Primordialism: Is a Revision Neccessary?

We live in an age today in which so much depends upon our strong sense of global community, and yet so many of our problems trace back to how weak this unifying sense is. This theme is obviously most tragic when it appears in the form genocide, ethnic cleansings, and other manifestations of the deadly politics of identity. After our discussion in class during the Rwandan Genocide presentation I began to question how indeed an ethnoscape or rather the politics of identity can lead to implications surrounding the primordialist thesis as discussed by Appadurai.

According to Appadurai the greatest barrier to being able to map the interaction of disjunctive flows is a widespread attachment to primordialism. But what is really meant by primordialism? Is it simply the idea that culture and identity are rooted in, often unconscious, sentiments of belonging to a primary group, wherein a collective identity is based on conceptions of shared geography, ethnicity, or language?(lecture, Feb. 26, 2008)) Or is it something far more complex or specific having to do with strong ties a particular group has, based not on the unconscious, but rather, continually reinforced ideas of belonging, being a direct result of the current globalized media?

There is no doubt that breaking the vicious political cycle of ethnic or religious identity determining ones worth, or appropriate place in the world, is difficult. But it is possible. As it was mentioned in class, Rwanda and now Darfur are prime examples of missed opportunities for intervention. Breaking this destructive ethnocentric cycle is necessary for many tangible reasons, as these conflicts both feed into, and perpetuate other conflicts, including the current panic surrounding terrorism.

Arguably, it was the relatively autonomous developments of large and aggressive social formations in the Americas and Kingdoms of Africa and the overlapping of Eurocolonial worlds that set the basis for a permanent traffic of ideas of peoplehood and selfhood, which created the imagined communities of recent nationalism throughout the world (Appaurai, 28). With this idea in mind it is easy to draw a link between colonial possession and rule over a country, such as the Belgians in Rwanda, and a paradox of constructed primordialisms, namely the European constructed ethnicities of the Hutu’s and Tootsies. So what then, can be done to reverse the implications of the times past? And furthermore how can we theorize about the world within this primordialist view?

It is true after all that many policymakers, as we saw in the case of Rwanda, take the primordialist view of these conflicts, viewing them as the playing out of histories of fixed, inherited, deeply antagonistic group identities. In trying to make sense of this ethnic strife however, while history shapes, it does not necessarily determine conflicts nearly to the extent posited in such theories. A number of studies, for example, have shown that ethnic identities are much less fixed over time and that the frequency and intensity of ethnic conflict vary more than primordialist theory would have it (www.harvardir.org...). In the example discussed in class, the Tutsi and Hutus of Rwanda never really thought of themselves as being very different from each other prior to the European colonization of this county. With this simple fact in mind, can we move towards a new kind of primordialist theory, that is not based so much on specific ethnicity or language, but one wherein the implications of our increasingly globalized world starts to play a more pivotal role? My assumption is yes, not only because of the theoretical significance that this change would prompt, but also that it may prevent further tragedies from happening by way of a more modern look at current ethnoscapes and thus the reasons for ethnic conflict.

Sources:
Appadurai, A. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Modernity at Large:Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Minnesota, 1996.

Jentleson, Bruce W. “A Responsibility to Protect: the Defining Challenge for Global Community.” Ethnic Conflict, Vol. 28 (4) winter 2007.<>.