Derived from ‘ethnicity’ (Greek: ethnos, ‘people’), ‘ethnicity’ refers to concepts of self-identification and external identification for groups of people based on socio-cultural characteristics. The result of this attribution is referred to as an ‘ethnic group’, or, in older usage, as an ‘ethnic community’, and sometimes also as a ‘tribe’ or ‘people’.

The precursors to the concept of ‘ethnicity’ can already be found in the community studies of the Chicago School dating back to the 1920s. It gained greater prominence in American sociology as a means of describing cultural revivals and so-called ‘revival’ phenomena, after social reality had definitively disproved the idea of the ‘melting pot’ – that is, a melting pot of heterogeneous cultural traditions. However, it was not until the 1980s that the term ‘ethnicity’ replaced the category of ‘race’ in British and American social science discourse as a means of describing cultural diversity.

In European ethnology and folklore studies, the study of ‘cultural islands’ (so-called ‘linguistic islands’) was superseded by a new form of ethnicity research, with research in this field focusing, on the one hand, on the context of regionalism, migration and politics, and, on the other, on everyday life and intercultural communication.

‘Ethnicity’ is an analytical concept in the social and cultural sciences that encompasses various methodological and theoretical approaches and relates to the social organisation of cultural diversity. In recent years, the term has emerged as a central socio-cultural category, much like ‘class’, ‘social stratum’ or ‘gender’. However, its use as an analytical category leads to the increasing prominence and political instrumentalisation of ‘ethnos’ in the sense of a static, essentialising concept of culture and group identity.

English: ethnicity; French: ethnicité; Polish: etniczność; Czech: etnicita; Russian: ėtničnost’.

Ethnicity is today regarded as a specific dimension of socio-cultural differences, and can be described as both a structural and a symbolic-cultural phenomenon. It is constituted through self-attributions and attributions by others of socio-cultural characteristics and is understood as an expression of social interests, as a symbolic resource that can be utilised to serve the interests of political leaders or certain political elites in the struggle for influence or power.

The conceptual debates within the field of ethnicity studies are centred on the so-called primordialists or essentialists on the one hand, and the instrumentalists or constructivists on the other. From the primordialists’ perspective, ethnicity is a fundamental identity based on immutable cultural traits and identifications that every individual acquires through birth and upbringing. The opposing position follows the general theory of social constructivism and comprises two versions: The first focuses on the macro-level of social phenomena and emphasises the elite-dominated, instrumental nature of ethnicity, whilst the second perspective relates to the micro-level of social processes and highlights the relational and situational nature of ethnicity.

Furthermore, theories of ethnicity differ in their objectivist or subjectivist approach to the subject. From an objectivist perspective, ethnicity is regarded by most sociologists – on a structural basis – and by many ethnologists – on a cultural basis – as an objective characteristic of societies. Their findings consist either of descriptions of the perceived ethnic characteristics of individual groups or of explanations for the social and power differences between coexisting ethnic groups.

This perspective is challenged by the view that a perceived sense of origin is also constitutive of ethnic groups. In the early 1960s, Michel Moerman formulated the first ‘subjective’ definition of ethnicity. This approach was further developed to focus on the experiential dimension of ethnicity, conceptualising ethnicity as a phenomenon of language, thought and social practice – in contrast to ‘ethnopolitics’ or ethnic ideologies.

According to the Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth (1928–2016), ethnic groups are the result of social processes of identification and differentiation between actors. There are therefore no ‘objective’ cultural differences that can be regarded by academia as primordial characteristics of ethnicity. Instead, only those characteristics that are significant to the actors themselves contribute to the formation of ethnicity.

Recently, there has also been an increased emphasis on the distinctive features and influences of hybrid lived worlds, and on the examination of identity narratives and practices of individuals and communities who situate themselves within several ethnic or national traditions simultaneously.

‘Ethnicity’ and its manifestations can only be understood in (late-)modern societies in the context of the logic of the nation state and the strategies of ethnicisation that follow this logic. In the ethnically based nation state, this logic designates ‘culturally different’ groups as ethnic minorities; ethnicisation is a reactive process constructed not only by the state but also by immigrants or minorities themselves, and is usually employed strategically in response to a lack of integration.

The far-reaching consequences of ethnic concepts are evident in the discourses on minorities and minority policies following the (re)emergence of ethnically based nation-states in Eastern Europe after the World Wars; ethnic minorities were regarded as a problem, which in many cases led to the unequal legal treatment of these groups (restricted civil rights, deportation and expropriation).

The recognition of ‘ethnically German’ (late) repatriates, e.g. from Romania or the former Soviet Union, as German nationals is also based on the principle of ‘ethnicity’ grounded in descent and/or cultural characteristics, whilst the situational nature of ethnic attributions also comes into play here, where a ‘commitment’ to German culture is required for privileged immigration and is demonstrated by those concerned, which in some cases leads to self-exclusion and exclusion by others during the integration process.

• Marcus Banks: Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions. London et al., 1969.
• Fredrik Barth: Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organisation of Cultural Difference. London, Oslo 1969.
• Fredrik Barth: ‘Enduring and emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity’. In: Hans Vermeulen, Cora Govers (eds.): Anthropology and Ethnicity. Beyond Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Amsterdam 1994, pp. 11–32.
• Rogers Brubaker: Ethnicity Without Groups. Cambridge, Mass., 2004.
• Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox, Liana Grancea: Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton 2006.
• Thomas Hyland Eriksen: *Ethnicity and Nationalism. Anthropological Perspectives*. London 1993.
• Richard Jenkins: Rethinking Ethnicity. Arguments and Explorations. London 1997.

Margit Feischmidt: Ethnicity. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2016. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p44171 (as at 24 August 2020).