Ethnic Nationalism and Subaltern Political Process: Exploring Autonomous Democratic Action in Kashmir

Abstract. This article argues that the emergence and development of subaltern political process is a significant conflict dynamic found in the escalation of ethnic nationalist movements. These ethnie‐defined modes of political participation are in turn an expression of the autonomous nature of ethnic nationalism, but occur ‘underneath’ and often antecedent to the organised violence and militancy which distracts most analyses of these conflicts. The article discusses this process of insurgent political mobilisation as a response to the structural paralysis of the post‐colonial state, using the ethnic nationalist conflict in Indian Jammu and Kashmir as the central case study. In its discussion of this case, the article seeks to argue that the presence of such subaltern political process provides additional empirical evidence of the autonomous nature of ethnic nationalism, and its capacity to carve out alternative options for democratic action and popular participation.     

Commoditizing the safari and making space for conflict: Place,identity and parks in East Africa

Increased resource scarcity, the social construction of nature, the disintegration of moral economy and associated policy shifts are often cited as the main drivers of resource conflicts in East Africa. Research in geography, anthropology and rural sociology has unveiled how common explanations of resource conflicts overlook multi-scalar political, economic, social, cultural and environmental tensions. The purpose of this study is to provide more nuanced explanations of resource conflicts by incorporating three disparate but related threads of literature. Using literatures on the commodification of nature, multi-stranded notions of identity and geographical conceptualizations of ‘place’, I demonstrate how three transformational moments structure and propagate conflicts between herders and protected area managers around a national park in Kenya. I argue that the rise of a commoditized form of nature tourism coupled with idealized notions of ‘nature’ and ‘wilderness’ have altered the micro-geography of interaction between herders and protected area managers. These altered geographies of interaction have diluted the shared history and traditional relations of reciprocity, created new social milieux, and lead to the creation of binary identities among herders and protected area managers. The enforcement of these binary identities culminates in conflict.     

Contested Sources of Authority: Re‐claiming State Sovereignty by Formalizing Traditional Authority in Mozambique

In Mozambique, the current legal framework institutionalizes a rural–urban differentiation of local governance, allowing for elected representation in thirty‐three urban settings and the recognition of ‘community authorities’ in rural areas. This article deals with the latter by exploring the implementation of Decree 15/2000, which is the first legislation in post‐colonial Mozambique to formalize ‘traditional authority’. Views of traditional authority as either a ‘genuine’ African form of authority legitimized by traditional beliefs and practices, or as a form of power ‘corrupted’ by colonial rule, are inadequate for understanding the current situation. In formerly war‐torn Sussundenga District, kin‐based authorities drew on elements from ‘traditional’ and ‘state‐administrative’ domains of authority in order to be recognized. Varied definitions of tradition came to justify leadership, but the content on which legitimization was based defies any generalized Weberian dichotomy between traditional and modern/state types of office. Different sources of legitimacy sometimes foregrounded administrative needs and at other times maintained what became defined as traditional.     

China’s Rangelands under Stress: A Comparative Study of Pasture Commons in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

China’s economic reforms have exacerbated the problems of over‐grazing and desertification in the country’s pastoral areas. In order to deal with rangeland degradation, the Chinese government has resorted to nationalization, or semi‐privatization. Since the implementation of rangeland policy has proved very difficult, however, experiments with alternative rangeland tenure systems merit our attention. In Ningxia, in northwest China, local attempts have been undertaken to establish communal range management systems with the village as the basic unit of use and control. Some of these management regimes are under severe stress, due to large‐scale digging for medicinal herbs in the grasslands. This digging has resulted in serious conflicts between Han and Hui Muslim Chinese, during which several farmers have been killed. It is against this backdrop that this article explores the institutional dynamics of range management in two different villages.     

Social Capital and Post‐Conflict Reconstruction in Burundi: The Limits of Community‐based Reconstruction

Using an examination of three NGO interventions in post‐conflict Burundi, this article questions community‐based reconstruction as a mechanism to rebuild social capital after conflicts, particularly when direct livelihood support is provided. The authors demonstrate a general shortcoming of the methodology employed in community‐based development (CBD), namely its focus on ‘technical procedural design’, which results in what may be termed ‘supply‐driven demand‐driven’ reconstruction. The findings suggest the need for a political economy perspective on social capital, which acknowledges that the effects on social capital are determined by the type of economic resource CBD gives access to. Through the use of a resource typology, the case studies show that the CBD methodology and the potential effects on social capital differ when applied to public and non‐strategic versus private and strategic resources. This has particular consequences for post‐conflict situations. A generalized application of CBD methodology to post‐conflict reconstruction programmes fails to take adequate account of the nature of the interventions and the challenges posed by the particular post‐conflict setting. The article therefore questions the current popular ‘social engineering’ approach to post‐conflict reconstruction.     

Dilemmas of Counter‐Mapping Community Resources in Tanzania

Recent work has celebrated the political potential of ‘counter‐mapping’, that is, mapping against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals. This article briefly reviews the counter‐mapping literature, and compares four counter‐mapping projects from Maasai areas in Tanzania to explore some potential pitfalls in such efforts. The cases, which involve community‐based initiatives led by a church‐based NGO, ecotourism companies, the Tanzanian National Parks Authority, and grassroots pastoralist rights advocacy groups, illustrate the broad range of activities grouped under the heading of counter‐mapping. They also present a series of political dilemmas that are typical of many counter‐mapping efforts: conflicts inherent in conservation efforts involving territorialization, privatization, integration and indigenization; problems associated with the theory and practice of ‘community‐level’ political engagement; the need to combine mapping efforts with broader legal and political strategies; and critical questions involving the agency of ‘external’ actors such as conservation and development donors, the state and private business interests.     

Slum Wars of the 21st Century: Gangs,Mano Dura and the New Urban Geography of Conflict in Central America

The political economy of violence in Central America is widely perceived as having undergone a critical shift during the past two decades, often pithily summarized as a movement from ‘political’ to ‘social’ violence. Although such an analysis is plausible, it also offers a depoliticized vision of the contemporary Central American panorama of violence. Basing itself principally on the example of Nicaragua, the country in the region that is historically perhaps most paradigmatically associated with violence, this article offers an alternative interpretation of the changes that the regional landscape of violence has undergone. It suggests that these are better understood as a movement from ‘peasant wars of the twentieth century’ ( Wolf, 1969 ) to ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ ( Beall, 2006 ), thereby highlighting how present‐day urban violence can in many ways be seen as representing a structural continuation of past political conflicts, albeit in new spatial contexts. At the same time, however, there are certain key differences between past and present violence, as a result of which contemporary conflict has intensified. This is most visible in relation to the changing forms of urban spatial organization in Central American cities, the heavy‐handed mano dura response to gangs by governments, and the dystopian evolutionary trajectory of gangs. Taken together, these processes point to a critical shift in the balance of power between rich and poor in the region, as the new ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ are increasingly giving way to more circumscribed ‘slum wars’ that effectively signal the defeat of the poor.     

Partition,consociation, border‐crossing: some lessons from the national conflict in Ireland/Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT. Outlining Ireland's long history of ethno‐national conflict, and the recent protracted ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland, contextualises a critique of the problems underlying such conflicts, and the difficulties in transforming externally imposed conflict management into self‐sustaining conflict resolution. It is argued that the problems and difficulties are deeply rooted in a thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common denominator of territoriality, and the nub of the problem is the ‘double paradox’ of democracy's undemocratic origins in the present. Territoriality, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it can grossly oversimplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders and especially where territory is contested, thereby reinforcing other distorting simplifications typically found in ethno‐national conflicts. In consequence, radical remedies are needed if the problems are to be overcome. Making ethno‐national peace paradoxically calls for more creative border‐crossing conflicts around other issues.     

Place,identity and social conflict in post-industrial England: cases from South Lincolnshire in the 1980s

ABSTRACT

This article examines a case of social conflict in an overlooked corner of England (Lincolnshire) in the late 1980s when self-described ‘local’ people opposed private housing developments and the migration of ‘southerners’, ‘townies’ and ‘commuters’ into their towns and villages. Protestors lamented change and disliked newcomers. This was a reaction to the arrival of affluent, ‘post-industrial’ workers on the back of a booming service sector. They personified a series of complex, interconnected socioeconomic and cultural changes which disrupted patterns of life rooted in disappearing productive industries and destabilised communities amidst factory closures, agricultural mechanisation, job losses and now suburbanisation. This affected meanings ascribed to places and introduced hierarchies and conflicts structured around Britain’s transition towards a service economy. Opposition was expressed through nostalgia, conservationism, inverse snobbery, anti-metropolitanism, attachment to ‘local’ identities, and concerns about declining independence, community and power. This paper argues that these protests demonstrate the emergence of new ideas about social relations, difference and distinction in post-industrial England. The findings also highlight feelings which would slowly seep into a new, reactionary politics foreshadowing the way that many towns and rural areas (including Lincolnshire) embraced a new political right in the first decades of the next millennium.     

Property Rights and the Environment in Pastoral China: Evidence from the Field

It is widely perceived that the degradation of China’s rangelands has accelerated since the introduction of rural reforms in the late 1970s. The popular explanation for this phenomenon has been that a ‘tragedy of the commons’ exists, as privately‐owned livestock are being grazed on ‘common’ land. Since the passing of the Rangeland Law in 1985, Chinese pastoral tenure policy has emphasized the establishment of individual household tenure as a necessary condition for improving incentives for sustainable rangeland management. Yet household tenure has yet to be effectively established in many pastoral regions. The first objective of this article is to describe pastoral tenure arrangements in northern Xinjiang‐Uygur Autonomous Region. Its second objective is to explain pastoral tenure arrangements, particularly the observed persistence of collective action. It is argued that there is no ‘tragedy of the commons’ and that it is characteristics of rangeland resources and the social environment that give rise to the particular types of institutional arrangements found.     

Maritime territorialisation as performance of sovereignty and nationhood in the South China Sea

The South China Sea (SCS) is a conflict‐ridden international arena of rivalry between China, the USA, India, and the other ASEAN countries over sovereignty, resources and security. In this geopolitical clash China is the dominant force and Vietnam its main challenger. While most analysts assume that the various claims to the mostly uninhabited islands are motivated by the presence of submarine mineral resources, the conflicts evoke strong nationalist feelings in Vietnam and China, fuelled by narratives of the historical presence of fisheries and navies. By analysing the tension between complex territorial claims, new technologies and forms of knowledge applied by these states to delineate their material borders on the sea and vernacular notions of social space, this paper explores how sovereignty and nationality is enacted on a day‐to‐day basis. Thus, I argue that maritime territorialisation is a paradox of treating the sea as ‘land’ produced by the performance of a socially constructed image of the state geo‐body capitalising on strong nationalistic sentiments in China and Vietnam.     

‘Participatory consociationalism? No,but South Tyrol's Autonomy Convention is evidence that power‐sharing can transform conflicts’

South Tyrol is an autonomous, predominantly German‐speaking province in Italy, and one of the most successful cases of power‐sharing in the world. Nevertheless, the Province recently conducted a participatory‐democratic process known as the ‘Autonomy Convention’ to debate and draft a proposal for revising the 1972 Autonomy Statute. It is the first such process with the stated intent of amending a power‐sharing arrangement, and our research questions are whether this represents a new type of consociational negotiation, and what made it possible. The answer to the first question is ‘no’, and the Convention is best seen as a ‘participatory‐ish consultation’ which had no formal power. But the problems that it faced, and the fact that it occurred at all, are evidence of consociational democracy's potential to transform conflicts. The Convention, we argue, is the result of ‘normal’, not ‘ethnic’ politics, and two generations of successful power‐sharing made that possible by desecuritising the relationship between South Tyrol's three official linguistic groups.     

Political tourism in the Israeli‐Palestinian space (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

With the violent clashes that took place in May 2010 during the attempt by the Free Gaza movement flotilla to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the remarkable strength of pro‐Palestinian networks became globally apparent. Drawing on an ethnography of political activism in the Israeli‐Palestinian space, we suggest that the striking visibility of these networks does not exclusively derive from the prominence of the Israeli‐Palestinian conflicts, but is also a consequence of the activists’ ability to produce innovative forms of sociality. However, some of the approaches taken can exist in problematic relation to the experiences of people who live with the conflict. In this context, the issue is not so much the precise relationships between indigenous ‘truths’ in Palestine and their foreign representations, but the way in which encounters redefine the conflicts that activist networks seek to represent.     

Respacing for Peace? Resistance to Integration and the Ontopolitics of Rural Planning in Post‐War Burundi

This article investigates the politics and social impact of post‐war ‘respacing for peace’ strategies in Burundi from within a set of contested spatial arrangements — or rather, post‐war socio‐spatial experiments — including peace villages, IDP site clearances and land sharing. The author takes a critical look at these reconfigurations, and the resistances and manipulations that result when people (or their remains) are moved or placed in the name of coexistence, integration and sharing after the war. In this way, the article contributes to a post‐conflict planning literature that is mostly concerned with overcoming segregation and cleansing through integration, by exploring some of the complexities and problems that can arise with unquestioned embrace of the latter. It shows that a very particular and problematic logic of ethnic coexistence and physical integration drives post‐war respacing in Burundi and that people resist it with strategies in both physical and reflexive space. Proceeding through a set of paradoxes — such as the refusal to return and staying put, or re‐emigration as a response to settling — the article explores how and why respacing‐for‐peace might produce, or fail to prevent, the opposite outcome: community conflict, social tension and segregation.     

Citizenship at war: Passports and nationality in the 2008 Russian‐Georgian conflict (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

By analyzing the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, this paper stretches the limits of the anthropology of war and citizenship. Trying to overcome anthropologists' usual unease about commenting on ‘big topics’, I examine citizenship policies ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ that potentially lead to conflict and war. Special attention is paid to the role of nationality as a crucial feature of post‐Soviet citizenship, and to citizenship as an effective means of neo‐imperial expansion. In my conclusion, I contextualize my findings within anthropological debates about citizenship and argue that the recent stress on rights and entitlements needs to be balanced by an analysis of the repressive dimensions of citizenship regimes.     

Shaping childhood risk in post‐conflict rural Northern Ireland

The realities of the ethno‐sectarian conflict have dominated the analysis of social problems within the context of Northern Ireland (NI). As a result of this, issues such as non‐conflict related childhood risk have received less attention than in the remainder of the UK. However, with the rapidly changing agenda of the Peace Process there is now the momentum to take a broader approach to examining Northern Irish society. This paper examines children's own experiences of growing up in rural NI and explores their own and adults' perceptions of the risks that they encounter and the resulting constraints placed on children's activity outside the home. It is evident that the legacy and reproduction of ethno‐sectarian conflict still influences notions of fear and mistrust of ‘an ethno‐sectarian other’. However, as shown within this paper these fears run in parallel with other fears that are constructed around concerns over ‘everyday’ risks that are evident in the range of outdoor play practices reported by the children involved in the study.     

Transitional Justice and Political Economies of Survival in Post‐conflict Northern Uganda

This article explores the interplay between transitional justice and ‘everyday’ political economies of survival in post‐conflict Acholiland, northern Uganda. It advances two main arguments. First, that transitional justice — as part and parcel of conventional liberal peacebuilding packages — promotes a repertoire of normatively driven policies that have little bearing on lived realities of social accountability in post‐conflict settings. Second, that in transcending the epistemological and ontological boundaries of transitional justice and using concepts developed in the critical peacebuilding literature — the ‘everyday’ and ‘hybridity’ — a nuanced understanding of this dissonance emerges. Based on extensive fieldwork in Acholiland in the period 2012–14, using a range of qualitative research methods, the author examines the means through which people negotiate social and moral order in the context of post‐conflict life and analyses the tensions between these forms of ‘everyday’ activity and current transitional justice policy and programming in the region.     

Populism and nationalism

Few social science categories have been more heatedly contested in recent years than ‘populism’. One focus of debate concerns the relation between populism and nationalism. Criticising the tendency to conflate populism and nationalism, De Cleen and Stavrakakis argue for a sharp conceptual distinction between the two. They situate populist discourse on a vertical, and nationalist discourse on a horizontal axis. I argue that this strict conceptual separation cannot capture the productive ambiguity of populist appeals to ‘the people’, evoking at once plebs, sovereign demos and bounded community. The frame of reference for populist discourse is most fruitfully understood as a two‐dimensional space, at once a space of inequality and a space of difference. Vertical opposition to those on top (and often those on the bottom) and horizontal opposition to those outside are tightly interwoven, generally in such a way that economic, political and cultural elites are represented as being ‘outside’ as well as ‘on top’. The ambiguity and two‐dimensionality of appeals to ‘the people’ do not result from the conflation of populism and nationalism; they are a constitutive feature of populism itself, a practical resource that can be exploited in constructing political identities and defining lines of political opposition and conflict.