by Cass Sunstein

During discussions of Iraq, many people have suggested that with the fall of Saddam, ancient, even primordial hatreds have bubbled up to the surface. On this view, the current situation is what it is because long-suppressed ethnic and religious antagonisms are now in full bloom. The problem with this view is that ethnic hatreds are usually not primordial. Part of what we have been witnessing is a kind of rapid "ethnification," in the form of a social cascade. Some societies show low levels of ethnic activity. In most American cities, for example, most people do not act publicly in a way that draws even the slightest attention to their ethnicity. But some societies show slow or rapid ethnification, as people devote more of their efforts to showcasing their ethnic identity. We can easily find eras in the United States in which ethnic identification grew (usually just a bit) or declined (sometimes a lot). As Hitler obtained power, many German Jews became more closely self-identified as Jewish, in part for reasons of self-protection. A key factor here is whether the relevant social norms impose pressure to identify in ethnic terms, or not to do so. It may be "politically correct" to broadcast one's ethnicity, or it may be politically correct to hide it. Sometimes the governing norms shift abruptly. When this is so, there can be intense pressure to self-identify in ethnic terms, sometimes to retain friends, sometimes to obtain material advantages, sometimes to save one's life. Focusing on ethnic hatreds in the former Yugoslavia, the underlying process has been illuminatingly discussed by economist Timur Kuran in a 1998 paper (apparently unavailable on line but published as "Ethnic Norms and Their Transformation through Reputational Cascades," in the Journal of Legal Studies). Even at a late stage, people in the former Yugoslavia lived together harmoniously, and supposedly primordial hatreds played no role in the lives of most people. Old historical events were hardly salient. But as Kuran writes: "Within months, millions of Serbs who had shown little ethnic fervor began paying attention to ethnic statistics, promoting symbols of Serb exclusiveness, vilifying and ostracizing non-Serbs, referring frequently to the sufferings of their ancestors, and supporting the enlargement of Serbian-held territories." Previously happy mixed marriages disintegrated. Historical events that had mattered not at all suddenly became central to political debates. A major conclusion is that even the most intense forms of ethnic hatred and fear can be a product of a process of ethnification, rather than a cause of that process. A careful investigation of the situation in Iraq would be necessary, of course, to know whether this conclusion holds for that country. But ethnic hatred is not in anyone's blood. Whether people focus on ethnic identity, or on something else, is partly a product of (current and recent) social pressures, not of anything that happened in the distant past. It is reasonable to speculate that Iraq has witnessed a period of ever-intensifying pressure to identify in ethnic terms--pressure that people increase even as they capitulate to it. Some good news is that ethnic hatred can decline fairly rapidly as well, especially when it is a product of social norms to which people have unenthusiastically yielded. Some bad news is that when violence is rampant along ethnic lines, any such decline is extremely difficult to engineer.