Social identity and ethnic formation: Some epistemological implications for liberal social philosophy.

Abstract

Ethnic nationalism increasingly concerns social philosophers, who frequently deal with it either in the context of defending liberal individualism with concomitant deep autonomy, which viewpoint seems antithetical to the principle of ethnicity, or else deal with it as a version of communalism: thus the topic becomes an issue contained within the established communalist-individualist debate. The tendency is to regard the phenomenon as a refractory historical residue and focus on fitting it into normative systems proceeding from liberal political thought about rational, optimizing agendas.

At the same time, research in anthropology, history, and literature studies indicate that ethnic nationalism is a dynamic process rather than detrital. If this is so, then perhaps ethnic nationalism ought to be treated as an inevitable element of the human social situation upon which social philosophers construct their optimizing models, rather than another option to be considered for inclusion in or exclusion from such philosophical models.

Rather than adjudicating between communalism and individualism, I argue that, if the ethnic phenomenon is not detrital, as evidenced by empirical theory, then prescriptive measures (political policy) should be adjusted accordingly; and therefore the relevancy of normative philosophical constructs is impacted. Additionally, if the ethnic phenomenon is contingently pernicious, rather than necessarily so, then philosophical constructs intended to inform and justify politics need still more adjustment. I do not advocate any such adjustments or remedies, except through a very general implication that the neutral procedural federated state may be least unacceptable arrangement for a multicultural society.

I try to conform some of these empirical theories (of P. L. van den Berghe, Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, and Edward Said) with some philosophical arguments made by will Kymlicka, Yael Tamir, Charles Taylor, and Joseph Raz. I examine a conceptual distinction within the general notion of ethnic-based communitarianism (passive historical ethnicity, and civic state-building ethnicity), and then argue for the legitimacy of epistemologically useful connections with the selected work in the social sciences.