GROUP IDENTITY, RATIONALITY, AND THE STATE

The rational choice approach to the understanding of group identity an d conflict tends to overlook the extent to which groups are mutable, a nd the element of design by group leaders (especially those wielding s tate power) in tile definition of group identity and the shaping of ra tionality. Tile 1994 genocide of tile Rwandese Tutsis was the outcome of an extreme case of planning ethnic and ideological engineering. To see such phenomena as instances of ''rational self-interest'' stretche s that concept beyond its breaking point.