Ethnic Identity and Civil Society in Latvia, Poland and Ukraine: The Case of Environmental NGOs
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17449057.2011.615693
ISSN1744-9065
Autores Tópico(s)Social Science and Policy Research
ResumoAbstract This research tests the hypothesis that social identities play a key role in the success or failure of democracy, as individuals often hold ethnic and regional identities in a mutually exclusive fashion, resisting calls to act politically on other identities that cut across them. Activists in environmental non-governmental organisations were interviewed in Latvia, Poland and Ukraine in order to examine the policy process in an area that cuts across regional and ethnic lines. The results support the argument that ethnic and regional divisions harm cooperation on environmental issues, though other hypotheses cannot be ruled out. Acknowledgements This study was funded by a grant from the Institute for Humane Studies. Notes This paper was originally presented in a different form at the graduate student symposium on 'Exploring Ukrainian Identity: Gender, Language, and Statehood' at the University of Toronto, 12–13 March 2004. Orr (2008) Orr, S. D. 2008. Identity and civil society in Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine: women's NGOs. East European Politics and Societies, 22(4): 856–878. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] is ©2008 American Council of Learned Socities. Text from that article is reproduced here under licence provided by Sage Publications' contributor agreement. This conclusion is based on the responses of multiple informants in the interviews. 'Membership' here is used not in the sense of formal membership in an organisation, but in the sense of identification with some social group. Despite the usage of early scholars of democracy, the term 'modern' should probably be avoided for describing cross-cutting identities: although the usage is not strictly incorrect, the word 'modern' has over the past century collected a great variety of not entirely compatible meanings and connotations that are best avoided in a rigorous discussion. This identification of course also brings to mind the 'imagined communities' of Anderson (1983) Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso Editions/NLB. [Google Scholar]. First popularised by Olson (1965) Olson, M. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]. For an analogous argument about a free economic marketplace, see North (1981) North, D. C. 1981. Structure and Change in Economic History, New York: W.W. Norton & Company. [Google Scholar]. Gender is a very important exception to the general rule that ascriptive identities are perceived as mutually exclusive, probably for the very simple reason that gender necessarily cuts across every one of the identities that are perceived as mutually exclusive. Indeed, Heisler (1991 Heisler, M. O. 1991. "Ethnicity and ethnic relations in the modern West". In Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies, Edited by: Montville, J. V. 21–52. New York: Lexington Books. [Google Scholar], p. 25) describes 'the availability of choice' to emphasise or not emphasise ethnic identity as the key difference between ethnic politics in the rich democracies and ethnic politics elsewhere. In addition to the sources mentioned at the beginning of the previous section, see Parsons (1961) Parsons, T. 1961. Some considerations on the theory of social change. Rural Sociology, 26: 219–239. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. The seminal work on civil society is Keane (1988) Keane, J. 1988. Democracy and Civil Society: On the Predicaments of European Socialism, the Prospects for Democracy, and the Problem of Controlling Social and Political Power, New York: Verso. [Google Scholar]; important discussions of civil society and political culture in the context of democratisation can be found in Arato (1981) Arato, A. 1981. Civil society against the state: Poland 1980–81. Telos, 47: 23–47. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Diamond & Linz (1988) Diamond, L. and Linz, J. J. 1988. "Introduction". In Democracy in Developing Countries, Volume Three: Asia, Edited by: Diamond, L., Linz, J. J. and Lipset, S. M. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. [Google Scholar], Di Palma (1991) Di Palma, G. 1991. Legitimation from the top to civil society: politico-cultural change in Eastern Europe. World Politics, 44(1): 49–80. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Perez Diaz (1993) Perez Diaz, V. 1993. The Return of Civil Society: The Emergence of Democratic Spain, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], Diamond (1994) Diamond, L. 1994. Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries Edited by: Diamond, L. textbook edn (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner) [Google Scholar], Linz & Stepan (1996) Linz, J. J. and Stepan, A. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Bunce (1999a Bunce, V. 1999a. Subversive Institutions: The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 1999b Bunce, V. 1999b. The political economy of postsocialism. Slavic Review, 58(4): 756–793. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2000 Bunce, V. 2000. "The historical origins of the East–West divide: civil society, political society, and democracy in Europe". In Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-century Europe, Edited by: Bermeo, N. and Nord, P. 209–236. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. [Google Scholar]). Obviously, Mutz's findings in the USA suggest that differences in identity may well produce differences in behaviour even in an advanced democracy, though of course she measured attitudes about political behaviours, not the behaviours themselves. Another possible reason for Mutz's positive findings is that she (and this is also true of Gibson, 2001 Gibson, J. L. 2001. Social networks, civil society, and the prospects for consolidating Russia's democratic transition. American Journal of Political Science, 45(1): 51–68. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) focused not on the 'objective' cross-pressures measured by Powell (1970 Powell, G. B. Jr. 1970. Social Fragmentation and Political Hostility: An Austrian Case Study, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar], 1976 Powell, G. B. Jr. 1976. Political cleavage structure, cross-pressure processes, and partisanship: an empirical test of the theory. American Journal of Political Science, 20(1): 1–23. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar])—whether membership in organisations or membership in potential reference groups—but rather the perception by individuals of cross-pressures resulting from multiple identities. Eastern Europeans speaking or writing in English almost always use the word 'ecological' rather than 'environmental', though the latter is more common in American English. The apparent reason for this usage is that 'ecological' is the cognate of the analagous term in most of the languages of the region. The information in this section comes from the interviews, in addition to the other sources cited within the text. Interestingly, where environmental movements became nationalist vehicles, they tended to unite rather than divide the inhabitants of each state across ethnic and regional lines, at least during the final years of the Communist era. See Dawson (1996) Dawson, J. I. 1996. Eco-nationalism: Anti-nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar] for a full description of the phenonomenon. Useful accounts of this trend can be found in Dawson (1996) Dawson, J. I. 1996. Eco-nationalism: Anti-nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar], Hicks (1996) Hicks, B. E. 1996. Environmental Politics in Poland: A Social Movement between Regime and Opposition, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar], Baker & Jehlička (1998) Baker, S. and Jehlička, P. 1998. Dilemmas of transition: the environment, democracy and economic reform in East Central Europe—an introduction. Environmental Politics, 7(1): 1–26. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], Jancar-Webster (1998) Jancar-Webster, B. 1998. Environmental movement and social change in the transition countries. Environmental Politics, 7(1): 69–90. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], Millard (1998) Millard, F. 1998. Environmental policy in Poland. Environmental Politics, 7(1): 145–161. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] and Waller (1998) Waller, M. 1998. Geopolitics and the environment in Eastern Europe. Environmental Politics, 7(1): 29–52. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]. Those familiar with NGOs in post-Communist Europe may find the idea that outside funding might be harmful puzzling, given these NGOs' overwhelming dependence on that funding. However, the fact that funding keeps Eastern European NGOs afloat does not preclude the possibility that the very same funding keeps them from cooperating with one another, and in fact the explanations for lack of cooperation actually rely on the critical importance of outside funding. For a survey, see McAdam et al. (1996) McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. D. and Zald, M. N. 1996. "Introduction: opportunities, mobilizing structure, and framing processes—toward a synthetic, comparative perspective on social movements". In Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, Edited by: McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. D. and Zald, M. N. 1–20. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]. For some recent examples of studies that do examine the role of ethnic divisions, see Dawson (1996) Dawson, J. I. 1996. Eco-nationalism: Anti-nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar], Heilman & Lucas (1997) Heilman, B. and Lucas, J. 1997. A social movement for African capitalism? A comparison of business associations in two African cities. African Studies Review, 40(2): 141–171. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Schatz (1999) Schatz, E. A.D. 1999. Notes on the 'dog that didn't bark': eco-internationalism in late Soviet Kazakstan. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(1): 136–161. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. It is notable that both Dawson and Schatz addressed their works to post-Soviet states and the role (or lack thereof) of 'eco-nationalism' in the environmental movements there. For a few examples, see Garcia (1989) Garcia, A. M. 1989. The development of Chicana feminist discourse, 1970–1980. Gender and Society, 3(2): 217–238. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Parmar (1989) Parmar, P. 1989. Other kinds of dreams. Feminist Review, 31: 55–65. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Accad (1991) Accad, E. 1991. "Sexuality and sexual politics: conflicts and contradictions for contemporary women in the Middle East". In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Edited by: Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A. and Torres, L. 237–250. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]. Hrycak (2006 Hrycak, A. 2006. Foundation feminism and the articulation of hybrid feminisms in post-socialist Ukraine. East European Politics and Societies, 20(1): 69–100. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 85) also notes that the first foreign-funded groups seeking women's rights were made up of 'elite Russian speakers'. Oddly, the impact of ethnic splits on the women's movement in Ukraine receives little attention in this most recent article, and the issue of splits within Rukh receives none at all; Hrycak seems to have moved from a more nuanced position in her earlier articles to a position that lays the blame squarely on Western funding. In addition to complete results, the author's dissertation (Orr, 2005 Orr, S.D. (2005) Democratic Identity: The Role of Ethnic and Regional Identities in the Success or Failure of Democracy in Eastern Europe, Dissertation for Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, available online at: http://web.newsguy.com/MTKnife/SIT8.pdf [Google Scholar]) includes details on the background of NGOs in Latvia, Poland and Ukraine, the methodology of the interviews, the interview script and a summary of the data. One group in Ukraine was both a women's and an environmental NGO, and its operations in the two different sectors were assessed differently. One other NGO in Ukraine, and another in Latvia, had at least some operations in both sectors, but for these two groups, the operations in one or the other sector were not substantial enough to allow a meaningful assessment. In order to preserve anonymity, each NGO was assigned a unique letter code. The codes have no significance other than indicating the issue area of the organisation ('W' for women or 'E' for the environment) and the order of the interviews (A–GG). The study included several types of organisation, some engaged in politics and others engaged in less controversial projects, while some were national and others local. If the data for all of these subtypes were being presented, it would make sense to give each one a new designator that reflected its specific type, but this article considers only those NGOs engaged in political activities, making it impossible to place them in different categories without being so specific as to compromise their anonymity. Political organisations were typically national, though a handful were local, and these groups are so noted whenever mentioned in the text. Organisations in Poland also cooperated extensively with counterparts in the West and in some cases with those elsewhere in Eastern Europe, though such cooperation hardly made Polish groups unique—groups in Latvia and Ukraine that seldom cooperated inside their own countries almost universally cooperated internationally. Most of this enthusiastic cooperation is probably explainable by fact that Western NGOs were a primary source of money and other forms of assistance. Informants from environmental NGOs mentioned such coalitions perhaps not quite as frequently as did those from women's groups. Only one informant, in the non-Silesian city of Krakow, mentioned having Silesian roots, and two of the three informants in Upper Silesia said that their own roots lay outside the region (that is, their families moved there in the aftermath of World War II), while no activist mentioned Silesian identity without prompting. This could mean that the identity is weak among most Silesians, though it might well be stronger among those with deeper roots in the region than the informants interviewed for this study. In any case, there was no evidence of an impact of Silesian identity on environmental activism. Group EC in Warsaw had managed to persuade 95% of the people who voted in a referendum on the incinerator project there to disapprove of it. However, evidently due to intentionally poor publicisation of the referendum by the authorities, only 26% of voters showed up at the polls, not enough to make the referendum valid. Amusingly, Latvia solved the problem of statelessness in 2004 by definitional fiat, passing a Law on Stateless Persons that classified former citizens of the USSR as 'non-citizens' rather than 'stateless persons' ('Law on Stateless Persons', 2010 'Law on Stateless Persons'. 2010. Söderköping Process, available online at: http://soderkoping.org.ua/page11221.html [Google Scholar]); the motive for this action was probably less an effort to obfuscate the problem than an attempt to evade the country's commitments under international conventions on stateless persons, as can be seen, for example, in the 2007 report by Latvian Human Rights Representative Inga Reine to a seminar of the European Parliament (Reine, 2007 Reine, I. 2007. Protection of stateless persons in Latvia. Seminar on Prevention of Statelessness and Protection of Stateless Persons with the European Union, 26 June 2007, European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs, available online at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/hearings/20070626/libe/reine_en.pdf [Google Scholar]). At the end of 2009, after considerable if reluctant efforts to naturalise Russian-speaking residents, non-citizens still made up about 15% of Latvia's population (Farrand, 2010 Farrand, C. E. 2010. Invisible citizens: statelessness in Europe. Foreign Policy Digest, June, available online at: http://www.foreignpolicydigest.org/Europe-Russia/June-2010/invisibe-citizens-statelessness-is-europe.html [Google Scholar]). I accidentally assigned the code 'EX' twice, to two unrelated organisations. This town is small enough that giving its actual name would in effect identify the organisations studied there, violating the confidentiality of the informants. From this point forward, the term 'Russian' can be taken as shorthand for the more accurate but awkard 'Russian-speaking' and 'Russian-speaker'. One NGO in the study, local group EY in Daugavpils, lobbied against conservation—that is, it lobbied in favour of allowing property owners to use environmental resources as they wished; because its work opposed that of the other groups in the study, EY has not been included in the discussion in the main text. Interestingly, though, this NGO was mostly Russian, but chose an ethnic Latvian leader in order present a better face to the authorities and the Latvian public. EZ may have been regarded by other organisations as partly Russian simply by virtue of its location in Daugavpils. This refrain was also heard from women's organisations, suggesting that it was not unique to the environmental sector. The NGO in question was not one of those engaged in lobbying on environmental issues, but this particular informant had long participated in the environmental movement, and was in a position to be aware of the internal workings of other NGOs. Enviromental NGOs did not claim any credit for the orginal passage of either the Arhus Covention or the Law on Enviornmental Impact Assessments, both of which were adopted as the result of Western pressure—they had merely exploited their provisions. The level of inter-ethnic cooperation and cooperation in general among environmental NGOs in Latvia was clearly lower than that among women's NGOs, but general cooperation among women's NGOs had increased dramatically in the previous year, perhaps even more so than cooperation among environmental NGOs, and so the comparison between the two sectors may have looked different a year earlier (Orr, 2008 Orr, S. D. 2008. Identity and civil society in Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine: women's NGOs. East European Politics and Societies, 22(4): 856–878. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). For more details, see Laitin (1998) Laitin, D. D. 1998. Identity in Formation: The Russian-speaking Populations in the Near Abroad, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]. The environmental NGO sector was quite a bit more vigorous than the women's sector (Orr, 2008 Orr, S. D. 2008. Identity and civil society in Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine: women's NGOs. East European Politics and Societies, 22(4): 856–878. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The interview for this last organisation was conducted in Kharkiv. The researcher's interpreter in Kharkiv was an ethusiastically nationalist Ukrainian who was of entirely Russian descent. One of the (self-identified) Ukrainian informants interviewed was of Korean descent and had close ties to an ethnic-Korean cultural organisation. Notably, Ukraine was one of the first signatories to the Arhus Convention. Furthermore, the trouble that interviewees had in explaining their successes and failures might pose problems for future research, even if the right questions are asked the next time. Though this paper uses the term 'divisions' to refer to the more or less stable boundaries between ethnic and regional groups, for want of a better term, not all divisions prove equally divisive, let alone uniform across time or differing individuals—a point made particularly evident by the case of Ukraine. The detailed account of the development of women's NGOs in Ukraine that Hrycak provides in 'Coping with Chaos' (2005) does very much suggest such an explanation, especially when contrasted with the sunny picture in Poland.
Referência(s)