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For Bill Jordan (University of Plymouth), a leading scholar of social policy, the findings of the recent inquiry into standards at Stafford Hospital – described as ‘one of the worst NHS scandals in history’ – offer confirmation of what’s wrong with social policy and its current principles...

My new book was written during the economic crash of 2008-9. It argues for a transformation of our collective life, based on a rejection of the abtract economic model which has penetrated every aspect of our societies.

The helplessness of governments as the crash unfolded, and their subsequent haste in borrowing funds to bail out the banks and mortgage companies, revealed how much of their power they had delegated to these financial intermediaries. But the extent of private debt also showed how the wider public had accepted this process. The book describes how a set of interlocking ideas installed the consuming, choosing, ‘independent’ individual at the base of a pyramid of credit, linked together through contractual relationships.

These notions have gradually usurped other political and moral principles and social bonds, to supply the rationale for all activities and organizations. As they have insinuated themselves into collective life, other cultural resources have decayed; increasingly we define who we are and what we do in terms of this model.

The worst consequences of these processes were publicized last week in the report on the scandal of perhaps 1,000 avoidable deaths at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Hospital Trust. It described the humiliation and neglect that had become routine elements in patients’ experiences, as staff ignored their pleas for help, and managers focused on government targets and efficiency savings. Almost the worst feature of the scandal was that the Trust was granted lucrative and prestigious Foundation status during this process, as complaints from patients and their relatives were brushed aside.

In social policy, the edifice of regulation, accreditation, measurement, performance and delivery has been tailored to the economic model, often at the expense of a culture of care, respect and recognition. Part of the solution lies in restoring standards of empathy and judgement in practice; another part in making services truly accountable to the public.

More fundamentally, social policy should seek to build a social infrastructure in which people experience themselves as equal and participating members of society, as a collective body with shared purposes and ideals. The public services should be central to this project.

What’s Wrong with Social Policy and How to Fix It  has just been released, and offers a diagnosis of, and suggested cures for, growing inequalities in society, failures in our social services, increases in a wide range of social problems, and public disillusion over the effectiveness of policy programmes.

 

On 20^th February, after lengthy and arduous talks, the Dutch coalition government collapsed, triggering a general election. The issue that created the crisis was not domestic politics, but whether Dutch troops should continue in Afghanistan beyond August this year. On the same day, Plaid Cymru’s Elfyn Llwyd, leader of the Welsh nationalists in the British Parliament, called for the withdrawal of all British troops from Afghanistan. US President Barack Obama has increased American troop numbers in the country by 30,000, taking the total of foreign troops to around 130,000; but at the same time, he announced a phased withdrawal and a handover to the Afghan regime from July 2011. Are these all signs that the long-running conflict in Afghanistan is drawing to an end in the very near future? If the major NATO-led offensive against the Taliban, Operation Moshtarak, is as successful as some optimistic commentators think, then the largest body of insurgents will soon be removed from central Helmand province and reconstruction and rebuilding of ‘safe havens’ will begin.

Afghanistan has been the focus of America’s so-called, ‘war on terror’ since October 2001 in the aftermath of Al-Qaeda’s attacks on the US on 11^th September (Obama has dropped use of this concept). The hard-line Islamicist Taliban government, which had allowed and supported Al-Qaeda’s training camps in the country, was overthrown in 2001, but the Taliban and its supporters had regrouped in Pakistan and Afghanistan by 2003. Although a new Western-backed government was elected in 2005 with its base in the capital Kabul, it has little authority beyond this as warlords, drugs traders and the Taliban pose serious threats to a national system of political governance. Taliban leaders are said to be preparing for a ‘20-year war’ against foreign invaders and even in recent months have managed to mount attacks, killing CIA agents and government officials in the most heavily defended areas of Kabul. Whether the current intensified military campaign will succeed before July 2011 is still unclear.

Despite the language of ‘war’ and ‘warfare’ that’s used on both sides, it is legitimate to ask what kind of war is being fought out in Afghanistan. Our conventional view of war is of two or more large armies fighting each other until the power and military might of one group forces the other to surrender. This image is borne out of the experience of major conflicts between nation-states where both sides have reasonably well-matched military power at their disposal. However, this is clearly not the case in Afghanistan where NATO forces and the Afghan army have access to the most advanced technology and weaponry, whilst the Taliban use guerrilla tactics, older (albeit still modern) weapons, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide bombers. NATO forces number some 130,000 with a further 94,000 Afghan troops and 80,000 police, whilst best estimates of Taliban fighters are just 20,000. Can such a grossly unequal state of affairs really be described as a war at all?

Conventional inter-state wars do seem to be becoming less common, but perhaps the massive loss of life in the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars have skewed our commonsense perception of what war is? Maybe these ‘total wars’ were exceptional rather than typical? Total war mobilized entire national populations, not just armed forces, and in that sense they were different from earlier inter-state wars between smaller armies with little if any involvement of civilian populations. Certainly the ‘wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different from total wars, but they are also significantly different from those earlier inter-state wars too. For some sociologists and military historians, these contemporary conflicts are typical of a new form of war and warfare that has emerged over the last 30-40 years, known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). RMA theorists have argued that information technology is changing warfare forever. A moment’s reflection on the role played by satellite images and targeting systems, computer-controlled missiles and new mobile communications in the organization, deployment and the waging of war in Afghanistan and Iraq shows just how important IT has become. But winning the communications war also means shaping the perceptions of the civilian population in order to prevent the insurgency taking a wider hold. NATO’s Afghanistan commander, General Stanley McChrystal, noted this month that: ‘This is all a war of perceptions. This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants.’   

The insurgents’ tactics may appear to hark back to quite traditional, low-tech, localized guerrilla movements, but appearances are deceptive. The Taliban clearly have access to modern weaponry, much of it left behind when Soviet troops were forced out of Afghanistan in 1989. And though their ideology may be ultra-traditional, they are quite prepared, as are Al-Qaeda, to make use of all the technological devices and communications of modern living. New wars also blur the previous boundaries between war, organized criminal activity (illegal opium production helps to fund Taliban operations, for example) and human rights violations. The new wars are also globalized conflicts involving an array of external actors such as international bands of mercenaries, military advisers, diaspora volunteers, international NGOs as well as United Nations agencies, the EU, African Union and many more (see Mary Kaldor’s thesis here).

If the conflict in Afghanistan can be correctly described as a new war, then how likely to succeed is the present US / NATO strategy? The increasing calls for the withdrawal of troops are entirely understandable when more than 1,600 coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001 (figures here). But this does increase the pressure on NATO’s Operation Moshtarak to achieve a rapid and conclusive end to Taliban influence in Helmand and beyond. From what we know about the globalized character of new wars, their tendency to connect with organized crime and to attract support from sympathizers beyond national boundaries, the prospects of this project don’t look good. If the Taliban does survive as an active force beyond July 2011, the question of whether Western societies are capable of committing their armed forces to the Taliban’s proposed 20-year war will come into much sharper focus.

Chapter 23 covers war and the ‘new war’ thesis and includes an important critique that is not discussed above. However, there is also much useful material on politics and conflict in Chapter 22. Organized crime is discussed on pp. 970-3.

When one considers that citizenship tests in the United States are old hat, it’s astonishing that their recent introduction in Europe has raised such controversy, and that there is doubt about their ‘liberal’ credentials. How liberal are the new citizenship tests? (You can see the British version, ‘Life in the UK Test’, here.) To ask for competence in the host-society language and knowledge of the principles and values of liberal democracy is an undeniably legitimate core component of all citizenship tests in Europe and other Western states. And few would doubt that it’s equally legitimate to ask for knowledge of key events in the host country’s history, and how it developed into a liberal democracy. So where is the problem?

A test that seeks to uncover the ‘true’ values or beliefs of an individual, even if they conform to the principles of liberal democracy, is pernicious from a liberal point of view. The most infamous example is the so-called Gesprächsleitfaden (Interview Guideline) which the Land government of Baden-Württemberg issued in 2005 to aid the officers responsible for granting immigrants naturalization as German citizens. Its professed purpose was to check whether a citizenship applicant’s written ‘declaration of loyalty’ (Bekenntnis) to the German Constitution (which has been a component of the German naturalization procedure since 2000) also corresponded to the applicant’s actual beliefs or ‘inner disposition’. This practice was questionable in two respects. First, it originally applied only to citizenship applicants from member states of the Islamic League, thus it discriminated against Muslim applicants for citizenship. The guideline consisted of 30 trick questions (obvious to everyone except the half-witted) about applicants’ views on parental authority, religion, homosexuality, gender equality, terrorism, and other issues. In doing so, the guideline construed the liberal democratic order primarily as one that is contrary and opposed to the presumed values of a specific group, i.e. Muslims. But perhaps even more importantly, by invading the intimate and private sphere of the person, the interview guideline violated the liberty rights of the Constitution itself, especially the freedom of opinion and conscience. This, indeed, is repressive liberalism, and demonstrates the illiberal potential of liberalism: a liberalism that becomes an identity, an ethical way of life to which everyone is expected to conform, and which is brought forward with an unabashedly exclusionary intention against liberalism’s presumed ‘Other’, i.e. Islam and Muslims.

However, the provincial German state’s scrutiny of citizenship applicants’ morality raised eyebrows precisely for being exception to the liberal norm. Note that the federal German citizenship test introduced in autumn 2008 deliberately abstains from ‘matters of conscience’. It would certainly be unwise to reject all the new citizenship tests as illiberal based on the 2005 guidelines issued by Baden-Württemberg. In fact, the move towards standardization and formalization of guidelines may well be a net gain in liberality since it increases the naturalization procedure’s calculability on the part of citizenship applicants, who are no longer subject to the whims of an open-ended, individual interview procedure.

 

Christian Joppke’s new book, Citizenship and Immigration, provides a succinct overview and assessment of citizenship and immigration, as well as presenting a fresh and original argument about changing citizenship in our contemporary human rights era.

The 3rd edition of Anthony Giddens and Philip W. Sutton's Sociology: Introductory Readings is now available from Polity.

Arranged in 10 broad thematic sections, each with thoughtful editorial introductions, the volume includes classic and contemporary readings, from Weber and Durkheim, to new sociological thinking about climate change, virtual communities, and war and terrorism in the 21st century.

Also available in a discounted bundle together with the 6th edition of Sociology, this will continue to be an essential resource for anyone who wishes to engage with the scope of sociological thought today.

Last week, Google, the company behind the world’s most popular search engine, announced that it is considering pulling out of China after discovering that the Gmail accounts of campaigners for human rights in China had been attacked [Google statement here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html?]. Google said only two accounts had actually been accessed and very limited information gained, but ‘at least twenty’ other large companies had been attacked and campaigners based in China, the US and Europe had their accounts attacked via ‘phishing’ scams and malware. No firm accusation was made against the Chinese authorities, but the implication of Google’s statement is that, having traced the source of these highly organized and well-orchestrated attacks to China, government sources are attempting to garner information on human rights activism. As a result, the company says it is no longer willing to censor its search results in China (Google.cn).

Google’s championing of the right to ‘freedom of search’ rings pretty hollow for some who have tracked the company’s move into the Chinese market. Google first opened in China in January 2006 but, in order to do so, also agreed to censor some search terms to meet Chinese laws on Internet use; these included search terms that would bring up material on controversial topics, such as ‘Tiananmen’ (the site in Beijing of the massacre of protesters by the Chinese military in 1989), ‘Falun Gong’ (a banned spiritual movement whose followers have allegedly been persecuted by the Chinese government) and ‘Dalai Lama’ (a Buddhist spiritual leader revered in Tibet, a disputed Chinese territory). Critics saw the company putting profit before human rights in a move that was also against the company motto – ‘don’t be evil’. Google, though, saw it as constructive engagement with the Chinese government in order to help promote civil liberties and change China’s stance on freedom and openness. The latest episode appears to be an acknowledgement that this policy has failed, although Google says it will still sit down with the authorities soon to see if an agreement on an uncensored search engine can be found before it pulls out of China altogether. Cynics also point out that China’s most popular search engine is not Google, which has only around 31% market share, but a Chinese engine, Baidu, with around 64% (in Chinese: http://www.baidu.com/). Has Google found it more difficult to break into China and not achieved the kind of profits it was looking for? Does that mean the Chinese gamble has not been worth the damage done to Google’s corporate brand in the rest of the world (‘we’re good not evil’)? 

Is this issue really as obvious as Google’s rather simplistic good and evil view of the world suggests? Chinese censorship, especially political censorship, is undoubtedly extensive and the overall system has been described as the Great Firewall of China for good reason. The BBC, which has suffered an almost complete ban, says that around 50,000 Chinese authorities spend all of their time monitoring Internet traffic. But government secret services around the world, including those in the USA and Europe, routinely monitor communications, email exchanges and blogs, particularly of anyone suspected of involvement in extremism and terrorist activity in our age of a ‘new’ terrorism and heightened security fears. Similarly, search engines screen out certain results in order to comply with, say, child protection laws in the UK. Are these good or evil practices? At a lower level, anyone who has tried to carry out research knows that even university IT systems operate with lists of proscribed websites, sometimes including legal organizations such as the British National Party, that are not freely available to students or staff without special dispensation. Monitoring, intervention and censorship on the worldwide web is widespread and freedom of search doesn’t exist even in the ‘free’ West. Whether it should is, of course, another matter.

There is also a tendency amongst commentators in the West to unthinkingly assume that Chinese users of the web are the passive victims of state censorship, imbibing government propaganda in a fairly uncritical way. Such a view comes close to the old hypodermic syringe theories of media content, which are seen today as rather naïve and one-dimensional. The more recent body of work under the general rubric of audience studies, making use of interpretative models and theories, has shown that audiences and users are active interpreters, not passive sponges, reading between the lines and adopting a cynical approach to media messages. This is even more the case with new media such as the Internet, which demand active engagement from users. Those using search engines to find specific information become skilled at finding it and don’t give up their information-foraging easily.  

A nice empirical study carried out by James Lull in the late 1990s explored 100 Chinese families’ attitudes and approaches to television, which had been rolled out across the country in the 1980s. He found that, in similar ways to populations in the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe, Chinese audiences knew full well that what they saw and heard was heavily censored and included much propaganda, but they were able to filter and interpret it through their own knowledge of society and wider international relations in order to make sense of it. They were extremely sensitive to how news is presented and how it’s delivered, what’s been left out and which issues are accorded priority. In all likelihood, this kind of active interpretation and critical reception is even more widespread in web searching, Internet use and information retrieval. None of which means that extreme political censorship of the web is not an issue of concern, but it does mean that many of China’s 360 million Internet users are unlikely to be as surprised as Google seems to be at the latest revelations of state surveillance and intervention. 

Chapter 17 on Media is the starting point for debates on Internet use. ICTs and globalization is covered in Chapter 4, pp.127-131. Postmodern theories of society focusing on the impact of media are in Chapter 3, pp.96-8. Chapter 7 on social interaction includes social constructionism and cyberspace (pp.273-6), and US ‘televangelism’ is covered in Chapter 16 on pp.702-6. Technology in schools can be found in Chapter 19, pp.870-7, whilst cybercrimes are discussed in Chapter 21, pp.970-4.

Football is a global sport. It is watched by millions across the world and on every continent. The African Nations Cup has assumed even more significance as the global mobility of players brings many African players to the Premier League to be cheered from English terraces and become part of British popular culture. But football is also glocal, with its global dimensions mediated by local circumstances.

The attack on the Togo national football team coach from rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) has propelled into the news two little-known countries in Western Central Africa; it is usually countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia from the region that dominate the news. Togo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) both have failing regimes, weak states, stalled peace negotiations and high levels of what is called ‘spoiler violence’, which is violence intended to disrupt peaceful political settlements to communal conflict. In this respect they parallel Sierra Leone and Liberia. Elections are held in Togo and the DRC, with different degrees of fairness, but without a democratic civic culture and a vibrant civil society, democratic norms are not strong enough to consolidate their peace.

This point is worth reiterating; institutional reform of the governance structures is insufficient on its own to stabilize peace processes. Sociological approaches to the study of peace processes advance the importance of a range of social issues to the success of democratic transitions. A key factor is an active and progressive civil society, linked to global civil society networks and thus able to traverse local, national and international arenas. Other important processes highlighted by sociological study include: gender mainstreaming to promote the position of women in post-conflict reconstruction; the social, educational and economic reintegration of former combatants; the management of emotions and the cultivation of spaces for reconciliation, hope and forgiveness in the public sphere; the emergence of truth recovery procedures along with citizenship education programmes to manage memory and remembrance; informed public policies to deal with victimhood and the deconstruction of violent masculinities, etc.

Amongst these issues must be policies to implement social and economic redistribution. Part of the problem of good governance approaches to peace processes is the emphasis on the introduction of Western market economics rather than social democratic models. Eliminating poverty has to be part of a peace process; without it, ‘war economies’ are encouraged, in which the conflict is kept going for economic benefits, such as warlord patronage, organized crime, corruption (among rebels, national armies and governments), and illegal trade in natural resources.

This describes the problems not only of Western and Central Africa but Africa generally, as well as Sri Lanka and many other zones of conflict. It prompts the reminder that peace processes are very fragile and that serious attempts by the international community and academics are needed to address both the political and social dimensions of peace processes. Political science, International Relations and human rights law have done much to identify what is necessary for the political peace process to succeed; sociology is now beginning to chart the sort of issues important to the social peace process.

John Brewer’s new book, Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach, released this month, takes a bold new approach to the study of peacebuilding by beginning from the premise that sociology can identify those factors that help to stabilize them.

 

Luke Martell (Reader in Sociology at the University of Sussex) explores one of the factors involved in globalization and offers some alternative ways of viewing global migration.

The current financial crisis and the Copenhagen summit on climate change have recently drawn increased attention to global interdependency. The anti-government uprisings in Iran and similar events elsewhere in the world show the movement of media such as Twitter across national boundaries. At the same time, the rise of the far-right and intolerance remind us that another type of globalization exists: the globalization of people. This is a type which is not so freely allowed or welcomed by many governments and citizens. Yet evidence for the benefits of migration is overwhelming. When properly considered, it is difficult to see why migration should be opposed, except for reasons of prejudice and intolerance.

Migration is often described in terms of waves or similar tidal metaphors. But in rich OECD countries less than 12% of the population is born abroad. Globally 97.5% of people stay in the country they were born in. From popular myths you would think most migrants in a country like the UK were from Asia, the Caribbean or Eastern Europe. Yet the largest immigrant group is the Irish. Other significant migrant groups who rarely get mentioned are from countries such as Germany and the USA. 

Most migrants in the UK do not take the mainstay of British workers’ jobs: they often fill high- or low-level vacancies that British workers cannot or will not take up. It is often forgotten that much migration is temporary. And given the media coverage of immigration, it is surprising to learn that about 80% of asylum seekers in the UK are sent home.

The British government has estimated that migrants add £6 billion annually to economic growth. They often cannot work where they come from, but are able to be productive in their new home. Spending their earnings creates jobs for others, for example in the service sector, rather than taking them away. Money sent home sometimes provides greater income for countries of origin than aid or foreign investment. Rather than draining public services, migrant workers pay taxes which support these and the growing proportion of elderly people in rich countries.

It has been reported that 50% of Americans think there are twice as many immigrants in their country than there really are, which clearly demonstrates the misinformation that exists concerning migration. And those vigilantes who patrol the Mexican border forget that their country is almost entirely constituted by immigration. This is a big part of what gives the US its unique diversity and dynamism, and many of those who made the US what it is were escaping persecution and hardship. Quite apart from economic considerations, this is perhaps the most overlooked and important reason for seeing the value of migration.

This issue is discussed more fully in chapter 6 of Luke’s new book, The Sociology of Globalization, released this month, which addresses a wide range of distinctive insights that sociology has to bring to the study of globalization.

  

In the first ‘ask an expert’ session of 2010, Steve Fenton (Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol) writes about national identity in Britain. Is it endangered? Does it matter? And how can we address the controversy it has given rise to?

The growth of supra-national organizations, of which the European Union is a key example, is said to have undermined nation-states and national identity. Similarly, multi-national corporations act on a global stage, not a national one, and the days when large companies had distinctive national images are mostly gone. Furthermore, as most capitalist societies continue to reduce state welfare and privatize state functions (such as now, in Britain, is proposed for the Royal Mail), the idea that people viewed the state as “for them” and for their security has lost power. All these things, and the continued migration of workers, are believed to weaken national identity. Hence many European states appear to be suffering crises of national identity. How much this is happening in Britain is disputed¹; but assuming it is happening in some measure there is another question to ask: does it matter?

The evidence of political voices on the right in the case of Britain certainly suggests that it does². Try typing “national identity” into a search box on the Daily Mail online and you will see what I mean. There is a portion of the population that is outraged at the erosion of national identity and angry about the European Union intruding on British prerogatives. They believe that what they call “mass immigration” has endangered a sense of nationhood that has been nurtured over centuries. Newspapers frequently give reports of assaults on Britishness or Englishness, for example “political correctness” about Christmas, multicultural teaching in schools, or the failure to celebrate St. George’s day. As a rough speculative assessment, I would think that some 30-40% of the population in Britain share some or all of these views. In opinion polls the percentages saying that we should do more to control immigration and even repatriate immigrants are pretty high. One possibility is that if a celebrated and taken-for-granted national identity has been lost, it has been replaced in England by a rather resentful and narrow perspective. This is not so in Scotland or Wales where new national projects express progressive national identities, in search of a new politics. But in England is the resentful version all we have to expect?

There are alternatives of which we might consider two: the first is a multicultural inclusiveness which at the same time leaves space for traditional Britishness (or Englishness); the second is an individualistic acceptance that national identity is no longer really important and, indeed, is an impediment to broader universalistic values. If I were to express a preference it would be for a combination of these two: a moderate multiculturalism linked to an acknowledgement that many of our best aspirations as peoples and states go beyond nations and national identities. There is a danger though: neither of these latter two more universalistic versions of national identity is remotely possible unless we understand – and deal with – the anxieties and anger associated with resentful Englishness and Britishness.

¹ See Anthony Heath et al (2008) ‘Are traditional identities in decline?’ http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/esrcinfocentre/viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-148-25-0031

² Chapter 8 of my book deals with right-wing neo-nationalist movements in Europe. Chapters 4 and 5 address how we understand ethnic and national identities as sources of action.

Lauren asks: Do you think that in countries where there is greater awareness of national identity, like Wales and Scotland, that this encourages people to be more open to people from other cultures, or more concerned to protect their own national identity?

This question is sensible in avoiding suggesting that national identities are stronger in Wales and Scotland than in England: in those two countries national identities are clearer rather than simply being stronger. This is partly because in Wales and Scotland people, on the whole, are clearer about distinguishing themselves from the English as well as from, increasingly, the British. Many people in England notoriously fail to distinguish English from British, and their national identity is more ‘obscure’ and confused with British national identity. Furthermore, as Krishan Kumar has argued, the English have suppressed English nationalism since, in view of their dominance within Britain, Englishness would have been impolite and impolitic. However, these are all tendencies rather than unmistakable social facts, and the tendencies can change and are changing. The tendency for Englishness to be ‘silent’ is diminishing and is reappearing as a new nationalism – which is often resentful and opposed to multiculturalism. On the whole, there appears to be a greater prospect that Scotland and Wales will be able to foster a progressive form of nationalism. (Neo-nationalisms, especially those of a ‘populist’ kind, are discussed in chapter eight of my book, Ethnicity.) 

Scottish nationalism in particular has made claims to be a civic and multicultural nationalism – i.e. not based on Scottish ethnicity, defined either as ancestry or culture. But strong strands of Islamophobia can still be found in Scotland as well as England, though to a greater degree in England. One of the best research sources is the work of Hussain and Miller (see http://www.devolution.ac.uk/pdfdata/Briefing%2024%20-%20Hussain-Miller.pdf and their recent book). Interestingly they show that, in England, Islamophobia is linked to a strong English identity; in Scotland it is not linked to a strong Scottish identity. But a strong Scottish identity is linked to Anglophobia, and a quarter of English people in Scotland (and half of Pakistanis) are reported as having experienced racial harassment. It is important to remember that sociology tells us identities are accentuated when there is some cause for them to be accentuated, not because of the degree of ‘cultural distinctiveness’.

Steve’s  new edition of his concise and accessible introduction to the concept and history of ethnicity is published this Friday, and looks at what ethnic identity means in today’s world.