ETHNICITY AND THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE

Spring 1995
ETHNICITY AND THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE
Fredrik Barth

February 23, 1995

The juxtaposition of ethnicity with the current debate in anthropology on the concept
of culture is a way of trying to elucidate one problem with another. In 1969 I argued
that ethnicity represents the social organization of culture difference. Thus it raises
issues about the constitution of that which we call culture, but only as its ground.
Contrary to what is still a widely shared view, I argued that ethnic groups are not
groups formed on the basis of shared culture, but rather the formation of groups on
the basis of differences of culture. To think of ethnicity in relation to one group and its
culture is like trying to clap with one hand. The contrast between "us" and "others" is
what is embedded in the organization of ethnicity: an otherness of the others that is
explicitly linked to the assertion of cultural differences. So let us start by rethinking
culture, the ground from which ethnic groups emerge.
We anthropologists are even more aware than others of the enormous global variation
in culture. But like others, we have been inclined to think of this variation in terms of
there being a multiplicity of different, distinct cultures in the world, each a unit and a
whole onto itself. If there are many cultures out there, then we must be able to specify
where each of them is, what composes them and what bounds them. Where do we
imagine that a culture is lodged? Is its stuff made up of a population, or customs, or all
the ideas shared by the people of a tribe, an island? Where is this unit located, in
space and time and in persons?
We all agree that culture refers to something (everything?) that is learned. More
precisely, that means that culture is experience-induced in people--so to identify it, we
must be able to point to those experiences. We must also accept certain implications
that follow: that culture must constantly be generated by those experiences from
which people learn. We then have a focus--not a way to say where culture is localized,
but a way of pointing to where it is being produced and reproduced.
I invite you to look at culture globally, and to see it not just as showing great variation,
but as showing continuous variation. I share some ideas with persons widely
distributed over the world, others with my closest neighbor; and no single other person
in the world has the identical set of concepts and ideas--culture--that I have. However,
variation is continuous not in the sense that is shows every form and has uniform
gradients: there are steeper and less steep clines, and patterned scatters of sharing of
some ideas in contrast to others. It is thus characterized by a complex and patterned
continuity. But the pattern is not--as speaking in terms of a multiplicity of local
cultures would imply--a mosaic of bounded, internally homogeneous units. The ideas
that compose culture overflow and spread differentially and create a variety of clusters
and gradients.
Secondly, we should think of it as something distributed on people, in people, as a
result of their experiences; while by having similar experiences and engaging each

other in reflections, instructions, and interactions, people will also be induced to

conceptualize and in part share many cultural models. I suggest that a crucial aspect
of cultural things is the way they thus become differentially distributed on people and
on circles and groups of people.
Thirdly, culture is in a constant state of flux. There can be no stasis in cultural
materials, because cultural materials are constantly being generated, as they are
induced from people's experiences. I argue, therefore, that we must not think of
cultural materials as transmitted traditions from the past, fixed in time, but as basically
in a state of flux.
All these features differentiate the stuff of culture very clearly from the stuff of social
organization. Social groups can perfectly well have clear boundaries. One group may
be clearly and categorically distinct from another. A group can also have internal
uniform membership in the sense that everyone who shares a position in a group has
identical rights and duties. Furthermore, groups can be stable, in that the group
structure remains unchanged through time by virtue of a consistent pattern of
recruitment, regardless of the change and replacement of personnel. In all these ways,
the social shows different properties from the cultural. Much of the confusion (and
perhaps also the compelling importance) of ethnic groups arises from this tension
between the nature of social groups and the nature of the cultural materials on which
the definition of ethnic groups as social units is based.
When I speak in this way, I am making a slight simplification of world ethnography.
There have been, and are today, a few places where the continuities break down.
When the first explorers fought their way through the ice and made contact with the
Polar Eskimo of North Greenland, they met people who thought that the rest of
humanity had perished and they were the sole human survivors in the world. In other
words, they represented both an insulated group and a culture with definite
boundaries. That was true then; it is not true anymore. But I do know one place where
it seems to be thus today. In the Andaman Islands of the Bay of Bengal there are
Andaman Pygmies who live in a scatter of surviving communities. Most of the
Andamanese have some contact with the world, but there is a group on one little island
called Sentinel Island. These people refuse any contact with people from the outside.
Some years ago there was an article in National Geographic with a magnificent photo
of them on the beach, threatening and chasing away a little ship that was trying to
land to make contact with them. But there are few such places. No people are, or have
been, able to maintain this truculent isolation under normal geographical
circumstances. The island of Manhattan is much more typical of the human condition
than Sentinel Island, and this has been so for many thousand years. Living in
communication, in a place where people come and go and mingle and mix with a
considerable degree of cultural pluralism is the normal condition of humankind. It is
not the result of modernization; all the great civilizations throughout the ages have
certainly been characterized by this kind of pluralism. Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean,
and major parts of the New World long before Columbus, all had this characteristic.
In a previous Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival Seminar, David
Maybury-Lewis spoke about indigenous groups. Indigenous groups are, in a social
sense, survivors of populations that occupied the land before some of the most
dramatic clashes and meetings of peoples. Their cultures, on the other hand, are
certainly not aboriginal. As David was saying, he could introduce persons from many
an indigenous group who have Ph.D.s, and they have all participated in a great deal

that is not aboriginal and a lot of interaction that is external to their indigenous group.
Being an indigenous person does not mean that you carry a separate, indigenous
culture. Instead, it probably means that at some times, at some occasions, you say,
"This is my ethnic identity. This is the group to which I wish to belong." And you will
cherish some particular signs that this is your identity. And it surely means that you
will have learned some things that show a cultural continuity of tradition from previous
generations of the indigenous population. But that knowledge, those ideas and skills,
are certainly not exhaustive of what you have learned, of the culture that you
command.
I wish to hammer this point and proceed slowly, so as to shake off misconceptions that
we are all prone to harbor and that will distort every understanding of what ethnicity is
about. I will do it by speaking about the emergence of a new ethnic category, that of
Pakistanis in Norway. There are about 30,000 Pakistanis living as part of Norwegian
society. Norwegian society used to be exceptionally homogeneous, and these foreign
labor migrants, who came from Pakistan starting in the late 1950s or early 1960s,
seemed very strange and anomalous to Norwegian communities. Let us now examine
not the Norwegian reaction to them, but the reaction to Norway, what their experience
was and what it resulted in. I'll start with a Pathan I know who came from Pakistan in
the early 1960s.
In Pakistan, Pathans are one of several ethnic groups who are periodically in stark
conflict with each other. For years there was an ethnic independence movement for a
free Pakhtunistan; and from current newscasts you will be familiar with the ethnic riots
taking place in Karachi, where Pathans are some of the players. So to be Pathan is
very clearly to have a distinct ethnic identity within Pakistan.
Now this Pathan man came to Norway, very aware of his identity. He arrived as a labor
migrant. Of course in such a situation one learns very much very quickly. He had to
learn some Norwegian, though not all that well. As he learned language, he learned
about Norwegian society. He had to learn new skills and new knowledge to obtain
employment, and further learned new things in his new workplace. His conception of
Norwegian society grew and changed, and this I insist is a change in his culture. It is
not just like being bilingual, learning a bit of Norwegian and continuing to know an
unmodified Pashto language. No, he is learning all sorts of things that also change
what he used to know. He actively reflects on his position in Norway. His idea of being
a Muslim becomes different from what it was when he was living in a Muslim society.
The idea of being a "Pakistani," moreover, is a new and growing idea. It comes about
as he seeks out the company of other persons who are in the same position as himself,
who can support each other in a growing fellowship of being Pakistani in Norway. He
never much considered himself to be one before, but the old ethnic differences from
Pakistan now seem pretty irrelevant as he confronts what is Norwegian. He is
responding to the things he is learning by reviewing and restructuring a lot of things
that he formerly had not reflected much on. He is discarding some of his previous
values, and increasingly cherishing others. In other words, his total culture is
undergoing change, and it quickly becomes illusory to identify a part of him as molded
by Pathan or Pakistani culture and another part of him as representing the Norwegian
culture that he is learning.
After some time his wife joins him in Norway. Now, a woman's experience living as a
Pathan in Pakistan is very different from that of men. Since she has lived a woman's
life, when she arrives in Norway her culture is, in a very real way, different from that

of her husband. Moreover, her experiences living in Norway are drastically different
than her husband's, both because she is living a different life, and because she is
interpreting everything in her different terms. She is limited in ways he was not at the
time when he arrived, while he was forced by his circumstances to do many things and
learn many things that she is not. So these two Pathans in Oslo, starting out different,
become only more different because of the different experiences they accumulate.
They have children, born in Norway but of Pakistani descent. These children go to
Norwegian schools, and presumably learn the things that other Norwegian children
learn. They live in a local neighborhood, partly containing other Pakistanis, partly
Norwegians. The children, then, are exposed to enormous bodies of learning
experiences that are vastly different from those of the mother or father when they
came to Norway. Thus the children of this little family will grow up with a "culture"--a
precipitate from learning, reflection, and experience--that will be different from both
their mother and their father, and from everybody else. I wish to highlight this aspect
of one small Pakistani family which, though a unit for reproduction of the Pakistani
ethnic group is not also a unit for the reproduction of a shared culture, but on the
contrary, is a dynamic mix of cultural difference, contrast, and conflict. The wife and
the husband have different ideas of how to do things and how to adjust and are
arguing about it. The children are also pushed and pulled by their different relations to
significant others, interpreting their own unique experiences and grappling with their
own problems. Their interests and interpretations may be in direct opposition to those
of the parents in many respects, and moving in divergent directions. In other words,
this group is a witch's cauldron of conflicting interests, ideas, misinterpretations and
misunderstandings, and deep cultural differences--right there in the center of a small,
elementary family. What happens to such a family?
Firstly, they will converge on an idea of sharing an identity as Pakistanis. They live in
Oslo with shared contacts in a growing community of Pakistanis, mostly Punjabis. But
what used to be a highly salient ethnic contrast between Pathan and Punjabi becomes
irrelevant; they are now all Pakistanis in Norway. They have a common nationality and
some degree of common background to justify this, and certainly a shared contrast:
being Muslims (though of a great variety of orientations and commitments) in a
Christian majority. They experience being stereotyped by other members of Norwegian
society--who care if you say you are Pathan or Punjabi, you're a Pakistani. People seek
community with others who are placed in positions similar to theirs, and soon a
Pakistani ethnic category emerges from their experiences of being stereotyped, of
being among strangers, of being in the same boat. But the cultural bases of this
shared identity are really quite weak and limited, while their internal differences are of
course even greater than in the little family we explored. None the less, the experience
that seems undeniable--though based on different events as between adults and
children, men and woman--is their being different from the surrounding Norwegians.
Observe how this community of Pakistanis progressively forms and asserts its effects.
Some of the Pakistanis are more successful than others at accommodating to the
Norwegian situation. But those who are less successful, spend more time in their
Pakistani circle and thereby become more influential in articulating the dominant
attitudes of the Pakistani community. In fact they use their Pakistani fellowship as a
way of retrenching and building a more positive self image in a problematic world that
they have to cope with to some extent, but can seek refuge from in a community of
Pakistanis. This is the context where the central myth of ethnicity is formed: the non
sequitur that since "we" of the minority identity share so many differences from the
dominant "them"--in life situation, concerns, and attitudes--we must be similar to one
another, we must share a culture that reflects those differences to another culture.

The formation of such a myth, and of the social group that lives by it, again has its
further effects. I return to the Pathan man that I opened with. Before his wife came to
Norway he didn't have to worry much about his identities, contacts, and memberships,
specifically in terms of culture. He could move as a single person among Norwegians,
and he could see other Pakistanis whenever he felt like it. With his wife there he is in a
new situation. First, because he is troubled about what she might be learning about
Norwegian women's situation and their ideas about gender rights and roles.
Furthermore, other Pakistanis are pressuring him to institute the kind of controls over
female spouses that they want instituted. What better solution than to form an alliance
with them so as to better protect his interests. Within the Pakistani community,
collective pressures are brought to bear to constrain the movements of women and
control what they may learn. And his new concerns will influence and change the
positions he himself takes on the various Norwegian ideas that he has learned.
Culture is always in flux, always changing, but also always subject to constraints. The
main creative and overflowing processes of learning and diversifying that I have
spoken of are not unfettered in the continuous variation that they produce. I see three
contrary processes at work that I would like to highlight: the processes of controlling,
of silencing, and of erasing experiences. The culture that each person is accumulating
and living by is under constant reshaping, not only by growth, but also through being
limited and channelled by those three processes. Most dramatically, we see thais in the
Norwegian-born children of Pakistani descent. These children must go to Norwegian
school, and parents both welcome it and worry about it. As they experience the
increasing distancing and alienation that these experiences and this learning produces
in their own children, they try to control and minimize their children's contacts with the
source of disturbance. Many Pakistani parents refuse their children permission to bring
Norwegian classmates and friends home or to visit them at their homes. Experiences
will also be silenced: whatever friendships these children have with Norwegians in the
school situation, they will learn not to tell about them at home because it makes for
trouble. I am not sure what effect this has on the conceptualization of such relations
and experiences, but it must surely have an effect. Finally, if silencing fails, there may
be a need for active erasing. Consider, for example, a daughter in a Pakistani family
who goes to Norwegian school, and like all other pupils has physical education. Small
girls, by Pakistani conventions, are allowed to be physically active and boisterous and
need not be discouraged from gym. But as they get to be ten or twelve, such physical
activity is no longer suitable as far as the parents are concerned. The scene of their
daughter, a budding woman, dancing around in a state of relative undress is deeply
troubling. The child may indeed have enjoyed the activity greatly and accumulated a
pleasurable valuation of it--in which case her positive experience needs to be erased
and she must learn that it is bad. Continued physical education for girls is a recurring
bone of contention between school authorities and the Pakistani community.
Even more dramatic, of course are cross-gender friendships and crushes. Children
have not progressed very far into school before they show the first signs of having
sweethearts. How do these Norwegian children of Pakistani descent handle such
matters? Their parents are very troubled by the slightest suggestion or even thought of
such relationships, and there is bound to be difficulties. For the boys, control and
silencing set in. In the case of girls, real desperation may result, because any story
that circulated in the Pakistani community that their daughter has a Norwegian
boyfriend will greatly damage her reputation and reduce her value on the marriage
market among Pakistanis. Inevitably, the news even passes back to Pakistan and
prevents an arranged marriage for her there. What can the parents do? They certainly
do not allow the child a chance to reflect on the experience, to speak about it with

anyone and take it in and learn anything positive from it--instead they work to erase
it, stamp it out. If that tactic does not succeed, the girl may be sent to relatives in
pakistan, even in anticipation of the dangers rather than after the fact. Some girls,
born in Norway, fluent in Norwegian and mainstream culture, are sent "home" to
Pakistan to grandparents or an uncle they may never have met, given a one way ticket
only to discover they are not allowed to come back. The Norwegian consulate has been
involved in a few such cases, because the girls in question managed to get word to
them and tell their story. Yet, as on many other issues, Norwegian authorities have
tended to participate on the side of the parents, controlling and silencing on the basis
of their construction of the nature and meaning of cultural differences and ethnic
identity.
Thus we see a number of ways in which the potentially unfettered processes of
experience, learning, and interaction that would produce an unbounded and truly
continuous global field of variation in culture are counteracted by these specifically
social processes of controlling, silencing, and erasing. These social processes work
towards creating cultural discontinuities and a somewhat greater isomorphy between
the social with its divisions, and the cultural with its inconvenient tendency to overflow,
vary, and blur. The resulting disordered field of continuous variation and occasional
interruptions of discontinuities is further conceptually distorted by a myth of cultural
homogeneity and sharing, so it will provide a better charter and justification for the
construction of social identities and group memberships. A few select items of culture,
preferably organized as contrastive idioms, are then selected as icons of these
contrastive identities. That is how cultural variation is enrolled to serve as the basis for
the social phenomenon of ethnic groups. Ethnic group membership is constructed
without reference to the real diversity of culture, reaching right into the individual
family, but through an overdrawn myth of contrast and sharing respectively. This is
dramatized by a few select contrastive cultural emblems and some choice,
confrontational historical accounts of situations where groups (not "cultures") have
clashed and perpetrated injustices on each other.
We are all of us part of such stories and may have difficulties separating ourselves
from the convenient identities they deliver. But it is a striking fact that depending on
where we are and what society surrounds us, these stories will be different and the
nature of the ethnicity that results will be different. There do not seem to be any
identifiable primordial processes at work producing the same kind of ethnic groups in
different situations--rather, the particular circumstances under which ethnic identities
emerge vary so greatly that the results will be likewise variable. All the generalizations
so far advanced have proved simplistic and wrong.
Ethnicity and Political Entrepreneurs
The above argument was more about culture and cultural pluralism and some of the
social processes that shape ethnic sensibilities, and less about the issues of ethnicity
as they are constructed in contemporary media treating current conflicts. When one
speaks of ethnicity in the media or in much of the social sciences, the attention is
narrowly focused on the politization of this ground of cultural variation within certain
modern state structures, i.e. ethnic conflicts as they tend to arise today. To address
those issues, I need to add a further account of the processes whereby certain kinds of
leaders activate ethnic identities in collective political action. These contemporary
events are often talked about as "retribalization," imputing a historical perspective that
dismisses them as somehow archaic and anomalous. This is one of those plausible

falsehoods that David Maybury-Lewis mentioned in his seminar. I believe the

phenomenon has nothing to do with tribalism and pre-state political systems--on the
contrary, it is a response of people to a particular form of state organization and the
political opportunities it creates. Further, it is important to recognize that the dynamics
whereby political mobilization to conflict on an ethnic basis takes place are not the
expression of collective popular sentiments, but result from tactical moves made by
political entrepreneurs. Our ability to prevent and reverse such tragic perversions of
relations in culturally plural states depends on our ability to understand these
dynamics with some precision.
Crudely, I would say that the conflicts we see today are the work mainly of middle
echelon politicians who use the politics of cultural difference to further their ambitions
for leadership. This is tempting to them because in ethnic identities they see a
potential constituency, so to speak, waiting for them, and all they need to find is the
key to set the process in motion. Leaders seek these constituencies and mobilize them
by making select, contrastive cultural differences more salient, and preferably by
linking them to grievances and injustices, whether in the past or escalating in the
present. They mobilize such constituencies in dissatisfaction so that they can lead
them to a promised satisfaction. They engage in confrontational politics where, in fact,
the ethnic appeal of competing leaders or candidates is one that constantly aggravates
conflict and contrast, because once you are on this trajectory, the more you can prove
your own commitment by vociferous rhetoric, the more support and more authority
you can claim. Candidates emphasize the total unreasonableness of others, and the
constraints of the current situation to ensure the necessity that people join them so
they can lead their followers to the promised land. The emergence of such a wave of
ethnic mobilization also intensifies the processes of controlling, silencing and erasing
experiences, thus progressively producing their own preconditions. Persons with a rich
network of relationships and experiences that extend beyond the ethnic group are told
that these things are banned, valueless, or worse, that they must no longer be
allowed, that we must be strong and united to create the political force that is needed
for our particular objectives. These objectives are formulated by the entrepreneurs as
a package. People are not left free to choose and say "Yes, I want to activate my
ethnic identity for this purpose but not for that purpose. I will support you on this
policy, but not on that policy." Thus the collective process is one that dramatically
restricts the freedom of persons to act and to choose. Blocks with prepackaged
programs are created, and either/or choices imposed. People's diversity of life and
choices in their own private lives are reduced, and their conceptions of who they are
and what they might do are limited and cut back.
Our anthropological colleague Tone Bringa started working as an ethnographer in a
Bosnian town before the troubles started. In her town were mainly Muslims and Roman
Catholics. People of the town who were Roman Catholic could identify themselves as
Croat, but in fact they thought of themselves as local people of this local town, not as
part of Croatia. Bringa has seen the process whereby the politization and mobilization
of ethnic groups has invaded that local society. She has tried to map the processes
that have taken place there. It is one of those pathetic human stories of people in a
network straddling the Muslim/Roman Catholic boundary--a category-boundary that
entails differences in custom, difference of identity, but vast bodies of shared cultural
materials and a social network that tied people closely together. A number of
intermarriages used to take place, with patterns whereby people handled the fact that
boys and girls of different categories did fall in love with one another, and folk wisdom
on how to accommodate these links across fault lines. However, progressively the
political entrepreneurs mobilized them. They were drawn into situations where young

men were given no real choice and forced to join sides. Yet old women in the village
long continued to come together and give each other news of their respective sons and
husbands who were away in the hills killing each other. Living plural communities with
a rich capital of cultural pluralism and diversity were progressively destroyed.
It is worth emphasizing that this is a process that unfolds in response to and
interaction with the structure of a larger statehood and a larger international context of
institutions, not in their absence. Yet the ethnic mobilization that takes place in such
contexts is not necessarily one of nationalism. Quite often ethnic groups are mobilized
as factions to control the center in a multicultural state, or they may seek to survive on
the peripheries of such states. They may initially be designed as nationalist projects by
their entrepreneurs, and subsequently move to pursue other goals--or vice versa. In
either case, current tactics will reflect the particular opportunities and circumstances of
the state structure within which they take place. It is becoming obvious that such
ethnic mobilization takes place less readily in the more authoritarian states. It is no
coincidence that Tito's Yugoslavia was a more unified state than the post-Tito era,
when it falls apart. It is no coincidence that the Soviet Union held together when the
terror was strong. The scope for middle-level political entrepreneurs is much greater
where the competition for political leadership is more open and more decentralized.
That makes unorganized constituencies like ethnic identities more attractive, and their
mobilization more practicable.
On the other hand, state structures may also be directly based on ethnic groups. The
classical multiethnic and multicultural structure in Europe, of course, was the Ottoman
Empire, with its extraordinary organization of culture groups within a system of
division of labor encompassing the whole Empire. There were ethnic confrontations and
ethnic cleansings and exiles also in that structure, but we are beginning to see that
more democratic systems of government may provide a more open field for political
rivalries that can lead to ethnic movements and mobilizations. Obviously, what we call
democracies are not simple systems that directly express the popular will, they are
systems that are governed through particular instituted processes of populist appeal.
They provide an open field for political leadership and rivalry, and if there is this
ground of ethnic contrasts in identity to work with, somebody is bound to pick it up
and use it. Sometimes it leads to fateful escalation of contrasts between these political
constituencies that are emerging in relation to the control of the state, or it may lead
towards separatism.
Finally, let us reflect on the possibilities of nonviolent solutions in the face of ethnic
escalation. Recall the materials on Pakistanis in Norway. I want to remind you of the
constant processes that are at work in that situation: ongoing processes where bridges
are constantly being built, boundaries are weakened through experience and learning
that overflows, enhanced individual variation in culture, and networks that are made
more continuous. At the same time, the processes of controlling, silencing, and erasing
that counteract linkages and create discontinuity are also at work. If we want to deescalate a situation, I think this is the key understanding of dynamics which we must
bring to the task. The point is to attack the grounds on which ethnic mobilization and
separation take place--in other words, attack the myths of culture. We need to reduce
the saliency of people's awareness of these particular differences, and draw their
attention to all the other criss-crossing differences and the joint interests they have as
socially composite individuals. We want to create arenas, specifically for negotiations,
where one can work from common interests and move outward, where one allows the
processes that build bridges to be productive and assert themselves with less
constraint. This is the essence of Scandinavian collective bargaining in labor relations.

You don't start with opposed constituencies and try to bring them together. You start
with the common ground. You ask what the shared interests between the parties are.
Then you negotiate to expand that common ground. This is the opposite procedure
from that employed by the entrepreneurs when they mobilize ethnic groups. So if you
are dealing with an ethnic conflict, you do not create an arena that allows leaders to
speak narrowly as representatives of constituencies while relaying to those
constituencies what they are saying--that can only result in deadlock. You must define
the discourse so it is not about those boundary-marking distinctions, but about all the
other interests that cannot be structured along that single line of confrontation. That's
what Roed Larsen did in his secret mediation between Palestinians and Israelis that
broke the deadlock of negotiations. It is obviously too early to say that it was
successful, but there is still hope. If you compare it to the Bosnian negotiations, you
see a clear difference. The Bosnian negotiators are there with their counterpoised
symbols and positions and the negotiators try to bring them closer. That is the
opposite technique of what would be indicated by the dynamics of ethnicity that I have
tried to expose. Whatever shaky and limited recognized common ground there may be,
that will be where you should start, with a view to progressively expand it through
exploring shared concerns. Only in that way can the dichotomies of ethnic boundaries
be overcome, through attention to whole lives and continuous cultural variation
through the larger society

The epistemological status of the concept of ethnicity

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Conference paper, Amsterdam ("The Anthropology of Ethnicity"), December 1993.

Published in Anthropological Notebooks (Ljubljana, Slovenia) in 1996.

Introduction: The problem

It is widely held, by social scientists as well as by lay people, that the members of human
groups have an "innate" propensity to distinguish between insiders and outsiders, to
delineate social boundaries and to develop stereotypes about "the other" in order to sustain
and justify these boundaries. If this is indeed the case, ethnicity can be conceived of as
being nearly as universal a characteristic of humanity as gender and age - unlike
phenomena like nationhood and nationalism, which have been so conceptualised in the
academic community as to concern the modern world only (Anderson 1991, Gellner 1983).
Marx and Engels held, probably correctly, that sex, age and the insideroutsider distinction
were universal criteria of differentiation. If, on the other hand, ethnicity as we conceptualise
it can be shown to be a product of a particular kind of society, it can of course not be
regarded as an ahistorical and universal phenomenon.
The question to be explored in this paper, at this stage little more than a sketch, consists in
this ambiguity in the conceptualisation of ethnicity. Can it fruitfully be regarded as a
relational property of any social system, or should the concept rather be confined to a
specific kind of historical society, notably those defined as modern societies? In exploring
this question, I shall draw on selected theoretical and meta-theoretical contributions to the
analysis of ethnicity, beginning with Fredrik Barth's "Introduction" to his edited volume
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Barth 1969), which to my mind represents the clearest
defence of an ahistorical concept of ethnicity.
Defining concept or defined space?
While certain arguments in Barth's discussion may seem obsolete (such as the section on
ecology) and others were perhaps less original than they may have seemed at the time (cf.
e.g. the first chapter of Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma, Leach 1954, or
Mitchell's The Kalela Dance, Mitchell 1956), his article represented an important break
with a formerly widespread, essentialist view of ethnicity, and it therefore deserves its
prominent place in the history of anthropological ethnicity studies. Instead of highlighting

the concern with boundaries as a replacement for "cultural differences", which is the single
most influential idea in the article, I shall draw attention to the underlying epistemological
assumptions of the model.
The concept of ethnicity developed by Barth in his "Introduction" could roughly be labelled
a naturalist one. Although a main original contribution of his essay consisted in stressing
that ethnic identities are created from within and not by virtue of "objective" cultural
differences, thereby giving him the label "subjectivist" in some quarters, he also makes it
clear, if implicitly, that ethnic phenomena are endemic to humanity and not to any
particular kind of society. More specifically, Barth locates the emergence of ethnic
distinctions to differentiation within a society and the concomitant development of
divergent standards of evaluation and constraints on interaction (Barth 1969, pp. 17-18).
Disentangling the concept of ethnicity from concepts of race and culture, the main
epistemological contribution of Barth's article consisted, perhaps, in his refining and
relativising the concept of society seen as a natural phenomenon of cultural humans, while
not discarding it completely. He shows that societies may be poly-ethnic and thus contain
delineated and distinctive groups, that the boundaries of societies may be not only relative
but also "permeable" in the sense that people may permanently cross into another society
(i.e. another ethnic group), and finally, that the members of an ethnic group need not share
all the characteristics deemed as defining of the group (a polythetic "family resemblance" is
sufficient).
On the other hand, the actual status differentiation within a society (notably ethnicity as an
imperative status) is taken for granted in the greater part of the text and so is, by
implication, the social structure. The systems of relationships entailed by ethnicity in
various contexts are implicitly regarded by Barth as comparable, and in the final parts of his
essay (pp. 29ff.), he goes on to discuss contextual variations and their implications for
analysis. The actual boundary mechanism which defines ethnicity is, in other words, held
constant and is implicitly assumed to be context-independent. Ethnicity thus becomes, in
Barth's version, an important defining concept and thereby a formal comparative concept,
an analytical bridgehead not confined to any particular kind of society or historical era.
Barth's view is underpinned by the other contributions to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries
(cf. especially Haaland's, Izikowitz' and Knutsson's contributions), which largely deal with
interethnic relations in non-modern or non-industrial societies where ethnicity has yet to
become a mobilising force in mass politics.
The view of ethnicity presented in Abner Cohen's "essay on the anthropology of power and
symbolism" (Cohen 1974a), as well as in his important "Introduction" to his edited ASA
monograph on Urban Ethnicity (Cohen 1974b), differs from that of Barth in this regard.
Wheras Barth could be represented as a moderate realist, Cohen makes it clear that he is a
committed nominalist: to him, ethnicity is neither more nor less than a useful heuristic
concept tailored to make sense of particular, historically delineated processes such as
urbanisation in Africa. Cohen thus identifies ethnicity with the processes whereby "some
interest groups exploit parts of their traditional culture in order to articulate informal
organisational functions that are used in the struggle of these groups for power" (1974a, p.
91). A few pages on, he elaborates the notion by adding, among other things, that ethnicity
"involves a dynamic rearrangement of relations and of customs and is not the result of

cultural conservatism or continuity" (1974a, p. 97). In Cohen's analysis, ethnicity appears

as neither more nor less than a form of corporate traditionalism, and is as such confined to
modern circumstances - presumably presupposing institutional differentiation, literacy and
the state.
However, like Barth, Cohen also depends on ahistorical, formal, defining concepts. Unlike
Barth, who developed his boundary model partly to evade the pitfalls of structuralfunctionalism (cf. Barth 1966), Cohen embraces structural-functionalist explanation, using
it explicitly as a general comparative frame into which he puts, under certain historical and
political circumstances, the empirical phenomena classified as ethnicity. This logic is also
evident in Cohen's ethnographic analyses of Hausa in Ibadan and Creoles in Freetown. In
other words: Whereas ethnicity appears as a natural social phenomenon in Barth, it is
relegated to the status of an historical contingent phenomenon in Cohen - in other words, as
a part of the defined space; as a part of the society under scrutiny. A question to which we
shall have to return is, obviously, whether the two authors have the same phenomenon in
mind when talking about ethnicity.

Constructivism and historical accounts

Arnold Epstein's Ethos and Identity (Epstein 1978) marked a decisive shift in focus in the
social anthropological study of ethnicity. Whereas Barth and Cohen implicitly agree that
ethnicity is best seen as a kind of politics, Epstein calls attention to the identity dimension
of ethnicity rather than the political dimension, and draws heavily on social psychology,
notably Erik H. Erikson's work, in arguing that "we need to supplement conventional
sociological perspectives by paying greater attention to the nature of ethnic identity"
(Epstein 1978, p. 5). However, contrary to what one might fear from Epstein's
programmatic statement at the outset of his three studies, he does not leave "conventional
sociological perspectives" out. In a manner which resembles, probably not accidentally,
Victor Turner's analysis of the work of ritual symbols, Epstein combines a cognitivist
concern with symbolic meaning and a foundation in sociological analysis in what is one of
the most profound studies of ethnic identity to date. It is also clear that Epstein, like Cohen,
considers ethnicity largely as the creation of modernity. His cases, from the Copperbelt,
Melanesia and contemporary Jewish diaspora, indicate that the formation of ethnic
identities, and that socially organised and orchestrated communication of cultural
distinctiveness which constitutes ethnicity, belong to situations of rapid and uncontrollable
social change - in a word, the impact of the modern world. Epstein's social psychological
approach could be seen as complementary to Cohen's sociological view, in that it looks into
the non-utilitarian and nonfunctional aspects of individual meaning creation in the process
of ethnogenesis, but deals with essentially the same kind of social situation.
A fourth main position could be described as the social constructivist view. Drawing
inspiration from all three "classic" perspectives outlined, but defending a reflexive position,
representatives of this view more explicitly and frequently more viciously dissociate
ethnicity from "race" and "culture", often focusing on the ways in which ethnic identities
and boundaries are historically arbitrary and the constructs of members of an lite looking
for political power and/or material gain - or the construct of a dominating group seeking to

intimidate dominated groups by imposing ethnic labels on them. Each in their way, Eugeen
Roosens (1989) and the editors of the ASA monograph History and Ethnicity (Chapman et
al. 1989) represent such a strategy, which stresses the importance of the "native's point of
view" in the development of ethnic identities. Their views are perhaps truly "subjectivist"
(unlike Barth's, which combines subjective and objective factors) since they regard ethnic
groups as possible, but not necessary products of creative endeavours under particular
historical circumstances. In their view, culturalist explanations of ethnicity are as invalid as
racist explanations of social race, since ethnic identity formation involves the more or less
haphazard appropriation of and overcommunication of alleged cultural traits. The degree to
which societal factors are granted explanatory power within this exploratory matrix varies;
Benedict Anderson, for example, could clearly be seen as a constructivist, although he
insists on the necessity of objective, enabling technological forces for ethnic (or national)
identities to appear.
The final approach to ethnicity studies to be mentioned here, could be described as the
historical one. This view has emerged as a component of the general increased interest in
historical analysis in anthropology, which began when the Marxist and so-called neoMarxist currents were in fashion and which has continued up to this day. John and Jean
Comaroff, in Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Comaroff & Comaroff 1992),
make a clear statement of related positions when they state, in their engaging comparison of
ethnicity and totemism, that "contrary to the tendency to view it as a function of primordial
ties, ethnicity always has its genesis in specific historical forces, forces which are
simultaneously structural and cultural" (p. 50). The modern world renders values
comparable through monetarisation; it also renders cultural differences comparable and
thereby stimulates the emergence of ethnic groups - in Comaroff & Comaroff's words,
"ethnicity has its origins in the asymmetrical incorporation of structurally dissimilar
groupings into a single political economy" (p. 54). This kind of view is supported by
several other scholars, for instance in John Peel's important work from Nigeria (e.g. Peel
1989), where he argues, contra Abner Cohen, that although Yoruba ethnicity emerged
historically in response to social changes imposed by colonialism, it did emerge under
specific circumstances which included important cultural dimensions - and that Yoruba
ethnicity could not be accounted for satisfactorily without a consideration of cultural and
historical factors. This argument could well be directed against extreme social
constructivist positions as well as against Cohen's structural-functionalist explanation: Peel
shows that although ethnic identities may appear as inventions, they are certainly not
arbitrary inventions, and historical causation severely limits not only the range of options
for the intentional construction of identities, but also their form.
The map--territory problem
The discussion engaged in so far may seem to resemble former metatheoretical discussions
of the ethnicity concept; notably the old subjectivist--objectivist and primordialist-instrumentalist debates. However, these distinctions no longer seem to reflect the main
theoretical differences. The positions outlined could perhaps be described as naturalist
(Barth), structural-functionalist (Cohen), mentalist (Epstein), constructivist (Roosens,
Chapman et al.), and historicist (Comaroff, Peel), and could apparently be arranged on a
continuum from extreme subjectivism (the constructivist positions) to a moderate
objectivism (Comaroff). However, to be fair, all positions grant that ethnicity is contingent

on a combination of subjective and objective factors although the stress on either dimension
varies.
Regarding the issue of culture as a determining force in ethnicity vs. culture as reified
ideological fantasy, the most primordialistically inclined views are perhaps those of Epstein
and Barth, but all authors dealt with have distanced themselves from the Weberian idea that
ethnic identities are "natural" and could therefore be treated as independent variables.
When Barth is labelled a "naturalist", this is merely intended to call attention to his formal,
empirically empty model of ethnicity - his ethnicity concept is a defining one, but not an
agent of causation.
The debates on subjective vs. objective and primordial vs. instrumental thus seem to have
been transcended. The most pressing issue regarding the epistemological status of the
concept of ethnicity, in other words, seems to be the relationship between ethnicity as a
property of intergroup relationships tout court, and ethnicity as the product of a particular
kind of historical situation.
In order to disentangle different aspects of this question, it may be useful to look into the
actual conceptualisations. In other words: Do different analysts speak of the same thing
when they say "ethnicity"?
Levels of inquiry
The most fundamental fact of ethnicity, as investigated by anthropologists, is the
application of a systematic distinction between "we" and "the others". A mass of
anthropological work from the most diverse societies indicate that such distinctions are
indeed universal. Studies such as Middleton's of Lugbara witchcraft or Leach's of Kachin
society, indicate that the we--they distinction is a perennial feature of human groups. The
moment they come into contact with other groups, it seems, ethnicity appears. (With
hindsight, we may, perhaps, add: Ethnicity then appears at least in the eye of the beholder.)
Further, as Hirschfeld (1988) has argued, even very young children seem to be able
distinguish more or less spontaneously between "kinds" of people - in other words, humans
seem to be genetically predisposed for this kind of distinction. Epstein's view of ethnicity
resonates with this perspective on humanity. He regards the search for, and psychological
need for, a sound, secure and more or less bounded social identity as fundamental, and
connects this need - under particular historical circumstances - to the formation of ethnic
identities.
Are social identities, seen as contrastive labels and mutually exclusive classifications,
necessarily and always to be considered as ethnic ones? Do any other features of
relationship need to be present in order for a particular configuration to be labelled
"ethnic"? This seems to me to be the heart of the matter. The Comaroffs' reply is "yes", and
they classify e.g. the Nuer--Dinka relationship as a totemic one, not an interethnic one,
since it is the expression of a "different kind of consciousness" (1992, p. 55). Ethnicity
occurs when perceived cultural differences make a social difference; that much is granted.
A useful comparative definition nevertheless requires greater accuracy, and it might here be
noted that all of the analysts cited arrive at heuristically useful, although different
definitions.

The next, inevitable question must be: Which conceptualisation of ethnicity is the most
useful one in anthropological comparison? The empirically empty, formal concept
advocated by Barth gives us the option of very wide-ranging comparisons of ethnic
phenomena, as it theoretically includes Yanomam--Cholo, Norwegian--Sami, Fur-Baggara, Black British--White British relationships as well as many other relationships
which have little in common apart from the ongoing social reproduction of ethnic
boundaries. At least in the case of the Fur--Baggara relationship, modernisation did not
seem to have influenced it to any significant degree at the time of Haaland's (1969)
fieldwork (notwithstanding O'Brien's, 1986, historical analysis of Sudanese ethnogenesis).
The outcome of comparisons at this level of generality is limited to highly abstract findings
such as: Ethnicity implies both dichotomisation and complementarisation - both contrasting
and comparison (Eidheim 1969); individuals may cross ethnic boundaries without
disturbing their basic functioning (Haaland 1969); the relationship between culture and
ethnicity is not a one-to-one relationship (Blom 1969); and at an even more general level:
ethnicity entails making differences comparable. This kind of comparison, while it runs the
risk of comparing apples and pears, clearly has its value since it enables us to ask further,
more specific questions to our material. For example, the various interethnic situations may
be compared with regard to openness vs. closure, dominance vs. equity, and the correlation
between ethnicity and the division of labour.
What this conceptualisation of ethnicity does not promise, is a better understanding of the
emergence of particular ethnic identities and particular interethnic relationships. That,
however, can be achieved from research on particular societies; the point is that an allencompassing, formal concept of ethnicity may serve as a starting-point or a bridgehead for
the investigation of the unique features of a particular society (cf. Eriksen 1992:chaps. 1-2).
At this point, it could be objected that such a maneuvre entails a brutal and deeply
positivistic comparison of contexts which cannot meaningfully be compared - for example
individualistic and holistic societies, where "ethnicity" cannot exist in the same way. This
would probably have been Dumont's argument, had he engaged in this discussion:
elsewhere (e.g. Dumont 1983), he has criticised post-Tnniesian European social scientists
for presuming that the European logic of action and individualist metaphysics were
universal.
Modern reflexivity
In line with this reasoning, it has been argued that not only should ethnicity be seen largely
as a construct, but it is indeed, in many cases, the construct of the analyst (Fardon 1987,
Ardener 1989). Earlier, Aidan Southall (1976) has argued that the "Nuer" and "Dinka",
seen as ethnic groups, were more or less the constructs of Evans-Pritchard and Lienhardt,
respectively: neither people could conceivably define themselves as members of "peoples".
Fardon and Ardener argue what is essentially the same point with respect to two West
African peoples, the Chamba and Kole, respectively. Surely, Fardon concedes, the Chamba
invoked "us--them" distinctions in precolonial times, but these were more fluid, more

situational and overlapping, and on the whole less clear-cut than ethnic distinctions, where
a definite boundary is being drawn.
The history of nationalism may give clues as to the origin of the current anthropological
concept of the ethnic group. As a matter of fact, the concept of "tribe", as well as that of
"ethnic group", is conceptually close kin to the European concept of the nation as culturally
homogenous, united and sovereign. The very concept of the ethnic group thus appears as a
child of nationalism - in which case it may be of limited use in the study of non-modern
societies.
However, in Fardon's article at least, it turns out that the Chamba have eventually come to
regard themselves as an ethnic group in a way roughly reminiscent of the anthropological
conceptualisation of ethnic groups. As a matter of fact, they have partly picked up the
anthropological usage, partly been influenced by social processes transforming their society
into one where ethnic groups (in this sense) may come about - in a word, literate capitalist
state societies with a formal educational system. In an epistemologically and
methodologically confusing way, thus, so-called informants have in recent years
appropriated the concepts and analyses of anthropologists and have thereby turned these
concepts into empirical material or "data". The situation may be one of parameter collapse
(Ardener's apt term) where our concepts of culture and ethnicity, formerly defining
concepts par excellence, collapse into the defined space - rather than serving as conceptual
footholds, they become part of the social reality which needs to be accounted for.
This, evidently, is the kind of ethnicity Roosens talks of in his analyses of the Huron
indians and the Luba of Kasai (Roosens 1989). The Hurons, in particular, have selfconsciously fashioned "a culture" and a social identity which fits perfectly with the
contemporary view of minorities and minority politics, which enables them to pursue
political goals within the context of the Canadian state - and which owes a lot to
anthropological concepts and models. This option was not present to Haaland's Fur,
although it seems clear that they held ideological notions about their cultural distinctiveness
vis-a-vis the Baggara.
Ethnicity and diffusion
Studies such as Roosens' Creating Ethnicity indicate the fruitfulness of an historically
bound ethnicity concept. In this book, which presents a wide range of interethnic situations,
the author has tailored an ethnicity concept encompassing the sociopsychological and
reflexive dimensions of ethnicity as well as the political ones. Simultaneously, Roosens
argues that "among human beings, whatever their cultural tradition, a number of material
goods and values, whose production originated in Western society, are highly desirable". In
Roosens' analysis, ranging from the Hurons of Quebec to minorities in Belgium, ethnicity,
while it has not necessarily been directly diffused, appears as a kind of response to the
diffusion of certain vital dimensions of modernity.
A more explicitly diffusionist view is taken by Peter Worsley (1984), who remarks that it is
surely not without academic interest that Tamils in Sri Lanka, before the separatist Tamil
Eelam movement emerged, must have watched newsreels from the West Bank informing
them about the Palestinian struggle.

This perspective is, if adopted in comparative studies of ethnicity, not without

epistemological consequences. If we are to focus on ethnic self-consciousness as it is being
spread by mass media or migration, or as it is being developed through similar historical
processes in different societies, then the classical anthropological form of comparison
through "quasi-experiments" relating discrete and presumably isolated societies to each
other, must be discarded. In my view, it is clear that this method will have to go. In this
seamless world, it is no longer feasible to keep variables constant in the anthropological
quasi-experiment of comparison: there is too much distortion for this style of comparison to
be viable. Instead, a sensible strategy for comparison must trace out interconnections
between societies and account for their local expressions. These interconnections include
"objective" as well as "subjective" aspects, and ethnicity, whether studied as contrasting
identities or as political organisation, must in today's world be viewed in relation to
globalisation processes. This does not imply that ethnicity is "ontologically" merely a byproduct of capitalism, the state and modern mass media, but that its expressions are at least
today contingent on such parameters.
Such an historically bound concept of ethnicity enables us to compare modernities within a
larger conceptual framework, which I cannot present here (but cf. Eriksen 1993:ch. 8). A
few points can nevertheless be suggested, however briefly.
Edvard Hviding, a Melanesianist, has argued (1993) that the general tendency towards
cognatic kinship among Solomon Islanders has in recent years been challenged by a
concern with unilinear kinship, especially of the patrilineal kind. Hviding explains this as
an expression of political interests in achieving territorial rights and tight corporate
organisation at the clan level. This development is very similar to the development
described by Fardon (1987), in his study of Chamba ethnogenesis: it is contingent on
modernity, colonialism, literacy, private property, individualism and several other
parameters which, after their introduction, makes discrete contexts comparable along new
lines. In other words, an historical location of ethnicity as we know it may include
contextual variables as well as the naked facts of ethnic distinctions, and makes it possible
to compare empirical features of societies, not simply formal characteristics.
Concluding remarks
Instead of framing the question of the nature of ethnicity somewhere within or around the
familiar instrumentalist/primordialist dichotomy, I have chosen to discuss it as a concept.
For ethnicity is first and foremost a concept and not a natural phenomenon. As a concept it
exists at (at least) two levels, that of the analyst and that of the native. Is it possible - or
even desirable - to keep the two apart? If we do, it will retain its wide-ranging comparative
potential; if we do not, it will enable us to describe local contexts in a more experience-near
fashion than otherwise.
Ethnicity can be seen as a universal social phenomenon, and it can be seen as a modern
cultural construct. It can be conceptualised as a peculiar kind of informal political
organisation (Cohen), as an aspect of personal identity involving contrastive, mutually
exclusive labelling (Epstein), as the reflexive appropriation of a "cultural estate", history
and concomitant political rights (Roosens), as a product of colonialism and capitalism

(Comaroff, Fardon), or as a functional boundary mechanism separating endogamous groups

(Barth). If say, the reflexive, traditionalist self-identity aspect forms the focus of the
analysis, a narrow, historically bounded concept of ethnicity is called for. If, on the
contrary, the research aims at mapping out say, aspects of basic processes of interaction or
of social identity formation, then a more encompassing and formal conceptualisation is
needed. The question should not, therefore, be framed as "what is ethnicity", but rather as
"how can we most fruitfully conceptualise ethnicity?". I suspect that most controversies
over definitions stem from an inadequate distinction in this regard: from an implicit (or
explicit) concern with "essences" and a positivist innocence with regards to the ontological
status of our concepts. Most of them, in the social disciplines at least, have a fairly short
lifespan, and there is no reason to believe that the presently - still - useful concept of
ethnicity will still be with us in a few years. As I have insinuated, the boundary between
ethnicity as folk concept and as analytical tool is currently under stress - natives have their
own, anthropologically informed theories of ethnicity - and it seems that the concept,
hitherto a defining concept, is about to collapse, as Ardener would have put it, into a
defined space. Perhaps it is time to prepare ourselves to replace our ethnicity concepts with
terms like traditionalism, culturalism, politicised culture and informal political organisation
in an increasing number of cases. Such concepts will create a new defined space, possibly
one more beneficial to research. And possibly not.

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Thomas Hylland Eriksen 1993/1996
In his most famous book, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969), he focused
on the concern that boundaries are now a replacement for cultural
differences. He argued that ethnic groups are not groups formed on the
basis of a shared culture, but rather the formation of groups on the basis of
cultural differences . Barth states It is the everyday actions, choices,
situations and conditions in which each individual finds himself or herself,
and with which they choose to identify, which makes a difference in how
ethnic groups are made up. Barth also created a model on how to analyze
complex everyday situations by dividing them up by micro, median, and
macro levels with each model acting as a feedback mechanism on the other.
By connecting the levels he saw how a group has a sense of itself based on
how it interacts with others in the world community