44 (0) 28 71 [email protected]

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Explaining Ethnic Protest: The Caseof the Middle East

by Emile Sahliyeh, PhDDepartment of Political Science

University of North Texas

Introduction

One of the paradoxes of the contemporary global systemis that despite the presence of transnational forces andtechnology that increase interdependence, reduce distancesamong states, and help create ties among individuals ofdifferent societies, separatism, social fragmentation, andlocal loyalties remain strong and well spread. In manycases, the profusion of the means of communication helpsto sustain, and even create, national identities more than asense of international or global solidarity. In thisconnection, the post-World War II era has witnessed wavesof political action by numerous communal, ethnic, andnationalist groups. Some of these political movements havebeen motivated by grievances such as the denial of theparticular group of the opportunity of state-building, theloss of one’s homeland, the opposition to economicexploitation, and the demands for individual and collectiverights. Other political movements have been driven by theyearning to establish one’s own state and recover lostterritory, the desire to protect the group’s identity, itsculture, language, religion, territory, and life-styles againstthe intrusive demands of others.

Among the regions of the world, the Middle Eastern ethnicgroups have been most active. The primary aim of severalof these groups is not to seek national integration butseparation. According to Ted Gurr, political action can benonviolent protest, violent protest and rebellion. In theMiddle East, the trend has been away from nonviolent toviolent protests, verging more toward rebellion (Gurr1993:116).

As a result of the political protest and violence of thesegroups, many of the countries in the Middle East are weakand vulnerable. The weakness of these states is not in themilitary realm but rather in the fact that the ruling elitedoes not have commanding loyalty and allegiance amongsignificant sectors of the populations and that the politicalstability of these states is undermined by inter groupcommunal conflicts. Some of these groups including thePalestinians, the Kurds, the Cypriot Turks, and theSouthern Sudanese seek to create their own states.

This article explores the causes of communal conflict inthe Middle East and seeks to find if there is a consensusamong the community of scholars concerning theconditions necessary for ethnic protest. It will also assessthe contribution of these writings to the broader literatureon ethnic conflict. To facilitate these tasks, I will brieflysurvey the main theories and models for the explanation

of ethnic conflict. My conception of the Middle East isbroad and consists of 27 Middle Eastern countriesincluding the 22 members of the Arab League andAfghanistan, Cyprus, Turkey, Iran, and Israel.

Explanatory Models of Ethnic ActivismThe literature on ethnicity reveals the presence of severalcompeting perspectives for the explanation of thephenomenon of group ethnic identity and protest. One ofthe oldest perspectives is the primordial perspective,which conceives of ethnic nationalism as an indication ofan enduring cultural tradition based on a primordial senseof ethnic identity. The proponents of the primordialperspective (Charles F. Keyes 1981, Joseph Rothschild1981, Richard A. Schermerhorn 1970, and James McKay1982), posit that the presence of a common culture,language, religion, a distinct social origin, race, and regionare essential for the rise of communal identity, ethnicawareness, and the differentiation among assorted socialcollectivities.

The dissatisfaction with the primordial perspective allowedfor the rise of the instrumentalist approach. In hisdescription of this perspective, Abner Cohen (1974)attributes the emergence of ethnic feelings to instrumentalconsiderations and regards ethnicity as “an exercise inboundary maintenance.” He further points out that theinstrumental perspective assumes that ethnic identityserves the practical needs and interests of the members ofthe community and that ethnicity is an effectual responseto differential treatment. Because of the functional natureof this perspective, ethnic identity is not a closed system,as outsiders can be incorporated into the ethnic group.

Like the primordial model, the instrumentalist perspectivedoes not explain accurately and completely the scope andthe intensity of the political protest and rebellion of ethnicgroups. The discontent with the two models prompted thescholars on communal conflict analysis to introduce therelative deprivation and the resource mobilization models.The collective grievance and relative deprivation modelascribes the ascension of ethnic nationalism to themultifaceted crises and the socioeconomic, psychological,and political grievances and frustrations that an ethnicgroup experience collectively. The political action of acommunal group is inspired by the group’s feeling of unjusttreatment and its marginal status in the society or thediscriminatory treatment it experiences in its place ofresidence. In particular, the supporters of this perspectivesuggest that sentiments of separation along ethnic linesmay also arise from the interaction of the group with otheroutside rival groups. In this regard, Dov Ronen (1979)states that external dangers to the security and survival ofthe group reinforce the feelings of ethnic solidarity amongthe members of that community.


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The critics of the grievance and deprivation model (CharlesTilly 1978, Louise A. Tilly and Charles Tilly 1981, and R.Aya 1979) point out that the aggrieved individuals are tooweak and helpless to engage in political action. Thepolitical activism of ethnic and communal groups thereforeshould be explained by employing a resourcemobilization model. This model assumes that the groupis the focus of political mobilization and action by leaderswho formulate the group’s political interests and expressthe group’s grievances and political aspirations. Theadvocates of the resource mobilization model (Jeffrey A.Ross 1981, Charles Tilly 1978, Louise A. Tilly and CharlesTilly 1981, and R. Aya 1979) emphasize the calculatedmobilization of group resources in response to changingpolitical opportunities.

The resource mobilization model contains threecomponents. First, a communal group’s activism is notpossible without the presence of political space andopportunities. Second, the political vigor of a communalgroup depends on the presence of an assortment ofresources including political leadership, organizationalstructures, communication networks, manpower, funds,ideology, and external encouragement. These assetsdetermine the nature and the degree of the reaction of theaggrieved persons. Third, such ethnic groups cannot bemobilized without the presence of motives and incentivesincluding the desire to alleviate the widespread social,economic, and political inequities among the members ofthe group.

The relative deprivation and resource mobilization modelswere treated in the literature as competing and separateperspectives. In his Minorities At Risk project, Ted R. Gurrincorporates the two competing theoretical models as wellas some aspects of the primordial perspective to bringabout an ethnic communal mobilizational model. In hismodel, Gurr delineates four group traits, which allow forthe endurance of group grievances and define theirresponses to mobilizational exertions. The first such traitinvolves the presence of a gap between the aggrievedpopulation and the governing groups. This gap is generatedby policies that discriminate against the deprived groupand limit their material well-being and their admission topolitical power. Gurr hypothesizes that the greater thediscrimination experienced by a group, the more the groupwould feel the grievances, and the more would be thegroup’s potential for political mobilization.

The second trait is the strength of group identity forpolitical mobilization. Gurr maintains that the identity ofthe group rests on shared historical experiences and onthe presence of one or more of the following attributes:ethnic origin, common language and religion, and regionof residence. Group identity is also a function of culturaland social variations between the afflicted group and the

dominant or enemy groups. Such differences allow forthe political mobilization of the communal group andenable the leaders to articulate the demands and theinterests of the aggrieved groups. Gurr proposes that littleprospect exists for political mobilization if the grievancesand group identity are weak and that strong group identityadvances the chances for group political action.

The third trait involves the interconnectedness of the group,which is a function of the political organization of a groupand its convergence in one region. According to Gurr, thepotential for political activism is greater when there is ahigher degree of cohesion among the members of acommunal group.

The fourth trait highlights the degree of repression of asubordinate group by the dominant group. Gurr suggeststhat the potential for political mobilization varies inverselywith the intensity and level of government oppression. Hefurther proposes that though subjugated groups harborprofound grievances, they are reluctant to immersethemselves in open violence.

In addition to the four group traits, Gurr outlined threeother factors that would increase the opportunities andincentives for political action of aggrieved ethnic andcommunal groups. First, a disadvantaged communalgroup’s potential for political action is increased by thedispersion of its members among a number of neighboringcountries. The political activists in one country can havea safe sanctuary among their fellow nationals in adjoiningstates and usually can count on the kindred groupsdiplomatic, political, economic, and military support.Second, the communal groups benefit from the presenceof widespread international networks, which share similartraits and conditions. Such networks provide their memberswith a myriad of resources, including ideology, leadership,organizational skills, material inducements, and a forumfor publicizing the group’s grievances and politicaldemands. Third, the absence of democracy hinders theprocess of assimilation and the accommodation of theinterests of the ethnic groups and therefore keeps thegroup’s grievances alive and amenable to mobilization.

The Causes of Ethnic Protest in the Middle EastIn light of the preceding discussion, I will devote the restof this paper to examine the causes of ethnic protest in theMiddle East. The bulk of the literature on ethnicity andnationalism is descriptive and surveys the various ethnicgroups and speculates on the reasons behind their protest.No consensus, however, exists among the Middle East areaspecialists on the causes of ethnic protest. The threeperspectives of primordialism, grievance and depravation,and resource mobilization models dominate much of thisliterature. My classification of the Middle East area studyin to these three models is rather arbitrary. Many of the

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writings used in this paper belong to more than one model.Indeed, the majority of the writers do not employ atheoretical framework in their analysis of the causes ofethnic protest in the Middle East.

One group of writers (Davidson 1992, Golan 1994, andBill and Springborg 1999) maintain that religion,nationalism, and ethnicity in the Middle East and NorthAfrica have played both an integrative and a divisive role.They attribute much of the domestic violence and interstateconflict in the Middle East and North Africa to theopposing role of ethnic nationalism and credit the politicalturmoil of countries like Lebanon, Algeria, Sudan, andAfghanistan to the presence of ethnic and religiousconflicts. In this connection, Geshekter (1994) maintainsthat the contradictory role of ethnicity and nationalism iswell exemplified in the case of Somalia, where nationalismprovided the initial mechanism for integration andunification but later on it led to the disintegration of thecountry. Still, for countries like Saudi-Arabia and Iran,religion, ethnicity, and nationalism have served a unifyingrole and a locus for political allegiance while for Algeriaand Egypt they initially functioned as a vehicle forliberation and independence but later on served as a sourceof internal instability.

Other writers (Harik 1994, and Lesch 1985, 1987, 1988)ascribe the rise of ethnic separatist sentiments to thepresence of group distinctive primordial attributesincluding language, religion, geographic region, economicdisparities, and a particular standard of living or distinctway of life. They note that such primordial features createda deep wedge between the Cypriot Turks and Greeks, theIsraeli Jews and Palestinians, the Lebanese Muslims andChristians, and the Sudanese Muslim and non-Muslims.They also observe that the civil strife between the CyprioteTurks and Greeks, Lebanese Muslims and Christians, andMuslim Arab Sudanese and non Muslim Sudanese werefueled by religious, linguistic, economic, and ethniccleavages.

It should be noted, however, that in societies where religionand language are not crucial distinguishing traits, ethniccommunalism does not always lead to severe internaldissension or erosion of state sovereignty. For instance,while language has differentiated the Iraqi Kurds from theIraqi Arabs, the communal self-awareness of the Shi’a ofSouthern Iraq does not have separatist overtones.

Another manifestation of the contradiction between loyaltyto the nation-state and to primordial sentiments andidentities may be observed in the inconsistency betweenethnicity and state geographic boundaries. Indeed, muchof the domestic violence and interstate conflict in theMiddle East region can be attributed to the incongruitybetween ethnic lines and state boundaries. Transnational

loyalties to clan and ethnic groups remain strongparticularly because many of these groups are ethnicallydivided across, rather than within national borders.Because the borders of many Middle East countries weredrawn by former colonial powers—Britain and France—they are generally inconsistent with the ethnic compositionof the populations in many of these states. The boundariesof Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Iran,Turkey, Sudan, and the North African countries areinconsistent with the ethnic composition of theirpopulations.

The disparities between ethnic and state lines and thereligious and ethnic composition of the twenty-sevencountries included in this paper are presented in Table 1.The table denotes that many of the Middle Easterncountries comprise ethnic and religious groups that arescattered across national boundaries. Afghanistan has thirtyeight percent Pashtuns and twenty five percent Tajik.Approximately ninety percent of the Iranian population isShi’is of Persian origin, while 10 percent is Sunni. Inaddition, Iran has a small Turkmen minority. Table 1 alsoshows that the Kurds are dispersed across state boundaries,where they are divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria,and Armenia. Approximately 17 percent of the populationof Iraq and twenty percent of the Turkish population claimKurdish identity.

The Shi’a is also another transnational religious group thatare found in different parts of the Middle East, CentralAsia, and South Asia. They make up 90 percent of Iran’spopulation, they constitute the majority of the people inAzerbaijan and they have a sizable presence in Afghanistanand in some of the Central Asian republics of the formerSoviet Union. There are also eighteen million Shi’a wholive in the Arab World. In addition to being the majorityin both Iraq and Bahrain, a significant number of The Shi’alive in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United ArabEmirates, Oman, and Syria.

Table 1 further indicates that in some countries, such asSudan, Cyprus, and Israel the ethnic demarcations coincidewith religious divisions; while in other countries like Iraq,Syria, and Bahrain, the minority religious groups are incontrol of the government. It also shows that some of theGulf countries have a significant number of Asian workersranging from 50% of the UAE population, to 13% ofBahrain, 10% of Saudia-Arabia, and 9% of Kuwait. Table1 also reveals that the Christians are scattered aroundseveral countries. They constitute 30%, 10%, 8%, 6%, and5% of the population of each of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan,Egypt, and Sudan.


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The Grievance-Deprivation ExplanationThe primordial explanation of the rise of ethnic separatistsentiments is closely linked to the grievance model in thewritings of many Middle East area specialists. Theproponents of the grievance explanation contend that thepervasiveness of authoritarian regimes exasperates ethnicand religious sentiments. They claim that the politicalexclusion of the ethnic and religious minorities is a primarycause of violence in Algeria, Cyprus, Lebanon, Iraq,Turkey, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, and some of theCentral Asian republics (Ann Mosley Lesch 1986, SamirAl-Khalil 1989). These scholars suggest that some of themultiethnic Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq, Turkey,Iran, and Sudan have used invariably primordial and grouptraits to relegate their ethnic, religious, and geographicminorities to a subordinate economic, political, and socialposition. Such regimes oppose granting meaningfulpolitical concessions to their ethnic groups, as they fearthat any loosening of their control over the country willsplit the society into competing factions. They insist uponmaintaining a powerful central government that canpreserve order and national unity.

The ethnic groups political vision clash with theirgovernment’s policy of forced assimilation. Therepresentatives of these groups call for a new socialcontract that defines citizenship by place of birth, ratherthan a particular religion, language, or culture, that wouldgrant them self-autonomy, and that would recognize theirethnic identity. They also want their respectivegovernments to redress the existing economic, social, andpolitical inequities. In particular, they demand adecentralized system of government and the redistributionof economic resources among the various ethnic, linguistic,and religious groups.

The advocates of the grievance-deprivation explanationobserve that the political exclusion of the Kurds, the Shi’a,and the non-Moslem non-Arab population of SouthernSudan led to political turmoil in Iraq, Turkey, Sudan,Bahrain, and Lebanon. In this connection, Ann Leschmaintains that Sudan has experienced incessant internaldiscord and division over the place of ethnicity, languageand religion in the determination of one’s membership inSudan’s polity. Sudan’s central government has beenreluctant to grant the ethnic and religious minoritiescomplete self-autonomy, fearing that a step of this sortwould undermine the Arab-Islamic character of thecountry, its political stability, and territorial integrity.

Likewise, Augustus Richard Norton (1987), JosephKostiner (1988), John L. Esposito (1990) ascertain thatthe Shi’as feeling of deprivation and marginalizationrelative to the political, social, and economic advantagesof the Sunnis are behind their political activism and

protests. In this context, Norton states that for the Shi’aliving at the margins of the Arab World, Shia’ism provedto be a potent symbol for political action. An individual’sstatus as a Shi’a often corresponds with lower economicand social standing and political subordination. In additionto the protest of the poor, the relatively well-educatedmiddle and lower middle Shi’a classes also resent thedominance of the Sunni Muslim community.

Esposito suggests that the Shi’a demands fordemocratization and equal representation in their place ofresidence, their linkage to Iran, and the resort to violenceof some Shi’i groups, increase the anxieties and distrustof countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, andLebanon. As a result, these governments view their Shi’aminorities as an Iranian fifth column.

Samir Khalil attributes the political agitation and activismof the Kurds to their sense of historical injustice. Followingthe dismantlement of Kurdistan after World War I, theKurdish people found themselves dispersed within Turkey,Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Armenia, where they are denied basicpolitical and civil rights including the rights to preservetheir separate cultural and ethnic identity, and the rightsfor political autonomy and economic equality. As early as1924, Kemalist Turkey passed laws forbidding the teachingof Kurdish in school. Article 89 of the law that governsthe formation of political parties and associations in Turkeystipulated that such organizations “must not claim thatthere are any minorities in the territory of the TurkishRepublic, as this would undermine national unity.” TheTurkish government has escalated its denial of culturalautonomy for the Kurds to the military dimension. Sincethe early 1990s, the Turkish army has been conducting asevere military campaign against the PKK (the KurdishWorkers Party), where thousands of Kurds have beenkilled.

In neighboring Iran, the Shah’s troops crushed the attemptto form a Kurdish Republic in 1945 and executed itsleaders. Samir Khalil, however, observes that the Kurdshave suffered the most at the hands of the Iraqigovernment. The Iraqi rulers feared that the Kurdish questfor autonomy would increase the potential for the breakupof Iraq into three separate regions: Kurdish, Shiite, andSunni. The area of Kurdistan contains fertile lands, as wellas two-thirds of the country’s oil fields and oil reserves.

The Resource Mobilization ExplanationThe literature on ethnic protest in the Middle East includestwo explanations that are encapsulated in the resourcemobilization model. The first explanation ascribes ethnicprotest in the Middle East to the presence of resourcesand assets which are derived from the modernizationprocess. Writers like E. Harik (1994), Michael Hudson

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(1968), Augustus Richard Norton (1987), and AlfredManfred (1958) contend that the process and effects ofmodernization including the spread of education, exposureto the mass media, advancements in transportation andcommunications, employment opportunities, andindustrialization, heightened ethnic self-awareness andintensified communal differences. In addition to providinga sense of political identity, modernization has increasedmany groups’ awareness of their low socioeconomic statusand political exclusion from the rest of society. TheLebanese Shi’a, the Southern Sudanese, the Cypriot Turks,and the Kurds exemplify this point. The failure on the partof the Lebanese, Sudanese, Cypriot, Iraqi, and Turkishgovernments to accommodate the demands of theirminorities forced these groups to resort to violence to effectan equitable redistribution of political and economicresources.

Another group of writers, (Laurie A. Brand 1988, EmileSahliyeh 1997, 1995, 1990, Kemal Kirisci 1986, WilliamB. Quandt at al 1973), emphasize the role of organizationalcohesion and the leadership class and highlight therelevance of the role of external actors in promoting ethnicpolitical activism. They propose that the rise of thePalestinian national movement would not have beenpossible without Arab and international political, financial,and military support, and the presence of kindred groupsin neighboring states. Likewise, the Kurdish rebellion inIraq and Turkey and the Shi’a political agitation wouldnot have been possible without such an outsideintervention. For many years, the Shah of Iran encouragedthe Kurds to rebel against the Iraqi government and Iran’sIslamic revolution after 1978 assisted in the crystallizationof a Shi’a political identity.

In his analysis of the political situation in Afghanistan,Zalmay Khalilzad (1997) makes it clear that the civilconflict in Afghanistan is the result of external intervention.He remarks that the fragmentation of Afghanistan was thedirect result of the Soviet invasion in 1979 and its policyof using ethnic groups against one another. The countersupport of the United States, Pakistan, Egypt, and SaudiArabia to the Mujahidin further intensified civil violence.Although the Soviet invasion eventually failed,Afghanistan was left with ruined infrastructure and alegacy of factional infighting.

Concluding RemarksIn attempting to determine the factors that could explainethnic political activism in the Middle East, I referencedfive perspectives—the primordial, instrumental,grievance-deprivation, resource mobilization, and theethnic communal mobilization. In their analysis of thecauses of ethnic protest and rebellion, the Middle Eastarea scholars were influenced initially by the primordial

and the grievance perspectives. The majority of thesewriters, however, did not employ a theoretical frameworkto explain the causes of ethnic protest in the Middle East.In the late 1980s, the mobilization model became popularwith a number of scholars thus offering more insight intothe political activism of ethnic groups.

Yet, within this body of scholarship, there is no consensuson the causes of ethnic protest in the Middle East. Theliterature offers a variety of explanations ranging fromincongruities between ethnic and state boundaries; to statecultural, religious, and political and economicdiscrimination; to the level of state autocracy; and to therole of outside powers and organizational cohesiveness.Much of this literature is also descriptive, qualitative, andsubjective, providing neither the empirical measuresnecessary for rigorous hypothesis testing nor even atheoretical foundation necessary to identify the extent andthe conditions for ethnic rebellion in the Middle East.

Needless to say, the conduct of empirical analysis andrigorous hypothesis testing would enrich the scholarshipon ethnic protest in the Middle East and contribute to thebroader theoretical debate on the causes of and conditionsfor ethnic political activism. For instance, to myknowledge, no research has been initiated in the MiddleEast area study to utilize Ted Gurr’s data set Minorities AtRisk (1996) and to test the relevance and the validity ofhis hypotheses and prepositions to ethnic protest andconflict in the Middle East. This data set contains 456variables and covers 268 groups.

Finally, no consensus exists among the community ofMiddle Eastern scholars as to whether the primordial,relative deprivation, or the resource mobilization modelsthat dominate Middle Eastern scholarship, has betterexplanatory power of ethnic conflict. The currentscholarship also leaves many questions unanswered anddoes not inform us if the mere presence of grievanceprovides enough grounds for people to express discontent.It also does not address itself to whether the inequalitiesbetween communities adequately explain the presence ofconflict in the Middle East. Likewise, it does not explainthe causes behind the variance in the intensity of protestby the different ethnic groups or even determine which ofthe resource mobilization variables provide the necessaryand the sufficient conditions for ethnic activism andprotest.


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Table 1 : Percentage Composition of Religious and Ethnic Groups in Middle Eastern Countries (Numbers Represent

Percentages).

Country Religious Groups Ethnic Groups

Muslims

Shia Sunni Others Christian Largest Minority Other

Afghanistan 15 84 1 - 38 Pashtun 25 Tajik 37

Algeria - 99 1 - 99 Berber - 1

Bahrain 75 25 - - 63 Bahraini 13 Arab 14

Cyprus - 18 4 78 78 Greeks 18 Turkish 4

Dijbouti - 94 6 - 60 Somali 35 Afar 5

Egypt - 94 - 6 99 Egyptian - 1

Iran 89 10 1 - 51 Persian 24 Azer 25

Iraq 63 34 - 3 80 Arab 17 Kurds 3

Israel - 82 4 82 Jews 18 Arab -

Jordan - - 8 51 Arab 49 Palestinians -

Kuwait 40 45 15 - 45 Kuwaiti 35 Arab 20

Lebanon 23 17 30 10 Palestinians 90 Arab -

Libya - - 3 97 Berber - 3

Mauritania - - - 40 mixed 30 Maur 30 Black

Maur/black

Morocco - - 1 64.1 Arab 35 Berber 0.9

Oman 12 75* - 75 Arab - 25

Qatar - - 10 40 Arab 10 Persian 50

Saudi Arabia 15 - - 90 Arab - 10

Somalia - - - 85 Somali 10 Arab 5

Sudan - 25 5 52 Black 39 Arab 11

Syria 16** - 10 90.3 Arab 9.7 Kurds -

Tunisia - - 2 98 Berber - 2

Turkey - 99.8 - 0.2 80 Turkish 20 Kurds -

UAE 16 - 4 23 Arab 50 Asians 27

Yemen 80*** - 20 80 Arab - 20

Source: CIA World Fact Book, 1997/98

* is Ibadhi Muslims

** is Allawites

***is Zaydi Shias

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References

Al-Khalil, Samir. The Republic of Fear: The Politics ofModern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press,1989.Al-Rashid, Madawi. “The Shi’a of Saudi Arabia: AMinority in Search of Cultural Authenticity.” BritishJournal of Middle Eastern Studies, May 1997.Aya, Rod. “Theories of Revolution Reconsidered:Contrasting Models of Collective Violence,” Theory andSociety 8, 1979.Bill, James and Springborg, Robert. Politics In the MiddleEast New York: Harper Collins, 1999.Brand, Laurie A. The Palestinians in the Arab World:Institution-Building and the Search for State. New York:Columbia University Press, 1988.Cohen, Abner. “Introduction: The Lesson of Ethnicity,”in Abner Cohen (ed.), Urban Ethnicity. London: TavistockPublications, 1974.Cole, Juan Ricardo, and Nikki R. Keddie, (eds.), Shia’ismand Social Protest. New Haven: Yale University Press,1986.Davidson, Basil. The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and theCurse of the Nation-State. New York: Random House,1992.Esposito, John L. (ed.), The Iranian Revolution: Its GlobalImpact. Miami: Florida International University Press,1990.Geshekter, Charles. The Death of Somalia in HistoricalPerspective,” Paper presented at a conference on Unityversus Separatism in the Middle East, RAND Sana MonicaCA, August 26 1994.Gilmour, David. Dispossessed: The Ordeal of thePalestinians 1917-1980. London: Sphere Books, 1982.Golan, Galia. “Ethnicity and Problems of Central Asia,”Paper presented at a conference on Unity versusSeparatism in the Middle East. RAND. 1994 August 26.Goldberg, Jacob. “The Shi’i Minority in Saudi Arabia,”in Juan Ricardo Cole and Nikki R. Keddie, Eds. Shia’ismand Social Protest. New Haven: Yale University Press,1986.Gurr, Ted Robert. Minorities at Risk: A Global View ofEthno political Conflict. Washington, DC: U. S. Instituteof Peace Press, 1993.Gurr, Ted Robert, and Barbara Harff, (eds.) Ethnic Conflictin World Politics. Boulder: Westview Pres, 1994.Harik, E. “Lebanon: Unity or fragmentation,” Paperpresented at a conference on Unity versus Separatism inthe Middle East, RAND Sana Monica CA, August 26 1994.Hudson, Michael. The Precarious Republic. John HopkinsUniversity Press, 1968.Keyes, Charles F. (ed.), Ethnic Change. Seattle: Universityof Washington Press, 1981.Khalilzad, Zalmay. “Anarchy in Afghanistan,” Journal ofInternational Affairs. Summer: 1997. Kirisci, Kemal. ThePLO and World Politics: A Study of the Mobilization ofSupport for the Palestinian Cause. New York: St. Martin’s,1986.

Kostiner, Joseph. “Kuwait and Bahrain,” in S. Hunter, ed.,The Politics of Islamic Revivalism. Buffalo: SUNY Press,1988.Lesch, Ann Mosley. “Confrontation in Southern Sudan.”Middle East Journal 40:3, 1986.------.” Negotiations in the Sudan,” in David R. Smock,ed., Foreign Intervention in Sub-Saharan Africa: MakingWar and Waging Peace. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Instituteof Peace Press, 1993. ------“A Khartoum.” Foreign Affairs 65:4 Spring 1987.Manfred, Alfred. Social and Political Change: The MiddleEast in Transition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.McKay, James. “An Exploratory Synthesis of Primordialand Mobilizational Approaches to Ethnic Phenomena.”Ethnic and Race Relations 5 October 1982.Norton, Augustus Richard. Amal and the Shi’a: Strugglefor the Soul of Lebanon. Austin: University of Texas Press,1987.Quandt, William B. Jabber, Fuad. and Lesch, Ann. ThePolitics of Palestinian Nationalism. Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1973.Ronen, Dov. The Quest for Self-Determination. NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1979.Rothschild, Joseph. Ethnopolitics: A ConceptualFramework. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.Ross, Jeffrey A. (ed.), The Mobilization of CollectiveIdentity: Comparative Perspectives. Lanham, Md.:University Press of America, 1981.Sahliyeh, Emile. Religious Resurgence and Politics in theContemporary World. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990.-------- “The PLO And The Politics of Mass Mobilization”in Moshe Maoz (ed.), Israel and The PLO. Saint MartinPress, 1997.-------- “A Comparative Analysis of the Islamic Movementin the West Bank, the Lebanese Shi’a, and the RadicalSikhs of India,” in Martin E. Marty and Scott Appleby(eds.), Fundamentalism’s Comprehended. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1995.Sayigh, Rosemary. “The Palestinian Identity Among CampResidents,” Journal of Palestine Studies 6: Spring 1977.--------“Sources of Palestinian Nationalism: A Study of aPalestinian Camp in Lebanon,” Journal of PalestinianStudies 6 Summer 1977.Schermerhorn, Richard A. Comparative Ethnic Relations:A Framework for Theory and Research. New York:Random House, 1970.Sirhan, Bassem. “A Refugee Camp Life in Lebanon,”Journal of Palestinian Studies 4 Winter 1975.Tilly, Louise A. and Tilly, Charles (eds.), Class Conflictand Collective Action. Beverly Hills, CA.: Sage, 1981.Tilly, Charles Lewis. From Mobilization to Revolution.Reading, MA: Random House, 1978.Woodward, Peter. Sudan, 1898-1989: The Unstable State.Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1990.Wright, Robin. The Sacred Rage: The Wrath of MilitantIslam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.Young, Crawford. The Politics of Cultural Pluralism.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976


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Identity and Nationalism

Identity and Territorial Autonomy inPlural

Societies

William Safran & Ramón Máiz (eds.)

(London: Frank Cass, 2000) 296 pp. Index. Pb.:GBP16.50; ISBN 07146-8083-4.

In most cases, the state and nation are not congruent. Themanagement of different conceptions and obligations ofpublic life – be they economic, educational, linguistic andpolitical – is thus a perennial challenge. This volumeconsiders this in a variety of contexts. It highlights theevolution of national identity and citizenship, making evermore complex and sensitive the processes andcompromises inherent in organizing the institutions andvalues that are used in plural societies. The 12 chaptersraise and address such issues through both theoretical andcase study analysis. Spanish experiences receive mostattention, although there are also chapters on Kosovo,South Asia, and British Columbia. On the theoretical side,Safran compares territorial and non-territorial approachesto autonomy and considers the reasons for differentinstitutional and policy choices for different minority/majority identity challenges. He untangles the meanings– and sometimes misunderstandings – of ‘autonomy’ andidentity, which are not necessarily territorially based: hence‘functional autonomy’, when substantial minorities pursuetheir lives together in large cities through sharedinstitutions, schools and associations, for example,ignored/left alone by other groups. Ramón Máiz examinesthe potential for managing autonomy issues throughconstitutional engineering, envisioning a federalarrangement that combines cultural pluralism and politicalunity.

Other chapters consider the relationship between local,national, and intermediate forms of government andadministration (Luis Moreno), which discusses the impactof the information revolution, globalization, migration, andthe development of transnationalism and supranationalforces upon sovereignty. In the context of the EU, thisleads to ‘cosmopolitan localism’: regions and nations canfeel autonomous within the EU, without having to bepreoccupied with independence from the ‘dominant’identity of the state. This seems to work for Scotland, andless so for the Basque country.

Francesco Llera, who considers the latter case, outlinesthe competition between party politics and violence. Interms of possible solution – depending upon the context –an array of possibilities is forwarded through the areastudies. Partition, dual citizenship, federalism, andconsociational structures are amongst them. ShaheenMoaffar and James Scarritt’s analysis of Africa questionsthe feasibility of territorial autonomy in Africa, because

ethnicity is only one of many identities. Autonomy wouldlead to chaos – the creation of hundreds of unviable units,and always the potential for a minority within a minorityto seek autonomy in turn. Yet as Caroline Hartzell andDonald Rothchild observe, a major cause of ‘ethnic’conflict is the domination of society by a single ethnicgroup to the detriment of rival groups. This, collection,based upon a journal special issue, is a well edited piecethat will be valuable for students of nationalism andidentity, as well as the specific cases considered.

Edward Newman, PhDPeace and Governance ProgrammeUnited Nations University, Tokyo

Citizenship and National Identity

David Miller

(Oxford: Polity Press, 2000) 220pp. Index. Pb.: ISBN 0-7456-2394-8.

This book is a collection of essays, most of which werepublished by Miller over the previous ten years. Itapproaches the themes of citizenship and nationality fromnumerous perspectives. This width has both strong andweak points as to how the book succeeds as an organicunit. On the plus side, there is much to prompt andchallenge, and on the minus there is the difficulty of seeingall the threads together. A small point of structure is anexample of this difficulty. Deliberative democracy isexamined from one perspective in chapter one and anotherat chapter nine, a thread obviously separated by aconsiderable amount of detailed argument.

The book deals with ethnicity matters directly andindirectly. An example of the latter is his analysis of thevarious types of citizenship, for example, republican,bounded (i.e. within national political communities) andcosmopolitan. There is much detail and argument that willhelp those interested in ethnic identity matters. It is clearthat where there are tensions around ethnic identities, theywill not automatically ease by simplistic reference andcall to ‘citizenship’ as a set of minimum agreed valuesand responsibilities. Miller’s analysis reveals a complexphenomenon, facets of which will still collide with, forexample, migrant identities and those forged at, what hasbeen described as, the ‘ethnic frontier’.

A direct, and cogent, reference to ethnicity is Miller’streatment of inclusion and the politics of recognition (pp70-5). Debating Iris Young’s appeal to ‘affinity groups’he highlights the difficulties of multifaceted identities, forexample, a blend of ethnic / race with gender, class andreligion. Group rights, where there is a multiplicity ofgroups face, as Millar puts it, identity politics’ inability tobe “infinitely flexible” and societies that can only designatecertain groups for political recognition. He goes on to arguethe strength of common nationality and a “plurality of

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private cultures” co-existing. Space does not permit fullanalysis here but I immediately reflected on the scenariowhereby nationality, per se, was at the heart of the problem.Nevertheless, there was much in his treatment that addsto the debate.

Deliberative democracy is also well aired. Millerconstructs a case outlining how social choice, in the liberaldemocratic system, is restricted by the arbitrary nature ofchoosing (voting, opinion polls etc) and strategicmanipulation. Deliberative democracy, by contrast, allowsfor preferences therefore greater formation of opinions bythe people. My immediate reaction was that of a laudableproject confronted, even in the era of e-communications,by the harsh practicalities of decision making on the ‘big’political questions and also in polarised arenas. I am surethere is more to be said on this concept.

The last chapter is ‘National Self-Determination andGlobal Justice’ with Miller viewing justice as ‘distributive’.One chapter for such a broad topic and one ‘review’paragraph of comment from me is insufficient to say theleast. Nevertheless, I felt that Miller’s conclusion of aworld in which nations could “independently pursue theirown conceptions of social justice …” while simultaneouslyrespecting internal and external rights (179) can bestridently challenged. For example, intellectual propertyrights and the numerous border / territory disputesimmediately confound divisions into ‘internal’ and‘external’.

Much of the material is accessible elsewhere but it is stilla commendable collection.

Dr. Billy LeonardINCORE

Social Conflicts and CollectiveIdentities

Patrick G. Coy and Lynne M. Woehrle(eds.)

(Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and LittlefieldPublishers, 2000) 232pp. Index. Pb.: $25.95; ISBN 0-

7425-0051-9.

This interesting collection of essays dedicated to LouisKriesburg examines the theoretical and empirical aspectsof the relationship between collective identity constructionand reconstruction and conflict resolution approaches. Itexamines the way in which identity both shapes and isshaped by conflict and how conflict resolution approachesmay make a useful contribution to the unravelling of thecomplexities that result, based upon the premise thatconflict can both be a destructive and constructive socialphenomena. Based in part upon the contribution Kriesburghas made to the investigation of the relationship betweenthe social construction of identity and various forms ofconflict, this study examines how ‘…people create conflict

as part of their definition of themselves and of the groupsto which they belong, and to achieve what they need tosurvive and develop. Conflict is this part of the constructionof our social reality.’ (p.2.)

The introduction by Lynne M.Woehrie and Patrick G. Coyexamines the development of conflict analysis in thiscontext, pointing to the general exploitation of identityformation by power brokers who tend to believe that theirobjectives can be furthered if they can persuade theirconstituents to ignore the needs of other identity groups(p.8.). Part One looks at the construction of the ‘other’and its role in creating conflict, with a contribution fromGina Petonito on racial discourse in the case of Japaneseinternment in WWII, which illustrates how easily enemyimages can be created and receive wide endorsement. Thisis followed by an examination of the role of emotion inthe Falklands conflict by Nora Femenia, in particular inthe construction of stereotypes of the other. In Chapter 4,Ross A. Klein looks at the disproportionate ‘power’ ofsmall states in the context of the conflicts over fishingrights between Iceland and the UK, and Ecuador, Peruand the US, particularly in the formation of collectiveidentities. In Chapter 5, Sean Byrne looks at the impact ofconflict on children in the case of Northern Ireland, andhow power politics exploits ethno-religious and nationalidentity formation processes at this level. Part II of thebook looks at the construction of identities in conflictresolution. Celia Cook- Huffman looks at the framing ofsocial identity and gender in a Church-community conflict,illustrating how shifting identities can be a response to,and also cause, conflict. Verna M. Cavey examines theQuaker separation in 1827 and how groups can break downinto sub groups because of internal conflicts despite thefact that they may have their own institutional conflictmanagement mechanisms. In Chapter 8 Brian Polkinghornexamines how collective identities are exploited to simplifynegotiating positions in environmental protectionnegotiations, and more generally how identity politics canbe used to enfranchise and disenfranchise certain groups.In Chapter 9 Christine Wagner looks at the relationshipbetween politics, patriotism and gender and demonstrateshow factors of exclusion can strengthen identity formationin the face of adversity. In the final chapter RichardKendrick looks at peace movement recruitment and howsocial movements may appeal to identity needs in orderto draw attention to critical social issues.

This is a valuable and pertinent addition to the literatureon identity and conflict, and examines a diverse range ofactors, levels and issues, in a phenomena that is now global.Perhaps my one criticism would be that there is littleengagement throughout the book with how the variousmicro-level or regional conflicts which emerge becauseof the shaping and reshaping of identies have a globalimpact, through abrasion with the states-system at aconceptual level and through the constant [re] constructionof binary identity which it promotes.

Dr. Oliver RichmondDepartment of International RelationsUniversity of St. Andrews


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State, Identity and Violence: Jammu.Kashmir and Ladakh

Navnita Chadha Behera

(New Delhi, Manohar Publishers, 2000) 384pp. Biblio. Index.Hb.: Price; Indian rupees 600.00; ISBN 81-7304-360-4.

In a well-knit ten chapters, Behera addresses the coreproblem of social formations in terms of religion, ethnicity,and cultural and linguistic identities and their politicization, especially in the context of the state of Jammu andKashmir in India. The first chapter deals with concepts ofstate and identity as far back as the 19th century. Beherapurveys a detailed survey of the identity issue from pre-colonial India through its national freedom movement tothe birth of India as an independent state in August 1947.At the end , she concludes that “the levers of state powertends to alienate and marginalise the sub-regionalidentities.”(p.30). It is a sweeping and simplisticconclusion.

In the second chapter , Behera traces the genesis of theidentity problem in the state of Jammu and Kashmir fromancient times when “an individual’s loyalty was primarilyto the tribe, clan or caste group…”(p.35). Behera tries toexplain how the rulers of Jammu and Kashmir continuedsuppressing the voices of workers and peasants. Sheblames the Hindu King Hari Singh for suppressing factoryworkers who had opposed his “oppressive attitude ofauthorities”.

In chapters three to nine, Behera returns to her main themeto prove how discriminatory policies practised against theMuslims from the days of the Dogra rulers havecontributed to the process of the construction of theKashmiri Muslim identity. After accession of the State ofJammu and Kashmir to the Indian Union in October 1947,ruling elites of both State and Centre failed to addresssocio-economic problems of Kashmiri Muslims. As aresult of which, as Behera has rightly pointed out, theycould not “secure the emotional integration of Kashmirisinto the Indian nation”(p.134). Also she seems to be correctthat the failure of the Centre including ruling leaders ofthe state to address developmental problems of the Valley,ultimately resulted in an ever deepening internal unrest,and consequent upon Pakistan’s direct hand in sponsoringmilitancy in the Kashmir Valley since 1989. In her lastchapter, Behera recommends that it is vitally important to“remodel state structures and transform the relationshipwith the sub-national identities..”(p.302). But how? It isfor readers to find out.

Although the book does not offer fresh ideas or anyinnovative approach to deal with the problem of identity,it provides an excellent analysis of events in the historicalcontext with a rich bibliography and valuable appendicesindispensable for scholars and informed readership.

B.M. JainUniversity of Rajasthan, Jaipur-India

Dynamics of Violence: Processes ofEscalation and De-Escalation in

Violent Group Conflicts. Sociologus -a Journal for Empirical Ethno-

Sociology and Ethno-Psychology,Supplement 1

Georg Elwert, Stephan Feuchtwang andDieter Neubert (eds.)

Berlin, 1999. ISSN 1438-6895. 98 DM.

”He maintains that war needs to be looked at beyondcultural essentialism and that three sets of ideas allow fora differentiated analyses of violence: war as practice, asperformance, and as discourse”, Heike Schmidt quotingPaul Richards in her contribution, (Heike Schmidt: NeitherWar nor Peace: Making Sense of Violence: 212), to thisvolume’s collection of high profile articles on escalatingand de-escalating violence in a range of settings aroundthe world.

The whole volume can be read and understood as acollection of differentiated analyses of violence and violentconflicts. Divided into three parts (1. the logic of violence;2. auto-regulation of violence and escalation; 3. de-escalation and treatment of violence) it contains twelvearticles from mostly German and a few English scholars,all of whom are focusing on an anthropologicalperspective. This provides an essential and importantreading and a most valuable addition to any research onpeace, conflict and violence.

Far from delivering only political analyses of variousconflicts around the globe, these articles explore the basicdynamics of conflicts and violence but always focus on abigger picture; the understanding of ‘why’ and ‘how’conflicts escalate and lead to (sometimes extreme formsof) violence. Furthermore focus is given to the fact thatprocedures and strategies to contain violence exist invarious societies and social settings. With this focus theauthors dispute the notion of violence as random, wild,uncivilized, uncontrollable and somewhat primordial.

Dieter Neubert very clearly shows how in the case of theRwandan genocide of 1994 the violence didn’t just eruptas part of an ‘ethnic’ and ‘backward’ tribal conflict, butwas manufactured, planned and then acted out. Propagandaplayed a major role in this event, and it is worthwhile takinga look at the language used in the built up to this massmurder. In this regard I also recommend looking at VictorKlemperers Lingua Tertii Imperii, which is available inEnglish: The language of the 3rd Reich.

The four articles in the theory section provide theoreticalapproaches to the anthropological (but also general) study

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of violence. Trutz von Trotha lays out a typology ofviolence, defining and distinguishing raids, total wars andwars of pacification. Peter Waldmann looks at differentsocieties in civil war, especially Colombia and NorthernIreland, and the development and auto-dynamics duringthese conflicts. Among the features he discovers are theritualised and sacred notions of violence and the state’slack of control of the violence. The latter point is verymuch debatable, as the state in both countries is not lackingany control. Rather they are also major participants inviolence and mustn’t be seen as helpless third partybystanders in what are falsely labelled as ethnic conflicts(especially Northern Ireland). Georg Elwert takes aneconomic approach as he looks at conflicts as ‘markets ofviolence’ which come into being when monopolies ofviolence disintegrate and new agents appear on the scenethat gain economically from the rising violence and theabsence of its control. Elwert stresses the need to look atconflicts from an economical perspective as ‘economicimperatives cannot be bypassed’ and ‘even non-economical loyalty breaks down, if troops are no longerfed’ (93). Elwert’s arguments are indeed essential for anyanalysis that wants to look beyond the cliché of ethnic-tribal-primordial labeled conflicts to the background of aglobal economy with far reaching consequences for whatappear to be local conflicts.

These three major contributions, which contain muchsubstance for further discussions and debate, are followedby analyses and accounts from a variety of backgrounds.Among these is Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers’ report onthe development, history and current state of a feudingsystem in Albania and Tim Allen’s examination of therelation between War, Genocide and Aid in the Rwandangenocide.

The volume is surely an outstanding collection of articleson the topic of violence and of immense importancebeyond anthropological circles. It will provide manyresearchers with valuable information and discussionmaterial and will enrich any debate or indeed research onthese issues. Its focus on the mechanisms and dynamicsbehind the often-misleading politics and well meaning butoften wrongly applied reconciliation strategies makes itimportant. It is to be hoped that despite the (somewhatinconceivable) high price, it will find many readers,especially outside the anthropological community.

Nils ZurawskiUniversity of MünsterDAAD-research fellow at INCORE

Hegemony and Resistance:Contesting Identities in South Africa

Thiven Reddy

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 264pp. Biblio. Hb.: £39.95;ISBN 0-7546-1205-8.

Hegemony and Resistence explores two dimensions ofSouth African identities. Abstractly, Reddy engages withsocial theorists such as Derrida and Foucault to explorediscursive hegemony (and to a lesser extent resistance) inSouth African historiography. More concretely, heillustrates some of the discursive practices ofdiscrimination and apartheid. This historicalreinterpretation begins with European exploration andcovers up until the 1980s.

Reddy’s analysis teases the reader with the potential forsystematic rethinking of the discursive basis of apartheidpower but fails to deliver. By trying to cover both a critiqueof historiography and a new historical reading, Reddynever clearly identifies the relationship between the two. For example, does this book seek to overturn class-basedanalysis of apartheid, or does Reddy see the discursiveconstruction of class-based identity as a complement tomarxist approaches? Perhaps he is less concerned withexplaining South African social history than with usingSouth African examples to illustrate the insights of histheoretical perspectives. Either is a laudable goal, but heleaves us with a book that does neither convincingly.

Particularly if Reddy seeks to enhance our understandingof identities in South Africa, the argument would bestrengthened by more systematic historical work. Hisoverview of colonialism, for example, would benefit frommore detailed analyses of sailor narratives, courtdocuments, and missionary reports — sources that heoccasionally mentions in illustrative fashion. We wouldunderstand segregation and apartheid better if Reddylooked directly at labor legislation, land policies, andcommission reports, rather than relying almost exclusivelyon secondary materials. The power of discourse wouldcome through more clearly if he linked explicitly the waysin which categorizations of race, ethnicity and class (andtensions between them) translated into the institutions ofapartheid, such as the form of the state apparatus and theconsequent demarcation of space through labor and workregulations (for example).

Last but not least, Reddy would make a stronger case byintegrating an analysis of discursive responses tohegemony into each of these chapters, rather than leavingresistance to the end. In retrospect, based on this book,we should indeed be shocked by the 1994 transition,because we haven’t been offered analytical tools to explain


Page 15

the overthrow of discursive hegemony — or perhaps itspersistence in the post-apartheid era. That indeed wouldbe a provocative work.

Audie KlotzDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of Illinois at Chicago

Social Preconditions of NationalRevival in Europe. A Comparative

Analysis of the Social Composition ofPatriotic Groups among the Smaller

European Nations

Miroslav Hroch

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) 220pp.Index. Pb.: £11.00; ISBN 0-231-11771-x.

This work, first published in German in 1968, had alreadybecome one of the classic studies of nation-formation whenit was revised and translated into English fifteen years ago.The book has since become standard reading for anyuniversity course exploring the origins of the modernnation. It stands out from many other treatments of thesubject by virtue of its undogmatic and subtle Marxistinterpretation, its meticulously researched and empiricallydetailed comparative approach, its original and provocativethesis of a three-phase development of national revival,and its suggestive typology of national movements.

The author’s preface to this new edition of the 1985 textstresses that his work was intended to elucidate not the“nebulous and omnipresent” concept of “nationalism” (p.xiii), but the historical conditions under which smallnations began to form, specifically the circumstances underwhich “national agitation was accepted by members ofthe nondominant ethnic group and achieved the status ofa mass movement” (p. xiv). In other words, how small,oppressed and socially fragmented peoples discovered thatthey in fact comprised larger, oppressed and sociallycoherent units called nations. Much of the book isconcerned to investigate the “social and territorial originsof national activists” and to relate the origins, characterand consequences of their patriotic agitation to eachregion’s progress in its transition to capitalist marketrelations. It was out of each population’s new awarenessof belonging to the nation, which in Hroch’s understandingis constituted ‘objectively’ by diverse integratingrelationships, that nationalism developed (not vice-versa,as many scholars would argue).

Much of the criticism of this work has assumed that itaspires to conceptualise and comprehensively explain thefull range of nationalisms and nation-building processes.In fact, its analytical acuity derives from its limited focus:on the second phase of national development (that ofnational agitation) among a number of small, nondominantethnic groups (Norwegians, Bohemians, Finns, Estonians,

Lithuanians, Slovaks, Flemings and Danish) whichproceeded to form modern nations. The book does not dealwith the historically “greater” state-nations (like theFrench, Dutch or Portuguese) or with smaller peoples whofailed to achieve nationhood; it does not seek to explorein detail the first phase of national awakening amongintellectuals; it does not pursue the third phase of massnationalism in the twentieth century; it does not strive toreduce nation-formation to a pure function of economicrelations or to assert an invariable teleology of nationaldevelopment. Appreciating the book’s modest scope andaims will help new readers avoid many of themisunderstandings and misuses to which its generalisationsand typologies have been subject.

Nick BaronUniversity of Manchester

Social Preconditions of NationalRevival in Europe. A Comparative

Analysis of the Social Composition ofPatriotic Groups among the Smaller

European Nations

Miroslav Hroch

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) 220pp.Index. Pb.: £11.00; ISBN 0-231-11771-x.

In the thirty years since this classic work on nationalismwas first published and the fifteen years since the Englishlanguage edition was released, the study of nationalismhas undergone considerable evolution on both theoreticaland empirical fronts. Nevertheless, Hroch’s work remainsa seminal work in the field and is released here with its1985 text intact, accompanied by a new preface from theauthor.

Few would argue that the strength of Hroch’s argumentlies in its theoretical construction. In the forward to thenew edition, he suggests that, rather than attempting todevelop a new theory of nationalism, his goals were “farmore modest: to determine just which social circumstanceswere favorable for the successful spread of patrioticfeelings among the broad masses of the population” (xi).

Whatever Hroch’s “modest” goals, his analysis isnoteworthy for its use of the comparative method and hissuccess at evaluating the conditions surrounding theacceptance of national agitation by non-dominant ethnicgroups in eight “smaller nations.” His conclusion thatexchange relationships among various segments of societyare at the root of this phenomenon (particularly for thepetty bourgeoisie, who he suggests functions both as a“prospective vehicle for national consciousness” and a“potential source for the ruling class” (137)) is borne outby the framing of his argument and the evidence he cites.

Hroch’s argument dovetails nicely with other explanationsof nationalist awakening that were published in the early

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to middle 1980’s (Gellner, Breuilly, et al.) and helped todevelop a new context for research in this field. Thisgeneration of scholarship ascribed new roles todevelopment, communication, and social mobility in theemergence of national movements. Hroch, however,specifically discounts both primordialism and the powerof ideas as explanatory forces in the mobilization ofnational groups, suggesting instead that economic andsocial relationships lie at the heart of these movements.

However elegant the construction of his argument, though,Hroch’s analysis does fall short in its ability to accountfor alternative explanations, particularly in his narrowtreatment of some key components of the argument. Forexample, he avers that social communication as a productof the marketplace predominates (and predates) otherimportant forms of communication, most notably thosewhich emerged from the development of educationalsystems (174).

In the preface to the new edition, Hroch speaks to severalissues that he concedes as having received incompleteattention in the text. At the same time, he provides somecontext to what others have perceived as an over-relianceon Marxist ideas in his approach. The shortcomingsalluded to in the preface and in this review are minorquibbles, however. Hroch’s book provides scholars witha well-conceived explanation for the emergence of nationalmovements that both serves as a methodological blueprintfor further inquiry and provides insightful conclusions inits own right.

While the study of nationalism has “moved on (along withthe author, as Hroch notes),” this book rightly retains itsstatus as an innovative and enduring text.

Andrew DuttlingerPolitical ScienceWashington University in St. Louis

Kritik des Ethnonationalismus(Critique of Ethnic-Nationalism)

Detlev Claussen, Oskar Negt, MichaelWerz, (eds)

(In: Hannoversche Schriften 2, Frankfurt / Main 2000).(Publishing address: Verlag Neue Kritik, Kettenhofweg53, 60325 Frankfurt/M. Deutschland, +49 (69) 727576,[email protected]). ISBN 3-8015-0343-7

(Price: 28,- DM) Language: German. Contact: Dr.Michael Werz, [email protected].

Why a critique of ethnic (or ethno-) nationalism?According to the editors of this volume of articles, therehave been important changes in the political andideological landscapes since the autumn of 1989, whenthe Berlin wall fell and the soviet empire broke apart. Since

then, the argument continues, the world has seen thedevelopment of a new framework of political, ideologicaland cultural orientation around the world. As the existingmodel of east vs. west didn’t work anymore, the vacuumwas very soon filled with a new model - that of ethnicnationalism.

Ethnic nationalism is seen by the editors as modernideology, an everyday religion that is different to the 19thcentury nationalism, as it doesn’t use nation state as itsreference, but is all about ever changing perceptions ofcultural belonging (pp. 7-9). The background today is aworld, which is globalised by the market, and whoseborders and frontiers are constantly challenged byindividual mobility of various kinds. And as borders havebecome so vulnerable, they have to be maintained andsecured by new ideologies (p. 9).

The volume brings together a broad range of differentaccounts on the wider issue of ethnic nationalism,geographically as well as thematically. Two of thecontributions deal with the ethnic politics of the formerSoviet Union. They examine the effects this had, and stillhas on concepts of ethnic nationalism in some of the Sovietrepublics turned nation states in Central Asia (DetlevClaussen and Victor Zaslavsky).

The articles by David A Hollinger, Berndt Ostendorf andBritta Waldschmidt-Nelson are concerned with America.According to David A. Hollinger, America has not beengiven much attention in the general discussion onnationalism. Nonetheless, he argues that America is of vitalimportance for such a debate, as it is one of the oldestconstitutional regimes and was able to incorporate/integrate many different ethnic groups throughout itsexistence (p. 110). Ostendorf takes a wider perspective onthis and discusses the role of American nationalism forAmerica in front of a global perspective, whileWaldschmidt-Nelson looks at some of the contradictionsof this nationalism in analysing the political representationof the black minority in the USA.

The remaining articles deal with the topic on a moreabstract level. Dan Diner analyses the historicconstitutional process of ethnos and nationality and withoutdoubt contributes the most interesting article in thisvolume. Also excellent is Bruno Schoch’s piece onSwitzerland as an example of a nation, which is anexception in almost all regards as to what is generallybelieved to constitute a nation. The piece by BenedictAnderson, whose seminal work ‘Imagined Communities’(1991) set standards in the discussion of nationalism, issomewhat disappointing, as it tells us nothing new andmerely repeats what he already pointed out in his ratherwell known book. The very short, but to the point, essayby Paul Parin is more anthropological in nature as itsuccessfully argues that a universal principle of revengeand retaliation is not an inherent part of human nature.

The book is an interesting and helpful introduction intothe subject, especially for those who have not previouslystudied the subject of nationalism in depth. Although


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history is a big part of many of the articles, the book alsoshows that the issues at hand are of very current concernacross this planet. Notwithstanding the quality of thearticles, one book on which many of the articles and indeedthe concept of this volume seem to be based, shouldn’t gounmentioned, i.e. Eric J. Hobsbawm’s “Age of Extremes”.Hobsbawm’s earlier work on ethnic nationalism and hisrecent analyses of the 20th century, the break-up of theSoviet Union (‘Age of Extremes’) and the changes after1989 are crucial to understanding the current situation thatthis volume attempts to discuss.

Nils ZurawskiUniversity of Muenster / GermanyDAAD-research fellow at INCORE

Edward Said: a Critical Introduction

Valerie Kennedy

(Oxford: Polity Press, 2000) 192pp. Biblio. Index. Pb.:£14:99; ISBN 0-7456-2019-1.

Kennedy explores the impact of Edward Said’scontribution to academia primarily through “Orientalism”and “Culture and Imperialism”. His upbringing as aChristian Palestinian through to his education at Princetonand Harvard has given him a unique insight through hisfield of literary studies into the cultural heritage of theWestern world. His public defence of Palestinian rightsand his contribution to the debate on the role andresponsibilities of academics has made him a controversialfigure. These aspects of his work are discussed inKennedy’s overview of his work to date. Perhaps morerelevant to this review though is her discussion of hiscontribution to the field of culture. As a professor ofliterature Edward Said published his groundbreaking book“Orientalism” (1978) which highlighted the imperialistroots of Western culture and its enduring influence inWestern perceptions of itself and its attitude towards non-western cultures. By exposing links in our own culturalheritage, he forced Western academics to analyse andredefine how issues of race, culture and ethnicity areapproached. “Culture and Imperialism” (1993) went onto build upon his earlier work by further emphasising thelink between politics and literature through thecommentaries of nineteenth and twentieth century writers.His emphasis lay in the resistance found to imperial andpostcolonial power with contradictions and dual loyaltiesof many of the writers lying at the heart of these texts. Hisability to connect the disciplines of literature, history andpolitics offers a radical engagement to narratives of British,French and American colonial experience. Said’s workcontinues to be influential, primarily in the field ofpostcolonial studies. His vision and engagement on these

issues has done much to shape the discipline and furtherWestern cultures recognition of its roots more broadly. ForKennedy, Said’s work goes far beyond even this. Sheconsiders his influence to be “a major factor which hasforced the West to recognize the place of the non-Westernworld in its creation and its image of itself and, perhaps,to begin to do justice to it, however belatedly” (p148).Kennedy does highlight and address two importantcriticisms levelled at Said’s writings, firstly that he doesnot address the issue of gender and secondly that hisposition as a Western academic compromises his authorityto comment on issues on non-western culture. A valuableintroduction to the vision and ability of an individual andinfluential thinker.

Susan GodfreyDept. Politics and International RelationsUniversity of Aberdeen

Ethnicity and Globalisation

Stephen Castles

(London: Sage Publications, 2000) 240pp. Biblio.Index. Pb.: £16.99; ISBN 0-7619-5612-3.

Stephen Castles book is a collection of essays that spanalmost his entire career as a researcher and scholar ofmigration, racism and identity. So despite the title, thebook’s main focus is on migration. But Castles makes quiteclear why this happens to be: “Why give migration suchprominence? Because it plays a key part in mostcontemporary social transformations” (124), among whichethnicity and globalization can be found as either a cause,an effect or subject of change.

And to view and review these transformations Castlespresents us with empirical data and theoretical analysisfrom over 3 decades of research. Starting with a sectionof essays he gives a theoretical account of the beginningof migration to the industrialized countries of WesternEurope in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, where much labourwas needed to rebuild the war affected countries, especiallyin Germany, one of his main areas at that time. These essaysgive a good overview of what impact labour migrationmade on Germany and other European Countries duringthat time. ‘The guests that stayed’ is a phrase that catchesthe situation many European countries were facing, whenthey started migration, thinking it was temporary but itwas in fact permanent.

He goes on from there to study the phenomenoncomparatively, with studies on Britain, Canada andespecially Australia, the latter getting special attention inone of the chapters on multicultural citizenship. Migrationin the Asia Pacific Region as well as the relation betweenglobalization and migration in the 90s are discussed.

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Throughout his essays, although not written as one book,Castles never looses sight of the important elements whichmake his work strong. These are the role of racism, thecomplexity of migration and effect these processes haveon peoples identities in the receiving as well as in thesending countries, given the changes that occur over time.Seeing migration as a process which changed manycountries and eventually led to a variety of multiculturalsocieties throughout the world, this collection of essaysalso documents the theoretical changes that have takenplace in migration and identity research over the past 30years, on which he reflects in his introduction.

Given the wide range of years from which the articles aredrawn while focusing on the same subject, there are somerepetitions throughout the book, which for someone withexperience in this field may not be too interesting. As forothers that want to get an overview on the topic, this is anexcellent book. The book is not only be a historical accountof migration research, it also serves as a starting point forfuture research, providing good and new ideas for researchon a very complex matter, i.e. the relationship betweenglobalization, migration and racism.

Its only weak point is its discussion of the subject ofethnicity itself, which comes up many times, but neverreally is discussed or defined, given the fact that this is ahard task to do. Although claiming to have aninterdisciplinary approach, he is sometimes lacking ananthropological understanding and a more cultural drivennotion of ethnicity. But other than that, this is a good andworthwhile read.

Nils ZurawskiUniversity of Muenster / GermanyDAAD Research fellow at INCORE

Predatory Globalisation: A Critique

Richard Falk

(Oxford: Polity Press, 1999) 224pp. Index. Pb.: £14.99;ISBN 0-7456-0936-8.

The author of this book presents a vivid analysis of theeffects of economic globalisation (aptly termed ‘predatoryglobalisation’) and argues that one of the major effects ofthis ongoing process has been that of eroding the socialcontract forged between state and society with particularreference to the question of welfare provision. A newalignment of forces has crystallised in the form of market,technological, and ideological developments while thestate system has gradually lost control of policy. Thecentral problem outlined is that ‘there is little, or no,normative agency associated with this emerging worldorder’ (p.36) to offset the drive of business and finance tosubordinate social policy to the criteria of profitability andcapital efficiency.

The suggested solution is that of establishing a regulatoryframework for global market forces that is people-centredrather than capital-driven. Such a solution is located inthe process of resistance to predatory globalisation andthe social construction of this process, also identified as‘rooted utopianism’ or ‘global realism’, can be understoodthrough the distinction made by the author between‘globalisation-from-above’ and ‘globalisation-from-below’. The former process involves the conjuncture oflargely non-accountable power and influence exerted byglobal financial capital while the latter process involvesattempts at the local and transnational level to createmitigating options through the democratisation of globalinstitutions, increased accountability and the establishmentof procedures for wider participation in governance.

According to the author ideology has played a relevantrole in allowing for the negative effects of globalisationto go unchallenged as it is stated that ‘globalization fromabove would have different, and generally more positive,normative impacts if the prevailing ideological climatewere conditioned by social democracy rather than by neo-liberalism’ (p.130). An alternative unifying ideologycapable of mobilising and unifying the disparate forcesthat constitute global society and to provide politicalenergy associated with the process of globalization-from-below is provided through the notion of ‘normativedemocracy’. The elements that constitute normativedemocracy are: citizens’ representation; rule of law; humanrights; meaningful participation in political life;accountability of government; public goods agenda;transparency; and ethos of non-violence.

A critical and refreshing view of the process ofglobalisation is adopted here and the analysis presented iffar from utopian. If it is true that capitalism has now spreadto the ninety per cent of the world population (it is pointedout that only twenty years earlier such conditions werethose of only twenty per cent of the world population) theconditions of ‘global apartheid’ whereby a smallpercentage of the world’s population uses most of theearth’s processed energy and mineral resources haveremained unchanged and unchallenged. The rising powerof transnational capital and the advent of new politics havebeen previous topics of discussion in political science textsbut what is new in this book is the focus on the process of‘globalisation-from-below’ and the refreshing andoutspoken approach critical of established theoreticalapproaches that deny any possibility of challenging thestatus quo. The book sometimes lacks a definite structurebut the picture can only be sketchy as the analysis centreson the processes and forces emerging to redefine thequestion of sustainable economic development. This is avery well written and refreshing text focusing on a realisticanalysis of the most pressing issues and the focus onnormative aspects of international relations theory awayfrom a world of pretence realism is very much welcome.

Marina ArlatiIAS/UNU Alumni Association


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Conflict Resolution

Contemporary Conflict Resolution:The Prevention, Management andTransformation of Deadly Conflict

Hugh Miall, Oliver Ramsbotham, andTom Woodhouse

(Oxford: Polity Press, 1999) 345pp. Biblio. Index. Hb.:ISBN 0-7456-2034-5. Pb.: 0-7456-2035-3

This text evocatively sets forth conflict resolution optionsto resolve violent disputes in international and local arenas.The authors effectively argue that though conflictresolution faces similar dilemmas to those of traditionalmethods (including the role of coercion, force, inequality,oppression, intervention and autonomy) there is new hopeon the horizon.

First, the nature of conflict and its resolution is placed inthe context of the international community. An overviewof conflict resolution models and available statistical dataon “deadly quarrels” is provided in the introduction.Chapter Two describes conflict resolution as a distinct fieldof study, providing a brief history of the developmenttheories and practice, in various contexts, illuminating thestrengths and weaknesses of this “new” discipline.Chapter Three shifts focus to the contemporary situation,offering a concise overview of the theories andframeworks to understand and manage conflict andprotracted “social” struggles, indicating a shift in focusfrom state-centric to societal levels of analysis. Sourcesof “international-social conflict,” including methods formapping and tracking disputes completes this complexsegment of the book. Chapters Four through Six discussviolent conflict causes and prevention, working in warzones, war economies and cultures of violence, and thechallenges of ending violent disputes. Numerous casestudies are provided from the hottest spots in the worldtoday, including Kosovo, Rwanda, Israel-Palestine andNorthern Ireland. Chapter Seven defines post-settlementpeace building and the challenges therein, both in theimmediate aftermath and over the long term. A brief tenyear analysis of United Nation’s post-settlementpeacebuilding missions in offered, concluding “. . . overallthat the experiment has not been shown to have failed . . ..” (p. 214) Numerous informative tables and maps pepperthe text. The conclusion paints a depressing yet hopefulpicture of a global community drastically in need ofdedicated and well-trained peacemakers.

This book is clearly and well written and researched. Ionly wish the text were expanded, especially Chapter

Three’s discussion of theory development and sources ofsocial conflict, mapping and tracking, and Chapters Fourthrough Six. Nonetheless, its structure makes it accessibleto both experts in the field and those new to it. It wouldmake an excellent text for any college level course onglobal conflict resolution, and I intend to use it next term.It makes an important contribution to the field. Hope ison the horizon.

The longed for tidal waveOf Justice can rise upAnd hope and history rhyme . . . .Seamus Heaney, extract from The Cure for Troy inContemporary Conflict Resolution by Miall,Ramsbotham and Woodhouse, p. 216.

R. Averell ManesWestern Connecticut State UniversityDanbury, Connecticut

Searching for Peace: The Road toTRANSCEND

Johan Galtung and Carl G. Jacobsen

(London: Pluto Press, 2000) 296pp. Paperback £15.99;Hardback £45.00 (ISBN 0-7453-1614-1613-1 and 1614-x).

The use of medical metaphors to describe social disordershas plenty of precedents. Roger Fisher and his colleaguesat Harvard, for example, use it as a central metaphor fortreatment of deeply divided societies. It is againenthusiastically embraced in this book. The forty casescited by Johan Galtung in the body of the book areapproached under three headings, Diagnosis, Prognosisand Therapy.

The principal danger in this conceit is that the analysts areoften the equivalent of medical consultants rather thangeneral practitioners. Their knowledge and skills lie morein the general state of the art than in the details of theirpatients’ condition. Clearly such knowledge is necessaryto advance general understanding, but the edifice issometimes constructed on imperfectly understood data.The Northern Ireland ailment, for example, is treated byan embarrassingly superficial set of prescriptions. Theseinclude the introduction of a version of the Euro forNorthern Ireland, in apparent ignorance that the Irish andBritish currencies have significantly different values andfluctuate on a daily basis; it is further suggested naming itan ‘ulster’, in apparent ignorance that this is a disputedterm. It is equally difficult to see either demand or functionfor another of their proposals, the creation an Ulsterpassport. In the case of Sri Lanka the section on Therapy

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concludes: ‘it can only be hoped that the Sinhalese willproduce a leader capable of thinking the unthinkable, aTamil state, and doing the so far undoable; and that theTamils will join in a giant reconstruction and reconciliationoperation’. Fine, but it falls a long way short of aconvincing prescription.

The book is structured in four parts. The two chapters inPart 1 provide an overview of recent developments in peaceresearch and peace-making, and the defining parametersof war culture. They present a useful review of similarmaterial to that covered recently by Miall, Ramsbothamand Woodhouse (Contemporary Conflict Resolution,Polity, London, 1999), and would provide an excellentintroduction for Graduate courses in conflict and peacestudies. The second part, entitled Conflict Formations forthe Twenty-first Century, has a short introduction byGaltung and three geographical surveys of Russia-China,Eurasia and South Asia by Jacobsen. A Practice for Peace,the third and longest part, is a celebration of forty years ofthe TRANSCEND approach, which is closely associatedwith Galtung; it classifies forty conflicts in which theTRANSCEND (‘a network of scholars-practitioners, doingaction/training/dissemination/research within fifteenprogrammes’) approach was applied. The two chapters inPart 4, by Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen and Finn Tschudi,speculate about new approaches and new actors.

Galtung’s writing always provides succinct and importantinsights. He stresses, for example, that ‘conflicts cannotbe prevented, but violence can be prevented’ (p.107). Healso identifies what he describes as three basic mistakesin ‘conflict practice’: the liberal fallacy, which refuses toconfront real contradictions; the conservative fallacy,which believes that behaviour can only be modified byputting the lid on aggressive action; and the Marxist fallacy,so obsessed by the contradiction between labour andcapital that it ignores the personal costs involved (p.208).

In the end, however, sharp observations are not enough.Searching for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND may beseen by some as a magisterial book, by others as a lazyone. In some chapters the citations are quite inadequate.There is insufficient willingness to be critical of, or evento evaluate, the TRANSCEND approach, so the reader isleft unconvinced of its impact. The index contains 58references to TRANSCEND (not to mention another 97to its three components, Diagnosis, Prognosis and Therapy.The United Nations merits a grand total of 18.)

Nevertheless, the book has appropriate and importanttargets: it seeks to uncover the general truth among theparticular complications; it does not draw back from

proposing courses of action; it confronts serious tasks.Unfortunately, it does not quite accomplish them.

John DarbyThe Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at theUniversity of Notre Dame

Peace Agreements and Human Rights

Christine Bell

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 416pp. Biblio.Index. Hb.: £45.00; ISBN 0-19-829889-7.

This is an important book. It examines the human rightscomponent of peace agreements reached in four conflictswith an ethnic dimension: South Africa, Israel/Palestine,Northern Ireland and Bosnia Herzegovina. The book isdetailed, scholarly and authoritative, yet maintains anengaging narrative style and concentrates on the moraldilemmas associated with contemporary peace accords.Chapters on negotiations; human rights institutions;refugees, land and possession; and prisoners,accountability and truth follow the case studies mentionedabove.

The conceptualisation of peace processes (pp. 16-19) is alittle brief and rests on the view that peace processes arevalue judgements of attempts to end/win a conflict. In otherwords, they are heavily dependent on perception. Thismuch is true, but a more detailed framework ofcontemporary peace processes, perhaps resting onobjective criteria such as longevity of a peace process andthe inclusion of key actors, may have sat more easily withthe detailed consideration of the content of peaceagreements that follows. This is a minor point and the bookviews peace accords as transitional constitutions – a usefulstarting point.

The book is not a dry legal tome, Instead it places peaceaccords in their human context and is aware of variegatedand simultaneous pressures that contribute to thedevelopment of accords. So, for example, increased legaltrends towards individual accountability and punishmentare juxtaposed with prisoner releases. Noting theinternational community’s often contradictory attitudes toself-determination, Bell reasons that ‘An alien from Mars(with an interest in political science) would be hard pressedto understand why “bantustanization” was internationallyunacceptable in South Africa, but perhaps acceptable inPalestine; or why consociational government wasconsidered vital internationally in the divided society ofBosnia Herzegovina, permissible in Northern Ireland, butunnecessary in South Africa.’(pp. 189-90).


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Bell concludes by highlighting the importance ofcomparison and cross-fertilisation between agreements:‘The stories of peace processes should continue to betold.’(p. 321) True to her word, this is followed by a lengthyappendix of peace agreements reached in the 1990s: fromAfghanistan to Yemen. This in itself is a magnificentresource and I would recommend this book for graduatecourses on peace and conflict.

Roger Mac GintyDepartment of PoliticsUniversity of York

Peacekeeping and ConflictResolution

Tom Woodhouse and OliverRamsbotham (eds.)

(London: Frank Cass, 2000) 279pp. Biblio. Index. Hb.:£42.50; ISBN 0-7146-4976-7. Pb.: £17.50; ISBN 0-

7146-8039-7.

This book is timely indeed. As the field of peacekeepingis changing so rapidly, with many new actors committingthemselves to peacekeeping, and new regionalarrangements developing, it is fitting that the authors havechosen to bring to our attention many of the issues whichare shaping current approaches to peacekeeping. Inparticular the book focuses on the necessity to ensure thatcurrent approaches to conflict resolution are taken intoaccount when considering future developments in the field.

The issues are all here. To begin with, Tom Woodhousetakes us through the various recent critiques of conflictresolution, and in particular the role of peacekeepinginterventions, arguing that many such criticisms arise froma lack of communication and respect between the field,which needs to be significantly addressed. PhilipWilkinson, speaking with the authority of his previousmilitary background gives an extremely thoughtfuloverview of peacekeeping necessities, which points to theneed to consider the overall results for the populace interms of conflict resolution, and not just the militaryobjectives achieved. The new recognition for the necessityof post-conflict, i.e. in ‘making the settlement stick’ is wellarticulated by Oliver Ramsbotham, with a useful andcomprehensive framework which outlines the practicalnecessities for UN post-settlement peacebuilding.

Beth Fetherson revisits key concepts and many of thedebates pertaining in the field using in particular theinsights of Jabri, Foucault, Burton and Lederach andHabermas against which to develop her discourse. Shefinally arrives at the need to develop a post-hegemonic

world that will legitimate a multiplicity of social meaningsas realities, and in doing so, hopefully mitigate and preventconflict. Tamara Duffey, writing from her experience intraining peacekeepers in the field, warns against theproblem of perceiving any peacekeeping force as ahomogeneous group, and of the necessity to keep theirdiffering national mandates, staff procedures, and culturaldifferences etc. in mind as operations develop. In addition,Duffey points to the need to understand the culturalconceptions of the conflict prevailing at local levels. Shepoints to cultural differences within the Somalipeacekeeping force, as well as the misunderstandings ofSomali culture as contributing significantly to the failureof the peacekeeping mission.

Stephen Ryan offers a useful view of where peacekeepinghas been, setting it in the context of contemporary modelsof conflict resolution approaches, and a look to its future.He suggests that the current trend may be away from UNpeacekeeping, and that such activities may in the futurebe subsumed within the various developing forms of globalgovernance.

For those who are coming fresh to the field ofpeacekeeping, for those who want to revisit the field for astate-of the art review of many current issues in the field,and above all for those who want to know how far thedebate on peacekeeping/conflict resolution has progressed,this is an excellent reference book.

Professor Mari FitzduffINCORE

Peace Operations Between War andPeace

Erwin Schmidl (ed.)

(London: Frank Cass, 2000) 184pp. Index. Hb.: £37.50; ISBN0-7146-4989-9. Pb.: £16.50; ISBN 0-7146-8052-4.

This is a somewhat unusual collection of articles on peaceoperations. It contains a wide range of studies whose onlycommon denominator is their focus on various aspects ofpeacekeeping, enforcement, or other forms of peaceoperations. The introductory overview by Schmidl coversthe familiar conceptual and historical ground on theevolution of peace operations. He has also produced asummary analysis for the book. The reader would benefitmore by reading the more comprehensive and importantanalyses of peace-maintenance tasks by Jarat Chopra andhis co-authors than the summary provided in this book.

The most interesting contributions in the book come fromsomewhat unusual perspectives. Thus, Thomas Mockaitis

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explores peace operations from the vantage point ofcounterinsurgency warfare. The author’s approach isconceptually muddled and ethically troublesome, but heseems to make an important point by comparing especiallythe operations in Somalia in terms of counterinsurgency.In fact, this perspective may help to explain why Somaliabecame such a debacle.

The book also contains a comparison of experiences inSrebrenica and Somalia by Chris Klep and DonnaWinslow. They provide a reflective analysis of thedifficulties faced primarily by the Canadian and Dutchforces in these violent places. The authors refer toinadequate training, logistical problems, unclear rules ofengagement, political complexities, and other factors asreasons for the international failure in Srebrenica andSomalia.

Moreover, both the Dutch and especially the Canadianpeacekeepers became involved in clearly criminal acts inSbrebrenica. Klep and Winslow conclude, however, witha happy note that both governments started a soul searchand have mended their peacekeeping practices since then.Unfortunately, there seems to have been much lessmultilateral learning from Somalia which has ratherprompted unilateral reactions, especially in the UnitedStates.

The latter problem is addressed indirectly by ChristopherDandeker and James Gow who explore the impact of“strategic peacekeeping” on military culture. Theyrecognize that, in addition to the problems of interstatecoordination in peacekeeping activities, the need for robustoperations also poses challenges to the traditional nationalmilitary culture. As there is, in peacekeeping, noClausewitzian binary choice between victory and defeat,military cultures must become more flexible, while at thesame time civil-military relations may have to be redefined.

The effects of peacekeeping on established militarycultures and practices are, in part, due to the differentenvironment compared with war. Fabrizio Battistelli,Teresa Ammendola and Maria Grazia Galantino link upin their intriguing contribution the indeterminacy of peaceoperations to the postmodern nature of its environmentwhich is fuzzy, in the cybernetic sense of the word.Although the correlation established, for instance, betweenthe “postmodernity” of soldiers and their motivation tobecome engaged in peace enforcement seems to bedubious, the article is refreshingly different from thestandard studies of peacekeeping.

Raimo VäyrynenUniversity of Notre Dame

International Relations

World Politics: Progress and itsLimits

James Mayall

(Oxford: Polity Press, 2000) 184pp. Index. Pb.:£11.99; ISBN 0-7456-2590-8.

How will an “international society”, which can contributeto the prevention or peaceful resolution of ethnic conflict,be constructed? This book, which consists of four parts(11 chapters), explores the meaning of the new millenniumfrom the viewpoint of international relations and, inparticular, perspectives on the construction of a usefulinternational society.

In the first part, the author considers the meaning andhistory of “international society”, a key concept for the“English school” on international relations such as MartinWight or Hedley Bull. He highlights conceptions of“pluralism” and “solidarism” of international society andinsists on a necessity of their harmonisation; but it is shownthat we have been faced with its limit.

The next parts discuss three important global issues,sovereignty, democracy and international intervention,where ethnic conflict and nationalism are treated as oneof the major problématiques. We can understand that thedomination of Western standards on the international stagehas made it more difficult to reform international society(ex. the Gulf War).

How should we then analyse present and futureinternational relations? There are three grand approachesin this academic field: the realist, liberal rationalist andrevolutionary. All of them are plausible according toProfessor Mayall. In the short run, in order to deal withsuch an uncertain future, it is indispensable to pay moreattention to what is real in the world, avoiding a necessarilyoptimistic or pessimistic point of view. And governmentsmust continue to struggle to reform international societywhile never evading the responsibility for each of theiractions.

This book lacks detailed analysis of ethnic conflictsthemselves, but it will be able to offer some hints on howto best approach such conflicts from a global point of view.

SAKAI KazunariFaculty of Cross-Cultural StudiesKobe University


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Intervention: The Use of AmericanMilitary Force in the Post Cold War

World

Richard N. Haass

(Washington: Brookings Institution Press, revisededition, 1999) 295pp. Index. Pb.: $18.95; ISBN 0-

8700-3135-X

In this volume Haass performs two valuable services foranyone interested in the use of force as a foreign policytool in the post-Cold War world – he offers an insider’sview into the world of American foreign policy making;and in a comprehensive set of appendices he presents uswith ‘documents that are highly relevant but not alwayseasy to find.’(p.xii) An introduction to the post-Cold Warworld and the consequences of this environment formilitary intervention is followed in the main body of thetext by analysis of 12 cases of American intervention. Thechapter on the vocabulary of intervention, highlighted withcase-study examples, is particularly interesting andinformative. However, chapters on whether and how tointervene are frustratingly brief. Indeed, this is one of themajor shortcomings of the work as a whole. A bare 180pages (excluding appendices) is not sufficient to do justiceto the ambitions and claims of the outlined topic material.This is particularly evident in the rather short shrift givento the additional five years covered by the “revisedaddition” – little more than a twenty page afterword,despite the author’s admission that, if anything, the paceof intervention has picked up.

Whether as a result of the brevity of the work as a whole,or the author’s personal and professional biases, theanalytical framework is also limited in its reach. Despiteat times touching on literary traditions as diverse as justwar theory, international law, humanitarian intervention,the work of major strategists, and authors of works onlimited war and international society, the normative debatethat is perhaps the key identifying element of post-ColdWar international relations is sadly truncated. While it isacknowledged that Realist tenets such as sovereignty andnational interest have come under increasing attack, thecase study analyses resolutely focus on the policystatements of members of various American governmentadministrations. Strategic and policy considerations areemphasises to the virtual exclusion of the normativedebate. Thus the question “when is it right to intervene?”is invariably answered in terms of when it is right forAmerican interests and forces rather than when it is morallyacceptable. Hence the conclusion ‘legitimacy must residein the policy and derive from the ends and means of theintervention, not from some external organization orinternational court of law.’(p.151) Furthermore, theauthor’s pro-American and Republican bias shows throughin his analysis of policy initiatives. I found his claim that‘the Qaddafi government carried out the destruction ofPan Am flight 103, resulting in the deaths of 270 innocentpeople’ (p.27) with no consideration of the evidence and

in anticipation of a verdict which if anything is likely todisprove Libyan collusion, disquieting.

This book is certainly not without merit, but would havebenefited from a more comprehensive second editionrather than a revised addition that fails even to update thelanguage and context of the earlier cases.

Brendan HoweTrinity College, Dublin

The Balance of Power in South Asia

The Emirates Center for StrategicStudies and Research

(Reading: Ithaca Press; United Arab Emirates: TheEmirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research,

2000) 142pp. Index. Biblio. ISBN 0-86372-267-9.

The nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998 haveimplications for national security beyond the Subcontinent,and this collection of essays purports to look at their impacton the Arab Gulf. It begins with an informative‘Introduction’ by Michael Krepon which explores why thetwo countries’ tested, rightly highlighting how primarilydomestic political considerations drove Prime MinistersAtul Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, respectively, togive their go-aheads. ‘The Limits of Realpolitik in theSecurity Environment of South Asia’ by Marvin G.Weinbaum also finds both countries guilty of ‘largelyunreconstructed views of strategic defense and nationalinterest’ (p. 11); that is, living in a bygone world whereacquiring nuclear weapons matters more than socio-economic improvement.

The security perceptions of the Asian nuclear playersthemselves are covered by the next three essays. In‘Nuclearization and Regional Security: An IndianPerspective’, Jasjit Singh explains how Vajpayee opted totest because of the lack of progress on world nucleardisarmament, need to insure against existing nuclear-armed states, and danger that a growing global non-proliferation order might soon prevent India fromestablishing a ‘defensive, no-first-use’ (p. 37) nucleardeterrent. Interestingly, Singh, the long-serving Directorof the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Delhi,appears unconvinced that the decision to test was correct.

In contrast, Najam Rafique, a senior research fellow atthe Institute for Strategic Studies, Islamabad, argues that‘maintaining a nuclear capability is...an imperative thatPakistan can hardly choose to ignore’ (p 69) given India’s1998 tests. Perhaps he is correct. Certainly, Rafique’s‘Pakistan and Regional Security in South Asia’ reflectsthe current simplistically reactive state of Pakistan foreignpolicy decision-making. Readers also may wince at hiscasual India-bashing (always guilty as regards Kashmir!)and forgetful Pakistan-promoting (wither the Bangladeshgenocide?) statements.

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China’s foreign policy considerations could not be moredifferent, argues Christian Koch in ‘China and RegionalSecurity in South Asia’. The pre-eminent Asian nuclearweapons power in Asia worries first about Japan, thenTaiwan, the United States, Central Asia and, finally, Russia.‘In a nutshell, China is more important for South Asiathan South Asia is for China’ (p 81). The addition of nuclearweapons to its south finds Koch untroubled for, he argues,China will inevitably be drawn further into internationalcompromises in an attempt to maintain a high level ofeconomic growth (and thus preserve the current regime).I would not be so sanguine.

Nor, in his ‘The Future Strategic Balance in South Asia’,is Eric Arnett-but this time about the Pakistani elite’scapability to understand the implications of the May 1998tests:

a militarily and confident and ascendant India facing adeclining Pakistan that sometimes appears to verge ondesperation...makes clear that war is stillpossible....[Therefore,] Convincing the Pakistani elite thatthey must be more realistic about the strengths andweaknesses of deterrence...is imperative (pp 106-107).

Similarly, the book’s ‘Concluding Remarks’ argue that theGulf states-mainly for reasons of geographic proximity-need somehow to help contribute to preventing furthernuclear weaponization and/or proliferation in the region.Let us hope they are successful.

Dr Apurba KunduDepartment of Cybernetics, Internet and Virtual SystemsUniversity of Bradford

Running Guns: The Global BlackMarket in Small Arms

Lora Lumpe (ed.)

(London and New York: Zed Books, 2000) 256pp.Index. Hb.: £49.95; ISBN 1-85649-872-7. Pb.: £15.95;

ISBN 1-85649-873-5.

Owing to their intractability, pervasiveness and the threatsthey pose to sustainable peace within states and the entireglobal system, small arms are without doubt one of thebiggest defining elements in the international world order.The contributors to Running Guns: The Global BlackMarket in Small Arms have attempted to provide anunderstanding of illegal arms trafficking. In this respect,the book does succeed in introducing the reader to theplayers of the global black arms market, how it isconducted and the repercussions of the same. In Part 4, SMeek and T Leggett present in their way forward,suggestions on what can be done to curb the pandemictrade.

Following the introduction to gun-running, B J Thomasand E C Gillard explain in detail the legal framework thatsurrounds the transfer of weapons. It is important to notetheir observation that besides the ECOWAS moratorium,there have not been any other cases of outright bans oftransfer of small arms and light weapons. What does thismean? Should we not now accept that the continuedproliferation of small arms is in some ways a direct resultof the complacency of governments and other regionalbodies? In Part 2, the forces of supply and demand aredealt with - although not in that order. It would providebetter reading were W Cukier and S Stropshire’s articleon Domestic Gun Markets: The Licit – Illicit Link to comebefore the article by L Mathiak and L Lumpe onGovernment Gun-Running to Guerrillas and P Abel’sManufacturing Trends: Globalising the Source. That notwithstanding, this part of the book is the most informative.Abel’s detailed write-up on the different countries’production of both licensed and unlicensed small arms iscrucial particularly for policy makers. Indeed, his entiresection on Licensed Production Agreements is a must-readfor those who seek to understand the magnitude of theproblem at hand. Besides the illicit trafficking of smallarms, we are now faced with the additional question ofhow to deal with the Licensed Production Agreements thatare directly responsible for the steady increase in thenumber of manufacturing countries and companiesworldwide. Can these “Production Agreements” bedelegitimized in one way or the other? Part 3 of the bookdeals with the technical aspects of the trade. The strikingof deals, the movement of small arms, the role of brokersand shippers and the financing of the illegal trade are alldiscussed. Suffice to say that anyone who thinks that “…illegal deals involve men with black eye patchesexchanging valises stuffed with $100 in a smoky bar…”pg. 159 is way off the mark! Payment mechanisms aremuch more complicated and involve the negotiation ofcomplex offset packages.

Essentially, this book looks chiefly at the methods by whichgun traffickers circumvent the law. The fourth part of thevolume contains viable suggestions on how the lawenforcement bodies can make it difficult for black armstraders to get away with gun trafficking. The writers, TLeggett and S Meek also present ways through which theinternational community can work together and assist insubduing the trade.

I wish to reiterate the fact that the book serves as a goodintroduction to the intricacies of the global black armsmarket. It should encourage other theorists, researchersand practitioners to continue with the discussion on thisvery important and multifarious issue of global concern.

Sam KonaThe Richardson Institute for Peace and Conflict ResearchLancaster University – UK


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States, Ideologies, and SocialRevolutions: A Comparative Analysis

of Iran, Nicaragua and thePhilippines

Misargh Parsa

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)336pp. Biblio. Index. Hb.: £37.50; ISBN 0-521-

77337-7. Pb.: £13.95; ISBN 0-521-77430-6.

This book is a comparative study of the revolutions inIran, Nicaragua, and Philippines and as such appears tobe almost unique . The author seeks to explain why therewere differences in the capacity of elites to mobilisesections of the population into revolutionary activity.Drawing critically on the different models of revolutionset out in the first chapter, Parsa aims to develop an analysisof revolution that is not rooted exclusively in the Marxisttradition. Parsa rejects the thesis that a high level ofworking class mobilisaton and an ideological shift againstthe capitalist class is necessary. Indeed, it is suggested thatthe failure of the revolutionary activity in Nicaragua andthe Philippines in the 1970s was down to the absence ofcapitalists from the coalition of students and workers.

Parsa makes the claim that where there is a high level ofstate repression the focus of attacks by students andworkers is the state as such rather than simply the capitalistclass. In the absence of a repressive state there is evidencethat the focus of peoples attentions is on the capitalist class.In Nicaragua the second phase of the revolution involvedthe imposition of martial law by the Chamorro regime.The result was the redirection of energies towards theregime itself. Consequently the involvement of thecapitalist class contributed, according to Parsa, to thesuccess of the revolution. Elsewhere the reversal of thissituation, a less repressive state, impeded class coalitions.

Importantly in this work, the key factor which unites allof the examples cited by Parsa is the role of the upperclass. Rejecting Theda Skocpol’s thesis that the defectionof the upper-class from the regime presented opportunitiesfor mobilisation, Parsa argues that such a defection wasnot the overriding factor in the cases cited. Primacy cannotbe given to upper class politics because, argues Parsa, theirpolitics are affected not only by the state but by theirrelationship with the working classes. The role of theworking classes and in particular, their politics, cruciallyaffects the upper class’s role in an insurgency.

This book is a key text for those interested in thecomparative study of revolutions. As a comparative studyit is strong. Solid in theoretical analysis and empiricalresearch the book is ambitious but effectively argued.

Robert GrantUniversity of Aberdeen

Women and Politics in LatinAmerica

Nikki Craske

(Oxford: Polity Press, 1999) 224pp. Index. Biblio.Pb.: £14.99; ISBN 0-7456-1547-3.

There are many books which try to serve two audiences -the undergraduate and the academic - but few do so withsuch coherence, engagement, clarity and enthusiasm forthe subject as Nikki Craske’s book. I used this text on amodule last semester and all those who used it found it tobe clear, comprehensive and fascinating, as did I.

This extremely useful book examines women’s politicalparticipation in Latin America during the twentieth century,focusing in particular on the last thirty years. Craske’s keytheme in the book is the tension between two potentsymbolic devices: motherhood and citizenship. Both areemployed by political actors of all hues and have immensesocial and political resonance, precisely because they arefounding blocks in the creation of women’s (and society’s)political identity. This becomes evident in the subsequentchapters which examine the formal political arena, theeconomic sphere, social movements, revolutions andfeminist activity. Common to each is an approach whichasks how and why women participate and whether theybenefit from such participation, through the satisfactionof needs (‘practical gender interests’), or through thepromotion of substantive improvements (‘strategic genderinterests’) via empowerment, mobilization and legal orcultural change. Craske has a generally positiveinterpretation of women’s impact on the political,economic and social world. She argues that there has beena real improvement in women’s legal status as citizens, avalorization of women’s domestic roles and enhancedaccess for women to new political and economicopportunities. However, Craske also points to the tendencyof formal political agencies to promote ‘harmless’ changein order to maintain gender relationships through cosmeticalteration, and to the resilience of skewed patterns of powerin gender relationships.

This book has a lot to say, then, to scholars of LatinAmerican politics, to those interested in ‘progressive’political change and to those who study gender. Whatmakes it a good read in particular is its firm foundation infieldwork research which lends the book a sense ofengagement and intimacy with the protagonist(a)s as wellas analytical authority. As such it is also a thought-provoking read for both students and their lecturers; put iton the reading list, and save a copy for yourself.

Lucy TaylorDepartment of International PoliticsUniversity of Wales, AberystwythEmail: [email protected]

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Religion and Conflict

Between Eden and Armageddon: TheFuture of World Religions, Violence,

and Peacemaking

Marc Gopin

(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)324pp. Biblio. Index. Hb.: £21.50; ISBN 0-19-513432-X.

In his path-breaking work on religion and conflictresolution, Marc Gopin blends together insights from histraining as a religious and ethics scholar with his practicaland scholarly experience in the field of conflict resolution.His central thesis speaks to the dearth of literature inconflict resolution regarding religion and religious actorsin conflict. He acknowledges the propensities withinreligious traditions to motivate violence, or what he termsthe anti-social values, and peace, or the pro-social values.Gopin proposes that the key is to balance two competinghuman needs: a need for integration and a need foruniqueness. This central thesis – that successfulpeacemakers are those who are able to retain their uniqueidentity as rooted in a particular religious tradition, butwho are able to see the best in other traditions as well –forms one of the recurrent themes of the book.

Gopin proposes that conflict resolution strategies mustincorporate and resonate with a religious ethos andvocabulary in order to engage religious actors. He callsfor a hermeneutic reinterpretation of religious texts thatemphasize the prosocial values within religions, butacknowledges that change will inevitably be slow. Toillustrate, he devotes several chapters that analyze Judaismand its peacemaking ethic, and that outline how varioustexts may be reinterpreted to yield a peacemaking ethic.Gopin’s historical and theological analysis of Judaism isenlightening and useful but sometimes too advanced forthose more unfamiliar with Jewish traditions or religiousscholarship. Nonetheless, his own experience andscholarly analysis yield crucial insights into the Arab-Israeli conflict. His overall analysis extends to Islam,Eastern, and Christian traditions, with one chapter thatanalyzes Mennonite contributions to conflict resolution.

Although he does not speak directly to ethnic conflict, hisinsights about religion are relevant for students andanalysts of ethnic conflict. His central thesis could wellbe applied to some ethnic conflicts that are religiously-motivated, and even to those that are not. Conflictresolution in secular contexts could also include areinterpretation of historical texts and myths to nurtureprosocial tendencies.

Gopin’s book is an important contribution to the fields ofreligious studies and of conflict resolution. While his finalchapter outlines practice and policy suggestions relatedto interventions in religious conflict, some of these remaindifficult for others to translate into practice. As heindicates, this is one of the tasks that remains for thosewho follow.

Larissa FastICAR, George Mason University

The Ambivalence of the Sacred:Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation

R. Scott Appleby

(Oxford and Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) 429pp. Index. Bibl. Hb.: £54.00; ISBN 0-8476-8554-3. Pb.:

£19.95; ISBN 0-8476-8555-1

Scott Appleby has produced a work of considerablescholarship as he seeks to explore the painful andparadoxical relationship between religion, destructiveconflict and peace in the contemporary world. On the onehand religion has legitimated and exacerbated so manyviolent conflicts around the world, acting as one of thekey identity markers by which people seek to distinguishthemselves as a ‘people’, and providing the necessarymythological legitimacy to claims of primordial rights toself-determination and national territory. But religion hasalso provided the vision and the promise to inspire peace-makers and peace-builders throughout the world in theirefforts to transform deadly quarrels and promote processesof reconciliation and reconstruction.

Three overarching questions guide the study. Under whatconditions do religious actors become violent? Under whatconditions do religiously motivated actors challenge theextremists’ commitment to violence as a sacred duty? Andunder what conditions do nonviolent religious actorsbecome active agents of peacebuilding?

The nature of religious extremists who consider it a sacredduty to pursue an exclusivist truth and their particularversion of justice by means of violence has been exploredin many studies and this volume adds little to ourunderstanding. Furthermore, there have been numerousstudies of religious pacifism and the belief systems thatsanctify nonviolent resistance to tyranny and oppression.The real ground-breaking value of this work lies in theexploration of the variety of roles performed by religiousinstitutions, communities and individuals in conflicttransformation. Illustrated through a range of case studymaterial we can learn about the witness and truth-tellingof groups like the Christian Peacemaker Teams now basedin Hebron and the protective accompaniment work of para-religious groups like Witness for Peace in Central America.Other religiously motivated communities and institutionshave concentrated on human rights and advocacy roles,whilst others have focused on developing conflictmanagement training and related workshops. Then thereis the mediation and ‘good offices’ work performed byreligious professionals and para-religious networks withinand across the fractures of divided societies, whether it beat the grass-roots or the inter-state level at which theCommunity of Sant’ Egidio has operated. Historicallyreligious institutions and communities offered ‘safehavens’ for those seeking sanctuary. The contemporaryvariant of this is the healing and reconciliation work thatcan take place within the religiously sanctioned safe spaceswhere people from different communities can attempt tocome to terms with the pain of the past.

There is a growing interest in the role of religion ininternational affairs, and this volume will be central tothis field for some time.

Dr Andrew RigbyCentre for the Study of Forgiveness and ReconciliationCoventry University


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Prejudice and Politics

The Outsider: Prejudice and Politicsin Italy

Paul M. Sniderman, Pierangelo Peri,Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Jr and Thomas

Piazza

(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press,2000) 222pp. Index. Biblio. Hb.: £18.95; ISBN 0-691-

04839-8.

Sniderman and his co-authors have provided seriousstudents of prejudice and politics with a refreshing andmethodologically innovative approach to understandingprejudice against immigrants in Italy.

The book describes an exploratory study of immigrantsfrom North Africa and Eastern European countries whohave settled in Italy where they have become an outgroupand aliens in a country where prejudice is evident.Sniderman critically reviews classical theoreticalcontributions from Tajfel, Adorno, Asch and Sherif, andexplores the theoretical and empirical limitations of theseapproaches in relation to explaining the roots of prejudicebetween the Italians and the immigrants.

In the opening chapter the concept of prejudice as anexclusively psychological phenomenon is displaced bySnidermans contention that it is irrelevant and inadequatein todays world. There is little space in Snidermansthinking for social psychological processes or socialcognition as dominant theoretical models to explainingroup versus outgroup hostility. Whilst political andideological self conceptions, he argues, provide theimpetus for prejudicial attitudes between the Italians andimmigrants, his advanced state of the art methodology isseverely limited in that he has not tapped themultidimensional nature of individual self concepts. Hisapproach could well be accused of being heavilyreductionist in the socio-politico -economic sense of theword.

In his second chapter the authors impeccable scholarshipacknowledges a major paradox in that competing theoriesof prejudice do not advance our understanding of prejudicebetween ingroups and outgroups. He contends that theyhave lost their explanatory power to explain the changingnature of prejudice. Sniderman, however, utilizes Tajfelssocial identity theory and Adornos authoritarianpersonality theory together with Sherifs realistic conflicttheory to generate a uniform and more comprehensivetheory of prejudice in Italy. This reformulation comprisesan eclecticism which is evaluative encompassing classinterests, education, competition for jobs and housing asmajor features of prejudice. The problem with such anevolutionary approach such as this is that compromise isa distinct reality. At what cost theoretically and

conceptually do we allow ourselves to generatecomprehensive models of conflict?

The authors reconceptualize the concept of prejudice andutilize a multiformat, multitrait approach to measureprejudice between the Northern and Southern Italians andboth against the immigrants. Whilst marginalizing thesignificance of Adornos personality indices the irony isthat Sniderman uses a confirmatory factor analysis toextract factor loadings which assess Italians evaluativeconsistencies and personal attributions of prejudicetowards the immigrants.

The findings do shed new insights into the measurementof prejudice and conflict but at the expense of theory andmultidimensional self concepts. They show clearly that tobe different is to be an Outsider. This is the heart of thematter. We have learned much from Snidermans approach,theories are in a sense only theories, what the authors needto do now is to consider what are the most appropriateresearch questions to ask. Retrospectively, Snidermancould well consider how to replace the full stops withquestion marks.

Dr. Arthur CassidyBelfast Institute of Further & Higher Education

Even in Sweden: Racisms, RacializedSpaces, and the Popular

Geographical Imagination

Allan Pred

(Berkeley and London: The University of CaliforniaPress, 2000) 338 pp. Biblio. Index. Pb.: $18.95, £11.95;

ISBN 0-520-22449-3.

Dealing with the phenomenon of ‘cultural racism’, AllanPred challenges the image of Sweden as a society oftolerance, social equality and solidarity when dealing withMuslim or non-European immigrants. By drawing on abroad pallet of sources he creates a mosaic of voices,including his own, that serve to expose underlyingstructures and mechanism of Swedish racisms. To pastetogether this montage the author uses examples frommedia, political discourse and social interaction, showinghow overt racism is used as a scapegoat in order forSwedish society to avoid facing its deeper cultural racism.Pred concludes that past and present policies dealing withintegration of immigrants into Swedish society need toaddress the deeply embedded structures of cultural racismin order not to repeat past failures.

As I myself am of Swedish non-immigrant origin this bookhas not been easy to review, especially since the text inmany parts is designed to provoke new thinking byquestioning basic social ‘truths’.

The montage structure presents the reader with a multitudeof discourses with the goal of making the reader a part of

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the overall discourse on cultural racism. The transgressionsof boundaries: conceptual, academic, linguistic etc., servesto create metonymical links between the text and itssubject. But even though this is a very interesting approach,the text itself often overpowers the discourse(s) blurringthe boundary between the academic and the polemic.Conversely it can sometimes feel like the author is quiteabsent from the text, leaving the discourse to the collageand the reader. The result is a tension between expressionand conclusion which could be traced to an inherentlimitation to post-modern discourses.

With this kind of transgressionary approach comes acertain degree of denial of the humanity of classificationand juxtapositioning as processes of identification. Callingfor the reframing or restructuring of all social discourses,central power relations, state bureaucracy, economicredistribution, popular history and the habits of the mind(pp. 283f) balances on the border between an active civilsociety and public paranoia. If we are to eliminate existingboundaries, where are the new lines to be drawn and onwhat basis? How are ‘bad’ classifications to be isolatedfrom ‘good’ ones? In which situations should differencebe highlighted/ignored/explained? In short, were do wedraw the boundary between (cultural) racism as a socialproblem and/or as a human problem?

In conclusion it can be said that, while this book may beinappropriate for those seeking answers, it is certainly agoldmine for those who seek questions on the subject ofracisms in liberal democracies.

Christer Grenabo

The Politics of the Extreme Right:From the Margins to the Mainstream

Paul Hainsworth (ed.)

(London: Pinter, Continuum Publishing Group 2000)336pp. Index. Pb.: £15.99; 1-85567-459-9.

This volume is particularly timely, given the concernsabout a right-wing domino effect in Western Europe, thatwere prevalent in the wake of the accession of a coalitiongovernment in Austria that included the FPO. The casestudies are well-documented analyses, rich in detail of theelectoral performance and key personalities involved ineach of the prominent extreme right-wing parties acrossEurope. As a result, this volume answers one of thecomplaints that Eatwell has made, namely that the politicaldimension has been lacking in previous analyses of suchgroups.

Taking each chapter on its individual merits, substantiveresearch has been carried out, demonstrating the specificpeculiarities of each party on a national stage. The onlyexception is the chapter on the Vlaams Blok, which offers

only a microanalysis of the city of Antwerp. Yet, itsgreatest strength is also its biggest weakness. The volumelacks a concluding chapter, which draws on the themesexpressed in most of the chapters. Without it, the readeris left to draw their own conclusions from a quite disparatecollection of cases. Rather than attempting to tie themtogether, each emphasises its own national peculiarities,making analysis of the wider subject more difficult.Hainsworth attempts to outline some of the general themesin one chapter, but these are occasionally lost within awelter of case-specific details. As such, the volumeoccasionally lacks a conceptual centre.

The title of the volume is also ambiguous. What exactlyis meant by the mainstream? Very few cases, save theFPO and the MSI in Italy, have made the electoral journeyfrom the wilderness to government. While success cannotbe judged solely in electoral terms, as these parties havehad a significant influence on the parameters of debate(especially on immigration), electoral results are used asthe main standard in most of the chapters. PerhapsHainsworth’s point concerning their status as anti-establishment parties suggests that these parties are bydefinition, better served by being in opposition rather thangovernment. The examples of both the FPO and the MSIseem to suggest that the ‘extremist’ programme that theyhave promoted in opposition is rarely honoured ingovernment.

Finally, while Hainsworth criticises the use of the term‘extreme right’ in his own submission, suggesting that itis not applicable in all cases, it is used constantlythroughout the rest of the book and is even contained withinthe title.

David BrownDept of Politics and International RelationsUniversity of Aberdeen

Challenges to Democracy: Essays inhonour and memory of Isaiah Berlin

Raphael Cohen-Almagor

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 344pp. Index. Hb.: £50.00;ISBN 0-7546-2095-6.

Democracy does not remove hatred from society; it doesnot prevent the violent and intransigent conflict of interestsand of competing visions of public life; it does notguarantee that every individual or group will abide by thedemocratic rules of the game. Yet democracy is almostuniversally accepted as the basic form of legitimategovernance. This book gives excellent insights into someof the most sensitive questions confronting democracy asit evolves in certain regions of the world today. Moreoverthe questions are posed and addressed by scholars at the


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sharp end of these ideas. How should democracies (basedupon freedom of movement and expression) deal withintolerance and political extremism (which in turn canundermine democracy)? What are the limits of toleration,especially when the ideal of pluralism is tested by therealities and tensions of heterogeneity? How shoulddemocracies deal with illiberal challenges? In morespecific terms, how can Israel, in a state of security crisisand composed of disparate ethnic groups and religiousvisions, sustain a viable democratic project? In times ofcrisis or emergency, what enforcement actions by the states– such as administrative detention, emergency powers andcurfew – are permissible whilst maintaining a democraticsystem? How to uphold a system of democracy withoutundermining the spirit of democracy?

The editorial lead is that political and religious extremismare growing concerns to liberal democracies around theworld where groups exploit the opportunities thatdemocracy provides. As democracies struggle with therealities of ethnic, political and religious heterogeneity,the book attempts to honor Berlin’s legendary espousal ofliberty, tolerance and pluralism. Although this is essentiallya book about challenges to democracy in Israel rather thanin a wider sense (and, for that matter, not so much a bookabout Isaiah Berlin, despite the sub-title) the quality ofthe papers provides plenty of relevance for other societiesfacing similar challenges. The standard of writing andscholarship – and particularly by the editor – is very high,and the depth of political understanding shines through.There is no coherent set of conclusions, although a numberof points stand out, most notably that we should not takedemocratic rights and freedoms for granted, nor allow themto be destroyed in the struggle against intolerance andextremism. Moreover, one never knows where thechallenge to democracy will come from: Rabin was killedby a fellow Jew and citizen.

This is a rather eclectic collection of revised conferencepapers based upon a 1997 conference – with chapters onpolitical assassination, freedom of speech, emergencypowers in times of crisis, tolerance and emotions,democracy and multiculturalism, Canadian liberaldemocracy, political culture, constitutional dictatorship,controlling civil disorder, and the media. The project wasundertaken at the University of Haifa and most chaptersare written directly on Israel; the thinking behind theinclusion of chapters on other countries, such as Canada,is not entirely clear. The chapters do not attempt to applyor engage with Berlin’s theses; indeed, the re-printed‘personal impression’ of Berlin, describing his yearsamongst the dreaming spires of Oxford, appears quiteremote from the rest of the volume. Nevertheless, this is ahighly interesting collection, most useful for its explorationof academic debate in Israel at this difficult time.

Edward NewmanUnited Nations University

Human Rights

Rewriting Rights in Europe

Linda Hancock and Carolyn O’Brien (eds.)

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 240pp. Index. Hb: £50;ISBN 0-7546-2002-6

Despite the rather general indication of the title, the actualfocus of this volume is on rights and the EU, includingboth current and future members. The essays examine avariety of perspectives looking at a wide range of rightsfrom civil and political to socio-economic. Theperspectives of the essays range from looking at rights ina general sense to more particular areas of inquiry with anumber of contributions dealing directly with minority issues.

In particular, Stefan Auer provides a discussion on minorityrights in Central Europe. He describes the efforts at findingways for different ethnic groups to live in peace as one ofthe most pressing problems in the post-communist era.His study demonstrates the problems which arise withstrategies of indifference – where ethnic differences areignored, or equally the pitfalls faced in an active policy ofrecognising differences. His conclusion is that while wecan look to a wide range of theorists and commentatorsfor suggestions as to how a multi-ethnic society should beordered, ultimately it will come down to the particularcontext and strategies of the society in question. Somemay be disappointed in the lack of conclusions in Auer’swork but as Martin Krygier’s essay makes clear, when itcomes to issues of rights in post-communist Europe thereare more questions than answers. Krygier’s piece furtherdemonstrates that while we can make use of universal ideasand practices for the protection of rights we must be ableto accommodate fundamental social and culturalparticularities if the rights project is to be useful. Twofurther contributions dealing with women, immigrationand nationalism, in France show that the problems ofaccommodating ethnic differences are equally a problemin the current Member States of the EU.

The individual essays in this collection are in themselvesinteresting and useful pieces. However there is somequestion as to whether the essays come together in a singlecoherent volume dealing with human rights in Europe.The included essays deal with a theoretical undertakingabout conceptions of rights, an empirical based study ofeconomic rights, a detailed study of the accession processthat is more about the economics of membership thanrights or cultural issues, a look at the ECHR and itslimitations as a legal tool in the hands of the courts and apiece on the new International Criminal court which is farfrom clear on how it relates to rights in Europe. The titleof the volume promises a good deal, but unfortunately thecontent does not deliver.

Dr. Richard BurchillSchool of LawUniversity of Hull

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Devising an Adequate System ofMinority Protection. Individual

Human Rights, Minority Rights, andthe Right to Self-Determination

Kristin Henrard

(The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus NijhoffPublishers, 2000) ISBN 90-411-1359-2.

Should I ever be charged with devising a system ofminority protection on a remote island and besimultaneously constrained by airline baggage allowances,Henrard’s book would certainly be among the essentials Iwould take along – for what she provides is one of themost comprehensive treatments of minority protectionfrom a legal perspective that I know of.

The book is divided into four chapters, preceded by a shortintroduction and followed by an even shorter conclusion.What I found particularly reader-friendly is the fact thatHenrard spared me from yet another extensive discussionof historic developments of minority protection, butprovides instead a five-page summary of the mostimportant developments with rather extensive footnotesreferencing the key works that can be consulted for furtherreading. Equally brief but nonetheless informative is thediscussion of the more fundamental issue of what exactlya minority is. From the outset, Henrard acknowledges thatthere is no universally agreed definition. She examinesthe most influential definitions thus far –Capotorti andDeschênes at the UN level (pp. 21-24), and variousproposals at the European level (pp. 25-30) – and derivesfrom them a list of components that a majority of thesedefinitions include. These components (different ethnic,linguistic, or religious characteristics; numerical position;non-dominant position; nationality requirement; subjectivecomponent; official recognition; loyalty requirement) arethen individually assessed in their importance and aworking definition is provided (p. 48). After elaboratingon the use of qualifying terms, such as ethnic, racial,religious, linguistic, and national, Henrard provides herown definition which is, unsurprisingly, similar to thosepreviously examined, but omits both the nationality(citizenship) and loyalty requirements that can be foundelsewhere.

Following this groundwork, chapters II to IV respectivelycover the contribution of individual human rights, minorityrights, and the right to self-determination to an adequatesystem of minority protection. The extensive discussionand analysis of the relevant international documents (atUN, OSCE, and European level) in each of the chapters issubstantiated by an examination of court cases, primarilyin relation to Article 27 of the International Covenant onCivil and Political Rights. Yet, Henrard doesn’t stop atthe level of analysing legal documents but goes furtherand elaborates on current debates among legal experts onsuch crucial issues as ‘special rights’ (pp. 218-233) and

group rights (pp. 233-243) and relates them to those aspectsof minorities’ identities that are often the ‘focal point oftheir [i.e., minorities’ – S.W.] more concrete demands’ (p.244), such as language, religion, culture/ethnicity,education, media, and political participation.

A similarly enlightening analysis of the more fundamentalissues that have informed the legal as well as the politicaldiscourse on minority protection is conducted in relationto the right to self-determination. A brief discussion of theinternal and external dimensions of self-determination (pp.296-306) is then followed by a more detailed examinationof federalism (pp. 308-311), autonomy (pp. 311-313), andpower-sharing (pp. 313-314) as forms in which the internaldimension of the right to self-determination can be realised.

Finally, Henrard looks into the relationship betweenminority rights and the right to self-determination (pp. 314-316) and between the latter and individual human rights(pp. 316-319). Acknowledging that the issue of secessionhas ‘coloured this debate [on the right to self-determination] in the most negative way’ (p. 314), sherecognises that minority rights are not always sufficient‘in their contribution towards an optimal protection andpromotion of the minorities’ right to identity’ (p. 316).This leads her to conclude that ‘there is an intrinsicconnection between minority rights and an internal rightto self-determination’ (p. 316), while she considers theright to self-determination a human right itself and ‘anecessary condition for the exercise of all other individualhuman rights’ (pp. 316-317).

Thus, Henrard’s book is an invaluable resource guide foranyone interested in the protection of minorities, be it froman academic or a practical perspective. At the same time,she also delivers a clear argument in support of the use ofthe whole range of legal instruments available for theprotection of minorities, or, as Henrard herself wouldphrase it, for the ‘accommodation of population diversity’.This argument culminates in her assertion that ‘it seemsjustified to conclude that individual human rights, minorityrights, and a right to (internal) self-determination are allthree needed and interrelate for the elaboration of anadequate system of minority protection’ (p. 321).

The only slight disappointment with the book is the factthat, especially given its rather exorbitant price, more carecould have been invested in the copy-editing process.Spelling and punctuation mistakes are quite frequent, andgiven that Henrard herself is not a native speaker ofEnglish, responsibility for these shortcomings lies withthe publisher alone. In any revised edition, which in someyears from now may be necessary as international andnational law systems will evolve, these issues should beaddressed. On the other hand, the book is presented in asolid and apparently durable hardback edition which willguarantee it a sufficiently long physical life in librarieswhere it is sure to be consulted frequently for its thematiccomprehensiveness, intellectual rigour of analysis, andclarity of argument. What is more, especially for the non-


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lawyer, neither Henrard’s argument nor the book as a wholeare overly technical in their vocabulary, and thus allowpolitical scientists, sociologists, and others working in thefield easy access to the legal discourse on minorityprotection. This, too, should ensure the wide and positivereception this book deserves.

Stefan WolffUniversity of Bath

People Versus States: Minorities atRisk in the New Century

Ted Robert Gurr

(Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace,2000) 448pp. Index. Pb.: $29.95/£21.50; ISBN 1-

929223-02-1.

Peoples versus States examines specific situations in theworld for conflicts and indications of conflicts betweenstate leadership and various unanimity groups, be theyethnic or religious in nature and cause. The different casestudies all contribute to form a complex yet understandableparallelism. The analysis of data in the book is quiteimpressive.

In the first chapter, the writer highlights the fact that oneof the ways of reducing intrastate conflict in Germany isby incorporating the Turks into German society byeffecting citizenship policies that favor the Turks anddiscriminatory social practices. This is a principle thatholds potential for other countries which have big numbersof immigrants and refugees.

As is noted by Gurr in the second chapter of the book “…the cresting wave of ethnopolitical conflict at the beginningof the 1990s does not have a simple explanation…” pg56. Essentially, this observation forms the basis forunderstanding the trends of intrastate conflicts in the 21st

century. Marion Recktenwald’s contribution: The“Russian Minority” in Ukraine is a valiant attempt atassessing the ethnopolitical conflict therein. However, oneis left somewhat in limbo because there are no propositionsor augmentative observations made at the end of the article.

I wish to question the rather bold conclusion made by boththe author as well as by Richard H Solomon who wrotethe book’s foreword. This is with reference to statementsthat allude to a worldwide decline in intrastate conflicts.For example “…Comparative evidence shows thatethnonational political conflict subsided in most worldregions from the mid-through the late 1990s…” pg. x.Does this mean that on average there is less ethnopoliticalconflict or is the conclusion derived from a region by

region study? Speaking from an African perspective andon the basis of researches done on the same, there appearsto be no decline in ethnonational conflicts in the region.Citing the examples of Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya,Ethiopia, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda all from the EasternAfrican region and all currently experiencing the saidconflicts. For a conclusion of such magnitude andoptimism, as is portrayed by the book to be made, there isneed for homogeneous research. The issue should beresearched further, or at the very least, conclusions shouldbe situation specific.

The third chapter is without a doubt one of the mostexpedient in the book. It outlines the groundwork fromwhich a hypothesis for ethnopolitical conflict can be built.Four key factors are discussed as the basis for theframework: identity groups, mobilization, timing of actionand choice of strategies of participation, protest orrebellion. The arguments brought forth by the author areconvincing and the proposed framework can be used toidentify groups that have great probability forethnopolitical conflict in the future.

The sketch done on Political Rivalries and CommunalVengeance in Kenya (chapter 7) raises a number ofquestions. To begin with, the only bearing that the sketchcontents have on the Chapter title Assessing the Risks ofFuture Ethnic Wars is a vague reference to the 2002General Elections in Kenya. “…intensified politicalconflict with ethnic overtones will be provided by the 2002ethnic clashes…” Is this all that pertains to the assessmentof the risks of future ethnic conflicts in the Kenyan context?Secondly, the writer’s reference to ethnic conflict inMombasa in 1997 is lacking in detail. Who were the partiesinvolved? Through out Ms Pitsch’s write up, the full blamefor the Kenyan situation is placed squarely on Moi andhis government. How true is this? The judgement appearsto be one-sided. Doubtless, the most conspicuous omissionby the writer is the failure to discuss, or at least mentionthe pastoralist conflicts in Kenya. These account for overhalf the conflicts that exist in the country. Moreover, theyare ongoing and have had extremely adverse effects overthe past decade (s). Most of the omissions in this piececould be attributed to the sources. Rigorous research andanalysis should be done to obtain factual information andan objective overview.

This notwithstanding, it is an arduous task to write a booksuch as this one. The writers in their various studies have,on the whole, done a meticulous job in terms of depth anddetail. Peoples versus States is a plus to existingpublications on intrastate conflicts. It is highlyrecommended and both scholars and non-scholars will findit readable and informative.

Sam KonaRichardson Institute for Peace and Conflict Research.Lancaster University

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Aid and Refugee Issues

Psychosocial Wellness of Refugees:Issues in Qualitative and Quantitative

Research

Frederick L. Ahearn, Jr.

(New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000) 275pp.Index. Pb.: £14.00; ISBN 1-57181-205-9.

In a time when refugee assistance is a paramount concernfor government and nongovernmental entities, this volumeprovides a thoughtful guide for researching psychosocialwellness of refugees. As current therapies for helpingtraumatized refugees are many and diverse, this workanswers the need for methodological tools to gather dataon best practices for assisting refugees to recover fromthe trauma of displacement. The editor, Frederick L.Ahearn, Jr., takes a positive approach to refugee mentalhealth, seeking ways in which humans overcome adversityin order to survive extraordinary circumstances. Theauthors of this volume stress wellness as a way of studyingthe psychological consequences of displacement becauseit underscores the perspectives of strength, resilience, andindependence. This work effectively moves from definingwellbeing and critiquing quantitative and qualitativemethods of studying it. The first section addresses broadtheoretical issues involved in conducting research withrefugees and in evaluating psychosocial programs. Theauthors suggest multi-method approaches to studyingrefugee psychosocial wellness. These chapters set the stagefor case studies from experienced investigators that addresspertinent issues in the field. Case studies cite examples ofrefugees from Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Palestine,Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Eastern Europe, Bosnia, and Chile.

The strength of this work lies in the personal anecdotes inrefugee research that illuminate considerations for theresearcher, such as the utility of particular researchmethods and cultural appropriateness. Patricia Omidandescribes cultural lessons from her work with Afghanrefugees. She stresses the importance of triangulating datathrough various data collection methods to avoidinaccurate interpretations. For instance, in a study of dentalhygiene practices of Afghan refugees, responses reflecteda high level of care in brushing and flossing. However,‘brushing’ actually meant running a finger over ones teethafter meals and flossing was only used to remove a foodparticle from around one’s tooth after eating, or using astrand of woman’s hair in lieu of commercial floss. Thisexample served to validate the need for quantitativetechniques, such as participant observation, to enhancequalitative findings. Another important reflection is theway in which the researcher must deal with the emotionsof a traumatized individual, and the researchers’ emotionalrepercussions of absorbing negative emotions.

By critiquing tools of research and guidelines forresearchers who must consider their own response toaccounts of torture, humiliation, and killing, this volumeprovides a thoughtful and thorough guide for assessingthe psychosocial wellness of refugees. I recommend thisvolume as a comprehensive basic text for students ofconflict studies, forced migration, or practitioners involvedin refugee research and assistance.

Stephanie DonlonInstitute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Kosovo’s Refugees in the EuropeanUnion

Joanne van Selm (ed.)

(London: Pinter, Continuum Publishing, 2000) 245pp.Index. Hb.: £50.00; ISBN 1-85567-640-0. Pb.: £15.99;

ISBN 1-85567-641-9.

The focus of this book is the EU response to the refugeecrisis created by the war in Kosovo. The various chaptersdescribe and analyse the approaches which a selection ofEU governments took towards the displaced of Kosovo.The seven case studies discussed in the book are; Germany,The Netherlands, The UK, Sweden, Austria, Italy andFrance.

The discussion is placed within the context of bothdomestic policies and European Integration. It examinesthe EU member states’ approach to protection of Kosovarsboth as a step in a process of altered political thought onthe need and means of refugee protection, and as a step onthe way to an EU common approach to this subject.

The book seeks to describe and analyse what they refer toas the vacillation of EU member states concerning themanagement of this European refugee crisis. It also reflectson the stance of the respective EU state with regard toissues such as; their reputation with regard to asylum andimmigration policies generally; approaches to the matterof “solidarity” or “burden-sharing” at the EU level as atool for accomplishing a common approach; geographicalspread with regard to proximity to the Balkan region; andstances on NATO intervention and involvement in thatintervention

The seven chapters to some extent vary in approach andin focus, but are all built around four main themes;

• The lessons of the reception and statuses accorded toBosnian refugees and how it was drawn on in dealingwith the displacement of Kosovars,

• The national debates on asylum and immigrationwithin which the crisis found a place and whichinfluence policy-making,

• Wider theoretical issues related to the issues discussed,• The way EU integration (or not) on the subject is

impacting policy-making in the different states.


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The discussions throughout the book build upon theassumption that the EU countries have a responsibility toprotect and accept refugees in times of crises.

This book is valuable to anybody who is interested inquestions surrounding migration and the acceptance ofrefugees within the EU. The different chapters bring toattention both the difference in the approach taken withineach EU member states towards the reception of asylum-seekers in general, as well as the effect this had on theirdealing with the Kosovar refugee crisis. A recurring issuein every chapter is the fact that although the Bosnianexperience had challenged existing policies towardsrefugees, and in a number of cases led to legal changesregarding their status, few states were ready to deal withthe crisis created by the massive displacement of refugeesfrom Kosovo during the spring of 1999. The book clearlydemonstrates the lack of a co-ordinated European approachtowards such crises, and highlights the problemssurrounding the status granted to refugees. While themajority of the displaced from the war in Kosovo wouldqualify under the definition of a refugee in the 1951 GenevaConvention, most countries introduced a temporary status.This raises a lot of questions about whether status wasdefined according to political criteria, with focus on thesecurity need of the receiving state, or humanitariancriteria, safeguarding the rights of the displaced person.

The discussion in the book raises more issues than itanswers. This is perhaps not strange, since it was publishedin 1999, while the long-term implications of the Kosovorefugee crisis still remained unclear. The focus is verymuch on the reception of the Kosovar refugees, and lessso on long-term concerns such as repatriation and/orintegration. The issues that are raised, however, are crucialnot only to the manner in which the EU member states aredealing with this particular crisis, but also towards theirhandling of similar mass displacements of people in thefuture, and towards the creation of a more co-ordinatedEuropean approach to questions surrounding migration.

Although each chapter offers a slightly different approachto the main themes under discussion in the book, thecollection of papers works quite well, and appearscoherent. The book could have gained from offering aclearer definition of its use of the word refugee andalternative terms applied to define the displaced peopleunder discussion. Despite the fact that the status accordedto people seeking protection within EU states is one ofthe main themes in the book, some of the authors qualifytheir use of the word refugee by referring to Bosnian‘refugees’ and Kosovar ‘refugees’, without explaining whythey do so. In doing this, they fail to explain to the readerhow they define a refugee in a more general sense, as wellas why they qualify the use of the term in relation to theabove mentioned groups.

Hilde HaugThe Queen’s University of Belfast

War, Money and Survival: ForumSeries

International Committee of the RedCross

(Geneva: ICRC, 2000) 110pp. Sfr 20.

This is the second in ICRC’s new Forum series whichbrings together a variety of writers to address ahumanitarian issue of the moment. The first was on water.This one is on the political economy of war andhumanitarian assistance. And its editors, Gilles Carbonnierand Sarah Fleming, deftly step through the minefield of1990s humanitarians’ great discovery - “war economy”.

As a genre, the Forum series is rather bizarre. They lookand read like a sort of humanitarian Vanity Fair withserious analysts writing in a glossy format interspersedwith excellent photographs. I kept expecting to turn thepage to find an advertisement for Rolex with a picture ofthe UN’s Sergio Vieira de Mello saying why he wouldnever go into a war zone without his!

But this glossy format is perfectly suited to its subjectmatter because the contributions in this book are all aboutthe grisly meshing of slick global capitalism, vicious localviolence and racketeering humanitarian NGOs. It isindeed a credit to ICRC that they should leave the safeterritory of conventional humanitarian response to delveinto the capitalist drivers which cause, structure and exploittoday’s post-modern conflicts. It is good to see themaddressing economic protection and leading on livelihoodsas well as lives - all concerns affirmed as humanitarian inthe Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocolsand now taken up by ICRC’s new Economic Security Unit.

The book is in four parts. Part one is a global view with,amongst others, a sharp piece by Zaki Laidi onglobalisation and war. There is a section on the economicsof war at national and sub-national level with interestingpieces on corporate behaviour and responsibility in warand a good look at transnational security companies (TSCs)by Kim Richard Nossal. David Keen struts his stuff aboutthe “rationality” of civil war - a view that has helped manyof us in the 1990s think more clearly about the economicfunctions of violence. There is a fairly conventionalsection about how people cope and survive in and aroundwar by living by their economic wits - legally or illegally.

Finally, there is a section arguing that NGOs and the newbreed of corporates providing humanitarian assistance arejust in it for the money. NGO-bashers (and some peoplein ICRC) will like this bit best. Those who deplore thecrowded field of humanitarian action will find satisfactionin having the majority of NGOs portrayed (once again) asshameless profiteers who often do more harm than good.And to this end, Robin Davies puts the boot in well. Butit is a boot with generalisations for toe-caps and clichesfor heels.

So what should we make of it all? The political economyof war and humanitarian response is a hugely importantsubject that has come along way in the 1990s. Its analysis

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must now be central in all humanitarian and peace work.But economics is not the whole story and it would bedisastrous for conflict studies and humanitarianism if theybecame dominated by a theory that said that it was. Thisis why my favourite piece in this book is by ThandikaMkandawire who takes apart the excessive “rationality”of some of today’s political economy theorists. He warnsas much against imposing a total economic logic as awholly chaotic logic on the extreme personalised violenceof these terrible wars. A wise man.

Hugo SlimSenior Lecturer in International HumanitarianismOxford Brookes University

NGOs and Civil Society: Democracyby Proxy?

Ann C. Hudock

(Oxford: Polity Press, 1999) 140pp. Index. Biblio. Pb.:£11.99; ISBN 0-7456-1649-6

Much has been written about civil society, democracy andthe role of NGOs in resolving ethnic conflicts, but fewbooks have explored the links between them. This shortvolume is a first attempt to redress the balance.

Hudock argues that in order to be effective in their aims,NGOs need to be more comprehensive, coherent andcoordinated in their activities. They need to concentrateon building genuine foundations for democracy and civilsociety and not just on creating a democratic façade. Inorder to achieve this, she argues, the focus of NGOs mustshift towards encouraging local ownership of policies andworking with civil society at grassroots level.

However, according to the author, this failing cannot beput down solely to a lack of will or efficiency. Instead,she argues, promoters of democracy and civil society havetoo often assumed a role that in most cases has been markedmore by a proliferation of interests than a genuine desireto resolve conflict and build a durable peace. As a result,many areas of ethnic tension in desperate need of outsidehelp are littered with ill-conceived projects often conductedby agencies that are unaware of local circumstances andtake little – if any – account of local input.

This circumstance, Hudock claims, is down to the relationbetween what she terms ‘southern’ and ‘northern’ NGOsi.e. those NGOs located in less-developed countriesbeholden to those organisations in developed countries andwhich control the purse strings. The relation is one ofpower and bureaucracy and it is here that Hudock aims tomake an original contribution to NGO literature. Bydrawing on organisational theory and theories of powerrelations, Hudock aims to develop a conceptual frameworkfor understanding the operational strengths andweaknesses, opportunities and constraints of much NGOactivity and to highlight the political nature of theiractivities. In so doing, she aims to draw out strategies tomake NGOs more independent of their benefactors and

thus allow them to contribute more effectively to thedevelopment of civil society.

The project is admirable and Hudock manages it in clearand accessible language that avoids the didactic tones oftenfound in such analyses. However, despite this, the author’sachievements are in fact quite limited. Throughout thebook, the analysis is confined to an examination of onesubset of NGO activity – that of NGOs working in thefield of international development – and the author’s choiceof illustrations is often limited to an examination of theactivities of one NGO, the Association for RuralDevelopment (ARD), for which Hudock worked asprojects assistant. As a result, many interesting areas inthe book are insufficiently explored and, at times, appearsuperficial. This is a shame since, as the structure andacknowledgements of the book belie, the work obviouslystems from a more substantial doctoral thesis.

Graham HollidayEuropean Centre for Minority Issues

Civil Society, NGDOs and SocialDevelopment: Changing the Rules of

the Game

Alan Fowler

(Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for SocialDevelopment, 2000) 76pp. Biblio. ISBN 92-9085-021-3.

This study has been published as Occasional Paper 1 of“Geneva 2000: The Next Step in Social Development”, aproject of the United Nations Research Institute for SocialDevelopment (UNRISD). It reviews the role andcontribution of non-governmental developmentorganisations (NGDOs) in promoting social developmentand makes some recommendations about ways in whichtheir performance and the institutions might be improved.

The first section tries to ‘unpack’ the concept of ‘civilsociety’ in relation to NGDOs and concludes (in a footnote)that, “for our purposes, civil society can be understood asthe realm of citizen’s informal and formal privateassociation to pursue non-economic interests and goals.”(p. 3) The author is critical of the tendency by aid agenciesand the aid system in general to, “adopt a formal, uniformand historical view of civil society in relation tointernational development”, which “misrepresents how thepoor associate in order to cope and survive informallythrough intricate trust-based webs of familial and othernetworks”. (p. 6) Further, he make the point that “civilsociety encompasses contending power relations and groupinterests that can both advance and impede povertyreduction, equity, inclusion, justice and other socialdevelopment objectives.” (p. 7) He then elaborates onthe “complex nature of NGDOs” with respect todifferences in their origins, goals and behaviours indifferent socio-political contexts. He makes broaddistinctions between historical experiences on the differentcontinents and how these have influenced the natures ofNGDOs on each continent.


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The second section is focused on what NGDOs haveactually achieved in social development. Based onintentions expressed at the World Summit for SocialDevelopment in Copenhagen in 1995 and publicationsfrom the official aid system, he lists a summary of whatNGDOs are expected to contribute to social development,including that they “will have a positive influence within(civil) society.” (p. 12) He then draws upon a variety ofstudies and assessments to compare the achievements ofNGDOs with these expectations, and highlights a numberof shortcomings and constraints (both internal andexternal) on their performance and impact. In the realmof “civic impact”, he concludes that “NGDO-supportedgroups tend to remain isolated from each other and fromother civic formations. Mobilization or aggregations oflocal organisations into substantive civic actors has beenpoor.” (p. 16) In relation to “policy leverage” by NGDOs,he states: “Concern is being raised about NGDO legitimacyand accountability as policy actors” and that “NGDOsusing multilateral bodies to gain leverage on their owngovernments … can undermine local political processes,erode sovereignty and weaken (local) governments’ownership of initiatives.” (p. 17)

The third section begins with a list of factors that the authorbelieves condition the “evolution and activities” ofNGDOs. He summarises these as Tolerance, Civic life,Profile of poverty and exclusion, Governance, Reform,Decentralization and Aid, and describes the use of theseseven factors for a kind of ‘mapping’ of the situation inparticular countries with respect to the strengths orweaknesses of each of these factors. As someone whodoes a lot of ‘mapping’ of situations in relation to conflict,I find this an interesting suggestion which might be a usefultool for analysing conditions for promoting politicaldevelopment as well as social development. The sectioncontinues with an examination of the nature and range ofrelationships that NGDOs have with communities,‘partners’, the wider civil society, government at variouslevels and with each other.

In the final section, the author makes a number ofrecommendations about “changing the rules of the game”,including “repositioning aid”, moving toward more“authentic partnership”, “involving an honest broker” (anOmbudsman or mediator), “preventing a developmentmonoculture”, “improving NGDO practice” by enhancingorganisational capacity, “expanding engagement with civilsociety beyond NGDOs” and “institutional reform”.

Although the study does not focus specifically on ethnicconflict, I found the discussion about complexity in thenature of civil society and about the different factors andconstraints in different contexts to be relevant. This studywill be of interest primarily to those who are concernedabout the impact of development programmes with respectto social development, the quality of relationships betweeninternational and local development organisations and thewider ‘civil society’, and the nature of the internationalaid system.

Steve WilliamsINCORE, University of Ulster& Responding To Conflict, Birmingham, UK

Narrative and Conflict

Bear in Mind: Stories of the Troubles

An Crann/The Tree

(Belfast: Lagan Press / An Crann /The Tree, 2000)138pp. Pb.: £7.95; ISBN 1-873687-13-3.

‘Because what is forgotten cannot be healed, and thatwhich cannot be healed easily becomes the source ofgreater evil’.

Lionel Chircop’s quote sets the tone of a book containingover a hundred stories of ordinary people’s experiencesof the Troubles. These are stories that contain the realityof a 30-year conflict that has tainted a whole communitywith fear, anger and a deep sense of grief. The collectedstories come in the form of poems, drama extracts,interviews and letters and come from a cross section ofthe community including RUC officers, soldiers andrelatives of the disappeared. Issues discussed includeinternment, policing, the blanket protests and mostpoignantly the issues of futility and lost innocence.

In this wonderful yet harrowing collection An Crann/TheTree has recognised that in the early stages of a postsettlement agreement, now is the time for the silencedvoices to be heard. That collective (and individual) healingcan only begin when the people’s pain is listened to andacknowledged without fear of a competing victim-hood.Everyone’s story is real, valid and true. Pain and loss is across-community experience.

‘Bear in Mind’ is not an easy read in terms of subjectmatter. You can’t read more than a few stories withoutfeeling a real sense of the trauma that the community hasexperienced. I certainly needed time away from the bookfor some of the stories to settle ~ in particular a deeplymoving account of one mans experience of Omagh entitled‘End Of My Immunity’ (p46).

With this book An Crann/ The Tree has powerfullyembedded the importance of story in the healing process.To end I highlight an extract from an interviewee, whoeloquently explains the significance of people as ‘storysharers’ rather than ‘message carriers’, and creates a senseof why this book is so important:

‘ It’s hard to get over what’s been bred into you, soyou need to always be aware that it’s been bredinto you, because if your first thing about people isto be suspicious of what they say, then actually youhave little respect for them and their integrity.I’ve never had any kind of formal structures fordealing with this ~ sometimes suspicion just reallyhas to be lived through ~ and again…this is wheresharing the stories can help, because the stories alsochallenge. They can challenge our prejudice andthey can challenge the collective memory of aculture, allowing a different story to come intopeople’s consciousness’ (p124).

Sarah AlldredCentre for the Study of Forgiveness and ReconciliationCoventry

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Doing What Had To Be Done: TheLife Narrative of Dora Yum Kim

Soo-Young Chin

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999) xi +229pp. Index. Photos. Hb.: $65.50; ISBN 1-5663-9693-

X. Pb.: $21.95; ISBN 1-5663-9694-8.

This biography depicts the long, active life of Dora Yum,born in 1921 in California to Korean immigrant parents.The story continues to the mid-1990s, by which time Dorabeen designated a “Living Treasure” for her lifetimeachievements. Her biographer is an anthropologist at theUniversity of Southern California. The work contributesto the interesting discussion on differences betweenEuropean and Asian conceptions of autobiography: thatthe Western autobiography implicitly promotes the subjectas a dynamic, individualized, almost independent entity;by contrast, many non-Western cultures place much moreemphasis on a sense of self or identity diffused through acommunity.

Dora’s life embodies changes that have taken place inAsian communities in the USA since the 1920s. A virtualapartheid system operated until the 1940s: “I grew up withdiscrimination. Discimination affected every aspect ofmy life…I never thought of Chinatown as a ghetto. Wejust couldn’t live anywhere else” (p. 17). The SecondWorld War brought changes, mainly because of theincreased demand for military and industrial personnel.Also, new legislative reforms reflected the antipathy toNazism and began to erode white supremacy: soon afterthe war, Asians moved into higher education, professionalemployment, and wealthier neighbourhoods.

The success of earlier immigrants paved the way for alarge influx in the 1970s: it is estimated that in the SanFrancisco area alone, the number of Koreans jumped fromabout 100 in 1965, to perhaps 100,000 by the mid-1990s.In Los Angeles and New York, the growth was even morespectacular. It was with these new arrivals that significanttensions arose, particularly with the Black communities.

Dora has a number of observations to make about theKorean-Black animosity which led to violence in recentyears. While believing that many Blacks were envious ofAsian success, Dora also criticizes her own community.She sees most Koreans as clannish, narrow-minded, anddeeply involved in factional squabbling; inevitably theyfeel little solidarity with other sectors of the community.Proximity and contact have increased, for example becauseof the numerous small Korean businesses in Black districts;but mutual antipathy seems to increase rather than decline(p. 133). However, apart from this major problem, Dora’s

story illustrates the remarkable achievements of the Asiancommunity in the USA.

Dr Alan HunterSenior LecturerCentre for the Study of Forgiveness and ReconciliationCoventry University, UK

Violence and Subjectivity

Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman,Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela

Reynolds (eds.)

(Berkeley, CA and London: University of CaliforniaPress, 2000) 389pp. Index. Pb.: £12.50; ISBN 0-520-

21608-3.

It is easy in conflict resolution research and practice tolose sight of the individuals: the constant barrage of mediareporting can induce a kind of trauma fatigue, and popular,essentialist explanations for violence see individuals asonly metonymic of larger tribal, ethnic or sectarian groupsat war with one another. The editors attempt to bringindividuals and subjectivity back into focus through thiscollection of conference papers on violence in SouthAfrica, Guatemala, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, theBalkans, Nigeria, and the United States.

As with most cross-disciplinary and edited collections, theresult is mixed. On the one hand, the collection providesan interesting overview of social scientific attempts tocome to terms with subjectivity, something thatanthropologists Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman defineas “the felt interior experience of the person that includeshis or her positions in a field of relational power”(p. 1).Thus, the authors draw from the conceptual repertoires oftheir various disciplines (political science, sociology,history, and anthropology) to link the subjectivities ofindividuals and their families, individual activists, andentire generations, to violence occurring on local, stateand international levels. But even with a good introductoryessay, its hard to walk away from the collection with acoherent sense of how to apply these disparate conceptualframeworks to new settings.

Still, for the patient reader, several essays are particularlyinsightful for the conflict resolution researcher andpractitioner. For example, Jonathan Spencer’s essay abouta young Sinhala activist gives a thought provoking answerto the question of why some in communities affected byviolence (here Sri Lanka) choose not to become terrorists.Susan Woodward, in a cogent critique of the concept ofintervention, draws our attention to how Western states


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and international organizations had begun theirinterventions into the everyday politics and lives of Balkancitizens well before the breakup of Yugoslavia. PamelaReynolds moves expertly from an individual illustration,to a small group of respondents, to her results from a large-scale survey of children, to describe the impact of stateviolence on children and their support networks in SouthAfrica. And Kay Warren and Murray Last remind us ofthe difficult place of history in individual’s experiencesand understanding of violence. To some, like the pan-Mayan activist/scholar described by Warren, the mythifiednationalist history of the Spanish Conquest became acritical vehicle for understanding the impact of the morerecent Guatemalan Civil War on contemporary Mayanpopulations, and for his advocacy of a new Mayan politicalidentity during the negotiations leading to the GuatemalanPeace Accords. In contrast, Murray Last suggests thatsome people may not want to remember histories ofviolence; a critical insight he uses to distinguish betweenthe purposely non-interested “bystanders” and interested“watchers” of Nigeria’s civil war over Biafra’s attemptedsecession (1966-1968). There, the effect of the state’sefforts to bring about an end to the war and a post-warrecovery varied depending in part on the relevance ofmemories, both public and private, to these differentgroups.

Christopher T. TimuraDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of Michigan

Europe

Intercultural Europe: Diversity andSocial Policy

Jagdish Gundara and Sidney Jacobs(eds.)

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 390pp. Index. Hb.:£49.95; ISBN 1-85742-346-1.

Overall, this is an excellent contribution to the field ofsocial policy study in Europe. Its breadth and depth shouldbe a great resource to many as the diversity of expertiseamong the many contributors is impressive. It would beimpossible to refer to all the chapters but they range fromthe historical introduction, ethnic diversity, migrantcommunities, identity politics, lessons from N Ireland,health, trade unions issues to racist violence in Europe.

There were two drawbacks. Firstly, the structure of thebook called out for a short concluding chapter. The editorsgave a very impressive introductory chapter and with therange of succeeding material it would have been a greatasset to identify the common and disparate themes and‘cluster’ the specific issues to be addressed in theimmediate future. Secondly the impact of the latterchapters was perhaps less than some of the earliercontributions.

That said, some of the high points were as follows. Jacobstreatment of race and racism was an excellent reminderand illustration of the depth of the problem to be addressed.Allied to Gundara’s work on the political context andCoussey’s chapter on ethnic diversity in the EU we haveexcellent base point material. But interestingly these threechapters actually highlight the need for a concludingchapter. Much commentary and flagging up of issues isprovided but less so the proposals and/or ideas forcollective policy approaches to combat the problems. Anexception to this general observation is Coussey’s call fora review of the legal framework so that immigrants, ethnicand national minorities can exercise political rights andhave security of residence (p91).

There are strong contributions by Rex and Hansen whichwhen considered together highlight a confluence of majorimportance to the EU. The former studied migrantcommunities, one facet of this being the ‘cultural hybridity’of the migrant. There are many variations on this themebut essentially the migrant blends aspects of host countryculture with the ‘communal culture of the migrant ethnicminority group’ (p68).

Juxtaposition this with Hansen’s chapter on the ‘culturalshort cut’ of trying to garner EU legitimacy on culturalidentity, the problems are well highlighted. If citizenshipof the Union is the cornerstone of EU identity, how cancitizenship rules exclude many in the EU? Ally this to

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‘cultural hybridity’ and longstanding and strong nationalidentities, it is argued that a European culture and identityis restricted therefore, popular legitimacy of the Union isunder pressure (pp105-6). Add considerable EU expansionto the ‘menu’ and the problem obviously grows. Hansenstrongly argues for ‘a process of democratization’ tobalance the current approach of cultural identity.

A core issue is ‘mentioned’ in the introduction to the booki.e. ‘reform from above’ without enough listening to thoseon the sidelines (p12). Social policy in intercultural Europeis well analysed in this book but the next stage may bearticulating core ideas on how those on the sidelines areincluded through social policy and its implementation.

Dr. Billy LeonardINCORE

East Central Europe in the ModernWorld: the Politics of theBorderlands from Pre-to

Postcommunism

Andrew C. Janos

(Stanford, CA and Cambridge: Stanford UniversityPress, 2000), 488pp. Biblio. Index. Hb.: £37.50/$65.00;

ISBN 08047-3743-6.

This volume is a formidable work of scholarly synthesis,weighing in at just under five hundred pages and boastinga forty-five page bibliography. The author’s arguments arepresented clearly and developed cogently, and his use ofevidence convinces if not by deft deployment of the ‘tellingfact’, then certainly by attrition. In terms of the author’sintentions, this work succeeds with aplomb. The book, ashe states in the first sentence of the ‘Introduction’,represents “political history written by a social scientist”(p1). Its aim is to formulate a cogent theoretical frameworkto elucidate the last two centuries of political and economicdevelopment among the states of East-Central Europe. Themodel which the author adopts is derived from a world-systems approach with its three-tier functional andstructural differentiation of ‘core’, ‘periphery’ and ‘semi-periphery’. This enables him to engage in lucid andpersuasive comparative histories, based largely onsecondary sources, of the small states of the region inrelation both to their neighbours and to more distantcentres, and to identify a dynamic of frustrateddevelopment in the persisting “relative deprivation” ofperipheral states. Within this system, the motive force ofmodernisation on the periphery is provided by the“demonstration effect” of material progress in the core. Inthe nineteenth century, for example, the striving of élitesof peripheral states to emulate the material progress oftheir peers in western nations resulted in a pact with thedevil, whereby the political classes renounced liberalpolitical aspirations in return for an assured place in thestate apparat and support for their rent-seeking activities.In the twentieth century, the states of the borderlandscontinued to develop in the thrall of regional hegemons

and imperial powers which defined the aspirations of thepoliticised masses and dictated the objectives of corruptstate machines.

The author convincingly describes the consequences ofthis system both in spatial terms - expectations diminishover distance and are mediated by diverse culturalperceptions in different places, and in temporal terms -the modalities of change within the whole system and itsconstituent states vary according to historical conjuncture.In particular, he stresses the enduring imprint of historicalexperience on the states under survey, attributing in partthe divergent development patterns of the northwesterntier of societies, such as Poland, Bohemia and Hungary,and the southeastern societies, such as Romania, Bulgariaand the Balkans, to their distinct traditions of WesternChristianity, legalism and elective authority as opposedto Byzantine Orthodoxy, commonality and autocraticpaternalism. Throughout, a balance of analysis andnarrative serves to mitigate the social scientific impulseto generalise with close attention to the specificities andidiosyncrasies of geography and history.

The reader finishes this work with a sense of both its granddesign and painstaking detail. Inevitably, some specialistswill notice the occasional inaccuracy (for example, thestatement on p. 155 that the Finnish uprising, whichoccurred in early 1918, was “fomented” by the Comintern,although this organisation was established only in 1919),but this does not detract from the achievement. What does,to some extent, is the author’s leaden prose and therelentless, encyclopaedic density of the book. Because thevalue of this work resides in its analytic framework andargument, its impact would have been greatly strengthenedif the narrative had been cut by half. Nevertheless, thisvolume can be strongly recommended for readers withstamina, and for those without, the clear andcomprehensive index, combined with precise citations ofsecondary sources and the extensive bibliography, makesit invaluable for reference.

Nick BaronResearch AssociateUniversity of Manchester

Turkey’s Transformation andAmerican Policy

Morton Abramowitz (ed.)

(New York: The Century Foundation, 2000. Distributedby Brookings Institution Press) 298pp. Index. Hb.:

$24.95; ISBN 0-87078-453-6.

This study provides a useful examination of US policytowards Turkey and the key issues that are involved inthis somewhat fraught relationship, includingdevelopments within Turkey, and its foreign policyproblems. Morton Abramowitz provides a useful overviewof these areas in the introduction. Heath W Lowry looksat the development and weaknesses of Turkey’s politicalstructure in Chapter 2 and argues that the Ataturk legacy


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is now outdated and the cause of many of the problems ofthe state. Philip Robins then examines the Kurdish issueand argues that there is now a golden opportunity for asolution. Ziya Onis looks at Turkey’s economic prospectsin Chapter 4 and makes the case that there are now somegrounds for optimism. Cengiz Candar looks at Turkishperspectives of US policy in Chapter 5 and points out thatTurkey has not felt sufficiently appreciated by theinternational community or US in the past, and indeedhas been particularly suspicious of the west’s interests inthe country. Morton Abramowitz looks at the complexitiesof US policy towards Turkey in the following chapter, andin particular how Turkey can be aided to reform. In thepenultimate chapter, M. James Wilkinson examines theimportance of Greece in this relationship and calls for amore decisive US stance on the issues which dog Turkishforeign policy with Greece and Cyprus. In the final chapterAlan Makovshy examines different scenarios for US policyissues and Turkey, including a deterioration in Turkishdemocracy, a return to power of the Islamists, conflict withGreece, the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq,and a decline of US interests in the region.

This is an excellent contribution to the literature on Turkeyand the various problems it faces for a number of reasons.Firstly, it highlights in a detailed and careful manner thefraught relationship between Turkey and its neighbours,as well as its internal weaknesses in the context of westernand particularly US foreign policy goals. Secondly, thoughclearly sympathetic to the problems that Turkey faces andto the generally accepted need of the US to court andsupport Turkey, it also does not ignore Turkey’s propensityfor self-aggrandisement and indeed is critical of its internaland external policy making machinery. Thirdly, it doesmuch to undermine the myth that the US cannot afford toalienate Turkey and thus cannot push too much in anattempt to force it to comply with western norms vis-à-vis relations with neighbours, human rights and pressfreedoms.

This is clearly with the proviso that, as Morton Abramowitzpoints out in the introduction, many Turks are not interestedin the west and not least the EU because they fear a loss ofsovereignty that heightened relations may provoke whichthey fear may lead to an internal break-up. However, whilehe is of the opinion that the EU will have to court Turkey(p.4.), this merely seems to reflect a US preoccupationwith Turkey’s strategic position rather than obligations asa member of a regional community and global society ofstates. Turkey has been a thorn in the side of Europeanregional stability for quite some time, particularly vis-à-vis its relationship with Greece and Cyprus. Its otherborders also provide cause for concern, as does itshistorical relationship with Russia and the Turkic worldmore generally. It is for these reasons that this book arguesfor a balanced relationship between the US and Turkey,between reform and support. It is clear that facilitatingchange in Turkey and in its foreign policy requires sensitivehandling and a long term view, given the internalproclivities of Turkish politics.

Dr. Oliver RichmondDepartment of International RelationsUniversity of St. Andrews

The Long War: The IRA and SinnFéin

Brendan O’Brien

(New York: Syracuse University Press, 2nd edition 1999)Pb.: $19.95; ISBN 0-8156-0597-8.

This is the Second Edition of Brendan O’Brien’s book onIrish republicanism and like the previous updated edition,takes us up to 1999 when the dust had yet to settle afterthe signing of the Good Friday Agreement. The author’sextensive experience within Irish journalism stretches overtwo decades and has included a particular emphasis onthe conflict in the north of Ireland. Not so much acomprehensive history of Sinn Fein and the IRA (for thissee Tim Pat Coogan’s book on the subject), O’Brien’s workis concerned more with the recent Irish peace process andthe role of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness inmodern Irish republicanism.

The ideological and tactical shifts within Irishrepublicanism in the last three decades are examined indepth, showing how circumstances such as the cease-firesof the mid 1970s and the failure of Sinn Fein to make animpact in southern Ireland in the 1980s led to a moresophisticated and pragmatic approach to the pursuit of aunited Ireland, as well as a greater attempt at understandingunionist sentiment. The book contains interviews withmany of the important figures plus a valuable appendix ofmilestone documents.

While the conflict in Ireland is not an ethnic one as such,it does contain elements relevant to the subject and O’Brienlooks at how the various government initiatives such asSunningdale in the 1970s and Hillsborough in the 1980smade some attempt to address relationships on the island.In greater detail he deals with the tortuous negotiations inthe run up to the Good Friday Agreement and the variousmechanisms built into it to help ensure that as manynationalist/republicans and unionists as possible could feelcomfortable enough to work the compromise. There is alsoa chapter on unionist/loyalist attitudes to Sinn Fein andthe IRA. More perhaps could have been written on theimportance of demographic change as a factor in thecurrent peace process and on the reasons behind andenormous impact of the British government’s‘Ulsterisation’ policy when locally recruited forces largelyreplaced the regular army on the front line. Such a policyhelped form the view among the international communitythat the conflict was essentially an ethnic one.

In the large library on the subject however, ‘The LongWar’ is one of the better accounts of Irish republicanism.

Martin Campbell

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Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence andPolitical Culture in Ulster, 1784-1886

Sean Farrell,

(Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000)254pp. Biblio. Index. Hb.: $34.95; ISBN 0-8131-2171-X.

Rituals and Riots provides new insights into the sectarianviolence and political culture in pre-famine Ulster. SeanFarrell begins the discussion with the troubles in Armaghand mid-Ulster in 1784-1798 and finishes with the Belfastriots which took place some hundred years after Armagh.The theoretical framework focuses on the concept of moraleconomy first introduced by E. P. Thompson. Moraleconomy emphasises the role of community, theirperceptions of legitimate history and communal action,and also the cultural context of violence. In NorthernIreland sectarian moral economy centred on an exclusivistdefinition of loyalty and citizenship (p.13). Farrell arguesthat the Protestant community based their worldviewexclusively on sectarian moral economy in order to holdon to superior status. On the other hand, the Catholicworldview was based on sense of dispossession. It gainedits legitimacy from a particular view of Irish history, anarrative which focused on the status and power lost toProtestant conquest. Catholic understanding of Ireland’sfuture was not based on moral economy, quite the contrarythey tried to resist the status quo created by Protestantsectarian moral economy.

Farrell’s book discusses the history of violence in Ulster.It aims to clarify the sources and reasons for the violentoutbursts and moreover go beyond the institutionalexplanations. This means that communal expectations,contested worldviews and sense of fear among thecommunities have much greater effect on the appearanceand collective support for violence than is oftenacknowledged. The six chapters of the book discuss, forexample, the differences and similarities of the OrangeOrder and Catholic resistance in 17th and 18th century. Theyalso examine how violence is not just tribalism butcarefully constructed in ritual contexts and tied to localand national political life. Farrell illustrates how ritualsshaped the style and substance of party violence,experienced during and after the sectarian festivities. Aparticularly interesting chapter of the book focuses onurbanisation and riots in Belfast and Derry. Urbanterritories and segregation changed the nature and thegeographical place of violent confrontations from ruralArmagh to the cities of Ulster.

Generally, the book is a compact and illustrative work onthe use of violence in organising community relations inpre-famine Ulster. Farrell is critical of several previousareas of research on the topic and in many points is ableto convince the reader with new, well-foundedexplanations. However, at times I was left with a feelingthat deeper discussion would have been required. Riotsand Rituals is a book with an historical approach, but ithas much relevance in understanding the contemporaryNorthern Ireland. It was rather frightening to notice thatthe same circle of violence, politics and confrontation hasbeen on-going in Ulster since the 16th century. Cynicallywe can ask, when do we learn the lessons of history?

Anna-Kaisa KuusistoUniversity of Tampere, Finland

The Balkans

The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina:Ethnic Conflict and International

Intervention

Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup

(Armonk, NY and London: ME Sharpe, 1999)distributed by The Eurospan Group. 504pp. Index.

Biblio. Pb.: £15.95; ISBN 1-56324-309-1.

Steven Burg and Paul Shoup established their credentialsas experts on Yugoslavia long before that country implodedin 1991. They have collaboratively crafted a finely detailedaccount of how the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav crisisplayed out in Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), focusing onthe period between end-1990 (the republic’s firstcompetitive elections) and end-1995 (the Dayton PeaceAgreement).

This is a solid, serious book. Unlike the legions ofsensation-seekers and/or self-appointed moral crusaderswho have produced tendentious tracts on the Bosniantragedy, Burg and Shoup do not seek to deny or caricature,but rather engage and explore, the many complexities ofthe land called Bosnia-Herzegovina and the conflict thattore it apart between 1992 and 1995. That, perhaps, is thesingular achievement of their effort.

The book consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 summarilysets out the complicated moral and practical issuessurrounding international intervention in the Bosnian war.Chapter 2 is a fine survey of the competing, indeedintermingled traditions of conflict and coexistence inBosnia’s modern political history, and covers events untilearly 1991. The organization of the book thereafter (Chs.3-7) follows a chronological pattern, covering in theprocess a cataclysm of events from the outbreak of war inCroatia (second half of 1991) and the failed Lisbon talkson Bosnia’s future (March 1992) to the denouement atDayton, Ohio in late 1995. The intervening materialincludes a detailed narrative of the war in various regionsand localities of BiH, and careful assessments ofinternational diplomatic efforts to end the war mounted atvarious points in time. The authors deserve credit for theircarefully considered and convincing evaluations of suchhotly debated peace proposals as the Vance-Owen plan(1993). The final chapter discusses the difficulties ofeffective international intervention at various points in theBosnian conflict and contains interesting if brief reflectionson the fractured country’s post-Dayton future.

Throughout the book, Burg and Shoup demonstrate a keenunderstanding of the historical and institutional contextsof the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the positionsand agendas of the contending factions (and various sub-factions thereof). A relatively minor trade-off of this depth


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and solidity is a style of presentation that is overly denseat times, and masses of detail (sometimes simplysummarizing conflicting claims made by propagandisticsources representing the perspectives of the warringfactions) which could be confusing to any but the mostattentive and advanced readers. This book, 500 pages inlength, could have been significantly shorter without anysignificant loss of substance or analytical insight.Occasionally, one also gets the impression from the textthat the authors, despite their undoubted expertise andformidable research, have not spent substantial time onthe ground in either wartime or post-war Bosnia &Herzegovina.

Burg and Shoup’s approach to the engagement of the“international community” with the Bosnian war is,however, exceptionally clear-eyed. In particular, UnitedStates policy towards the post-Yugoslav crises in Bosniaand Croatia consistently emerges in a rather poor light inthis work written by two American scholars. The irony, ofcourse, is that no international strategy to end the Bosnianwar could succeed until it integrated a credible threat ofpunitive force (against non-compliance) with a fairapproach to the demands and fears of all three combatants,i.e., including the Bosnian Serbs. As Burg and Shoup argue,“that integration appears not to have been achieved until1995, when the chief proponent of use of force—the UnitedStates—became convinced of the need for a realisticpolitical settlement that addressed Serb interests” (p. 262).That intervention ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina,but it came too late for countless innocent people caughtup in its maelstrom, and has left as its legacy a brokencountry suspended in a strange limbo between de jureunion and de facto partition. Five years on, despite a majorpost-conflict statebuilding intervention by Westerncountries and international agencies, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s post-Yugoslav future is still tenuous inalmost every sense.

Dr. Sumantra BoseDepartment of GovernmentLondon School of Economics and Political Science

Minority Rights in Yugoslavia

Jan Briza

(London: Minority Rights Group, 2000) 34pp. Pb.:£6.70; ISBN 1-897693-08-7.

Minority Rights in Yugoslavia is another in a series ofreports from Minority Rights Group International, anorganization devoted to securing “rights for ethnic,linguistic, and religious minorities worldwide.” This smallreport (only 32 large pages!) provides exhaustive coverageof minorities in Yugoslavia. Particular attention is paid tokey multi-ethnic regions of Yugoslavia – the well-knownconflict zone in Kosovo/a, but also the less publicizedregions of Sandzak and Vojvodina, as well as Montenegro.

What drives the text in each of the main sections is theseparation between de jure and de facto rights forminorities. For each region, a detailed account of the rightsof each minority group – in law and in implementation -is given, with special attention paid to education, officialuse of the language and alphabet, political life, culturallife and the media, and economic life. I learned a greatdeal about less prominent minority groups in Yugoslaviasuch as Roma, Bulgarians, Vlachs, Macedonians, and evenGermans – a very nice touch. Each section is packed withfacts and figures about each minority group, though thefigures are quite often, not surprisingly, outdated andsuspect, as Briza readily acknowledges.

The report closes with a series of recommendations, firstto the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia(FRY) and then to the international community. Theserecommendations in themselves are not surprising, rangingfrom respecting human rights standards and strengtheningthe independent media for the FRY government tostrengthening civil society for the international community.What is surprising, though, is the disconnect between theserecommendations and the rest of the text. No systematicattempt to make connections is made. Instead, therecommendations seem quite separated from the remainderof the work.

For readers looking for an in-depth argument linkingminority situations to policy recommendations, MinorityRights in Yugoslavia is not the right choice. However,Minority Rights in Yugoslavia is an excellent report forunderstanding the distribution of ethnic minority groupsin Yugoslavia and the issues they face. In contrast to thepolitical framing of this information, these distributionsand issues are unlikely to have already changed with thenew administration in Yugoslavia.

L. Kendall PalmerDepartment of SociologyUniversity of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

The Road to War in Serbia: Traumaand Catharsis

Nebojsa Popov

(Budapest, Central European University Press, 2000)711pp. Bibl. Index. Pb.: £17.95; ISBN 963-9116-56-4.

In this book the authors try to understand, explain andprovide an insight into why so many turn - even by theirown free will - to nationalism as an ideological practice.About twenty scholars - social and political scientists,historians, economists, lawyers, statisticians, scholars ofethnology and language, and theologians - investigate ‘theSerb side of the War’ after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Notbecause this was familiar territory to them, or it affectedthemselves more immediately but out of “repudiation ofthe usual tactics of imputing blame to those of other creeds,

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nations, countries, or in fact the whole world for causingthe war and all it entailed” (p.2).

The book consists of four parts. The first part is a collectionof essays concerned with the broader outline of the themeand essays that examine the roots of the trauma. The essayswithin the second part analyse the role of the cultural andpolitical elite and of scientific, cultural and otherinstitutions. The third part’s essays focus upon the roleand influence of the media. The final part consists of anessay on the efforts of international organisations to helpto arrive at compromise and to end the war. Although thebook concentrates mainly on the period before the breakupuntil the first years of conflict (1987-1993), it does notaddress the period thereafter and therefore a knowledgeof what the consequences of the war meant for culture,economy and society is lacking.

For Pesic (pp.9-49), the war was inevitable- a self-fulfillingprophecy - as a consequence of the absence of a loyaltytowards a collective state and the extreme positions takenby the political elites of the different republics. It wascaused by the creation of new national states in which theleadership brought them into conflict over the distributionof Yugoslav territory, borders and ethnic boundaries (astruggle over power and over the national question).Nevertheless, Popov argues that it could have been avoided(pp.81-105). But many took a more defensive view on thefuture of Serbia and the Serbian People. Not onlypoliticians, but also academics, writers, the church andeconomists became protectors and/or instruments of anti-democratic government. Although it was a reflection ofits time, the 1974 Constitution contributed to the war as“an ornamental piece of rhetoric and a justification fordictatorial (largely totalitarian) rule” (V. Dimitrijevic,pp.399-424). Even the opposition did not oppose theGreater Serbia idea at the time of the breakup ofYugoslavia; “unity between the national programmes ofboth the Serbian opposition and the government indicatesthat the Yugoslav Wars were not a post-Communistphenomenon, but that their causes were deep and theiressence lay in the struggle for domination in these regions”(D. Stojanovic, pp.449-478).

Also the media contributed to the outbreak of the war. Byserving politics and rejecting autonomy, it contributed tothe creation and spreading of an authoritarian societywhich left no opening for a democratic solution to theconflicts and made all Serbs into victims (Z. Markovic,pp.587-607). The breakup of Yugoslavia and the Kosovoquestion nationalized everyday life in Serbia (S.Milivojevic, pp.608-629). Even international interventioncould not alter this; instead it enhanced it.

Although the book is very descriptive and gives no generalconclusion, it is of importance because it tries to give usinsight into the processes of nationalism and (anti)democratization within Serbia and into causes of ethnicconflict. Not only does it explain why extremistnationalistic politics for a long time was - and perhaps

even is - common sense in Serbia, but it can also help usto find strategies and means for change. In order to helpthem to democratize we need to be more aware of theseprocesses and their consequences. Therefore, the book iswell worth reading. To the authors it is important that, “ifresearch show that the avalanche of fear, hatred andviolence was produced by the concrete action ofindividuals, groups, institutions and organizations, that itwas not the result of some kind of automatism of fate ornature, there is even less possibility for alternatives to theavalanche to emerge by some kind of automatism. ... It isnecessary to create the appropriate values, institutions,organizations and procedures” (p.4).

For us it shows the complexity of the situation and thelong way and difficult task that lies ahead. If we do not doit right this time, ethnic conflict might occur again in thefuture.

Wim de HaarPolitical Science DepartmentFree University Brussels

Identity and Security in FormerYugoslavia

Zlatko Isakovic

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 326pp. Biblio. Index. Hb.:£45.00; ISBN 0-7546-1503-0.

Zlatko Isakovic has produced a serviceable book focusingon societal security in the successor states to the formerYugoslavia. Drawing on the 1993 work of Ole Waever in“Societal security: the concept” in Ole Waever, BarryBuzan, Morten Kelstrup and Pierre Lemaitre (eds.)Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda inEurope (London: Pinter Publishers Ltd.), the author definessocietal security as the ability of a society [read: ethnicgroup, nation or nationality] to persist in its essentialcharacter under changing conditions and possible or actualthreats. The threats to a nation’s identity, Isakovic explains,may range from the seizure by others of the society’shistoric territory and the deportation or killing of itsmembers, to the suppression of expressions of its identityand to interference with its ability to reproduce itself, eitherby forbidding the use of the society’s language, ethnicnames and traditional attire or by closing its schools andchurches. If the “nation” is not the same as the state – andIsakovic explains that in the former Yugoslavia that wasthe case for all peoples who are now in successor states –threats may come not only from forbidding ethnic“markers” but also by allowing them, since they canundermine the homogeneity of the state, e.g., the markersof Serbs in Croatia, Albanians in Serbia and Macedonia.

For Isakovic, studying societal security in the successorstates requires looking at the way the elements of nationalidentity are weighted and combined among the several


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ethnic groups and noting whether or not the group is amajority or minority community in the successor state inwhich it now resides. After an introduction on the themeand methodological approach to societal security, therefollow five individual chapters on the successor states,with attention given for each resident ethnic group towidely held myths, shared memories of a common originand ancestry, traditions of statehood, religious affiliationand commonalities of language and culture. The finalchapter sums up what has been presented and offersprognoses for the future.

The bibliography is rich and detailed and its usefulness inreflected in the many generally impressive footnotes. Itis, however, disconcerting to see superficial articles in theEncyclopedia Britannica cited and quoted as well,particularly with reference to the early history of thevarious peoples. Better sources were obviously availableto the author, who has a good command of the literature.

The work shows many of the drawbacks of a hastilyprocessed dissertation. The editors did not serve Isakovicwell in allowing to pass errors of grammar and syntax aswell as intrusive infelicities of language that make thereading harder. For all that, the book is worth reading,offers some fresh insights into the post-Yugoslav successorstates and has its uses as a compendium of what should beknown and thought about.

Thomas J. HegartyThe University of Tampa

Bosnia the Good: Tolerance andTradition

Rusmir Mahmutcehajic

(Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000)236 pp. Biblio. Index. Pb: 13.95 GBP; ISBN 963-9116-

87-4

The book is an elegantly formulated rejection of theprojects to split Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war (andsubsequently) in to “ethnically homogeneous” units.Mahmutcehajic, one of the most prominent Bosnian andBosniac intellectuals, attempts to define Bosnia as aparadigmatic case of a society based on diversity ofreligions, traditions and nations. He locates this diversityless in the Western discourses of Multiculturalism of suchauthors as Charles Taylor or Will Kymlicka, but rather inthe traditions of the region and Islam.

In fact, the book takes a critical position of both thepredominant Western view of Islam and Bosnian Muslims/Bosniacs, and even more so in relation to the two“Western”/”Christian” national ideologies—Croat andSerbian nationalism—which threatened to rip Bosnia apartin the early 1990s. The author argues that the nationalistdemands for the separation of Croats, Serbs and Bosniacs,

as pursued during the war, contradict the historical legacyof Bosnia. Mahmutcehajic highlights elements of Bosniaidentity and cross-communal historical traditions thatcould point to the development of an over-arching loyaltyand identity structure in Bosnia.

Bosnia the Good highlights the dilemma which faced theBosniacs throughout the 1990s and before. On one hand,it acknowledges the need for a non-national(ist) Bosnianidentity which is based on the country’s diversity. On theother hand, it offers only little clues how such an identitycould develop outside the Bosniac nation. Mahmutcehajicoutlines in detail how the Bosniac community and itsnational and religious identity fit into a larger identity, butoffers only few hints how Croats and Serbs could beincluded into such a project. This difficulty is highlightedboth in the limitation of Bosnian identity under Austro-Hungarian rule (Kallay) to the Muslim community andthe limitation of success of multi-national parties in recentyears to Bosniacs.

While not resolving the complex topic of identity inBosnia, the book offers some valuable insights on cross-cutting traditions of tolerance and co-operation which werenot only denied by nationalists, but also by many Westernobservers who focused exclusively on the break-down ofco-existence, ignoring the rich tapestry of cross-community contacts and joint life for most of Bosnia’shistory.

The value of the book lies not only in an alternative viewon the destruction of Bosnia and—in consequence—ofthe flaws of the post-Dayton state, but also in highlightingsome of the moral dilemmas associated with post-conflictstate-building in general on how to accommodate demandsby political leaders advocating their groups (supposed)interests through the use of violence.

Florian BieberEuropean Centre for Minority Issues

Civil Resistance in Kosovo

Howard Clark,

(London: Pluto Press, 2000) 288pp. Biblio. Index.Hb.: £45.00; ISBN 0-7453-1574-7. Pb.: £14.99; ISBN

0-7453-1569-0.

The vast majority of the books, articles and monographspublished in the past year on Kosovo have concentratedon the province’s recent history. After short context-settinghistories, most quickly gallop on up to the late 90s and therise of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the mass displacementof the province’s Albanian majority, the NATO campaignand the establishment of the United Nations interimadministration in the aftermath of the war.

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Clark’s book is an exception in terms of time period andsubject matter. The author- a veteran peace activist whohas been involved for years in facilitating Serb-Albaniandialogue- focuses on the ten years of Albanian non-violentresistance preceding the conflict. It is a fascinating topicand sheds light upon an overlooked period of Kosovohistory. As bloody wars of secession were raging in otherparts of the former Yugoslavia, Clark describes howKosovo Albanians adopted a strategy of pacific opposition.They established a parallel political system under the noseof the Milosevic regime. With their own parliament,presidency and ministries the internationally unrecognisedRepublic of Kosova collected taxes, and effectively ranhealth and education services. At the same time, the authorargues that Kosovars were being individually, sectorallyand collectively empowered through their non-violentopposition. He examines actions –strikes, marches andexhibitions – and describes organisations – student unions,sports clubs, newspapers, that are often held up as beingemblematic of a strong and flourishing civil society.

Clark is no utopian. He pulls no punches in his criticismof Kosovo’s embryonic institutions. Arguing that thealternative political institutions often did not functionproperly and sometimes not at all, he lambastes Kosovarpoliticians for their failure to build on their institutionalbase and let them stagnate. He is also scathing of Westerndiplomacy. Assuming that no violence equalled noproblem, they ignored Kosovo throughout most of the1990s, leaving a problem to fester until its tragic eruptioninto violence.

In writing this book, Clark has ensured that a non-violentchapter of the province’s recent past is given dueimportance and not written out of history. Nevertheless,his book could have been much better. The writing couldhave been much tighter and the book better structured,especially when he talks about societal empowerment.There are, for example, too many itsy-bitsy sections ondisconnected events, making it difficult to join the dotsand come up with a big picture. Drawbacks aside, however,this is an extremely worthwhile book and a valuablecorrective to the perception that Kosovo’s history has beenperpetually violent.

Gordon PeakeSt. Antony’s College Oxford

Making Peace prevail. Preventingviolent conflict in Macedonia

Alice Ackermann

(New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000) 232pp.Biblio. Index. Pb.:$24.95, ISBN: 0-8156-0602-8.

Macedonia represents in many respects an unusual country.Since its independence in 1991, the small Balkan state

managed not to get involved in the Yugoslav war unleashedby the politics of nationalist hatred. Burdened with theeconomic legacy of communism, she had to cope withtwo Greek embargoes. Macedonian minorities in Bulgariaand Greece were denied their cultural rights and the useof the Macedonian language. The Kosovo crisis led to amassive influx of refugees; fears of destabilisation seemedreasonable since the country’s Albanian minority amountsto 23%. Despite these burdens Macedonia was capable ofkeeping internal peace. Moreover, her sound foreign policybased on the programme of ‘Europeanization of theBalkans’ and the continuous tight co-operation with EU,OSCE and UNO made her a stabilising factor in theBalkans. The crucial element of Macedonian politics,however, was the prevailing political will of the ethniccommunities’ leaders to implement measures ofaccommodation and co-operation. Macedonia thereforeis an almost perfect, but certainly a unique example ofpreventive diplomacy.

What does preventive diplomacy mean and how can wemake peace prevail? Ackermann offers an important andvaluable insight to the issue of ethnic conflicts. Herinvestigation is therefore recommended reading foreverybody interested in the Balkans specifically andinternational politics in general. The analysis of the Slovak-Hungarian, Rwandan and Russian-Estonian conflictsdemonstrates the importance of internationally supportedpreventive diplomacy at an early stage. Ackermann’sapproach to conflict resolution is two-dimensional:‘deliberate implementation of measures ...’ shall preventthe outbreak of violence at the early, nonescalatory stage,while measures such as rapprochement, reconciliation andinstitution-building aim at the prevention of conflictrenewal in the postconflict stage (p. 19f.). The detailedassessment of Macedonian conflict accommodation by thecommunities’ leaders offers the basis for the conflictprevention model (p.169f.). The model suggests concretepolicies and pragmatic measures to be implemented bythe actors of the four distinct levels (Top-leadership;leaders of ethnic groups; Third party actors – international/regional organisations; NGOs and other grassroots). Thecrucial factor, however, concerns primarily the top-leadership: the political will of the actors in charge remainsthe conditio sine qua non of successful conflict prevention.If this will is lacking at the top leadership level, what canbe done to foster its emergence in the light of the fact thatstate sovereignty is legitimised by Public InternationalLaw?

Josette BaerDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of Zurich, Switzerland


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The Middle East

Compromising Palestine: A Guide toFinal Status Negotiations

Aharon Klieman

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) 284 pp.Index. Pb.: £ 11.50; ISBN 0-231-11789-2

Aharon Klieman pursues two arguments in this book: Thefirst is that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have arrived ata crossroads where difficult decisions no longer can bepostponed. Ambiguities that may have been constructive,and even necessary, at earlier phases of the peace process,now stand in the way of progress. The second argument isthat any ‘final’ settlement needs to acknowledge the factthat the Israeli and Palestinian communities areinterconnected and deemed to continued coexistence, andtherefore dependence, within the confines of historicPalestine. Although physical and political separation,however painfully may have been established as theprinciple on which a settlement must be based, the twocommunities have so far failed to accept that the ‘facts onthe ground’ (geographic and demographic determinants)stand in the way of a clean cut partitionist settlementresulting in two ethnically homogenous and independentareas.

In addition to exposing the complexities involved inapplying a clear-cut partition principle, Klieman presentsan alternative guideline for future negotiations. Klieman’sapproach, ‘partition plus,’ is a softer version of partitioncombining political distinctiveness with elements ofintegration and coordination.

Not disputing that partition may be the only way out forthe Israelis and Palestinians, Klieman neverthelessexpresses the hope that rather than an irrevocable divorce,partition will turn out to be a transition phase, a trialseparation. After a (much needed) cooling-off period, andwhen the two communities have (re)gained a sense ofsecurity and self-confidence, they may want to reengagewith each other and engage on a project of joint custodyover this disputed land. As Klieman concludes, “Therecan be an end to the Israeli-Palestinian’ conflict. But notto the ongoing Arab-Jewish encounter”(p. 244).

Klieman’s book should be of interest to any student ofIsraeli-Palestinian relations. On this subject the reader mayfind that the Israeli perspective is subjected to a morenuanced scrutiny than the Palestinian (a fact alsoacknowledged – and regretted – by the author who takesmore care than most authors in revealing his own biases).But the book is also a valuable contribution to the moregeneral discussion of partition as a strategy for ethnicconflict resolution, a long discredited notion that in the1990s experienced something of a revival. Here Klieman’scontribution lies primarily in his demonstration that

partition rather than a strategy represents a continuum ofstrategies with varying degrees of integration andseparation.

Ann-Sofi Jakobsson HatayUppsala University, Department of Peace and ConflictResearch

The New Israel: Peacemaking andLiberalization

Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled (eds.)

(Oxford: Westview Press, 2000) 294pp. Index. HB;£44.95; ISBN 0-8133-3567-1

The Middle East peace process has generated a vastamount of literature since 1991. The focus, however, hasbeen on conflict resolution, negotiations and politics. Incontrast, this edited volume The New Israel: Peacemakingand Liberalization looks at Israeli history and peacemakingfrom the economic angle, analysing the link between theliberalisation of the Israeli economy since the mid-1980sand the effects of globalisation upon Israel’s decision to“explore the option of peace.” The main argument of thebook, which is well supported by the individualcontributions, is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflictremained at an impasse as it had been viewed solely insecurity terms, but became “solvable” when it wasreconceptualised in economic terms. Israel could onlycompete in the global market if Israeli businesses werefully integrated, and Israeli businesses would only everbe fully integrated once the Arab boycott had been liftedas a result of negotiations and peace agreements.

The book is divided into three parts. The first focuses onIsrael’s state-centred economy, the second onliberalisation, and the third, on the peace process. The mostinteresting aspect of the first part, which is a historicaldiscussion of labour relations between Arabs and Jews, isits contribution to the on-going Israeli historiographicaldebate. The second part of the book, while dealingpredominantly with the process of Israeli economicliberalisation, picks up on the split Arab-Jewish economytheme. For instance, Michael Shalev’s chapter shows thatliberalisation really only meant state contraction and thatthe split model could be upheld through the OccupiedTerritories which provided more markets and cheap labour.Indeed, he maintains that a radical restructuring of thelabour market only occurred in the early 1990s withglobalisation, the peace process, and the introduction offoreign, non-Arab, Gastarbeiter.

The last part of the book reinforces the overall argument,looking at the emerging independent businesses which areprofiting from and consequently sustaining the drive forpeace. Thus, The New Israel shows that economics iscapable of providing a different paradigm for Arab-Jewishrelations which is worth re-examining in light of recentpolitical difficulties.

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All together, this book is recommended to anyone with aninterest in the peace process, especially those looking fora different angle. It also is a treat for economic historiansand political economists. As a whole, it is well written,documented and argued, which, for an edited volume, isan achievement in itself.

Dr. Kirsten E. SchulzeInternational HistoryLondon School of Economics

The Difficult Road to Peace:Netanyahu, Israel and the Middle

East Peace Process

Neill Lochery

(Reading: Ithaca Press, 1999) 350pp. Biblio. Index.ISBN 0-86372-248-2.

This book analyses and chronicles the developments ofthe various tracks of the Middle East peace process, andin particular the Oslo accords, under the Likud governmentled by Binyamin Netanyahu between 1996 and 1998. Twomain themes are presented by the author. Firstly, it isargued that the difficulties that the peace process hasencountered under Netanyahu are not a matter of specificparty politics or a specific style of leadership and wouldhave also occurred under a Labour government. Secondly,it is argued that a number of internal restraints haveconsiderably influenced Netanyahu’s policy towards thepeace process. Internal restraints acquired increasedsalience as a result of changes in Israel’s electoral systemin 1996 aimed to enhance the power of the prime ministerthrough direct elections. It is argued that such changesmay have actually had the opposite effect as they resultedin a fragmentation of the Knesset with decline in supportfor both parties and the subsequent difficulty of managingan unruly government coalition.

The book is divided into five sections: Section I analyseschanges in the Israeli political system and how they haveproduced restraints on Netanyahu’s scope for action.Section II focuses on the Palestinian track of the peaceprocess and in particular security arrangements in the WestBank and Gaza strip, the question of Palestinian refugees,the final status of Jerusalem, and the economic dimensionof the process in terms of possible peace dividends for thePalestinian and the Israeli economies. Section III paysspecific attention to Israeli relations with the Arab statesand in particular to peace negotiations with Jordan andSyria as well as relations with Lebanon and Turkey. SectionIV analyses the role of external actors in the peace processwith specific emphasis on the United States. Finally,section V attempts to draw lessons from the Middle Eastprocess applicable to other areas of high conflict potentialand territorial dispute.

The arguments presented in this book are valuable becauseof the specific attention paid to domestic factors ininfluencing foreign policy making. The domestic level of

analysis has been very much dismissed by internationalrelations theory since neorealists such as Waltz havecharged foreign policy analyses adopting such an approachwith reductionism. However, much of current internationalrelations theory has had problems in explainingsatisfactorily the main sources of major post-Cold warchanges, which have undoubtedly occurred at the domesticlevel. Moreover, domestic factors are of particularimportance in explaining the difficulties encountered byboth Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders.

However, the causal argument linking the internalconstraints variable (influence of religious parties,coalition constraints, etc.) to the foreign policy variable(Netanyahu’s attitude and policies towards peace process)is rather weak. Moreover, the author states that there is ‘adirect relationship between the formation of Israeli policytoward the peace process and ... changes in Israel’s methodof electing its governments’ (p.xv). Such a relationship isfar from direct and self-explanatory. Netanyahu’sweakened position in the Knesset may have been the resultof variables not related to changes in the electoral systemand the strict system of proportionality adopted in theKnesset is already a major factor leading to fragmentation.Moreover, changes in policy towards the peace processunder Netanyahu could be imputed to factors other thanthe domestic level of constraint. By adopting a merespeculative view of what would have occurred under aLabour government, the author fails to convince the readerof the significance of the variables purported asexplanatory.

This book helps to understand one important aspect ofproblems with the implementation of the Oslo agreementsrelated to some constraints on Israeli policy making.Moreover, the final chapter represents an excellent (albeitsomehow rushed) effort to spell out crucial factors andmechanisms which may increase or decrease the chancesfor a successful diplomatic settlement of problematicterritorial issues. The sections dedicated to the advantagesof secret diplomacy; problems related to interim stages inagreements; role of external parties; and the importanceof peace dividends and reconstruction are particularlyinteresting and may constitute an excellent framework ofanalysis for future studies.

However, one major shortcoming of this work (perhapsbecause of the sources of primary and secondary materialemployed) is its over-sensitivity towards policy views andneeds of the Israeli government. The underlyingassumption throughout the book that the Oslo agreementscannot be fulfilled (p. 55, 58, 239); the use of the termJerusalem to indicate Israel (p. 218, 226) and the emphasison the United States as the exclusive mediator of theprocess (pp. 223-225) are some of the factors which throwdoubts on the objectivity of the work. This book shouldbe regarded more as an analysis or even a portrayal ofIsraeli foreign policy rather than a comprehensive viewof the possibilities for implementation of the Osloagreements.

Marina ArlatiIAS/UNU Alumni Association


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Transitions: Russians, Ethiopians,and Bedouins in Israel’s Negev Desert

Richard Isralowitz and JonathanFriedlander

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) 158pp. Hb.: £40.00; ISBN 184014 512 9.

The photography is the first thing that strikes one aboutthis book. Ron Kelly’s photographs draw one into the greatbarren expanses of Israel’s Negev desert, but they alsoshow that the desert is bristling with new development.Much of this development is connected with thegovernment-sponsored settlement of Russian Jews,Ethiopian Jews, and Bedouin. Transitions is about thissettlement program, and about how these groupsexperience life in the Israeli state.

The nine articles in this volume illuminate the subject fromvery different angles, and in very different styles, someacademic, some personal, but two overarching themesemerge. The first is the disjunction between what Israeligovernments intend for the Negev and what their policiesmake possible. It has been the policy of successivegovernments to encourage the economic development andpopulation of ‘peripheral’ areas such as the Negev. In the1950s ten ‘development towns’ were built in the desertfor immigrants. In the 1980s and early 1990s a secondwave of mass immigration took place. 40,000 EthiopianJews were airlifted to Israel from their drought-riddencountry, and 360,000 Russian Jews arrived from thecollapsing Soviet Union. Many of them were settled inthe Negev. But in order to establish a settled population itis not enough to build houses. People also need jobs,transport, education, health, and welfare services,otherwise they will be driven to leave.

The second theme of Transitions is that the experience ofEthiopians, Russians and Bedouins in the Negev is largelydetermined by how they are perceived, officially andunofficially, to fit into the Israeli State. The Bedouinexperience is dominated by the fact that, as Arabs, theyare treated as if they do not have a right to be there at all.The government resettlement program forces the Bedouinto live in specially designated, very poor, townships bymaking it illegal for them to live anywhere else. This causesgreat resentment. However, Ethiopian and Russianimmigrants may not feel they belong either, even thoughthey are Jews. Despite being a small nation with limitedresources, Israel is committed to a policy of unlimitedimmigration for Jews. Isralowitz and Abu Saad point outthat this is a source of social conflict. The poorer elementsof society, including the Bedouin, see the immigrants as athreat, as competition for jobs. The Ethiopian immigrantsalso have to contend with the racist attitudes of Russiansand even of Absorption bureaucrats. Moreover, asTransitions documents in words and, perhaps moreeloquently, in photographs, the immigrants’ cultural andethnic differences alone give rise to feelings of alienation.As one of them put it, ‘There we were Jews, and here weare Russians’.

Rose Hankey

Africa

Africa Since Independence

Colin Legum

(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UniversityPress, 1999) 106pp. Hb.: ISBN0-253-33588-4. Pb.: 0-

254-21334-7.

This is a skilful scholarly attempt to tackle a wide andcomplex topic such as Africa since Independence in a veryshort, condensed and readable book. Colin Legum analysesthe struggle for democratic governance and economicgrowth in the African continent in four main parts: thepost-colonial romantic period, the period ofdisillusionment, the period of realism and the period ofrenaissance. The evolving of the nation state in Africaduring the second half of the twentieth century was markedwith turmoil, corruption, wars and ethnicity, but Africa isno exception. Europe underwent similar predicamentsduring the Hundred Years’ War and the Napoleonicconquest. The bitterness of the American Civil War andattempts to reconsolidate the new state exceeded themiseries of episodic violence in the twentieth centuryAfrica. However, Legum points out two importantdifferences. First, the period of reconstruction in the Westwas a time of rapid economic growth, though partiallydependent on colonial natural resources. Second, Africais unique in the speed with which reconciliation occurs inthe aftermath of conflicts; Biafra and South Africa are casesin point.

Ethnicity is responsible for the eruption of many conflictsin the continent, yet, Legum rejects Western stereotypeview of Africa as a society of pre-modern tribesacrimoniously involved in continuous conflicts for merelytribal causes. In his opinion power struggle dominatedmajor conflicts and civil wars in the continent and thecontribution of regional and international factors toAfrica’s post-colonial wars was quite significant.

Legum concludes with three predictions for the future ofAfrica. First, the majority of African states will adoptdemocratic constitutions. Second, one half of the continentwill enjoy democratic governance and economic growthwhile the rest will remain under autocratic and corruptgovernments. Under the third scenario the existingdemocratic structures will have collapsed and economicgrowth will have returned to the 1960s’ level of negativegrowth. However, for Legum the only credible predictionis that by the year 2050 Africa will resemble the earlytwentieth century Europe: a range of states with differentlevels of stability, wealth and modernisation.

Mohamed Awad Osman PhDLondon School of Economics

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Voting for Democracy: WatershedElections in Contemporary

Anglophone Africa

John Daniel, Roger Southall, andMorris Szeftel

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) 284pp. Index. Bibl. Hb.:£40.00; ISBN 1-8552-1996-4.

Voting For Democracy explores the recent movementtoward democratization in Anglophone Africa throughexamination of recent “watershed” elections in sevenstates. Using elections for the Constituent assembly inNamibia in 1989 and the historic all-race election in SouthAfrica in 1994 as bookends, the volume looks at bothfailures and successes in democratic elections in the regionduring this five-year period.

Elections are a result, not a cause, of democracy, and thisvolume doesn’t attempt to argue otherwise. Nigeria’struncated democracy, and its aborted presidential electionin 1993, illustrate this. Indeed, one of the best chapters,Rok Ajulu’s examination of the 1992 multi-party electionin Kenya, examines the results of what could well beconsidered in isolation as a true democratic electionheralding a new sprit of pluralism. However, after winningthe election Moi reimposes the old order and continues togovern as an authoritarian. Indeed, the argument can bemade that winning a multi-party election creates the verylegitimacy that allows Moi to further consolidate hisauthority. As Moi demonstrates, democracy will not lastif political elites will work to undermine it.

Even elections which are relatively free and fair are meetwith justifiable suspicion. The 1993 election in Lesothoand the 1994 contest in Malawi were widely viewed byAfrican observers as true watershed events - the first freeelections in both states in over 30 years. Yet the results, asthe various authors report, tell a different story. Civicsocieties which lack concepts such as a loyal oppositionand a free press, and the desire for unity among contendingand mutually distrustful groups in a society, may wellundermine the results of any election, regardless of howfree and fair the actual electoral process was.

One important lesson for democracy in Africa may beascertained from the example in Roger Southall’s chapterconcerning Lesotho. The authoritarian regimes which hadgoverned Lesotho had been able to do so because of thesupport of the white-minority government in South Africa.When this support vanished, so largely did the ability ofthe authoritarian state to maintain itself. This might be animportant lesson in the recent elections in Anglophone

Africa covered here. Either explicitly or implicitlyauthoritarians support authoritarians. While the electionsin the region may be seriously flawed, or the aftermathquestionable, the fact that they are occurring in closetemporal proximity may be important. While it is toosimplistic to say that democracies create democracies, likeauthoritarianism democracies do offer at least implicitsupport for the pluralist alternative. Perhaps the verynumber of states involved can create a “critical mass” ofat least avowedly pluralist states which could facilitate atrue systemic shift in the region. While the initial resultsof any movement in the direction of democracy may beimperfect, or even seriously flawed, it may shift states inthe region from the historical path of authoritarianism toone of greater pluralism.

One criticism that may be levelled at this otherwiseambitious work is the very use of the adjective “watershed”in the title to characterize the elections studied. As theauthors themselves note, at best the elections covered arebut a first step toward true democratic reform. As currentevents in states covered here demonstrate, evenconstitutional changes which allow for multiparty electionsmay not significantly contribute to long-term democraticreform against entrenched oligarchs with a vested interestin authoritarianism. It is perhaps still too early to determineif the elections covered here are true watershed events,constituting “founding elections” in a sense that theyredefine political norms in these states, or if elites willcontinue to undermine pluralist democratic ideals in favorof narrow self-interest. Chudi Okoye, in his chapter onNigeria sums up the problem of democratic transition - abroad-based elite pact on issues of power sharing, thedistribution of natural resources, and, indeed, the modalityof the transition itself, is a necessary pre-condition for anysustainable democratization. (p. 181) This is true not justfor Nigeria, but all states attempting the difficult transitionfrom authoritarianism to pluralism.

This volume is an excellent source in the far too oftenoverlooked topic of democratization in Africa. While muchhas been written in recent years concerningdemocratization in Latin America, the process in Africahas been largely ignored Utilizing both general theoreticaland specific case-studies, it offers both introductory andmore experienced African scholars insight into this difficultprocess. The elections covered here are not only valuablein their own right, but will serve as an important startingpoint for further comparative research in African electionsand democratic transitions.

David CarwellDepartment of Political ScienceEastern Illinois University


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The United States

International Politics and CivilRights Policies in the United States,

1941-1960

Azza Salama Layton

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 217pp.Index. Hb.: £12.95; ISBN 0-521-66976-6. Hb.: £35.00;

ISBN 0-521-66002-5.

Recent protests at WTO and IMF meetings highlight atrend that few scholars have focused upon in the pastdecade, that is, the linkages between international politicsand protest movements. Layton synthesizes these twodisparate theoretical perspectives to illuminate US racepolitics.

Layton offers precise mechanisms which link theinternational and domestic political spheres. She developsan international dimension to the concept of “opportunitystructure,” a core component of social movement theory.Anti-communist ideology during the Cold War, forexample, framed the discourse of the US debate aboutracism. Consequently, some policies became moredesirable — or costly — as weapons in the competitionbetween the US and Soviet Union over newly-independentstates in the Third World, the leaders of which cared aboutracial discrimination, both in principle and because itaffected them personally during visits to the US.

After laying out the theoretical reasons for thinking thatthe Cold War might influence the civil rights agenda,Layton systemically addresses alternative explanations tohighlight the gaps in the civil rights story that can best beexplained by taking international context seriously. Firstshe demonstrates that black activists in the US sawthemselves as operating in an international arena, not solelya domestic one. Leaders went to the United Nations, forexample, to raise the question of racial discrimination,linking US policies and practices to broader critiques ofcolonialism. That is, they used this discursive frameworkto make transnational allies and to generate internationalpressures on the US government.

The next piece of her puzzle revolves around whether USpolicy-makers took these pressures into account, and ifso, the extent to which they changed policy as a result.Here Layton deftly separates the question of effect intocomponent parts that can be distinguished from thepredictions of alternative explanations. For example, sheuses State Department correspondence to illustrate boththat the federal government was aware of international

criticisms and that various branches of the governmentheeded these concerns. Furthermore, she disaggregates UScivil rights policy to demonstrate that internationalpressures motivated changes in only some areas — thosemost visible to outside critics — but not necessarily theones that domestic critics cared about the most.

The result of this superb research design and archival workis an important reinterpretation of the US civil rights story.Scholars interested in social movements, internationalrelations, US politics, race relations and human rightsshould read this excellent book.

Audie KlotzDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of Illinois at Chicago

Divided Arsenal: Race and theAmerican State during World War II

Daniel Kryder

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 301pp.Index. Hb.: £19.95; ISBN 0-521-59338-7.

Daniel Kryder’s Divided Arsenal: Race and the AmericanState During World War II is a careful examination of racepolicies during WWII. While substantial attention hasbeen given to race relations during the periods of“Reconstruction” and the Civil Rights Movement of the1950s and 60s in the United States, scant attention hasbeen given to race relations during WWII. This bookexplains how the crisis of World War II, and federaladministrators’ efficiency and electoral concerns resultingfrom this crisis, created attitudes toward reform that werenot simply reducible to white racism or whiteegalitarianism. Kryder systematically analyzes the strictpolicies of racial segregation in the armed forces thataggravated racial tensions, the black migration from thesouth, the racial climate on southern farms, and thedevelopment of the Fair Employment PracticesCommission (FEPC). Moreover, while interpreting themotivations of the “central state,” he integrates a thoroughand refreshing analysis of war time race relations into adiscussion about presidential politics.

According to Kryder, the war’s immediate effect waspolitical and economic rather than ideological. A reelectionimperative motivated President Franklin D. Roosevelt toconfront the race problem. In addition, he was inspired toinitiate race reforms to stop blacks from spontaneouslydisrupting production, hence undermining the efficiency

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of the war mobilization efforts. Kryder details howRoosevelt’s “conflict-adjustment” measures were largelysymbolic and not substantive.

In Chapter One, Kryder offers the reader an insightfulcritique of Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 classic book on racerelations, An American Dilemma. Myrdal predicted themultiple forces of WWII would lead to black liberationand equality. Contrary to this hypothesis, Kryder statesthat Myrdal underestimated the “chameleonlike”adaptability of racist attitudes in the U.S.

Throughout the book, the author outlines how Rooseveltwas consistently forced into initiating race reforms. Hewas forced to sign Executive Order 8802, which outlaweddiscrimination in the federal civil service and in defensecontracting, by A. Phillip Randolph’s proposed March onWashington. He was pressured by black leaders to createthe FEPC.

The author’s meticulous effort in supporting his discussionwith numerous primary references represents soundscholarship. Throughout the book, Kryder supports hishypotheses. His narrative is insightful and informative.He clearly adds something seminal and substantive to theliterature on race relations. This effort departs from manyworks on the subject because of the author’s analyticresearch methods. In fact, the reader gains a substantialamount of knowledge on the issue by reading the author’sreference notes. The content of this book is clear, engaging,and comprehensive.

Renford ReeseCal Poly Pomona University

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