more than others, their meaning, placement, and structure may be highly contested, and boundaries are often a key site for struggles over social relations generally. Even the most institutionalized cultural boundaries can be (and are) plausibly redrawn as people struggle to enact, change, or dissolve distinctions in ways consonant with their wider purposes.”
Wimmer (2013, 25) concurs, stating that “ethnic categories might be contested rather than universally agreed upon. Such contestation is part of a broader politico-symbolic struggle over power and prestige, the legitimacy of certain forms of exclusion over others, and the merits of discriminating for or against certain types of people.”
Boundary contestations or struggles, however, remain undertheorized in the existing literature.9 Further in-depth analysis of boundary contestation would be invaluable for boundary approaches. In particular, we need to spend more time thinking about questions such as, how, when, and under what conditions do boundary contestations take place? And when are boundary contestations more likely to succeed? In this section, we attempt to provide some preliminary answers to such questions.
Boundary-making processes might involve external and/or internal struggles over ethnic boundaries. External boundary contestation simply refers to struggles and competition between insiders and outsiders over where symbolic and social boundaries should be drawn. Boundary workers’ efforts (e.g., expansion or contraction of symbolic and social boundaries of an ethnic group or movement) might threaten the ideational and/or material interests of out-group members. Being challenged by such efforts, outsiders (e.g., ruling state elites, political opponents, or members of other ethnic groups or movements) might try to prevent or delegitimize boundary workers’ efforts or initiatives. To achieve such goals, outsiders might employ various strategies such as expanding and/or contracting ethnic, religious, and ideological boundaries. Under the presence of ethnic competition and conflict (e.g., interethnic rivalry over scarce political, economic, and symbolic resources), such boundary struggles between insiders and outsiders might get quite intense.
External contestation might in turn have substantial impact on the boundaries of ethnic categories and of movements. To illustrate how external contestation might shape ethnic boundaries, we can utilize Richard Jenkins’s (2008) analytical distinction between “internal” and “external” ethnic identification, which are two mutually interdependent but analytically distinct processes. In the case of internal identification (also called “group identification”), “members of a group signal to fellow group members or others a self-definition of who they are, their identity” (R. Jenkins 2008, 55). Jenkins (55) explains that the internal definition of identity is necessarily interactional and social because such processes “presuppose an audience, without whom they make no sense, and a shared framework of meaning.” External identification (also called “social categorization” because it involves the identification of others as a collectivity), on the other hand, refers to “other-directed processes, during which one person or set of persons defines the other(s) as ‘X,’ ‘Y,’ or whatever” (55). Jenkins suggests that external identification might take a consensual or conflictual form. In the case of the consensual form, others validate or endorse internal definition(s) of themselves. Regarding the conflictual form, “there is the imposition, by one set of actors on another, of a name and/or characterization that the categorized do not recognize” (55).
Regarding the nexus between internal and external definitions (or between group identification and social categorization), Jenkins claims that these two processes are analytically distinct but not isolated from each other. As he notes, “each is chronically implicated in the other in an ongoing dialectic of identification. The categorization of ‘them’ is too useful a foil in the identification of ‘us’ for this not to be the case, and the definition of ‘us’ too much the product of a history of relationships with a range of significant others.… Ethnicity—the production, reproduction and transformation of the ‘group-ness’ of culturally differentiated collectivities—is a two-way process that takes place across the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (2008, 55). Similarly, Eriksen (2010, 77) asserts that “the Barthian view of ethnicity as a system of mutually exclusive self-ascriptions must be slightly modified: the ascription attributed by others also contributes to creating ethnicity, and may be of paramount importance.” Cornell and Hartmann (2007, 83) also acknowledge the impact of both internal and external construction processes and dynamics on group identity and boundaries:
Construction involves both the passive experience of being “made” by external forces, including not only material circumstances but also the claims that other persons or groups make about the group in question, and the active process by which the group “makes” itself. The world around us may “tell” us we are racially distinct, or our experience at the hands of circumstances may “tell” us that we constitute a group, but our identity is also a product of the claims we make. These claims may build on the messages we receive from the world around us or may depart from them rejecting them, adding to them, or refining them.
Returning to the impact of external boundary contestation on ethnic boundaries, we should acknowledge that it almost always involves processes of “external definition” or “social categorization.” As outsiders contest ethnic boundaries, they usually attempt to impose alternative categories or labels (usually disparaging ones in the case of conflictual situations) on the ethnic group or movement that they challenge. As the empirical chapters of this study illustrate, rival political movements with conservative or Islamic orientations constantly label the secular, leftist Kurdish movement as “infidels,” “heretical,” or “un-Islamic.”
Such attempts of external definition, however, might have major consequences for boundary processes. Facing challenge or threat by outsiders, group members are likely to become much more defensive about their ethnic identity. As a result, they are likely to put internal divisions or conflicts aside and be more assertive with respect to issues related to their group identities and boundaries. As R. Jenkins (2008, 59) suggests, “the experience of categorization may strengthen existing group identity through a process of resistance and reaction. Thus, the experience of being categorized as ‘A’ may, only apparently paradoxically, contribute to the reinforcement, or even perhaps the formation, of [the] group identity as ‘B.’” Likewise, Cornell and Hartmann (2007, 64) note, “Competition … often leads, via social closure, to an emphasis on ethnic or racial boundaries. It is thereby likely to reinforce and reproduce [these boundaries].” In the same way, Eriksen (2010, 81) remarks, “Conspicuous forms of boundary maintenance become important when the boundaries are under pressure.” Thus, contestation of group boundaries by outsiders is likely to solidify internal identification, group attachments, and cohesiveness (see also Hale 2004). In other words, rather than weakening or undermining ethnic boundaries, external contestation might empower or thicken them. In brief, given the dialectical relationship between external and internal identifications, external boundary contestation might lead to major consequences for ethnic identification. It might result in either boundary reinforcement or boundary shift.
The preceding explanations suggest that contestations of ethnic boundaries by out-group members should also be regarded as one form of ethnic boundary work. As indicated earlier, the notion of boundary by definition presumes two separate spheres (i.e., inside and outside). Since contestations stemming from outside the boundary are likely to affect (directly or indirectly) what goes on within the boundary, these should qualify as one type of boundary work by outsiders. To put it differently, external boundary contestation can also be interpreted as boundary work, which might lead to the construction or reconstruction of the boundaries of ethnic groups and of movements. As the empirical chapters discuss in detail, Islamic or conservative political actors have been trying to delegitimize the secular, leftist Kurdish movement in the eyes of the conservative Kurdish masses by externally defining or categorizing the movement as “Marxist,” “atheist,” “Satanic evil,” and “un-Islamic.” Such an external identification or social categorization by competing conservative or Islamic political actors was one of the triggering factors behind the Islamic opening of the secular Kurdish movement in the past decades.
Internal
