Thoughts on Christian Promitzer et al's (Hidden) Minorities

Deriving its contents from papers and discussions presented at a workshop on the Alpine-Adriatic region in 2002, this book looks at language and ethnic minorities in the region that do not necessarily 'fit' into the usual narratives on nationalism. The analyses turn away from the assumption that these groups are rigid, homogenised, and eternal, and thus as unusual examples of nation building 'gone wrong', but delivers an alternative narrative by ethnographically portraying the development of these groups under the forces of nationalism, globalisation, modernisation, and viewing them through the prism of minority rights legislation in the region. Using the urban/rural dichotomy, public/private use of language, economic liberation etc, the book attempts to account for how these groups have evaded being 'recognised' by hiding or being hidden vis-a-vis the state or other recognised minorities, and failing to succumb to objective definitions of how their ethnic or linguistic kin ought to be constituted.

The theoretical framework that underpins the book emanates from older debates around ethnicity and nations, recalling the likes of Anthony Smith and his primordial/perennial case, listing categories that make up the ethnie; or Ernest Gellner's retort that nations are the result of modernity. The latter point is what the authors agree on, and thus they coalesce around Rogers Brubaker who writes that ethnicity and nationality 'are not things in the world, but perspectives on the world'. Hence, in terms of identity, they observe the relationship between subjective factors accounting for ones own identification to the community, in the 'self/other' guise, and the objective classifications of what one's identity is by external groups or institutions. Yet all the while, their observations reel back to how hidden minorities place their identity within the locality.

Sited in the region as it is, one of the points of departure are the placing of political borders. This involves analysis of groups that straddle or are contained within new state boundaries, and how this has impacted on the objective and subjective categories that define those linguistic or ethnic groups. An example would be in Duska Knezevic-Hocevar's chapter on the Kolpa River acting as a new political boundary encompassing the residents of the Kolpa Valley. Here, linguistic analysis of the past century lent itself to nationalist interpretation, not because it revolved around two written standards of Slovene and Croat, as this was a modern phenomenon, but those linguists wanted to portray the independent developments of the two languages that became the common local tongue. They explained the dialects away as sub standard local dialects of the two higher standards in an attempt to make the two languages ahistorical and thus 'natural' for them to be separated. This jarred with how the locals saw it because, for them, the locally spoken language was the same either side of the river. Alongside this analysis, Knezevic-Hocevar described the dynamics of national identity, and the paradox of locals not necessarily feeling strong national identities (as they had mixed families) yet using the language of national stereotypes in their day to day conversations.  

This placing of a border brought with it the assumption that the people on the ground on either side would automatically affiliate with their newly designated co-nationals. Yet this was not the case. And this moves on to another theme in the book revolving around the relation between a group being hidden or hiding and the application of minority rights legislation within the state they reside. Many factors are involved in this debate; the size of the group, does it have 'supposed' co-nationals in another state, does it have supposed 'co-nationals in the state they reside in and how do they relate to them vis-a-vis state legislation on minority rights, do they want to hide or would they prefer to carry ethnic/lingustic traits in private, the timing of when borders were put up, are they from the countryside or town, or have they migrated far as a group either recently or in the distant past. All these factors, and more, create dynamic situations that each group contends with in its relation with the state. One particular example is Klaus-Jurgen Hermanik's study of the Slovenes of Styria, which analyses the identity constructions that have occurred in the area over the last two centuries. What this chapter highlights is the difference between 'hiding' one's ethnic/linguistic traits, however one would classify them, and being 'hidden' from the view of the state and/or other ethnic/linguistic minorities. Overarching this, is how political borders have changed, how laws within the these altered states changed, but crucially, how the relations between the group and these institutions played out as part of borderland dynamics. In the Slovene's case, Germanisation, economic marginalisation, and political oppression led to the group 'hiding' themselves. Yet they were 'hidden', because some still had private use of Slovenian, but wouldn't think of using it in public. Thus, a signifier that would usually be viewed as an ethnic/linguistic unifier of minority groups, was weak and so did not lead to the group being conscious of their own collectivity, and so were not 'seen' in the eyes of the state.

What this book does best is to inform the reader of other perspectives on how ethnic and linguistic groups are formed in the Alpine-Adriatic region. The writers don't presume, from the outset, that these groups are ahistorical and perennial entities, but neither do they treat the information gathered from informants during ethnographic research with disrespect and scepticism. What they do, is develop theories on how identities are formed and explain how groups perceive themselves and their views on how the world views them. Parallel to this, they try and put it into historical contexts regarding state collapse and (re)formation, where borders fall, and globalisation. As stated before, identities aren't just the sum of a checklist of classificatory 'things' in the world that form a perfectly defined group. Instead, identities are fluid and continually changing phenomenon whose edges are blurry, and have to content with subjective and objective perceptions of what 'we' and 'they' are. This book ought to frustrate nationalists who believe that groups can be rigidly defined and exclusive, as this text shows that even in the era of the 'nation-state', some areas in the world fail to conform to the nationalist dream.