Ethnicity etcetera: Social anthropological points of view

Abstract

This article draws upon Barth and Geertz to offer a general anthropological model of ethnicity which emphasizes cultural differentiation constructed in the course of social interaction; which understands ethnicity as neither fixed nor unchanging; and which views ethnic identity as collective and individual, external and internal. Three main areas of anthropological debate are discussed: the primordiality versus instrumentality debate; the relationship between culture and nature; and the relationship between different levels of conceptualization such as the local, the national and the global. A number of difficulties in teaching about ethnicity from a specifically anthropological perpective are discussed. The closing section underlines the continuing importance of anthropology's constructionist point of view in challenging the essentialist common sense that ethnicity and ‘race’ are ‘natural’.

Keywords:

• Anthropology
• ethnicity
• cultural difference
• primordiality
• locality
• nation
• globalization
• teaching