روشهایی برای حل تعارض های قومی: الگوها و اصول

In the past few decades, the consciousness of the ubiquity of ethnic conflicts and of ethnic diversity has significantly increased. There has been, however, an inability to foresee, adequately explain and resolve ethnic conflicts. This inability is attributed to the preconceived frameworks and paradigms through which the ethnic phenomenon has been understood. Three types of such preconceptions are singled out: the preconception of ethnic groups as pre-modern, the self-conception of the majority group in society as non-ethnic and the often-assumed “command” character of the mandate carried out by appointed administrators dealing with minority ethnic groups. These preconceptions have contributed to ineffectiveness of efforts at interethnic conflict resolution in as much as they have excluded the principle of identity recognition, regarded here as a basic metaprinciple of interethnic relations. Techniques of ethnic conflict resolution, such as that of negotiation, can work effectively only when they are governed by this metaprinciple. In this regard, the effectiveness depends also on participation of the state in interethnic conflict resolution, particularly by means of policies of identity recognition. Application of the metaprinciples, however, requires not only an understanding of the circumstances of each particular situation of conflict, but as well, an understanding of the nature of ethnicity, types of ethnic groups, the nature of ethnic identity, the nature of the process of ethnic identity construction and change. Understanding of the nature of nationalism and types of nationalisms is a case in point. Full understanding of the broader nature of the phenomenon of ethnicity is a prerequisite for development of an attitude that would lead to an effective negotiation process between conflicting ethnic groups.

Why are social scientists and practitioners so often unable to foresee or predict interethnic conflicts and when they occur unable to find effective ways of their resolution? What follows is an attempt to give an answer to this frequently asked question. I locate the problem in several intellectual paradigms of the era of modernity. First, a brief picture of potential interethnic conflicts at the end of this century is presented. This is followed by a discussion of what I consider to have been prevalent intellectual paradigms which have made the persistence of ethnicity and interethnic conflicts difficult to understand. Thirdly, I take up the issue of the most general principles that guide approaches to ethnic conflict resolution and argue in favor of the principle of identity recognition. I suggest that employment of this principle and the attitudes deriving from this principle can make a more thorough conflict resolution possible. Inversely, the failure to regard the principle of identity recognition frustrates or limits the intervention efforts for interethnic conflict resolution. Identity recognition provides integrity to the process of interethnic negotiation and in difficult cases of negotiation even one or a few actions which symbolically detract from identity recognition will have the effect of undermining the entire process. The process of interethnic negotiation presupposes not only a specific knowledge of each culturally different group involved in interethnic conflict, but also, and especially, a broader understanding of ethnicity as a social phenomenon that changes or develops over time. Finally, I present an analysis of nationalism as an example of this broader approach to understanding ethnicity. The discussion will use a variety of illustrations of interethnic conflicts in the world, but it will particularly draw examples from Canada’s social and historical experience.

In this paper I have tried to address the issue that while both scholars and practitioners in the past 20 years or so have become more aware of interethnic conflicts, the approaches to their resolution or their prediction have still remained not very effective. I have tried to locate the difficulty of approaching ethnic conflict resolution in the basic paradigms of the intellectual climate of the era of modernity. I call these pre-normative paradigms in the sense that they have been implicit in the way scholars and practitioners have looked at and understood important social and cultural issues, particularly ethnic issues, and in the principles and techniques they used to approach them. I have argued that among the principles of conflict resolution that have been identified by scholars (Fisher, 1994), the principle of identity recognition is paramount, but its role has not been adequately studied and assessed. I have also turned attention to the role of public recognition, particularly as provided by the participation of the state in the process of ethnic conflict resolution. Finally, I discussed a theory of nationalism as an example of the necessity to understand ethnic processes in a general way, as historical-social phenomena. The threshold to post-modernity was crossed when both the intellectuals and the politicians have come to realise that ethnicity not only has not disappeared as modernity advanced, but rather that it has remained and often reappeared and asserted itself in societies in which it was thought to be unimportant or was thought to be already gone. More than ever, the West has become aware that ethnic conflicts are ubiquitous and that the West as much as the rest of the world must now find ways of resolving and at least foreseeing the worst of these conflicts. To do so, it is necessary to have not only a knowledge of the most appropriate techniques and skills of conflict resolution, but also an understanding of the deeper principles behind these techniques, an attitude based on this understanding, a thorough knowledge of the ethnicities in question, particularly their histories, as well as a deeper knowledge of the nature and types of ethnic groups and identities and the processes in which “they” and “us” are enwrapped.