Ethnic Conflicts in The Former USSR: The Use and Misuse of Typologies and Data
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343399036005005 |
| Author | Valery Tishkov |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Ethnic Conflicts in the Former USSR: The Use and
Misuse of Typologies and Data*
VALERY TISHKOV
Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Moscow & International Peace Research
Institute, Oslo (PRIO)
journal of
peace
R
ESEARCH
© 1999 Journal of Peace Research
vol. 36, no. 5, 1999, pp. 571–591
Sage Publications (London, Thousand
Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
[0022-3433 (199909) 36:5; 571–591; 009492]
This article summarizes research on ethnic conflict in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Various
appealing but unsatisfactory typologies have been proposed, focusing on the subjects of the conflict
(actors, goals, motivations); on the environment of the conflict (territory, language, socio-economy,
environment and resources; or on characteristics of the conflict (scale, length, form of fighting, losses,
aftermath). Most conflict typologies reflect better the thinking and political agenda of the typologists
than the actual social panorama. Conflict theories and data presentations contain strong prescriptive
elements and may even generate new conflict. For the conflicts in the Former Soviet Union, existing
typologies fail to grasp several major factors, such as the strategies and behavior of individuals, social
and political disorder, power and status aspirations, elite manipulations, and outside interventions.
This article discusses data on human and material losses in nine violent conflicts: Karabakh, Fergana,
Osh, South Ossetia, Transdniestria, Tajik, Abkhazia, Ingush–Ossetian, and Chechen. In conclusion, a
plea is made for writing ‘between’ theory and data, without sacrificing sensitive and self-reflective nar-
ration in order to produce new insights and new knowledge.
The Politics of Meta-Projects
It is difficult to accept as ‘theories’ many
widely acclaimed postulates in conflict
studies. Theories of ‘group risk’ or ‘basic
human needs’, for example, barely meet the
minimum requirement of being reasoned
suppositions put forward to explain facts or
events. Attempts to use these approaches for
regional or case analyses run into all kinds of
problems, although they continue to serve as
attractive constructions in academic exer-
cises.
Potential clients abound for ambitious
academic or political enterprises, especially
in the field of international relations and
conflict research. Thus, the ‘risk method-
ology’ from the minorities debate (Gurr,
1993) evolved into the State Failure Project
(Esty et al., 1995, 1998) responding to the
euphoria felt by Western academics and the
political bureaucracy at the liberal victory,
and their rush to ‘remake’ the post–Cold
War world. And indeed, the results seem
impressive: with a massive amount of data
(233 minority groups for the ‘risk’ project
and 2 million pieces of data for the ‘state
failure’ project) involving quantitative oper-
ations with dozens of indicators of risk, and
600 variables for failed states, the authors
have produced interesting observations and
stimulated new questions for comparative
research. But simply by identifying
* This article became possible with the support of the
Russian Fund for Humanities and PRIO’s Ethnic and
Nationalist Studies Program. I wish to thank Susan Høivik
at PRIO for her editorial work.
571
at SAGE Publications on December 7, 2012jpr.sagepub.comDownloaded from
mythopoetic ‘basic human needs’ or rather
random lists of ‘minorities at risk’, one
cannot pinpoint a place and a time where a
crisis will occur. That is why it is dangerous
and even conflict provoking to believe that
‘people will aspire to meet their needs, one
way or another, even to extent that they may
be defined by others as “deviant” even as
“criminal” (e.g. terrorist)’ (Sandole, 1992:
13).
The basic methodological weakness of
such theories of conflict analysis lies in their
vision of groups as collective bodies with
needs and universal motivations – not as
situations, feelings, or acts of speech.
Attempts to rescue, for example, Burton’s
(1987) needs-based theory of conflict resol-
ution by modifying needs into ‘types’ fail to
yield serious insights into understanding
concrete cases – witness Michael Salla’s
article on the East Timor conflict (Salla,
1997: 458–462). Instead of producing new
knowledge, such meta-approaches attempt
to formulate prescriptions and predictions.
Predictive power is viewed as a test of good
research and even as a major mission of
social science. Yet, this vision represents a
grave predicament for social science because
it ignores uncertainty and creativity, the role
of human projects, and their rational and
irrational strategies. Even worse are the
massive resources invested and the attendant
expectations to prove the predictions and,
thus, the creditability of costly research as
well. In the State Failure Project in 1992–
93, the Russian Federation was ranked
among states ‘with high risk of disintegra-
tion’, a prediction which so far has not
proven very useful.
Predictions may be used not only to
prove but also to enforce realization.
Western academics and politicians provided
wide support for the scenario envisaging the
next round of disintegration after the
breakup of the USSR – this time involving
Russia as a ‘Mini-Empire’ peopled with
‘non-status nations’ or with ‘nations without
states’ which did not gain independence
‘simply because of bad luck or a quirk of
fate, but not because they are any less
deserving’ (Carley, 1996: 15; see also
Bremmer & Taras, 1993; Brzezinski, 1994).
Many academics have come to be self-
appointed advocates speaking on behalf of
what they see as oppressed groups.1Politics
and research become interdependent,
especially when efforts such as the State
Failure Project are surrounded with a mighty
institutional aura like that of the CIA, and
when politicians recruit major academic
names.
General conclusions drawn from rich
and reliable empiricism frequently fail to
work outside of the original data. For
example, researchers have had difficulties
identifying groups at risk beyond the orig-
inal list (Tishkov, 1997a: 134–136).
Nonetheless, it is rare to find the theory and
data of such grand projects questioned by
experts on a particular region, country, or
conflict. Quantitative theories live their own
lives without mundane testing. In the schol-
arly literature we can find such statements
such as ‘minorities at risk constitute one
sixth of the world’s population. There are at
least 47 violent conflicts in progress, gener-
ating about 50 million refugees’ (Carment
& James, 1997: 206). Such statements are
pronounced as self-evident truths, with no
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 36 / number 5 / september 1999572
1The problem of irresponsible ‘sympathetic anthro-
pology’ has been rightly pointed out by Fredrik Barth
(1994: 24): Anthropologists ‘regularly operate too nar-
rowly as (self-appointed) advocates and apologists for
ethnic groups and their grievances. They have neglected
the closer analysis of processes of collective decision
making that emerge on the median level [for Barth, a level
of group mobilization for diverse purposes by diverse
means, the field of entrepreneurship, leadership, and
rhetoric] and how they may produce policies and actions at
odds with the popular will and the shared interests of
people in the populations affected’. This observation
should also be extended to many other outside advocacy
groups who often destabilize the situation and existing
local balances in intergroup relations through giving a
voice to elitist ethnic entrepreneurs, often without local
support or legitimization.
at SAGE Publications on December 7, 2012jpr.sagepub.comDownloaded from
To continue reading
Request your trial