Ethnicity

From Hobson's Choice

"A Jewish Wedding," Moritz Oppenheim (1800-1882)

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Ethnicity is usually understood as the physical traits of person, when expressed by origins. Hence, skin color, eyelids, hair color and type, facial shape and so forth, are not just randomly distributed through a population; they reflect one's historic origins. Typically, in regions such as Transylvania, Romania, definitions of ethnic origin are used to argue over the rights of certain groups in the region.

While the broadest ethnic categories undoubtedly reflect different regional origins, and consistent genotypes for each category, these distinctions become unstable at lower levels of division. For example, the familiar image of ethnicities branching out as trees is not compatible with historical human behavior. On the contrary, there is a tendency for tribes entering agrarian/urban social orders to lose their distinct tribal/clan moniker, and become submerged into their class. The ruling class then developed a new mythology of national origins.

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Context

In discussing the roots of conflict, it is necessary to discuss the category of ethnicity. The term έθνος (ethnos) was originally used to refer to foreign nations, although in modern Greek it is the translation of "nation." For the concept of ethnicity, there is λαός (laos). The concept of precisely what "ethnicity" signifies is, however, a slippery one. The Greeks, such as Herodotus, used the term to explain the historic origins of people they were curious about; ethnicity implied a common, distant origin. In contrast, lands farther north regarded ethnicity as conferring special merit and entitlement; the nation, and the special political standing it conferred on the volk, were what ethnicity meant. In contrast, early theorists of race such as Arthur-Joseph comte de Gobineau, or Louis Agassiz proposed the concept of race as as a classification that intersected that of ethnicity. Within a nation, the master race was prone to noble rank; he was "pulled down" by ethnic claims on his loyalty and marital preferences.^[1]

Today, different ethnic groups are perceived as belonging to different genotypes. There is a surmise of unified genetic origins among members of the same ethnic group, whereas members of other ethnic groups are of different origins. We might say this unity is "constructed," or (crudely speaking) "assumed into existence" through a tacit social struggle within the community. Families at the margins of social approval tend to advertise their ties to the local aristocracy. Members of a less-fashionable clan may scrutinize their family trees for connections to the more prestigious one. They may seek employ as family retainers, and affect the same geographical origins. Gradually these pretensions become accepted as true.

Successive changes in regime, such as in the Levant, tend to result in repeated endeavors by the less-elite to identify with different cadres of elites. An example that comes to mind is the 19th-century system of aristocracy in France, in which some of the aristocracy had been ennobled by the Bourbons, and others by the Bonapartes. In Syria-Lebanon, the repeated scrambles to re-align with new ruling houses led to a complex matrix of clans, confessional affinities, and surnames. Efforts to actually track the histories of individual Lebanese families is quite revealing, and suggests that our notions of (say) Arab versus Persian, or Kurd, or other ethnic category, are actually quite spurious.

The essence of ethnicity is proximity of origins. Different, but adjacent ethnic groups (e.g., in the Balkans) have different legends of national origins.

With urbanization, the crisp definition of ethnicity fades. The emergence of a coherent industrial system makes ethnic particularism a luxury, and a costly one at that. Intermarriage, for strategic, then social reasons, tends to blend the elite families first. Bourgeois families closely follow the aristocratic ones. The middle class typically lacks the push of [[opportunity cost[[, but also lacks the anchor of large inheritances (the parents might oppose a cross-ethnic match, but they have less enforcement power).

"Moravian Peasant Girl,"
Jean Baptiste Le Prince
(1734–1781)

Click on image to enlarge

Not all intermarriage is the same. In practice, ethnic groups of any particular region tend to coalesce into ranks; in some cases, these ranks will not be acknowledged, but that's surprisingly rare. These ranks contributed to the formation of the ethnic groups in the first place; as the original, pre-urban ethnic (or tribal) divisions blue, new ones will appear that tend to mimic more closely the divisions of race or class. During the course of this phase, intermarriage is driven by the old forces of identification, except that now the cohort that each household wants to be identified with will have changed, and now reflects the networks of industrial or bureaucratic power. The fact that intermarriage occurs, and may occur across rank lines, does not cause ethnicity itself to vanish, but only the original, clear-cut lines. Ethnic groups become much larger and adopt pretensions of solidarity across the continent. One of the most spectacular cases of this was the affinity of Hungarians and Austrian Germans (actually, Slovenes). The Magyar had risen to occupy the ranks just beneath that of the emperor within Hungary; by the 1850's, the bid for Magyar independence within the old pre-Habsburg boundaries—and with it, empire over several neighboring, lower-ranked ethnic groups—was actually a benefit to the German ruling classes, who were in danger of becoming too thinly spread. Hence, the creation of a Hungarian "sub-empire" (the Apostolic Kingdom in 1867). Oddly, as co-aristocrats to the Germans, the Magyar were nevertheless of all Europeans the most distant in ethnic origins from the Germans.^[2] Likewise, the various Slavonic peoples under the rule of German-speaking rulers tended to identify as much as possible with Germans (if possible, as, for example, when they lived in communities where German was spoken) and affect German customs as representing civilization.

In cases where the rival rankings of ethnic groups was in force, as in the Balkans, or regions of South Asia, intermarriage came more slowly because negotiations of terms like dowry, bride price, etc., were much more acrimonious and prone to collapse. The families involved, with the temporary exception of the potential bride and groom, had a strong interest in holding out for some acknowledgment of their higher status with respect to the other. The "lower household" (as seen by the other) would not be receiving a benefit it wished to pay for, such as deferential treatment of in-laws, a large dowry, or what-have-you. Consequently, a barrier to intermarriage might survive for many years.

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Notes

↑ Additional reading on the late [post-Darwinian] concepts of ethnicity include the "Evolution in Later Social and Political Thought | Evolution and Ethnicity" module of Dr. Brian Yhearm (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK). Unfortunately, most Usonian writers tend to lump the conception of "race" with the conception of "ethnicity."
↑ The Magyar are generally understood to have originated in the easternmost regions of Europe; according to the US Library of Congress country study, they originated in the region between the Volga and the Urals. However, at the time (400 CE) of their first historical reference, there would have been a large "ambient" population of Samoyed peoples, so that the components of the Magyar nation most likely were from much farther east. René Grousset believes the Magyar were in any event under the control of a Turkic aristocracy, which eventually supplied the Arpad Dynasty (The Empire of the Steppes, Grousset, 1939 p.177)

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