Information AboutEthnogenesis |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ETHNOGENESIS | |
| kinship and descent | |
| race | |
| ethnicity | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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PASSIVE ETHNOGENESIS Ethnogenesis can occur passively, in the accumulation of markers of group identity forged through interaction with the physical environment, cultural and religious divisions between sections of a society, migrations and other processes, for which ethnic subdivision is an unintended outcome. Religion The set of cultural markers that accompanies each of the major religions can amount to distinct ethnic identities, although the definition may be subject to change over time (for example, in 19th Century Europe it would be commonplace to conceive of Jews and Muslims as one 'ethnic' bloc, the Semites ). Powerful distinctions between - for example - Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim ethnicities arise on the basis of languages each religion historically favoured ( Latin , Hebrew , Sanskrit and Arabic respectively). The sources of religious differentiation are contested, among Sociologists and among Anthropologists as much as between the faith groups themselves. From sect to ethnicity The line between a well-defined religious Sect and a discrete ethnicity cannot be sharply defined. Sects which most observers would accept as constituting a separate ethnicity usually have, as a minimum, a firm set of rules censuring those who 'marry-out' or who fail to raise their children in the proper faith. Examples might include:
Geography Geographical factors can lead to both cultural and genetic isolation from wider human society. Groups which settle remote habitats and intermarry over generations will acquire distinctive cultural and genetic traits, evolving from the information brought with them and through interaction with their unique environmental circumstances. Ethnogenesis in these circumstances typically results in an identity which is less value-laden than one forged in contradistinction to competing populations. Particularly in Pastoral mountain peoples, social organization tends to hinge primarily on familial identification, not a wider Collective Identity . ACTIVE ETHNOGENESIS Ethnogenesis can occur actively, as persons deliberately and directly 'engineer' separate identities in order to solve a political problem - the preservation or imposition of certain cultural values, power relations, etc. Colonial policy The Roman Empire strategem of ''divide et impera'' or Divide And Rule has been used to a greater or lesser extent by each of the colonial powers that emerged in the modern period. Managing a territory from a distance places peculiar strains on the systems of legitimacy which arise more 'organically' within a polis. The British Empire proved especially adept at identifying and recruiting minority allies within subject peoples. The minority would receive special privileges, assisting the colonial power in its attempts to maintain rule, and would come to depend on that foreign rule for its own defence against the disadvantaged majority in its own country. Other European colonial powers, and Japan, deployed similar methods. The legacy of ethnic division arising from these externally-imposed power structures may still be felt in conflicts within, for example, Indian or Indonesian politics. Belgium, Rwanda and the Hutu/Tutsi divide A particularly stark example of ethnogenetic colonial policy occurred in Rwanda in the 1920s and 30s, under the League Of Nations protectorate granted to Belgium . Belgium allocated ethnic Identity Cards to Rwandans, institutionalizing a system of vicious ethnic discrimination. The minority Tutsi , mainly peasant farmers but including the existing monarchy and 'ruling class', were granted privileges denied to the majority Hutu . Belgium's exceptionally harsh colonial policing methods and politicization of what were previously existing ethnic lines created bitter divisions in Rwandan society. Domestic policy Societies challenged by the obsolesence of those narratives which previously afforded them coherence can fall back on ethnic or racial narratives, as a means to maintaining or reaffirming their collective identity, or polis. Aryan myth The idea of ethnic German identity and of a wider Aryan 'master race' can be seen in this context as an attempt to establish a narrative through which German power holders, suffering a crisis of legitimacy, could reassert their shared, collective identity with the wider German public, and describe a common ground from which their leadership could again legitimately flow. The task involved a reworking of contemporaneous scholarship on ancient human migrations; and a revival of interest in Germanic folklore and mythology. The Nazi appropriation of the Hindu Swastika is emblematic of this type of work of ethnic reinvention. Milošević and ethnic identity With the demise of the Soviet bloc at the end of the 1980s, Yugoslavia 's main collective identity, as a non-aligned socialist nation, began to unravel. Politicians within the various federated states fell back on ethnic narratives to cohere their fragmenting power bases. Slobodan Milošević rose to federal power on the strength of his vision of a Serbian ethnic identity, while equivalent voices in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina struggled to reach above their territorially limited 'ethnic' constituencies. Language revival Language is a critical asset for authenticating ethnic identities. The process of reviving an antique ethnic identity often poses an immediate language challenge, as obsolete languages will lack expressions for contemporary experiences. In Europe in the 1990s, proponents of ethnic revivals from the Celt ic fringes in Wales and the Basque country. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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