ABSTRACT

One of the aims of this study is to demonstrate the complexity of minority issues, in regards to which simple solutions seem unlikely to be effective, especially if they are based on a priori considerations and “a one-size-fits-all approach,” as put in an article devoted to the research paradigm known as intersectionality (Hankivsky and Cormier 2011, 218). Here I start from the obvious fact that reallife cases of tension and conflict involving minorities are rarely due to a single factor, such as the failure to take into account the cultural identity of members of a given minority group in designing public policies. The practice shows that conflicts of this type are usually the effect of a combination of various influences. Although they may appear to be the work of one factor whose effects are visible, a closer examination will reveal a dissonance in these effects, which can be due only to interference from other factors. For example, the tragic events during the breakup of Yugoslavia, about which we already have sufficient empirical information, were determined by cultural as well as by social and political circumstances. On the one hand, they were driven by existing ethnic, religious, and linguistic differences, as well as by historical score-settling, and on the other, by the aspirations of the local political elites to emancipate themselves from the central government in Belgrade and to head sovereign states. And, if we are to believe some of the claims of conspiracy theories, it is possible that foreign powers with a stake in the breakup of the federation could also have been involved in one way or another. The causal determination of such conflicts by a certain type of factor may often appear as being the effect of different ones. Frequently, the relative weights of the various influences may not only change over the course of the conflict, but may also vary from one point of the conflict’s location to another. Lastly, the different participants in the conflict may not necessarily share the same motives. Thus, if we ignore the possibility that an ethnic or religious conflict may be due to a combination of factors, some of which have nothing to do with ethnicity or religion, we risk developing an understanding about it that will be misleading in the design of minority public policies. That is why I will examine issues related to minority policy within a threedimensional coordinate system. In my opinion, every conflict situation of this kind is exposed to at least three types of influences whose effects may vary in

strength. I have in mind cultural differences, group solidarity, and factors of social and political nature. Or, if we use the metaphor of the coordinate system, such a conflict situation can be represented as a point in the three-dimensional “space” defined by the three axes in question. Furthermore, its position in this space can change over time depending on the possible changes in the relative weight of the different types of influences. Examining a given minority issue within such a coordinate system means making a special effort to establish the degree of “contribution” of each of the three types of factors. Public policies designed to resolve the issue in question must take into account the correlations of these qualitatively different “contributions” which require different public-policy approaches, but generate a common effect and are often involved in relationships of the positive-feedback type, meaning that they “catalyze” each other. So, if we do not adequately “diagnose” the issue, the policies that address it can be at odds with reality and turn out to be counterproductive. I will illustrate the imperative need for such analytical differentiation of the different “components”1 of minority issues (with the caveat that these components inevitably interface through the relations of mutual constitution and mutual reinforcement that exist between them) with an elegant formulation by Mari Matsuda (1990, 1189) – namely, the method she calls “ask the other question”:

When I see something that looks racist, I ask, “Where is the patriarchy in this?” When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, “Where is the heterosexism in this?” When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, “Where are the class interests in this?”