 The idea of what is the possible truth or real of ethnicity is bound up with political

concerns and normative judgments or the correct way of doing something that requires
a genealogical approach which means that it is through kinship.
 The traditional views range from primordialism to instrumentalism.
 The primordialist perceived contemporary forms of ethnic expression as a recurrence of
older, (sometimes biological) relations.
 Primordialism is essentialist where it disregards the complexity of the historical conditions
under which ethnicity becomes significant over-states the internal homogeneity of ethnic
identities.
 The instrumentalist perceived ethnicity as a resource for different interest groups.
 The instrumentalist is nominalist where it suggests that the ethnic identification is
important only as far as it is based on more material phenomena.
 Constructivism is the third main position of ethnicity that highlighted the historical and
political processes by which it is formed and positioning it about other identities such as
racial, sexual, national, or gendered.
 Norval argues for a materialistic poststructuralist theory against linguistic monism which
suggests that “the body” is important.

I. ETHNICITIES: Old and New

 A return should be approached not to remember its origins but, to remind ourselves
about the theorization of ethnicity, multiculturalism, and the emphasis on a politics of
identity present in our contemporary world that has long trajectories.
 With an attempt to reconstruct its trajectory it should take a genealogical form. To
reconstruct, it requires investigation of the structural, historical, and academic contexts
of emergence and surfaces in which it has been inscribed, as well as the full critical
assessment of the achievements and failures of politics and theories of ethnicity.
 According to Geertz, traditional views from primordialism to instrumentalism can be
situated in continuum views from ethnic identity stems from the givens of social existence
 (blood, speech or custom) which have an ineffable coerciveness in and of themselves, to
a view that ethnic identity is nothing, but a mask deployed strategically to advance group
interests that are often economic in character.
 Anthony D. Smith is one of the most prolific commentators on nationalism and ethnicity.
He treats the contemporary forms of ethnic identification as nothing but a rebirth of more
primordial identifications associated with “ethnies.”
 For Van den Berghe, ethnicity can be understood by kinship relations. Moreover, ethnicity
is a manifestation of nepotism between kin that has a genetic basis.
 Instrumentalist approach treats ethnicity as a resource for different interest groups.
 The analytical emphasis uncovers the processes through which elites mobilize groups to
further their self-interest.
 Ethnicity for Instrumentalism from the work of Barth is essentially flexible and open to
elite manipulation. Furthermore, ethnicity is viewed as an instrument to allow
mobilization around the interest that are grounded in social class.
 In the Rational Choice approach, similar happened where ethnicity is analyzed from the
perspective of rational actors who choose to join groups to secure specific individual ends.

Three diverging positions on ethnicity:

1. Ethnicity is treated as natural, as a given and as a nodal point around which identity is
organized.
2. Ethnicity is not accorded any reality of its own.
3. Both the primordialist or essentialist and the instrumentalist or nominalist have come
under fire from constructivism.
 Different forms of constructivism or contextualism: inter alia.
 The pluralization has shifted attention towards other forms of identification (racial,
sexual, national or gendered) to a preoccupation with the question of difference.
II. From Identity to Identification

 Reordering the discrepancy has been made by a theorization of the imaginary constitution
of society.
 Objectivity is nothing but that which is socially constituted has become sedimented over
time. Hence, any sedimented practice may be put into question by political contestation.
 Once the historically constituted character is revealed, it loses its naturalized status as
“objectively given.”
 Once the objectivity of identity is questioned, and a purely subjectivist account of ethnic
identity is problematized, the way is open to advance a hypothetical account of ethnic
identification.
 According to Ashmed (1997), when we can no longer assume that the subject has an
identity in the form of a suitably defined place of belonging, the required is an analysis of
the process and structures of identification where identities come to be seen as such
place of belonging.

III. Different Forms of Constructivism: From Linguistic Monism to Poststructuralism

 Constructivism positions may take many forms from linguistic monism where linguistic
construction is taken to be generative and deterministic through instrumentalist
accounts.

3 Difficulties arising from linguistic monism:

1. If the act of construction is understood as a purely verbal act.

2. As with instrumentalist accounts.
3. That both of these positions fail to account for the force of ethnic identification by treating
it either as a matter of individual choice or as a matter of elite manipulation.
 To outline an alternative: Poststructuralist explanation to constructivism
 It is necessary to identify what main features such a position would have to contain. And
it has to break with the view of ethnic identity as either imposed or simply subjective.
  Therefore, it must contain a reasonable interpretation of materiality and its role in the
production of images for identification.

IV. Radicalized Identities: The Question of Materiality

 Physical Appearance should be considered as only one possible marker of boundaries

(Wallman 1978) and Ericksen (1993)
 There are two areas, in particular, have to be addressed if a constructivist analytic is to be
deepened in a poststructuralist direction which emphasizes the need to avoid pure
contextualism.
 Thus, socially inscribed identities direct attention to the historical, social and political
process through which images for identification are constructed and sustained, contested
and negotiated.

V. Hybrid Ethnicities: Rethinking Pluralism

 The Problems of reductionisms occurs not only where ethnicity is reduced to other modes
of identification based, for instance, upon class but also where there is an over-
concentration on the presumed homogeneity of ethnic identities.
 Contemporary postcolonial theories of identity are explicitly situated within the context
of contemporary concerns withy diaspora, displacement and the politics of politics of
cultural difference

GUIDE:
Theorization of ethnicity: bound up with political concerns and normative judgments so that it
requires a genealogical approach.
Traditional views: range from primordialism to instrumentalism

Primordialist: See contemporary forms of ethnic expression as a reactivation of older, (sometimes

biological) relations.
Primordialism is essentialist.
- it ignores the complexity of the historical conditions
- under which ethnicity becomes significant
- over-states the internal homogeneity of ethnic identities

Instrumentalist: see ethnicity as a resource for different interest groups.

Instrumentalist is nominalist.
-- suggests that ethnic identification is important only as far as it is based on more material
phenomena.

3rd position: constructivism

- emphasized the historical and political processes by which it is formed and situating it in relation
to other identities: racial, sexual, national, or gendered.

Range of constructivist positions:

Norval argues for a materialistic poststructuralist theory against linguistic monism.
- suggests that “the body” is important.
- but that markers of race and ethnicity are historical, social, and political rather than natural.

- she discusses hybridity and postcolonial theories of identity concerned with: diaspora,
displacement, and the politics of cultural difference.
Pluralism: must be radicalized to democratize potentially exclusionary identities.

Glazer and Moyniban 1975: The new word reflects a new reality. (Ethnicity)

- Ethnic groups from minority and marginal subgroups to major elements of the
society.

Hall 1992: There is a need to retheorize the concept of difference to pursue the
movement of the new politics of representation on ideological contestation in the term “ethnicity”.

ETHNICITIES: Old and New

- first alerted to us the presence of ethnicity as a novel form of identification.

- return should be approached not in a sense to rediscover its origins but, to remind ourselves about
the theorization of ethnicity, multiculturalism, and the emphasis on a politics of identity present in
our contemporary world that has long trajectories.

- it is important to note that the history of theorization of ethnicity is not a progressive and
increasing one.
- it is intimately bond up with political concerns and normative judgments.
- any attempt to reconstruct its trajectory should take a genealogical form.

- not possible to achieve anything approaching a full account of the complex genealogy of the uses
and abuses of the term “ethnicity”.

- to reconstruct, it requires investigation of the structural, historical, and academic contexts of

emergence and surfaces in which it has been inscribed, as well as the full critical assessment of the
achievements and failures of politics and theories of ethnicity.
- useful to remind ourselves of some main outlines and features of this trajectory.

OBJECTIVES:
1. Trace out the movement from primordialist and instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity to
a more engagement with questions of difference.
2. Give particular attention to the contribution of accounts of difference
a. Drawing on poststructuralist and postcolonialist theorizations.
i. Treats ethnicity as one amongst many possible forms of identification.
b. Aimed to supplement the two approaches with a consideration of the politics of
difference, and its implications for the treatment of ethnicity.

- Traditional debates on ethnic identity can be situated in a continuum views (primordialism to

instrumentalism).

Geertz - from views that ethnic identity stems from the givens of social existence (blood, speech
or custom) which have an ineffable coerciveness in and of themselves

- to a view that ethnic identity is nothing, but a mask deployed strategically to

advance group interests that are often economic in character.

Primordialist thesis (Shils elaborated by Geertz)- remains quite influential in discussions of

ethnicity.
Anthony D. Smith: one of the most prolific commentators on nationalism and ethnicity
 - treats the contemporary forms of ethnic identification as nothing but a
rebirth of more primordial identifications associated with “ethnies.”
- retains the emphasis on the lasting, and even premodern character of ethnicity.
Van den Berghe: ethnicity can be understood on the basis of kinship relations.
- a manifestation of nepotism between kin that has a genetic basis.
Ethnicity- always involves the cultural and genetic boundaries of a breeding population.

Primordialist approaches have been criticized for failing account for change, for working with
overly static conceptions of ethnicity, and for naturalizing ethnic groups.
Instrumentalist approach treats ethnicity as a resource for different interest groups.

Analytical emphasis: uncovers the processes through which elites mobilize groups to further their
own self-interest.

Instrumentalism (from the work of Barth): ethnicity- essentially flexible and open to elite
manipulation.

Primordialism and Instrumentalism is not a homogenous category (not a same category).

- encompasses both neo-Marxist and rational choice approaches.

Instrumentalism - Ethnicity: viewed as an instrument to allow mobilization around

interest that are grounded in social class.

Rational Choice approaches- similar happened where ethnicity is analyzed from the perspective of
rational actors who choose to join groups to secure specific individual ends.
- Both of these types of analysis failed to treat ethnic identification as worthy of analysis of itself.

- As a consequence, identity and identification are reduced to a level of analysis which is deemed
to be more fundamental and politically more significant than ethnic identity itself.
- It is useful to concentrate on the question of the “reality” of ethnicity.

Three diverging positions on ethnicity:

1. Ethnicity is treated as natural, as a given and as a nodal point around which identity is
organized.
Nodal point ahistorical value: core of identity regardless of historical concept.
- acts as an indicator of a homogeneous group identity.
- politically, socially, and culturally salient regardless of the specific context.
- the essentialism is evident in primordialist approaches to ethnicity.
- the main problems in treating the ethnicity in an essentialist fashion:

a. denying the complexity of both the specific historical circumstances under which
ethnicity comes to be a significant phenomenon.
b. the lack of internal similarity of ethnic identities.

2. Ethnicity is not accorded any reality of its own.

- merely a marker for deeper, more significant social divisions.
- marker is manipulable since it is something epiphenomenal.
- the nominalism about ethnicity is characteristic particularly of instrumentalist approaches.

- suffers from a reductionism that naively suggests that the force of ethnic forms of identification
arise entirely from external inducement.

- were we to understand the process properly, there would be nothing of significance left to engage
with: ethnicity will simply dissolve.
3. Both the primordialist/essentialist and the instrumentalist/nominalist have come under the fire
from constructivism.
- different forms of constructivism or contextualism: inter alia.

Inter alia: attentive to the complexities of processes of identity formation and to the hybridity of
identities. While not ignoring the political significance of the ethnic groups of identification.

In other words:
a. there is a shift away from the assumption of the ahistorical and given nature of ethnic
identity. Emphasis on the analysis of the historical and political processes and practices through
which it comes into being.

b. there is a break with the assumption that ethnicity is in and of itself. The core
organizing feature of identity.

- the pluralization has shifted attention towards other forms of identification (racial, sexual,
national or gendered) to a preoccupation with question of difference.
 From Identity to Identification
Former: “purely personal”
Latter: “given”

- needs a rethinking of the relation between subjective and the objective. To facilitate the
engagement with social and political processes shaping ethnic forms of identification.

- reorganizing the distinction has been made by a theorization of the imaginary constitution of
society.

far from “given”, Objectivity- nothing but that which is socially constituted, has become
sedimented over time.
- attributed to any sedimented social practice or identity.
- might open the space of desedimentation.
- any sedimented practice may be put into question by political contestation.

- once its historically constituted character is revealed, it loses its naturalized status as
“objectively given.”
- once the giveness and objectivity of identity is questioned, and a purely subjectivist account of
ethnic identity is problematized, the way is open to develop a theoretical account of ethnic
identification.

Ashmed (1997): when we can no longer assume that the subject has an identity in a form of a
properly defined place of belonging, the required is an analysis of the process and structures of
identification where identities come to be seen as such place of belonging.

Different Forms of Constructivism: From Linguistic Monism to Poststructuralism

- Constructivism positions may take many forms from linguistic monism where linguistic
construction is taken to be generative and deterministic through instrumentalist accounts.

Difficulties arising from linguistic monism:

1. if the act of construction is understood as a purely verbal act.
- it is unclear how such an act would be linked to the materially real
 - because, ethnic markers place certain limitations on what could be “constructed”
verbally.
2. as with instrumentalist accounts
- construction is still understood as a unilateral process initiated from above

- reinforcing a top-down view of the production of ethnic identity which leaves little
space for human agency and resistance.

3. both of these positions fail to account for the force of ethnic identification by treating it either
as a matter of individual choice, or as a matter of elite manipulation.

- Alternative: Poststructuralist explanation to constructivism

- It is necessary to identify what main features such a position would have
to contain.

- it has to break with the view of ethnic identity as either imposed or

merely subjective.
- it must provide us with an account of the subject and of identification.

- it must be able to address the complexity and hybridity of identities, while avoiding linguistic
determinism.

- Therefore, it must contain a plausible interpretation of materiality and its role in the production
of images for identification.

- The latter is important if one is to accommodate the force of radicalized identities without
giving way to the spuriousness of a sociobiological approach.