ANTROPOLOŠKO KONSTRUIRANJE ETNICITETA
ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNICITY

Summary/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.

• Details
• Contents