Ethnic Groups in Conflict

Horowitz relates ethnicity and the act of sociological analysis. He critiques the absence of a set of first principles which scholars could agree to use to examine ethnic relations in an intelligible and productive way. He asserts that the sociology of ethnicity is being held back by the lack of this intellectual foundation, which thwarts attempts to compare different situations and groups.

Horowitz cites several phenomena whose understanding, he believes, should be the utmost goal of analysis. First, there is the fact that different societies have different degrees of division. This phenomena, in his view, points to the differing roles of colonial, sovereign, ethnic, and indigenous identities in organizing people and instigating conflict. Second, he advocates trying to understand why different kinds of hierarchy emerge in social arrangements, and how they make possible or foreclose different economic transactions. Third, he argues that we must learn more about why systems tend towards centralization, often forging binary oppositions such as two-party political systems.



Fourth, Horowitz seeks to understand the role of differences that are ascribed rather than obvious. He uses as an example the fact that the ascription of one’s “ethnicity” is more complicated than how one dresses, or where one lives, or the religion or language in which one takes part. Difference constantly exceeds and overflows humanity’s categorizing capabilities, resulting in the formation of even more complex categories. Horowitz also argues, in the vein of Karl Marx, that ethnicity is more useful as a describing term than class, since it is more rigid, while class mobility is highly possible, even encouraged, in many societies.

Horowitz describes his theory of ethnic conflict. He holds that ethnic sentiment naturally takes on a primal, “raw” form that is then distorted and manipulated by self-interested institutional powers, which themselves have emerged out of years of ethnic struggle. He talks about the common capacity of institutions to actively affect ethnic sentiment. To do so, he reviews three primary frameworks for understanding ethnic conflict: cultural pluralism, economic self-interestedness, and the theory of modernization. None of them, in his view, are as comprehensive in describing ethnic conflict as the social psychological theory that he endorses. Horowitz rejects the notion that conflict happens because different ethnic identities feud over how labor is divided. Instead, most societies are driven by the creation of economic niches that constantly pull away from the notion that industries are to be few in number and ethnically contentious. Different ethnic groups naturally come to favor and participate in distinct economic activities.

Horowitz touches on how ethnic conflict relates to partisan politics. He believes that modern electoral systems make it easier than ever to form ethnic groups that eventuate in ethnic conflicts. If political partisanship is to be utilized well, in Horowitz’s view, it should publicly respond to as many issues as possible, participating in the languages of ethnicization. As grounds for this claim, he points to the fact that rarely, in the long run, do people simply vote for a party that engineers its identity to reflect a static ethnicity. Rather, their votes change rapidly and are highly sensitive to social evolution.



Using a number of well-researched examples from a broad set of nations across the most recent segment of the modern era, Horowitz delivers a compelling appeal to rethink ethnic conflict. The analytical position he arrives at is one of constant attentiveness to the psychology of ethnic formation, which provides a sounding board for new developments in economics and politics.