Sociological Forum, Vol. 12, No. 2, 7997

Review Essays

Preface Suzanne Keller1

There is a sociological truism that hostility toward outgroups strengthens ingroup solidarity, hence the ubiquity of scapegoating and negative prejudice of every kind. If true, then we confront something of a paradox in the era ahead. On the one hand, there is the anticipated weakening and decline of the nation-state, as analyzed by Jacobson (and reviewed here by Crosby) that may be expected to dilute the extremes of nationalist pride and prejudice in favor of a more cosmopolitan and universalistic perspective. This perspective stresses broad human affinities among diverse peoples in opposition to the particularistic and exclusionary tendencies. Similarly, if we heed the findings on antisemitism summarized by Curtis, we should expect ethocentrism to decrease as education, urbanization, and globalism continue to advance. On the other hand, however, there also is a notable countertrend stimulated by a concomitant rise in the search for roots and ethnic, racial, or religious allegiances that is multiculturalism's other face. By this token, outgroup prejudice may receive new life as well as the rationalizations that support it. Of course, outgroup prejudice may survive the absence of the group so targeted—hence the curious phenomenon of antisemitism without Jews—but for the most part, social diversification ensures the existence of enough groups against which to hone one's sense of superiority or solidarity. In the short run, then, cultural separatism is likely to increase with the decline of assimilationist ideologies and policies. In the long run, however, the coexistence of diverse, separate-but-equal subcultures may engender a society more open to such diversity in principle. Still, battles over turf and social priorities will not disappear soon, if ever. The ancient pattern of groups vying for pride of place is likely to accompany us into the next century. If multiculturalism is to succeed in the U.S. it will need to 1Department

of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544.

319 0884-8971/97/D600-0319$125WO « 1997 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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Keller

be geared to a set of values oriented more to cooperative coexistence than to the quest for particularistic group advantage. These developments, moreover, to judge from Crosby's review, are likely to take place in a very different context for one of society's key institutions: the nation state. Like death and taxes, the nation state, barely five centuries old, had seemed eternal. Yet now, according to a number of scholars, the nationstate may be slated for decline given the trend toward transnational alliances, codes of universal human rights, and the "devaluation of citizenship." At the same time, new laws on immigration and social welfare benefits in a number of countries suggest the mobilization of counterforces. As Grosby notes, this is part of an ongoing debate between those who stress the continued primacy of attachment to land and kin and those who count on the spread of more universalistic bases for human association. Transnational alliances such as the European Union would seem to support the latter trend along with the rise in immigrant groups who opt to participate in the economic life of the host society but forego citizenship while maintaining strong ethnic and religious loyalties. These trends bear close sociological scrutiny, especially when viewed in the context of a globally interconnected economy and an expanding network of multinational corporations whose policies can bypass national political control. Thus we seem to be moving simultaneously in opposite directions: forward to higher forms of social integration yet also toward more localized and ascriptive ties and loyalties and the ethnocentrism these may foster. Judging from the slow and sporadic movement toward the European Union alone over the past few decades, the erosion of the nation-state is likely to proceed gradually and unevenly at best. For a transformation of this magnitude, one must think in terms of centuries not decades. Still, it is bound to create considerable disturbances in the field especially when accompanied by the counterforces of ingroup retrenchment and out-group prejudice. These are fertile themes for sociologists to explore.