ETHNIC GROUP

An ethnic group is a human population whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry (Smith, 1986). Recognition by others as a separate ethnic group, and a specific name for the group, also contribute to defining it. Ethnic groups are also usually united by certain common cultural, behavioural, linguistic and ritualistic or religious traits. In this sense, an ethnic group is also a cultural community. Processes that result in the emergence of such a community are summarized as ethnogenesis.

Members of an ethnic group generally claim a strong cultural continuity over time, although some historians and anthropologists have documented that many of the cultural practices on which various ethnic groups are based are of recent invention (Friedlander 1975, Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, Sider 1993). On the political front, an ethnic group is distinguished from a nation-state by the former's lack of sovereignty.