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Not with One Voice: An Explanation of Intragroup Variation in Nationalist Sentiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Dmitry Gorenburg
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Abstract

Support for nationalism among minorities in multiethnic countries has received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years. Few of these studies, however, have delved into the social bases of support for nationalism within a particular ethnic group. Scholars who study nationalism usually assume that support for nationalism among the members of an ethnic group is either randomly distributed or identical for all members of the group. Both assumptions are implausible. This article seeks to show that support for nationalism among members of an ethnic group is neither constant nor random. Furthermore, it argues that the extent to which members of social subgroups within the ethnic group come to support nationalism is predictable and is based on a particular sequence of mobilization. This sequence depends on the extent to which members of each subgroup possess a sense of common collective identity and on the strength of their social ties with those who are at the forefront of the mobilization effort. Both of these factors in turn depend largely on the extent to which state institutions promote ethnic identification among the minority population and create links that increase the density of intragroup social ties. Ethnic institutions are thus the key factor in explaining the sequence by which social groups within an ethnic minority population come to support nationalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , October 2000 , pp. 115 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2000

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References

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4 Ibid.

5 Horowitz (fn. 1), 234–35,259.

6 Ibid., 346.

7 Rothschild (fn. 1), 168.

8 Laitin (fn. 1), 248–50.

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14 Hechter (fn. 12), 276.

15 Ibid., 275.

16 See Kuper, Leo, “Plural Societies: Perspectives and Problems,” in Kuper, Leo and Smith, M. G., eds., Pluralism in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969)Google Scholar; and Smith, M. G., The Plural Society in the British West Indies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

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18 Huntington (fn. 2).

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23 Similar factors may have been at work in Yugoslavia during the 1980s. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

24 This was based on the strongly primordialist view of ethnicity prevalent in Soviet social science.

25 This finding does not hold true for majority ethnic groups, since the well-educated elites that belong to such groups are more likely to focus on national politics and the history of the entire state, rather than on the specific history of their ethnic group.

26 The survey interviewed one thousand randomly selected respondents in each region, covering both urban and rural areas. Principal investigators included Timothy Colton of Harvard University, Jerry Hough of Duke University, Susan Lehmann of Columbia University, and Mikhail Guboglo of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

27 For the sake of brevity, this survey is hereafter referred to as the Laitin/Hough survey. For more information on the survey and its results, see Laitin (fn. 1).

28 These include intellectuals, students, migrants from rural areas, industrial workers, agricultural workers, and Muslims. I also include variables that measure the respondent's education level, religiosity, and age. For an explanation of how these variables were created, see Gorenburg, Dmitry, “Nationalism for the Masses: Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999)Google Scholar, methodological appendix.

29 Factor analysis was used to confirm that these indexes are in fact measuring a single underlying tendency. One factor was detected for the indexes of native-language education and the language-knowledge index. For the language-use index, in addition to the dominant factor that describes language knowledge, two additional factors were detected. These factors grouped the partners in the communication according to their status relative to the respondent. The second factor included elder relatives, while the third factor included conversations with nonrelatives. The factor loadings and other technical information, as well as the exact wording of the questions used to construct these indexes, may be found in the methodological appendix in Gorenburg (fn. 28).

30 Other important factors that contribute to language use and fluency include the age of the respondent and growing up in a rural area. Education level and being a student are correlated negatively with these variables.

31 Iskhakov, Damir, “Neformalnye obedineniia v sovremennom Tatarskom obshchestve,” in Iskhakov, D. and Musina, R., eds., Sovremennye Natsionalnye Protsessy v Respublike Tatarstan (Kazan, 1992), 1:7–9Google Scholar.

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33 Iskhakov (fn. 31), 7–9.

34 On the lack of support for Tatar nationalism among the rural administration, see Elise Giuliano, “Maintaining Russian Integrity: Nationalism and Social Transformation in Tatarstan” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington D. C., 1997).

35 Iskhakov (fn. 31), 7.

36 Interview with Damir Iskhakov, November 1995. The relationship between the Tatarstan government and the nationalist movement is described in detail in Gorenburg (fn. 28).

37 Gorenburg, Dmitry, “Nationalism for the Masses: Popular Support for Nationalism in Russia's Ethnic Republics,” Europe Asia Studies 53 (January 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.