The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

group” only if certain additional characteristics are present,
namely:
when individual membership is primarily derived
from a birth right (ascription);
when the set of people consciously and explicitly distinguishes
itself from other such sets by reference to
specific cultural differences; and
when the members of such a set identify with one another
on the basis of a shared historical experience.
The social process creates boundaries, but also in order
to cut across them. Thus, most ethnic groups include a
minority of members who have gained their membership
not at birth but only later in life, in a context of marriage,
migration, language acquisition, adoption, the assumption
of a new identity and new life style, religious conversion,
etc.
Boundary markers include:
a distinct ethnic name;
a distinct home territory (although many members of
any ethnic group may have taken up residence, temporarily
or permanently, outside that territory);
associated with the home territory, a distinct language
or dialect (although many if not most adults will be at
least bilingual);
distinct traditional authorities (kings, chiefs, headmen);
distinct details of custom, especially in the sphere of
expressive, ceremonial, and ritual production (music,
dance, puberty rites, other life crisis ritual, patterns of
sacrification, hairstyle and clothing, royal ritual)
which may be taken as distinguishing ethnic markers
between adjacent ethnic groups even though in fact
the spatial distribution of the custom in question may
be much more widespread.
In general, ethnicity is conceived as holistic and bundled,
involving language, cultural customs, somatic features,
territory, and political leadership, which integrated
package is claimed to determine the total mode of being of
that person. In reality, however, ethnic groups often differ
from each other only with respect to a very limited selection
of cultural features functioning as boundary markers.
Now, ethnicization displays a remarkable dialectics which
one might consider its engine: on the one hand, the binary
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opposition through nomenclature offers a logical structure,
which is further ossified through ascription (i.e. being
made into a birth right) and which presents itself as unconditioned,
bounded, inescapable, and timeless (= primordial);
on the other hand, the actual processual realization
(through the construction of a culture coinciding with the
group boundary, through distinctive cultural symbols,
through a shared historical consciousness, through that part
of membership which is non-ascriptive but acquired)
means flexibility, choice, constructedness, and recent
change (= instrumental). Both, entirely contradictory, aspects
of ethnicization belong to ethnicity. As a result, ethnicity
is often of a highly kaleidoscopic nature, constantly
changing in shape and difficult to pin down to specific,
general analytical formulae. Above all, it should be realized
that for every set of historical actors involved their
particular vision on ethnic relations and ethnic history is
per definition that of partisans, and therefore must be subjected
to severe historical criticism before it can be used as
an historical source.
The given
(1) model of nominal ethnicity within a continuous
cultural space
is only one of several very distinct shapes that the ethnic
space can take in different periods and in different regions.
Several major alternative models are:
(2) The immigrant model, found in all continents
throughout history, where a set of immigrants
(not necessarily less numerous than the original
population) have managed to insert themselves
into the local geographic space, and while retaining
a selection of linguistic and cultural specific
traits (often as a result of continued
contacts with these immigrants’ original home,
which may be quite distant, and both culturally
and linguistically very distinct from their new
host society), have begun to function as an integral
part of that host society’s ethnic space.
(3) The conquest model, found in all continents
throughout history as a variant of the immigrant
model, in situations where an immigrant dominant
minority (of pastoralists, metal-workers,
warriors with superior skills and weapons, etc.)
has imposed itself as a distinct ethnic minority