Loading...
Nationalities and conflicting ethnicity in post-communist russia
Tishkov, Valery
Tishkov, Valery
Author(s)
Author(s) (Additional)
Illustrator(s)
Producer(s)
Contributor(s)
Contributor(s) (Other)
Editor(s)
Advisor(s)
Contact(s)
Data Collector(s)
Keywords
Collections
Files
Loading...
DP50.pdf
Adobe PDF, 360.32 KB
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Online Access
Abstract
"Rising nationalism and ongoing conflicts in post-Communist countries have exposed a quite common tendency: many societal institutions, in the midst of deep social change and radical reform, develop a manifestly ethnic form. In spite of significant intellectual efforts to understand why this is so, the results are disheartening. The dynamics and forms of conflicting ethnicity have become one of the dominant themes of discussion for modern social scientists and political practitioners (Stavenhagen, 1990; Rupersinghe et al., 1992; Moynihan, 1993). In Russia, this topic is at the centre of academic and public discourse. Society, its policy makers and its governors increasingly seek — instead of ideological invocations — “objective” analysis as the basis for adopting decisions, as well as “practical advice” for designing policy and carrying out public administration. On the other hand, scholars, though liberated from ideological dictates, continue to demonstrate a “detachment from life”, disseminating mutually exclusive opinions with weak prognostic power. In spite of the lack of scholarly accord on the issue, it should be possible to avoid relativistic inertia in discussing the question of ethnicity and conflict governance. At least general mechanisms and rules can be traced from the efforts of policy makers, public forces, military personnel, and international agencies which have faced this challenge in recent decades. This is not a novel idea in many respects, yet concrete principles and approaches have rarely been formulated in the literature or in public statements. Scholars, experts and politicians dealing with contemporary nationalism and conflicts express growing concerns about the destructive effects of complex discussions between intellectuals, political entrepreneurs and the lay public around ethnic myths, sentiments and demands. We can observe more and more attempts to avoid the raising (in Bakhtin’s term) of everyday dogmatism and irrational mythmaking to a level of political language and legal norms. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, nevertheless declared in An Agenda for Peace that as “fierce new assertions of nationalism and sovereignty spring up...the cohesion of states is threatened by brutal ethnic, religious or linguistic strife”. He made the important conclusion that “the time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty, however, has passed; its theory was never matched by reality”, and “if every ethnic, religious or linguistic group claimed statehood, there would be no limit to fragmentation, and peace, security and economic well-being for all would become ever more difficult to achieve” (Boutros-Ghali, 1992)."(pg 1)
Note(s)
Topic
Type
Book
Date
1994-03
Identifier
ISBN
DOI
Copyright/License
With permission of the license/copyright holder