Biographical Note on Finkelkraut

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%20Judaism&f=false

Introduction

Race

In British English there is an admirable reluctance to use the word race when dealing with what are essentially
cultural differences. This is something that is, it would appear, still acceptable in the United States (with its more direct
experience of “racial” policies linked to Black African slavery). British people tend to prefer the term:

~ ethnic identity.

Writing about the usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States, in
1977 Wallman noted that The term 'ethnic' popularly connotes '[race]' in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter
value load. In North America, by contrast, '[race]' most commonly means color, and 'ethnics' are the descendents of
relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. '[Ethnic]' is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are
no 'ethnics'; there are only 'ethnic relations'.[10] Wallman, S. "Ethnicity research in Britain", Current Anthropology, v.
18, n. 3, 1977, pp. 531–532.

Thus, in today's everyday language, the words "ethnic" and "ethnicity" still have a ring of exotic peoples, minority
issues and race relations.

~ race in biology. In biology, races are distinct

genetically divergent populations

within the same species
with relatively small morphological and genetic differences.

The populations can be described as

ecological races if they arise from adaptation to different local habitats

or geographic races when they are geographically isolated.

If sufficiently different, two or more races can be identified as

 subspecies, which is an official biological taxonomy unit subordinate to species.
If not, they are denoted as races, which means that a a formal rank should not be given to the group,
or taxonomists are unsure whether or not a formal rank should be given.

According to Ernst W. Mayr, "a subspecies is a geographic race that is sufficiently different taxonomically to be worthy
of a separate name" [1][1] Examples of race include:
 The Key lime and the Persian lime, both of species Citrus × aurantifolia. The Mexican lime has a thicker skin
and darker green color.
 The western honey bee is divided into several honey bee races

~ Race and the human species. In biological or genetic terms, the human species is remarkably homogenous.
A race is a biological subspecies, or variety of a species, consisting of a more or less distinct population with anatomical
traits that distinguish it clearly from other races.  This biologist's definition does not fit the reality of human genetic
variation today.  We are an extremely homogenous species genetically.  As a matter of fact, all humans today are 99.9%
genetically identical, and most of the variation that does occur is in the difference between males and females and our
unique personal traits.  This homogeneity is very unusual in the animal kingdom.  Even our closest biological relatives,
the chimpanzees have 2-3 times more genetic variation than people.  Orangutans have 8-10 times more variation.
It is now clear that our human "races" are primarily cultural creations, not biological realities.  The commonly held
belief in the existence of human biological races is based on the false assumption that anatomical traits, such as skin
color and specific facial characteristics, cluster together in single distinct groups of people.  They do not.  There are no
clearly distinct "black", "white", or other races.

From the outset, therefore, race can be considered as having as much validity in classifying human groups as, say,
differences in eye or hair colour. The term will not be considered pertinent in the following pages as a result.

Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity

Origin of the Term

The terms

ethnicity and ethnic group are derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos, normally translated as "nation." The
modern meaning emerged in the mid 19th century and expresses the notion of "a people" or "a nation".

From L. ethnicus, Gk. ethnikos, from ethnos "band of people living together, nation, people," prop. “people of one's
own kind,”

from PIE *swedh-no-, suffixed form of base *s(w)e- (see idiom).

1610s, from Low Ger., from M.L.G. Swede, back-formed from a source akin to O.E. Sweoðeod, lit. "Swede-people,"
from Sweon (pl.) "Swedes" (O.N., O.Swed. Sviar), called by the Romans Suiones, probably from P.Gmc. *sweba “free,
independent,” or else from *geswion “kinsman.”
 Proto-Indo-European *swedh-no-,
expanded from the reflexive pronoun
Proto-Indo-European *we- (“self”). ἔθνος (genitive ἔθνεος or ἔθνους);

1. group of people: tribe, family

2. group of animals: flock, herd
3. country, nation
4. class, caste

5. (later, in plural), foreign nations, barbarians

6. (Jewish and Christian usage) gentiles, heathen

In Septuagint, Gk. ta ethne translates Heb. goyim, pl. of goy "nation," especially of non-Israelites, hence "Gentile
nation." as ethnikos was used as the LXX translation of Hebrew goyim "the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews".[4]

The term "ethnic" and related forms

from the 14th century through the middle of the 19th century were used in English
late 14c., Scottish, "heathen, pagan,"
and having that sense first in English; as an adj. from late 15c.
in the meaning of "pagan, heathen",

"ethnic character," 1953, from ethnic + -ity. Earlier it meant "paganism" (1772).

Sense of "peculiar to a race or nation" is attested from 1851,

Among the first to bring the term "ethnic group" into social studies was the German sociologist Max Weber,
who defined it as:

[T]hose human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type
or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group
formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.[12]

^ Max Weber [1922]1978 Economy and Society eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, trans. Ephraim Fischof, vol. 2
Berkeley: University of California Press, 389

a return to the word's original meaning; that of "different cultural groups" is 1935; The modern usage of "ethnic
group" further came to reflect the different kinds of encounters industrialised states have had with external groups, such
as immigrants and indigenous peoples; "ethnic" thus came to stand in opposition to "national", to refer to people with
distinct cultural identities who, through migration or conquest, had become subject to a state or "nation" with a different
cultural mainstream.[5] — with the first usage of the term ethnic group in 1935,[6] and entering the Oxford English
Dictionary in 1972.[7][8][9]

The modern usage definition of the Oxford English Dictionary is:

a[djective]
...
2.a. Pertaining to race; peculiar to a race or nation; ethnological. Also, pertaining to or having common racial,
cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics, esp. designating a racial or other group within a larger system; hence
(U.S. colloq.), foreign, exotic.
b ethnic minority (group), a group of people differentiated from the rest of the community by racial origins or cultural
background, and usu. claiming or enjoying official recognition of their group identity. Also attrib.
n[oun]
...
3 A member of an ethnic group or minority. orig. U.S.

(Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, online version as of 2008-01-12, s.v. "ethnic, a. and n.")

and that of "racial, cultural or national minority group" is Amer.Eng. 1945; The term ethnicity is of 20th
century coinage, attested from the 1950s.

The term nationality depending on context

may either be used synonymously with ethnicity,
or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign state).

In fact, one of its main uses – the one that is found in connection with the war in Yugoslavia in particular – is that of
peoples who constitute a nation but do not have a state. To be an ethnic Serb is to find oneself outside the frontiers of a
Serb territory and hence under the jurisdiction of non-Serb authorities. The term clearly implies that legitimate state
authority can be aligned with questions of ethnic identity (and that rule by individuals of a different ethnic identity over
a distinct ethnic group is illegitimate).

ethnic cleansing is attested from 1991.

Similarity between Ethnicity and Nation

Like the notion of the “nation” there is a sense of being able to identify fellow members of the same group (as
this supposes the reciprocal recognition of the identity of the group by others from outside).

The terms refer currently to people thought to have common ancestry who share a distinctive culture.
Members of an ethnic group

Processes that result in the emergence of such identification are called ethnogenesis.
Within the social sciences, however, the usage has become more generalized to all human groups that explicitly regard
themselves and are regarded by others as culturally distinctive.[11]

Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. According
to "Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World: Science, politics, and reality",[who?] "Ethnicity is a fundamental factor
in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience."[13] Many social scientists, such as anthropologists
Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of
specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups.[14]
[edit] Conceptual history of ethnicity
According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently.
 One is between "primordialism" and "instrumentalism". In the primordialist view, the participant perceives
ethnic ties collectively, as an externally given, even coercive, social bond.[15] The instrumentalist approach, on
the other hand, treats ethnicity primarily as an ad-hoc element of a political strategy, used as a resource for
interest groups for achieving secondary goals such as, for instance, an increase in wealth, power or status.[16]
[17] This debate is still an important point of reference in Political science, although most scholars' approaches
fall between the two poles.[18]
 The second debate is between "constructivism" and "essentialism". Constructivists view national and ethnic
identities as the product of historical forces, often recent, even when the identities are presented as old.[19][20]
Essentialists view such identities as ontological categories defining social actors, and not the result of social
action.[21][22]
According to Eriksen, these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology, by scholars' attempts to respond
to increasingly politicised forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the
context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large
immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in the Caribbean and South Asia.[23]
Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct) because they were based on a
subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the
group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolise power and status. This
was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences
between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race".[24]
Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth, whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has
been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of the term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s. [25] Barth
went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated
and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not
discontinuous cultural isolates, or logical a prioris to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with
anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with a focus on
the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic
identities. Barth writes: "[...] categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and
information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained
despite changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories."
In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists
often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities:
... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even
worse inaccurately, imposed.[25]
In this way, he pointed to the fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not
coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage,
the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller
groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had the added value of being able to
describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested
that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices
and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states.[25]
Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus,
anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character.[26] Ronald Cohen
concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness".[25] He agrees
with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary
terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization.[25] This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of
ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic
boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation.
[edit] "Ethnies" or ethnic categories
In order to avoid the problems of defining ethnic classification as labelling of others or as self-identification, it has been
proposed[27] to distinguish between concepts of "ethnic categories", "ethnic networks" and "ethnic communities" or
"ethnies".[28][29]
 An "ethnic category" is a category set up by outsiders, that is, those who are not themselves members of the
category, and whose members are populations that are categorised by outsiders as being distinguished by
attributes of a common name or emblem, a shared cultural element and a connection to a specific territory. But,
members who are ascribed to ethnic categories do not themselves have any awareness of their belonging to a
common, distinctive group.
 At the level of "ethnic networks", the group begins to have a sense of collectiveness, and at this level, common
myths of origin and shared cultural and biological heritage begins to emerge, at least among the élites.[29]
 At the level of "ethnies" or "ethnic communities", the members themselves have clear conceptions of being "a
named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, and one or more
common elements of culture, including an association with a homeland, and some degree of solidarity, at least
among the élites". That is, an ethnie is self-defined as a group, whereas ethnic categories are set up by outsiders
whether or not their own members identify with the category given them.[30]
 A "Situational Ethnicity" is an Ethnic identity that is chosen for the moment based on the social setting or
situation.[31]
[edit] Approaches to understanding ethnicity
Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand
the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. Examples of such approaches are: primordialism,
essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.
 "Primordialism", holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that modern ethnic groups
have historical continuity into the far past. For them, the idea of ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations
and is rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity as being divided into primordially existing groups
rooted by kinship and biological heritage.
 "Essentialist primordialism" further holds that ethnicity is an a priori fact of human existence, that
 ethnicity precedes any human social interaction and that it is basically unchanged by it. This theory
sees ethnic groups as natural, not just as historical. This understanding does not explain how and why
nations and ethnic groups seemingly appear, disappear and often reappear through history. It also has
problems dealing with the consequences of intermarriage, migration and colonization for the
composition of modern day multi-ethnic societies.[30]
 "Kinship primordialism" holds that ethnic communities are extensions of kinship units, basically being
derived by kinship or clan ties where the choices of cultural signs (language, religion, traditions) are
made exactly to show this biological affinity. In this way, the myths of common biological ancestry
that are a defining feature of ethnic communities are to be understood as representing actual biological
history. A problem with this view on ethnicity is that it is more often than not the case that mythic
origins of specific ethnic groups directly contradict the known biological history of an ethnic
community.[30]
 "Geertz's primordialism", notably espoused by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, argues that humans in
general attribute an overwhelming power to primordial human "givens" such as blood ties, language,
territory, and cultural differences. In Geertz' opinion, ethnicity is not in itself primordial but humans
perceive it as such because it is embedded in their experience of the world.[30]
 "Perennialism" holds that ethnicity is ever changing, and that while the concept of ethnicity has existed at all
times, ethnic groups are generally short lived before the ethnic boundaries realign in new patterns. The
opposing perennialist view holds that while ethnicity and ethnic groupings has existed throughout history, they
are not part of the natural order.
 "Perpetual perennialism" holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously throughout
history.
 "Situational perennialism" holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, change and vanish through
the course of history. This view holds that the concept of ethnicity is basically a tool used by political
groups to manipulate resources such as wealth, power, territory or status in their particular groups'
interests. Accordingly, ethnicity emerges when it is relevant as means of furthering emergent
collective interests and changes according to political changes in the society. Examples of a
perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are also found in Barth,and Seidner who see ethnicity as ever-
changing boundaries between groups of people established through ongoing social negotiation and
interaction.
 "Instrumentalist perennialism", while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that identified
different ethnics groups and limits through time, explains ethnicity as a mechanism of social
stratification, meaning that ethnicity is the basis for a hierarchical arrangement of individuals.
According to Donald Noel, a sociologist who developed a theory on the origin of ethnic stratification,
ethnic stratification is a "system of stratification wherein some relatively fixed group membership
(e.g., race, religion, or nationality) is utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions".[32]
Ethnic stratification is one of many different types of social stratification, including stratification
based on socio-economic status, race, or gender. According to Donald Noel, ethnic stratification will
emerge only when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with one another, and only when
those groups are characterized by a high degree of ethnocentrism, competition, and differential power.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own
culture, and to downgrade all other groups outside one’s own culture. Some sociologists, such as
 Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings, say the origin of ethnic stratification lies in individual
dispositions of ethnic prejudice, which relates to the theory of ethnocentrism.[33] Continuing with
Noel's theory, some degree of differential power must be present for the emergence of ethnic
stratification. In other words, an inequality of power among ethnic groups means "they are of such
unequal power that one is able to impose its will upon another".[32] In addition to differential power,
a degree of competition structured along ethnic lines is a prerequisite to ethnic stratification as well.
The different ethnic groups must be competing for some common goal, such as power or influence, or
a material interest, such as wealth or territory. Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings propose that
competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and results in inevitable stratification and conflict.
[33]
 "Constructivism" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed,[33] and rejects the notion
of ethnicity as a basic human condition. It holds that ethnic groups are only products of human social
interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as valid social constructs in societies.
 "Modernist constructivism" correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards
nationstates beginning in the early modern period.[34] Proponents of this theory, such as Eric
Hobsbawm, argue that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such as nationalism, are purely modern
inventions, appearing only in the modern period of world history. They hold that prior to this, ethnic
homogeneity was not considered an ideal or necessary factor in the forging of large-scale societies.
[edit] Ethnicity and race
Before Weber, race and ethnicity were often seen as two aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before the
essentialist primordialist understanding of ethnicity was predominant, cultural differences between peoples were seen as
being the result of inherited traits and tendencies.[35] This was the time when "sciences" such as phrenology claimed to
be able to correlate cultural and behavioral traits of different populations with their outward physical characteristics,
such as the shape of the skull. With Weber's introduction of ethnicity as a social construct, race and ethnicity were
divided from each other. A social belief in biologically well-defined races lingered on.
In 1950, the UNESCO statement, "The Race Question", signed by some of the internationally renowned scholars of the
time (including Ashley Montagu, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gunnar Myrdal, Julian Huxley, etc.), suggested that: "National,
religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural
traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are
habitually committed when the term 'race' is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races
to drop the term 'race' altogether and speak of 'ethnic groups'."[36]
In 1982, American cultural anthropologists, summing up forty years of ethnographic research, argued that racial and
ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different ways that people from different parts of the world have been
incorporated into a global economy:
The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through appeals to "racial" and "ethnic"
distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets,
relegating stigmatized populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from below.
Capitalism did not create all the distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to set off categories of workers from one
another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their
effective values.[citation needed]
According to Wolf, races were constructed and incorporated during the period of European mercantile expansion, and
ethnic groups during the period of capitalist expansion.[37]
Often, ethnicity also connotes shared cultural, linguistic, behavioural or religious traits. For example, to call oneself
Jewish or Arab is to immediately invoke a clutch of linguistic, religious, cultural and racial features that are held to be
common within each ethnic category. Such broad ethnic categories have also been termed macroethnicity.[38] This
distinguishes them from smaller, more subjective ethnic features, often termed microethnicity.[39][40]
[edit] Ethnicity and nation
Further information: Nation state and ethnic minority
In some cases, especially involving transnational migration, or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality.
Anthropologists and historians, following the modernist understanding of ethnicity as proposed by Ernest Gellner [41]
and Benedict Anderson[42] see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the
seventeenth century. They culminated in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation
coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation,
developed in the context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global
movements of populations at the same time that state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the
nineteenth century, modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations." Nation-states,
however, invariably include populations that have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members
of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion on the basis of equality, or seek autonomy, sometimes
even to the extent of complete political separation in their own nation-state.[43] Under these conditions—when people
moved from one state to another,[44] or one state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries—
ethnic groups were formed by people who identified with one nation, but lived in another state.
[edit] Ethno-national conflict
Further information: Ethnic conflict
Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or its constituents. In the twentieth
century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state
can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry, have argued that the
legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According
to this view, the state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and
legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka, argue that the notion of the autonomous
individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop
processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries of the
nation-state.
The nineteenth century saw the development of the political ideology of ethnic nationalism, when the concept of race
was tied to nationalism, first by German theorists including Johann Gottfried von Herder. Instances of societies
focusing on ethnic ties, arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context, have resulted in the justification of
nationalist goals. Two periods frequently cited as examples of this are the nineteenth century consolidation and
expansion of the German Empire and the twentieth century Third (Greater German) Reich. Each promoted the pan-
ethnic idea that these governments were only acquiring lands that had always been inhabited by ethnic Germans. The
history of late-comers to the nation-state model, such as those arising in the Near East and south-eastern Europe out of
the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the former USSR, is
marked by inter-ethnic conflicts. Such conflicts usually occur within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, as
in other regions of the world. Thus, the conflicts are often misleadingly labelled and characterized as civil wars when
they are inter-ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic state.
[edit] Ethnicity in specific countries
[edit] USA
Main article: Race and ethnicity in the United States
In the United States of America, the term "ethnic" carries a different meaning from how it is commonly used in some
other countries due to the historical and ongoing significance of racial distinctions that categorize together what might
otherwise have been viewed as ethnic groups. So, for example, various ethnic, "national," or linguistic groups from
Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, Latin America and Indigenous America have long been aggregated as racial
minority groups (currently designated as African American, Asian, Latino and Native American or American Indian,
respectively). While a sense of ethnic identity may coexist with racial identity (Chinese Americans among Asian or Irish
American among European or White, for example), the United States' long history as a settler, conqueror and slave
society, and the concomitant formal and informal inscription of racialized groupings into law and social stratification
schemes has bestowed upon race a fundamental social identification role in the United States. "Ethnicity theory" in the
US refers to a school of thinking on race that arose in response first to biological views of race, which underwrote some
of the most extreme forms of racial social stratification, exclusion and subordination. However, in the 1960s ethnicity
theory was put to service in debates among academics and policy makers regarding how to grapple with the demands
and resistant (sometimes "race nationalist") political identities resulting from the great civil rights mobilizations and
transformation. Ethnicity theory came to be synonymous with a liberal and neoconservative rejection or diminution of
race as a fundamental feature of US social order, politics and culture. Ethnicity theorists embraced an individualist,
quasi-voluntarist notion of identity, which downplayed the significance of race as structuring element in US history and
society. Michael Omi and Howard Winant have argued in the their book Racial Formation in the United States: from
the 1960s to the 1990s that ethnicity theory fails to grapple effectively with the meaning and material significance of
race in the US and offer a theory of racial formation as an alternative view.
Ethnicity usually refers to collectives of related groups, having more to do with morphology, specifically skin color,
rather than political boundaries. The word "nationality" is more commonly used for this purpose (e.g. Italian, Mexican,
French, Russian, Japanese, etc. are nationalities). Most prominently in the U.S., Latin American descended populations
are grouped in a "Hispanic" or "Latino" ethnicity. The many previously designated Oriental ethnic groups are now
classified as the Asian racial group for the census.
The terms "Black" and "African American", while different, are both used as ethnic categories in the US. In the late
1980s, the term "African American", was posited as the most appropriate and politically correct race designation.[45]
While it was intended as a shift away from the racial inequities of America's past often associated with the historical
views of the "Black race", it largely became a simple replacement for the terms Black, Colored, Negro and the like,
referring to any individual of dark skin color regardless of geographical descent. Likewise, whether light-skinned,
medium-skinned or dark-Skinned, many African Americans are multiracial; although many people have the
misconception and assumption that light-skinned African Americans are more mixed than others because of their lack of
genetic knowledge. More than half of African Americans also have European ancestry equivalent to one great-
grandparent, and 5 percent have Native American ancestry equivalent to one great-grandparent.[46]
The term "White" generally describes people whose ancestry can be traced to Europe (including other European-settled
countries in the Americas, Australasia and South Africa among others) and who now live in the United States. Middle
Easterners may sometimes also be included in the "white" category. This includes people from Southwest Asia and
North Africa. All the aforementioned are categorized as part of the "White" racial group, as per US Census
categorization. This category has been split into two groups: Hispanics and non-Hispanics (e.g. White non-Hispanic and
White Hispanic.) Although people from East Asia may typically have light skin, they are not considered "white" due to
their mongoloid origin, which reflects upon the socially-constructed nature of racial groups.
[edit] Europe
Main article: Ethnic groups in Europe
Further information: Ethnicity (United Kingdom) and Ethnic groups in Russia
Europe has a large number of ethnic groups; Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33
form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities within
every state they inhabit (although they may form local regional majorities within a sub-national entity). The total
number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million
Europeans.[47]
A number of European countries, including France,[48] and Switzerland do not collect information on the ethnicity of
their resident population.
Russia has numerous recognized ethnic groups besides the 80% ethnic Russian majority. The largest group are the
Tatars (3.8%). Many of the smaller groups are found in the Asian part of Russia (see Indigenous peoples of Siberia).
[edit] India
Main article: South Asian ethnic groups
In India, the population is categorized in terms of the 1,652 mother tongues spoken. Indian society is traditionally
divided into castes or clans, not ethnicities, and these categories have had no official status since Independence in 1947,
except for the scheduled castes and tribes which remain registered for the purpose of positive discrimination.
[edit] China
Main articles: List of ethnic groups in China and Ethnic minorities in China
The People's Republic of China officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Han Chinese. Many of
the ethnic minorities maintain their own cultures, languages and identity although many are also becoming more
westernised. Han predominate demographically and politically in most areas of China, although less so in Tibet and
Xinjiang, where the Han are in the minority. The one-child policy only applies to the Han.
[edit] See also
 Ancestry  List of ethnic groups
 Clan  List of indigenous peoples
 Cultural diversity in the media in Europe  List of stateless ethnic groups
 Diaspora  Meta-ethnicity
 Ethnic autonomous regions  Multiculturalism
 Ethnic cleansing  Nation
 Ethnic flag  National minority
 Ethnic minority  National symbol
 Ethnic nationalism  Passing (ethnic group)
 Ethnicity and health  Polyethnicity
 Ethnocentrism  Population genetics
 Ethnogenesis  Race and ethnicity in the United States Census
 Genealogy  Race (classification of human beings)
 Genetic genealogy  Stateless nation
 Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP)  Tribe
 Identity politics  Y-DNA haplogroups by ethnic groups
 Intersectionality
  Kinship and Descent

1. What is ethnicity?

It takes at least two somethings to create a difference. (...) Clearly each alone is - for the mind and perception - a non-
entity, a non-being. Not different from being, and not different from non-being. An unknowable, a Ding an sich, a sound
from one hand clapping.

Gregory Bateson (1979: 78)

Words like "ethnic groups", "ethnicity" and "ethnic conflict" have become quite common terms in the English language,
and they keep cropping up in the press, in TV news, in political programmes and in casual conversations. The same can
be said for "nation" and "nationalism", and many of us have to admit that the meaning of these terms frequently seems
ambiguous and vague.

There has been a parallel development in the social sciences. During the 1980s and early 1990s, we have witnessed an
explosion in the growth of scholarly publications on ethnicity and nationalism, particularly in the fields of political
science, history, sociology and social anthropology.

In the case of social anthropology, ethnicity has been a main preoccupation since the late 1960s, and it remains a central
focus for research in the 1990s. In this book, the importance of anthropological approaches to the study of ethnicity will
be emphasised. Through its dependence on long-term fieldwork, anthropology has the advantage of generating first-
hand knowledge of social life at the level of everyday interaction. To a great extent, this is the locus where ethnicity is
created and re-created. Ethnicity emerges and is made relevant through ongoing social situations and encounters, and
through people's ways of coping with the demands and challenges of life. From its vantage-point right at the centre of
local life, social anthropology is in a unique position to investigate these processes. Anthropological approaches also
enable us to explore the ways in which ethnic relations are being defined and perceived by people; how they talk and
think about their own group as well as other groups, and how particular world-views are being maintained or contested.
The significance of ethnic membership to people can best be investigated through that detailed on-the-ground research
which is the hallmark of anthropology. Finally, social anthropology, being a comparative discipline, studies both
differences and similarities between ethnic phenomena. It thereby provides a nuanced and complex vision of ethnicity
in the contemporary world.

An important reason for the current academic interest in ethnicity and nationalism is the fact that such phenomena have
become so visible in many societies that it has become impossible to ignore them. In the early twentieth century, many
social theorists held that ethnicity and nationalism would decrease in importance and eventually vanish as a result of
modernisation, industrialisation and individualism. This never came about. On the contrary, ethnicity and nationalism
have grown in political importance in the world, particularly since the Second World War.

Thirty-five of the thirty-seven major armed conflicts in the world in 1991 were internal conflicts, and most of them -
from Sri Lanka to Northern Ireland - could plausibly be described as ethnic conflicts. In addition to violent ethnic
movements, there are also many important non-violent ethnic movements, such as the Québecois independence
movement in Canada. In many parts of the world, further, nation-building - the creation of political cohesion and
national identity in former colonies - is high on the political agenda. Ethnic and national identities also become strongly
pertinent following the continuous influx of labour migrants and refugees to Europe and North America, which has led
to the establishment of new, permanent ethnic minorities in these areas. During the same period, indigenous populations
such as Inuits ("Eskimos") and Sami ("Lapps") have organised themselves politically, and demand that their ethnic
identities and territorial entitlements should be recognised by the State. Finally, the political turbulence in Europe has
moved issues of ethnic and national identities to the forefront of political life. At one extreme of the continent, the
erstwhile Soviet Union has split into over a dozen ethnically based states. With the disappearance of the strong Socialist
state in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, issues of nationhood and minority problems are emerging with
unprecedented force. On the other extreme of the continent, the situation seems to be the opposite, as the nation-states
of Western Europe are moving towards a closer economic, political and possibly cultural integration. But here, too,
national and ethnic identities have become important issues in recent years. Many people fear the loss of their national
or ethnic identity as a result of a tight European integration, whereas others consider the possibilities for a pan-European
identity to replace the ethnic and national ones. During the electoral campaign preceding the Danish referendum on
European Union in June 1992, a main anti-EU slogan was: "I want a country to be European in". This slogan suggests
that personal identities are intimately linked with political processes and that social identities, e.g. as Danes or
Europeans, are not given once and for all, but are negotiated over. Both of these insights are crucial to the study of
ethnicity.
This book will show how social anthropology can shed light on concrete issues of ethnicity; which questions social
anthropologists ask in relation to ethnic phenomena, and how they proceed to answer them. In this way, the book will
offer a set of conceptual tools which go far beyond the immediate interpretation of day-to-day politics in their
applicability. Some of the questions which will be discussed are:

· How do ethnic groups remain distinctive under different social conditions?

· Under which circumstances does ethnicity become important?
· What is the relationship between ethnic identity and ethnic political organisation?
· Is nationalism always a form of ethnicity?
· What is the relationship between ethnicity and other types of identity, social classification and political organisation,
such as class and gender?
· What happens to ethnic relations when societies are industrialised?
· In which ways can history be important in the creation of ethnicity?
· What is the relationship between ethnicity and culture?

This introductory chapter will present the main concepts to be used throughout the book. It also explores their
ambiguities and in this way introduces some main theoretical issues.

The term itself

"Ethnicity seems to be a new term", state Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan (1975: 1), who point to the fact that the
term's earliest dictionary appearance is in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. Its first usage is attributed to the
American sociologist David Riesman in 1953. The word "ethnic", however, is much older. The word is derived from the
Greek ethnos (which in turn derived from the word ethnikos), which originally meant heathen or pagan (R. Williams,
1976: 119). It was used in this sense in English from the mid-14th century until the mid-19th century, when it gradually
began to refer to "racial" characteristics. In the United States, "ethnics" came to be used around the Second World War
as a polite term referring to Jews, Italians, Irish and other people considered inferior to the dominant group of largely
British descent. None of the founding fathers of sociology and social anthropology - with the partial exception of Max
Weber - granted ethnicity much attention.

Since the 1960s, ethnic groups and ethnicity have become household words in Anglophone social anthropology,
although, as Ronald Cohen (1978) has remarked, few of those who use the terms bother to define them. In the course of
this book, I shall examine a number of approaches to ethnicity. Most of them are closely related, although they may
serve different analytical purposes. All of the approaches agree that ethnicity has something to do with the classification
of people and group relationships.

In everyday language, the word ethnicity still has a ring of "minority issues" and "race relations", but in social
anthropology, it refers to aspects of relationships between groups which consider themselves, and are regarded by
others, as being culturally distinctive. Although it is true that "the discourse concerning ethnicity tends to concern itself
with subnational units, or minorities of some kind or another" (Chapman et al., 1989: 17), majorities and dominant
peoples are no less "ethnic" than minorities. This will be particularly evident in Chapters 6 and 7, which discuss
nationalism and minority-majority relationships.

Ethnicity, race and nation

A few words must be said initially about the relationship between ethnicity and "race". The term race has deliberately
been placed within inverted commas in order to stress that it has dubious descriptive value. Whereas it was for some
time common to divide humanity into four main races, modern genetics tends not to speak of races, and this has two
main reasons. First, there has always been so much interbreeding between human populations that it would be
meaningless to talk of fixed boundaries between races. Secondly, the distribution of hereditary physical traits does not
follow clear boundaries. In other words, there is often greater variation within a "racial" group than there is systematic
variation between two groups.

Concepts of race can nevertheless be important to the extent that they inform people's actions; at this level, race exists
as a cultural construct, whether it has a "biological" reality or not. Racism, obviously, builds on the assumption that
personality is somehow linked with hereditary characteristics which differ systematically between "races", and in this
way race may assume sociological importance even if it has no "objective" existence. Social scientists who study race
relations in Great Britain and the United States need not themselves believe in the existence of race, since their object of
study is the social and cultural relevance of the notion that race exists. If influential people in a society had developed a
similar theory about the hereditary personality traits of redhaired people, and if that theory gained social and cultural
significance, "redhead studies" would for similar reasons have become a field of academic research, even if the
researchers themselves did not agree that redheads were different from others in a relevant way. In societies where they
are important, ideas of race may therefore be studied as part of local discourses on ethnicity.

Should the study of race relations, in this meaning of the word, be distinguished from the study of ethnicity or ethnic
relations? Pierre van den Berghe (1983) does not think so, but would rather regard "race" relations as a special case of
ethnicity. Others, among them Michael Banton (1967), have argued the need to distinguish between race and ethnicity.
In Banton's view, race refers to the categorisation of people, while ethnicity has to do with group identification. He
argues that "ethnicity is generally more concerned with the identification of 'us', while racism is more oriented to the
categorisation of 'them'" (cf. Jenkins, 1986: 177). However, ethnicity can assume many forms, and since ethnic
ideologies tend to stress common descent among their members, the distinction between race and ethnicity is a
problematic one, even if Banton's distinction between groups and categories can be useful (cf. Chapter 3). I shall not,
therefore, distinguish between race relations and ethnicity. Ideas of "race" may or may not form part of ethnic
ideologies, and their presence or absence does not seem a decisive factor in interethnic relations.

Discrimination on ethnic grounds is spoken of as "racism" in Trinidad and as "communalism" in Mauritius (Eriksen,
1992a), but the forms of imputed discrimination referred to can be nearly identical. On the other hand, it is doubtless
true that groups who look different from majorities or dominating groups may be less liable to become assimilated into
the majority than others, and that it can be difficult for them to escape from their ethnic identity if they wish to.
However, this may also hold good for minority groups with, say, an inadequate command of the dominant language. In
both cases, their ethnic identity becomes an imperative status, an ascribed aspect of their personhood from which they
cannot escape entirely. Race or skin colour as such is not the decisive variable in every society.

The relationship between the terms ethnicity and nationality is nearly as complex as that between ethnicity and race.
Like the words ethnic and race, the word nation has a long history (R. Williams, 1976: 213-214), and has been used in a
variety of different meanings in English. We shall refrain from discussing these meanings here, and will concentrate on
the sense in which nation and nationalism are used analytically in academic discourse. Like ethnic ideologies,
nationalism stresses the cultural similarity of its adherents, and by implication, it draws boundaries vis-a-vis others, who
thereby become outsiders. The distinguishing mark of nationalism is by definition its relationship to the state. A
nationalist holds that political boundaries should be coterminous with cultural boundaries, whereas many ethnic groups
do not demand command over a state. When the political leaders of an ethnic movement place demands to this effect,
the ethnic movement therefore by definition becomes a nationalist movement. Although nationalisms tend to be ethnic
in character, this is not necessarily the case, and we shall look more carefully into the relationship between ethnicity and
nationalism in Chapters 6-7.

Ethnicity and class

The term ethnicity refers to relationships between groups whose members consider themselves distinctive, and these
groups may be ranked hierarchically within a society. It is therefore necessary to distinguish clearly between ethnicity
and social class.

In the literature of social science, there are two main definitions of classes. One derives from Karl Marx, the other from
Max Weber. Sometimes elements from the two definitions are combined.

The Marxist view of social classes emphasises economic aspects. A social class is defined according to its relationship
to the productive process in society. In capitalist societies, according to Marx, there are three main classes. First, there is
the capitalist class or bourgeoisie, whose members own the means of production (factories, tools and machinery, etc.)
and buy other people's labour-power (i.e. employ them). Secondly, there is the petit-bourgeoisie, whose members own
means of production but do not employ others. Owners of small shops are typical examples. The third, and most
numerous class, is the proletariat or working class, whose members depend upon selling their labour-power to a
capitalist for their livelihood. There are also other classes, notably the aristocracy, whose members live by land interest,
and the lumpenproletariat, which consists of unemployed and underemployed people - vagrants and the like.

Since Marx' time in the mid-nineteenth century, the theory of classes has been developed in several directions. Its
adherents nevertheless still stress the relationship to property in their delineation of classes. A further central feature of
this theory is the notion of class struggle. Marx and his followers held that oppressed classes would eventually rise
against the oppressors, overthrow them through a revolution, and alter the political order and the social organisation of
labour. This, in Marx' view, was the main way in which societies evolved.

The Weberian view of social classes, which has partly developed into theories of social stratification, combines several
criteria in delineating classes, including income, education and political influence. Unlike Marx, Weber did not regard
classes as potential corporate groups; he did not believe that members of social classes necessarily would have shared
political interests. Weber preferred to speak of status groups rather than classes.

Theories of social class always refer to systems of social ranking and distribution of power. Ethnicity, on the contrary,
does not necessarily refer to rank; ethnic relations may well be egalitarian in this regard. Still, many poly-ethnic
societies are ranked according to ethnic membership. The criteria for such ranking are nevertheless different from class
ranking: they refer to imputed cultural differences or "races", not to property or achieved statuses.

There may be a high correlation between ethnicity and class, which means that there is a high likelihood that persons
belonging to specific ethnic groups also belong to specific social classes. There can be a significant interrelationship
between class and ethnicity, both class and ethnicity can be criteria for rank, and ethnic membership can be an important
factor for class membership. Both class differences and ethnic differences can be pervasive features of societies, but
they are not one and the same thing and must be distinguished from one another analytically.

The current concern with ethnicity

If one runs a word search programme through a representative sample of English-language anthropological publications
since 1950, one will note significant changes in the frequency of a number of keywords. Words like "structure" and
"function", for example, have gradually grown unfashionable, whereas Marxist terms like "base and superstructure",
"means of production" and "class struggle" were popular from around 1965 until the early 1980s. Terms like "ethnicity",
"ethnic" and "ethnic group", for their part, have steadily grown in currency since the mid- to late 1960s. There may be
two main causes for this. One of them is change in the social world, while the other concerns changes in the dominant
way of thinking in social anthropology.

Whereas classical social anthropology, as exemplified in the works of Malinowski, Boas, Radcliffe-Brown, Lévi-
Strauss, Evans-Pritchard and others, would characteristically focus on single "tribal" societies, changes in the world
after the Second World War have brought many of these societies into increased contact with each other, with the state
and with global society. Many of the peoples studied by social anthropologists have become involved in national
liberation movements or ethnic conflicts in post-colonial states. Many of them, formerly regarded as "tribes" or
"aboriginals", have become "ethnic minorities". Many former members of tribal or traditional groups have also
migrated to Europe or North America, where their relationships with the host societies have been studied extensively by
sociologists, social psychologists and social anthropologists.

Some ethnic groups have moved to towns or regional centres where they are brought into contact with people with other
customs, languages and identities, and where they frequently enter into competitive relationships in politics and the
labour market. Frequently, people who migrate try to maintain their old kinship and neighbourhood social networks in
the new urban context, and both ethnic quarters and ethnic policical groupings often emerge in such urban settings.
Although the speed of social and cultural change can be high, people tend to retain their ethnic identity despite having
moved to a new environment. This kind of social change has been investigated in a series of pioneering studies in North
American cities from the 1920s and in Southern Africa from the early 1940s, and we will return to these studies in the
next chapter.

In an influential study of ethnic identity in the United States, Glazer and Moynihan (1963) stated that the most
important point to be made about the "American melting-pot" is that it never occurred. They argue that rather than
eradicating ethnic differences, modern American society has actually created a new awareness in people, a concern
about roots and origins. Moreover, many Americans continue to use their ethnic networks actively when looking for
jobs or a spouse. Many prefer to live in neighbourhoods dominated by people with the same origins as themselves, and
they continue to regard themselves as "Italians", "Poles" etc., in addition to being Americans - two generations or more
after their ancestors left the country of origin.

A main insight from anthropological research has been that ethnic organisation and identity, rather than being
"primordial" phenomena radically opposed to modernity and the modern state, are frequently reactions to processes of
modernisation. As Jonathan Friedman has put it, "[e]thnic and cultural fragmentation and modernist homogenization are
not two arguments, two opposing views of what is happening in the world today, but two constitutive trends of global
reality" (Friedman, 1990: 311).

Does this mean that ethnicity is chiefly a modern phenomenon? This is a tricky, but highly relevant question. The
contemporary ethnic processes referred to above can be described as modern in character. In an influential statement on
political ethnicity, Abner Cohen (1974a) has argued that the concept is perhaps most useful in the study of the
development of new political cultures in situations of social change in the "Third World". However, important studies of
ethnicity have been carried out in non-modern, non-Western societies as well.

The contemporary concern with ethnicity and ethnic processes is partly related to historical changes such as the ones
mentioned above. It could nevertheless also be argued that the growing interest in ethnicity reflects changes in the
dominant anthropological mode of thought. Instead of viewing "societies" or even "cultures" as more or less isolated,
static and homogeneous units as the early structural-functionalists would tend to, many anthropologists now try to
depict flux and process, ambiguity and complexity in their analyses of social worlds. In this context, ethnicity has
proven a highly useful concept, since it suggests a dynamic situation of variable contact and mutual accomodation
between groups.
From tribe to ethnic group

As mentioned, there has been a shift in Anglophone social anthropological terminology concerning the nature of the
social units we study. While one formerly spoke of "tribes", the term "ethnic group" is nowadays much more common.
Ronald Cohen remarks: "Quite suddenly, with little comment or ceremony, ethnicity is an ubiquitous presence" (R.
Cohen, 1978: 379). This switch in terminology implies more than a mere replacement of a word with another. Notably,
the use of the term "ethnic group" suggests contact and interrelationship. To speak of an ethnic group in total isolation is
as absurd as to speak of the sound from one hand clapping (cf. Bateson, 1979: 78). By definition, ethnic groups remain
more or less discrete from each other, but they are aware of - and in contact with - members of other ethnic groups.
Moreover, these groups or categories are in a sense created through that very contact. Group identities must always be
defined in relation to that which they are not - in other words, in relation to non-members of the group.

The terminological switch from "tribe" to "ethnic group" may also mitigate or even transcend an ethnocentric or
Eurocentric bias which anthropologists have often been accused of promoting covertly. When we talk of tribes, we
implicitly introduce a sharp, qualitative distinction between ourselves and the people we study; the distinction generally
corresponds to the distinction between modern and traditional or "primitive" societies. If we instead talk of ethnic
groups or categories, such a sharp distinction becomes difficult to maintain. Virtually every human being belongs to an
ethnic group, whether he or she lives in Europe, Melanesia or Central America. There are ethnic groups in English
cities, in the Bolivian countryside and in the New Guinea highlands.

Anthropologists themselves belong to ethnic groups or nations. Moreover, the concepts and models used in the study of
ethnicity can often be applied to modern as well as non-modern contexts, to Western as well as non-Western societies.
In this sense, the concept of ethnicity can be said to bridge two important gaps in social anthropology: it entails a focus
on dynamics rather than statics, and it relativises the boundaries between "us" and "them", between moderns and tribals.

What is ethnicity?

When we talk of ethnicity, we indicate that groups and identities have developed in mutual contact rather than in
isolation. But what is the nature of such groups?

When A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn investigated the various meanings of culture in the early 1950s (Kroeber &
Kluckhohn, 1952), they found about three hundred different definitions. Although Ronald Cohen is correct in stating
that most of whose who write on ethnicity do not bother to define the term, the extant number of definitions is already
high - and it is growing (B. Williams, 1989a). Instead of going through the various definitions of ethnicity here, I will
point out significant differences between theoretical perspectives as we go along. As a starting-point, let us examine the
recent development of the term as it is being used by social anthropologists.

The word "ethnic group" has come to mean something like "a people". But what is a people? Does the population of
Britain constitute a people, does it comprise several peoples (as Nairn, 1977, tends to argue), or does it rather form part
of a Germanic, or an English-speaking, or a European people? All of these positions may have their defenders, and this
very ambiguity in the designation of peoples has been taken on as a challenge by anthropologists. In a study of ethnic
relations in Thailand, Michael Moerman (1965) asks himself: "Who are the Lue?" The Lue were the ethnic group his
research focused on, but when he tried to describe who they were - in which ways they were distinctive from other
ethnic groups - he quickly ran into trouble. His problem, a very common one in contemporary social anthropology,
concerned the boundaries of the group. After listing a number of criteria commonly used by anthropologists to
demarcate cultural groups, such as language, political organisation and territorial contiguity, he states: "Since language,
culture, political organization, etc., do not correlate completely, the units delimited by one criterion do not coincide with
the units delimited by another" (Moerman, 1965: 1215). When he asked individual Lue what were their typical
characteristics, they would mention cultural traits which they in fact shared with other, neighbouring groups. They lived
in close interaction with other groups in the area; they had no exclusive livelihood, no exclusive language, no exclusive
customs, no exclusive religion. Why was it appropriate to describe them as an ethnic group? After posing these
problems, Moerman was forced to conclude that "[s]omeone is Lue by virtue of believing and calling himself Lue and
of acting in ways that validate his Lueness" (Moerman, 1965: 1219). Being unable to argue that this "Lueness" can be
defined with reference to objective cultural features or clear-cut boundaries, Moerman defines it as an emic category of
ascription. This way of delineating ethnic groups has become very influential in social anthropology (cf. Chapter 3).

Does this imply that ethnic groups do not necessarily have a distinctive culture? Can two groups be culturally identical
and yet constitute two different ethnic groups? This is a complicated question which will be dealt with at length in later
chapters. At this point, we should note that contrary to a widespread commonsense view, cultural difference between
two groups is not the decisive feature of ethnicity. Two distinctive, endogamous groups, say, somewhere in New
Guinea, may well have widely different languages, religious beliefs and even technologies, but that does not entail that
there is an ethnic relationship between them. For ethnicity to come about, the groups must have a minimum of contact
between them, and they must entertain ideas of each other as being culturally different from themselves. If these
conditions are not fulfilled, there is no ethnicity, for ethnicity is essentially an aspect of a relationship, not a property of
a group. Conversely, some groups may seem culturally similar, yet there can be a socially highly relevant (and even
volatile) inter-ethnic relationship between them. This would be the case of the relationship between Serbs and Croats
following the break-up of Yugoslavia, or of the tension between coastal Sami and Norwegians. There may also be
considerable cultural variation within a group without ethnicity (Blom, 1969). Only in so far as cultural differences are
perceived as being important, and are made socially relevant, do social relationships have an ethnic element.

Ethnicity is an aspect of social relationship between agents who consider themselves as being culturally distinctive from
members of other groups with whom they have a minimum of regular interaction. It can thus also be defined as a social
identity (based on a contrast vis-a-vis others) characterised by metaphoric or fictive kinship (Yelvington, 1991: 168).
When cultural differences regularly make a difference in interaction between members of groups, the social relationship
has an ethnic element. Ethnicity refers both to aspects of gain and loss in interaction, and to aspects of meaning in the
creation of identity. In this way, it has a political, organisational aspect as well as a symbolic one.

Ethnic groups tend to have myths of common origin, and they nearly always have ideologies encouraging endogamy,
which may nevertheless be of highly varying practical importance.

"Kinds" of ethnic relations?

This very general and tentative definition of ethnicity lumps together a great number of very different social
phenomena. My relationship with my Pakistani greengrocer has an ethnic aspect; so, it could be argued, do the war in
former Yugoslavia and "race riots" in American cities. Do these phenomena have anything interesting in common,
justifying that we compare them within a single conceptual framework? The answer is both yes and no. One of the
contentions from anthropological studies of ethnicity is that there may be mechanisms of ethnic processes which are
relatively uniform in every inter-ethnic situation: to this effect, we can identify certain shared formal properties in all
ethnic phenomena.

On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the substantial social contexts of ethnicity differ enormously, and indeed
that ethnic identities and ethnic organisations themselves may have highly variable importance in different societies, for
different persons and in different situations. We should nevertheless keep in mind that the point of anthropological
comparison is not necessarily to establish similarities between societies, but it can also be to reveal important
differences. In order to discover such differences, we must initially possess some kind of measuring-stick, a constant or
a conceptual bridgehead, which can be used as a basis of comparison. If we first know what we mean by ethnicity, we
can then use the concept as a common denominator for societies and social contexts which are otherwise very different.
The concept of ethnicity can in this way not only teach us something about similarity, but also about differences.

Although the concept of ethnicity should always have the same meaning lest it ceases to be useful in comparison, it is
inevitable that we distinguish between the social contexts under scrutiny. Some interethnic contexts in different societies
are very similar and may seem easily comparable, whereas others differ profoundly. In order to give an idea of the
variation, I shall briefly describe some typical empirical foci of ethnic studies, some "kinds of ethnic groups", so to
speak. This list is not exhaustive.

(a) Urban ethnic minorities. This category would include, among others, non-European immigrants in European cities
and Hispanics in the United States, as well as migrants to industrial towns in Africa and elsewhere. Research on
immigrants has focused on problems of adaptation, on ethnic discrimination from the host society, racism, and issues
relating to identity management and cultural change (cf. Chapters 4 and 7). Anthropologists who have investigated
urbanisation in Africa have focused on change and continuity in political organisation and social identity following
migration to totally new settings (cf. Chapter 2). Although they have political interests, these ethnic groups rarely
demand political independence or statehood, and they are as a rule integrated into a capitalist system of production and
consumption.

(b) Indigenous peoples. This word is a blanket term for aboriginal inhabitants of a territory, who are politically
relatively powerless and who are only partially integrated into the dominant nation-state. Indigenous peoples are
associated with a non-industrial mode of production and a stateless political system (Minority Rights Group, 1990). The
Basques of the Bay of Biscay and the Welsh of Great Britain are not considered indigenous populations, although they
are certainly as indigenous, technically speaking, as the Sami of northern Scandinavia or the Jívaro of the Amazon
basin. The concept "indigenous people" is thus not an accurate analytical one, but rather one drawing on broad family
resemblances and contemporary political issues (cf. Chapters 4 and 7).

(c) Proto-nations ("ethnonationalist" movements). These groups, the most famous of ethnic groups in the news media of
the 1990s, include Kurds, Sikhs, Palestinians and Sri Lankan Tamils, and their number is growing. By definition, these
groups have political leaders who claim that they are entitled to their own nation-state and should not be "ruled by
others". These groups, short of having a nation-state, may be said to have more substantial characteristics in common
with nations (cf. Chapter 6) than with either urban minorities or indigenous peoples. They are always territorially based;
they are differentiated according to class and educational achievement, and they are large groups. In accordance with
common terminology, these groups may be described as "nations without a state". Anthropologists have studied such
movements in a number of societies, including Euzkadi or Basque Country (Heiberg, 1989), Brittany (McDonald, 1989)
and Québec (Handler, 1988).

(d) Ethnic groups in "plural societies". The term "plural society" usually designates colonially created states with
culturally heterogeneous populations (Furnivall, 1948; M. G. Smith, 1965). Typical plural societies would be Kenya,
Indonesia and Jamaica. The groups that make up the plural society, although they are compelled to participate in
uniform political and economic systems, are regarded as (and regard themselves as) highly distinctive in other matters.
In plural societies, secessionism is usually not an option, and ethnicity tends to be articulated as group competition. As
Richard Jenkins (1986) has remarked, most contemporary states could plausibly be considered plural ones.

The definition of ethnicity proposed earlier would include all of these "kinds" of groups, no matter how different they
are in other respects. Surely, there are aspects of politics (gain and loss in interaction) as well as meaning (social
identity and belonging) in the ethnic relations reproduced by urban minorities, indigenous peoples, proto-nations and
the component groups of "plural societies" alike. Despite the great variations between the problems and substantial
characteristics represented by the respective kinds of groups, the word ethnicity may, in other words, meaningfully be
used as a common denominator for them. In later chapters, it will be shown how anthropological approaches to
ethnicity may shed light on both similarities and differences between different social contexts and historical
circumstances.

Analytical concepts and "native" concepts

The final problem to be discussed in this chapter concerns the relationship between anthropological concepts and their
subject-matter. This is a problem with complicated ramifications, and it concerns the relationships between (i)
anthropological theory and "native theory", (ii) anthropological theory and social organisation, and (iii) "native theory"
and social organisation.

It can be argued that the terminological shift from "tribe" to "ethnic group" mitigated the formerly strong distinction
between "moderns" and "primitives". The growing anthropological interest in nationalism entails a further step towards
"studying ourselves". For if ethnicity can be non-modern as well as modern, nationalism must be identified with the
modern age, with the French Enlightenment and German Romanticism as parallel starting-points. Nationalist slogans,
movements and symbols have later penetrated into the heartlands of anthropological research. Nationalism, being a
modern state ideology, is present in the social worlds in which the anthropologists themselves live. Although there are
interesting differences between particular nationalisms, nationalism as such is a modern ideology. When studying
nationalism in a foreign country, it is therefore difficult to use one's own society as an implicit contrast as
anthropologists have frequently done when studying "exotic" societies. In fact, as Richard Handler (1988) has observed,
nationalism and social science, including anthropology, grew out of the same historical circumstances of modernisation,
industrialisation and the growth of individualism in the 19th century. For this reason, Handler argues, it has been
difficult for anthropologists to attain sufficient analytical distance vis-a-vis nationalisms; the respective concepts and
ways of thinking are too closely related (cf. also Herzfeld, 1987; Just, 1989).

Handler's point is also valid in relation to modern ethnopolitical movements. Their spokesmen tend to invoke a concept
of culture which is in fact often directly inspired by anthropological concepts of culture, and in some cases they self-
consciously present themselves as "tribes" reminiscent of the "tribes" depicted in classical anthropological monographs
(Roosens, 1989). In these cases, there is an intrinsic relationship between anthropological theorising and "native
theory". Additionally, when anthropologists study contested issues in their own societies, there is a real risk that the
scholarly conceptual apparatus will be contaminated by the inaccurate and perhaps ideologically loaded everyday
meanings of the words. For this reason, we should be particularly cautious in our choice of analytical terms and
interpretations when we study phenomena such as ethnicity and nationalism.

The points made by Handler and others in relation to the study of nationalism and modern ethnopolitics, can
nevertheless be seen as general problems of social anthropology. The main problem concerns how to articulate the
relationship between anthropological theory, "native theory" and social organisation (Mitchell, 1974). In a sense,
ethnicity is created by the analyst when he or she goes out into the world and poses questions about ethnicity. Had one
instead been concerned with gender, one would doubtless have found aspects of gender instead of ethnicity. On the
other hand, persons or informants who live in the societies in question may themselves be concerned with issues
relating to ethnicity, and as such the phenomenon clearly does exist outside of the mind of the observer. But since our
concepts, for example ethnicity and nationalism, are our own inventions, we must not assume that the actors themselves
have the same ideas about the ways in which the world is constituted - even if they are using the very same words as
ourselves! History and social identity are constructed socially, sometimes with a very tenuous relationship with
established, or at least official, facts (cf. Chapter 4).

There are often discrepancies between what people say and what they do, and there will nearly always be discrepancies
between informants' descriptions of their society and the anthropologist's description of the same society. Indeed, many
anthropologists (e.g. Holy & Stuchlik, 1983) hold that it is a main goal of our discipline to investigate and clarify the
relationship between notions and actions, or between what people say and what they do. One may disagree with their
"rationalist" perspective, which seems to assume that a simple, "economic" means-end rationality underlies all social
action, but the general problem remains important: why is it that people say one thing and then proceed to doing
something entirely different, and how can this be investigated?

This discrepancy is relevant for ethnic studies, and it requires that we are clear about the distinctions between our own
concepts and models, "native" concepts and models, and social process. In some societies, people will perhaps deny that
there is systematic differential treatment between members of different groups, although the anthropologist will
discover that such discrimination exists. Conversely, I have met many Christians in Mauritius who have sworn, in
conversations, that they would (for ostensibly sound reasons) have nothing to do with Muslims; later on, it has turned
out that they in fact entertain quite strong and sometimes confidential relationships with Muslims. It is, indeed,
frequently contradictions of this kind that lead to anthropological insights.

©Thomas Hylland Eriksen 1993