Regional Peripheries and Ethnic Conflict:

Defining the ‘European Periphery’ as an Analytical Concept

Allan Zink Abstract: Structural analyses of ethnic conflict have been criticised for underrating the

importance of factors such as culture and religion, and for being unable to explain why certain

conflicts provoke an ‘ethnic’ or ‘national(ist)’ rather than, for example, a class-based reaction.

This suggests the need to develop analytical categories which can link structural concepts such

as ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ with those of a more contingent, socio-historical nature. Though the

notion of specific regional peripheries has not yet been developed in the literature, such

composite categories should help identify and typologise the structural characteristics

common to various groups of ethnic conflicts while making their complex interrelationship

with non-structural factors more accessible to comparative analysis. The European periphery

is conceived here as part of a regional sub-system within the larger, world-wide network of

hierarchically structured core-periphery relationships. ‘Periphery’ refers to the structural

asymmetry of power relations inherent to the world system and comprises those areas which

are in a position of sustained economic and political dependency with regard to the core. The

‘European’ element designates the temporal and spatial (geopolitical) framework within

which these asymmetrical relations interact with local factors to generate and perpetuate

individual ethnic conflicts. As a ‘proximal periphery’, the European periphery differs from

other peripheral areas through its long-term geographical proximity to a major core zone. This

has not only exposed it to both the regional and global interests of the European powers, but

also allowed for its partial incorporation within the global core itself.

Keywords: ethnic conflict – core-periphery – Europe – regional periphery – analytical concept

General Theoretical Perspective

The idea of developing a more precise concept of the European periphery arose during a

comparative study of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Cyprus (Zink 2003). This study

was conceived as a first step towards establishing a typology of ethnic conflict which would

classify individual cases according to their common structural characteristics while also

considering the historical context and regional framework within which they evolved. The

choice of a predominantly structural approach reflected our hypothesis that major

asymmetries of power between collectivities, countries or regions tend to give rise to concrete

antagonisms which can subsequently evolve into full-scale conflict. Such antagonisms (for

example, those provoked by the Ulster Plantation of 1609) are often the result of conquest or

colonisation and generally begin as relatively straightforward ‘we’ versus ‘the others’ zero-

sum games. The specific nature of the asymmetries involved provides a preliminary

indication of where a particular category of conflicts can be situated, typologically, within the

worldwide complex of core-periphery relations (see the tentative categorisation of conflicts

according to their basic structural characteristics in ibid.: 11).

If not resolved by accommodation, inter-group antagonisms can translate into longer-term

conflicts of interest which, under specific historical conditions, assume an ethno-national or

ethno-religious form (for example, the ‘traditional’ animosity between Catholics and

Protestants in Ulster). The elementary ‘we/other’ structure at the heart of such conflicts – in

Ulster, the political and economic hegemony of a minority over the majority – conditions the

relations of power and interest between the two communities and is analytically, though not

necessarily chronologically, antecedent to its ‘ethnification’. The acquisition of an ethnic

form generally follows a process in which the original we/other antagonism absorbs or is

2

infused with a number of ethnic and national(ist) identifiers which then serve to define the

parties to the conflict in national or ethno-religious terms. These elements often develop a

high degree of functional autonomy which can distort and obscure the initial dispute, thus

increasing its complexity for both the analyst and the practician.

It is nonetheless doubtful, despite all appearances and subjectively held convictions, if

nationalist or religious attitudes can lead to serious ethno-religious conflict without the

presence of more fundamental structural or relational (‘we/other’) prerequisites. This is why

we conceive ethnic conflict as deriving ultimately from ‘real’ political conflicts of an interest-

and power-related nature, and not from socio-cultural constructs such as nationalism or

ethnicity (though these can, in the course of a conflict, obviously assume a powerful dynamic

of their own). On the conceptual level, this implies that we must distinguish structural

categories (such as ‘core’ and ‘periphery’) from essentially formal notions (like ‘ethnicity’,

‘nation’ and ‘religion’) and instrumental or modal concepts (such as ‘violence’, which

identify the means with which, or the mode in which, a conflict is carried out in a more

immediate context).

Our adoption of a structurally oriented, macro-factorial perspective should not be taken to

suggest that non-structural factors, be they on the macro- or micro-level, are not highly

instrumental in determining the nature and course of individual conflicts. It is also not blind to

the fact that structural analyses of ethnic conflict have been criticised for underrating the

importance of factors such as culture and religion, and that they have generally been unable to

explain why conflicts may provoke an 'ethnic' or 'national(ist)' reaction rather than assuming,

for example, a class-based character. However, the basic problem in analysing inter-

communal conflicts, no matter how they may define themselves, is the necessity of realising

3

an appropriate reduction of complexity. Such an operation is not a unique and given

procedure, but is only possible with reference to the particular questions being asked, and

these can be as diverse as the theoretical and methodological instruments deployed in the

attempt to answer them. As Smith notes, ”the elusive complexity of definitional features of

concepts of the nation and nationalism renders the search for certainty in the explanation of

ethnic and nationalist phenomena, and the attempt to reduce their variety to a single pattern of

preferences, implausible and untenable” (1998: 67).

The Core-Periphery Model

The core-periphery paradigm was originally formulated by Frank and other Marxist

authors during the 1960s and 1970s in order to conceptualise a key aspect of the world

capitalist system: the complex interplay of structures and mechanisms which kept the

chronically underdeveloped (‘peripheral’) areas of the world in a state of economic and, as a

rule, political and cultural dependency vis-à-vis the industrialised ‘core’ countries (see

Senghaas 1972, 1974; Fröbel etc. 1977). This conceptual model has subsequently been used,

with varying degrees of theoretical stringency, by both Marxists and non-Marxists to analyse

the manifold asymmetries which structure the relationship between dominant and subordinate

elements of socio-economic and political systems. Its relevance for the study of ethnic

conflict derives from the fact that ethnic and ethno-religious friction has much to do with the

subordination, exploitation, marginalisation and peripherisation of larger human populations.

In particular, the concepts of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ help us consider ethnic conflicts in

relation to their broader political and economic settings and facilitate the empirical

identification of structural influences on both the macro- and micro-factorial levels.

4

In his critique of ‘modernist’ theories of nationalism, Smith disqualifies the core-periphery

model for what he sees as its inherent economistic bias and its resulting inability to explain

nationalism as a general phenomenon (1998: ch. 3, 1981: ch. 4). Though the main object of

his criticism is Marxist methodology in general, and the theories of Hechter and Nairn in

particular, he is correct inasmuch as the ‘classic’ version of the core-periphery model was

indeed based on a traditional materialist understanding of structural dependency and

underdevelopment. However, there is no compelling reason why recognising the importance

of economics must necessarily imply the wholesale reduction of non-economic phenomena to

economic causes. As used here, the core-periphery model presupposes a complex

interdependence and interaction of economic, political and cultural factors within specific

historical and geographical frameworks, whereby the establishment of causal relationships

remains largely a matter of empirical and comparative analysis. We can thus avoid the pitfalls

of economic reductionism without, like Smith, rejecting the concepts of ‘core’ and

‘periphery’ outright or positing the independent existence of ethnicity as a motivating force

per se (1986: introd., chs. 1,9; 1992: 58-80). Even if we would accept, as Smith suggests, that

ethnic phenomena are best understood on the level of symbols and meanings (1986: 211-212),

it would be hard to deny that ethnic conflicts arise initially out of conflicts of interest, and not

conflicts of meaning, no matter how salient the latter may subsequently become. This is

where a non-economistic understanding of the core-periphery paradigm demonstrates its

heuristic value, since it allows us to place particular emphasis on such politically relevant

notions as marginality, structural assymetry, interest, power and contingency without at the

same time ignoring their immense economic significance.

5

Another erroneous assumption made by Smith in an earlier critique of Hechter and Nairn is

that ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ are essentially spatial categories (1981: 33). Until the 1990s, these

concepts were indeed used almost exclusively in a spatial sense, since the dividing line

between the ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ world, despite the many transformations

which have taken place in the world-system since colonial times, was effectively a

geographical one. With the advent of globalisation, however, the increasing mobility of

financial capital and the growing wave of migration from the poorer to the wealthier regions

has universalised a tendency which was already latent in the slums and bidonvilles of the pre-

1990s developed world: the ‘deterritorialisation’ of core-periphery relations to the extent that

portions of the developed core are transposed into the traditional geographical periphery,

while elements of the periphery emerge within the marginalised sectors of core societies. If

today ”the structure of core-periphery [has] become a social division, rather than a

geographic one” (Hoogvelt 1997: 129, my emphasis), then we must also conceive those

asymmetric structures involved in the emergence and perpetuation of ethnic conflict as being

primarily relational rather than spatial in nature.1

Regional Peripheries

Gills and Frank underline several differences between their approach to world-system

theory and that of other authors such as Wallerstein (Gills and Frank 2001: 163 ff.; see also

Wallerstein 1974: ch. 7). Among them is their argument that core-periphery structures are not

only characteristic of the post-1500 capitalist era, but that they have existed, in Eurasia at

least, since the days of the earliest civilisations some 5,000 years ago. This leads them to

reject the idea of a fundamental dichotomy between ‘politically determined’ pre-modern

6

economies and ‘economically determined’ modern economies (Gills and Frank 2001: 170).

They also contest the notion of a single unipolar system of core-periphery relations, pointing

instead to the uninterrupted existence of a hierarchically structured but nonetheless

differentiated “multipolar” system in which “an inter-linked set of center-periphery

complexes [is] ... joined together in an overall ensemble” on the global level (ibid.: 156).

These sub-systems are defined as “distinct regional, imperial, or market-mediated center-

periphery complexes” which, though of unequal status in the “very complex ‘chain’ of

‘metropole-satellite’ relations of extraction and transfer of surplus,” are nonetheless “all seen

as part of a single whole with systemic links to one another” (ibid.: 157). Central, though not

unique to Gills’ and Frank’s position is the idea of a dynamic and continually evolving world-

system in which “areas that were once ‘peripheral’ may ascend to hegemonic or core status,

while areas that have once been core may descend into the periphery” (ibid.; see also

Wallerstein 1974: 349-350).

If we accept that regional core-periphery complexes have existed as long as the world-

system itself, then the next question is how to develop viable concepts of ‘regional

peripheries’ which can be applied to the study of ethnic conflict. Since the differences

between individual regions are both historically and geographically variable, it will be

necessary to construct categories which can link the structural notions of core and periphery

with elements of a more contingent, socio-historical character. Such composite categories

have not yet been elaborated in the literature, but they promise to help us identify and

categorise structural chatacteristics common to particular types of ethnic conflicts, while at

the same time making their complex interrelationship with non-structural factors more

accessible to case-based and comparative analysis. They thus have a primarily explanatory

objective and do not purport to mirror a single universal theoretical perspective. Concepts of

7

particular regional peripheries, such as the European periphery, should be expected to fulfil

four general criteria: (a) they should help explain to what extent different core-periphery

complexes reveal different kinds of asymmetries which unipolar models have difficulty in

accounting for (for example, Britain’s domination of its former overseas colonies vs. its

domination of Ireland); (b) they should aid in distinguishing various types of ethnic conflict

within a specific regional periphery; (c) they should help identify and define the basic

we/other conflict structures underlying the particular forms such conflicts might take; (d) they

should give sufficient weight to structural and economic factors without succumbing to a

rigidly structuralist or economically determinist bias.

The European Periphery

The European periphery forms part of a regional sub-system within the global hierarchical

network of core/periphery relationships. ‘Periphery’ refers here to those areas or populations

which, at any given time, are in a position of sustained economic and political dependency

and/or marginalisation with regard to a regional core. ‘European’ designates the specific

historical, geographical and social context within which these asymmetric structural relations

interact with local and regional factors to generate and perpetuate individual ethnic conflicts.

It is this combination of structural and contingent factors by means of which the European

periphery distinguishes itself from regional peripheries in other parts of the world. Its most

visible structural singularity is its geographical proximity to the ‘classical’ global core of the

pre-1945 world-system which constitutes a major segment of the global core today. As a

'proximal periphery', the European periphery has not only been directly exposed to both the

regional and global interests of the European core powers for over half a millennium, but has

8

also, at various moments in history, been in a position to become partially incorporated within

the global core itself.

There is nothing specifically European about peripheral areas being subject to the

economic, geopolitical and geostrategic interests of regional core states. What gives this

phenomenon its particular relevance here is the combined regional and global character of the

European core. The structural relationship between a global core area and its regional

periphery (for example, Britain and Portugal in the nineteenth century, the United States and

Central America in the twentieth) is necessarily of a different quality than those between the

global core and more distant peripheral regions (e.g., France and its former overseas colonies)

or between regional cores and regional peripheries within the global periphery (e.g., Brazil

and Paraguay). The peripheral areas of Europe have traditionally been instrumentalised by the

core states not only to serve their economic, power and security requirements closer to home,

but also to provide added resources for their hegemony in other parts of the world. This has

normally occurred either through direct conquest and annexation (for example, Engand’s

early acquisition of Ireland and Wales) or through the establishment of spheres of influence

(e.g., Britain’s hegemony in Greece from 1864 to 1947). Accordingly, power politics in

Europe has tended to have both a regional and global dimension from at least the fifteenth

century onwards. This means that the accretion of power and wealth within the core as a

result of its hegemony over the regional periphery has always, at least potentially, had a

significance transcending the confines of the European region itself.

It will take a greater number of case studies to establish a robust link between this

particularly European variation of core-periphery relations and specific types of ethnic

conflict. However, a summary comparison of the Northern Irish and Cypriot cases will show

9

that a correlation does appear to exist between the conditions of peripherality in Europe and at

least one such category of conflict. (For a more detailed comparison see Zink 2003: 12-30.)

Ireland and Cyprus were both conquered at a relatively early date by strong neighbouring

states and were subject to a significant influx of immigrants from the ruling metropole during

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But while much of Ireland’s native Catholic

population was driven off the land to make way for Protestant settlements (‘plantations’) and

further marginalised through a series of discriminatory ‘penal laws’, the Turkish immigrants

in Cyprus were settled on estates which had belonged to Catholic landlords during the

preceding period of Venetian rule. As a result, a severe we/other antagonism along ethno-

religious lines developed almost immediately in Ireland, while on the whole the Orthodox

Greek and Muslim Turkish communities in Cyprus coexisted peacefully until after Britain

took possession of the island in 1878. Of course, many contingent factors played a role in

these developments, including the unique Ottoman millet system (which gave each religiously

defined community a high degree of cultural autonomy) and the specific impact of Irish and

Greek nationalism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, Britain acquired

Cyprus mainly for geostrategic reasons – the island was a stepping-stone on the route to

British India – and never exploited it economically as was the case with Ireland. Nonetheless,

we can observe a clear temporal parallel between the emergence of ethnically defined

we/other conflicts in Ireland and Cyprus, and the periods during which these islands belonged

to the European periphery by virtue of their having come under British rule.

It is significant that at the time of the Ulster Plantation (1609), the largest Protestant

plantation in Ireland, Britain was not only a European core nation but also on the verge of

becoming a colonial power in North America and India. Ireland, for its part, remained firmly

entrenched in its peripheral status, arguably until as late as the 1990s. The sole exception was

10

Belfast which, in the course of the nineteenth century, became “one of [imperial] Britain’s

major industrial port cities and the center of a developed enclave ... [which] was absorbed into

the European core, while the rest of Ireland, including large parts of Ulster, retained its

peripheral character” (Zink 2003: 13). The Ottoman Empire, in contrast, was never part of the

European core despite having conquered nearly all of southeastern Europe by the middle of

the sixteenth century. It was only after some 200 years of progressive decline, towards the end

of the nineteenth century, that it can be considered to have been incorporated into the

European periphery as a result of its economic and political penetration by the great powers.

Cyprus became fully absorbed into the European periphery following its cession to Britain, at

which time the millet system was formally abolished and the Turkish Cypriots began to look

to the new colonial power for protection against the rising tide of Greek nationalism. We

should note that, in keeping with the logic of this evolution, the resolution of both the

Northern Ireland and Cyprus conflicts promises to take place within the framework of the

European Union, that is, in the wake of the integration of these two previously peripheral

areas into the European core (see Richmond 1998).

The detection of a general synchronicity linking one or more types of ethnically defined

we/other conflicts with peripherality in Europe should not be taken to suggest that, as a rule,

ethnic conflicts are more likely to occur in situations where global core powers are directly

involved. Nor does it imply that all the areas and peoples annexed or dominated by such

powers are necessarily underdeveloped economically. But it does mean that these areas or

nations, at crucial periods in their histories, lacked the resources with which to counter the

incursions of the more powerful core states as they pursued their quest for hegemony on a

global scale. Mac Laughlin saw the process of nation-building in Europe as one in which the

titular nationalities of both the traditional and newly created nation-states (‘big nations’)

11

succeeded in marginalising those populations (‘small nations’, ‘ethno-nationalities’) which, at

different times and for varying reasons, could not form a state of their own, but remained

incorporated as minorities within a ‘big-nation’ state (2001: 91-134). This categorisation does

not take into account the nominally independent but nonetheless peripheral areas of Europe

(such as Greece before its incorporation into the EU or Moldova today), but it does, once

again, point to the necessity of refining our analysis by considering inputs from further case-

based comparisons. How, for example, do the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Cyprus differ

from the structurally similar, but non-European case of Fiji? To what extent are they

comparable to the situation in the post-Soviet Baltic States with their Russian minorities? In

our study of Northern Ireland and Cyprus, all of these cases were tentatively categorised as

‘conflicts between an immigrant community from an earlier imperial or colonial period and a

population which sees itself as the original inhabitants of the territory in question’ (Zink

2003: 11). Finally, how do those parts of Europe which, in Mac Loughlin’s terminology, are

the home of ‘peripheral’ ethno-nationalities (2001: 95), but which have become fully

developed economically (for example, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Scotland), compare

with those areas which have remained wholly within the periphery and have only recently

been (or are now being) incorporated into the global core via their integration into the EU?

In considering these questions we must address two further structural particularities of the

core-periphery relationship in Europe. The first is the ‘wandering’ character of the European

periphery: a phenomenon relating to the relatively high fluidity, in historical perspective, of

the divide between core and peripheral zones. The non-static nature of the European

periphery would appear to make its precise localisation and characterisation problematic,

particularly since there is no consensus as to the geographical limits of Europe or what might

constitute Europe’s ‘cultural space’. (The current debate over Turkey’s candidacy for full EU

12

membership is a case in point.) However, the European periphery cannot be defined in

geographical or cultural terms, since its peripheral character is the expression of its structural

relationship to the (regional and global) European core at any given moment. In our study of

the Northern Ireland and Cyprus conflicts, we provisionally defined the European periphery

as “that area which, from the beginning of the sixteenth to the second half of the twentieth

century, was situated on the margins of ... the main centers of economic development and

political power in the (non-American) Western world.” This means that “the extent and

location of this periphery [has] varied over time as a result of gradual changes in power

relations and the ability [of states and populations] to access resources and markets” (Zink

2003: 11).2 While certain parts of the periphery succeeded in becoming absorbed into the core

(for example, Scandinavia in the early twentieth century, Ireland in the 1990s), some core

countries receded into the periphery (e.g., Spain in the eighteenth century). At present, large

portions of what was periphery only a generation ago, including such ex-core areas as Spain

and Portugal, have been assimilated or re-assimilated into the core as a consequence of EU

integration and international pressures towards larger regional and global markets.

This process of deperipherisation has already been completed in Western Europe and

Greece, is now underway in East-Central Europe and is about to expand into the Balkans,

with Turkey aspiring to core status through EU membership as well. The European periphery

thus appears to be retreating from much of the continent, and there is the realistic prospect of

a ‘greater European’ core emerging which, in the longer term, could extend as far as the

borders of Russia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. This raises the question whether the

dissolution of the European periphery might not already be eroding the structural foundations

of many inter-communal conflicts rooted in earlier peripheral conditions, thus robbing their

‘ethnic’ manifestations of their raison d'être.

13

The second structural particularity of the European core-periphery subsystem is closely

related to the first and concerns the relative facility with which core and periphery have been

able to interact – politically, economically and culturally – within the context of regional, that

is, intra-European power politics. It is to a large extent this mode of interaction which, at

different moments in history, has enabled certain peripheral areas to rise to core status or, less

frequently, condemned parts of the core to recede into the periphery. This phenomenon has

much to do with the Europe’s geographical situation, since the continent occupies a relatively

compact portion of the earth’s land mass surrounded on three sides by water and in the east by

the vast Russian state. However, Europe’s unique historical development – particularly the

predominance of relatively small political entities (and, later, nation-states) rather than

extensive territorial empires or large ex-colonial republics – has made the relationship

between its core and peripheral areas, despite the basic asymmetry of this relationship, much

more ‘multilateral’ and tightly knit than, for example, relations between the United States and

its Latin American ‘back yard’ or those of China and Japan with the Southeast Asia. The

closer and more polycentric character of this interactional structure has rendered the regional

dimension of ethnic conflict far more influential in Europe than in other parts of the world,

both historically and at present. Examples of this are the geostrategic importance which

Ireland, an early object of English and Scottish settlement, had for Britain’s emergence as a

maritime power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the key role which Greco-

Turkish relations have played, and still play, in the Cyprus conflict.

The specifically European pattern of core-periphery interaction and the notion of the

‘wandering periphery’ are of particular importance for the analysis of ethnic conflicts with

deep historical roots and a relatively long duration. In order to understand the precise nature

14

of the interests involved in such conflicts, it is important to determine whether the original

we/other antagonism arose, for example, as a result of colonisation or migration from the core

(Northern Ireland) or an imperial non-core power (Cyprus and the Baltic countries), or

whether it developed between two or more peripheral populations under the influence of some

form of core hegemony (ex-Yugoslavia3). It is equally important to trace the further evolution

of the conflict with regard to subsequent shifts in core-periphery geography: did the conflict

originate within a core area which then became periphery, or in a peripheral area which was

later absorbed into the core (Spain with Catalonia and the Basque Country)? Above all, what

concrete changes in the original constellation of interests and power relations did these shifts

bring about?

Finally, we should mention a more recent particularity of European core-periphery

relations which is reminiscent of, but is not identical to, a phenomenon previously thought of

as being typically North American: the interiorisation of the core-periphery antinomy within

the core itself as a result of the mass influx of immigrant labour from the global periphery.

The formation and marginalisation of large, non-integrated minority communities in the

European core states can be interpreted as a partial deterritorialisation of the global core-

periphery system since these milieus, though often confined to ‘ethnically marked’ urban or

suburban ghettos, are essentially non-spatial in character. Whereas the current process of EU

integration appears to be heading towards a large-scale deperipherisation of European

territory in a manner similar to that of twentieth-century ‘white’ North America, the

emergence of a single pan-European core is being cross-cut by a new kind of internal

fragmentation which reflects contemporary tendencies towards the ‘socialisation’ of core-

periphery relations on a world-wide scale. As the ‘old’ European periphery continues to

shrink geographically, a new non-territorial periphery is developing within the urban centres

15

of the more advanced nations (see diagram below) which, as the recent unrest in the French

banlieues suggests, promises to generate new types of potentially violent we/other conflicts.

This process has its historical antecedents in the marginalisation of the Roma and other

minority peoples in the course of modern nation-building and in the emergence of urban

slums, with or without immigrant populations, as a consequence of industrialisation during

the nineteenth century (see Mac Loughlin 2001: 29, 132). The present wave of ghettoisation,

however, is a largely by-product of globalisation, and it is still not clear to what extent these

new marginalised milieus with their predominantly, but not exclusively, minority populations

will assume an overtly ‘ethnic’ or a more social (class) identity.

Ethnic vs. Class-Based Mobilisation in Peripheral Societies: An Unresolved Question

In outlining the concept of the European periphery, we have had little recourse to theories

of nationalism, although it is within the framework of such theories that many analytical

categories relating to ethnic conflict have been developed. Attempts to explain ethnic conflict

with reference to nationalism tend to reflect ongoing debates over the nature of ethnicity and

the relationship between ethnicity and the nation. If we have not addressed these questions

here, it is because our approach follows a different logic. Instead of trying to interpret ethnic

conflict as a dependent variable of nationalism and thus, ultimately, as the ‘outcome’ of some

understanding of ethnicity, it begins by identifying the fundamental we/other antagonisms at

the root of individual conflicts and the circumstances, both structural and contingent, under

which these antagonisms develop (for example, conditions characteristic of a specific regional

periphery). Then, it examines the formal aspects of each conflict, including the role of

nationalism and other socio-cultural factors, on a case-by-case basis. This is not to say that

16

nationalism cannot become a central element in ethnic conflict, particularly with regard to the

development of its ethnic or ethno-religious form. But it is rarely at the root of the conflict

itself. Moreover, the ‘material’ issues and interests involved are not necessarily identical to

the nationalist narratives through which the conflict is defined to its participants.

Smith points to a further problem by observing that most theories of nationalism centre

about relatively specific, and often quite different, questions using a variety of divergent

paradigms (1998: 223). He is sceptical as to whether there will ever be a single general theory

capable of explaining the “many and varied questions and dimensions” relating to the

nationalist phenomenon. This, of course, must also be taken to include the origins and nature

of ethnic conflict inasmuch as it is considered to be a derivative or consequence of

nationalism. The appropriateness of such an assumption appears doubtful, however,

particularly if we take Smith’s reflections to their logical conclusion and ask whether

nationalism itself is indeed a single, universal phenomenon which any one theory might be in

a position to grasp.

There is nonetheless one question raised by proponents of what Smith terms the ‘modernist’

paradigm which demands our attention, even though it does not as yet seem to have met with an

entirely satisfactory answer. Several authors within the broader Gellnerian tradition have

applied the core-periphery model to the analysis of nationalism and ethnic conflict, and in so

doing have attempted to show why conflicts deriving from what we have called we/other

antagonisms tend to assume an ethnic rather than a class form. Nairn, for example, adopts a

instrumentalist approach in his attempt to explain why national(ist) mobilisation appears to be

so much more prevalent in peripheral societies than mobilisation based on class. Drawing on

Gellner’s thesis that modern political nationalities were produced by the uneven spread of

17

industrialisation and modernisation (164: 164-171), Nairn defines nationalism as

“mobilisation against the ... grossly uneven development” of capitalism which “invariably

generate[s] an imperialism of the centre over the periphery” (1977: 96, 340, my emphasis).

This, he argues, leads to an ambiguous situation in which modernising elites in the periphery

must win mass support for the struggle against imperialist domination while at the same time

striving to catch up with the core, or ‘centre’, both economically and institutionally.

Incorporation into the capitalist periphery tends to break preexisting social formations apart

along their internal lines of cleavage, which are usually ones of nationality, sometimes of

religion, but never of class per se. National conflict has thus “enveloped and repressed” class

conflict because of its superior functionality in promoting mass (populist) mobilisation on the

basis of the only factors capable of constituting a “separate identity vis-à-vis the outside

forces of domination”: a society’s own ethnic and socio-cultural peculiarities (ibid.: 353, 340;

see also 339).

The main problem with this interpretation is that it implicitly presupposes a natural

predominance of ethno-national or religious cleavages over those of class in both pre-capitalist

and peripheral social formations. This may be true in a large number of cases, but it still needs

to be substantiated on a broader scale. Despite nationalism’s inherent ambiguity – Nairn

emphasises the precarious symbiosis of its forward-looking (civic) and backward-looking

(ethnic) aspects (1997: 71-129) – it is the purported functional advantage of nationalist

mobilisation under peripheral conditions which leads him to consider nationalism as an

unavoidable and ‘normal’ attribute of the modern world. This thesis reflects his tendency to

equate peripherality with some form of direct subjugation, that is, with the incorporation of

minority peoples into a developed metropole or empire, either as a province or as a colony, on

unequal terms (ibid.: 49). Such an emphasis not only overlooks the many cases in which

18

peripherality takes the form of an indirect or informal hegemony of the core over nominally

independent territories, as has often been the case in Europe. It also brings Nairn to consider the

multinational state itself, and with it the question of separatism and secession, as the central

problems raised by nationalism and ethnic conflict. From here it is only a small step to his

conclusion, advanced with an eye to post-communist eastern Europe, that national identity

cannot rest upon “ethnic-linguistic factors” alone, but that it requires above all else the

“government – or ... the attempted government – of one’s own affairs” (ibid.: 52-53).

The restrictedness of Nairn’s perspective is overcome to a certain extent by Hechter, who

places greater emphasis on the question of ethno-cultural status than on the relationship of

minority communities to the colonial, imperial or ‘big nation’ state (in Nairn’s terminology:

‘big battalions’). Hechter uses the core-periphery model to underpin his concept of internal

colonialism which he portrays as one of three basic modes of peripherality: the ‘colony’, the

‘internal colony’, and the ‘peripheral region’. Internal colonies, peculiar to both core and

peripheral societies, presuppose the existence of at least two distinct socio-cultural

collectivities: one dominant (the core group), the other subordinate (the peripheral group).

(Hechter 1975: 348-349; see also 18.) If conflicts between such groups tend to elicit an

‘ethnic’ rather than a class-based response, it is because a cultural division of labour has

evolved in which “objective cultural distinctions are superimposed upon class lines. High

status occupations tend to be reserved for those of metropolitan culture, while those of

indigenous culture cluster at the bottom of the stratification system” (ibid.: 30). Internal

colonies can be the result of conquest, institutional arrangements or immigration, and differ

according to their position within the world system and the degree to which ethnic groups are

hierarchically stratified and/or occupationally segmentalised. Ethnic group cohesion can also

vary according to time and place, but political demands tend to be formulated in ethnic rather

19

than class terms wherever a cultural division of labour has emerged. (Hechter 2000: 107-108;

1975: 345, 355, 356, 372.)

Although Hechter’s main concern is internal colonialism, and particularly the case of

Britain, cultural divisions of labour can exist in any peripheral setting, including non-spatial

peripheries within core societies like those which appear to be emerging in Europe today. For

this reason, his analytical category can be of help in understanding the ethnic form taken by

many inter-communal conflicts (for example, Ireland up to the late nineteenth century).

Nonetheless, it does not account for all cases of mobilisation along ethnic or religious lines,

either under European or non-European peripheral conditions. Smith, writing in 1983, cites

for Europe the examples of Catalonia, the Basque country and the former Yugoslav republics

of Croatia and Slovenia (1998: 33). Even in cases like Northern Ireland and Cyprus, it is hard

to discern a significant coincidence of occupational status (i.e., class) and ethno-religious

identity which might explain the pre-eminence of ethnically defined hegemonial structures

and the chronically strained character of inter-communal relations. Although Ulster’s

Protestants have remained on the whole more privileged and better off than the province’s

Catholics, each community developed its own internal class structure after the dissolution of

the landed ascendency in the nineteenth century with few hierarchical or segmental

peculiarities developing on either side. Similarly, in post-Ottoman Cyprus, the Greek

community was numerically and economically stronger than the Turkish, but both

communities developed their own parallel class structures after British colonial rule had

abolished the formal hegemonial structures of the Ottoman period. The only exception –

albeit an important one for the relationship between class and ethnicity – was that, up to the

time of independence, a “wealthy Turkish Cypriot was likely to be a landowner (often

20

absentee) ... [while] the role of the bourgeoisie was filled almost exclusively by Greek

Cypriots” (Lyle 1983).

A more system-oriented approach to the class-ethnicity problem is developed by

Wallerstein with his concept of ‘peoplehood’. Social identities, he argues, are constructed

through invented notions of ‘pastness’ which can be defined “in terms of genetically

continuous groups (races), historical socio-political groups (nations) or cultural groups (ethnic

groups).” These three “peoplehood constructs” are merely different modal terms for the same

logical category of ‘pastness’, each of them “hing[ing] on one of the basic structural features

of the capitalist world-economy” (Wallerstein 1991: 78-79). Whereas “racial categorization

arose primarily as a mode of expressing and sustaining the core-periphery antimony, national

categorisation arose originally as a mode of expressing the competition between states”

within the interstate system (ibid.: 82). Categorisation by ethnic group emerged as a mode of

expressing and legitimising the existence of majority (hegemonial) and minority communities

within individual states and a corresponding ethnicisation of occupational categories –

Hechter’s ‘cultural division of labour’ – alongside class-based occupational hierarchies. In the

latter case, group-specific socialisation brings large segments of the world’s working

population to ‘voluntarily’ defend and assert their social ‘identity’ to the point of demanding

political indepencence, although it is precisely this ethnic categorisation which serves to

justify their practical inequality and, often, over-exploitation (ibid.: 83-84). Though none of

these three social constructs is directly related to the ‘objective’ category of class, class

consciousness is, for Wallerstein, nonetheless essentially ‘people-based’: despite all case-

specific variations in the relationship between class and national consciousness, “the

constructed ‘peoples’ – the races, the nations, the ethnic groups – correlate so heavily, albeit

21

imperfectly, with ‘objective class’ [that] a very high proportion of class-based political

activity in the modern world has taken the form of people-based political activity” (ibid.: 84).

As it stands, Wallerstein’s concept of ‘peoplehood’ presents us with two fundamental

difficulties when we try to apply it to the particular conditions of Europe’s historical

periphery. First, it was conceived within the framework of a world-system model consisting

of a single, global core-periphery antinomy which separates the ‘developed’ capitalist nations

from the ‘underdeveloped’ (‘third’) world. Without adapting the concept to allow for a

plurality of core-periphery sub-systems and more complex hegemonic structures on the

regional level, such as envisaged by Frank,4 it would be theoretically inconsistent to transpose

it from the global level to that of the European periphery, particularly since Wallerstein would

qualify much of this area as either core or semi-periphery (see note 2). Secondly,

Wallerstein’s economic reductionism makes ‘peoplehood’ appear as little more than a

functional reflex of the internal contradictions of the capitalist world-economy. It does not

allow for further differentiation or modification as a result of either concrete-historical

developments or ‘non-determined’ human agency. Our understanding of the European

periphery, however, stipulates that alongside certain structural particularities there are

numerous contingent factors which have interacted with and modified these structural

relationships, thus contributing to their distinctive character. The further we proceed

downward into the sub-systems of global core-periphery relations, the more we can expect the

importance such ‘concrete’ historico-spatial factors to increase.

On the other hand, the concept of ‘peoplehood’ is much broader in scope than both Nairn’s

functionalist thesis on mass mobilisation and Hechter’s idea of a cultural division of labour. It

is also abstract enough to be potentially applicable to peripheral conditions of the European

22

type provided the necessary theoretical adjustments are made. Mac Laughlin attempts such an

adaptation by applying the notion of ‘peoplehood’ to the nation-building processes of

Europe’s ethno-nationalities, and specifically the Irish, during the nineteenth century: nations

which he designates as ‘peripheral’ (i.e. marginalised), though he does not use the term

‘European periphery’ for them collectively. He observes that ‘race-thinking’ not only served

to legitimise colonial domination and the hegemony of the core nations within the world-

system, but also to legitimise ethnic supremacy within the ‘big’ nations themselves (Mac

Laughlin 2001: 124). As a reaction to ‘big nation’ nationalism, ethno-nationalism exhibits all

the characteristics which Wallerstein attributes to ‘people-based’ political activity with an

inherent class content: it is “socially constructed as an ensemble of sensibilities ... projected

across a wide range of social, cultural and territorial fields” with a breadth of relevance

covering both class and national dimensions (ibid.: 127). Its principal difference to ‘big

nation’ nationalism lies solely in its orientation towards a different, and usually opposing,

hegemonial group with its corresponding class, national and ‘peoplehood’ interests. This

leads Mac Laughlin to conclude that for both Irish nationalism and Ulster Unionism, “the

nation-building processes which fostered the construction of ‘peoplehood’ [in the late

nineteenth century] were inextricably bound up with class formation and the growth of class

consciousness in concrete regional settings” (ibid.: 125).

Mac Laughlin compensates for a significant weakness in Wallerstein’s approach by

embracing Gramsci’s understanding of human agency as “both determined and determining”,

that is, as a matter of “real people” acting deliberately within structurally defined limits (ibid.:

38). However, his application of the concept of ‘peoplehood’ to the case of Ireland, and by

extension to Europe’s other ethno-nationalities, does not develop the theoretical arguments

necessary to permit its use in a pan-European peripheral context. Part of the problem lies with

23

Wallerstein himself, since it is not clear from his reasoning precisely how race, nation and

ethnicity ‘correlate heavily’ with class in concrete situations. But since Mac Loughlin’s main

purpose is to demonstrate that ethno-nationalism is no less important as a nation-building

force than ‘big nation’ nationalism, he does not systematically investigate the extent to which

the emergence of ‘peoplehood’ in Ireland reflects a general tendency among all the

‘peripheral’ ethno-nations of Europe. He shows that ‘people-based’ political mobilisation in

Ireland included class-based elements and traces in detail how these processes took place, but

he does not explain in more general theoretical terms why they occurred the way they did.

A similar problem presents itself with regard to the two other approaches outlined here: if

Wallerstein’s concept of ‘peoplehood’ is too abstract, too economistic and too implicitly

third-world-centred to be readily applicable to all cases of ethnic conflict in the European

periphery, then Nairn’s functionalist model and Hechter’s ‘cultural division of labour’ are too

restricted in scope to serve this purpose. Of course, a satisfactory explanation of why most

we/other conflicts tend to provoke an ethnic rather than a class-based reaction will not be

found within the context of a single core/periphery sub-system, let alone for a single type of

conflict in a particular peripheral area. But neither can it be deduced from abstract or general

systemic functions without taking regional variations into account. Rather, it will have to be

based on the results of a sizeable number of comparative case studies which consider

structural as well as contingent factors both within and across regional sub-system

boundaries.

Concluding Remarks

24

Ethnic conflict is a complex, multi-faceted and politically contentious phenomenon which

defies simple explanation. The diversity of theoretical approaches and analytical methods

which have been used to study it, and the lack of consensus on even its most fundamental

characteristics – the nature of ethnicity and the nation is but one example – testify to a

corresponding multiplicity of cognitive intertests on the part of analysts and practitioners

alike. These interests are in part academic, but also tend to be linked in one way or other to

the defence or critique of a certain view of society, history and politics. Ideally, such interests

should be explicitly stated since they have a decisive influence on the way in which an author

goes about reducing the complexity of his subject in order to make it amenable to analysis.

Our principal cognitive interest has been to look critically at those approaches to ethnic

conflict which operate almost exclusively on the level of ‘formal’ social constructions and

concentrate our attention on the more ‘material’ conflicts of power and interest which we

presume to constitute the backbone of all social conflicts, but which tend to be lost from view

as soon as these conflicts assume an ‘ethnic’ colouring. Our emphasis, in other words, has

been on the conflictual aspect of this phenomenon rather than on its ethnic character. We have

therefore reduced the complexity of our subject in such a way as to focus on the specific

interplay of structural and contingent factors which, for the area we have identified as the

‘European periphery’, appear to have played a significant role in the genesis and evolution of

various types of ‘ethnic’ conflict. This procedure makes no claim to exclusivity or

exhaustiveness, but has been developed with a view to the questions we have raised and the

answers we hope to find to them. If we are correct in assuming that ‘ethnic’ conflicts derive

ultimately from conflicts of collectively held interests which, in their most abstract sense, can

be understood as ‘we/other’ antagonisms, then the specific cultural forms these conflicts

assume (whether they be ethnic, ethno-religious, ‘national’, class-based or something else)

25

must be examined empirically and historically for each individual case before more

generalised conclusions can be drawn.

This is where the notion of the European periphery becomes relevant. Its usefulness as an

analytical concept derives from a series of interrelated structural characteristics which

distinguish it from other peripheral areas, and which can be interpreted as reflecting the

combined regional and global status of the European core. Let us recapitulate briefly:

(1) The European periphery as a ‘proximal periphery’. The immediate proximity of Europe’s

regional periphery to a major segment of the world core has permitted it to be

instrumentalised by the European core states both within the context of regional power

politics and in the interest of their hegemony on a more global level. Though this overlapping

of regional and global interests is also true of the relationship between North and Central

America, the European core-periphery complex is historically much older, politically more

compact and, above all, characterised by a polycentric power structure unknown in the

Western Hemisphere. This has tended to make the hegemony of the European core over its

regional periphery, and its influence on local ethnic antagonisms, both more immediate and,

because of the plurality of competing core powers, more ambivalent than in most other parts

of the world.

(2) The European periphery as a ‘wandering periphery’. The extent to which the European

periphery has become incorporated into the multipolar structure of regional European power

relations has, from an historical perspective, rendered the dividing line between core and

periphery particularly fluid. Due in part to frequent shifts in the balance of power between the

European states, an increasing number of peripheral areas has, over the long term, been

absorbed into the regional – and hence into the global – core, while some core states have

temporarily descended into the periphery. This can influence the course of ethnic conflicts to

26

the extent that those which originate under peripheral conditions can begin to lose their raison

d’être if, after the area in question becomes absorbed into the core, important changes in the

constellation of we/other interests and power relations occur.

(3) The facility of core-periphery interaction. Apart from the factors just mentioned, the

relative facility with which core and periphery have been able to interact in Europe is largely

a consequence of the predominence of comparatively small (nation-)states existing within a

relatively ‘compact’ geographical area. This has not only facilitated exchanges of territory

between core and periphery over time, but has also accentuated the importance of the more

immediate regional dimension of ethnic conflict.

(4) The transition from a geographical to a social periphery in Europe. While the progressive

enlargement of the European Union has rendered the dissolution of Europe’s old spatial

periphery conceivable, a new social periphery appears to be emerging in the urban ghettos of

the wealthier core nations. Composed of marginalised populations of mostly immigrant, but

also non-immigrant origin, it remains to be seen to what extent the conflicts emerging within

these milieus will assume a more ethnic or class-oriented character.

Concerning this final point, we have cited the reflections of several authors who have

applied the core-periphery paradigm to the theory of nationalism. We have concluded that

there still does not appear to be a satisfactory explanation for why so many we/other conflicts

tend to assume an ethnic rather than a class-based form. Plausible explanations for certain

categories of cases have been advanced, and the relationship between class and ethnicity has

been considered on a more abstract level by world-system theory. However, a general theory

of ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ mobilisation which takes into account the diversity of conditions

and hegemonial relations within individual core-periphery sub-systems has yet to be

formulated. If, as we believe, further case-based research is the way forward towards such a

27

theory, then the notion of regional peripheries with their particular synthesis of structural and

contingent elements should prove useful in analysing conflicts which arise under similar

historical and regionally specific conditions. Our concept of the European periphery, when

fully developed, is intended to perform in such a manner. Its primary function will be to help

identify aggregates of structural factors common to groups of ethnic conflict and set them in

relationship to key non-structural factors which also play a role in the cases concerned.

Ultimately, a series of comparative case studies should allow us to construct a typology of

ethnic conflict for the European periphery which would classify all cases according to their

basic structural features while at the same time considereing the historical contexts and more

immediate geopolitical settings within which they evolved.

28

29

Notes

1. Wallerstein recognised as early as 1991 that spatiality was not an absolute sine qua non

of the core-periphery relationship: “The axial division of labour within the world-economy

has engendered a spatial division of labour. We speak of a core-periphery antinomy as

constitutive of this division of labour. Core and periphery are relational concepts that have to

do with differential cost structures of production. The location of these different production

processes in spatially distant zones is not an inevitable and constant feature of the

relationship. But it tends to be a normal one” (1991: 79).

2. It is to some extent due to this fluidity that the term ‘periphery’ has been used to

designate not only a diversity of economic, political and cultural conditions in Europe, but

also quite different geographical areas at various moments in history. While non-Marxist

economic historians tend to define the European periphery empirically and in purely

economic terms, using as their main criterion the level of poverty in a particular country at a

given time, Mac Loughlin, a political geographer, portrays nineteenth century Europe as

“clearly divided between powerful self-governing nation states on the one hand, and ...

peripheral small nations ruled from the real centers of national power on the other” (2001:

95). Among the countries cited as peripheral by the economic historians consulted (O’Rourke

and Williamson 1995; Maddison 1994; Foreman-Peck and Lains 2001: 1), we find for the

period 1870-1913: Ireland, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, the Balkans, Russia, Poland, the

Hungarian part of the Habsburg monarchy and, in one case, Austria and Italy. Mac Laughlin,

in contrast, lists the Basque country, Catalonia, Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Poland and

Czechoslovakia as being among the “relatively small, non-industrialised nations on the

peripheries of [nineteenth century] Europe” (2001: 100, 103).

30

Wallerstein, who does not subscribe to Frank’s notion of regional core-periphery

complexes, maintains that the countries of southern Europe were “peripheralised” (in a global

context) after 1815, but that they subsequently followed a course of ‘semi-peripheral’

development in the attempt to catch up with the core: first in the form of fascism and

corporatism, which failed, and then in concert with American hegemonial and core economic

interests via NATO and the EEC. He defines the semi-periphery as composed of countries

whose production processes reveal a fairly even mix of core- and periphery-like activities,

and where there is “a concentration of state-oriented political activity by major internal (and

external) economic actors” aimed at shifting this mix in a “core-like” direction. (1985: 36-

38.)

3. As Mac Laughlin points out, the dominant (‘hegemonic’) traditions in nineteenth- and

early twentieth-century social philosophy prompted most nation-builders in the core countries

to oppose the ethno-nationalist aspirations of the Balkan and other peoples on political,

economic and geopolitical grounds. This was an important factor leading to the creation of

multi-national states like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia after the First World War. (2001: 4,

20-21, 36-37)

4. For Gills and Frank, “world hegemony is always shared hegemony, exercised through a

complex network composed of class coalitions, alliances and other forms of association

between states, including competitive ones.” It is this complexity of hegemonic structures

which makes the “alternation between hegemonic leadership and rivalry for hegemony” an

important matrix of ethnic and religious conflict potential within a continually evolving,

hierarchically structured multipolar system of core-periphery complexes. (2001: 157, 158.)

31

References

Foreman-Peck, James, and Pedro Lains (2001). “Economic Growth in the European Periphery

1870-1914”. Paper presented at the Allied Social Science Association Meeting, New Orleans,

January 2001. 25 May 2006.

<http://www.eh.net/Clio/ASSAPapers/Economic_Growth.htm>

Fröbel, Folker, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye (1977). Die neue internationale

Arbeitsteilung. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Gellner, Ernest (1964). Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Gills, Barry K., and Andre Gunder Frank (2001). “A Structural Theory of the Five Thousand

Year World System”, pp. 151-176 in Sing C. Chew and David Knottnerus (eds.), Structure,

Culture, and History: Recent Issues in Social Theory. Lanham and Boulder, CO: Rowman &

Littlefield.

Hoogvelt, Ankie (1977). Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political

Economy of Development. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Hechter, Michael (2000). Containing Nationalism. Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press.

——— (1975). Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development,

1536-1966. London etc.: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

32

Lyle, Keith (1983). “Cyprus”. Paper written for the Minority Rights Group, London. 25 May

2006.

< http://www.cyprus-conflict.net/narrative-main.htm>

Mac Laughlin, Jim (2001). Reimagining the Nation-State: The Contested Terrains of Nation-

building. London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.

Maddison, Angus (1994). “Explaining the Economic Performance of Nations, 1820-1989”,

pp. 20-61 in William J. Baumol, Richard R. Nelson, and Edward N. Wolff (eds.),

Convergence of Productivity: Cross-National Studies and Historical Evidence. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Nairn, Tom (1977). The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism. London: NLB.

——— (1997). Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited. London and New York: Verso.

Richmond, Oliver P. (1998). “Implications for Peace: Building Negotiating Positions During

the Cyprus Conflict”. Paper delivered to an ACGTA seminar in London on 5 June 1998. 25

May 2006.

< http://website.lineone.net/~acgta/Richmond.doc>

O’Rourke, Kevin H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G. (1995). “Around the European Periphery

1870-1913: Globalization, Schooling and Growth”. Working Paper 5392, National Bureau of

Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.

33

Senghaas, Dieter, ed. (1972). Imperialismus und strukturelle Gewalt: Analysen über

abhängige Reproduktuion. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

———, ed. (1974). Peripherer Kapitalismus: Analysen über Abhängigkeit und

Unterentwicklung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Smith, Anthony D. (1981). The Ethnic Revival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——— (1986). The Ethnic Origin of Nations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

——— (1992). “Nationalism and the Historians”, pp. 58-80 in Anthony D. Smith (ed.),

Ethnicity and Nationalism. Leiden: Brill.

——— (1998). Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations

and Nationalism. London: Routledge.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1974). The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the

Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic

Press.

——— (1985). “The Relevance of the Concept of Semiperiphery to Southern Europe”, pp.

31-39 in Giovanni Arrighi (ed.), Semiperipheral Development: The Politics of Southern

Europe in the Twentieth Century. Beverly Hills etc.: Sage Publications.

34

——— (1991). “The Constructon of Peoplehood Racism, Nationalism, Ethnicity”, pp. 71/85

in Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (eds.), Race, Nation and Class: Ambiguous

Identities. London: Verso.

Zink, Allan (2003). “Northern Ireland and Cyprus: Towards a Typology of Conflict in the

European Periphery”. Paper presented at the XIX World Congress of the International

Political Science Association, Durban, June-July 2003.

35

Biographical note

Allan Zink is an independent researcher in Strasbourg, France. He has previously held

positions at the Federal Army University in Munich and the Universities of Augsburg and

Marburg. His research interests include Greek, Irish and Eastern Mediterranean politics,

ethnic conflict, clientelism, and the conditions of democracy. He has published on Greek and

Irish politics and organised interests in Europe. He is currently engaged in research on ethnic

conflict in the European periphery, and is the author of a forthcoming article comparing the

conflicts in Northern Ireland and Cyprus. Address: 11 allée Carl, 67120 Molsheim, France

[email: allan.zink@wanadoo.fr].

36