Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives: Third Edition (Anthropology, Culture and Society)

257 Pages·2010·2.63 MB·English

by  Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Ethnicity and Nationalism

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Anthropology, Culture and Society
Series Editors:
Professor Vered Amit, Concordia University
and
Dr Jon P. Mitchell, University of Sussex
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EthNicity aNd NatioNalism
anthropological Perspectives
third Edition
Thomas Hylland Eriksen

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First published 1994
this edition published 2010 by Pluto Press
345 archway Road, london N6 5aa and
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www.plutobooks.com
distributed in the United states of america exclusively by
Palgrave macmillan, a division of st. martin’s Press llc,
175 Fifth avenue, New york, Ny 10010
copyright © thomas hylland Eriksen 1994, 2002, 2010
the right of thomas hylland Eriksen to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright,
designs and Patents act 1988.
British library cataloguing in Publication data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British library
isBN 978 0 7453 3043 3 hardback
isBN 978 0 7453 3042 6 Paperback
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and sustained forest sources. logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are
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contents
Series Preface viii
Preface to the Third Edition ix
Preface to the Second Edition x
Preface to the First Edition xi
1. What is Ethnicity? 1
The term itself 4; Ethnicity and race 5; Ethnicity, nation and
class 9; The current concern with ethnicity 11; From tribe to ethnic
group 13; So what is ethnicity? 15; Kinds of ethnic relations 17;
Analytical concepts and ‘native’ concepts 20
2. Ethnic Classification: Us and Them 23
The ecology of the city 23; The melting-pot metaphor 25;
Communicating cultural difference 26; Stereotyping 28; Folk
taxonomies and social distance 31; Contrasting and matching 33;
Ethnic stigma 35; Negotiating identity 37; Ethnicity from the
individual’s point of view 38; Criteria for ethnicity 40
3. The Social Organisation of Cultural Distinctiveness 43
Ascription as a decisive feature of ethnicity 43; Boundary
maintenance 45; Boundary transcendence and fluidity 46; Degrees
of ethnic incorporation 48; Ethnicity as resource competition 53;
Levels of ethnic incorporation 54; The theory of plural societies 57;
Ethnicity and hierarchy 58; The interrelationship between criteria 61;
Instrumentalism and its critics 63; A problem of culture 66
4. Ethnic Identification and Ideology 70
Order in the social universe 72; Anomalies 73; Entrepreneurs 77;
Analog and digital; we and us 79; The emergence of ethnic
identities 80; The creation of an ancestral identity 83; History and
ideology 84; Genetics, kinship and ethnicity 87; Social factors in
identity processes 88; Is a European identity conceivable? 89; What
do identities do? 92
5. Ethnicity in History 95
The historical development of ethnic relations 96; Expansions of
system boundaries 96; Capitalism and individualisation 98; The label
‘black identity’ 99; Indians in new worlds 101; Ethnic revitalisation:
from people to a people 103; Colonialism and migration 104; The
power of naming 106; Modern education and ethnic identity 109;
Ethnicity, history and culture 110; History and myth 112
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vi EthNicity aNd NatioNalism
6. Nationalism 117
The race to nation 117; What is nationalism? 119; The nation as a
cultural community 122; The political use of cultural symbols 123;
Nationalism and industrial society 125; Communication technology
and nationhood 126; Nationalism as metaphoric kinship 129; The
nation-state 131; Nationalism against the state 132; Nationalism and
the Other 134; The problem of identity boundaries 136; Nationalism
without ethnicity? 140; Nationalism and ethnicity reconsidered 144
7. Minorities and the State 147
Minorities and majorities 147; Minorities and the state 148; The
creation of minorities in the modern world 151; Indigeneity 152;
Territorial conflict 153; Stages in ethnogenesis 155; Factors in
indigenous ethnogenesis 157; Immigrant minorities 159; Boundaries
and hybridity 161; Culture and economics among migrants 163;
Identities and culture 167; Ethnicity in the US: race, class and
language 168; Minorities and modernity 171
8. Identity Politics, Culture and Rights 174
Dilemmas of ethnic diversity 174; Multiculturalism and its
critics 176; Beyond the standard paradigm of nation-building 178;
Embedded discourses about culture and pluralism 181; Struggles
over cultural identity and social integration 184; Diaspora and
hybridity 186; Transnationalism and long-distance nationalism 187;
The modernity of Hindutva 192; Some generic features of identity
politics 194
9. The Non-Ethnic 198
Globalisation 199; Social theory and the postmodern world 202;
Changes in the world of intergroup relations 204; Globalisation and
localisation 206; Identities and loyalties 209; Gender, ethnicity and
nationhood 211; Beyond ethnicity? 213; The end of ethnicity? 215;
The eye of the beholder 218
Bibliography 220
Index 237

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series Preface
Anthropology is a discipline based upon in-depth ethnographic
works that deal with wider theoretical issues in the context of
particular, local conditions – to paraphrase an important volume
from the series: large issues explored in small places. This series
has a particular mission: to publish work that moves away from
an old-style descriptive ethnography that is strongly area-studies
oriented, and offer genuine theoretical arguments that are of interest
to a much wider readership, but which are nevertheless located and
grounded in solid ethnographic research. If anthropology is to argue
itself a place in the contemporary intellectual world, then it must
surely be through such research.
We start from the question: ‘What can this ethnographic material
tell us about the bigger theoretical issues that concern the social
sciences?’ rather than ‘What can these theoretical ideas tell us about
the ethnographic context?’ Put this way round, such work becomes
about large issues, set in a (relatively) small place, rather than
detailed description of a small place for its own sake. As Clifford
Geertz once said, ‘Anthropologists don’t study villages; they study
in villages.’
By place, we mean not only geographical locale, but also other
types of ‘place’ – within political, economic, religious or other
social systems. We therefore publish work based on ethnography
within political and religious movements, occupational or class
groups, among youth, development agencies, and nationalist
movements; but also work that is more thematically based – on
kinship, landscape, the state, violence, corruption, the self. The
series publishes four kinds of volume: ethnographic monographs;
comparativ e texts; edited collections; and shorter, polemical essays.
We publish work from all traditions of anthropology, and
all parts of the world, which combines theoretical debate with
empirical evidence to demonstrate anthropology’s unique position
in contemporary scholarship and the contemporary world.
Professor Vered Amit
Dr Jon P. Mitchell
vii
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Preface to the third Edition
It would be an exaggeration to claim that our entire way of thinking
about ethnicity and nationalism has changed since the second edition
of this book was completed in 2002, but it cannot be denied that
research agendas have moved on and shifted somewhat in response
to changing historical circumstances; new themes have been
introduced, and some old themes have been rephrased, sometimes
for the better. A few new topics in this edition, dealt with cursorily or
not at all in the first two editions of this book, are cultural property
rights, the role of genetics in the public understanding of identi-
fication, commercialisation of identity, and the significance of the
internet. Arguments about globalisation, hybridisation and the need
for a more inclusive concept of identity politics have been developed
further, as have the sections about the relative degree of group
cohesion, the role of culture in ethnic identification, the concept
of race, and migration. Apart from these fairly major revisions, I
have updated the text and made minor changes where necessary.
As always, I am grateful to my students, colleagues and translators
to languages other than English for their encouragement, but
also for pointing out inconsistencies, debatable points, lacunae
and incomplete arguments, and I have done my best to deal with
relevant objections.
Oslo, November 2009

viii
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Preface to the second Edition
The manuscript for the first edition of this book was completed
in the summer of 1992, that is a decade ago; during the Serbian-
Croatian war, a year and a half after the Gulf War, in the midst
of the transition of the European Community into the European
Union, in the early days of the Rushdie affair, and shortly after the
regime changes in Eastern Europe. It seems a very long time ago.
The worlds of academia and of identity politics change rapidly in
this era of accelerated change, and this revision is long overdue.
Although ethnicity studies in anthropology may have peaked,
quantitatively speaking, some time in the 1980s, the concerns that
initially animated Ethnicity and Nationalism remain at the core of
the discipline: reflexive identity and social change, identity politics,
social complexity and group dynamics. Although new research
agendas focusing on transnationalism, hybridity and globalisation
(in the 1990s, this word was all over the place!) were developed,
the more general issues remain relevant.
This edition has been extensively revised and updated. New
research and new theoretical agendas have been taken into account,
and I have often seen the need (sometimes prompted by critical
remarks from colleagues) to clarify and rephrase vague or misleading
formulations; in one or two cases, I have also taken the liberty of
changing my mind. Moreover, a new chapter has been added on
multiculturalism, culture and rights, a major recent research topic
and a public preoccupation in many countries.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Pluto Press for
their continued support of my work, and my postgraduate students
for bringing so much intriguing ethnographic material to my desk.

Oslo, February 2002
ix
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