CULTURE IS A PROCESS!

The Egyptian World

Ethnicity as a Political Resource

Addaiyan Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences , 2021

Ethnicity and central ethnicity are central issues in sociology and have been analyzed by sociologists from different angles. Ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of human beings whose members have the same or common ancestral characteristics and origins. Ethnic groups also often have cultural, linguistic, behavioral, and religious commonalities that may be traced back to their ancestors or to other factors; Thus an ethnic group can be a cultural community. The concepts of nation and nationality are closely related to the concepts of ethnic group and ethnicity, but in political societies it imposes a different meaning.

Colonialism is a process by which rhings shape people, rarher rhan rhe reverse. Colonialism exisrs where marerial culrure moves people, borh culrurally and physically, leading rhem co expand geographically, co accepr new marerial forms and co ser up power srrucrures around a desire for mare rial culrure. l

Ethnology, 1992

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2009

The words race, ethnicity and culture and their various derivatives are all very familiar: indeed the terms race and culture, if not ethnicity, are regularly used in everyday speech. Yet just what do they actually mean? Are they merely synonyms for one another, are do they point to very different dimensions of the social order? Although there can be little doubt that the social phenomena with respect to which these terms are deployed issues are amongst those of the most pressing socio-political importance in the contemporary world, a little reflection soon reveals that their precise meaning is still surrounded by clouds of conceptual confusion. Nor is this confusion limited to popular discourse: sociologists hardly do much better. This is most alarming. If n social scientists lack an analytical vocabulary whose meanings are broadly agreed upon, there is little prospect of them being able to construct viable descriptions – let alone insightful explanations – of the phenomena they are seeking to understand, no matter how much the streets may be riven by 'race riots', no matter how many holocausts may be precipitated by processes of 'ethnic cleansing', and no matter how many aircraft may be flown straight into skyscrapers. In the absence of an appropriate analytical vocabulary not only will the prospect of our being able to comprehend the processes give rise to such confrontations be severely inhibited, but the prospects our being able to identify the best means of resolving the underlying problems will remain remote. With such challenges in mind, this Chapter has a straightforward agenda. Firstly to identify how the terms race, ethnicity and culture are currently used in popular discourse – and the significance of these usages; secondly to identify how each of these terms can best be defined in technical terms, such that they can be turned into more precise – and hence more effective – vehicles for sociological analysis; and thirdly to explore the ways in which a more carefully constructed analytical vocabulary can enable us to gain a clearer grasp of just how a whole series of pressing contemporary problems have arisen – and how they might realistically be resolved.

Ethnicity is sometimes one of the misunderstood cultural aspects of national heritage in Africa. The mere mention of the term ‘ethnicity’ or ‘ethnic origin’ is apt to elicit negative reactions, basically because only one facet is assumed, namely ‘ethnocentricity’, or to use a less anodyne term, ‘tribalism’. Yet there are many other positive facets to ethnicity. For example, ethnicity can be claimed, rightly so, as one aspect of national identity, which enriches Africa’s national heritage(s).This paper attempts to highlight these dynamics through analyzing how one community, namely, the Nandi, manifests its ethnicity its social construction of reality, the differences in intra-ethnic identities that separate them from their immediate ‘cousins’ as well as other neighbors, namely, the Maasai and Luo and the Kenyan nation as a whole. It is hoped that the answers to the above will help us to positively harness ethnic diversity to create a multicultural society at ease with itself