Predicting intercultural conflict

Identities are expressed and conflict at many geospatial and political levels – personal, regional, national, international. It is fascinating how each of these is interrelated, and three papers that have come out in recent weeks look at aspects of this. Ornit Shani asks the question of how “India’s nationhood holds together” in Modern Asian Studies. Focusing on Muslims as a widely excluded minority in India, she finds that despite this exclusion they still have strong national identity and participation. This she attributes to the fact that India allows different groups to inhabit a range of citizenship roles, allowing social conflicts to be absorbed. She describes four main kinds of citizenship: liberal, republican, ethno-nationalist and non-statist. Based around the views of Gandhi, non-statist citizenship contains the “… notion of membership of the state in the society, or a desire for a minimal interaction with the state, in order to protect individuals and groups”. Shani’s contention is that the ability of the State over time to allow all of these kinds of citizenship to exist to some extent has been a significant factor in how India has ‘held its nationhood together’.

Gitika Commuri takes the interplay of different identities up to the next level and looks at how they have influenced Indian foreign policy in regard to Pakistan, in the Journal of South Asian Development. She compares the secular National Front, Congress and United Front governments of 1990-1997 with the ethno-nationalist, BJP from 1998 to 2003, to see whether there was any difference in India’s security and foreign policy regarding Pakistan. While one might have expected the Hindu chauvinist, pro-communal conflict BJP to have increased the level of conflict with Pakistan, Commuri finds that this is not what occurred, and that while there was an increase in the aggressiveness of interaction, there was also an increase of efforts to cooperate at many levels. It is an interesting paper that highlights the fact that the behaviour of a particular group is not always linked to it’s most outward expression of identity, and that both may change while it pursues its most essential interests. This is one reason that I intend to read a lot of De Mesquita soon.

In the third paper, this time in International Affairs, Barry Buzan asks how important a shared identity is at the highest level, such that international society itself is able to function relatively stably. Where Commuri found that cultural/religious identity did not always determine a state’s foreign policy, so Buzan believes that cultural differences do not threaten international stability as long as there is a socio-political structure in place that allows states to pursue their essential interests, such as security and trade. All very interesting stuff.

Published: 1.24.10 / 10pm
Tags: , ,