Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspectve1

It has been said that technological and economic development lead ultimately to the decline of communal conflict, and that the emergence of new kinds of socio-economic roles and identities undercuts the organizational bases upon which communal (that is, “racial,” “ethnic,” “religious,” or “tribal”) politics rests. In the past decade, several scholars working in culturally plural societies have challenged this conventional view. They have suggested that communalism may in fact be a persistent feature of social change, and that the dichotomous traditionmodernity models which have often guided our empirical investigations have obscured this theoretical alternative and thereby produced false expectations concerning the direction of change. This paper attempts to synthesize the various elements of this emerging theoretical perspective through the formulation of several propositions which link modernization to communalism. While our discussion will draw primarily upon the Nigerian experience for illustrative material, the propositions are intended to be applicable across societies. “Communalism,” in this paper, refers to the political assertiveness of groups which have three distinguishing characteristics: first, their membership is comprised of persons who share in a common culture and identity and, to use Karl Deutsch's term, a “complementarity of communication;” second, they encompass the full range of demographic (age and sex) divisions within the wider society and provide “for a network of groups and institutions extending throughout the individual's entire life cycle;” and, third, like the wider society in which they exist, they tend to be differentiated by wealth, status, and power.