Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, numbered RTT 95-10039 and dated October 1995, presents the proceedings of a conference held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored the conference. In it, academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials examined ethnic conflict by region, covering Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. The report also discusses what these conflicts mean for US policy. It does not deal with UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Nevers”25 pages
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 Geographic Perspectives on Ethnic Conflict Alexander Murphy Associate Professor of Geography University of Oregon Introduction The topic of ethnic conflict has long interested geogra- phers, and in recent years the geographical literature on the subject has attracted considerable attention. Although some of the issues raised in this literature are similar to those examined by political scientists and sociologists, the emphasis in geography on spa- tial, territorial, and environmental issues has trans- lated into a distinctly different analytical approach to ethnic conflict. The purpose of this paper is to summa- rize the most important aspects of this approach and to discuss how a geographical perspective can help us understand ethnic tensions, identify potentially desta- bilizing ethnic conflicts, and develop effective policy responses to those conflicts. , The ensuing discussion centers around three core geo- graphical concepts: location, territory, and environ- ment. In the United States, the discipline of geography is sometimes equated with efforts simply to locate and describe the physical and human attributes of the earth’s surface. Geography is, however, much more than this; it is concerned with analyzing and explain- ing the nature and significance of the spatial and envi- ronmental contexts within which events and processes unfold. Geographers seek to understand and explain the patterns that make up the eat-th’s surface, the rela- tionship among phenomena in particular places, the situation of places and peoples in relation to one another, and peoples’ understandings of the places where they live. Core Concepts The three core concepts around which this paper is structured are at the heart of these geographical con- cerns. The concept of location_ deals not only with the spatial distribution of ethnic groups but also with the relationship between ethnic patterns and other human and physical pattems. Territory is a rich concept that encompasses the nature and function of formal ethnic territories and group sense of place. The environmen- tal concept is concerned with the relationship between ethnic groups and their tangible physical setting, including the ways in which environmental percep- tions affect group definition and intergroup raations. There are obvious overlaps among these concepts, and they do not encompass all relevant aspects of geo- graphical inquiry. Nonetheless, they provide a useful organizing framework around which a discussion of the most important geographical insights on ethnic conflict can be built. Location: A Key To Understanding Relationships Between Ethnic Groups In any attempt to understand ethnic conflict, the loca- tion of the groups in question must be taken into con- sideration. On its surface this seems obvious, but many general analyses of ethnic conflict pay remarkably lit- tle attention to locational issues. Instead, it is simply assumed that groups live in the political units or histor- ical homelands with which they are most readily iden- tified. Too often studies note that the Bretons live in Brittany, the French speakers of Canada in Quebec, and the Tamils in Tamil Eelam without any consider- ation of the distributional complexities that lie behind these generalizations. Approaching ethnic conflict from a geographical per- spective implies a much greater concem with the details of location and distribution. This means focus- ing on the precise character of ethnic patterns and their relationship to other political, social, and envi- ronmental pattems. A critical entry-level problem in such an endeavor is to decide who does and does not belong to a given ethnic group (see Smith 1986). I-low an ethnic group is delimited depends on circumstances and purpose, of course, but the process is not always straightforward or obvious. There are more people that Welsh autonomists would like to include in their ethnic group than there are people who identify them- selves primarily as Welsh. The Tamils of Sri Lanka encompass two different groups from a historical and religious standpoint. On a larger scale, the Russians in 5 Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.