Original scientific paper
Difficulties in Theories Pertaining to the Ethnos, Nation and the Problem of Identity
Ivan Urbančič
; Institute of Sociology, Edvard Kardelj University, Ljubljana Slovenia
Abstract
The planetary universalization of existence in its postmodern form has resulted in the loss of human identity. Thus it is not strange that this loss has been supple¬mented by the search for the roots of sociability. The author, conceiving ethnic identity as the dominant historic integrative form of social communities, analyzes conceptions of such forms in ethnology and notes that this discipline does not have an established idea of ethnicity. Reviewing the notions of certain Yugoslav and Soviet authors, he shows that the ethnos is not defined by characteristics which could establish it as a social, formative, epoch-making form, and therefore it is not possible to consistently diferentiate it from the notions of people and nation Mentioning a non-Marxist theory – Ibn Khaldun's umma – the author poses the question of how ethnicity, despite all, manages to revitalise itself even in industrial societies. He finds the answer in that tehnicity needs not be a characteristic pertaining only to little differentiated societies. It follows that each contemporary, actively integrated nation is also an ethnos. The essential question of how such a co-existence is possible in modern societies finds an answer in the auto-rejerenciallity and autopoesis of dynamic, living human communities. Ethnicity and identity form a ONE (tó hén), which is the “force” that unites, binds and individualises. Thus it is the source and not the effect of community.
Keywords
identity; ethnic identity; ethnicity
Hrčak ID:
128050
URI
Publication date:
29.9.1989.
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