Ethnicity

ethnicity encompasses ascriptive groups whose members in the groups are typically assigned at birth and is difficult to change.
an ethnic group share
- a common name
- a believed common descent
- elements of a shared culture (or religion)
- common historical memories
- Most often language
Different views on ethnic identity
1. Primordial
  - Go hundreds/thousands years back: ancient hatred
    - Only solution: to divide society on ethnic lines
  - Unchangeable: stories and hatred passed down from older generations
  - Nested/overlapping identities
2. Instrumental
  - Identities can change based on context or what happens
  - Can be used as an instrument to get to a goal of unity, strength, uniqueness, patriotism
    - Creation of artificial differentiation between ethnicities of ‘us against them’
Ethnic identity is socially constructed
- People create their identities
- E.g. even racial distinctions are just a matter of custom
  - ‘invented traditions’: a myth-symbol complex’
  - Creates the ‘accepted’ history and ‘mythicize’ real history, taking real events but redefining them as the morally defining experiences of their people.
  - E.g. Serbs in Kosovo
- How can we tell?
- A conflict is ethnic only if the sides involved are distinguished primarily on the basis of ethnicity

Problems