Can we study ethnicity? A critique of fields of study in South African anthropology

Abstract

This paper examines the assumptions that have been made by South African anthropologists about the nature of ethnicity and its significance for demarcating the boundaries of groups they have chosen to study. It is argued that the assumptions made in this connection, within functionalist social anthropology and, particularly, within primordialist volkekunde, are illegitimate and, moreover, inimical to the future of anthropology in a changing South Africa. Various alternatives to this primordialist approach are examined. The work of Barth and his followers is questioned on the grounds that it provides no more than a half‐hearted challenge to primordialism. And it is argued, finally, using field data from the north‐west Cape, that an acceptable study of the significance of ethnicity must start from the premises of political economy, and must view ethnicity as one possible form of group mobilisation amongst several alternatives.