DIVISION OF ANTHROPOLOGY: CHANGE AND CHOICE IN ETHNIC IDENTIFICATION*

Abstract

A s far back a s our recorded knowledge goes, men have identified themselves (and have been identified by others) a s belonging to distinct and separate societies: each one with its name, its present o r past geographical roots, its historical destiny, and its characteristic ways of life.The a r t of ancient Egypt portrays recognizable types of Nubian, Syrian or Hittite prisoners of war. The Old Testan7ent refers to such groups a s the Midianites, the Amorites, the Moabites or the Philistines. The New Testament mentions the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, the Ethiopians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, the epic poems of ancient India, such a s Mahabhavata and Rainayaiia, and the oral traditions of Africa and Polynesia, all point to the same picture of mankind a s divided into distinct tribes, peoples, nations, and empires.If we examine closely all these instances of identifiable social aggregates, two basic types, two "ideal types" a s sociologists would call them, would emerge. One of these two types is represented by those human societies which a r e held together by true o r alleged bonds of common ancestry, a sense of collective destiny, a treasured folklore (songs, dances, costumes, etc.), a common language, and a family-like esprit de ?ovps. It has been customary to apply the term ethnic to this kind of societies, It will be so used in this paper.The other of the two "ideal types" under discussion has been described a s state-national or briefly national. These terms refer to sovereign political bodies undergirded by governmental, administrative and military structures. National states o r nation-states a r e always identified with a territory under their control. They often include a number of (to them) culturally foreign groups, or ethnic groups within their boundaries. In this discussion the term izatioizal will be used consistently a s describing political states with sovereignty extending over a delimited territory.It is hardly necessary to mention that when dealing with the so-called ''ideal types" one thinks of clusters of significant characteristics, structural and functional, which a r e not always encountered in social reality in a pure condition. The numerous subdivisions of mankind, with which we a r e dealing here, could be said to arrange themselves along a continuum, of which the national end would be exemplified by Italy, Brazil, India o r the Inca Empire. On the other hand the Bretons of France, the Lapps of Sweden, the Copts of Egypt, the Chukchi of Siberia and the Hopi Indians would be viewed as gravitating toward the ethnic pole of the above bipolar alignment.Furthermore, it is important to understand that ethnic and national forms of social existence a r e hardly ever final and definitive. Thus, the formerly

what is a Malay? situational selection of ethnic identity in a plural society

“…4Some o f these points have been suggested i n a general way by Bram (1965), but the present paper seeks t o develop the idea on the basis o f more detailed case studies.…”