Original scientific paper
ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNICITY
Vedrana Spajić-Vrkaš
; Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb
Abstract
The paper discusses the relationship of social reality, social visions
and anthropological constructions of ethnicity in the
western theoretical tradition. By analyzing changes in terminology,
the persistence of dual theoretical paradigms and differences
between the American and Western European approaches to ethnicity,
it argues that anthropological constructions of ethnicity
serve as functions of western self-interpretation and its interpretation
of the "other". Accepting the view that western democratic
tradition has developed as a process of recognition of relations
between individual rights/freedoms and authority, in which anthropology
and other social sciences have served greatly by offering
modes of recognition and change, it is stated in the paper
that both failed in recognizing the same relation in the context of
the "other". Arguments are found in the anthropological tendency
to name and define the "other" in terms of "tribe", "race", "ethnicity"
and "nationalism", while at the same time ignoring questions of
(national) identities of the western countries, probably under a
tricky presumption of equity between western social visions and
their social reality.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
32136
URI
Publication date:
1.3.1996.
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