1/31/2021

Defense University
Resource Management College

Anthropology
for First year students
Abridged by: Fithatsidk Taddese

Unit 5

Identity, Inter-Ethnic Relations and

Multiculturalism in Ethiopia

5. Identity, Inter-Ethnic Relations and Multiculturalism in

Ethiopia
• 5.1. Identity, Ethnicity and Race: Identification and Social
Categorization

• 5.2. Conceptualizing Ethnicity –What’s it?

• 5.3. Ethnic Groups and Ethnic Identity

• 5.4. Race –The Social Construction of Racial Identity

• 5.5. Theories of Ethnicity:

Primordialism, Instrumentalism and Social Constructivism

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5.1. Identity, Ethnicity and Race: Identification and Social

Categorization
Whatever reality can be attributed to groups depends on people
thinking that groups exist and that they belong to them.
Identity depends on processes of identification and does not
determine, in any mechanistic/ causal sense, what individuals do.
How people talk and think about their own group as well as other
groups, and how particular world-views are being maintained or
contested.
By exploring the differences and similarities between ethnic
phenomena, thereby provides a nuanced and complex vision of
ethnicity, process of ethnic and other identity constructions and
group categorization in the contemporary world.

5.1.1. Ethnicity: What’s in a name?

After WWII, words like “ethnicity”, “ethnic groups” “ethnic conflict” and
“nationalism” have become common here and there.
Starting from 1980s, in scholarly publications on ethnicity, ethnic
phenomenon and nationalism across different disciplines, within social
sciences.
On the contrary, ethnicity and nationalism have grown in political
importance in the world, particularly since WWII.
Thirty-five of the 37 major conflicts in 1991 were ethnic conflicts.
In addition to violent ethnic movements, there are also many important
non-violent ethnic movements, like the Québec independence
movement.
Nation-building - the creation of political cohesion and national identity
in former colonies - is high on the political agenda.

5.1.1. Ethnicity: What’s in a name?

Ethnic and national identities also become strongly appropriate
following the influx of labour migrants and refugees to Europe and
North America.
Indigenous people have organized politically for identity and territory.
Finally, the political turbulence in Europe has moved issues of ethnic
and national identities to the forefront of political life.
The former USSR has split into over a dozen ethnically based states.
Many people fear the loss of their national or ethnic identity as a
result of a tight European integration, whereas others consider the
possibilities for a pan-European identity to replace the ethnic and
national ones.
In Ethiopia, issue of ethnicity and identity are contested and ethnicity
has become the official organizing principle of the state since 1991.

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5.1.2. Ethnicity - A Short Historical Overview

The study of ethnicity and ethnic relations has in recent years
come to play a central role, to a large extent replacing class
structure and class conflict as a central focus of attention.
This has occurred on an interdisciplinary basis involving social
anthropology, sociology, political theory, political philosophy
and history.
In this regard, the academic and popular use of the term
‘ethnicity’ is fairly, modern.
The term “ethnicity” is relatively new, first appearing in the
Oxford English Dictionary in 1953.

5.1.3. The term itself –Ethnicity

The English origin of the term ‘ethnicity’ is connected to the term “ethnic,”
which is much older and has been in use since the Middle Ages.
The word is derived from Greek term ‘ethnos’ and Latin ‘ethnikos’, which
literally means “a group of people bound together by the same manners,
customs or other distinctive features”.
In the context of ancient Greek, the term refers to a collectivity of humans
lived and acted together, which is typically translated today as ‘people’ or
‘nation’ (group of people with shared communality).
Contrary to its literal meaning however, ancient Greeks were using the
term ‘ethnos’ in practice to refer to non-Hellenic.
In England it used to refer to someone who was not Christian/Jewish.
After the end of WWII the term widely adopted and begins to use.
Before WWII, while the term “tribe” was the term of choice for “pre-
modern” societies and the term “race” was used to refer modern societies.

5.1.3. The term itself –Ethnicity

Due to the close link between the term “race” and Nazi ideology, the term
“ethnic” gradually replaced “race”.
The North American tradition adopted ‘ethnic’ for minority groups within a
larger society of the nation-state beyond British.
In Europe and North America, ethnicity and race are largely preserved (in
its quasi-biological sense) and been used interchangeably.
They added a new definition of ethnicity as an immigrant minority.
The term ‘ethnic’ perverted into for tribal, primitive, barbaric and backward.
Ethnicity often refers again to noncitizens or second-class people.
What is obvious from this short history of the term is the fact that
‘ethnicity’ contains a multiplicity of meanings.
Such a plasticity and ambiguity of the concept allows for deep
misunderstandings as well as political misuses.

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5.2. Conceptualizing Ethnicity - What’s it?

Most scholars who uses “ethnicity” find definition either unnecessary or
they are reluctant to provide general framework for the concept.
An ethnic group is a particular form of status group.
Members of an ethnic group share certain beliefs, values, habits customs
and norms, and they define themselves as different and special because of
cultural features.
Cultural difference was traditionally explained from the inside out:
(language, lifestyle, descent, religion, physical markers, history, eating
habits, etc.).
Ethnicity from the outside in: it is the social interaction with other groups
that makes that difference possible, visible and socially meaningful.
The critical focus of investigation from this point of view becomes the
ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it
encloses’.

5.3. Ethnic Groups and Ethnic Identity

Ethnic Group
The term ‘ethnic group’ is also attached with meanings like ethnicity.
An ‘ethnic group’ is based on the belief in common descent shared by its
members, extending beyond kinship, political solidarity vis-a-vis other
groups, and customs, language, religion, values, morality, etiquette…
Ethnic groups as an imagined community has a “character and quality”.
A self-defined group based on subjective factors and/or fundamental
cultural values chosen by members from their past history or present
existing conditions in which members are aware of-and-in contact with
other ethnic groups.
Ethnic groups constitute an identity as defined by outsiders who do not
belong to the group but identify it as different from their own groups and
by “insiders” who belong to the same group.

5.3. Ethnic Groups and Ethnic Identity

Ethnic Identity
The fact that there is no widely agreed definition of ethnic identity.
Ethnic identity is an affiliative construct, where an individual is viewed by
himself and by others as belonging to a particular ethnic or cultural group.
An individual can choose to associate with a group especially if other
choices are available (i.e., the person is of mixed ethnic or racial heritage).
Racial factors involve the use of physiognomic and physical characteristics,
natal factors refer to "homeland", their parents and kin, and symbolic
factors include those factors that typify or exemplify an ethnic group.
Symbolic ethnic identity usually implies that individuals choose their
identity, however, to some extent the cultural elements of the ethnic or
racial group have a modest influence on their behaviour.
Ethnic origin is a person has been socialized in an ethnic group or that his
or her ancestors, real or symbolic, have been members of the group.

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5.4. Race - The Social Construction of Racial Identity

Racial Classification: A Short Historical Overview
For some time, it was common to divide humanity into four main races,
which recognized both on the scientific and folk notions of the concept.
In this regard, race was used both as a system of human classification
and social stratification as follows:
a. Europeaeus: White; muscular; hair – long, flowing; eyes blue – Acute,
inventive, gentle, and governed by laws.
b. Americanus: Reddish; erect; hair – black, straight, thick; wide nostrils –
Obstinate, merry, free, and regulated by custom.
c. Asiaticus: Sallow (yellow); hair black; eyes dark – Haughty, avaricious,
severe, and ruled by opinions.
d. Africanus: Black; hair –black, frizzled; skin silky; nose flat; lips tumid –
crafty, indolent, negligent, and governed by caprice or the will of their
masters.

5.5. Theories of Ethnicity: Primordialism, Instrumentalism

and Social Constructivism
Perspective Description
Primordialist
Approach Ethnicity is fixed at birth. Ethnic identification is based on
deep, ‘primordial’ attachments to a group or culture

Ethnicity, based on people’s “historical” and “symbolic”

Instrumentalist memory, is something created and used and exploited by
Approach leaders and others in the pragmatic pursuit of their own
interests.
Constructivist Ethnic identity is not something people “possess” but
Approach something they “construct” in specific social and historical
contexts to further their own interests.
It is therefore fluid and subjective.

5.5. Theories of Ethnicity: Primordialism, Instrumentalism

and Social Constructivism
The Primordialist,
are the dominant theoretical approaches in anthropology
Instrumentalist and envisaged to understand the nature and characteristics
Constructivist of ethnicity, ethnic identity and ethnic interaction.

These changes are related to the twin forces of modernity and

globalization.
Globalization started as an economic phenomenon and end up as a
phenomenon of identity.
Traditional ways people defined who they were have been undermined.
Modernity has, remade life in such a way that “the past is stripped away,
place loses its significance, community loses its hold, objective moral
norms vanish, and what remains is simply the self.”

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5.5.1. The Primordial Model of Ethnicity

Primordialism is an “objectivist/ essentialist theory” which argues, that
ultimately there is some real, tangible, foundation for ethnic identification.
He is also concerned with the terms in which attachments are understood
and mobilized locally; with what people believe.
At birth a person “becomes” a member of a particular group.
Ethnic identification is based on deep, ‘primordial’ attachments to that
group, established by kinship and descent.
One’s ethnicity is “fixed” and an unchangeable part of one’s identity.
‘Primordialism’ makes two distinct claims:
First, ethnicity and ethnic attachment is “natural and innate”, which
would never change over time, and second, it is “ancient and perennial”.
By this, ethnicity is an ascribed status and ethnic membership is fixed,
permanent and primarily ascribed through birth.

5.5.2. Instrumentalist (Situational) Theory of Ethnicity

Ethnicity is something that can be changed, constructed or even
manipulated to gain specific political and/or economic ends.
Proponents of this perspective advocate that in the contexts of modern
states, leaders use and manipulate perceptions of ethnic identity to
further their own ends and stay in power.
• Ethnic groups share common interests, and in pursuit of these interests
they develop “basic organizational functions: such as distinctiveness or
boundaries (ethnic identity); communication; authority structure; decision
making procedure; ideology; and socialization”.
• A more moderate view is that there is indeed a cultural content in an
ethnic community, but that the boundaries of the group, which has that
culture, depend upon the purpose in hand.
• The pursuit of political advantage and/or material self-interest is the
calculus, which is typically, held to inform such behaviour.

5.5.3. Social Constructivist Theory of Ethnicity

The basic notion in this approach is that ethnicity is something that is
being negotiated and constructed in everyday living.
It regards ethnicity as a process, which continues to unfold.
It has much to do with the demands of everyday survival (ethnicity is
constructed in the process of feeding, clothing, sending to school and
conversing with children and others).
• Depending on each social interaction, a person’s ethnic identity can be
perceived or presented in various ways.
• Cultural traits and even individuals can cross over ethnic boundaries,
which in turn can transform an ethnic group over time.
• Constructivists conceive ethnicity as situational, flexible and variable
dealing with inter-personal ethnicity.
• Ethnicity is dynamic that changes through time and space; and ethnic
identities are constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed.

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End of Unit 5

Before you open Unit 6,

attempt the exercises first.

Assignment for Unit 5

Elaborate the following:
1. “The former USSR has split into over a dozen ethnically
based states”. Write down the name of these countries.
2. Differentiate ethnic groups from ethnic identity
3. Define social construction of racial identity
4. Verify theories of ethnicity