Ethnic identity

Several scholars now agree that ethnicity is not a fixed and absolute entity, but that it is dynamic, negotiable and subject to change (Bangura, 2006; Parker and Rathbone, 2007).

This is also obvious in the various attempts to define the terms “ethnic”, “ethnicity” and

“ethnic groups” and what ultimately makes them what they are: identity. Bandana Purkayastha, for instance, has argued that “the concept of negotiating ethnicity is grounded in the scholarship on the social construction of ethnicity, transnationalism and gender” (2008: 459). Purkayastha suggests that there are multiple actors involved in constructing the content and boundaries of ethnicity, with structural restrictions and opportunities depending on the local, national and transnational contexts. Yusuf Bangura (2006: 4) argues in the same tone that “ethnic identities are not always easy to pin down, since they are, for the most part, situational.” He makes the observation that this is due to the fact that objective attributes such as language, religion, culture or shared history may not always describe a person’s ethnicity, and that ethnicity overlaps with many other forms of identity.

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Stephen Cornell and Douglas Hartman posit a sociological shift toward the subjective in the meaning of ethnicity. They refer to the German sociologist Max Weber who, in his great work Economy and Society, written early in the twentieth century and re-published in 1968, ties ethnic identity to the subjective belief a (human) group has in their common descent “because of similarities of physical type, or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration” (Weber, 1968: 389). Cornell and Hartman see Weber’s theory and definition as consisting of four main features:

1. The fact that the foundations of ethnic identity lie in real or assumed common descent.

2. That the fact of common descent is less important than a people’s belief in their common descent; that what people perceive is more important than what is.

3. That there are multiple potential bases of this belief – anyone or a combination of such factors from physical resemblance to shared cultural practices to a shared historical experience of intergroup interaction.

4. That an ethnic group exists wherever this distinctive connection of common descent is part of the foundation of community (Cornell and Hartmann, 2007: 17).

Weber’s theory is supported by Kanchan Chandra who refers to ethnic identities as “a sub-set of categories in which descent-based attributes are necessary for membership” (Chandra, 2012: 9). He argues that, among other attributes, by definition all ethnic categories require descent-based attributes, although all descent-based categories are not ethnic categories.

Weber and Chandra’s definitions of ethnic identities are supported further by George De Vos’s observation that “members of an ethnic group cling to a sense of having

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been an independent people, in origin at least, whatever specific role they have collectively come to play in a pluralistic society” (De Vos, 1995: 18).

Descent is, in the final analysis, the main attribute of ethnic identity. And as Chandra observes, “virtually all social science definitions of an ethnic identity emphasize the role of descent in some way … But they specify it differently, to mean a common ancestry, or a myth of a common ancestry, a common region of origin, or a myth of a common region of origin, or a ‘group’ descent rule” (Chandra 2012: 10). Various authors and commentators agree, however, that definitions of ethnic identities do typically combine descent with other features such as a common culture, a common language, a common history, a common territory and a communal character (Chandra, 2012: 10;

Ringer and Lawless, 2001: 49ff; Sekulic, 2008). Indeed, for some time, in what Sekulic refers to as “the traditional ‘static’ approach to ethnic relations” (Sekulic, 2008: 457), the tendency was to consider the most common elements of culture such as language or religion to be the universal characteristics of ethnicity. They were taken as the property that groups owned and which ultimately determined their ethnicity (Sekulic, 2008). It is the seminal work of Frederik Barth (1969) that signalled a new understanding of the relationship between culture and ethnicity. He shifted from the traditional idea of an ethnic group as being defined by a common culture. He argued that cultural content such as language, customs, religion and so on, serve not as the ‘properties’ that define an ethnic group and give it its identity, but rather as ‘markers’ that distinguish members from non-members in the process of social interaction with others. Barth thus refers to the main aspect of an ethnic group as the “boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it contains” (Barth, 1969: 15).

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For the purpose of this study, and in view of the state of tribes and/or ethnic groups in Uganda, I will opt for a middle ground arguing that the cultural elements of a human group act both as its defining features and, automatically, as the markers of boundaries between them and other ethnic groups. While the perceived common descent of ethnic groups in Uganda is an important feature of their identity (see chapter 3, section 3.2), their cultural “stuff” is important not only as a marker of their boundaries with other ethnic groups (tribes), but also as their defining property. Tribes define themselves by their common descent, migration patterns and historical-political experiences, as well as by their cultural features. There is a cultural independence implied in an ethnic definition.

Cultural elements like language, religion, and customs, both define the collective ethnic identity and strictly mark the boundaries between the “us” and “them” categories.

Where does this leave Barth’s argument then? As Chandra observes, many later definitions and discussions of ethnic identity have been untouched by his argument:

They continue to conceptualise ethnic groups as groups defined by common

“cultural stuff.” Gellner (1983), for instance, uses the words “ethnicity”, “culture”

and “nation” interchangeably, Laitin (1986) presents a theory of ethnic cleavages as “cultural” cleavages, and the large body of work on “multiculturalism” (Taylor, 1994; Kymlicka, 1995) is premised on the assumption that ethnic groups are self-standing cultural units. Everyday underself-standing of ethnicity often echoes the same idea. This is best illustrated by the definition of “ethnic groups” offered in Wikipedia: “Ethnic groups are also usually united by certain common cultural, behavioral, linguistic and ritualistic or religious traits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_group) (Chandra, 2012: 70).

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Other scholars who have linked ethnicity closely with culture include Tharailath Oommen (1997), who, citing Roosens (1989), conceptualizes ethnicity and ethnic groups as being relatively small, sharing a common culture with and tracing its descent to a common ancestor, and a tribe being the favourite example. Oommen has however cautioned about equating an ethnic group to a nation, arguing that the former should only be referred to as the latter only when “they adopt the territory into which they have immigrated as their homeland” (Oommen, 1997: 35). Oommen was reacting to such definitions as Anthony Smith’s (1986) which characterise what he alone calls an “ethnie”, as in a human group with a collective name, a common myth of descent, a shared history, a distinctive shared culture, an association with a specific territory, and a sense of solidarity, characteristics which fit the concept of a nation equally as well. Andrew Greeley and William Mccready define an ethnic group as “a large collectivity, based on presumed common origin, which is, at least on occasion, part of the common definition of a person, and which also acts as a bearer of cultural traits’’ (Greeley and Mccready, 1975: 210). From their study of immigrant groups in the US they concluded that much cannot be explained about their present behaviour without investigating the cultural background of the country of origin. Robert Schermerhorn defines an ethnic group as “a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements (emphasis mine) defined as the epitome of their peoplehood” (Schermerhorn, 1970: 12). Schermerhorn includes in the symbolic elements, language or dialect, kinship, religion, physical proximity, nationality or physical features of the people. He thus underlines the significance of both the physical and cultural-spiritual factors determining the identity of an ethnic group.

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All in all, ethnic identity is generally acquired at birth, though membership in an ethnic group is a matter of social definition: an inter-play of the self-definition of the members of a group, as well as the group’s definition of other groups. There are also possibilities of changing individual identity or even group identity in the sense of conscious modification of group behaviour and identification (Horowitz, 1975). This author has grown up with and experienced such trends in Uganda with the changes in the self-definition and integration of Rwandan and Burundian refugees into the Buganda region of Uganda. Both countries with similar (but not identical) ethnic demography descended into chaos at independence, and into genocidal slaughters and subsequent movements of refugees that went on well into the 1990s. Many Rwandans and Burundians have taken up Baganda clans and clan names and define themselves as such. Changes in individual identity have thus brought about changes in group boundaries and collective identity, the latter becoming either wider or narrower. In this particular case the Baganda clans and the tribe as such have become wider, incorporating many Rwandans and Burundians, while the latter groups have been narrowing as a result. It can be argued that this phenomenon has also occurred in other tribes and ethnicities (mainly in Western Uganda) that welcomed these refugees during the period of political turmoil dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s Hutu-Tutsi revolutions in Rwanda and Burundi.