McDoom, Omar Shahabudin 
ORCID: 0000-0001-5660-1903
(2016)
Horizontal inequality, status optimization, and interethnic marriage in a conflict-affected society.
WIDER Working Paper (2016/167).
World Institute for Development Economics, Helsinki, Finland.
ISBN 9789292562113
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Abstract
Although several theories of interethnic conflict emphasize ties across group boundaries as conducive to ethnic coexistence, little is known about how such ties are formed. Given their integrative potential, I examine the establishment of cross-ethnic marital ties in a deeply divided society and ask what drives individuals to defy powerful social norms and sanctions and to choose life-partners from across the divide. I theorize such choices as the outcome of a struggle between social forces and individual autonomy in society. I identify two channels through which social forces weaken and individual autonomy increases to allow ethnic group members to establish ties independently of group pressures: elite autonomy and status equalization. I find, first, that as an individual’s educational status increases, and second, as between-group inequality declines, individuals enjoy greater freedom in the choice of their social ties. However, I also find that in an ethnically ranked society this enhanced autonomy is exercised by members of high-ranked and low-ranked groups differently. Members from high-ranked groups become more likely to inmarry; low-ranked group members to outmarry. I suggest a status-optimization logic lies behind this divergent behaviour. Ethnic elites from high-ranked groups cannot improve their status through outmarriage and their coethnics, threatened by the rising status of the lower-ranked group, seek to maintain the distinctiveness of their status superiority through inmarriage. In contrast, as their own individual status or their group’s relative status improves, members of low-ranked groups take advantage of the opportunity to upmarry into the higher-ranked group. I establish these findings in the context of Mindanao, a conflict-affected society in the Philippines, using a combination of census micro-data on over two million marriages and in-depth interview data with inmarried and outmarried couples.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.wider.unu.edu/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2016 UNU-WIDER |
| Divisions: | Government |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JA Political science (General) |
| JEL classification: | D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D74 - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology > Z13 - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Jan 2017 11:10 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Dec 2024 19:22 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/68932 |
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