April 8, 2012

Thinking like a Somali about ethnicity

Plato talked about carving nature at the joints, and, at the most historic level,  much of politics consists of figuring out where institutions and groups can best be cut apart and where put together. Consider, say, Washington and Franklin. They helped take apart the British Empire and later helped weld together the federal government to rule the 13 states.

This is the kind of subject that deserves the most careful consideration, but usually doesn't get it.
The Implications of Constructivism for Constructing Ethnic Fractionalization Indices  
David Laitin (Stanford University), Daniel Posner (UCLA)   
[appeared in APSA-CP: The Comparative Politics Newsletter 12 (Winter 2001)]   
In recent years, ethnic fractionalization has emerged as a central variable in  quantitative analyses of outcomes ranging from economic growth rates (Easterly and  Levine, 1997) and the quality of governance (La Porta et al, 1999) to ethnic conflict (Kay  et al, 2000) and the frequency of coups d’etat (Londregan and Poole, 1990).  Almost all  such analyses employ, either alone or in combination with other measures, the same  measure of ethnic fractionalization.  This index, called ELF (for Ethno-Linguistic Fractionalization), is available for 129 countries – indeed, its broad coverage is the  principal reason for its widespread adoption – and reflects the likelihood that two people  chosen at random will be from different ethnic groups.  It is calculated using the  Herfindahl concentration formula from data compiled in a global survey of ethnic groups  published in the Atlas Narodov Mira (1964) and subsequently included in Taylor and  Hudson (1972).  

Atlas Narodov Mira was a 1964 compilation by Soviet ethnographers of, in their opinion, all the ethnic groups in the world. It had the advantage of being a standard source. 
Users of the ELF index have analyzed their results, to their peril, without any   regard to the constructivist findings in the literature on ethnicity. Constructivist findings would make the standard ELF index suspect for four different reasons.  
First, the users of  the ELF index assume that a country’s degree of ethnic fractionalization is fixed,  analogous to its topography or its distance from the equator.  To the extent that a  country’s boundaries do not change, it is assumed, its ELF score should remain constant.   Constructivist theories of ethnicity, however, would compel us to challenge this  assumption.  They would lead us to expect changes in the level of ethnic fractionalization  over time, as people over generations assimilate, differentiate, amalgamate, break-apart,  immigrate and emigrate.     
Take the case of Somalia. 

It used to be said that Somalia was a lucky country because the colonialists had happened to draw the boundaries right and thus there was only one tribe in Somalia, divided up merely into clans. But then in the late 1980s the country fell apart, and suddenly we started hearing about the deep divisions between clans and sub-clans.
At independence, Isaaqs (from former British  Somaliland) and Hawiyes (from former Italian Somalia) insisted they spoke the same  language, and any survey of linguistic diversity undertaken at the time would have  reflected this.  In recent years, however, Isaaqs have begun consciously differentiating their speech forms from those of the Hawiyes as part of an attempt to justify recognition for their secessionist republic – much as Croat and Serb intellectuals and linguists have  done over the past fifteen years in the Balkans (Greenberg, 2000).  A linguistic survey  conducted today would thus produce a quite different accounting of linguistic divisions in  both former Yugoslavia and former Somalia.     
Clan distinctions in Somalia have undergone a similar metamorphosis.  With the  decline of the dictatorship of Mohammed Siyaad Barre in the late 1980s, what had  previously been considered one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in Africa became severely divided by inter-clan fractionalization, with a concomitant change in the  level of aggregation that is considered appropriate by political analysts.  Studies of  Somalia in the 1960s that focused on clan-based divisions tended to concentrate their  analysis at the highest level of division (the clan family), of which there are three.  
But amid the fractionalization caused by the civil war that broke the country apart a decade  ago, more recent analyses have tended to emphasize distinctions among clans and even  sub-clans.  Thus, due to the civil war, a survey of ethnic fractionalization today would  yield a substantially larger number of clans (and a correspondingly higher  fractionalization index value) than one undertaken  forty years ago.  Contrary to the  assumptions of most users of the ELF index, levels of ethnic fractionalization in Somalia  have been dynamic over time, not stable givens of the landscape.  Constructivist findings would thus seem to demand that fractionalization scores be provided over a time series to  accommodate such changes.

The message that I would take from this is that when things fall apart, as in Black Hawk Down-era Somalia, to survive anarchy, people tend to go, as Tom Wolfe would say, Back to Blood. Family ties are the most likely default system for organizing for self-defense.

On the other hand, in a better ruled country, there are multiple ways to construct social ties, and the more they criss-cross, the more stable the country. On the other other hand, peoples that are used to stability and impose high standards of fair play upon themselves are ripe for exploitation by outsiders from chaotic lands where family ties are the basis for all organization. Think of, say, what Lake Wobegon would be like after Somali refugees had a couple of generations to get themselves organized.

A major problem that Republicans face in the 21st Century is a lack of much of a Brain Trust to think about these underlying questions in a cool-headed fashion. Instead, much of this analysis is carried out by people like, say, Karl Rove, who rose up the ladder of influence as PR men, as spinners. They are used to coming up with rationalizations for existing interests rather than in thinking about fundamentals and how to rearrange them.

For example, is there a single Republic operative within the Beltway who ever thinks about how the current racial/ethnic categories used by the federal government in dispensing goodies drives political behavior and how those categories could be altered for the long-run benefit of the GOP?

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess your question is a good one if you are interested in furthering the interests of the GOP. I myself would be more interested in questions that could provide answers that might help the working class majority americans.
If you really think that any major institution in america has the working class majority interests at heart, then you are just deluded enough to find success as a mainstream journalist.

Anonymous said...

Side note :

Steve, take a look at this -

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/08/us/colorado-libyan-rape-victim/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

I'd love to have your take.

eh said...

...is there a single Republic operative within the Beltway who ever thinks...

Forgetting for a moment about "goodies" (not to mention 'thinking' and 'Republicans' in the same sentence), and considering Somalis, among others...

Is there anyone who thinks about the perverse reverse incentive system behind asylum seekers and refugees? Meaning the worse you screw up your own, the more likely you are to receive an all expenses paid life in a Nice White Country.

Daybreaker said...

"For example, is there a single Republic operative within the Beltway who ever thinks about how the current racial/ethnic categories used by the federal government in dispensing goodies drives political behavior and how those categories could be altered for the long-run benefit of the GOP?"

The 8-ball answers: Don't count on it.

Anonymous said...

BTW Mark Bowden's book (I never got around to seeing the film) is actually as interesting as it's supposed to be. If you can't find a way to embed with a militarized peacekeeping outfit in some war-torn hellhole that's probably the next best way to learn about it.

For an inexpensive yuk check out the "Not to be confused" line atop his Wiki bio.

sr said...

Off topic, but check it out: the annual famine caused by lack of illegal immigrants to pick the fruit or vegetable of your choice is back!:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2012/0408/As-tide-of-illegal-immigrants-goes-home-will-US-economy-suffer/(page)/2

Anonymous said...

Interesting stuff Steve, worty of further consideration.

On a similar topic, I've read that Somalia's travails are the delayed reaction of smallpox eradication, an event that allowed Somalia's population to boom 30 or 40 odd years ago.
Basically what we are seeing now is a Malthusian solution - and the fracture plain for a Malthusian struggle for existence happens so often to be ethnicity.
Anyway, my point is really that multi-ethnic staes might possibly be viable in the long-term, but they never but never survive Malthusian crises.

Anonymous said...

Derbyshire is proof that thinking about underlying racial questions in a cool-headed fashion gets your ass fired.

Anonymous said...

So how does one redefine race to support the conservative cause? Anyone who is not black is white? You have suggested this in the past. One—not necessarily fatal—consequence of this would be that companies could no longer use 1/3 blood Mestizos, Creoles or South Asians to meet their diversity requirements. In my field we can't pay high enough wages to draw in the coveted IQ 120 blacks.

Bantam said...

borderline off-topic,

We are shamefully aware of how the legacy of slavery, white privilege and irreducible racisssm prevent the likes of La'Queysha and Ashtray'Von from becoming neurosurgeons or international traders in C10H15N.

Will our Iscariot overseers indulge in some deep soul-searching and somewhat tone down their kind, though justified reprimands after reading this study?

Anonymous said...

Are all academics in the social sciences so conceptually confused? So if there are changes in the level of ethnic fractionalization over time, as people over generations assimilate, differentiate, amalgamate, break-apart, immigrate and emigrate, then ethnic groups must be given a constructivist understanding? Biological species change over time, but they are not socially constructed, and the same goes for ethnic and racial groups.

Volksverhetzer said...

Somalians and Gypsies are our best friends, as there is no way even somebody who are a hardcore multikulturalist, can defend the way these groups acts.

With almost all immigrant groups, there is something positive that can be held up, but with the Somalians there is nothing.

Even old dyed in red feminists, see red when Somalian birth-tents come walking down the road, usually with a litter of smaller Somalians following.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

In case you missed it, the most reliable ethnic group in the Republican fold is the middle class white man. That means that any discussion or study of ethnicity (except to blame white males for everything since the invention of bronze) is doubleplusungood crime think.

No one is going to flush their career based on some hypothetical benefits that probably would not pan out in the author's lifetime.

Of course, someone will eventually study genetics, race, and culture and how they relate to each other. However, that is a long way off. The current crop of academe will need to be retired before any such sea-change will be possible.

TWS

Anonymous said...

"Is there anyone who thinks about the perverse reverse incentive system behind asylum seekers and refugees?"

What bothers me mre is that a) the people who come as refugees are often every bit as responsible for the mess their country is in as are their oppressors; b) that they often bypass 5-10-50 more suitable countries before arriving to settle as "refugees" in ours; c) they routinely take vacations back to the land of their "oppression"; and d) when the conflict is settled and peace returns they almost never go back.

Luke Lea said...

I second the first comment. Cynical elites manipulate ethnic divisions of the working-class to deny it an effective voice in the political process. Plus it has no friends in the upper class. I'd like to see some of the Ashkenazi elite take up its cause.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

BTW Mark Bowden's book (I never got around to seeing the film) is actually as interesting as it's supposed to be. If you can't find a way to embed with a militarized peacekeeping outfit in some war-torn hellhole that's probably the next best way to learn about it."

The movie was good too - actually one of the best war movies I have ever seen. Without ever explicitly saying so, it leaves one with the impression that wars of nation-building, especially in black Africa, are utterly futile.

It of course leaves out a lot of what was in the (quite good) book - such as how we allowed our army to be the tool of a UN agenda, and why the Somali warlords were, as a result, not so fond of us.

Anonymous said...

It is odd that you mentioned Somalis in Lake Wobegon. There has been a large resettlement of Somalis in St. Cloud, Minnesota (about 5,000 in an area of about 100,000 residents) with the fictional Lake Wobegon generated while Garrison Keillor was working a few miles away. Somalis have exerted their influence by claiming to the federal Department of Education that the local school district disproportionately disciplines Somalis. As a result of the settlement, it appears that Somali students will be given special privileges.

Anonymous said...

My Somalia strategy for the west:

STAY OUT OF SOMALIA! No more 'black hawk down' nonsense.

KEEP SOMALIS OUT OF THE WEST!

Complete disconnect.

Anonymous said...

I doubt that the structure of the benefits can be altered to support the GOP, especially considering that republicans bear culpability in structuring some of those benefits as they stand today.

Obviously whites would prefer that white taxpayer dollars go to fellow whites, but that isn't particularly workable because we'd also prefer to continue to status seek.

Further the desire to appear race neutral means that the outcome of having spent trillions trying to lift up blacks, and accomplishing nothing for it, must mean that the government can never accomplish any such aim.

Paul Mendez said...

If you really think that any major institution in america (sic) has the working class majority interests at heart, then you are just deluded enough to find success as a mainstream journalist.

Anonymous defeatism is absolutely the best way to help working class majority "americans."

eh said...

OT

...the Libyan woman who stormed into Tripoli's Rixos Hotel a little more than a year ago in March, screaming of gang rape by Col.Moammar Gadhafi's thugs ... gained asylum last summer in the United States and found herself a refugee in Denver...

You just knew it.

She doesn't like the food though.

Jehu said...

Want to alter the ethnic categories to benefit the GOP long term?
First, get rid of the Hispanic category entirely. If you can't do that, section it out such that it excludes White People with Spanish Surnames. Make it so you've got to be at least as dark as George Zimmerman to get any diversity bonus points based on being Hispanic/Latino/whatever. When the benefits evaporate, most will self-identify as white.