2. • Ascription as a decisive feature of ethnicity
• Boundary maintenance
• Boundary transcendence and fluidity
• Degrees of ethnic incorporation
3. Ascription as a decisive feature of ethnicity
Culture provides the form, the ‘dress’ of the social situation.
The cultural situation is a given factor, it is a product and an
accident of history. The question of the relationship between
ethnicity and culture was concluded that it would be misleading to
state simply that ethnic groups are identical with cultural groups
and that shared culture is the basis of ethnic identity. This problem
has been addressed by many social anthropologists, and many of
them have concluded that one ought to focus on social interaction
and social organisation rather than ‘cultural content’.
4. The main task for the anthropological study of ethnicity
consists in accounting for the maintenance and consequences of
ethnic boundaries.As groups are in continuous contact with one
another, the persistent fact of cultural variation needs to be
accounted for, since this is not a fact of nature.This approach to
ethnicity advocates a focus on that which is socially effective in
interethnic relations.
5. Boundary Maintenance
The ethnic group is defined through its
relationship to others, highlighted
through the boundary, and the boundary
itself is a social product which may have
variable importance and which may
change through time.The group’s culture,
as well as forms of social organisation,
may change without removing the ethnic
boundary. In some cases, groups may
actually become culturally more similar
at the same time that boundaries are
strengthened.
6. For example, the outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia in 1991,
and the eventual fragmentation of the federation, exemplifies the
relativity of ethnic boundaries.There had been peace between
Serbs and Croats since 1945, and the rate of intermarriage
between the groups had been high.Serbs and Croats spoke dialects
of the same language. Perhaps the main cultural difference
between the groups was the fact that they practised different
variants of Christianity.Nonetheless, it was repeatedly stressed,
following the outbreak of war in June 1991, that the groups were
irreconcilable and culturally incompatible; Serbs claimed that the
Croats were fascists and Croats claimed that the Serbs were
imperialists.
7. Boundary transcendence and fluidity
Ethnic boundaries are not necessarily territorial boundaries, but
social ones. They do not isolate groups entirely from each
other;rather, there is a continuous flow of information,
interaction, exchange and sometimes even people across
them.Czech anthropologist Gellner wrote, years before violence
erupted in the region, that the religious labels distinguishing the
ethnic groups in polyethnic Bosnia refer to past, not present
differences. ‘What [the Bosnian Muslims] meant was that they
could not describe themselves as Serb or as Croat (despite sharing
a language with Serbs and Croats), because these identifications
carried the implications of having been Orthodox or Catholic.
8. Degrees of ethnic incorporation
The concept of ethnic boundary places the focus of ethnic
studies on the relationship between groups. The boundary is that
invisible dividing line between them.Boundaries are generally two-
way; that is to say, both groups in a relationship demarcate their
identity and distinctiveness to the others.When we look at the
degrees of ethnic incorporation, we can categorize as the ethnic
category, the ethnic network, the ethnic association and the ethnic
community.
9.
10. The ethnic category is constituted by the fact that contrastive
categories are used to identify members and outsiders; its shared
‘assets’ could be described as ‘categorical corporate holdings’.The
ethnic network is decentralised and can be broken down into
dyadic relationships: it has no organisational nexus.When members
of an ethnic category feel that they have shared interests, and
develop an organisational apparatus to express them, it would be
appropriate to talk of an ethnic association.The highest degree of
ethnic incorporation is that of the ethnic community. This kind of
collectivity has, in addition to ethnic networks and shared political
organisation, a territory with more or less permanent physical
boundaries.
