In Focus: Elisabeth King and Cyrus Samii
20 August 2021
Elisabeth King and Cyrus Samii are both Associate Professors at New York University. Their new book, Diversity, Violence, and Recognition: How Recognizing Ethic Identity Promotes Peace, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
Elisabeth and Cyrus spoke with REACH team member Laura Cesaro about their book and the implications of their findings for policymakers and schools as they seek to create conditions for peace in contexts of conflict and ethnic diversity.
Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Laura: I read in the preface that this book has been 10 years in the making starting from conversations over coffee. What has been the journey of this book?
Elisabeth: Cyrus was finishing his Ph.D. studies with a fascinating study of Burundi. I was working on my book about classrooms to conflict in Rwanda. Over informal conversations, we noticed that these two countries had adopted diametrically opposed strategies to dealing with ethnicity in the aftermath of mass violence along ethnic lines. We also saw so many similarities in these two countries: histories, ethnic groups and ethnic demographics, similar socioeconomics—and yet, at this pivotal moment of decision, Rwanda chose not to recognize ethnicity and Burundi chose to entrench ethnicity in state institutions with things like ethnic quotas. We started having these conversations wondering which strategy is a better one, and that is what grew into a much bigger idea and then this book. So, it's really an empirical puzzle that motivated this book in our desire to learn more both about these two countries, and then broader strategies in conflict mitigation globally.
Cyrus: This book was interesting because it really sprung from our curiosity that came alongside other research that we were each doing. There is a lot of spontaneity that comes from unstructured conversations, which may lead you to a moment of clarity. We wanted to share these puzzles with other people because we think it has implications for the way people think about conflict management, institution building, and conflict-affected contexts, particularly where ethnic polarization is a major issue.
“Education is such a reflector of the state and the state priorities. Who has access to education, and are ethnic inequalities or injustices addressed?”
Laura: Who did you have in mind when writing this book?
Cyrus: The book is written in a manner that we hope is approachable for a broad audience. There is definitely an academic audience, from undergraduates through to graduate students and active researchers in the field because we think we're making a cutting-edge statement. We have also tried to write the book in an approachable manner, such that people who work in policy in NGOs, civil society organizations, and journalists would also be able to derive something from it as well. We provide an analytical framework that we hope provides a lens for people working actively in conflict processes through which to understand fundamental policy dilemmas related to ethnic polarization and broader dynamics of conflict management, conflict resolution, and post-conflict constitution writing.
Laura: What are the main findings of your research?
Elisabeth: The book looks at the universe of cases in a cross-national analysis and presents the outcomes. We saw important benefits of ethnic recognition in terms of economic vitality, in terms of the depth and quality of democracy, and, of course, most directly in terms of a reduction of political violence.
Cyrus: However, when we look at the data more closely, those sorts of positive trends are driven by cases where you have either majority ruling or what we call ‘plurality’. Whereas, if you just look at the cases where minority rule is in place, there is no clear benefit from recognition there. We therefore suggest that there are ways that you can deal with inter-ethnic mistrust through the use of recognition, but that in context of minority ethnic rule there are other challenges that would arise. In fact, in these instances the successful application of recognition-based strategies would have to deal with those challenges that are created.
Laura: What do your findings show in regards to recognition in the field of education?
Elisabeth: Education was the second most common sector in which we found recognition, very closely followed by language, which is also intricately tied to education. Education is such a reflector of the state and the state priorities. Who has access to education, and are ethnic inequalities or injustices addressed? Then we also need to look at the content of education: What is taught in terms of the historical narrative, and who is included and excluded from that story?
Laura: What would you say, then, is the biggest takeaway for policymakers dealing with ethnic conflicts?
Elisabeth: We hope that leaders—people who are facing these decisions—realize that there are lots of different ways to adopt recognition.
Cyrus: And in this choice, I want to reiterate the paradoxes that we discovered. What we find is that there is a difference between the objective of trying to de-politicize ethnicity and ignoring the existence of ethnic polarization. One does not necessarily equal the other. Ignoring the existence of ethnic identities and polarization around those identities does not necessarily translate into de-politicizing ethnicity. In fact, it could lead to the very opposite. On the other hand, identities in the construction of institutions can actually be a path toward depoliticizing ethnicity. That's the central paradox that comes out of our work.