What is the relationship between cultural status and group mobilisation? This working paper from the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE) analyses this relationship within the broader framework of horizontal inequalities – that is inequalities between culturally defined groups. Group grievances and violent conflict can emerge out of the inferior treatment or status afforded to different groups’ cultural practices by the state. The most dangerous situations exist where all three dimensions of horizontal inequality – socioeconomic, political and cultural – run in the same direction.
Cultural status inequalities are defined as perceived or actual differences in the treatment, public recognition or status of different groups’ cultural norms, practices, symbols and customs. Recent research on the causes of civil wars and communal, ethnic or religious conflicts has focused predominantly on political and economic grievances. However, in many conflicts, political and economic issues are complemented by perceptions of cultural discrimination, exclusion or inequality of treatment. The analysis of cultural status inequalities in plural societies is thus an important complement to political and economic analysis in understanding the emergence of (violent) group mobilisation.
Cultural status inequalities cover a range of practices and intentionality on the part of the state in question. They can be grouped into three broad categories:
- Recognition of religious practices and observances: In multi-religious societies, differing levels of formal recognition or restrictions on the observance of religious practices are often an important source of cultural status inequality.
- Languages and language recognition: The privileging of one or a few languages over others often signals, or is at least perceived as signalling, the dominance of those for whom these languages are the mother tongue. Conflicts revolving around language have been notable in India, where a high level of linguistic diversity has created status problems since independence.
- Recognition of ethnocultural practices: The state’s recognition of, and support for, the cultural practices of different groups is another important aspect of cultural status inequality. Also important in this respect are the ethnocultural practices and customs employed in the functioning of the state itself, which express the ‘identity’ of the state.
Cultural status inequalities are particularly prone to group mobilisation, and potentially violence, because of the inherent link with group identity. This can take the form both of ‘entrepreneurial’ mobilisation by self-interested elites or grievance-based mobilisation on the part of disadvantaged groups.
- If the state attributes inferior status to certain cultural identities, members of these cultural groups are more likely to feel alienated from the state and to mobilise along cultural lines in order to improve their group’s cultural status.
- While severe socioeconomic horizontal inequalities can persist for decades without raising violent responses, changes in cultural status inequalities, like changes in political horizontal inequalities, can be important in the politicisation of inequalities. They can also be a factor in group mobilisation for violence.
- Symbolic events which reinforce or publicly ‘perform’ cultural status inequalities have an important role in triggering group violence. In some cases, this may be a deliberate and cynical provocation.
