Contemporary approaches to ethnic mobilisation

This paper reviews four contemporary approaches to ethnic mobilisation, namely developmental, reactive ethnicity, competition, and Marxist. The developmental approach views ethnicity as a primordial identity that will disappear with modernity and hence ethnic mobilisations are a historical residue. The reactive ethnicity approach considers ethnicity to be pre-existing cultural differences based on which there is a hierarchical cultural division of labour with the dominant group at the top and the minority group at the bottom. Ethnic mobilisations in this perspective are thus a response to a position of inequality. The competition perspective considers ethnicity to be situationally determined and changing with ethnic mobilisation emerging from competition between groups in modern societies. Finally, the Marxist approach sees ethnicity as a mask that hides class identity and is used by the capitalists to prevent class solidarity. Here too, ethnic mobilisations are seen as an expression of inequality. I critically discuss these four perspectives and suggest that more dynamic, eclectic modes of ethnicity would help understand the emergence, resurgence, and persistence of ethnicity in modern societies.