‘Ethnic cleansing’: A metaphor for our time?

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Abstract
The intense ethnic assertion of identity often translated into violence ‐ethnic cleansing ‐ can be largely explained as a consequence of the challenge to the project of modernity (economic development, justice, rule of law, the mass media, satellite technology and transport). Although ethnic cleansing itself is not a new phenomenon, developments in the mass media allow it to play a crucial role in influencing people in their perception of culture on an unprecedented scale. Hatred of the enemy, defined simply in ethnic or religious terms, is heightened through the use of television. Honour, glory, past mythology and ethnic nationalism are extolled, creating a predisposition for extreme arguments. Rape or sexual intimidation is extensively employed to terrorize and humiliate the ethnic enemy and explains the bitterness among combatants. The article considers its theoretical and methodological implications. First, all such crises need to be looked at in a global frame, those who share the religion or race of the victims of ethnic intolerance in one part of the world may be the aggressors in another. Second, we need to recognize that the discrete boundaries between academic disciplines are redundant. Third, while we need to study the ethnic death and torture camps (like those in the Balkans) we must also spot other less obvious and more subtle but almost equally tragic forms of ethnic cleansing resulting from racism and immigration policies (as in western Europe). Finally, we need to recognize fragmentation, new mutations, transformations, revival‐isms and revisions. This fragmentation is both cause and effect of ethnic revivalism.

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