Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:11:29.024Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspectve1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Robert Melson  and
Howard Wolpe
Robert Melson
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Howard Wolpe
Affiliation:
Western Michigan University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It has been said that technological and economic development lead ultimately to the decline of communal conflict, and that the emergence of new kinds of socio-economic roles and identities undercuts the organizational bases upon which communal (that is, “racial,” “ethnic,” “religious,” or “tribal”) politics rests. In the past decade, several scholars working in culturally plural societies have challenged this conventional view. They have suggested that communalism may in fact be a persistent feature of social change, and that the dichotomous traditionmodernity models which have often guided our empirical investigations have obscured this theoretical alternative and thereby produced false expectations concerning the direction of change. This paper attempts to synthesize the various elements of this emerging theoretical perspective through the formulation of several propositions which link modernization to communalism. While our discussion will draw primarily upon the Nigerian experience for illustrative material, the propositions are intended to be applicable across societies.

“Communalism,” in this paper, refers to the political assertiveness of groups which have three distinguishing characteristics: first, their membership is comprised of persons who share in a common culture and identity and, to use Karl Deutsch's term, a “complementarity of communication;” second, they encompass the full range of demographic (age and sex) divisions within the wider society and provide “for a network of groups and institutions extending throughout the individual's entire life cycle;” and, third, like the wider society in which they exist, they tend to be differentiated by wealth, status, and power.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , December 1970 , pp. 1112 - 1130
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Research was supported by the Departments of Political Science at Michigan State University and Western Michigan University, and by the African Studies Center at Michigan State University. We both greatly benefitted by association with faculty and students in a workshop on the Nigerian experience sponsored by the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activity. We also wish to acknowledge, with gratitude, the helpful comments of the following colleagues who read this paper in manuscript form: Karl W. Deutsch, S. N. Eisenstadt, Justin Green, Daniel Lerner, James O'Connell, Simon Ottenberg, Lucian W. Pye, Lloyd I. and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Richard L. Sklar, Saadia Touval and Aristide Zolberg. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the American Political Science Association in New York, September 1969.

References

2 In particular, see the following works: Anderson, Charles W., von der Mehden, Fred R., and Young, Crawford, Issues of Political Development (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967) pp. 15–83 Google Scholar; Coleman, James S., Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., “Reflections on a Theory of Modernization,” in Rivkin, Arnold (ed.), Nations by Design (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1968), pp. 35–61 Google Scholar; Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution,” in Geertz, Clifford (ed.), Old Societies and New States (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1963), pp. 105–157 Google Scholar; Kilson, Martin, Political Change in a West African State: A Survey of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lloyd, I. and Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Sklar, Richard L., “The Contribution of Tribalism to Nationalism in Western Nigeria,” Journal of Human Relations, 8 (Spring-Summer 1960), 407–415 Google Scholar; Weiner, Myron, The Politics of Scarcity: Public Pressure and Political Response in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Whitaker, C. S. “A Dysrhythmic Process of Political Change,” World Politics, 19 (01 1967), 190–217 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wriggins, W. Howard, “Impediments to Unity in New Nations: The Case of Ceylon,” this Review, 55 (06 1961), 313–320 Google Scholar; Young, Crawford, Politics in the Congo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zolberg, Aristide, One-Party Government in the Ivory Coast (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 According to Deutch, complementarity of communication in a group “consists in the ability to communicate more effectively and over a wider range of subjects with members of one large group than with outsiders.” See his pathbreaking Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1953), p. 71 Google Scholar.

4 Gordon, Milton, Assimilation in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 39 Google Scholar.

5 It should be noted that communal groups are not alone in sharing culture, identity and complementarity. An age-grade among the Masai, for example, does in fact share in these characteristics. So does the upper class in Britain. But age grades and social classes are not to be thought of as communal groups, because they do not encompass the full range of demographic divisions within a society and they are not socio-economically heterogenous. It is these latter characteristics which give to communal groups their distinctive political significance in that they are, to use Clifford Geertz' term, “candidates for nationhood.” See Geertz, op. cit., p. 111. The term, “Communalism,” is not to be confused with the concept of “communal participation” developed by Sklar, Richard L., in his Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 474–480 Google Scholar.

6 Carl K. Eicher, for example, has written, “Nigeria's rate of economic growth of approximately 5 percent per annum since 1960 is impressive and second only to that of the Ivory Coast among West African nations. Nigeria became the world's tenth largest exporter of petroleum in 1966 and its petroleum reserves are estimated to match those of Libya.” See his “The Dynamica of Long-Term Agricultural Development in Nigeria,” Journal of Farm Economics, 49 (12 1967), 1158–1170 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to an estimate of Carl Liedholm, Eastern Nigeria in the early sixties possessed the fastest growing industrial sector in the world. See Liedholm, Carl, “Preliminary Estimates of an Index of Industrial Production for Eastern Nigeria, from 1961–66,” (Enugu: Economic Development Institute, 03 1967)Google Scholar. For a more extensive discussion of Nigerian economic development, see Helleiner, Gerald K., Peasant Agriculture, Government, and Economic Growth in Nigeria (Homewood: Richard Irwin, Inc., 1966)Google Scholar. For lucid discussions of the political consequences of Nigeria's rapid rates of educational expansion and urbanization, see James S. Coleman, op. cit. and Abernethy, David, The Political Dilemma of Popular Education: An African Case (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

7 Deutsch, Karl W., “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” this REVIEW 55 (09 1961), 493–514 Google Scholar; reprinted in Finkle, Jason L. and Gable, Richard W. (eds.), Political Development and Social Change (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.) pp. 205–226 Google Scholar.

8 Following Anderson, von der Mehden and Young, “cultural pluralism” refers to “the existence within a state of solidarity patterns, based upon shared religion, language, ethnic identity, race, caste, or region, which command a loyalty rivaling, at least in some situations, that which the state itself is able to generate,” op. cit., p. 17.

9 For an insightful discussion of the psychological dimension of social change, see Pye, Lucian W., Politics, Personality and Nation-Building (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

10 Concerning the groundnut industry, see Hoggendorn, J. S., “The Origins of the Groundnut Trade in Northern Nigeria,” in Eicher, Carl and Liedholm, Carl (eds.), Growth and Development of the Nigerian Economy, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970), pp. 30–52 Google Scholar.

11 See McClelland, David C., The Achieving Society (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hagen, Everett E., On the Theory of Social Change (Homewood: Dorsey Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Crawford Young, op. cit., especially pp. 256–265; Le Vine, Robert A., Dreams and Deeds: Achievement Motivation in Nigeria (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Ottenberg, Simon, “Ibo Receptivity to change,” in Bascom, William R. and Herskovits, Melville J. (eds.), Continuity and Change in African Cultures (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 130–143 Google Scholar.

12 The precise role and significance of such cultural predispositions in the development process is as yet uncertain. For a criticism of the McClelland thesis, see Eisenstadt, S. N., “The Need for Achievement,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 11 (01 1963), 420–431 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a critical analysis of the Ibo “receptivity to change” hypothesis, see Henderson, Richard, “‘Generalized Cultures’ and ‘Evolutionary Adaptability’: The Comparison of Urban Efik and Ibo in Nigeria,” Ethnology, 5 (10 1966), 365–391 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See Wolpe, Howard, “Port Harcourt: Ibo Politics in Microcosm,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 7 (10 1969), 469–493 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For an excellent analysis of communal conflict and violence within Nigeria's upper north, see Paden, John, “Communal Competition, Conflict, and Violence in Kano,” to appear in a forthcoming volume edited by Melson, Robert and Wolpe, Howard, Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalisrn (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

15 For a parallel analysis of Ivory Coast intergroup relationships, see Aristide R. Zolberg, op. cit.

16 Daniel Lerner, for example, has suggested that “A person with high achievement may still be dissatisfied if his aspirations far exceed his accomplishments. Relative deprivation … is the effective measure of satisfaction among individuals and groups.” See his “Toward a Communication Theory of Modernization,” in Pye, Lucian W. (ed.), Communications and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 333 Google Scholar. For a parallel treatment of the problem of relative deprivation, see Ulf Himmelstrand's application of rank-equilibration theory to Yoruba-Ibo competition in “Tribalism and Nationalism in Nigeria,” in Melaon and Wolpe, op. cit.

17 For an extensive discussion of how “deprivation” enters into civil strife, see Gurr, Ted, “A Causal Model of Civil Strife: A Comparative Analysis Using New Indices,” this Review, 62 (12 1968), 1104–1124 Google Scholar.

18 The terminology is Milton Gordon's. See op. cit., pp. 60–83. “Cultural assimilation” implies that a group has changed its cultural patterns to those of the host society. “Structural assimilation” refers to the group's membership actually entering into the cliques, clubs, and institutions of the host society, on the primary group level.

19 For an incisive analysis of Yoruba/Hausa segregation and the communalization of commercial activity in the city of Ibadan, see Cohen, Abner, “The Social Organization of Credit in a West African Cattle Market,” Africa, 35 (1965), 8–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For related discussions of inter-communal trade, see Nafziger, E. Wayne, “Inter-Regional Economic Relations in the Nigerian Footwear Industry,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 6 (1968), 531–542 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and John Harris and Mary Rowe, “Entrepreneurial Attitudes and National Integration,” Melson and Wolpe, op. cit. See also the forthcoming studies by Barbara Callaway on Aba urban politics and by George Jenkins and K. W. S. Post on the political history of the important Ibadan political leader, the late Adelabu.

20 Allport, Gordon W., The Nature of Prejudice (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1958), p. 256 Google Scholar.

21 See for example, Little, Kenneth, West African Urbanization: A Study of Voluntary Associations in Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa,” in Van Den Berghe, Pierre L. (ed.), Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1965) pp. 472–482 Google Scholar. For careful analyses of this phenomenon in India see Lloyd I. and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, op. cit., and Myron Weiner, op. cit.

22 Odudjiwa is a culture hero and mythical progenitor of the Yoruba people. See Sklar, op. cit., p. 67.

23 Interesting discussions of the relationship between improvement unions and political parties are to be found in Audrey Smock, “The Political Role of Ibo Ethnic Unions” and Alvin Magid, “The Idoma State Union: Minority Politics in Northern Nigeria,” in Melson and Wolpe, op. cit.

24 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 20 Google Scholar.

25 See Carmichael, Stokely and Hamilton, Charles V., Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage, 1967)Google Scholar.

26 This discussion of the Nigerian experience draws heavily upon the following studies: James S. Coleman, op. cit.; Richard L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, op. cit., Post, K. W. J., The Nigerian Federal Election of 1959 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, and Mackintosh, John P. (ed.),Nigerian Government and Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

27 See Sklar, Richard L., “The Ordeal of Chief Awolowo,” in Carter, Gwendolen M., (ed.), Politics in Africa: 7 Cases (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.), pp. 119–166 Google Scholar.

28 See Crawford Young's discussion of the Congolese “Bangala,” an example of “artificial ethnicity” produced by inter-group competition, in his Politics in the Congo, op. cit., pp. 242–246. It should be noted that contemporary “Ibo-ness” and “Yoruba-ness,” like contemporary American “Black-ness,” are also new forms of communalism engendered by mobilization and competition.

29 For a parallel analysis of the relationship between conflict and group formation, see Coser, Lewis A., The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: The Free Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

30 Anderson, von der Mehden, and Young, op. cit., p. 30.

31 Lloyd and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, op. cit., p. 100.

32 Ottenberg, Simon, “Ibo Oracles and Intergroup Relations,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 14 (Autumn 1958), 296 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an incisive discussion of the political implications of communal transformation among the Ibo, see Anber, Paul, “Modernization and Political Disintegration: Nigeria and the Ibos,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 5 (1967), 163–179 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 The concept of “geo-ethnicity” has much the same meaning as Immanuel Wallerstein's concept of “ethnicity,” in Wallerstein, op. cit. The former term is preferred here for two reasons. First, it offers a sharper conceptual tool than that of “eth-nicity” to describe the new kinds of urban groupings which are based upon non-traditional or neotraditional communities of origin. Second, the use of the “geo-ethnicity” concept to describe urban groupings based upon new, artificial entities enables us to reserve the concept of “ethnicity” for urban groupings based more strictly on kinship, cultural and linguistic ties. See Wolpe, op. cit., and Wolpe, , “Port Harcourt: A Community of Strangers—The Politics of Urban Development in Eastern Nigeria” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1965)Google Scholar.

34 See Dent, Martin J., “A Minority Party—the UMBC,” in Mackintosh, John F. (ed.), Nigerian Government and Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), pp. 461–507 Google Scholar.

35 On the Zikist Movement, see Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, op. cit., pp. 72–82. For a discussion of the emergence of Nigeria's political class, see Sklar, , “Contradictions in the Nigerian Political System,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 3 (1965), 201–213 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 See Sklar, , “Nigerian Politics in Perspective,” Government and Opposition, 2 (07-10 1967), 524–539 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Lloyd and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, op. cit., p. 101.

38 Anderson, von der Mehden and Young, op. cit., p. 60.

39 See Max Gluckman, “Tribalism in Modern British Central Africa,” in Van Den Berghe, op. cit., pp. 346–360. This article first appeared in Cahiers D'Etudes Africaines, 1 (01 1960), 55–70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, Epstein, A. L., Politics in an Urban African Community (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; and Mitchell, Clyde, The Kalela Dance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956)Google Scholar. For a recent application of the situational mode of analysis developed by the Rhodes-Livingstone group to the Nigerian scene, see Plotnicov, Leonard, Strangers to the City: Urban Man in Jos, Nigeria (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

40 See Gluckman, op. cit., p. 359. For a critical discussion of Gluckman's views, see Banton, Michael, Race Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 239–240 Google Scholar.

41 See Melson, Robert, “Politics and the Nigerian General Strike of 1964,” in Rotberg, Robert and Mazrui, Ali (eds.), Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; and Wolpe, “Port Harcourt: A Community of Strangers,” op. cit., pp. 423–454.

42 As the Rudolphs note, “Compartmentalization not only physically separates … home and family from place and colleagues, but also prevents the different norms of behavior and belief appropriate to modernity and tradition from colliding and causing conflict in the lives of those who live by both.” Op. cit., pp. 121–122.

43 “Cross-pressures are combinations of characteristics which in a given context would tend to load the individual to vote on both sides of a contest.” See Berelson, Bernard et al., Voting (Chicago: Universily of Chicago Press, 1954), p. 283 Google Scholar.

44 See Melson, Robert, “Ideology and Inconsistency: The Politics of the ‘Crosspressured’ Nigerian Worker,” American Political Science Review (03 1971)Google Scholar, reprinted in Melson and Wolpe, op. cit.

45 Geertz, op. cit., p. 111. See also Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communalization, op. cit., p. 78: “In an age of nationalism, a nationality is a people pressing to acquire a measure of effective control over the behavior of its members. It is a people striving to equip itself with power, with some machinery of compulsion strong enough to make the enforcement of its commands sufficiently probable ….” For Deutsch, what differentiates a people from a nationality is precisely the attempt by a communal group to gain power in order to discipline itself and to have its demands met by others. In that sense, Nigerian political parties, to the extent that they became representatives of a particular communal group served the function of transforming a people into a nationality. Thus, by 1965, Nigerian politics had come to resemble the politics of the multi-national nation-states of Europe before the First World War. See also Anderson, von der Mehden and Young, op. cit., p. 17: “By ‘nationalism’ we mean the assertion of the will to constitute an autonomous political community by a self-conscious group whether or not the group coincides with a recognized state.”

46 It is interesting that many scholars have tended to discount the significance of communal conflict. Ralf Dahrendorf, for example, while distinguishing between communal and class conflict, dismisses consideration of the former in favor of an analysis of the latter. In formulating a theory of class conflict, he asserts, “… we are by no means considering a general theory of social conflict, although I would undertake to defend the assertion that we are dealing here with one of the most important, if not the most important type of social conflict. However important as problems of social conflict St. Bartholomew's Night, Crystal Night, and Little Rock may be [these are all examples of communal conflict], the French Revolution, the British General Strike of 1926, and the events in East Berlin on June 17, 1953, seem to me more germane for structural analysis … the sociological theory of conflict would do well to confine itself for the time being to an explanation of the frictions between the rulers and the ruled in given organizations.” See Dahrendorf, , “Toward a Theory of Social Conflict,” in Etzioni, Amitai (ed.), Social Change (New York: Basic Books, 1964), p. 101 Google Scholar.

47 On the Zionist movement, see Halpern, Ben, The Idea of the Jewish State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

48 On the Black Muslim movement, see Essien-Udom, E. U., Black Nationalism: A Search for Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

49 Geertz' term, “primordial sentiments,” may be an unfortunate label, if it suggests that the bonds which define the cohesiveness of a communal group are in some sense pre-historicnl, given, or unchangeable. Op. cit., p. 109.

50 Parenti, Michael, “Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification,” this REVIEW, 61 (09 1967), 717–726 Google Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.