Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics

Edited by Kanchan Chandra

in OUP Catalogue from Oxford University Press

Abstract: Most 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, politics and economics using a variety of methods. The conceptual tools provided here open new avenues for theory building by representing the complexity of a constructivist world in an analytically tractable way. The theoretical arguments challenge the bad name that ethnic diversity has acquired in social scientific literature, according to which it is associated with regimes that are less stable, less democratic, less well-governed, less peaceful and poorer than regimes in which the population is ethnically homogeneous. Taking the possibility of change in ethnic identity into account, this book shows, dismantles the theoretical logics linking ethnic diversity to such negative outcomes. Indeed, ethnic diversity can sometimes serve as a benign force, strengthening rather than threatening democracy, preventing rather than producing violence, and inhibiting rather than accelerating state collapse or secession. Even more importantly, it defines new research agendas by changing the questions we can ask about the relationship between ethnicity, politics and economics. Contributors to this volume - Cilanne Boulet is Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University. Karen Ferree is Associate Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego. David Laitin is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Ian Lustick is Professor and Bess W. Heyman Chair of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Roger Petersen is Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at MIT. Maurits Van der Veen is Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary. Steven Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University.

Date: 2012
ISBN: 9780199893171
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780199893171

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://ukcatalogue.o ... uct/9780199893171.do

Access Statistics for this book

More books in OUP Catalogue from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Economics Book Marketing ().