'Ethnogenesis' (From
Greek: ''ethnos''(nation)+"''genesis''(birth), Greek: Εθνογένεσις) is the process by which a group of human beings comes to be understood or to understand themselves as
ethnically distinct from the wider social landscape from which their grouping emerges. By self-reinvention ethnic groups are "present at their own creation", in the phrase of
E. P. Thompson, setting traditional
teleological nation-building narratives, that were once uncritically accepted as history, into the framework of
legend.
Passive or active ethnogenesis
Ethnogenesis can occur passively, in the accumulation of markers of group identity forged through interaction with the physical environment, cultural and religious divisions between sections of a society, migrations and other processes, for which ethnic subdivision is an unintended outcome. It can occur actively, as persons deliberately and directly 'engineer' separate identities in order to attempt to solve a political problem - the preservation or imposition of certain cultural values, power relations, etc. Since the late eighteenth century such attempts have often been related to
language revival or creation of a new language, in what eventually becomes a "
national literature." Furthermore, in the twentieth century, societies challenged by the obsolescence of those
narratives which previously afforded them coherence can fall back on ethnic or racial narratives, as a means of maintaining or reaffirming their collective identity, or polis.
Language revival
Language is a critical asset for authenticating ethnic identities. The process of reviving an antique ethnic identity often poses an immediate language challenge, as obsolescent languages will lack expressions for contemporary experiences. In Europe in the 1990s, proponents of ethnic revivals are from the
Celtic fringes in
Wales and the
Basque country. The rebirth of
Occitan language in some activist groups in the 1970s in France is a similar attempt, as well as the
Fennoman in 19th century
Grand Duchy of Finland which aimed to intensify the
language strife and to raise the
Finnish language from peasant-status to the position of a national language and status. The Fennoman also founded the
Finnish Party to pursue their nationalist aims. The publication in 1835 of the Finnish
national epic, ''
Kalevala'', was a founding stone of Finnish nationalism and ethnogenesis, while Finnish became the
official language of Finland only in 1892. Fennomans were opposed by the
Svecomans, headed by
Axel Olof Freudenthal (1836-1911), who supported the use of
Swedish and considered, according to
scientific racism contemporary theories, that Finland harbored two "
races", one speaking Swedish and the other Finnish. The Svecomans claimed that the Swedish, "Germanic race," was superior to the Finnish people.
Religion
The set of cultural markers that accompanies each of the major
religions may become a component of distinct ethnic identities, although one does not necessarily recovers the others. Furthermore, the definition may be subject to change over time (for example, in 19th Century Europe it would be commonplace to conceive of Jews and Arabs as one 'ethnic' bloc, the
Semites ). Powerful distinctions between - for example - Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim ethnicities arise on the basis of languages each religion historically favoured (
Latin and
Greek,
Hebrew,
Sanskrit and
Arabic respectively). The sources of religious differentiation are contested, among
sociologists and among
anthropologists as much as between the faith groups themselves.
Furthermore, the line between a well-defined religious
sect and a discrete ethnicity cannot be sharply defined. Sects which most observers would accept as constituting a separate ethnicity usually have, as a minimum, a firm set of rules censuring those who 'marry-out' or who fail to raise their children in the proper faith. Examples might include:
★
Amish, or more controversially
Mennonite Christians .
Geography
Geographical factors can lead to both cultural and
genetic isolation from wider human society. Groups which settle remote habitats and intermarry over generations will acquire distinctive cultural and genetic traits, evolving from the information brought with them and through interaction with their unique environmental circumstances. Ethnogenesis in these circumstances typically results in an identity which is less value-laden than one forged in contradistinction to competing populations. Particularly in
pastoral mountain peoples, social organization tends to hinge primarily on familial identification, not a wider
collective identity.
Specific case I: the creation of the Moldovan identity in the Soviet Union
The separate
Moldovan ethnic denomination was promoted under Soviet rule in the 1920s, first to support territorial claims to the then-Romanian territories of
Bessarabia and
Northern Bukovina, and then, after the
occupation of the two in 1940, to counter potential re-unification claims.
The recognition of
Moldovans as a separate ethnicity, distinct from
Romanians, is today a controversial subject. On one side, the Moldovan Parliament (which had a Communist majority) adopted in 2003 "The Concept on National Policy of the Republic of Moldova", which states that Moldovans and Romanians are two distinct peoples and speak two different languages, Romanians form an ethnic minority in Moldova, and that the Republic of Moldova is the legitimate successor to the Principality of Moldavia. On the other side, Moldovans are recognized as a distinct ethnic group only by former Soviet states. For instance, in the United States, no difference is made between Romanians and Moldovans. In the
2004 census, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16.5% (558,508) chose Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% chose Moldovan. While 40% of all
urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose Romanian as their mother tongue, in the country side hardly each 7th Romanian/Moldovan speaker indicated Romanian as his mother tongue.
[1]
Specific case II: the Amerindian North American Southwest
With the arrival of the Spanish in southwestern North America, the
Native Americans of the
Jumanano cultural sphere underwent social changes partly in reaction, which spurred their ethnogenesis, Clayton Anderson has observed.
[2] Ethnogenesis in the Texas plains and along the coast took two forms: a disadvantaged group identified with a stronger group and became absorbed into it, on the one hand, and on the other hand, cultural institutions were modified and in a sense reinvented. The seventeenth-century Jumanano disintegration, a collapse in part engendered through introduced diseases, was followed by their reintegration as
Kiowa, Nancy Hickerson has argued.
[3] The exterior stresses that produced ethnogenetic shifts preceded the arrival of the Spanish and their horse culture: recurring cycles of drought had previously forced non-kin to band together or to disband and mobilize, and inter-tribal hostilities forced weaker groups to associate with stronger ones.
Ethnogenesis in historical scholarship
Within the historical profession, the term "ethnogenesis" has been borrowed as a
neologism to explain the origins and evolution of so-called
barbarian ethnic cultures,
[4] stripped of its metaphoric connotations drawn from biology, of "natural" birth and growth. This view is closely associated with the Austrian historian
Herwig Wolfram and his followers, who argue that such ethnicity was not a matter of genuine genetic descent ("tribes"), as in
Isidore of Seville's definition of ''
gens'',
[5] but rather, in Reinhard Wenskus' term ''Traditionskerne'' ("nuclei of tradition")
[6] in which small groups of aristocratic warriors carried ethnic traditions from place to place and generation to generation; followers would coalesce or disband around these nuclei of tradition - ethnicities were freely available to anyone who might want to participate in them with no requirement for being born into a "tribe". Thus questions of race and place of origin became secondary, and proponents of ethnogenesis will often claim it is the only alternative to the sort of
ethnocentric and
nationalist scholarship that is commonly seen in disputes over the origins of many ancient peoples such as the
Franks,
Goths, and
Huns.
[7]
Notes
1. National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova: Census 2004
2. See Clayton Anderson, ''The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention'' (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press) 1999; a broader scope is included in the articles in Jonathan D. Hill (ed.), ''History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992'', (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press) 1996.
3. Nancy Parrott Hickerson, ''The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains'' (University of Texas Press) 1996.
4. Walter Pohl. "Aux origines d'une Europe ethnique. Transformations d'identites entre Antiquite et Moyen Age". ''Annales HSS'' 60 (2005): 183-208, and Pohl, "Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies" ''Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings'', ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, (Blackwell), 1998, pp 13-24.( On-line text).
5. ''Gens est multitude ab uno principle orta'' ("a people [''gens''] is a multitude stemming from one origin") which, significantly, continues in the original (''Etymologiae'' IX.2.i) ''"sive ab alia natione secundum propriam collectionem distincta'' ("or distinguished from another people by its proper ties").
6. Wenskus' comparative study of German ethnogeneses is ''Stammesbildung und Verfassung'' (Cologne and Graz) 1961.
7. Michael Kulikowski (2006). ''Rome's Gothic Wars''. Cambridge University Press. Page 53
See also
★
Imagined communities
★
Nation-building
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
