Specialist Group on Ethnic Politics
Newsletter Winter 2002/2003

Dear Members,

The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, our international journal, continues to be a source of pride: on average, over 5,000 people now access every issue. The most recent edition of the journal features articles by Florian Bieber, Thomas C. Davis and Andrei Panici; a forum discussion on India with contributions Gurharpal Singh, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Katharine Adeney and Maya Chadda; a contribution to our practitioners’ corner by Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley; a research note by Sandra F. Joireman; a review essay by Stephen Ryan; a website review by Stephen Hopkins; and twenty pages of book reviews. As usual you can access all articles for free at www.ethnopolitics.org.

Our Specialist Group will be present at this year’s PSA conference in Leicester with three panels and a roundtable. The roundtable on ‘Western Models of Multiculturalism: How useful for central and south-eastern Europe?’ will be chaired by George Schöpflin. The topics of our three panels are: ‘Governing Ethnically Divided Societies’, ‘Diaspora Politics’ and ‘Structure and Agency in Conflict Regulation’. The full conference programme is available at the PSA website (www.psa.ac.uk). We will also hold our annual meeting in Leicester, details about time and place to follow.

Conferences

After the success of our first International Symposium last September in Bath, we propose to turn this into a regular biannual event. The next symposium would thus be held in September 2004. We have not decided on a theme yet, and would thus welcome your ideas. A call for paper and panel proposals will follow with our next newsletter.

An interesting conference took place last November at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Organised by Sid Noel from the Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict Research Group, the event was entitled ‘From Power-sharing to Democracy’. Abstracts and full papers can be accessed at www.ssc.uwo.ca/polysci/necrg/powersharingdemocracy/programme.html.

Karl & Stefan will be running a panel at the forthcoming ECPR General Conference in Marburg, Germany, next September.  The panel is entitled: German-Czech, German-Polish Relations in the Twenty-First Century: A Comparison. The overall aim of this panel is to assess comparatively contemporary German-Polish and German-Czech relations.  Analysis of this ‘triangle of fate’, will be made within the framework of the wider geopolitical background, including the enlargement of Western institutions into Central and Eastern Europe.

In cooperation with the European Centre on Minority Issues (www.ecmi.de), the Specialist Group is co-organising a panel at this year’s ASN convention in New York. The topic of the panel is “Elections and Ethnopolitics”. For a detailed programme, check www.nationalities.org.

As in the last years, the Specialist group will also be present with its panel at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Our panel is entitled ‘Power Sharing: A Durable Solution to Ethnic Conflict?’. It will be chaired by Donald Rothchild; papers will be given by Marie-Joëlle Zahar, Valerie Bunce, John McGarry & Brendan O’Leary, and Stefan Wolff. Phil Roeder will be the discussant. For further information on the conference, please visit www.apsanet.org. 

Publications
INCORE have recently published ‘Single Identity Work: An approach to conflict resolution in Northern Ireland’ by Cheyanne Church, Anna Visser and Laurie Johnson. The paper can be downloaded at http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/news/updates/ Hard copies are available directly from INCORE, e-mail:incore@incore.ulst.ac.uk, Tel:+44 (0)28 7137 5500.

Daniele Conversi has the following recent publications to report:

• ‘The dissolution of Yugoslavia: Secession by the centre?’, in John Coakley (ed.) The Territorial Management of Ethnic Conflicts. London: Frank Cass, 2002

• Daniele Conversi (ed.) Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World. London: Routledge, 2002 (with two essays by the editor: ‘Conceptualizing
  Nationalism’ and ‘Resisting Primordialism’)

Eben Friedman has recently completed and defended his Ph.D. dissertation, at the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, USA.  The title is ‘Explaining the Political Integration of Minorities: Roms as a Hard Case,’ Eben can be contacted regarding his work :University of California, San Diego Department of Political Science, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0521, USA: Telephone: +1 619 497 0823, Fax: +1 858 534 7130, e-mail efriedma@ucsd.edu

Professor Peter Gatrell and Dr. Nick Baron of Manchester University, UK, are proud to announce the launch of a new book series ‘Population Displacement and Political Space’ to be published by Anthem Press, London. At the following URL you will also find a downloadable flyer for the series which you are invited to print out, circulate among colleagues or post on your departmental notice board, as well as an extensive set of guidelines for authors who wish to submit proposals to the series. www.art.man.ac.uk/HISTORY/ahrbproj/anthem/series.htm.

James Jupp has recently published: From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, pp. xi + 243.

Petra Kovacs of the LGI Managing Multiethnic Communities Project (lgi.osi.hu/ethnic/) is pleased to announce publication of Local Governance and Minority Empowerment in the Commonwealth of Independent States by Valery Tishkov and Elena Filippova, 330 pages, ISBN: 963 9419 38 9. Please direct orders to LGIpublications@osi.hu

Graham Fox of the MRG has let us know of the following publication: Religious Minorities in Pakistan by Iftikhar H. Malik, published by Minority Rights Group International, ISBN 1 897693, September 2002, A4, wirebound, pp, £6.70 per copy inc. P&P (£6.95/US$11.75 outside the UK/EIRE).

Vanessa Pupavac, (August 2002) ‘Therapeutising Refugees, Pathologising Populations: International Psycho-social Programmes in Kosovo’, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 59. Geneva: UNHCR Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit. ISSN 1020-7473. Available at www.unhcr.ch.

RoutledgeCurzon have recently published a study of ethnic politics and insurgency in Burma by Ashley South: Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake. ISBN Hb: 0-7007-1609-2.

Stefan Wolff contributed an article to ECMI’s Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe. In line with the focus of the issue on ‘Will Kymlicka and Exporting Liberal Pluralism: Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe’, Wolff’s article is entitled ‘Western Standards? Eastern Realities? Beyond Ethnic politics in Central and Eastern Europe’ and can be downloaded for free along with all other contributions from the ECMI’s website at www.ecmi.de/jemie/special_4_2002.html.

Call for Papers
A special issue of Patterns of Prejudice on asylum and xenophobia. This special issue of Patterns of Prejudice, guest edited by Liza Schuster, will explore the link between xenophobia and attitudes towards asylum. Contributions are invited from a variety of social science disciplines, ideally leading to an issue that offers a discussion of how this link operates at both policymaking and local levels. Among the questions that might be explored are: does xenophobia have an impact on the formulation and implementation of asylum policy? To what extent can the popular rhetoric of the defence of ‘our’ security and nation, or of burdensome asylum-seekers, be construed as racist or xenophobic?, Does the media play a role in relation to attitudes to asylum-seekers? What have been the effects of the increase in hostility towards asylum-seekers?

Papers addressing these and related questions should be submitted in two (2) copies. They should be no longer than 7,000 words with documentation. Please see the journal for style sheet. Submissions and queries should be sent to: Liza Schuster, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England, l.k.schuster@lse.ac.uk

Best wishes,

Karl & Stefan