The widespread tendency in today’s world to seek refuge in ethnic identities as a means of confronting the adverse effects of socio-economic crises. Building upon this discussion, and delving deeper into its implications, a fundamental question arises: Can we necessarily observe a close and relatively complete overlap between the concepts of ethnicity and culture? When we speak of the culture of a society, we are referring to a broad and diverse set of components, many of which are also present in the concept of ethnicity—such as language, myths, beliefs, religion, historical collective memory, territory, material heritage, skills, technologies, and so on. In this context, we can refer to multiple layers of identity that interact in complex ways: ethnic identity, national identity, social identity, and so on. A characteristic feature of modernity is that, on the one hand, it continuously multiplies the number of identities, while on the other hand, it exhibits a strong tendency toward identity reductionism.
Both tendencies, though seemingly contradictory, are, in a way, governed by the same economic principle that underlies modern society: the principle of the market and its driving force, consumption. Can identity, then, be defined and explained as a form of cultural consumption? And can this consumption, in turn, become a motivation and a justification for identity reconstruction? If we consider the issue from this perspective, we may find an explanation for many new forms of communitarianism beyond identity crises and structural socio-economic disruptions. This explanation may lie in the formation of communities as potential or actual units of consumption. Such communities generate their own specific circles, social relations, symbolic languages, rituals, and material objects for self-expression. All these elements can and must be produced within society and integrated into its economic cycles.
Thus, we witness the emergence of a new generation of market goods, which might be referred to as “ethnic” or “communitarian” commodities: books, magazines, music albums, clothing, films and theatrical productions, media networks, websites, and so on. Cultural consumption, rooted in new urban systems, increasingly replaces or substantially transforms earlier forms of ethnic relations, which were traditionally based on kinship networks. As a result, we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of tribalism, sometimes referred to as “urban tribes.” But can this type of “tribe” be regarded as a sign of ethnic revival? The answer lies in recognizing that the notion of ethnicity here loses its original meaning and becomes intelligible only within the framework of new communitarian formations. These formations can radically reshape the components of ethnicity.
For example, one can no longer necessarily speak of a “territory” or “geographical domain” in the physical sense, nor of an independent “language” in its linguistic definition. Yet both elements still exist, albeit in more complex and sometimes hidden forms, and can be rediscovered in new configurations. The issue becomes even more complex when these new communitarianism’s — these “urban tribes» begin to influence and reshape older forms of ethnonationalism. Thus, we face the emergence of hybrid structures that cannot be understood by merely examining their external features or by relying on how individuals describe their own communities. Instead, such formations require deep ethnographic research, the outcomes of which are often unpredictable.
From this point, one can conclude that the core issue now revolves around the relationship that must be clarified between ethnicity—in both its synonymous and residual forms, which still appear to persist at least on the surface—and culture, in all its diversity and dynamism within the modern and postmodern world. This relationship demands a more nuanced understanding, especially given the complexity of identity formations today.
From this point, one can conclude that the core issue now revolves around the relationship that must be clarified between ethnicity—in both its synonymous and residual forms, which still appear to persist at least on the surface—and culture, in all its diversity and dynamism within the modern and postmodern world. This relationship demands a more nuanced understanding, especially given the complexity of identity formations today. In the short excerpt below, taken from Ethnicity in Contemporary Social Sciences by Marco Martiniello (1995), this question is explored, at least partially, from an anthropological perspective.
Anthropology, for a long time, was primarily interested in subjects such as tribes and oral societies that were entirely detached from Western civilization. The anthropological ideal was to study the social systems—and particularly the cultures—of these human communities in their purest form, untouched and uninfluenced by the West. This perspective led anthropologists to consider ethnic groups as populations sharing certain fundamental cultural values that were apparently expressed through visible cultural forms and functions.
In other words, ethnic groups were defined by a shared culture among their members—manifested in language, customs, and beliefs—that the anthropologist could observe within human society under study. Although the general tendency was to study peoples and tribes who lived in isolation and without any contact with the outside world, anthropologists also conducted research on societies in which different ethnic groups interacted with one another. In these cases, it was assumed that each of the elements involved in social interaction possessed a distinct culture.
Cultural differences between ethnic groups in contact were seen as the key factor in the emergence of ethnicity. Without these tangible cultural differences between the ethnic groups under study, ethnicity could not be expressed. Ethnicity was thus directly linked to material culture, to customs, and to observable and distinct practices characteristic of each ethnic group. In this traditional anthropological approach, the culture of ethnic groups was regarded as a natural given—something the Western researcher was tasked with decoding. Furthermore, it was assumed that if, for any reason, cultural differences between ethnic groups were to disappear, ethnicity itself would also vanish.
Meanwhile, although this conceptualization of ethnic groups as distinct cultural units had been borrowed from anthropology by other social sciences, anthropological fieldwork increasingly revealed its limitations in explaining certain situations. For example, in the case of the Kachin studied by Edmund Leach, a discrepancy was observed between the concept of ethnicity and cultural content. In fact, the Kachin of Burma, despite lacking linguistic or cultural unity, are still considered a distinct social group. It is the structure of their relations with their neighbors, the Shan, that grants them social cohesion—not a shared cultural content.
Abner Cohen (1974) provides another example of the limits of the traditional association between ethnicity and culture. According to him, the stock traders of London’s City district are culturally as distinct within British society as the Hausa are within Yoruba society. These traders form a group with shared interests that even uses its specific culture to compete with other groups within the broader social system in which they operate. Nevertheless, despite their cultural distinctiveness, these London traders could never be identified as an ethnic group.
The traditional approach to the specific connections between ethnicity and culture faces two fundamental problems. First, it largely participates in reifying culture, that is, treating culture as an entity, independent of other domains of human activity. The cultural system is viewed as fixed, definite, and closed. Second, this approach cannot explain why populations with different cultural characteristics, living in different places and times, can still belong to roughly the same group. Only through the study of social interaction and organization, as Leach and Barth urge, can this be explained. Such study requires focusing on the processes of differentiation and boundary-making among ethnic groups, alongside the individual study of each group’s culture.
This Note is an AI generated translation from Persian to English for nasserfakouhi.com 03/07/2025
