ABSTRACT
Social scientists have tended to view ethnicity, at best, as a phase on the way to assimilation (Lloyd Warner and Srole 1949), or at worst, a potential and obdurate obstacle to the effective governance of modern states (Rudolph 2006; Pinder 2013; Khadiagala 2010). The frames used, such as ‘plural societies’ and ‘ethnic conflict’, underscore that ethnicity is a potentially disruptive force that can only partly be tamed by embedding its logic into the political system, i.e. through consociationalism (Lijphart 1977), a paradigm utilised in relation to Guyana and Suriname, for example (Milne 1977; Dew 1978; Lowe 2013; Singh 2014). Although there are a number of variables of social difference, including class, gender, nation, religion and so on, it is striking that the concept of ethnicity can first, absorb some of these others, and second, be seen as a destabilising alternative to the order of the nation-state. National conversations about minority groups’ integration into the nation, and what this means for social cohesion of all kinds, are key features of late modernity, not only in contemporary Europe, but also in a variety of contexts, from Iraq to Australia, and Singapore to South Africa. It should also be emphasised that in much of this debate, the majority group’s cultural homogeneity and belonging is assumed rather than proven, and that these other variables noted above are frequently ignored or significantly downplayed in analyses, as if the ethnicity frame trumps all others.
