Racial Conflict in Global Society
Racial Conflict in Global Society (ISBN: 9780745662602) was written by John Stone and Polly Rizova in 2014.
The authors utilize a neo-Weberian framework to study racial conflict in a globalized/globalizing world. To clarify, that means they...
- Study the structures of power, as defined primarily as coercion.
- Focus on what agents believe is true, and how they legitimize their behaviors, rather than empirical truth.
- Race and ethnicity is not inherent but rather created; Weber argued that there were pariah groups that are singled out often by race.
Neo-Weberian theory instead looks at social closure and closing mechanism, such as citizenship. See Murphy.
Globalization has brought a number of challenges.
- Multi-ethnic states are more common, or rather it has become very difficult to create a mono-ethnic state.
- Four dynamics for why companies are going multinational to chase talented workers.
U.S., Japan, Europe, etc., are seeing lower birth rates and higher life expectancy; the work force is aging rapidly.
- Immigration laws have opened up, especially for work visas.
- Work in U.S. and Europe has transformed from manufacturing into services.
- Globalization, even if only in terms of the customers/clientele, but often in terms of multicultural and remote workplaces, means that companies have to manage a more diverse and differentiated workforce. This challenge on their part lends itself to a comparative advantage for the laborers themselves.
- Ease of travel means more immigration into U.S. and Europe. See also the "reversal of both Ireland and Italy from being societies of emigration to ones that experienced the economic, political, and social impacts of immigrants" (p66). It also means migrants are more likely to return to their homeland with education and wealth gained abroad.
- Heightened attention to citizenship.
Case studies that demonstrate failures of more conventional frameworks for thinking about race and ethnicity.
- Marx and Engel theory if class conflict; national and racial conflict are false consciousness that the ruling class use to distract from class consciousness.
- Smith theory that market forces dissolve boundaries.
- Both look at these conflicts as inevitably ending eventually.
In China, racial consciousness is real and rigidly defined, but class is the biggest determinant for outcomes.
In Brazil, there is a long legacy from slavery. But race identity is too loosely defined there to clearly delineate in-groups and out-groups. Instead there is discrimination against darker skin on a scale.
In South Africa, the very recent legacy of apartheid has created a political environment that punishes racial politics.
Research into how people get jobs, and what influences their wage rate given that they got the job, has consistently found that social networks and referrals play an outsized role.
Parallels in many cultures: sviazi in Russia, guanxi in China, wasta in Middle East, piston in Northern Africa.
- In the U.S., referrals have influence on wages for whites, but not blacks or latinos.
- These are all fundamentally systems that reinforce in-group preferences in a sub-legal manner.
The authors argue that the transition from a bipolar world (i.e., the Cold War) to a hegemonic system, and then the hegemon becoming trapped in a war to nowhere in the Middle East, creates the setting for modern racial and ethnic violence.
"One only has to remember the characterization of Lebanon in the 1960s as the 'Switzerland of the Middle East'. This was a society that had achieved an internal balance between its diverse religious and ethnic groups by sharing power on an equitable basis." (p121).
One strategy for alleviating racial tensions has been affirmative action. Even leaving aside the states where racial identity is loosely defined (e.g., Brazil), these policies have proven very controversial.
A common conservative strategy for countering affirmative action has emerged: call for colorblind policies.
Roberts wrote in the plurality opinion for Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
South Africa can be a model for justice, as the transition from apartheid to the free 1994 elections was far more peaceful than any theory would have predicted.
- The end of the Cold War rapidly reshaped geopolitical incentives; this may have had an impact on regime viability.
- The anti-apartheid movement was a thoroughly organized and highly professional political organization.
- Racial discrimination became redundant as class discrimination empowered white Afrikaaners just as well.
Meanwhile Yugoslavia: the only thing that is clear is that the Cold War had sustained cooperation, and no one explanation is available for how that state dissolved completely.
The authors suggest then that structural theories cannot guide the solutions, given how individualistic and contextual these case studies are.
Reading Notes
The authors explore several contemporary issues, which... are amusing in retrospect.
They posit that Turkey entering the EU will erode Christianity as a group identifier in Europe.
They posit that Republicans in the U.S. will hesitate to push against immigration reform for the risk that it will mobilize a generation of latinos against them electorally.
They posit that Merkle will solve the shrinking labor force by opening the country to immigration.
- They posit that the secular civic activism seen in the Arab Spring will lead to changes in how Muslim minorities are perceived in the U.S. and Europe.
- Combine this with how Uighur Muslims feature prominently in the China case study, seeking to establish that class is the main determinant to outcomes...