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This thesis explores why ethnicity was introduced as the basis for the reconstitution of the Ethiopian state in 1991, examining the politicisation of ethnic identity before and after the federation of the country’s ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ was instituted. The establishment of the modern Ethiopian empire state in the nineteenth century, and the processes of centralisation and bureaucratisation which consolidated it in the mid twentieth, provide a backdrop to an emerging concern with ‘regionalism’ amongst political circles in the 1960s and 1970s. Ethnicity operated as both resource and product of the mobilisation by which the major movements of armed opposition to the military regime of the 1970s and 1980s, later the architects of ethnic federalism, sought control of the state. Under federalism through the 1990s, political representation and territorial administration were reorganised in terms of ethnicity. A stratum of the local elite of each ethnic group was encouraged to form an ethnic organisation as a platform for executive office. Meanwhile ethnic groups and their elites responded to these new circumstances in unanticipated but calculative ways, often radically reviewing and reconstructing not only their sense of collective interest, but also the very ethnic collectives that would best serve those newlyperceived interests. The architects of ethnic federalism are influenced by a Marxist formulation of the ‘National Question’ which incorporates contradictory elements inherent in the notion of ‘granting self-determination’: the conviction that self-selected communities respond better to mobilisation ‘from within’, in their own language, by their own people; and the notion that ethnic groups are susceptible to identification, definition, and prescription ‘from above’, by a vanguard party applying a checklist of externally verifiable criteria. These two sets of assumptions correlate with tenets of instrumentalism and primordialism respectively, which are, as they stand, equally irreconcilable. An investigation of theoretical approaches to ethnicity and collective action suggests that many conflate the ‘real world’ and ‘socially constructed’ referents of the ethnic profile of an individual (the constituents of the individual state of being an ethnic x), with the fully constructed collective accomplishment which creates members of an ethnic group (conferring the social status of being an ethnic x, of which those referents are markers). Differentiating the two, and exploring the recursive relationship between them, by means of a consideration of calculative action within the framework of actors’ categories (emerging from emic knowledge systems) and shared social institutions (premised, whether their referents are ‘natural’ ‘social’ or ‘artificial’, on collective processes of ‘knowledge construction’), may improve analysis of the causes and operation of collective action associated with ethnicity and ethno-nationalism. Ethnic federalism in Ethiopia offered the prospect of a shift away from the ‘high modernism’ of that state’s past projects to ‘develop’ its people, apparently in favour of the collective perspectives of groups of its citizens. The coercive and developmental imperatives of the state that guided its implementation, however, have militated against the substantive incorporation of locally determined social institutions and knowledge.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-100). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

This thesis examines representations of identities that are specific to Francophone West Africa, as depicted in the films produced in the region since the 1990s. The films are set in the countries of Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso, among the ethnic groups that form the diverse demographic landscape of the region, and they portray stories and characters that strongly relate these films to the local ways of belonging. While existing research in the field of African film studies focuses on how films from Francophone West Africa portray postcolonial or national identities, very little scholarly attention has been paid to the depiction of identities that are linked to the region’s ethnic cultures. This thesis demonstrates that the local ways of belonging and the practices, rituals and beliefs which these identities rely on continue to have vital significance for representation in Francophone West African cinemas. Using textual analysis as a base for its arguments, this thesis is underpinned by an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that combines extensive contextual research into various West African practices, rituals and beliefs with the philosophical works on cinema by Gilles Deleuze. A number of the concepts Deleuze defines help significantly in the understanding of time and identity in the films, and the interpretative nature of Deleuze’s work offers the opportunity to bridge the gap in film theory application in studies of Francophone African cinema. By applying this diverse theoretical approach to its investigation of the intertwining local identities, the thesis highlights the necessity of an intersectional approach to analysing identity representation in Francophone African cinemas. It is the first study of representations of ethnically-linked identities in the field of African film studies.

Anamaria Remete TEMA EMMC 2nd year Ethnicity Revisited: the Case of Higher Educated Younger Generation Roma in Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe Abstract This research aims to explore the self perception of ethnicity of younger generation Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. The sample population is represented by two groups of higher educated Roma. First those who were beneficiaries of the university scholarships granted by the Open Society Institute's Roma Initiatives. Second those who are working in Roma-focused NGO advocacy organizations. The organisations are: the Open Society Institute-Budapest, European Roma Rights Centre also in Budapest, the European Roma Information Office in Brussels and the European Roma and Travellers Forum by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg . This strategy of the Open Society Institute and the above mentioned NGOs has only a short history, which will be discussed further in the study. The self perception dimension is going to be analyzed through the application of the concept of "everyday ethnicity" as developed by scholars Rogers Brubaker, Paloma Gay y Blasco and Carol Silverman in order to gain insight into the dynamics of the factors that come into play in the process of creating meaning for young and higher-educated Roma in countries from Central and Eastern...

Over the last sixty years anthropological interest in San has focused on their status as hunter-gatherers and, more recently, as an economically and socially marginalised minority group. In this thesis, I examine the different ways in which this indigenous minority population in Botswana manage and negotiate their relations with one another and with the broader society in which they are embedded. The research comprised eighteen months of fieldwork (April 2010 to December 2011) in Gaborone city, and a largely Naro-speaking village in Gantsi District in the west of Botswana. The participants comprised a small but relatively highly-educated cadre of elite San men who self-presented as advocates for San-related issues in the wider community but also San men and women in the towns and villages of the region. Early in the research process I recognised the need to make sense of the ethnography in terms of a variety of markers. Whilst this included what San actually said it also encompassed what they did and how they did it: that is their behaviour, dress and bodily techniques and practices – all of which I describe as voice. The research intersects with issues of gender, language, culture, class, identity and self-representation in the daily lives of San. I emphasise the tensions that San face in their daily struggles for recognition as human beings of equal value in Botswana’s society. As the public face of this struggle, San advocates were in a difficult and ambiguous position in relation to the wider San community. As a consequence of this, I explore egalitarianism as a set of political and social relationships rather than as a ‘sharing practice’. I identify a number of areas for further research, for example, to work collaboratively with San to incorporate aspects of what San called ‘personal empowerment’ and training. I show that the research has wider implications for other minority groups and indigenous people worldwide who have also been subject to highly politicised and overly deterministic definitions of their identity. My work suggests possibilities for working with emerging indigenous ‘elites’, who mediate most visibly the contours of these categories of identity by purposefully combining, conflating and straddling these labels.

The aim of this research is to examine the identities of youth from different cultural background in Malaysia that has been formed through consumption of media. The forces of globalisation reportedly have de-centred the self from the core, leading to multiple, fluid and contradictory identities. Individuals have been displaced from their backgrounds, and have emerged as individuals, in contrast to past collective identities. People are self-reflexive in constructing their sense of self, with the media playing a role in nurturing one s quest for self-identity (Thompson, 1995). This issue is of particular relevance to young Malaysians. Within this locality, young people s lives are deeply embedded in the collectivities of ethnicity, religion and national identity. At the same time, Malaysia has adopted an open economic market. The de-regulation of Malaysia s broadcasting services enables a mass penetration of the global media to influence young Malaysians. This study is interested in examining how these conditions have affected young Malaysians identities through media consumption. While other studies have explored identity through the consumption of the global media by local audiences, such studies have focused on hybridised cultural practices. This study takes into account de-centred identities by examining shifts in values among different ethnicities, as reflected in consumption of global and local television programmes, differentiating this from previous research works. This study draws on Giddens (1990) concept of reflexivity in examining this issue. This study found that the global media plays a significant role in young Malaysians questioning tradition against modernity. They admire life outside Malaysia, and view it as more modern and liberating, compared to the perceived closed life of Malaysian culture. Yet, this does not conclusively show that young Malaysians have completely abandoned local cultures and values. Rather, it shows they can fully adopt values they admire into their lives while continuing to live within the bounds of their parents and community. Young Malaysians have appropriated the various forms of global cultures derived from media consumption as a means of forging their sense of self, which articulates a need to project an individual self rather than emerging from their collectivity. Although religion and ethnicity remain important in their lives, these young people do not see themselves solely restricted by these identity markers alone. Their cultural identity contains characteristics of other global cultures as well. It is an intersection of various forms of identities, negotiated between religion and ethnicity within global youth cultures, diaspora, gender, lifestyles and taste. Young Malaysians can best be described as having in-between identities - global - local subjects borne out of the hybridisation of values from both sources. Ethnic minority Malaysians display two identities, due to their consumption of international programmes. First, overseas Chinese and Tamil television programmes enable youth to hybridise their youth identity into Western-Asian popular youth cultures instead of drawing solely from one or the other. Second, this type of exposure leads young Malaysian-Chinese to have feelings of cultural superiority over the local Malay films and drama.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the history of New Orleans’s Irish Channel and, through the use of archaeological evidence from two household privies, to trace the social processes involved in the formation of ethnicity and social identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Despite its name and the annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations that take place in its streets, the Irish Channel was never an ethnic enclave of Irish identity. With an equal number of Germans, along with some English and French immigrants, and certain streets comprised fully of African-Americans, the Irish Channel was home to a diverse assortment of people all with unique and fluid conceptions of "identity." This paper attempts to flesh out the changing social, cultural, and institutional boundaries surrounding the formation of ethnic and cultural identities in the Irish Channel at the turn of twentieth century. By combining contemporary anthropological theory on ethnicity and cultural change with an analysis of the archaeological data and the historical and social contexts in which material culture was used, I challenge the usefulness of assimilationist approaches to understanding culture and the archaeological record. Using the archaeology of two Irish Channel families, I demonstrate the need for studying the complex, multidimensional relationship between material culture and identity in order to gain a deeper understanding of the past.

Nesta tese analisamos a atuação dos movimentos sociais indígenas na Bolívia, e seus discursos sobre autonomia. Nosso foco é o CONAMAQ Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu. Por entendermos que não existe enunciado sem posição, mapeamos os discursos que operam na esfera pública boliviana a fim de compreender qual a posição do CONAMAQ. Este mapeamento consistiu na análise também dos discursos da CSUTCB Central Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia e do Estado Plurinacional de Bolívia. Descrevemos os discursos nacionalistas e indianistas bolivianos, em especial o katarismo, para analisar a constituição dos agentes, de seus posicionamentos e do modo como interagem. Nossa intenção foi definir o campo de relações, simultaneamente prático e discursivo, no qual se codificam os sistemas de diferenças que compõem o contexto em que circulam os agentes e seus discursos. Encontramos evidenciados no processo de construção do Estado Plurinacional na Bolívia, dois discursos com base nos quais se estabelecem posições discursivas, organizam-se movimentos sociais e criam-se agentes na esfera política pública: o camponês-indígena e o indígenaoriginário. Com base nisso, propomos analisar o encontro dos discursos sobre direitos do CONAMAQ, do Estado Plurinacional e da normativa do direito internacional sobre direitos dos povos indígenas, com ênfase no debate sobre o direito à autonomia. A fim de demonstrar que os contatos e encontros entre os níveis discursivos local (identificados como CONAMAQ e Estado plurinacional), e internacional (entendido como a normativa de direitos dos povos indígenas constituída por organismos internacionais), se interpenetram e apresentam diferentes pontos de contato, constituindo embates discursivos na esfera pública local e, também, na internacional/global. / In this thesis, we will analyze the actions of the indigenous social movements in Bolivia, and their discourses on autonomy. Our focus is the CONAMAQ Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu. As we understand there is no utterance without a position, we mapped out the discourses that operate in the Bolivian public sphere in order to understand the position of the CONAMAQ. This mapping out consisted also in the analysis of the discourses of the CSUTCB Central Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia and of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. We describe the Bolivian nationalist and indianist discourses, especially the katarismo, to analyze the constitution of the agents, of their positions and of the way they Interact. Our aim was to define the field of the relations, at the same time practical and discoursive, in which the systems of differences that make up the context where the agents and their discourses navigate are encoded. Two discourses are to be found evident in the process of construction of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, two discourses based on which discoursive positions are established, social movements are organized and agents are created in the public political sphere: the indianpeasant and the originary-indian. Based on this, we attempt to analyze the encounter of the discourses on rights of the CONAMAQ, of the Plurinational State and of the rules of the international law on the rights of indigenous peoples, with an emphasis on the debate about the right to autonomy. In order to demonstrate that the contacts and encounters between the local (identified as CONAMAQ and Plurinational State) and international (understood as rules of law regarding the rights of indigenous peoples elaborated by international organizations) discoursive levels are intertwined and show different points of contact, creating discursive clashes in the local public sphere, and also on an international/global level.