Some studies / info on diversity and ethnic conflict:
(From "Ethnic Conflicts Explained by Ethnic Nepotism" by Tatu Vanhanen)
See also page 80 of Vanhanen's 2012 book:
http://web.archive.org/web/202004182339 ... nhanen.pdfTHE POLITICS OF CULTURAL PLURALISM AND ETHNIC CONFLICT
Continuing ethnic tensions in the early years of the twenty-first century seem to confirm Mahabun ul Haq’s prediction—that wars between “people” (ethnic, religious, racial or cultural groups) will continue to far out-number wars between nation-states.
Classic accounts of modernization, particularly those influenced by Marx, predicted that the old basis for divisions, such as tribe and religion, would be swept aside. As hundreds of millions of people poured from rural to urban areas worldwide, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was expected that new alliances would be formed, based on social class in particular.
Scholars point out that fear of and hostility toward other ethnic groups are far older and often more entrenched than modern principles of tolerance or equality under the law. “No matter how we may wish for it otherwise, we did not leave violence against outsiders behind us as our nations became modern and democratic.”
Indeed, over the past 50 years, the most frequent settings for violent conflict have not been wars between sovereign states, but rather internal strife tied to cultural, tribal, religious, or other ethnic animosities. Between 1989 and 2004, there were 118 military conflicts in the world. Of those, only seven were between nation-states and the remaining 111 occurred within a single state, a large portion of which involved ethnic conflict.[1]
According to another recent estimate, “nearly two-thirds of all [the world’s] armed conflicts [at that time] included an ethnic component. [In fact], ethnic conflicts [were] four times more likely than interstate wars.”[2] Another study claimed that 80 percent of “major conflicts” in the 1990s had an ethnic element.[3]
Any listing of the world’s most brutal wars in the past few decades would include ethnically based internal warfare or massacres in Rwanda, the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Lebanon, and Indonesia (East Timor). In 1998, one authoritative study estimated that some 15 million people had died worldwide as a result of ethnic violence since 1945 (including war-related starvation and disease).
In the decade since, at least 5 million additional deaths resulted from ethnic conflict in the Congo alone, with hundreds of thousands more in Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Since the end of the Cold War, the world’s attention has focused increasingly on ethnic clashes. Some experts predict that poor, densely populated countries will experience increased ethnic conflict over scarce resources (such as farmland) in the coming decades. Warfare between Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovars in the former Yugoslavia, along with separatist movements by French-speaking Québécois, racially based riots in Los Angeles, Basque terrorism in Spain, and Protestant–Catholic clashes in Northern Ireland all demonstrate that interethnic friction and violence can erupt in both Western democracies and former European communist countries.
The intensification of ethnic, racial, and cultural hostilities during the twentieth century undercut several assumptions of modernization theory; it also contradicted an influential social psychology theory known as the “contact hypothesis.” That hypothesis predicted that as people of different races, religions, and ethnicities came into greater contact with each other, they better understand the other groups’ common human qualities, causing prejudice to decline.11 Although the contact hypothesis frequently predicts individual level attitudes and behavior (i.e., as individuals of different races or religions come to know each other better, their prejudices often diminish), increased interaction between different ethnic groups, occasioned by factors such as urban migration, frequently intensifies hostilities.
...
[1] Jennifer De Maio, "Confronting Ethnic Conflict", 2009, p. 23
[2] Monica Duffy Toft, "The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interest, and the Indivisibility of Territory", 2003, p. 3
[3] David Bloomfield and Ben Reilly, "The Changing Nature of Conflict Management" in Peter Harris and Ben Reilly, "Democracy and Deep-rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiations", 1998, p. 4
From:
https://archive.is/5r4xU or
http://web.archive.org/web/202006210846 ... 791239.pdfAdditional studies on ethnic diversity and ethnic conflict:
– Social trust is negatively affected by ethnic diversity, case study in Denmark from 1979 to the present.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2012.00289.x– Ethnic homogeneity and Protestant traditions positively impact individual and societal levels of social trust.
https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jci022– “In longitudinal perspective, [across European regions], an increase in immigration is related to a decrease in social trust.”
https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou088– Immigration undermines the moral imperative of those who most favor welfare benefits for the neediest.
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0020715212451987– The negative effect of community diversity on social cohesion is likely causal.
https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv081– In Switzerland, social peace between diverse factions isn’t maintained by integrated coexistence, but rather by strong topographic and political borders that separate groups and allow them autonomy.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095660– “Our analysis supports the hypothesis that violence between groups can be inhibited by both physical and political boundaries.”
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1705-1_12– Diversity hinders between-group cooperation at both the one-on-one and group levels.
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0190272515612403– The best chance for peace in Syria is better borders (intrastate or through the creation of new states) “suited to current geocultural regions”, and tribal autonomy.
http://web.archive.org/web/201504231725 ... /syria.pdf– Using data from US states, study finds a negative relationship between ethnic polarization and trust.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7287.2010.00215.x– Diversity is associated with more White support for nationalist parties, except at the local level where large immigrant populations cut into vote totals for nationalist parties.
https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sot046– In Australia, ethnic diversity lowers social cohesion and increases “hunkering”, providing support for Putnam’s thesis finding the same results in the US.
https://doi.org/10.1111/juaf.12015– After controlling for a self-selection bias, study finds that ethnic diversity in English schools reduces trust in same-age people and does not make White British students more inclusive in their attitudes towards immigrants.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.07.006– In Germany, residential diversity reduces natives’ trust in neighbors, while it also reduces immigrants’ trust but through a different pathway.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.03.014– Increasing social pluralism (diversity) is correlated with increased chance of collective violence.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/425106– “[E]thnic heterogeneity [diversity] explains 55% of the variation in the scale of ethnic conflicts, and the results of regression analysis disclose that the same relationship more or less applies to all 187 countries. … [E]thnic nepotism is the common cross-cultural background factor which supports the persistence of ethnic conflicts in the world as long as there are ethnically divided societies.”
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojps.2014.43016– Genetic Similarity Theory (GST) could help explain why diverse groups in close proximity increases ethnic conflict and ethnic nepotism.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.11.014– Genetic diversity has contributed significantly to frequency of ethnic civil conflict, intensity of social unrest, growth of unshared policy preferences, and economic inequality over the last half-century.
https://doi.org/10.3386/w21079– Using social science data and computer modeling, researchers found that policies that attempt to create neighborhoods that are both integrated and socially cohesive are “a lost cause”.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9608-0 (
http://archive.is/0Gc6s |
http://web.archive.org/web/201311200345 ... -possible/)
– The numbers and the genetic distance matter. Minority groups that get above a certain critical mass, and that are culturally distant from the majority culture, begin to self-segregate from the majority, moving society toward division and away from cooperation.
http://archive.is/G2JQg |
http://web.archive.org/web/201608281703 ... 201530.pdf– Using data from Copenhagen school registers, researchers found that native Danes opt out of public schools when the immigrant population concentration hits 35% or more.
https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcp024 |
http://web.archive.org/web/201404062320 ... chools.pdf– In the most liberal region in the US, San Francisco and surrounding suburbs, White parents are pulling their kids out of public schools that are becoming increasingly Asian.
http://archive.is/ivrc1– School integration (forced proximate Diversity) will not close race achievement gaps.
http://archive.is/dnbxD– Exclusionary dating is a natural consequence of racial diversity.
https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/89.3.807– As diversity increases, politics becomes more tribalistic.
http://archive.is/Z8YEG– Company diversity policies don’t help minorities or women, and they psychologically discriminate against White men.
http://archive.is/5E63T– Greater classroom and neighborhood diversity is linked to stronger tendencies to choose same-ethnic rather than cross-ethnic friends.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12248– A longitudinal test of the impact of diversity finds that it makes existing residents feel unhappier and more socially isolated.
https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv081 (
http://archive.is/Fw6uu)
– Internal dissension stoked by ethnic, social, political, and religious diversity, rather than environmental degradation, caused the collapse of the urbanized Cahokia Indian Tribe.
http://archive.is/cE04o– The volunteer participation rate in America hit a record low last year, declining 0.4% from the previous year, and has been declining since 2005. Not coincidentally, the racial composition of America has become more fragmented during the same time.
http://archive.is/cmhZ2– A sense of social cohesion with the people who live around us is as happiness-inducing as love for the place itself.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20165 (
http://archive.is/aP8dK)
– Our desire for ‘like-minded others’ is hard-wired.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000088 (
http://archive.is/AIn9E)
– “The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation” - "Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates."
http://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.2176– A wealthy Virginia county that is rapidly racially diversifying is getting poorer and less socially cohesive.
http://archive.is/Jo1sU– Gender diversity does not promote nonconformity in decision-making bodies. (But individual ability diversity does)
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2382– High ethnic diversity has a negative effect on innovation, but high “values diversity” has the opposite effect, as long as ethnic diversity is low. The best innovation happens in countries that are ethnically homogeneous but diverse in values orientation.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2015.1130785– Growing racial diversity in Houston is contributing to declining construction standards and aggravating the impact of natural disasters.
http://archive.is/zORTF– As an explanation of recent voting behavior,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.05.008 “…the political salience of white ethnicity persists, suggesting that ethnic groups do not simply dealign or politically “assimilate” over time
– Globalization and the internet are increasing the proximity of human diversity and consequently increasing mutual animosity as well. “The scholars traced the phenomenon to what they called ‘environmental spoiling.’ The nearer we get to others, the harder it becomes to avoid evidence of their irritating habits. Proximity makes differences stand out.”
http://archive.is/2UNXB– A study of social spiders finds that in-group spider homogeneity fosters individual spider distinctiveness. In contrast, spiders in unstable heterogeneous settings produce within-species uniformity of behavior.
http://archive.is/2B4Tf– Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health showed that multiethnic diversity decreases happiness among all groups, and most markedly for the downscale and economically dispossessed.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2015.06.004– A 2017 paper concludes that in societies where individuals differ from each other in both ethnicity and culture, social antagonism is greater, and political economy outcomes are worse.
https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20150243 |
http://web.archive.org/web/201708090811 ... ersity.pdf– Analysis of publicly available data and social science research finds that smaller, homogeneous cities have more social capital than larger, diverse cities.
http://archive.is/kXy0r– Homogeneous states have higher quality of life scores measuring feelings of social belonging than do racially diverse states.
https://www.kcra.com/article/study-cali ... 1/18858827