Steve Fenton

Beyond Ethnicity: The Global Comparative Analysis of Ethnic Conflict:

Conflicts that are reported as being between ethnic groups are often described as “ethnic conflicts.” The implication is that such conflicts belong to a general type of ethnic conflict with certain repeated and predictable features. This type of conflict is seen as being motivated by ethnic sentiments, as being grounded in deeply set hatreds, and as being virtually inescapable. By applying the epithet “ethnic,” it is as if the conflict were already explained. However, there are many reasons to be suspicious of these implications. Ethnic groups presently embroiled in fierce conflict may have been, at a previous point in time, peacefully co-existent. Frequently, the very lines of ethnic difference become blurred through intermarriage and cultural change. Therefore, in order to understand conflict described as “ethnic” we need to uncover the reasons why (in a given conflict situation) there is heightened awareness of ethnic difference. Then we need to explain what I have termed “the conditions of ethnicity,” that is, the external conditions which lead to severe conflict; and those external circumstances that make it likely that the conflict will follow lines of ethnic differentiation. Two of these conditions are the strength of the state system and the ability of the state to manage ethnic conflict.

The Personal Contexts of National Sentiments

There is an important strand of scholarship which argues that we need to explain ‘ethnicity’ within the social and personal contexts in which ethnic identities and sentiments are created and enacted. But there has been little attempt to consider whether, and if so how, attitudes to the nation may be informed by experiences and events at the personal level. Adopting a case-study approach, this paper focuses upon the lives of four ‘white English’ individuals. Treating each respondents account of his or her social milieu as the analytical starting point, the paper investigates how wider self-understandings and personal experiences inform a particular orientation towards nation, place and the country. In further exploration of this, it argues that the salience of ‘resentful nationalism’ is intensified when articulated through a sense of personal or social decline and failure. This is then demonstrated through reference to those with both ‘resentful’ and ‘indifferent’ orientations.

Ethnicity and Academia: Closure Models, Racism Models and Market Models

The paper addresses racism, discrimination, equal opportunities policies, institutional cultures, and the pressures of markets in influencing the position of minority ethnic groups in academia. The representation and position of minority ethnic groups among academic staff in UK higher education has previously been little studied. Data from the Higher Education Statistical Agency records and from new surveys are presented and analysed. Representation is low especially among some groups, but is growing among younger sections of academic staff, and is much higher in some academic subject areas than others. Analysis of terms of contract and of seniority by ethnic groups suggests that minorities are significantly less well placed within the profession. An important distinction is between British and non- British nationality in assessing ethnicity and academic posts; non- British staff may be seen as part of a global labour market, especially in fixed term contract research work. The evidence is evaluated alongside a re-exploration of principal models for explaining ethnic disadvantage in labour markets: closure, discrimination, equal opportunities, institutional racism and markets. The authors conclude that a combination of the last two models offers the best prospect of a full explanation.

Coronary heart disease and physical activity in South Asian women: local context and challenges

This paper discusses some of the findings of the Bristol Black and Ethnic Minority Health Survey, especially in relation to local plans to improve opportunities for South Asian women to become more physically active. Low levels of participation in exercise sessions were reported in the survey, particularly among Pakistani women. Many of the South Asian women whom we interviewed have poor self-assessed health and limited know ledge of English; they are also economically disadvantaged. It seems likely that exercise sessions outside the home will not reach many of these women. A project has been funded to discuss the research with local women, to identify exercise facilities and improve opportunities for South Asian women to become more active. In what follows we discuss findings relating to all South Asian women but subsequently with particular regard to Pakistani women, the largest single group.

How global is the UK academic labour market

One of the themes of the recent sociology of higher education has been the globalisation of knowledge and the professional transfer of scientists and researchers. In this paper we show how these transfers of people and knowledge are disproportionately characteristic of: (a) some institutions; and (b) some cost centres. We argue that universities form part of an international labour market for high skilled workers in prestige institutions. However, globalisation also has a second face in relation to labour markets in higher education. This refers to the deployment of overseas junior staff in areas unsupplied by the British system.

Self‐assessed health, economic status and ethnic origin

Abstract In the Bristol Black and Ethnic Minority Groups Health Survey more than 500 interviews were completed. The study made it possible to measure the health status of a range of groups. The interview schedule was translated into seven languages; the main groups interviewed were ‘Indian’, ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Black Caribbean’. Ethnic groups differ from each other quite markedly in socio‐economic profile, and within any given ethnic group there is differentiation. In the present article, we suggest that research reports about health and ethnicity may be misleading if they simply present inter‐group differences in health status, showing differences within and between groups. Socio‐economic variables influence self‐assessed health; in particular the unemployed and those with housing difficulties report significantly poorer health. The ‘Pakistani’ group have the poorest self‐assessed health and the poorest socio‐economic status. However, standardising for gender, age and material factors, differences in self‐a...

Ethnicity, health and health services utilization in a British study

Despite the exponential growth in the number of studies addressing ethnicity and health, there is considerable debate about definitions of ethnicity, the appropriate use of ethnicity in health research and whether research focusing on ethnicity in the health field will ultimately result in reduced disadvantage or will simply contribute to the reification of ethnic origin as a cause of health problems. The authors present and discuss health outcomes among White (n = 227), African-Caribbean (n = 213) and Indian and Pakistani (n = 233) adults aged between 18 and 59 years living in Leeds as measured in a stratified population survey, with particular emphasis on the interaction between reports of health conditions and health status in relation to ethnicity and gender. The survey included both general and specific measures of health and impairment and was undertaken following extensive qualitative fieldwork. Overall the results of the study suggest that adults in both broad minority ethnic groups studied have a somewhat less favourable profile of physical and mental health and risk factors such as obesity and low birthweight. Despite an absence of ethnic differences in reporting of long-term conditions, minority groups had lower health status because those with long-term conditions were generally in worse health than their White counterparts. The study findings agree with previous research in suggesting that variation in health status was better explained by specific measures of actual limitations in daily activities than by general measures of limiting long-term illness. These data suggest that limiting long-term illness or disability questions may underestimate functional limitation relative to more specific measures and consequently their use in resource allocation may be problematic.

Resentment, class and social sentiments about the nation: The ethnic majority in England

The concepts of ‘class trajectory’ and ‘secondary properties of classes’, drawn from Bourdieu, are deployed in an attempt to explain orientations to nation. Interview material forms the basis of two characterisations of these orientations: the resentful nationalist and the liberal cosmopolitan. These two orientations are seen as being associated with declining and rising class situations.

Thinking across domains: Class, nation and racism in England and Britain:

As Aughey comments in his paper in this issue, there was, until relatively recently, an assumption in UK political life that ‘class and distribution’ politics were ‘normal’ and ‘nationalist’ politics abnormal. Only Northern Ireland had nationalist politics grounded in religious and ethnic identities, and directed towards different views of nation and statehood. This was, so to speak, a deviation. We may now have to accept that the politics of ‘nation’ and ‘nationhood’ are here to stay in the UK – even if we cannot be sure how much questions of devolution and independence trouble the general public in any or all constituent parts of the UK. One way in which we might address this question is to address both concepts – class and nation – simultaneously and in relation to each other, alongside the closely related questions of the ‘ethnic majority’ and ‘whiteness’. This has been the task that we set ourselves in the seminar and papers that laid the foundation for this special issue. It is not entirely clear that in, for example, Scotland and England, the politics of nation have replaced the politics of class and distribution. There are some reasons for thinking that this is not altogether the case. One such reason is that the most developed devolved politics – in Scotland – have not been notably ‘nationalistic’ in the sense of a primary cultural or ethnic valorisation of the nation, even though there is recognition and celebration of a distinctive Scottish cultural tradition. But as long as the Scottish National Party styles itself as a progressive and ‘civic’ party that lays claim to having a better view of a future self-governing Scotland than could be found by continued dependence on Westminster governance, then it remains a non-ethnic national party. Some of the political questions on which it has distinguished itself from Westminster are indeed ‘class and distributive’ ones, including care for the elderly and student tuition fees. At the same time the effect on politics in England is not wholly clear. There are press references to these Ethnicities 12(4) 385–393 ! The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468796812448016 etn.sagepub.com

‘Our Own People’: Ethnic Majority Orientations to Nation and Country

In this chapter we examine orientations towards nation and country with sole reference to the ‘ethnic majority’ in England. Drawing on extensive qualitative interview data collected as part of the Leverhulme Programme, we examine the nuanced ways in which majority people orientate to concepts of nation, country and multiculturalism. We illustrate the linkages between these specific national sentiments and the broader context of change in British1 society, and changes in the life circumstances of our respondents as told in individual narratives. In doing so, we will argue that attitudes to ethnic or national identity and multicultural Britain are not traced solely through specific questions on those topics. These ideas, in themselves, we find to have little purchase amongst ‘ordinary’ people. We did ask respondents about ‘national identity’ and ‘Englishness’. But we also asked people about their work and neighbourhoods, their sense of opportunity, merit and reward, and what they thought of Britain as a place to live. These questions and their responses allowed us to contextualise peoples’ ‘national orientations’ within a wider set of social orientations to, for example, a sense of entitlement, security and stability in everyday life, and civility.