Cultural minorities are not homogeneous societies. Like all societies they
are socially stratified. Different classes in a peripheral community will
experience different costs and benefits from incorporation into a wider
economy, society and polity. A major influence on the degree of mobiliza-
tion of ethnic groups for nationalistic ends is the relationship between élites
and classes in the core and peripheral communities. One of the ways in
which national governments attempt to manage secessionist tendencies is
through alliances and collaboration with élites within national or ethnic
minorities (Brass, 1991, p. 256).
An economically dominant class within the minority community may be
well-integrated into the wider state and economy. Brass found that ‘locally
powerful economic, religious and political élites find it to their advantage to
co-operate with external authorities and adopt the language and culture of the
dominant ethnic group in order to maintain or enhance their own power’ (1991,
p. 26). In the Kurdish region of Turkey, for example, the Kurdish landed class
and wealthy merchants have been integrated into the Turkish economy through
trade and investment in urban property and small-scale industry in the major
urban centres. Since the 1950s the Turkish authorities have needed less repres-
sion against the Kurds because the corruption and self-interest of the Kurdish
ruling class achieve the government’s aims for it (‘Kendal’, 1980). The newly
emerging Kurdish bourgeoisie also co-exists with the Turkish economic and
political élite, serving as a regional section of the Turkish commercial network
and enjoying representation within the national political parties.
Nationalism is often a weapon which regional élites use in their competi-
tion for national political power. Appeals to ethnic loyalties to build and sus-
tain political support may be a consequence of a struggle for power between
ethnic élites, rather than a cause of mobilization on the part of minority
groups. McVey demonstrates this from Indonesian experience of separatist
regionalism in the 1950s. This was not an assertion of primordial loyalties,
but an attempt to consolidate political support. Eventually the regionalist
movements came to nothing because their ethnic base was insufficiently
meaningful:
Both Sumatra and Sulawesi were patchworks of culturally, linguistically
and religiously diverse peoples, and the unification of either into a nation-
state would have replicated Indonesia’s problems in achieving consensus
among the claimants for power, with much less basis for credibility.
(McVey, 1984, p. 11)In Nigeria, on the other hand, the reinforcement of political mobilization
on the basis of ethnicity by politicians exploiting growing inter-ethnic
Nationalism and Secession 215