đŸ Archived View for library.inu.red âș file âș andy-robinson-ethnic-politics-as-integration.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:31:08. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
âĄïž Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Ethnic Politics as Integration Author: Andy Robinson Date: 2006, Fall-Winter Language: en Topics: AJODA, AJODA #62 Source: From AJODA #62 Notes: AJODA #62, Fall-Winter 2006, Vol. 24. No. 2
The purpose of this article is to offer an account of the importance of
ethnicity in the world today, particularly in the global periphery (what
is conventionally termed the Third World âthe areas further from the
core of the global economic system). The theory proposed is that
ethnicity is basically a means whereby the network social form which
arises among the dispossessed can be recuperated by the global system
and by state power. Its pervasiveness is a sign both of the vitality of
networked social relations and their insurrectionary potential, and the
attempts of states to reduce the danger of such networks.
Discussion of network social forms has suddenly become rather
fashionable. Most of the discussion focuses on contemporary high-tech
social movements, which rely heavily on computer networks and other
communication networks such as mobile phones. Recent studies by the Rand
Corporation for instance have emphasised the growing importance of
"netwar" - struggles between or against social networks.[1] Theorists
sympathetic to social resistance such as Graeme Chesters make similar
claims, attributing the ability of anti-capitalist protesters to
mobilise effectively without leadership to a "swarm logic" based on
distributed network forms of power.[2] The technological aspect of this
view is taken furthest by leftists such as Hardt and Negri, who view the
network form of protest movements as an outgrowth of changes in
production, of the primacy of "immaterial" labour, and the rise of a new
kind of capitalism based on network organisation.[3]
Where this leftist reading goes wrong, however, is in linking the
network form primarily to high-tech or advanced capitalist conditions.
It is certainly the case that high-tech protest groups and
countercultural movements use network forms, and that technologies
allowing network construction are used in this construction. Hackers,
open-source programmers, and online protest campaigns are examples of
network social forms. It is also the case, however, that similar non-
hierarchical horizontal networks arise in almost every situation where
people try to mobilise or cooperate outside the framework of the state
and of domination. Hunter-gatherers and other indigenous societies,
peasant movements, and the urban poor of the shanty-towns and ghettos
are among the most obvious examples.
In relation to indigenous societies, Rohrlich-Leavitt noted that
"gatherer-hunters are generally non-territorial and bilocal; reject
group aggression and competition; share their resources freely; value
egalitarianism and personal autonomy in the context of group
cooperation; and are indulgent and loving with children."[4] Where
distinct groups exist, they often relate in a networked wayâthe gift
networks of the Trobriand Islands and the extended kinship networks of
the Lakota being two examples. One characteristic of such societies is
the non-exclusive nature of attachments and affinities, and hence the
absence of an overarching identity. Even in the strongest kinds of
segmentary lineage systems that come closest to fixed group identity,
the existence of extra-familial affinities operates as a restriction on
ingroup-outgroup patterns, ensuring some degree of social openness.[5]
Larissa Lomnitz studies survival and mutual aid networks in Latin
American shanty-towns, revealing that kinship and neighbourhood
relations form an entire informal economy, enabling a layer of excluded
people to survive on the periphery of major cities by means of
horizontal relations.[6] Partha Chatterjee shows how the formation of
Indian national identity leaves a trail of fragmentsâidentities based on
class, caste, ethnicity, region, religion, and so onâwhich provide the
basis for entire areas of social life organised beyond the reach of the
state, in private associations and homes. The power of the state is thus
very much partial, constrained by and always at risk from the
subcultures and countercultures emerging from the space beyond its
reach.[7]
Hecht and Simone provide a series of examples from African societies of
horizontal social forms which operate invisibly to inflect, undermine,
and sometimes overthrow states and formal institutions.
Rather than defining particular structures, the term civil society has
come to indicate myriad invisible threads that weave the fabric of
African societies together when nothing else appears to be holding them
together... [such as] so-called 'popular neighbourhoods' ... usually
controlled through ethnic, religious, or sectarian affiliation. They
produce informal, and often illegal, associations, alliances, strategies
and practice, that provide an infrastructure for the community and a
measure of functional autonomy.[8]
The uncontrollability and unpredictability of these movements is the
source of their strength. In Senegal for instance,
diverse groups are doing more than developing a critical language. They
are taking things into their own hands... attempting to reinvent their
surroundings... asking for or demanding... taxes to finance their
society independently of a larger authority... creating public protests
and the occasional riot.[9]
Even in mass societies, everyday relations are often networked and
horizontal, and thus implicitly anarchistâa point made clearly by Colin
Ward, who goes as far as to portray "apolitical" kinds of social
affiliation such as the local music scene in Milton Keynes as anarchist
due to their structure, a network of overlapping voluntary associations
existing for practical purposes rather than as part of a political
principle of domination.[10]
Examples could be multiplied, but the case is clear: in most of the
world, the integration of the global system of domination requires the
powerful to deal with a proliferating, unpredictable, subterranean type
of social relation which cannot be reduced to mass culture and which,
indeed, often appropriates mass culture for its own ends. It is as a
means of dealing with this situation that the importance of ethnicity
should be viewed.
The importance of the network form is that it allows the construction of
relations which do not rely on a hierarchic moment. In order for a
hierarchy to be constructed, there needs to be an authority or totality
to which all the incorporated people or elements submitâan overarching
leader, cause, organisation, idea, or some other spook around which
organisation is articulated. This is equally the case for reactive
moralities, in which the self-deadening shoulds of self-abasing belief
are grounded in some moment of authority. Networks, however, do not
require any such moment of authority. They operate like a swarm, without
leaders or guiding principles, and they can incorporate people and other
beings in ways that bring them together in spite of, or even because of
their differences. Deleuze and Guattari contrast the network (or
"rhizome") model to the "arborescent" model, structured like a
traditional image of a tree (though in fact trees do not follow this
model very closely). Whereas in an arborescent model, everything stems
from a central trunk, and the branches are given their status by their
relation to this trunk, in a network there is no integrating element,
only a series of non-reduc- tive and infinitely expansive horizontal
connections. For this reason, networks are inherently dangerous to all
systems of hierarchical power.
Already in the work of Kropotkin, a dividing-line is drawn between
society, by which he largely means network logics, and the state,
referring to hierarchic forms of integration. Kropotkin counterposes the
social logic of networks and voluntary associations to the hierarchic
political logic of statism, in which people are fragmented and
controlled. While networks are bubbling with life, states bring with
them death and decay, for the state has to destroy horizontal relations
wherever it goes, to arrogate social power to itself and stand in for
the community that no longer exists (one of the paradoxes being that the
state needs to create the scarcity and competition which then act as the
legitimation of its existence). Hence the first act of the state
wherever it was established was to break down horizontal networks and
pillage the societies they formed.
But while the State was condoning and organizing this pillage, could it
respect the institution of the commune as the organ of local affairs?
Obviously, it could not. For to admit that some citizens should
constitute a federation which takes over some of the functions of the
State would have been a contradiction of first principles. The State
demands from its subjects a direct, personal submission without
intermediaries; it demands equality in slavery; it cannot admit of a
'State within a State'. Thus as soon as the State began to be
constituted in the sixteenth century, it sought to destroy all the links
which existed among the citizens both in the towns and in the villages.
The state principle is a principle which destroys everything. The irony
of a recent British law which defines gathering together in a public
place as anti-social behaviour would not have been lost on Kropotkin. It
stands in a long tradition of state bans and attacks on horizontal
association. For statists, people can only relate through the
intermediary of the state; to remove this mediation is inherently
threatening to it.
Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking
over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it all its wars and
domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace
one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development
there is... death! Or the destruction of States, and new life starting
again in thousands of centres on the principles of the lively initiative
of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.[11]
This thesis was provided with further empirical backing by Clastres, who
argues that non-state societies construct mechanisms to prevent the
emergence of systematically stratified relations.[12]
State power requires the suppression of rhizomatic affiliations in order
to intensify its own domination. In western societies this has reached
the most extreme forms of social fragmentation and hierarchical
reintegration known to history. One sees a situation where the majority
are politically integrated in a predominantly symbolic way, often
receiving nothing in return, and being managed politically as a Silent
Majority through the mass media. This leads Trevor Pateman to argue that
the idea of televised elections is misleadingâinstead one should refer
to a "television election," in which the election itself is a televisual
phenomenon, a construct of the mass media.[13] This is certainly the
maximal form of rule which the state has so far found.
This massified society is built historically on a gradual breaking-down
of horizontal links and the construction of a massified society where
people only relate via categories and formal relations. Thus, the
so-called industrial revolution is actually a cumulative progress in
alienation, a cumulative increase in regulation and separation to ensure
the imposition of social control.[14] Historians writing about
successive periods chart this process over time; thus, Craig Calhoun can
write of the destruction of artisan culture in nineteenth-cen- tury
Britain in very similar terms to those used by Richard Hoggart in
discussing the rise of mass culture in the 1960s and the resultant
disintegration of locality-based forms of working-class life.[15] The
cumulative effect of such corrosion of horizontal affiliation is the
construction of a society based on what Sartre terms "seriality" â a
relation in which people are interchangeable, mediated by their social
position. One reaches the point where Hakim Bey can argue that even to
meet with other people outside the contexts of work and family is
already a victory for revolutionary energies.[16]
Such a situation is, however, unusual. It characterises, at its
broadest, western societies, and perhaps even then only a few of the
most advanced (in the system's terms) not having fully affected rural
communities or areas such as southern Europe. If mass society is the
optimal means by which the system manages social relations, in much of
the world it has to cope with a suboptimal situation where social
networks remain lively and active.
In most of the world, modern ethnicity is a colonial invention. It
apparently derives from some combination of nationalismâa phenomenon
dating back three centuries at most, arising among Europeans and set-
tler-colonists, and basically constructing spooks of sameness linked to
the rise of industrial technologyâwith theories of biological
superiority derived from discourses of aristocratic class privilege.[17]
Colonial administrators and their pet anthropologists and social
scientists went to great lengths to categorise people into groups based
on ethnicity â the basic function of the colonial census as a device of
subject-construction,[18] as well as to construct and promote discourses
differentiating the various groups and associating them with some
eternal essence.[19] In some cases (such as Vietnam), colonisers
actually went to the lengths of inventing an entire written script in
order to construct the colonised population as an ethnicity.[20]
This project continued after decolonisation, and in this regard at
least, the postcolonial state is far more a continuation of colonialism
than its triumphant adversary. Nominally independent states (often under
the watchful eye of imperial gunships and international financial
institutions) do a much more extensive job of constructing and enforcing
ethno-national categories than their colonial forebears. Thus one finds
Algerians, Iranians, and Indians acting much the same way towards the
Berbers, Kurds, and Nagas as the French and British once acted towards
them. One also finds the subordinate states performing the function of
integration into the world system on their own behalf, saving the
imperial powers any need to expend military resources on their
compliance. Imperial violence is then reduced to a kind of fire-fighting
operation, suppressing those lines of flight which take particular
peoples outside of the state system (so-called failed states) or which
pit particular states against the dominant powers (so-called rogue
states).
Nevertheless, networks continue to proliferate throughout the global
periphery, weakening state power and generating periodic insurrections
such as the Argentinazo, the Berber uprising, the struggles in Papua and
Bougainville, the repeated overthrows of neoliberal governments in
Ecuador and Bolivia, the Zapatista uprising, and a thousand
smaller-scale examples undermining the integration of the global system.
To contain the revolt, therefore, the system needs to find ways to
recuperate the networks which undermine it. From this dilemma arise the
many forms of uneven development, in which network- based social forms
are incorporated to a sufficient degree to enable exploitation or at
least to head off revolt. Capitalists are only able to profitably
exploit societies in which a capitalist infrastructure has not yet been
constructed, by working with and through existing social relations;
often, this means finding ways to incorporate networks. And it is here
that ethnic and patronage networks become useful.
The distinction between ethnic/ patronage and horizontal/affinity
networks is subtle, because the external organisational forms are often
quite similar. The difference is that, whereas the latter involves
horizontal links and structural openness, the former introduces a
hierarchical element which is potentially system-integrative or leaves
the network open to integration.
In the case of ethnic networks, this hierarchical aspect is an identity
category, a strong discourse of Us and Them defining the network and its
resources as the exclusive property of an authoritative social group. In
patronage networks, this identity- basis is used in combination with a
hierarchical situationâan asymmetrical control over resources âto
integrate the network around relative privilege, under the control of an
elite within the group who hold positions of power and use them to the
advantage of the group (and to the disadvantage of outsiders). It is my
contention that patronage networks based on ethnic, religious, and
sectarian affiliations are the primary form of system-integration in the
global periphery, and that these networks occupy such a role because of
their proximity to the affinity-network form which arises among the
dispossessed. Ethnicity is thus crucial as the primary recuperative
device used by the powerful in the world system to contain the
insurrection of the global poor.
The basis of ethnic identity in exclusionary categories â even to the
point of a structural primacy of the other over the self, a dependence
of the self's identity on its differentiation from an excluded other â
has been widely noted by conflict analysts looking into ethnic
conflict.[21] Anti-colonial activist Franz Fanon put this phenomenon
down to what he terms a "narcissism of small differences" â an elevation
of superficial difference into something fundamental, used as a way to
privilege oneself over those conceived as differentâlike in the parable
where people were killed or freed depending on how they pronounced the
word "shibboleth."
The difference between ethnic identities and the kinds of identities
that arise in social struggles is that ethnicity typically maps the
in-group as both eternal and privileged (or superior to others), whereas
socially-located identities react more directly to social relations and
conjunctures, without the same degree of mediation by abstract, mythical
categories. Thus, Alfredo Bonanno discusses the rise of political Islam
as a kind of mapping of the situated categories of oppressor and
oppressed onto the ethno-religious categories of Muslim and infidel.
The Islamic distinction between friend and enemy, faithful and
unfaithful ("mu'min" and "kafir"), corresponds to the modem one between
oppressed and oppressor ("mustad" and "mustakbird"). And it is within
the immense theoretical laboratory of militant Islam that disturbing
similarities are appearing between civil war and military war, war of
peoples to liberate themselves and war of States to impose their own
domination. And Muslim fundamentalism finds a good hold where it equates
oppressors with the unfaithful and the latter the most advanced, i.e.,
wealthiest, countries of the West. Poverty has always been
short-sighted, and is a bad counsellor... In particular there is a
mental closure that comes into contrast with the tradition of civility
and tolerance peculiar to the Muslim world which, is transforming Islam
into a theodicy of dominion, a totalitarian regime.[22]
Through this mapping, a group which is in fact subordinate fantasises
itself in a position of domination and sets about establishing this
domination through the microregulation of everyday life and a
generalised violence against outsiders. Political Islam is here not
unique; Bonanno recognises parallels with certain eastern European
nationalisms, and phenomena such as Hindu communalism could be added to
the list. The basic device here is a refusal to identify as an excluded,
peripheral or minoritarian figure, instead hiding behind a myth in which
one identifies as a member of a superior in-group, albeit a dispossessed
and unfairly treated one, and attempts to establish this in-group as the
new master, overthrowing the existing masters only to replace one
domination with another. Its characteristics include an often extreme
violence against outsiders ânot only members of the dominant group on an
undifferentiated basis, but also other out-groups, perceived traitors to
the in-group, and people whose personal autonomy puts them outside the
fixed essence attributed to the in-group. Islamists for instance have
repeatedly targeted groups such as gay men, unveiled women, film-goers,
barbers, members of the Ahmadi sect, indigenous Papuans, non-Muslim
minorities such as the Balinese Hindus, and members of different
branches of Islam, as well as targeting westerners, Christians, and Jews
in an undifferentiated way. This generalised violence against out-groups
is discursively a practice of domination, even if socially it sometimes
correlates with a struggle against real oppressors.
Because of the over-determination of conflicts with active, anarchistic
and reactive, totalitarian elements (resistance to oppressors and
establishment of domination), peripheral networks can slip between
emancipatory and repressive social forms rapidly and almost
imperceptibly. An example is the panchayat or village commune model
which operates in many isolated rural parts of the Indian subcontinent,
such as the ungovernable highlands of western Pakistan. These agencies
of autonomous local power are the locus of resistance movements such as
the revolt against Pakistani state control in Waziristan, and often
organise resistance to capitalism and the state, such as the expulsion
of Coca Cola from Plachimada, India. However, they are also the
structural basis for localised forms of domination, as in the case of
Mukhtar Mai, publicly gang-raped as a punishment for breaching
inter-clan barriers and damaging the honour of a privileged group. The
form of local autonomy seems to produce emancipatory and dominatory
effects depending on the balance of hierarchical and libertarian
elements in the local power structures and dominant customs which come
into play there.
The distinction between affinity networks and ethnic- based movements is
clearer in the case of Manipur. In 2004, a mass social movement against
emergency powers shook the Indian occupation. This movement was not
based on ethnic categories, but rather, operated across the lines of the
various social groups. One of its most notable features was the adoption
of a fragmented, centreless, localised form of organisation in which
social groups, classes, villages, and so on, were able to organise their
own autonomous activities. This proliferation of direct action
overwhelmed the state machine. One report states that '[t]he entire
stretch of the road, from Karong to Hiyangthang was dotted with such
barricades, and attempts by the police to clear the road were frustrated
due to the sheer number of agitators'[23] With villagers in each area
organising autonomously, the state was overwhelmed by action. Parallels
with effective anti-capital- ist and ecological direct action in the
west are very obvious here.
In contrast, ethnic politics in Manipur takes the form of the operation
of a number of hierarchical armed opposition groups. Each of these
groups is attached to one or another ethnicity, and their methods take
the form of persecution and exclusion of others. Each is fighting for
some kind of state in the world systemâgreater privileges in the
distribution of patronage, an independent state under the control of a
specific group, or the institutionalisation of one or another set of
privileges (such as language criteria) establishing the supremacy of a
particular ethnicity. While Meitei groups seek an independent state of
Manipur, Naga and Kuki groups fight for separate homelands, and in
contrast to the popular autonomy expressed by the social movements, the
armed opposition groups operate in an extremely hierarchical way,
imposing "moral codes" (such as traditional dress and alcohol
prohibition) by means of violence and punishment.[24] Armed opposition
groups
regularly conduct publicity seeking exercises such as setting fire to
drugs, breaking alcohol bottles and destroying video cassettes of Hindi
and pornographic movies in a bid to project themselves as protectors of
State's culture and moral values.[25]
This complicity in statism and authoritarianism also leads to conflicts
among the groups. "[T]he core ideology of all the insurgent groups moved
around their respective distinct ethnic identity." This has led, for
instance, to tensions between Naga and Kuki who inhabit the same hill
territories, and between Meitei and Pangal (Muslim) groups, sometimes
leading to armed clashes and deaths.[26]
In the context of the land shortages caused by encroachment and the
failure to invest in productive jobs, every group views the limited land
and jobs as its exclusive right. So each community rewrites its history
to claim an indigenous status and the exclusive right over resources in
a given area. Ethnic conflicts are a direct consequence of such hardened
ethnic identities and exclusive claims.[27]
It is notable that there is a large amount of tension between the
various armed groups, and between these groups and the social movements.
Women's, peace, and human rights groups have organised protests against
killings by armed groups and dialogues for peace between different
ethnic groups. It is interesting to note in this context that the Indian
government seems more inclined to negotiate with armed opposition groups
and to rehabilitate their members than it is to engage with the demands
of civil-societal groups across the northeast; and also that it seems to
encourage ethnic tension, both by pursuing peacemeal negotiations with
groups one at a time, and allegedly by setting up certain groups to
maintain division.28 In other words, the state is quite happy with the
existence of a war system or a system of negotiations with state-like
bodies, in which it can use means such as patronage to pursue
integration. It is far less happy dealing with movements of a type
dissimilar from its own. The same can be said for the Russian state in
Chechnya, which has concentrated on eradicating secular militias and
covertly strengthening Islamist factions.
Athina Karatzogianni's work on cyberconflict similarly produces an
empirically-based distinction between ethnoreligious and sociopolitical
movements, with the former based on rigid identity categories and
exclusions, and the latter notable for looser kinds of attachments. The
latter are better able to use the more horizontal characteristics of
information networks, whereas the former are likely to simply repeat the
war model they draw from conventional politics. Thus for instance, in
relation to the Iraq war, a clear difference can be observed between
those movements pursuing ethnoreligious and sociopolitical reasons for
opposing the war.29
A similar distinction can be made between the kind of messianic Judaism
embraced by authors such as Walter Benjamin and Martin Buber, and the
type espoused by statist Zionists as the basis for constructing an
ethnically exlcusion- ary state. European racists found Jews threatening
precisely because of their non-inscription in the state system and their
resultant outsider status. It was from this positionâas bearers of
hybridity and as people "out of place" â that the most important radical
developments of Jewish thought have arisen. In contrast, with the
exception of a small neo-Nazi fringe, the normalisation of Jewish
identity through the creation of a state-based ethnicity has effectively
defused anti-Semitism among European nationalists and statists. Rather,
there is now a kind of fellow-feeling with Israel as a western-allied
power contributing to world-system integration in an unstable region.
This rapid turnaround from hostility to commonality can be explained in
terms of the system-integrative functions of ethnicity. Contrary to
appearances, what European statists hated about Jews was not anything
specific to this particular group, but rather, the fact that a
particular group (any particular group âone could also refer to the Roma
here) could not be inscribed in the dominant system. The moment this
exceptional status was eliminated by means of integration into the
dominant system of representations, a discourse of antagonism was
replaced by a discourse of similarity and equivalence.
One should thus take seriously the paradoxical position of contemporary
racismâthe view that ethnic others are unobjectionable as such, as long
as they are within "their own" cultures or regions. Far from being in
contradiction with historical racisms based on superiority and
dominance, this principle has in fact always been central to the racist
project (as for instance in South African apartheid, British colonial
practices of native government, and the practices of the Canadian
Department of Indian Affairs). Racism of all kinds rests on
identity-fixity, which in turn requires otherness at a distance, as
something radically outside. In contrast, the flows of hybridity and
interrelation are threatening to such systems of identity-fixity because
they overflow the system of management through representation. Of
course, this recognised difference is also quite compatible with
systematic inequalityâ confined to their own social or geographical
space, distinct groups can then be differentiated in ways which produce
social, economic, political and cultural inequalities between them. The
entire immigration control system is one big apparatus for the
systematic construction of inequalities through the differentiation of
people as belonging to different identity categories.
Though ethnicity can express itself in terms of racism and populism, its
most characteristic formâespecially as regards attempts to manage
multicultural societies - is patronage. Patronage networks, usually
based on ethnic or quasi-ethnic (e.g. regional or religious) networks
and on various forms of nepotism, are the normal form of political
control and integration in the overwhelming majority of the world, with
the partial exception of certain western societies. This predominance of
patronage politics is often pathologised in western-based literatures on
development, governmentality, and comparative politics â as for instance
in Richard Hodder-Williams' account of the extractive view of politics
held by many Africans and its alleged contrasts with a developed form of
citizenship.[28]
In fact, a reverse view is more appropriate â the pervasiveness of
patronage is a sign of the vitality of everyday life, the failure to
develop overarching spooks to such a degree as to subordinate
populations, and a resultant need to offer something concrete as a
guarantee for support. They appear corrupt to those accustomed to
western systems, partly because they are different, and partly because
they render support for the state conditional on what it delivers.
Statists expect an unconditional allegiance from citizens, expect them
to choose between agendas or election candidates based on what is good
for the state... No wonder they object to this kind of conditionality,
where the state actually has to deliver to gain legitimacy. The idea of
corruption often gains a quite different meaning within patronage
systems themselves. When raised in the slogans of opposition movements,
it is typically a protest against the distribution of resources
exclusively to regime supporters, a call for inclusion in the patronage
apparatus or for its dismantling.[29]
The most obvious form of patronage consists of the unequal distribution
of resources to the benefit of groups deemed supportive of the regime.
Thus for instance, one often finds funding for humanitarian and
development projects directed at sympathetic regions, government jobs
distributed by ethnicity or affiliation (a majority of Saddam Hussein's
cabinet were from the Tikrit area for example, and nearly all were Sunni
Arabs rather than Shiites or Kurds), and contracts and perks given to
companies and individuals associated with supportive groups.
Another example is the kind of situation where power is rendered
conditional on the performance of rituals of generosity which
effectively buy the support of particular groups. Taiwanese candidates
are expected to throw lavish festivities during pre-election rallies as
a means of winning rural votes. This can be likened in certain respects
to the kind of potlatch events which are often a condition for the
acceptance of social hierarchy in big-man tribal arrangements, and which
are often considered to be a form, of redistribution and inequality
limitation. When incorporated in a modern state system, however, these
practices are actually a weak form of system-integration.
There is also a common form of inverse patronage in which violence-prone
states distribute their violent actions along patronage lines. During
the pogroms which preceded the independence of East Timor for instance,
widely portrayed in the western media as wanton violence, there was
actually a systematic pattern of targeting districts and villages which
had returned pro-independence results in the recent referendum. A
similar recent example was "Operation Sweep Out the Trash" in Zimbabwe,
which targeted mainly the urban poor â a key constituency for the
political opposition. One analyst claims that "a desire to punish the
urban areas for their almost universal tendency since 2000 to vote for
the opposition MDC" was a key motivation for the massive purge.[30] In
fact, from the purges against the (ZAPU-voting) Ndebele on the
achievement of independence through to the land redistributions
(notoriously biased towards regime loyalists), the Mugabe/ZANU regime
has been a paradigmatic case for the use of terror as a means of
inverted patronage. Similarly, the janjaweed militias in Sudan are
typically allowed to plunder the regions in which they operate in return
for services rendered to the state.
The important point to note here is that the various forms of patronage
are the primary means whereby the world economic system is kept intact.
Without these means of system-integration, the peripheral areas would
tend to delink from the system, because the predominant horizontal forms
of coordination provide little basis for integration into the system. It
is crucial, however, to bear in mind the limits of delinking as
previously conceived by world systems theorists such as Andre Gunder
Frank and Samir Amin.[31] These approaches tend to emphasise delinking
peripheral states from the world system. In practice, however, delinked
states are just as likely to pursue system-integrative strategies of
patronage and identity-formation as those which are fully integrated
into the world system. So-called anti-imperialist regimes such as
Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Iran are among the most extensive users of ethnic
patronage and identity-based exclusion. And the State Communist regimes
such as North Korea and Maoist China developed their own peculiar brand
of patronage politics, classifying people into relatively privileged and
excluded groups based on the class origins of their ancestors, in effect
reconstructing ethnic schemas on the basis of class.
The form which ethnic integration takes in western societies is the
community leader phenomenon, also known as multiculturalism. Basically,
this phenomenon operates by creating a stratum of privileged individuals
within each disenfranchised or excluded group, whose purpose is to
socially manage the group, to channel its frustrations into a positive
attachment to an ethnic category, and to defuse these frustrations by
means of the negotiation of this group's constructed identity within the
system.
The history of this strategy can be traced back to the British Empire,
which often used local leaders (religious figures, chiefs, kings, etc.)
in this kind of wayâa strategy which was absolutely crucial to the
management of a wide- ranging empire given the small number of settlers
and administrators.[32] It was also used in nineteenth-century Italy,
where it took the peculiar form known as trasformismo â the beheading of
social movements through the parliamentary or administrative
incorporation of movement leaders or figureheads. It reached something
akin to its modem form in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, which were
the world's first multicultural states. Each "nationality" was permitted
its own local party structure, representative institutions, and so
onâbut its representatives, much like today's community leaders, were
appointed from within the party-state apparatus, usually by the central
leadership, as a means of integrating the various "national" areas. It
reached its current form as a response to social crises in countries
such as America, Britain, Canada, and Australiaâas a strategy for
defusing the increasingly militant struggles of black people, migrant
populations, and indigenous peoples. Though often counterposed to the
monocultural models of ethnic-majority populism, it is in fact
structurally similar, relying on a similar model of social integration
through ethnic categories.
A similar strategy has been used to contain prison revolt. When the
black consciousness movement first reached prisons, the resulting
assertiveness of black prisoners was welcomed by the entire prison
population, as something that altered the balance of power between
prisoners and screws and that won important gains for prisoners. To
undermine this solidarity, screws started playing favouritesâgiving
benefits to black prisoners only, to create resentment from other
prisoners, or rewarding other groups for being compliant. In this way,
one can see the origins of the ethnic prison gangs which have since come
into existence. These gangs can be seen as at least partly a result of
divide-and-rule strategies which used ethnicity to undermine resistance.
When network social forms have outflanked control apparatuses, ethnicity
can be used by states and other dominant groups in order to re-establish
control. The effects of this become very clear in contexts where the
state uses pogroms to defuse anti-state unrest. The Indonesian financial
crisis of 1997 offers an especially clear example-state forces
suppressed popular anti-capitalist, anti- state and anti-dictatorship
protests, but encouraged and collaborated with pogroms against the
Chinese population of Indonesia. These pogroms served as a way to
channel social discontent in a way which was harmless for the state and
capitalism. This kind of pogrom may be uncommon in Indonesia, but the
channelling of frustrations onto ethnic groups deployed socially as
intermediaries is very commonânot only are the Chinese frequently
exploited in this way throughout Southeast Asia, but colonial regimes
frequently used ethnic minorities (the Tutsi, the Tamils) or migrant
communities (such as South Asians in East Africa) in the same way, and
one could even interpret European anti-Semitism along these lines. In
addition, ethnic politics based on pogroms and constant conflict is a
normal part of capitalist management in certain parts of Nigeria (eg.
Kaduna), Indonesia (eg. Ambon) and India (eg. Gujarat). There are also
similarities with the situation in Sydney, where a racist
pogromâtolerated, encouraged, and incited by state agentsâfollowed two
years of mass unrest against the state. The boundary between rigid
ethnic identities and loose affiliations in revolt against oppressors is
a slim one, and one which the socially excluded cross over on a regular
basis; the emotional and psychological reactions generated by social and
economic marginality and exclusion seem to be equally open to either
kind of articulation. This fluidity is something the state exploits in
order to prevent the kinds of revolts which really threaten its power.
A similar observation could be made regarding events in Britain and
France in November 2005. In France, the absence of multiculturalist
integration left open the possibility of revolts which crossed
boundaries of ethnicity and religion, and which were directed primarily
against the state. The result was a massive urban insurrection organised
on a network basis against the poor, directed primarily at crackdown
culture and the repressive apparatuses of the state and capitalism.
There was also unrest in Lozells, Birmingham, at around the same time -
an area which hosted a large anti-state uprising in the mid-1980s. In
this case, however, the discontent-while clearly sparked by exclusion,
poverty, and social alienation âwas channelled in directions which were
largely harmless to the state. Instead of taking the form of an uprising
against the police, the revolt took the form of communal fighting
between young men of Asian and African origin, on the basis of firm
identifications with specific ethnic categories. This is the harvest the
state has reaped for its strategy of multiculturalist integrationâthe
use of ethnically targeted state patronage to solidify group identities,
and the use of populism to channel concerns arising from social
exclusion and economic precarity into ethnic categories.
Similar strategies have been used in occupied Iraq as part of the
strategy to contain resistance to the occupation. The Iraqi elections
were constructed in such a way as to encourage the formation of ethnic
political blocs and their competition for state resources. Ethnic and
sectarian militias have been incorporated into local state apparatuses
and allowed to take control of local governmental machineries in return
for collaboration. These militias have then been deployed against other
ethnic groups-Shiite militias in al-Qaim, Kurds in Fallujah-to foment
divisions and create a basis for colonial power in the internal
structures of Iraqi society. American troops forge alliances with local
tribes, using existing rivalries to undermine opposition militias.[33]3
An American military leader adopts the dress, mannerisms and customs of
village sheikhs in an attempt to gain influence.[34] Ethnic militias
attract recruits with payment and perks,[35] while the British army
effectively hands over southern towns to the Mahdi and Badr
militias.[36] Iraq's interior ministry, controlled by the Shiite SCIRI
faction, refuses to deploy western-trained troops, instead delivering
positions to its own loyalists.[37] Similarly in Afghanistan, the
occupying forces rely on local militias to maintain control. In both
cases, it is only the use of local ethnic patronage networks that has
stood between the occupier and instant collapse. The blatant use of such
networks in these cases of sharpened conflict is a clear indication of
their crucial function they play in the integration of systemic power at
the periphery.
So what is the trick which allows patronage politics to integrate
networks? The answer lies in the kind of categories it uses. Patronage
networks are similar to affinity networks in adopting a network
organisational form; but they differ in that the integration of the
network is based not on degrees of affinity nor on particular projects,
but rather, on belonging to a rigid category. Most often, this category
is ethnic, although it can also be religious, regional, class-based, and
so on. It involves the endorsement of an ideaâa Stirnerian spookâwhich
holds the network together and which sets up a rigid borderline between
the inside and outside of the network.
The trick performed by state strategists is to alter the balance between
active and reactive attachments within a network, turning categories of
affiliation into rigid categories and active, expansive association for
practical, ludic, or survival purposes into reactive, exclusive, closed
association for purposes of competition, domination, and patronage. The
two mutually exclusive logics âof affinity and ethnicity - are usually
already operative within social networks of the dispossessed; whereas
one of them provides the seed of insurrection which renders these
networks disruptive of state power, the other is the Trojan horse
through which the state minimises the threat which the networks pose.
Basically it is a particular, sophisticated form of state- led
recuperation. Examining trasformismo in Italy, Gramsci argued that this
kind of strategy was a way of creating social passivity by preventing
the emergence of antagonistic forces. It was a means of passive
revolution, which is to say, of Hegelianism in the bad sense â the
synthesis of each antagonistic agent into the existing system, so that a
radical break could never emerge. This account prefigures the later
Situationist theory of recuperation, but the two phenomena are subtly
distinctâwhereas recuperation usually happens by means of symbolism
(such as the commercial appropriation of the cultural symbols of
dissident movements), trasformismo is more of an organisational
phenomenon, integrating oppositional movements through the incorporation
or creation of a malleable leadership. But the function is basically the
sameâbringing a flow which exceeds the system back into the system's
remit, by means of reinscribing it in the system's categories.
In Deleuze and Guattari's work, this process is viewed as
axiomatisation.
The capitalist system is axiomatic in the sense of relying on
quantification as a means of establishing equivalence between diverse
phenomena. Thus, many different subcultures are integrated in capitalism
by means of the addition of new axioms, of particular niche markets, or
new kinds of commodities. Capitalism was able to digest the Russian
Revolution only by continually adding new axioms to the old ones: an
axiom for the working class, for the unions, and so on. But it is always
prepared to add more axioms... it has a peculiar passion for such things
that leaves the essential unchanged.[38]
Ethnic politics is one example of this kind of phenomenon â the addition
of axioms in order to include particular populations and particular
social networks in the capitalist world system.
The crucial point about ethnicity is its establishment of
identity-fixity. The kinds of affinity theorised by Bonanno, Stimer,
Kropotkin, Ward, Deleuze, and the rest are based on types of affiliation
which are immediately actual. In contrast, affiliations aroused by
ethnic categories are mediated by a fixed representation which states
that people belong to a particular social group on the basis of some
essential characteristic or other. Thus networks are fixed and closed,
rather than fluid and open. It should be viewed as a reactive kind of
attachment in the Nietzschean sense âan attachment to
identity-categories based on an emphasis on certain differences as
exclusive, what Fanon terms a "narcissism of minor differences;" and an
establishment of personal or group identity based on a primary
exclusion, on an insistence that a particular Us-Them relation is
primary in defining one's being. Against this, anarchist networks insist
on the primacy of becoming or existence over being, the active
construction of categories, and the irreducibility of people, groups,
and relations to any imposed representational categories. As such, they
are outgrowths of active desire. This difference, however, is a
difference in the relation between self and groupânot necessarily a
difference in the structure of the group itself. To an outside observer,
the two kinds of networks can look very much alike.
The crucial political point here is that the network form is necessary
but not sufficient to liberation from statism and hierarchy. The lesson
of ethnicity for anarchists is that social networks can be recuperated
into hierarchic social forms by means of categories which operate
primarily at an ideological or psychological level. In this way, a
preponderance of social networks (as opposed to hierarchies or
mass-society forms) can be rendered compatible with certain forms of
state control and systemic integration. The question is not simply one
of building networks of resistance among the excluded and oppressed.
There is also a need to address and overcome the cops-in-heads, the
categories and spooks that tie people into hierarchical identities.
[1] E.g. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Swarming and the Future of
Conflict (RAND Corporation, 2001).
[2] Graeme Chesters, Another World is Possible: Social Movements
Confronting Capital and the State (London: Pluto 2006).
[3] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude (Harmondsworth: Penguin
2004), 54-8,145-8.
[4] âCited in John Zerzan, Future Primitive http://www.insurgentdesire.
org.uk/futureprim.htm
[5] Harold Barclay, "Anthropology and Anarchism," The Raven 18 (5:2),
April-June 1992, p. 160.
[6] Larissa Lomnitz, Networks and Marginality: Life in a Mexican
Shantytown (New York: Academic Press 1977)
[7] Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993).
[8] âSimon Hecht and Maliqalim Simone, Invisible Governance: The Art of
African Micropolitics (New York: Autonomedia 1994), 14-15.
[9] Hecht and Simone, p. 104.
[10] Colin Ward, "Anarchy in Milton Keynes," The Raven 18 (5:2), April-
June 1992,116-31.
[11] Peter Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role (1897), http:/
/www.panar- chy.org/kropotkin/1897.state.html
[12] Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State (New York: Zone, 1989).
[13] âTrevor Pateman, Television and the 1974 General Election,
http://www.selected- works.co.uk/ televisionl974.html
[14] âLeopold Roc, "Industrial Domestication: Industry as the Origins of
Modern Domination," http: / / www.eco-action.org/dt/ inddom.html
[15] Craig Calhoun, The Question of Class Struggle: The Social
Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Richard Hoggart, The Uses
of Literacy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957).
[16] Hakim Bey, "Immediatism vs Capitalism,"
http://www.left-bank.org/bey/ imm_cap.htm
[17] See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983);
Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). While these texts are the
main rivals in academic discussions of nationalism, it is worth noting
that they agree on the basic pointsâthat nationalism first came into
existence about three centuries ago, that it was a form of
state-integra- tion based on reinterpreting history, that its basic
contours are linked to industrialism and that its spread to the majority
of the world was carried out by colonialism. Where they differ is on the
reason for its emergenceâwhile Hobsbawm and Ranger emphasise political
machinations, Anderson stresses changes in perspective resulting from
the new industrial landscape.
[18] âAnderson, Imagined Communities, 164-5.
[19] See Edward Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1995),
especially chapter 1. "No merely asserted generality is denied the
dignity of truth; no theoretical list of Oriental attributes is without
application to the behavior of Orientals in the real world" (49).
[20] âAnderson, Imagined Communities, p. 128.
[21] E.g. Vivienne Jabri, Conflict Analysis Reconsidered (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1996); Ali Khan, The Extinction of Nation
States: A world without borders (The Hague: Kluwer Law International,
1996); David Campbell, "Violence, Justice and Identity in the Bosnian
Conflict," in Sovereignty and Subjectivity, ed. Jenny Edkins, Nalini
Persram and Veronique Pin-Fat (Boulder: Lynne Piener, 1999), 21-37.
[22] âAlfredo Bonanno, "For an Anti-Authoritarian Insurrectionalist
International," http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/insurint. html
[23] Pitch of protest hightens after partial lift," Imphal Free Press,
14 Aug.
[24] Routray, Bibhu Prasad (2005), "Manipur: Rampaging Militants, Mute
State," SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW Volume 3, No. 26, January 10,2005
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/3_26.htm
[25] Routray, "Manipur..."
[26] Upadhyay, R (2004), "Manipur âin a strange whirlpool of
cross-current insurgency," South Asia Analysis Group
http://www.saag.org/ papersl3/paperl210.html
[27] Femandez, Walter, "Limits of Law and Order Approach to the North-
East," EPW Commentary, Nov 16 2004
[28] âRichard Hodder-Williams, An Introduction to the Politics of
Tropical Africa (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984).
[29] The possible argument that patronage or extractive politics is an
outgrowth of poverty, while not entirely unfounded, ignores that these
practices also extend to wealthy sections of the population and to
relations between the state and corporations.
[30] Deborah Potts, '"Restoring Order'? Operation Murambatsvina and the
Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe," Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume
32, Number 2, June 2006.
[31] Samir Amin, Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World (New York: Zed,
1990).
[32] John Darwin, Britain and Decolonization: Retreat from Empire in the
Post-war World (London:MacMil- lan 1988).
[33] Hannah Allam and Mohammed al Dulaimy, "Marine-led Campaign Killed
Friends and Foes, Iraqi Leaders Say," http:// www.commondreams.org/head-
lines05/0517-01 .htm â
[34] Antonio Castaneda, "Iraq citizens deem U.S. soldier as sheik,"
http://www.mlive. com/ newsflash/ international / index.
ssf?/base/international- 25/1122826992255580.xml&story list=intemational
[35] Daniel McGrory, "Militias steal new recruits with better pay and
perks," http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ article/0â7374-2159349,00.html â
[36] Juan Cole, "British To Withdraw from Maysan, Muthanna," http:// www
.juancole.com/2006/05/bri tish-to-withdraw-from-maysan.htm
[37] âIraq's Interior Ministry Refuses to Deploy US-Trained Police," GI
Special 4D5.
[38] âGilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (London: Athlone
1984), 253.