* Starred terms are entered in the glossary where one may find some comments on them and references to their use in the four theme papers. Unfortunately, lack of space prevented notes on the somewhat different connotations of these terms often seen in Bigo's discourse.

The strength of the texts in this issue lies in their homogeneity which is present despite their different theoretical sensitivities. This homogeneity is due to their common analytical framework, the longue dure. All texts analyze transformations of the State* and ethnicity* over several millennia. Such a perspective enables the various authors, firstly, to distance themselves from the theses about "the return of ethnicity after bipolarity" or "the inextricable nature of ethnic conflicts"....

Secondly, all authors strongly affirm that contemporary ethnicity is the product of modernity* and of a certain type of State* with national* claims. For them, the former constitutes an emergent strategic stake in struggles between actors and has little to do with an unspecified primitive situation or an unspecified natural communalization. There is thus no need for establishing an opposition between the modernity of the State* and an historical retreat or decay related to the return of ethnicity.

Thirdly, according to these authors, the fact that ethnicity* is a modern social construction does not, on the other hand, prevent it from destabilizing citizen solidarities. In their view, it could also correspond to a new form of solidarity which is directly linked to either the birth of an informational imperialism*, the decline of a global hegemony*, or to post-modernity*.

The capacity of the authors to link these three issues concerning the formation of the State* and the world system*, the formation of contemporary ethnicity* and the relations of the latter to conflictuality, gives the texts a specific tone. Their originality challenges and disturbs the concert of generally accepted ideas. It is for this reason that they deserve to be carefully analyzed. It will nevertheless be seen that the quasi " braudelienne" perspective adopted in these texts, which studies the present moment as an interaction of "differentiated layers of duration"(nappes de dure differencies) can be problematic. Such an approach runs the risk of constituting the concepts which it uses as meta-historical objects. Generalizations concerning the relations between the State and ethnicity and economic structures, which are not always well founded, tend to overshadow symbolic and political analysis. Such relations or processes that one wanted [to be] dialectical and historical end up being essentialised, and even reified. The combined illusions of natural history and teleology hence resurface.

Thomas Hall, in a rewarding text, immediately relativizes what a number of other authors take for granted and consider as an inevitable starting point for analysis : he reminds us that ethnically-homogeneous-States* have always been extremely rare. He thus joins William McNeil in claiming that the national State* is the exception, the poly-ethnic State the rule. In his opinion there has been insufficient analysis of the mechanisms of incorporation, that is to say the mechanisms through which people and religions are absorbed into the world-system*. Instead, we tend to reduce these mechanisms to their institutional forms and analyze them in terms of State borders. Indeed, the discourses about the State in the Westphalian system neglect the longue dure and lead us to mistake what is in fact a normative discourse for the description of social practices. Our europocentrism blinds us into believing that the trajectory of far Western Europe is universal. We forget about the diversity of possible paths in the formation of States and the fact that for thousands of years city-States, empire-States and national-States* have coexisted, even in Europe.

Moreover, we do not sufficiently question the relationships between constraint and capital, terms used by Charles Tilly. [1] Consequently, many authors fail to understand the relationships between States* and ethnicity* because they hold false ideas about State formation itself.

Certain international relations specialists who have recently converted from strategic defense initiative or security issues to ethnic conflict studies, found their analysis on false presuppositions about the nature of the State*. In their view, the State* is by definition an homogeneous nation-State*, where "a" population within a confined space, delimited by borders, is controlled by "an" authority. Furthermore, they consider it to be the only desirable "model"; for them poly-ethnic models are believed to inevitably lead to chaos, anarchy, and war of all against all. The fact that this has not been the case for thousands of years seems to have gone unnoticed. When describing the history of the State* and sovereignty, these specialists quote the seventeenth century philosophers rather than historians or anthropologists.[2]

Moreover, they quote these philosophers in such a way that the ideas of the latter are distorted, if only it be by the historicizing of the concept of the state of nature. It would thus seem that international relations specialists writing about ethnicity are immune to the problem of legitimacy. They end up instituting themselves as an epistemic community even though they lack basic knowledge in history and anthropology, knowing neither the literature nor the methodology in these domains.[3] The mainstream theses on ethnic conflict are not only prisoner of realist postulates as is often pointed out, but they also constitute a "knowledge" which is written within the confines of the office and wants to be nothing more than a synthesis of world events.

Yet, the study of cultural dimensions of identities and ethnicity requires practical knowledge, inter-subjective meetings and an experience of otherness which, in turn, can only be achieved through substantial field work. From a distance, it is easy to forget one's own identity and make generalizations about ethnic identity, essentializing it and constructing it as something exotic. It is also easy to relay ethnicity to the idea of otherness and continue to think of oneself as universal, because of one's dominant position. However, when one incorporates field work into one's analyzes such reasoning becomes more difficult.

The false ideas on State* formation lead to erroneous assessments about the nature of ethnicity, as to whether it be pre-modern* or not. The latter is easily referred back to quasi prehistoric times and treated as if it had always existed. It is perceived as the hidden face of civilization which rears its ugly head as soon as war forms trigger the unleashing of its animal impulses. In this view, ethnic antagonism is always lying just below the surface and can be more readily mobilized than other types of antagonisms by war mongers who can instrumentalize the historical memory, highlighting certain tragedies and concealing peaceful periods of cohabitation of different ethnic groups. Whether it be a matter of explaining the breakup of the USSR, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan or Liberia, ethnicity provides a grid for analyzing and understanding conflicts, in spite of the political and religious differences.

Vis-a-vis this view, Fred Riggs points out that the apparent opposition between primordialists and instrumentalists masks the strong underlying agreement between them. Both consider ethnicity as a form of a past (whether it be real or mobilized through memory). However, contemporary ethnic conflicts are deeply modern* or para-modern* phenomena and although we may dislike the idea that modernity* can be the source of barbarism, we must accept that barbarity is the product of modernity and does not originate from pre-modern* times.[4]

In accordance with Thomas Hall, Fred Riggs underlines the fact that in pre-modern* societies ethnic diversity* never generated ethnic or more precisely ethno-nationalist* conflicts. Great ethnic diversity* exists almost everywhere and this does not prevent peaceful cohabitation. For Riggs, the instrumentalization of ethnicity* and nationality* through their politicization must be understood as a modern* phenomena, as a product of the mechanisms of colonialism, conquest, the development of nationalist* ideologies and the dream of a world divided into homogeneous State-nations*, of democratic* institutions and arms production .... However, in contrast with John Bowen, Fred Riggs points out that one should not assimilate ethnic diversity* and multiculturalism* with a perfectly harmonious world, thereby replacing, one might say, the Hobbesian version of interethnic war with a Rousseauiste version of the world.

We thus come to the third point. Glocalization and ethnic diversity* have engendered new forms of social relations by privileging global nomadism*, multiplication of diasporas and by questioning the rapport between populations and their natal territory. Majid Tehranian further develops Fred Riggs' notion of global nomadism by making the distinction between rich and poor nomads. Whereas the former, ranging from multinational corporations to international congresses, travel the world; the latter, in flight from conflicts, have no other choice than to leave their own country and settle elsewhere.

Jonathan Friedman also adopts this position. He focuses on the link between the novelty of ethnic forms of solidarity and transnationality* and tries to envisage migration* as something other than the resettlement of an ethnic group on another's territory. By considering migrants as "settlers" one condemns oneself to a vision which transforms them into "invaders". In this perspective, one forgets just how plastic ethnicity is and how groups do interact and adapt to each other, as through the exchange of women, linguistic and culinary practices.[5] All ethnic borders can be transgressed except when political entrepreneurs manage to mobilize groups and set up temporary barriers between these groups. This is achieved by manufacturing an image of the enemy, and in particular the internal enemy (the migrant).

At times, Fred Riggs seems to forget this and in a Janus-like manner, tends to position the migrant so that he is torn between solidarities with the host country and the country of origin and has no alternative or third choice. It is true that some migrants remain attached to their country of origin and become contacts for organizing and executing attacks against the host country. However, statistics show that such cases are extremely rare and thus not only to disprove but also reverse the previous claim. The ideas that migrants constitute "a fifth column" at the service of their country of origin and represent a potential source of mass terrorism were uprooted during the bloodiest attacks in Paris in 1986, 1995 and 1996. At the time of these episodes it proved to be extremely difficult to recruit protagonists for the attacks amongst the immigrant populations. The arrest of a handful of people was enough in each instance to put an end to the attacks.

This is not to say that immigrants necessarily agree with their host country policies. But they try to find practical arrangements which enable them to overcome this Janus situation and transform what Fred Riggs beautifully terms "the limbo land" into some thing concrete. Thus in analyzing immigration* according to ethno-national* categories or in connection with security issues, one risks securitizing the immigration question, playing too easily on fears and constructing a threat through the invention of "an " imaginary adversary (the immigrant becomes a relay of terrorism, drug problems, crime, unemployment, AIDS...). Immigration does not fit such an analysis; it stems from thousands of individual and independent decisions and lacks any will or global intention. In short, immigration is a phenomenon of social change and cannot as such be considered as threat to society unless one is willing to partake in the reactionary rhetoric which advocates immobility as a societal ideal.[6]

The debate on how to conceptualise immigration is far from being closed and it is important to remember the role of immigration in the formation of the world-system*. Majid Tehranian tries to categorise immigration according to this latter criterion when he distinguishes between agrarian, industrial and informational imperialism*. Indeed, the effects of the world system* must be reconsidered in terms of incorporation and the dialectic of the opening and closing of state borders to migration flows must be analysed. However, it seems that such a post-fordist, world-system* approach has a tendency to neglect many important dimensions: the autonomy* of polity with respect to economy, the role of internal factors, the symbolic dimension of power relations which is forgotten because one focuses exclusively on exploitation, forms of coercion and the relationship with territory. It is doubtful whether concepts such as global apartheid can contribute to a better understanding of the phenomena of policy deterritorialisation or what major French authors have called the international without territory.7

On the contrary, identity dynamics must be analyzed both beyond and within State* borders and thought of as mobile, fluid identities whose demarcations fluctuate and interpenetrate.[8] It should be understood that both the domestic and the international order -- it is not easy to distinguish between the two anymore -- are founded on exchanges (of goods, capital, information, and people) and not on [genetic?] stocks. At the same time, it is necessary to re-analyze the notion of border as a discriminant in the fields of economics, security and cultures and remember that no thought is possible without creating delimitations.[9] This is why forms of symbolic power (or violence) must also be analyzed and cannot simply be regarded as products derived from transformations of the world-system*. They are always taken for well-known, natural objects which never change : the State or the ethnic group*. As Paul Veyne has explained in a very important text:

" The illusion of a natural object (the governed [and also ethnicity*] throughout history) conceals the heterogeneous nature of practices. The governed are neither unitary nor multiple, any more than repression is, for the simple reason that it does not exist : there are just multiple objectifications which correlate with heterogeneous practices. The relationship between this multiplicity of practices and a unit only becomes an issue if one tries to ascribe unity when there is none ; a gold watch, a lemon zest and a racoon are also a multiplicity and do not seem to suffer from the fact that they have neither origin, object nor principle in common. Only the illusion of a natural object creates a vague impression of unity...there is no subconscious, no repression.. just the eternal teleological illusion. We are wrong in assuming that the doing, or practice, can be explained on the basis of what is done. On the contrary, what is done is explained by what the doing was at any point in History. Things, objects, are simply the correlate of practices. So our error is believing that the State* or States have always existed throughout history instead of studying the practices which project objectivations that we take for the State or different forms of the State."[10]

We fail to consider the dynamics involved in the passage from causes to results because we underestimate the causal mediations and systematically explain great events by "great causes" such as the world-system*. It is here that this illusion and the illusion of natural history join up and where authors have difficulties admitting that "local changes or transformations of low amplitude can produce great effects..."[11] They do not understand that outcomes are contingent and that events, even when they are real tragedies as in Bosnia, are the result of the random combination of multiple series of determinations. So perhaps the work that lies ahead of us should consist of trying to gain a better understanding of the actors' practices and the objective actions they give rise to, as well as looking more closely at the interplays between the multiple and local dimensions of events. Such work is less grand than a dialectical explanation of 5000 years of history based on the notions of State* and ethnicity*, yet is just as necessary and just as important theoretically. Starting from these practices (including discursive ones) we should try to reconstruct the interests and norms of the latter instead of wanting, yet again, to draw global prospects which reify and essentialize History.

*Maitre de Conferences des Universits l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, editor of Cultures & Conflits

1 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990-1990, Blackwell, Oxford, 1990

2. Liberals prefer philosophy of contract to history of war. cf. Michel Foucault, "Il faut defendre la societe" Cours du college de France, 1976, Gallimard, Paris, 1997.

3. David Campbell points out how these authors use a footnote referencing the works of Anthony Smith to replace a coherent argumentation on the notion of ethnicity. Cf. David Campbell, Ethnic Bosnia: The Poliltical Anthropology of International Diplomacy. ISA, Toronto, 1996.

4 This is also discussed in Michel Wieviorka (ed.), Racisme et modernite, La Decouverte, Paris, 1993.

5. For further analyses of these issues, cf. Jean Francois Bayart, L'Illusion identitaire, Fayart, Paris, 1996; and Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.) "Etat et communautarisme," Cultures & Conflicts, n. 15/16, Paris, 1994.

6. Didier Bigo, Polices en reseaux: l'experience europenne, Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 1996.

7. Bertrand Badie, Marie-Claude Smouts <dir.) "L'International sans territoires," Cultures & Conflits, n.21/22, Paris, 1995.

8 Hayward Alker (ed.), Michael Shapiro (ed.), Challenging Boundaries, University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

9. Malcolm Anderson, Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996. Ayse Ceyhan (dir.) Anastassia Tsoukala (dir.), "Controles: Frontires-Indtits: les enjeux autour de l'immigration et de l'asile," Cultures & Conflits, n.25-26, Paris, 1997.

10. Paul Veyne, Comment on crit l'Histoire Seuil, Paris, 1977, pp. 364, 365..

11 Michel Dobry, Sociologie des crises politiques, Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 1986.