Etnicitet i razvoj. Ogled o etničkome identitetu i društvenome razvoju
Ethnicity and Development. An Essay on Ethnic Identity and Social Development

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to find out the ways in which modem ethnological and anthropological science treats the phenomenon of ethnic identity, and whether there is any relationship between ethnic identity and social development. The theories that approach ethnicity as a natural category are discussed first and then those that approach it as a subjective category. The most recent tendencies that deal with the correlation of ethnic identity and global power relations are also presented. The author agrees with the opinion that ethnic identity is one of the factors of organized common life of a community. It encompasses a range of elements but basically it is founded on the feeling of affiliation and loyalty to a particular community (where a subjective dimension could be seen). It also includes different cultural elements that reflect individual expression of cultural patterns of the members of a community (objective dimension). The author also claims that the way of shaping the identity goes from the immanent human need for holding in common and affiliation, to ethnicity as the most prominent of all offers that the community could give to an individual as its member. Therefore, the shaping of identity is in direct correlation with general social development from band to modem national state.

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