Subethnic divisions are crucial to understanding how group solidarities and power relations coexist and where they intersect. But, in a second challenge to current thinking, Schatz argues that clan politics should not be understood simply as competition among primordial groups. Rather, the meanings attributed to clan relationships - both the public stigmas and the publicly proclaimed pride in clans - are part and parcel of this contest.
Drawing parallels with relevant cases from the Middle East, East and North Africa, and other parts of the former USSR, Schatz concludes that a more appropriate policy may be achieved by making clans a legitimate part of political and social life, rendering them less powerful or corrupt by increasing their transparency.
Political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, policy makers, and others who study state power and identity groups will find a wealth of empirical material and conceptual innovation for discussion and debate.
Edward Schatz is assistant professor of political science at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He has been a visiting fellow at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University and at the Kellog Institute for International Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.
"Schatz's analysis is all the more important in an age in which virtually everyone agrees that globalization is the most significant feature of the age and, consequently, the unexpected endurance of bonds of clanship at a level below the state is indeed counter intuitive." - Gregory W. Gleason, University of New Mexico