• Instrumental choice of ethnic identification
• Are people actually rational?
• Psychological approaches

Many scholars attempt to understand ethnic politics by taking the choice of ethnic identity from a repertoire as a strategic/intrumental choice.

• take “repertoire” of “operative ethnic identities” as given
• choose one to maximize some utility/gain
  • political power
  • economic gains
  • personal well-being

Posner (2005) formalizes/generalizes these arguments:

• there are mutually exclusive sets of identities along the same dimension (e.g. language-, racial-groups)
• these “sets” of identities form a “cleavage”… “cut” through society

Posner says, assume that…

1. People emphasize ethnic identity to maximize resources
2. Resources distributed by sole “winner” of election, only to members of winner’s group
3. Winner decided by who gets most votes
4. Everyone knows how many people in each ethnic category…

People ethnicity to form minimum winning coalition

• choose to emphasize ethnic identity that is large enough to win but as small as possible to reap the most benefit

Result of this process may vary depending on the size of groups, nature of cleavage structure (nested, cross-cutting), argues there is underlying rational process driving ethnic identification.

• Nested Example: Pakistan
• Cross-cutting Example: Language and Religion in India

Forms of ethnic change

• repertoire of descent attributes : structural
• nominal ethnic identities : structural
• operative ethnic identities : structural, psychological, strategic
• passing : strategic, psychological
• activating identities : strategic, psychological

Are you this rational in choosing ethnic identity categories in everyday life?

Are people in general this rational?

• Digression: ultimatum games (Bowles and Gintis)

It may be that political elites/leaders use ethnic identification strategically…

… even if most people do not think strategically.

• What explains how non-elites behave?

Hale (2004) describes how to think about ethnicity as a psychological phenomenon (differentiate from primordialism).

Like rational accounts, psychological approaches to ethnicity focus on the individual

• but people’s cognitive capacities are not always rational, prone to bias/taking cognitive shortcuts

Hale:

• Humans are motivated to reduce uncertainty

  • need to feel greater certainty about the world around them
  • social categories that “group” people reduce uncertainty

• Social categories more useful at reducing uncertainty if:

  • they are readily “accessible”
  • they “fit” reality well

Compared to other social categories ethnic categories may be…

more accessible:

• attributes of membership are easier to see/detect…
• e.g. physical features, language, correlation to real world experiences, accessibility of shared symbols

“fit” real-world situations

• ethnic categories correlate with many other differences: e.g. economic/social status
• sometimes these correlations are objective: they are an empirical reality
• sometimes these correlations are “mediated”: - “fit” may be informed by representations of reality. (e.g., representations of crime)

Thinking “ethnically” may not be conscious

• racial bias in threat-perception in first-person shooter simulations
• racial bias in hiring experiments
• framework for interpreting events

Are we “hardwired” to think ethnically?

Some ethnic (non-ethnic) categories might become more accessible or fit better.

Forms of ethnic change

• repertoire of descent attributes : structural
• nominal ethnic identities : structural
• operative ethnic identities : structural, psychological, strategic
• passing : strategic, psychological
• activating identities : strategic, psychological

Assumptions

1. people desire positive self-esteem
2. social groups/categories have positive/negative connotations that reflect a person’s social identity
3. group status is based on favorable/unfavorable comparison with other groups

Implications

1. people want to increase or maintain positive social identity
2. positive social identity based on positive comparison between in-group and relevant out-group
3. Individuals will leave group, change their group, alter the comparison to make identity more positive

Football victories:

• Does a positive change in status of national identity induce people to emphasize that identity?
• SIT suggests that this should occur to increase self esteem

Afrobarometer: multi-wave survey, same questions, dozens of countries

Compare:

• change in ethnic vs. national identification of people in countries whose team wins from before to after the game

vs.

• change in ethnic vs. national identification of people in countries whose team loses from before to after the game

69 official matches played between 2002 and 2015 with survey responses in window of 15 days before or after each match. Of these, 31 were wins by the respondent’s national team, 29 were losses, and 9 were draws