Industrialization and Assimilation examines the process of ethnic identity change in a broad historical context. Elliott Green explains how and why ethnicity changes across time, showing that, by altering the basis of economic production from land to labour and removing people from the 'idiocy of rural life', industrialization makes societies more ethnically homogenous. More specifically, the author argues that industrialization lowers the relative value of rural land, leading people to identify less with narrow rural identities in favour of broader identities that can aid them in navigating the formal urban economy. Using large-scale datasets that span the globe as well as detailed case studies ranging from mid-twentieth-century Turkey to contemporary Botswana, Somalia and Uganda, as well as evidence from Native Americans in the United States and the Māori in New Zealand, Industrialization and Assimilation provides a new framework to understand the origins of modern ethnic identities.

Elliott Green is Associate Professor of Development Studies in the Department of International Development at the LSE. He is currently Director of the department’s PhD program and convener of the MSc Course ‘Key Issues in Development Studies’ (DV442).

Elliott has three main research areas: 1) ethnic politics and national identity in Africa, 2) patronage, clientelism and African development, and 3) the political demography of modern Africa.  He has conducted fieldwork in Uganda, Tanzania and Botswana, and for several years taught a course entitled ‘Poverty and Development’ at the annual LSE-University of Cape Town Summer School. 

During the course 2022-23, IBEI has organised a series of research seminars, which normally take place once a week. Check the 2022-23 programme