Rogers Brubaker - Ethnicity without Groups

The weaknesses of common and all accepted approaches towards study of ethnicity in general and ethnic conflict in particular is analyzed by Rogers Brubaker in his work entitled Ethnicity without Groups.[1] Pointing to the great deal of literature dedicated to such concepts as class, identity, gender, ethnicity, or multiculturalism, where concept group is implicated, for Brubaker the major problem lays in the treatment of the central concept group – being taken as granted in the study of ethnicity and ethnic conflict in particular. Alternatively he suggests the term groupism for denoting the tendency of treating ethnic groups as chief protagonists of social conflict and fundamental units of social analysis, being accepted as substantial entities to which interests and agency can be attributed. Thus, ethnic groups should not be considered as internally homogenous, externally bounded groups, perceived as unitary collective actors with common purposes.
For Brubaker groupness is something that happens, or not happens, thus the line of analysis should include the analysis of those political, social, cultural and psychological processes through which categories get invested with groupness, i.e. highlighting those circumstances determining the success or failure of crystallization of group feelings. The process should be looked from the two angels – from above and from below – as to grasp how categories are proposed, propagated, imposed, institutionalized, discursively articulated, organizationally entrenched and generally embedded in multifarious forms of “governmentality”.[2]
In existing scientific literature around the problem of ethnicity and nationalism, especially in the post-Soviet space, the major problems stem from the absence of tradition and non-existence of clear demarcation between various terms and concepts, quiet often using them interchangeably, intentionally (mostly the case when scientists serve to be the major ideologies and intellectual supporters of political entrepreneurs) or unintentionally (being the result of the Soviet time norms of approaches towards ethnicity, leaving its stamp on several generations of scientists). Although various theories (rational choice, game theory, cognitive theory, network theory, etc) challenge the tendency to address ethnic groups as real, substantial things-in-the-world in line with various constructivist approaches, treating ethnic groups as constructed contingent and fluctuating.
We could conclude, for Brubaker, the major problem lays in automatic equalization of ethnicity, and ethnic conflict in particular, with ethnic groups in general settings, be it academic discussions over the subject or different sort of political discourses, suggesting not to “Adopt categories of ethnopolitical practice as our categories of social analysis”[3]. Reification itself, to be precise, reifying groups, is what ethnopolitical entrepreneurs are doing. So, for Brubaker not the process itself, but those conditions and circumstances, under which this practice of reification, i.e. crystallization of group feelings can work, matters more for analyses.
In line with his theory Brubaker suggests to look at agencies – various kinds of organizations and their empowered and authorized incumbents (ministries, offices, law enforcement agencies, armed forces units; terrorist groups, paramilitary organizations, armed bands, loosely structured gangs, political parties, ethnic associations, social movement organizations) being organizations and agencies of and for particular ethnic groups – more closely, which, according to his opinion, are major protagonists of ethnic conflicts, inspiriting most ethnic violence, i.e. differentiate between interests of ethnic groups and their representing organizations. The roles of organizations and individuals in propagating and flaming ethnic conflicts should be clearly differentiated, as conflict can be labeled as ethnic through actions of perpetrators, victims, politicians, officials, journalists, researchers, etc, as they not only interpret the violence, but constitute it as ethnic.[4] In this line, Ronald Grigor Suny notes: “The actions and understandings of ethnic masses have been equated or confused with the activities of their leaders, the writings of their intellectuals, or votes of bodies that claim to represent them”.[5]
Concluding, we should consider Brubaker’s suggestions could be valid only for particular cases, as containing high probability of misleading our analyses while trying to approach though the same prism divergent occurrences influenced by different historical circumstances.
[1]Rogers Brubaker. Ethnicity without Groups. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004).
[2]Ibid.
[3]Rogers Brubaker. Ethnicity without Groups. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004).
[4]Ibid.
[5]Ronald G. Suny. The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1993), 11.