74 THEORIES OP ETHNICITY PREDRIK BARTH 75
The nonrational core has been reached and triggered through music popularly
perceived as reflecting the nation's particular past or genius; the music
may va~y in sophistícation-ernbracing the work of composers such as Richard
Wagner, as well as folk music.
The core of the nation has been reached and triggered through rhe use of
familial metaphors which can magically transform the mundanely tangible
into ernotion-laden phantasma: which can, for example, mystically convert
what the outsider sees as merely the territory populated by a nation into a
motherland or fatherland, rhe ancestral land, land of our fathers, rhis sacred
soil, land where our fathers died, the native land, the cradle ofthe nation, and,
most commonly, the home-the homeland of our particular people-a
'Mother Russia,' an Armenia, a Deutschland, an England (Engla land: land
of the Angles), or a Kurdistan (literally, land of the Kurds). Here is an Uzbek
poet referring to Uzbekistan:
So that my generatíon would comprehend the Home1anďs worth,
Men were always transformed to dust,. it seems.
The Homeland is the remains of our forefathers
Who turned into dusr for rhis precious soíl."
A spirirual bond between nation and territory is rhus touched. As concisely
stated in the nineteenth-cenrury German couplet, 'Blut und Beden,' blood
and soil become mixed in national perceptions.
It is, then, the character of appeals made through and to the senses, not
through and to reason, which perrnit us some knowledge ofthe subconscious
convictions that people tend to harbor concerning their nation. The near
universality with which certain images and phrases appear-blood, family,
brothers, sisters, mother, forefathers, ancestors, home-and the proven success
of such invocations in eliciting massive, popular responses tell us much
about the nature of national identity. But, again, this line of research does not
provide a rational explanation for it.
Rational would-be explanations have abounded: relative economic deprívation;
elíte ambitions; rational choice theory; intense transaction flows; the
desire of the intelligentsia to convert a 'low,' subordinate culrure into a 'hígh,'
dominant one; cost-benefit considerations; internal colonialism; a ploy of
the bourgeoisie to undermine the class consciousness of the proletariat by
obscuring the conflicting class inrerests within each nation, and by encouraging
rivalry among the proletariat of various nations; a somewhat spontaneous
mass response to competition for scarce resources. AU such theories can be
criticized on empirical grounds. But they can be faulted principally for their
failure to reflect rhe emorional depth of national identity: the passions at
either extréme end of the hate-love continuurn which the nation onen
inspires, and the countless fanatical sacrifices which have been made in its
name. As Chateaubriand expressed ir nearly 200 years ago: 'Men don't allow
themselves to,be killed for their interests: they allow themselves to be killed
for their passíons. ,6 To phrase it differently: people do not voluntarily die for
things that are rational.
[Erhno·nationalism: The Qum for Undmranding (Princeron University Press, 1994), 196-8,
202-Ó.)
FREDRIK BARTH
IEthnlc Group. and Boundarl••
The main theoretical departure consists of several interconnected parts. Hrst,
we give primary emphasis to the fact that ethnic groups are categories of
ascription and idenríficatíon by the actors themselves, and thus have the
characteristic of organizing interaction berween people. We attempt to relate
other characteristics of ethnic groups to this primary fearure. Second, the
essays all apply a generative viewpoint to the analysis: rarher than working
through a typology of forms of ethnic groups and relations, we attempt to
explore the different processes that seem to be involved in generating and
maintaining ethnic groups. Third, to observe these processes we shíft the
focus of investigation frorn internal constitution and history of separate
groups to ethnic boundaries and boundary maintenance. Each of these points
needs some elaboration. .
Ethnic group defined
The term ethnic group is generally understood in anthropological literarure'
to designate a population which:
I. is largely biologically self-perpetuating
2. shares fundamental cultural values, realized in overt unity in culrural
forms
3. makes up a field of communication and interaction
4. has a membership which identifies itself, and is identified by orhers, as
constiruting a category distinguishable from other categories of the same
order.
This ideal type definition is not so far removed in content from rhe
traditional proposition that a race = a culture = a language and that a sociery
= a unit which rejects or discriminates against orhers. Yet, in its modified
form it is close enough to many empirical ethnographic situations, at least as
they appear and have been reported, so that this meaning continues to serve
the purposes of most anthropologists. My quarrel is not so much with the
substance of these characteristics, though as I shall show we can profit from a
certain change of emphasis; my main objection is that such a formulation