Governing Ethnic Conflict: Consociation, Identity and the Price of Peace by Andrew Finlay

Author:Andrew Finlay [Finlay, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Peace, Political Science, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9780415498036
Google: wdOcswEACAAJ
Goodreads: 8697195
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

Making the conflict meaningful – no longer an anomaly, normalised – it can be used as a model for other places.

7

No exit

Human rights and the priority of ethnicity

Chastened perhaps by the example of apartheid South Africa, consociational theorists developed the idea that the groups participating in a power-sharing arrangement need not be predetermined, but could and maybe should be self-determining (see Chapters 2 and 3). In practice however consociational governmentality, drawing on certain ideas about communal identity and autonomy, sanctions community programs and community relations techniques that are informed by, valorise and aim to cultivate, individual and collective subjects who understand themselves to be defined by ethno-nationalism (see Chapters 5 and 6). In Chapter 4 we saw that in Northern Ireland, communal designation has become almost ineluctable: not just when filling in a census form or applying for a job but when signing up to a variety of everyday organisations and activities.

And yet, the normalisation of the ethno-national is not complete. People continue to elude the specified ethno-national categories. The GFA and the Dayton Accords made some allowances for this by inventing a special category. In both cases the word used to designate this special category is the same: ‘other’ and ‘Others’, respectively. The GFA states, ‘At their first meeting, members of the Assembly will register a designation of identity – nationalist, unionist or other – for the purposes of measuring cross-community support in Assembly votes under the relevant provisions above’ (Strand one ‘Democratic Institutions in Northern Ireland’). As an annex to one of its 11 articles, the Dayton Accords states:

Recalling the Basic Principles agreed in Geneva on September 8, 1995, and in New York on September 26, 1995, Bosniacs, Croats, and Serbs, as constituent peoples (along with Others), and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina hereby determine that the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is as follows … .

(1995, Annex 4, my emphasis)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.