Description
Book SynopsisMost research on the effect of ethnicity on economic and political outcomes is driven by the primordialist assumption that ethnic identities are fixed. But constructivist research across the social sciences and humanities tells us that ethnic identities change over time, and are often a product of the very political and economic phenomena that they are used to explain. Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics is a first cut at rebuilding theories of the relationship between ethnicity, politics and economics on a fortified constructivist foundation. It proposes a new conceptual framework for thinking about ethnic identity. It uses this framework to synthesize constructivist arguments into a set of propositions about how and why ethnic identities change. It translates this framework - and the propositions derived from it -- into a new, combinatorial language. And it employs these conceptual, constructivist, and combinatorial tools to theorize about the relationship between ethnicity,
Trade ReviewGathering resourceful and innovative scholars, Kanchan Chandra has steered the creation of rich analytical essays-not least her own!-that confront the often surprising mutability of ethnic identity. This resonant volume advances fundamental scholarship by fusing a constructivist turn with the development of testable, theoretically-grounded, propositions focusing on mechanisms of transformation and their implications for essential human relations. * Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University *
This is an impressively sustained contribution towards a rigorously constructivist theory of politicized ethnicity. Kanchan Chandra and her collaborators develop a lucid analytical language and set of models to illuminate the ways in which ethnic identities change in response to political and economic dynamics. * Rogers Brubaker, Professor of Sociology and UCLA Foundation Chair at the University of California, Los Angeles *
Usually, essential concepts such as 'constructivism,' 'ethnic identity,' or 'state capacity' are understood to be irreducibly fuzzy in definition and idiosyncratic in use. No longer, now that we can read the rigorous and compelling Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics. Best of all, Kanchan Chandra provides hope. States can be effective democracies with, or even because of, ethnic heterogeneity if the institutions and practices are appropriately constituted. That is a message of deep importance. * Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University *
Chandra has done the public service of sorting through the loose and multiple ways that the term ethnicity is used, offering her own very rigorous definition and systematic method of operationalizing the concept. She places her bets on a methodologically individualist approach, whereby individuals mix and match identity-related attributes into different identity packages, depending on circumstances and incentives. Some constructivists will disagree with her choices, but few will deny that she has thought of every angle, issue, and objection, pursuing the logic of her own approach and alternatives vastly more carefully that has heretofore been the case in academic usage, let alone public discourse. * Jack Snyder, Belfer Professor of International Relations, Columbia University *
Table of Contents1. Introduction ; Kanchan Chandra ; Part 1: Concepts ; 2. What is Ethnic Identity: A Minimalist Definition. ; Kanchan Chandra ; 3. Attributes and Categories: A New Conceptual Vocabulary ; For Thinking About Ethnic Identity ; Kanchan Chandra ; 4. How Ethnic Identities Change ; Kanchan Chandra ; 5. A Language for Thinking About Ethnic Identity Change ; Kanchan Chandra and Cilanne Boulet ; Part 2: Models ; 6. A Baseline Model of Change in an Activated Ethnic Demography ; Kanchan Chandra and Cilanne Boulet ; 7. Modeling the Evolution of an Ethnic Demography ; Maurits Van der Veen and David Laitin ; 8. How Fluid is Fluid? Ethnic Demography and Electoral Volatility in Africa ; Karen Ferree ; 9. Ethnicity and Pork: A Virtual Test of Causal Mechanisms ; David Laitin and Maurits Van Der Veen ; 10. Constructivism and Ethnic Riots ; Steven Wilkinson ; 11. Identity, Rationality, and Emotion in State Disintegration and Reconstruction ; Roger Petersen ; 12. Deploying Constructivism for the Analysis of Rare Events: How Possible is the Emergence of "Punjabistan?" ; Ian Lustick
