Disputed Boundaries

Tuareg Discourse on Class and Ethnicity

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2737795
AutoresSusan J Rasmussen (autor correspondente), Susan Rasmussen (0000-0001-6408-0028)
Ano1992
Volume31
Fascículo4
Páginas351
Data de publicação1992-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEthnology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0014-1828 • E-ISSN: 2160-3510
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3773426
OpenAlexW16592555
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas11

Who defines ethnic identity? Cultural differences persist (and indeed often intensify) in situations of interethnic contact, economic interdependence, and power inequities. While this recognition has offered valuable insights into the subject of ethnic identity, it has produced two contrasting theoretical approaches. One tends either to reify ethnicity or to subsume it under social stratification and conflict (Barth 1969; Du Toit 1978; Cohen 1978). An alternative approach deconstructs ethnicity according to local conceptualizations of person categories (Drummond 1981; Galaty 1982; DeVos and Romanucci-Ross 1975; Crick 1976; Karp and Maynard 1983). The latter approach permits linking ethnicity to more recent anthropological concern with power, categorization, and alterity (Boon 1982; Fabian 1983; Herzfeld 1987; Fardon 1990; Battestini 1991; Maranhao 1991), yet also remains problematic. Here I advocate a reorientation in the anthropology of ethnicity similar to that advocated by Crick (1976) for witchcraft: ethnicity in anthropological theory is often used as a gloss, derives from essentially Western cultural categories, and needs to be recast. Moreover, that field called ethnic identity is plagued by a fuzzy focus for two principal reasons: first, because this is the entire subject-matter of anthropology; and second, because the question of authorship, who decides whom is to be represented, remains unresolved. This essay offers a theory to fill the analytical gap often left by deconstructionist approaches in their dissolving of equally problematic structuralist categories. As illustration, I drew examples from a problematic case: dialogue on the changing and disputed meanings of ethnicity in relation to local perceptions and classification systems among the Kel Ewey Tuareg in northeastern Niger.1

Class (philosophy · Epistemology · Ethnic group · Genealogy · Sociology · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy