Page 161 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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Union, Russia, is engaged in a destructive war with Chechens, who are determined
to liberate themselves from Russian colonial control.
Racial/ethnonational stratification is oppressive and destructive, and it must be dis-
mantled and transformed. Scholars who are interested in world peace, social justice,
and multicultural democracy need to allow members of the subjugated ethnonations
to actively participate in their research, because the experiences of these peoples are
more valuable than any number of learned speculations. Participatory research ap-
proaches can help scholars better understand the question of oppressed nationalism by
supplementing historical, quantitative, and qualitative methods of enquiry and helping
them to identify the weaknesses of their own concepts, theories, and assumptions by
learning from the actual experiences of the indigenous peoples. Introducing partici-
patory research approaches emerged as part of resistance to colonial or neocolonial re-
search practices in peripheral parts of the world.These kinds of research methods are
necessary for studies of oppressed nationalism and indigenous peoples so that they can
tell their stories without distortion and misinterpretation.
The issues of ethnonational diversity and oppressed nationalism are becoming cen-
tral for world peace, social justice, and democracy with the intensification of global-
ization and with the increasing challenge to the state, its structures, and its role in the
modern world system.This is because the subjugated ethnonational groups have been
systematically repressed, and they are beginning to understand the mechanisms of this
repression and use similar mechanisms and to respond in a comparable fashion. Since
racialized/ethnicized states oppose multicultural democracy and self-determination or
autonomy, they may disintegrate like the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Such
states oppose multicultural democracy because it loosens their hold and limits their
power and profits by reducing the margin of expropriation and the concentration of
benefits. Unfortunately, contradictory political processes inevitably result in conflict
and outright war.Therefore, the world community needs to be aware of these possi-
bilities and be capable of mediating the processes through developing democratic and
fair procedures and criteria by which to resolve global problems. This comparative
study strongly contributes to these processes.