Ethnic Violence vs. Imperial Segregations: Multinational Criminality in the Russian Imperial City as a Space of Conflict and Cooperation

Ilya V. Gerasimov, Center for the Study of Nationalism and Empire

Research Grant, 2011

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For over two decades, I’ve been studying a variety of topics in the history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. As I see now, all of them have one thing in common: they address different aspects of the phenomenon of societal self-organization, involving various social groups in diverse historical circumstances. The research project that resulted in the writing up of the book manuscript with the support by the foundation began in the late 1990s, and was conducted in archives and libraries in five countries. Focusing on case studies of four Russian imperial cities (Vilna [Vilnius], Odessa, Kazan, and Nizhny Novgorod), I was trying to reconstruct the peculiar worldview of the majority (close to 90 percent) of the urban population in Imperial Russia that can be cautiously identified as plebeian society: i.e., all those who did not belong to the fairly well-studied privileged and middle classes. The collected materials revealed a paradoxical situation: in the early twentieth century, when the population of urban centers was swelling at an astonishing pace (mainly due to migrants from the countryside), both the outdated legal norms and the modern hegemonic public discourses failed to regulate the bulk of the urban society. The imperial legislation did not fit the realities of the rising mass society, while the majority could not culturally, socially, and even technically (e.g. in terms of availability of the produced print runs of newspapers) belong to any public sphere. And yet, this rising mass plebeian society displayed a surprisingly high coherence and even standardization that can be seen in all four very different and distant cities that were used as case studies in my research. How was this coherence achieved in a society in flux, contrary to the inertia of social institutions and traditions, in violation of the legal norms of the well-ordered police state, and beyond the reach of public discourses?

Ethnically marked criminal violence emerged not only as a socially menacing phenomenon but also as an important indicator of intergroup boundary realignments.

I argue that there was in fact a common language of communication within that society, and self-representation of that society, only it was nontextual (nondiscursive). Social practices can be viewed as such a distinctive language of social self-description and self-representation. I identify three such main social practices: patriarchality (that helped people to sustain stability by pretending to be unaware of the competing projects of political or national mobilization); the middle ground (a peculiar mechanism of creative mutual misunderstanding); and criminal violence. In particular, ethnically marked criminal violence emerged not only as a socially menacing phenomenon but also as an important indicator of intergroup boundary realignments, and a side-effect of new patterns of emerging social solidarity. Violence can be senseless but is never meaningless, and my study elaborates on discovering those context-sensitive meanings of violence used by plebeian social groups that had no means or skills to express their interests and concerns through any elaborated public discourse and therefore relied on direct action.

Beijing-Seoul Families and Neighborhoods Study

Clifton R. Emery, School of Social Welfare, Yonsei University

Research Grant, 2011, 2012

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What do neighbors, friends, and extended family members do in response to domestic violence and child abuse, and does it make a difference? Are there cultural differences in this informal social control of family violence, and do such differences explain cultural differences in the prevalence and severity of domestic violence and child maltreatment? These are the principal questions the Families and Neighborhoods Study (FNS) attempts to answer, using newly developed measures of informal social control on random probability samples of cities. The FNS also tests propositions developed from Emery’s (2011) theoretical typology of domestic violence. The principal investigator (PI) received funding from HFG in 2011 and 2012 to carry out the FNS survey in Beijing, China, and Seoul, South Korea. In 2011 the study team interviewed 506 adults in a representative random probability sample of 506 families in Beijing. In 2012 the study team followed up with 541 interviews of adults in a representative random probability sample of families in Seoul. The findings from both cities suggest that whether your neighbors do anything, and especially what they do, may matter. The findings also suggest that the neighborhood collective efficacy measure may not be the best way to capture informal social control of family violence, as the data do not show the expected relationships between collective efficacy and family violence, but do show relationships between the PI’s informal social control measures and family violence.

Based on the promising findings from the HFG-funded study, the FNS has now expanded to include data from representative samples from Beijing, Seoul, Hanoi, Ulaan Baatar, Kathmandu (collected and currently under analysis or review), Philadelphia (collection in progress) and Madrid (planned for summer 2014). In one of the twists of fate that so frequently baffle academics, the findings from the first two cities (Seoul and Beijing) remain in the peer review process while findings from later waves of data collection have already been published. This fact frustratingly prevents a detailed discussion of the Beijing-Seoul findings here. It is hoped that this omission can be corrected soon as the Seoul findings are presently under revision for the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

The findings from both cities suggest that whether your neighbors do anything, and especially what they do, may matter.

In Hanoi, the FNS found that acts of informal social control by neighbors that try to protect the child are associated with less very severe abuse of the child (Emery, Trung & Wu, 2013). The same study found that when very severe abuse did occur, abuse-related externalizing behavior problems were lower when parents reported protective informal social control by neighbors (ibid). The goals of current data collection include making possible East-West comparisons of informal social control and the assessment of causal relationships via experimental techniques on population-based surveys.

The FNS has also found important relationships between variables suggested by Emery’s (2011) typology and intimate partner violence in Kathmandu and Ulaan Baatar.

Bibliography

1. Emery, C.R., Trung, H. & Wu, S. Neighborhood Informal Social Control of Child Maltreatment: A Comparison of Protective and Punitive Approaches. Child Abuse & Neglect, June, 2013. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.05.002.

2. Emery, C.R. Disorder or Deviant Order? Re-Theorizing Domestic Violence in Terms of Order, Power and Legitimacy. A Typology. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16(6): 525-540, November-December, 2011.

War and Economic Development in Vietnam and Sierra Leone

Edward Miguel, Economics, University of California, Berkeley

Research Grant, 2006

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The negative consequences of war on society are severe. Armed conflict displaces populations, destroys capital and infrastructure, damages the social fabric of communities, endangers civil liberties, and can create health and famine crises. There is currently a large literature on the conditions that lead to the outbreak of armed violence, but the long-term economic impacts of war remain relatively understudied empirically. The goal of this research project was to investigate both the short- and long-run legacies of armed conflict resulting from the U.S. bombing of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and from the 1991–1992 civil war in Sierra Leone.

One publication that resulted from this project is “The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam” (co-author Gerard Roland), forthcoming in the Journal of Development Economics. Many poverty trap models of economic growth predict that sufficiently severe war damage to the capital stock could lead to a “conflict trap” that condemns an economy to long-term underdevelopment. Despite this prediction, results from our research suggest that this is not necessarily always the case. We find no long-run impacts of U.S. bombing on local Vietnamese poverty rates, consumption levels, or population density over twenty-five years after the end of wartime bombing. Vietnam was able to recover largely due to the central government’s heavy postwar investment in both physical and human capital and reallocation of resources toward the most heavily bombed regions.

We find no long-run impacts of U.S. bombing on local Vietnamese poverty rates, consumption levels, or population density over twenty-five years after the end of wartime bombing.

A second publication, “War and Local Collective Action in Sierra Leone” (co-author John Bellows), in the Journal of Public Economics in 2009, carries out statistical analysis in Sierra Leone and similarly shows that despite war’s horrific humanitarian costs, the legacies of civil conflict are not always catastrophic. We find that individual exposure to the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone has lead to increased political participation, community activism, and local public good provision. This political mobilization has been coupled with, and may partially explain, the economic expansion Sierra Leone has experienced in early postwar years. These results run counter to the claims that civil war’s legacies are always major long-run impediments to African economic and political development. Moreover, since Sub-Saharan Africa is the most conflict-prone region today, these results offer some hope that even the poorest and most violent African nations can avoid the persistent negative economic and social consequences that civil conflict can potentially lead to.

However, caution must be called for in drawing broad lessons from this research regarding war’s impacts on economic growth in general. Unlike many other poor countries, postwar Vietnam benefited from relatively strong and centralized political institutions with the power to mobilize human and material resources in the reconstruction effort. Sierra Leone may be a special case of civil conflict as well; the war there was not fought along ethnic or religious lines. Though our findings may help make sense of the rapid economic growth and political consolidation that some countries have experienced following protracted armed conflict, more empirical evidence is needed before general claims about the effects of war on long-run economic performance can be made with confidence.

The research that resulted from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation grant also provided key material for two books that I have written in recent years, Economic Gangsters (Princeton University Press, 2008, co-author Raymond Fisman) and Africa’s Turn? (MIT Press, 2009). Both books emphasize the important role that violence and war have played in shaping contemporary economic and political development patterns around the world. I also recently wrote a literature survey article entitled “Civil War” (co-author Chris Blattman), for the Journal of Economic Literature in 2010.

An Anatomy of Sectarian Violence: Jews and Christians in Premodern Poland

Magdalena Teter, History, Wesleyan University

Research Grant, 2007

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Based on extensive research in nearly twenty archives in Poland and Rome, this project combines political, legal, and cultural historical approaches and tells a story of the role the sacred and sacrilege played in the contest for power between church and state. Sacrilege, treated increasingly as crime not as sin, became a token of broader power struggles and contested social and economic relations, as it moved the sacred to the public arena of courts. Far more than the Church’s efforts to educate the laity, the lay courts’ classification of Catholic spaces as the only “sacred spaces” and their adjudication of crimes of “sacrilege” were crucial for the (re-)Catholicization of Poland, and the shaping of the country’s religious identity.

In Poland, the contest over the sacredness of the Eucharist, a major Catholic dogma challenged by the Reformation, became manifest in lay courts’ adjudication of crimes against property and religious symbols, especially those linked to the Eucharistic rituals. The mishandling of sacred symbols and objects transformed sins into crimes and led to harsh sentences, including burning at the stake.

In places without political triggers, accusations of religious crimes did not result in prosecution, much less in religious violence against Jews.

The project crucially casts a new light on the most infamous case of sacrilege, the accusations against Jews for stealing and desecrating the host, situating it within a broader context of the politics of crime—most specifically that of sacrilege, illuminating its post-Reformation character. They were triggered in places with specific political needs, religious, economic, or related to power struggles between local authorities and royal power. In places without political triggers, accusations of religious crimes did not result in prosecution, much less in religious violence against Jews.

This project establishes that religion and, sometimes, religious violence were used in establishing religious boundaries and doctrines not only by religious institutions but also by secular courts. In post-Reformation Poland, it was the secular courts that became enforcers of Catholic doctrines, an ironic twist on the nobility’s efforts to remove religious cases from ecclesiastical courts to prevent religious persecution in Poland. Even though the context is largely Christian power struggle, Jews were central but not exclusively singled out. Courts and their judges, consciously or subconsciously, attached sacredness to Catholicism; public criminal executions, coupled with the word of mouth, left a permanent mark on religious boundaries in a country with one of the most diverse populations in Europe.

Bibliography

1. Teter, Magda. Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.

The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict

Roger Petersen, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research Grant, 2006

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Conflicts involve powerful experiences. The residue of these experiences is captured by the concept and language of emotion. Indiscriminate killing creates fear; targeted violence produces anger and a desire for vengeance; political status reversals spawn resentment; cultural prejudices sustain ethnic contempt. These emotions can become resources for political entrepreneurs. A broad range of Western interventions are based on a view of human nature as narrowly rational. Correspondingly, intervention policy generally aims to alter material incentives (“sticks and carrots”) to influence behavior. In response, poorer and weaker actors who wish to block or change this Western-implemented “game” use emotions as resources. This book examines the strategic use of emotion in the conflicts and interventions occurring in the Western Balkans over a twenty-year period. The project concentrates on the conflicts among Albanian and Slavic populations (Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, South Serbia), along with some comparisons to Bosnia.

In response, poorer and weaker actors who wish to block or change this Western-implemented "game" use emotions as resources.

Bibliography

1. Petersen, Roger. Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Toward a Transnational History of the Origins of World War I

Michael S. Neiberg, History, University of Southern Mississippi

Research Grant, 2009, 2010

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This project examines the outbreak of war in 1914 from a transnational perspective. Rather than see Europe in this era as a set of homogenous and hermetically sealed nation-states, it begins with the proposition that a series of transnational forces (including socialism, pacifism, and international diplomacy) mitigated against nationalism as a cause of war. While this study does not deny the importance of nationalism to Europeans in 1914, it assumes that nationalism was but one among many identities. Among its conclusions are that while nationalism certainly existed in Europe it was far from sufficient to cause the outbreak of war. Indeed, the vast majority of Europeans greeted the outbreak with surprise and confusion rather than relief or joy that supposed slights to national honor could be at long last avenged. Europeans neither wanted nor welcomed this war. They consented to war based on the shared idea in all of the great powers that their war was both defensive in nature and just. They continued to consent to the war within an atmosphere of limited information due to government control, censorship, and propaganda. Atrocities, the desire for revenge, and the totality of the rhetoric of 1914 created a situation that made any notion of compromise peace impossible. Regardless of their nationality, Europeans experienced the war in remarkably similar ways. This study is an examination of how a war with a small cause developed into a total world war by its first Christmas. Images of a Christmas truce and the horrors of 1915 to 1918 should not blind us to the reality that the disillusion, bitterness, and totality of this war was well in place before its first year was over.

Europeans neither wanted nor welcomed this war.

Bibliography

1. Neiberg, Michael S. Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of War in 1914 (Harvard University Press, 2011).

Local Government Violence and Rights Struggles in Contemporary Rural China

Lianjiang Li, Political Science, Hong Kong Baptist University

Research Grant, 2004, 2005

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This project examines why local government authorities in China often use violence against rural protesters and explore in what ways organized struggles for rights or rightful resistance may contribute to breaking the cycle of protest and violent repression. Its main findings are as follows. First, individuals who have stronger trust in the Chinese central government are more likely to organize and lead popular protest against malfeasant local authorities. Second, protest leaders lead the charge, shape collective claims, recruit activists and mobilize the public, devise and orchestrate acts of contention and organize cross-community efforts. Third, local authorities usually turn to repression and often use violence against protest leaders because they face strong pressure from their superiors and they lack necessary political and financial resources to co-opt or buy off protest leaders. Fourth, local government violence may inhibit further contention, but at other times it firms up the determination of protest leaders and makes them more prone to adopt confrontational tactics, partly by enhancing their popular support, partly by increasing the costs of withdrawal. Fifth, protest leaders who have suffered local government violence tend to lose confidence about the central leadership’s ability to control local authorities as well as about its commitment to serve the public interests. Lastly, individuals who have doubts about central leaders’ commitment to protect the rights and interests of ordinary people tend to develop stronger demand for leadership change and stronger preference for popular election as the mechanism of making leadership change.

Individuals who have stronger trust in the Chinese central government are more likely to organize and lead popular protest against malfeasant local authorities.

Bibliography

1. Li, Lianjiang. Rightful Resistance in Rural China (with Kevin OBrien), New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

2. Li, Lianjiang. "Political Trust and Petitioning in the Chinese Countryside," Comparative Politics, Vol.40, No.2 (January 2008), pp.209-26.

3. Li, Lianjiang. "Protest leadership in Rural China" (with Kevin O'Brien), China Quarterly, No.193 (March 2008), pp.1-23.

Longitudinal and Contextual Analyses of Violent Crime in the European Union

Patricia L. McCall, Sociology, North Carolina State University

Research Grant, 2009, 2010

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The purpose of this research is to explore the extent to which retrenchment in welfare support is related to homicide trends across European countries between 1994 and 2010. Using a longitudinal decomposition design that allows for stronger causal inferences compared to typical cross-sectional designs, we examine these potential linkages between social support spending and homicide with data collected from a heterogeneous sample of European nations, including twenty Western nations and nine less frequently analyzed East-Central nations, during recent years in which European nations generally witnessed substantial changes in homicide rates as well as both economic prosperity and fiscal crisis. Results suggest that even incremental, short-term changes in welfare support spending are associated with short-term reductions in homicide specifically, impacting homicide rates within two to three years for this sample of European nations.

Results suggest that even incremental, short-term changes in welfare support spending are associated with short-term reductions in homicide.

Criminal Retaliation: A Qualitative Study of Social Control Beyond the Law

Bruce A. Jacobs, Criminology, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Research Grant, 2003

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Despite its preeminent role in regulating disputes between and among street criminals, retaliation has received scant attention from criminological researchers. Existing studies explore retaliation only tangentially, with little or no consideration of its situational and contextual dynamics. Even when retaliation is examined in its own right, the circumstances in which payback is enacted typically receive less attention than the factors that mediate the availability of law. As a result, the structure, process, and forms of retaliation in the real world setting of urban American street crime remain poorly understood. This study explores the face of modern day retaliation from the perspective of currently active criminals who have experienced it first-hand, as offenders, victims, or both. The study explores the retaliatory ethic among street criminals and the vocabularies of motive that offenders adopt to justify its role as the preferred mode of extralegal social control. It also examines the structure, process, and contingent forms of retaliation, offering a typology to organize the data. Part of this examination is the ways in which gender shapes the context and dynamics of retaliatory events for both male and female street criminals. The study also investigates the phenomenon of imperfect retaliation—acts of reprisal committed against parties not responsible for the instigating affront. The reasons for imperfect retaliation and their implications for crime displacement beyond the law are specifically explored.

Qualitative analysis revealed the importance of two axial factors around which retaliatory strikes could best be understood: whether such strikes occur immediately after the affront, and whether the strikes involve face-to-face contact with the person responsible for the affront.

Qualitative analysis revealed the importance of two axial factors around which retaliatory strikes could best be understood: whether such strikes occur immediately after the affront, and whether the strikes involve face-to-face contact with the person responsible for the affront. Immediate reprisal that involves face-to-face contact was called reflexive retaliation. Immediate reprisal that involves no face-to-face contact was called reflexively displaced retaliation. When retaliation is delayed, an added contingency appears—whether or not the delay is desired by the retaliating party. This permits four additional possibilities. Face-to-face retaliation where the delay is desired was called calculated retaliation. Face-to-face retaliation where the delay is not desired was called deferred retaliation. Retaliation without face-to-face contact where the delay is desired was called sneaky retaliation. Retaliation without face-to-face contact with the violator where the delay was undesired by the retaliating party is called imperfect retaliation.

Ethnic Identity, Collective Action and Conflict: An Experimental Approach

Macartan Humphreys, Political Science, Harvard University

Research Grant, 2003

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A large literature shows that ethnically homogenous communities often do a better job than diverse communities of producing satisfactory schools and health care, adequate sanitation, low levels of crime, and other essential outcomes that depend on community-wide cooperation. This project seeks to find out why. The research indicates that the principal obstacle to cooperation in diverse groups is not ethnic favoritism or a lack of consensus on what should be done but rather the stronger expectations of reciprocity that exist within than across ethnic communities. The results offer important lessons for policymakers committed to improving the welfare of people living in diverse communities.

The study was conducted in a neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda, that has both high levels of diversity and low levels of public goods provision. The researchers used behavioral games to explore how the ethnicity of the person with whom one is interacting shapes social behavior. Hundreds of local participants interacted with various partners in strategic games involving the allocation of money and the completion of joint tasks. Each game was designed to capture a different channel through which ethnic diversity might affect social cooperation. Many of the subsequent findings debunk long-standing explanations for diversity’s adverse effects.

When given the opportunity to act altruistically in an anonymous fashion, individuals did not choose to benefit coethnics disproportionately. Yet when anonymity was removed, subjects behaved very differently.

Contrary to the prevalent notion that shared preferences facilitate collective action within ethnic groups, differences in goals and priorities among participants were not found to be structured along ethnic lines. Nor was there evidence that subjects favored the welfare of their coethnics over that of non-coethnics. When given the opportunity to act altruistically in an anonymous fashion, individuals did not choose to benefit coethnics disproportionately. Yet when anonymity was removed, subjects behaved very differently. With their actions publicly observed, subjects gave significantly more to coethnics, expected their partners to reciprocate, and expected that they would be sanctioned for a failure to cooperate. This effect was most pronounced among individuals who were otherwise least likely to cooperate.

These results suggest that what may look like ethnic favoritism is, in fact, a set of reciprocity norms—stronger among coethnics than among non-coethnics—that make it possible for members of more homogeneous communities to take risks, invest, and cooperate without the fear of getting cheated. Such norms may be more subject to change than deeply held ethnic antipathies—a powerful finding for policymakers seeking to design social institutions and promote development in diverse societies.

Bibliography

1. Humphreys, Macartan. Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (with J Habyarimana, D Posner, and J Weinstein). New York: Russell Sage Press, 2009.