Ahmed Fawaz, Opportunity, Identity, and Resources in Ethnic Mobilization: The Iraqi Kurds and the Abkhaz of Georgia, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017, 229 pp., (ISBN: 9781498534000).
The politicisation of ethnicity is a topic which in the past 60 years has garnered a lot of attention from among others political scientists, historians, and anthropologists. In doing so, researchers have attempted to map and understand the rationale behind just how and why different ethnic groups across the world mobilise. It is a question which seems always to find relevance in the modern world. Nationalism and ethnicity are inexplicably bound, and as the world celebrates the 23rd Olympic Winter Games, the salience of ethnic and national identity is at the forefront of our collective thoughts. These same identities, which unite countless peoples, have also led to the emergence of ethnic cleavages. Many of these occurring in states still struggling to manufacture their own national identities. These cleavages challenge the established state structure and can severely undermine the nation-building of those states. It is in this context that Ahmed Fawaz’s Opportunity, Identity, and Resources in Ethnic Mobilization emerges.
The author seeks to identify and analyse ethnic mobilisation in Abkhazia, Georgia and Iraqi Kurdistan (p. xvii). He chooses to compare these two groups as they were uniquely similar concerning historical trauma and engagement with more substantial regional powers. The states in which these ethnic groups exist have been subject to intervention from major world powers for over a century. The Abkhaz historically at the heel of Russian interests, and the Kurdish via Ottoman, British, and American interventions. For this book, the author focuses specifically on the years 1991–2016 (p. xx). In doing so, Fawaz looks to gear his focus towards contemporary developments in the mobilisation of each group.
Examining ethnic mobilisation, which the author defines as “the process by which groups are recruited to pursue collective action”, Fawaz attempts to create a model for explaining how “ethnic entrepreneurs” mobilise ethnicity via several distinct variables to achieve political goals. These variables include political opportunity structure, identity politicisation, and resource mobilisation. “Ethnic entrepreneurs employ the environment surrounding them to pursue ethnic mobilization” (p. xvii). The end goal for these groups being completion of their “national project”, i.e., defeating the central governing authority in their state and carving out some form of autonomy or declaring their independence (p. 192).
To reach these conclusions, the author developed his own theoretical model to describe how the ethnic entrepreneur achieves ethno-political mobilisation. It is essential first to define who the entrepreneur is; for this, Fawaz employs a variety of definitions established by others in the field. In it, he determines that the entrepreneur is a politician who profits from identifying with a particular ethnic group and makes use of symbols related to that group to establish a cohesive identity in order to facilitate mobilisation (p. 15). The author lays out a flow chart showing which variables specifically influence and are manipulated by the ethnic entrepreneur to achieve said mobilisation (p. 14). Environmental variables form the basis by which the entrepreneur seizes his opportunity. These variables include a history of hatred towards the group, a national project, and strong communal identity, amongst others. The entrepreneur will then make use of one of three intermediate variables: political opportunity structure, ethnic identity politicisation, or resource mobilisation to achieve full ethnic mobility. These are the variables by which the author conducts his comparative analysis; “none of them on its own is sufficient to explain ethnic mobilization” the author posits. A “complementary approach” is needed to explain the phenomenon entirely (p. 35). It is through this complementary approach that he seeks to show the similarities in both the Kurdish and the Abkhazian experience.
The different variables which constitute the authors work are not of his own defining but are the products of research by countless individuals, and Fawaz goes to great length to define how he uses each. Chapters one and two spend their entirety focusing on defining explicitly the framework which comprises his model for the mobilisation of ethnicity via the entrepreneur. It is in chapters three through five where the author delves more so into his comparative analysis of both ethnic groups. He naturally divides these chapters by the three intermediate variables. The degree to which the author succeeds in his comparison is questionable.
In the strictly comparative sense, the author is successful in his task. He adequately compares ethnic mobilisation between the Abkhaz and the Iraqi Kurds. The comparison in chapter three of competing national projects (p. 51) and policies of inclusion and exclusion are particularly well made (p. 44). There are other areas where the comparison is not as strong, and at times evidence for one group vastly outnumbers that of the other in both volume and effectiveness (see “The Anarchy of Armed Gangs and the Security Dilemma” pp. 120–122).
On the effectiveness of this comparison, the author notes that “these cases seem unlikely comparisons at first;” and this holds true (p. 191). As the book carries on, however, it does become clear that there are similarities in both cases. The larger question at play for the reader is whether or not this is the correct comparison that the author could be making? One has to wonder what led the author to choose the Iraqi element of the Kurdish people solely for his comparison. In the introduction, Fawaz remarks that “the Kurdish leaders used to announce that each group had to resolve its own problems” (p. xx). While that may be so, what makes the Iraqi case better suited to understanding ethnic mobilisation than say, the Turkish Kurds who have faced severe punishments at the hand of their state for similar actions? The exact reasoning behind why he chose the Iraqi Kurds over these other Kurdish groups is something the author does not adequately explain, which leaves the reader questioning if a better comparison remains untapped.
Closer examination of the works consulted has left other questions. Suspiciously absent is a reference to The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization, and Identity by David Romano (2006). For the last ten years, Romano’s work has been one of the fundamental works on nationalism and ethnic mobilization in Kurdistan. The absence of this source becomes even more peculiar when a further examination reveals the structural similarities in Romano’s work to that of the author. Both studies use many of the same theoretical concepts (political opportunity, resource mobilisation, and cultural framing) to explain ethnic mobilisation, and Romano’s work also features a history of Kurdish ethno-political mobilisation in Iraq in chapter six. Despite this, and for all their similarities, this work is not once cited. This omission brings about another question worth considering, does Opportunity, Identity, and Resources in Ethnic Mobilization say anything new? Many researchers have thoroughly examined ethnic mobilisation in Kurdistan, and the phenomenon has been explored in Abkhazia as well in some form (Cornell, 2002); but not to the degree found in this book. Here is where Fawaz makes his contribution.
That Fawaz delivers an extended examination of Abkhazian mobilisation is perhaps the book’s most significant strength. He makes use of a wide range of sources, including many in-person interviews with officials who have worked in Georgia and have first-hand knowledge of the situation in Abkhazia.1 The author makes a valued contribution to the study of the Abkhaz of Georgia in a more thorough manner than has previously been attempted. His theoretical model for understanding how political entrepreneurs utilise ethnicity to achieve mobilisation would serve well as the parameters for further comparative studies in other regions. To this end, the book is worth a read. It would make a useful contribution as reference material for students in classrooms examining ethno-political mobilisation, as it provides a useful enough comparison between two distinct ethnic groups.
References
Cornell, S. E. (2002). Autonomy as a Source of Conflict: Caucasian Conflicts in Theoretical Perspective. World Politics, 54(2), 262–266.
Romano, D. (2006). The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
See chapter 3 notes beginning on p. 93 for example.