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ETHNOGENESIS
Ethnogenesis 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.
Passive 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.
Religion
The set of cultural markers that accompanies each of the major religions can amount to distinct ethnic identities, although the definition may be subject to change over time (for example, in 19th Century Europe it would be commonplace to conceive of Jews and Muslims 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, 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.
From sect to ethnicity
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:
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.
Active Ethnogenesis
Ethnogenesis can occur actively, as persons deliberately and directly 'engineer' separate identities in order to solve a political problem - the preservation or imposition of certain cultural values, power relations, etc.
Colonial policy
The Roman Empire strategem of divide et impera or Divide and rule has been used to a greater or lesser extent by each of the colonial powers that emerged in the modern period. Managing a territory from a distance places peculiar strains on the systems of legitimacy which arise more 'organically' within a polis. The British Empire proved especially adept at identifying and recruiting minority allies within subject peoples. The minority would receive special privileges, assisting the colonial power in its attempts to maintain rule, and would come to depend on that foreign rule for its own defence against the disadvantaged majority in its own country. Other European colonial powers, and Japan, deployed similar methods. The legacy of ethnic division arising from these externally-imposed power structures may still be felt in conflicts within, for example, Indian or Indonesian politics.
Belgium, Rwanda and the Hutu/Tutsi divide
A particularly stark example of ethnogenetic colonial policy occurred in Rwanda in the 1920s and 30s, under the League of Nations protectorate granted to Belgium. Belgium allocated ethnic identity cards to Rwandans, institutionalizing a system of vicious ethnic discrimination. The minority Tutsi, mainly peasant farmers but including the existing monarchy and 'ruling class', were granted privileges denied to the majority Hutu. Belgium's exceptionally harsh colonial policing methods and politicization of what were previously existing ethnic lines created bitter divisions in Rwandan society.
The creation of the Moldovan identity in the Soviet Union
The Moldovan ethnic denomination was invented 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. Moreover, despite alleged pressions for people to declare themselves Moldovan rather than Romanian, about 40% of the population of Moldova declared Romanian as mother tongue during the 2004 Moldovan Census.
Domestic policy
Societies challenged by the obsolesence of those narratives which previously afforded them coherence can fall back on ethnic or racial narratives, as a means to maintaining or reaffirming their collective identity, or polis.
Aryan myth
The word Aryan comes from Sanskrit and means noble. The Nazi idea of the Aryan race is not without historical merit although the aims and purposes of the Nazis were not what they claimed. The proof of the Aryan race lies in the common language and culture shared by all acknoledged members of the Indo-European language family tree. From the Tartan wearing Parthans in Afghanistan to the Tartan wearing Celts in Scotland. From the Cow veneration in India and the Cow adoration/veneration in Greece. As for the Nazi Aryan Race there are many examples of extreme nationalism and racism in other cultures consider the Japanese sentiment towards China as evidenced by World War II.
Tito and Makedonian ethnogenesis
Following the war, Tito separated Yugoslav Macedonia from Serbia, making it a republic of the new federal Yugoslavia (as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) in 1946. He also promoted the concept of a separate Macedonian nation, as a means of severing the ties of the Slav population of Yugoslav Macedonia with Bulgaria. Although the Macedonian language is close to and mutually intelligible with Bulgarian, the differences were emphasized and the region's historical figures were promoted as being uniquely Macedonian (rather than Serbian or Bulgarian).At the same time , but to a lesser extent an attempt was made to discover and promote historical ties with the Ancient- Makedonians civilization. A separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967 (only partly successfully, because the church has not been recognized by any other Orthodox Church). The ideologists of a separate and independent Macedonian country, same as the pro-Bulgarian and pro-Serbian sentiment was forcibly suppressed [citation needed]. This chain of events received some mild criticism from the fellow communist state of Bulgaria, but were perceived as pure propaganda ,with a hidden agenda, by the neibourghing Greece.
Tito indeed had a number of reasons for doing this. First, he wanted to reduce Serbia's dominance in Yugoslavia; establishing a territory formerly considered Serbian as an equal to Serbia within Yugoslavia achieved this effect. Secondly, he wanted to sever the ties of the Macedonian population with Bulgaria as recognition of that population as Bulgarian could have undermined the unity of the Yugoslav federation. Thirdly, Tito sought to justify future Yugoslav claims towards the rest of geographical Macedonia; in August 1944, he claimed that his goal was to reunify "all parts of Macedonia, divided in 1915 and 1918 by Balkan imperialists." To this end, he opened negotiations with Bulgaria for a new federal state, which would also probably have included Albania, and supported the Greek Communists in the Greek Civil War. The idea of reunification of all of Macedonia under Communist rule was abandoned in 1948 when the Greek Communists lost and Tito fell out with the Soviet Union and pro-Soviet Bulgaria.
Tito's actions had a number of important consequences for the Macedonians. The most important was, obviously, the promotion for the first time of a distinctive Macedonian identity as a part of the multiethnic society of Yugoslavia.
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 obsolete languages will lack expressions for contemporary experiences. In Europe in the 1990s, proponents of ethnic revivals from the Celtic fringes in Wales and the Basque country.
See also
External links
- Stettenheim, Joel. The Arusha Accords and the Failure of International Intervention in Rwanda
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