Suchergebnisse

Recent writings on ethnicity emphasize changes involving group boundaries & conflict relationships. Ethnic groups often assimilate with other groups or differentiate themselves from groups of which they were formerly a part. As changes of this kind occur, cultural movements commonly emerge to foster or retard them. These movements range from literary, religious, & historical revivals to full scale "crisis cults." The form they take is related to the boundary change underway. If group members fear the drifting apart of subgroups, emphasis is often placed on myths of common origin. If, however, an ethnic group is being absorbed by another group, a common reaction is to stress the distinctiveness of group history & culture. Movements of the latter kind often result in political separatism & secessionist violence. Still other cultural revivals have their origins in anticolonial sentiment. Since the cultural content & the functionaries needed to propel such movements are to be found at the ethnic-group level, these movements also end by asserting ethnic distinctiveness. Anticolonial revival movements, as well as cultural movements that aim to rectify ethnic boundaries, thus contribute to conflict between ethnic groups. Modified HA.

The growing recognition of the importance of ethnic, racial, and religious groups in the politics of the new states has given rise to an urgent need for theory. Although this need extends to all aspects of group relations, the first priority is for systematic classification to reduce the bewildering array of descent-groups in the developing world to manageable proportions and comparable cases. With a view to facilitating comparative analysis, the aim of this paper is to make a modest beginning in the formulation of meaningful categories.