Interethnic relations, due to their multidimensional nature, are a complex phenomenon. They include two varieties:
– relations between different nationalities within one state;
– relations between different nation-states.
The forms of interethnic relations are as follows:
– Peaceful cooperation.
– Ethnic conflict(from lat. conflictus - collision).
The methods of peaceful cooperation are quite diverse.
The most civilized way to unite different peoples is the creation of a multinational state in which the rights and freedoms of every nationality and nation are respected. In such cases, several languages are official, for example, in Belgium - French, Danish and German, in Switzerland - German, French and Italian. As a result, it is formed cultural pluralism (from Latin pluralis - multiple).
With cultural pluralism, no national minority loses its identity or dissolves into the general culture. It implies that representatives of one nationality voluntarily master the habits and traditions of another, while enriching their own culture.
Cultural pluralism is an indicator of a person’s successful adaptation (adaptation) to a foreign culture without abandoning his own. Successful adaptation involves mastering the riches of another culture without compromising the values of one’s own.
In the modern world, two interrelated trends are visible in the development of nations.
Interethnic conflict
In the modern world there are practically no ethnically homogeneous states. Only 12 countries (9% of all countries in the world) can be conditionally classified as such. In 25 states (18.9%), the main ethnic community makes up 90% of the population; in another 25 countries this figure ranges from 75 to 89%. In 31 states (23.5%), the national majority ranges from 50 to 70%, and in 39 countries (29.5%) barely half the population is an ethnically homogeneous group.
Thus, people of different nationalities one way or another have to coexist on the same territory, and peaceful life does not always develop.
Interethnic conflict - one of the forms of relations between national communities, characterized by a state of mutual claims, open confrontation of ethnic groups, peoples and nations with each other, which tends to increase contradictions up to armed clashes, open wars.
In global conflictology there is no single conceptual approach to the causes of interethnic conflicts.
Social and structural changes in contacting ethnic groups, problems of their inequality in status, prestige, and remuneration are analyzed. There are approaches that focus on behavioral mechanisms associated with fears for the fate of the group - not only about the loss of cultural identity, but also about the use of property, resources and the aggression that arises in connection with this.
Researchers based on collective action focus their attention on the responsibility of elites fighting for power and resources. Obviously, the elites are primarily responsible for creating the “enemy image,” ideas about the compatibility or incompatibility of the values of ethnic groups, the ideology of peace or hostility.
In situations of tension, ideas are created about the characteristics of peoples that prevent communication - the “messianicism” of the Russians, the “inherited belligerence” of the Chechens, as well as the hierarchy of peoples with whom one can or cannot “deal.”
The concept of the “clash of civilizations” by the American researcher S. Huntington is very influential in the West. She explains modern conflicts, in particular recent acts of international terrorism, religious differences. In Islamic, Confucian, Buddhist and Orthodox cultures as if the ideas of Western civilization - liberalism, equality, legality, human rights, market, democracy, separation of church and state - do not resonate.
The main cause of conflicts, friction, and various kinds of prejudices between representatives of different nationalities is ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism - a set of misconceptions (prejudices) of one nation in relation to another, indicating the superiority of the first.
Ethnocentrism is confidence in the correctness of one’s own culture, a tendency or tendency to reject the standards of another culture as incorrect, low, or unaesthetic. Therefore, many interethnic conflicts are called false, since they are based not on objective contradictions, but on a misunderstanding of the positions and goals of the other side, attributing hostile intentions to it, which gives rise to an inadequate sense of danger and threat.
Modern sociologists offer the following classification of the causes of interethnic conflicts.
Causes of interethnic conflicts
– Socio-economic– inequality in living standards, different representation in prestigious professions, social strata, and government bodies.
– Cultural and linguistic– insufficient, from the point of view of an ethnic minority, the use of its language and culture in public life.
– Ethnodemographic– a rapid change in the ratio of the numbers of contacting peoples due to migration and differences in the level of natural population growth.
– Environmental– deterioration of the quality of the environment as a result of its pollution or depletion natural resources due to the use by representatives of other ethnic group.
– Extraterritorial– discrepancy between state or administrative boundaries and the boundaries of settlement of peoples.
– Historical– past relationships between peoples (wars, former dominance-subordination relationship, etc.).
– Confessional– due to belonging to different religions and confessions, differences in the level of modern religiosity of the population.
– Cultural– from the peculiarities of everyday behavior to the specifics of the political culture of the people.
Sociologists highlight Various types interethnic conflicts.
Interethnic conflicts do not arise out of nowhere. As a rule, their appearance requires a certain shift in the usual way of life and the destruction of the value system, which is accompanied by people’s feelings of confusion and discomfort, doom and even loss of the meaning of life. In such cases, the regulation of intergroup relations in society comes to the fore. ethnic factor as more ancient, performing the function of group survival.
The action of this socio-psychological factor is realized as follows. When a threat appears to the existence of a group as an integral and independent subject of intergroup interaction, at the level of social perception of the situation, social identification occurs on the basis of origin, on the basis of blood; Mechanisms of socio-psychological protection are included in the form of processes of intra-group cohesion, intra-group favoritism, strengthening the unity of “we” and out-group discrimination and isolation from “them”, “strangers”.
These processes can lead to nationalism.
Nationalism (French nationalosme from Latin nation - people) – ideology and politics that put the interests of the nation above any other economic, social, political interests, the desire for national isolation, localism; distrust of other nations, often developing into interethnic hostility.
Types of nationalism
Ethnic– the people’s struggle for national liberation, gaining their own statehood.
State-state– the desire of nations to realize their national-state interests, often at the expense of small nations.
Domestic- manifestation of national feelings, hostility towards foreigners, xenophobia (gr. hepov - stranger and pKobov - fear).
Nationalism can develop into its extremely aggressive form - chauvinism.
Chauvinism (French chauvinisme - the term comes from the name of Nicolas Chauvin, the literary hero of the comedy of the brothers I. and T. Cognard “The Tricolor Cockade”, the guardian of the greatness of France in the spirit of the ideas of Napoleon Bonaparte) – a political and ideological system of views and actions that substantiates the exclusivity of a particular nation, contrasting its interests with the interests of other nations and peoples, instilling in people’s consciousness hostility, and often hatred towards other nations, which incites hostility between people of different nationalities and religions, national extremism .
One of the manifestations of state nationalism is genocide.
Genocide (from Latin genos – genus and caedere – to kill) – the deliberate and systematic destruction of certain groups of the population on racial, national or religious grounds, as well as the deliberate creation of living conditions calculated to bring about the complete or partial physical destruction of these groups. An example of genocide is the Holocaust - the mass extermination of the Jewish population by the Nazis during World War II.
The unification of a group based on ethnicity occurs on the basis of:
– preference of their fellow tribesmen to “strangers”, newcomers, non-indigenous people and strengthening the sense of national solidarity;
– protecting the territory of residence and reviving the sense of territoriality for the titular nation, ethnic group;
– demands for the redistribution of income in favor of “our own”;
– ignoring the legitimate needs of other population groups in a given territory, recognized as “strangers”.
All these signs have one advantage for group mass action - the visibility and self-evidence of the community (in language, culture, appearance, history, etc.) compared to “strangers”. An indicator of the state of interethnic relations and, accordingly, their regulator is an ethnic stereotype as a type of social stereotype. At the same time, the regulation of intergroup relations with the help of an ethnic stereotype acquires a kind of independent existence and psychologically returns social relations to the historical past. When the interests of two groups collide and both groups lay claim to the same benefits and the same territory (such as the Ingush and North Ossetians), in conditions of social confrontation and devaluation of common goals and values, national-ethnic goals and ideals become leading socio-psychological regulators of mass social action. Therefore, the process of polarization along ethnic lines inevitably begins to express itself in confrontation, in conflict, which, in turn, blocks the satisfaction of the basic socio-psychological needs of both groups.
At the same time, in the process of escalation (expansion, build-up, increase) of the conflict, the following socio-psychological patterns objectively and invariably begin to operate:
– a decrease in the volume of communication between the parties, an increase in the amount of misinformation, a tightening of aggressive terminology, an increasing tendency to use the media as a weapon in the escalation of psychosis and confrontation among the broad masses of the population;
– distorted perception of information about each other;
– developing an attitude of hostility and suspicion, consolidating the image of a “cunning enemy” and dehumanizing him, i.e. exclusion from the human race, which psychologically justifies any atrocities and cruelties towards “non-humans” in achieving their goals;
– formation of an orientation towards victory in an interethnic conflict by force through the defeat or destruction of the other side.
In acute conflict situations one of the first intermediate phases of its settlement is legalization of the conflict.
The signing of any agreements in itself does not guarantee the settlement of the conflict. The determining factor is the willingness of the parties to implement them, and not to use them as a “smoke screen” to continue attempts to achieve their goals by illegal means. For this, in turn, it is necessary to at least partially overcome the conflict of interests or at least reduce its severity, which can lead, for example, to the emergence of new incentives in relations between the parties: severe economic necessity, the parties’ interest in each other’s resources, “bonuses” “for resolving the conflict in the form of international or foreign assistance - they can (though not always) switch the interests of the conflicting parties to a different plane and significantly dampen the conflict.
Thus, in socio-political terms, the path to overcoming interethnic conflicts lies either through at least partial satisfaction of the demands of the parties, or through reducing the relevance of the subject of the conflict for them.
Existing interethnic problems (territorial disputes, the desire for sovereignty; the struggle of ethnic minorities for self-determination, the creation of an independent state entity; discrimination against language, lifestyle; the problem of refugees, internally displaced persons, etc.) require significant efforts to resolve them.
Ways to resolve interethnic problems
– Recognition of interethnic problems and their solution using methods of national policy.
– Awareness by all people of the unacceptability of violence, mastery of the culture of interethnic relations, which requires the unconditional implementation of the rights and freedoms of persons of any nationality, respect for identity, their national identity, language, customs, excluding the slightest manifestation of national mistrust and hostility.
– Using economic leverage to normalize the ethnopolitical situation.
– Creation of cultural infrastructure in regions with a mixed national composition of the population - national societies and centers, schools with a national-cultural component for teaching children in their native language and in the traditions of national culture.
– Organization of effectively functioning international commissions, councils, and other structures for the peaceful resolution of national disputes.
Sample assignment
C6. Name two trends in the development of modern interethnic relations and illustrate each of them with an example.
Answer: The following trends in the development of modern interethnic relations can be named and illustrated with examples: Integration; economic, cultural and political rapprochement of nations, the destruction of national barriers (for example, the European Community). The desire of a number of peoples to preserve or gain cultural and national independence, autonomy (for example, the Korean minority in Japan).
National relations are relations between peoples (ethnicities), which cover all aspects of public life.
National relations find their expression in social actions, which largely depend on the individual motivation and behavior of the subjects of society.
National relations can be friendly and mutually respectful, or, on the contrary, hostile and conflicting.
Ethnic communities are associations of people based on a common historical past, which provokes identity in their worldview, cultural and spiritual traditions.
Main feature ethnic communities is their common historical region of residence.
Today there are several thousand ethnic communities in the world, and the modern geography of their settlement is very diverse.
Interethnic conflicts are a type of social conflict that occurs between members of different ethnic communities. In many scientific works, the basis of interethnic conflicts is indicated by types of political and civil confrontation.
Interethnic conflicts often exist in two forms: in the form of political competition and in the form of armed confrontations. Often the formation of the image of an enemy in the person of another people occurs on a historical basis.
Interethnic cooperation is the interaction between representatives of different ethnic groups, which is reflected in economic, political and cultural public relations. The main principle of interethnic cooperation is mutual assistance, as well as respect for representatives of other nations.
The culture of interethnic relations is the level of relationships between people and ethnic groups of different nationalities, which is based on moral principles, legal norms, as well as norms of mutual trust and respect.
A low level of culture of interethnic relations provokes the emergence of interethnic conflicts, while a high level contributes to the development of interethnic cooperation.
National policy is components activities of any state that regulates interethnic relations of citizens in various types public interaction.
The essence of national policy directly depends on the general vectors public policy. The national policy of legal democratic states is based on the principle of respect for people belonging to any ethnic community.
