Original scientific paper

Ethnicity and Class: Perpectives on Correspondence and Divergence

Vjeran Katunarić ; Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb

Abstract

Development of class societies is always influenced by the dynamics of intra-ethnical relations. The most important factors determining the position and development of ethnic groups within a society is the degree of correspondence between ethnic and class affiliations. That correspondence was first reduced in Western societies, relating to the relatively rapid disappearance of castehood societies. The mutual independence of criteria for ethnical and class affiliation can generally be taken for one of the indicators denoting the degree of democratization of a society.
The tendency of dispersion of ethnicity and intra-ethnical permeating is a prominent social process in multi-ethnical societies. Such a tendency has emerged several times in the American history, in the form of an optimistic ideology of social integration. In the latest version, the tendency of ethnic affiliation has been ascribed primary importance. Ethnicity is becoming the main way of group integration of individuals in the society, and the ideology of »melting pot« has thus been abandoned. However, in both versions ethnicity has the same function, and that is to make class affiliation become of secondary or no importance. In that context, a critical estimate of results of a comprehensive research project on the contemporary status of ethnicity in the United States is given, which clearly denoted the boundaries of ethnical optimism.
The conclusion discusses the question on the extent to which ethnical pluralism represents a genuine replacement for a free cultural pluralism, and on the measure in which it is used as a myth covering up problems of social integration. As an answer to the question posed, the author is offering his wiev on ethnicity having a significant protective function for individuals, in the period of initial and rapid industrialization, when all the forms of group intimacy in the society are destroyed by the market and when classes are formed as aggregations of anonymous individuals. However, if ethnicity is taken as a project of life in a group for a »classless society«, it represents a strikingly conservative orientation placing ethnicity as the utmost limit of human identification in the society.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

156001

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/156001

Publication date:

30.6.1980.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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