Religious Instrumentalism in Violent Conflict

Abstract

Instrumentalist understandings of the role of religion in violent conflicts are now conventional, and yet religious instrumentalism remains only weakly conceptualized. This article offers a new typology of religious instrumentalism aimed at enhancing conceptual rigor in future studies. In characterizing religious instrumentalism as consisting of a set of observable tactics, the typology facilitates comparative research as well as allows for greater specificity and clarity in scholarly analysis. The article discusses the implications of the conceptual exercise for theory-building and empirical analysis of ‘religious’ conflicts, and has broader applicability in the study of identity politics.

Acknowledgements

For valuable comments and discussions, the author thanks Nathan Brown, Micha Germann, Matthew Isaacs, Stathis Kalyvas, Zachariah Mampilly, Devorah Manekin, Daniel Meierrieks, the late Will Moore, Babak Rezaee, Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, Carolyn Warner, and Elisabeth Wood; seminar participants at Arizona State University and Yale University; and panel participants at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting and the International Studies Association Annual Convention where the author presented early ideas for this paper.

ORCID

Reyko Huang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2146-2012

Notes

1 In contrast, studies hewing to primordialist or essentialist views have fallen out of scholarly favor, though they continue to appear in more nuanced guises in academic work. On primordialism and its subtle yet pervasive manifestations in research, see Van Evera (2001). Of note, ‘to detect primordialism … we must read between the lines’ Chandra (2012, p. 137). Wimmer (2013, p. 23) writes of ‘the racial essentialism that much of mainstream social science routinely reproduces.’

2 This literature defines generally includes religion as a dimension of ethnicity, defining the latter as a sense of collective belonging based on common descent, language, history, culture, race, religion, or some combination thereof (see Horowitz, 1985; Sambanis, 2001; Varshney, 2007).

3 See also De Juan and Hasenclever (2015); Bormann, Cederman, and Vogt (2017); and Isaacs (2016, p. 213) for further critiques of existing treatments of identity-based conflicts.

4 See also Tilly (2003, pp. 75–76) on ‘boundary activation.’

5 On religious actors’ instrumentalization of politics, see Juergensmeyer (1996).

6 See also Isaacs (2016).

7 See Huang (2015).