1. MINORITIES AT RISK
“Monitoring the persecution
and mobilization of ethnic
groups worldwide”
BY ELLEN, WAYNE & VERITY
UTS:GLOBAL KNOWLEDGES
2. MAR - Key Dates
1986-1988 2008
MAR established and taken Establishment of Minorities
up by Maryland University at Risk Organisational
Centre for International Behaviour (MAROB)
Development and Conflict 2009
Management (CIDCM) Upgrade of data set and
2004 review of past coding
Restructuring of data avoid systems
selection bias Release of 2009 codebook
3. How they collect
• Must be “politically significant”
– Collectively suffers, or benefits from,
systematic discriminatory treatment from
other groups in a society; and,
– Is the basis for political mobilization and
collective action in defence or promotion of its
self-defined interests.
4. Bases of communal identity
• Shared language
• Religion
• National or racial origin
• Common cultural practices, and
• Attachment to a particular territory
• Common history, or myths of shared
experience
5. How they collect
• Indigenous
• Ethnoclass
• Religious Sect
• Ethnonationalist
• National Minority
• Communal Contender
6. Example
• Mons in Burma who are an indigenous
group
• Catalans in Spain who are a national
minority
• Even the Europeans in Zimbabwe who are
an ethnoclass
7. Criteria
• Population greater than 500 000
• If the group numbered at least 100 000 or at least 1% of the
population
• Separate groups in countries; Kurds are profiled separately in
Turkey, Iraq and Iran
• Include advantaged minorities ex the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and
the Overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia, but exclude
advantaged majorities
• Exclude refugee and immigrant groups unless regarded as
permanent residents
• They count and code groups at the highest-level within-
country level of aggregation that is politically meaningful.
• Estimate membership in a group using the widest
demographic definition, even though not all people who
nominally are members of a group necessarily identify with it.
8. Minorities at Risk Organisational
Behaviour
• Identify factors that motivate some
members of ethnic minorities
– to become radicalised
– to form activist organisations and
– to move from conventional means of politics
and protest to violence and terrorism.
9. To be in the MAROB database the
organisation:
• makes explicit claims to represent the
interests of one or more ethnic groups and/or
the organization's members are primarily
members of a specific ethnic minority.
• is political in its goals and activities.
• is active at a regional and/or national level.
• was not created by a government.
• is active for at least three consecutive years
between 1980 and 2006.
10. How the Data is Presented
• The data is divided on the website into
Quantitative which gives detailed
descriptions of what is going on as well as
chronological data, which gives a timeline.
• The qualitative data is also available
giving facts and figures but can only be
understood by access to a codebook
which helps make sense of the numbers.
11. The website also gives access to interactive
maps which highlight significant political
issues
13. Why It’s Important
•Research pre-MAR
•Offers new insights and empirical data
•New method for systematic analysis
But…
14. Problems with MAR
• Certain kinds of research are performative
• Inaccurate coding of existing variables
such as language
• Selection and grouping issues
• Inconsistencies
15. Defining Groups
and Inconsistencies
• Criteria for inclusion can be subjective
• Deciding what the “group” is
• Is descent a factor or not?
16. Falun Gong
• 5 religious sects listed in Asia
Falun Gong is not organized as a religion but does have:
• A spiritual discipline
• A moral philosophy articulated by its founder
• Buddhist and Taoist practices
• Central texts
17. Underlying Power
Structures
There is little reason to believe that the Aborigines of Australian will employ
militant tactics or systematic violence in the near future. They lack the risk
factors -- such as territorial concentration, group cohesion, regime instability
and government repression -- that make rebellion more likely… While the
risk of militant activity is low, the possibility for continued protests is higher…
The openness of the Australian democratic system allows for the group to
protest, and they have used the strategy throughout the past.
The risk of rebellion by Asians in the United Kingdom is low, although not
nonexistent. However, violence that does erupt is more likely in reaction to
the central government’s foreign policies, as was seen in the 2005 subway
bombings in London. It is unlikely that more than sporadic violence can be
sustained, as the majority of Asians and Asian advocacy groups pursue
nonviolent means.
20. Applications of the Data
• 568 reports published on UNHCR
Refworld
• Cited 734 times in academic papers
(Source: Google Scholar)
• Possible influence in refugee claims
22. Discussion Topics
• In groups, think about possible uses or
practical applications of this data set.
• Should we take the data as fair and
completely accurate, considering the
primary source restrictions and strict
criteria?
23. Bibliography
• Asal, Victor, Amy Pate and Jonathan Wilkenfeld. 2008. Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior Data and Codebook
Version 9/2008 online: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/data.asp.
• Hug, S. 2011, ‘Use and Misuse of MAR’, International Peace Research Institute Oslo, pp. 1-20.
• MAR Background Report: Religious Violence in Egypt, Minorities at Risk Project, University of Maryland Center for
International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), USA, 2011,
http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/pubs/backgrounders/2011/03egypt_religious_violence.pdf.
• Marylands University, Centre for International Development and Conflict Management, USA, 2009,Minorities At Risk (MAR)
Codebook, v.2/2009.
• Minorities at Risk Project. (2009) "Minorities at Risk Dataset." College Park, MD: Center for International Development and
Conflict Management. Retrieved from http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/ on: 10/10/2011.
• Minorities at Risk Project, 2011,The Macro Data Guide, NSD, Norway,10/10/2011,
http://www.nsd.uib.no/macrodataguide/set.html?id=25&sub=1 .
Editor's Notes
The literature on ethnic conflict/violence before the development of the MAR data base employed two types of research designs. Scholars have undertaken (1) relatively large, cross-sectional comparisons among cases selected because they are marked by significant ethnic conflict or violence, and (2) smallerstudies that consider the evolution of violence in particular cases over time (or which may compare two or three of these). The failure to systematically sample cases of low conflict or violence tends to undermine the first approach's ability to generate insight into what factors differentiate high and low violence cases. And while the small-N literature has produced a wealth of insights into particular dynamics and mechanisms at work in particular cases, this approach is inherently incapable of providing a "big picture" allowed researchers to offer new insights in many areas dealing with relationships among groups. there is a systematic, empirical core to the Minorities at Risk study that heretofore has been lacking from the literature on this topic. ” Undeniably, the “ minorities at risk ” project and data have opened the way for much more systematic analyses of ethnic violence and mobilization that were not possible before.
That is to say that the problems we solve are influenced by the questions we ask to begin with The promise of this data set is good. But there are some difficult problems, as yet unresolved, that undermine the validity of the results for all members of the scientific community who rely on these data. These problems include ones of selection of cases, inconsistencies and inaccurate coding of existing variables. The MAR variable "culdifx2" measures linguistic difference between the minority and the dominant group. The values of this variable go from "0" (No Difference) through "2" (Extreme Difference). Culdifx2 is an element of the index variable for cultural difference (culdifx), which plays a role in Gurr's own explanation for grievances in regard to group autonomy in Middle East and Latin America (Gurr 1993, 80-81). Not only is there a problem of classifying the language of any group, but there is the second problem of assessing the differences between them. On what metric? For example, the linguistic difference between northern and southern Chinese may be greater than between two distant Romance languages, yet because of a common schema of writing, intellectuals from all regions in China can communicate rather easily with one another. This is not because their languages are similar, but because they share an ideographic system that substitutes for speaking. Examples of issues: Chinese in Malaysia get a 2, while they get a 0 in Indonesia; but the official languages of Malaysia and Indonesia are virtually the same. In the United States, African-Americans get a 0 (reflecting full assimilation) while Native-Americans get a 2 (reflecting maximal difference). It seems that in the former, the criterion was the actual language practice of the group, while in the latter it was the historical language of the ancestors of the actual population.
To be included, a group had to reside in a country with population greater than one million in 1990, had to have itself a population greater than 500,000 or 1 percent of country population, and had to meet at least one of the four criteria Gurr et al. used to decide if the group was "at risk." For the "at risk" criteria, Gurr et al. asked whether (1) the group suffers "discrimination" relative to other groups in the country, (2) the group is "disadvantaged from past discrimination," (3) the group is an advantaged minority being challenged," or (4) the group is "mobilized," meaning that "the group (in whole or part) supports one or more political organizations that advocates greater group rights, priveleges, or autonomy“ Obviously, then, the criteria for inclusion are subjective and may be contestable for specific cases. There is also the problem of how to decide what the "group" is in cases where group boundaries and self/other descriptions are contested or unclear. For instance, MAR codes as single groups "Hispanics" in the U.S -”Southerners” in Chad and Sudan Minority ethnic groups in Latin American countries under the heading indigenous people Hispanics could be Spanish, Portuguese (in the traditional sense) or Mexican, Latin American even former spanish/portuguese empire such as equitorial guinea in africa In america this simply means a spanish sounding surname grouping in this way can be damaging and denies agency fails to recognize struggles of individual groups Interestingly, Gurr et al. never address the problem of defining what bases and indicators of groupness potentially qualify a group for inclusion in the list. The implicit criterion seems to be that group membership must be mainly reckoned by descent by people in the country. The vast majority of the groups in the data set could be referred to as "ethnic" in ordinary language, and the vast majority in fact are. Bu if descent is crucial, why are Indian castes omitted, and why are the Ba'hais of Iran, a religious sect where being a believer is probably close to necessary and sufficient to be a member of the group, included?
E.g. Hindus in Bangladesh and Hui Muslims in China. Practice of Qigong Although the practice initially enjoyed considerable support from Chinese officialdom, by the mid- to late-1990s, the Communist Party and public security organs increasingly viewed Falun Gong as a potential threat due to its size, independence from the state, and spiritual teachings. By 1999, some estimates placed the number of Falun Gong adherents at over 70 million, exceeding the total membership of the Chinese Communist Party. [8] In July 1999, Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership initiated a ban on Falun Gong and began a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign intended to eradicate the practice. In October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a "heretical organization." [1] [9] [10] Human rights groups report that Falun Gong practitioners in China are subject to a wide range of human rights abuses; hundreds of thousands are believe to have been imprisoned extra-judicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, severe torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities
Raewyn Connell quote.
Whilst the value of this data set is that it is empirical by nature, it also benefits from feedback and I have seen several academics comment that the MAR team is quick to correct data based on feedback but unless you speak English this is next to impossible.
United Nations High Commission for Refugees Refworld – journal for refugee decision support Scholarly topics range from risk assessment to the causes of violence and changes in ethnic conflict. -no official confirmation on this but MAR is cited in various UNHCR reports As you can see it is limited to academics and has little practical use possibly a good thing?
