Download - Аслан Альянс_the Role of Religion in Society

2014/5/2 Аслан Альянс/THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN SOCIETY

http://www.aslan4all.com/ori.html 1/4

Аслан Альянс/THE ROLE OF RELIGION INSOCIETY

"Preface," Ethnicity, Edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.Ethnicity as a term and a subject of study is very recent. For at least 150 years liberalsand socialists confidently expected the demise of ethnic, racial, and national ties andthe unification of the world through international trade and mass communications.These expectations have not been realized. Instead, we are witnessing a series ofexplosive ethnic revivals across the globe. In Europe and the Americas ethnicmovements unexpectedly surfaced from the 1960s and 1970s, in Africa and Asia theyhave been gaining force since the 1950s, and the demise of the former Soviet Union hasencouraged ethnic conflicts and national movements to flourish throughout its territory.Since 1990 twenty new states based largely upon dominant ethnic communities havebeen recognized. Clearly, ethnicity, far from fading away, has now become a centralissue in the social and political life of every continent. The "end of history", it seems,turns out to have ushered in the era of ethnicity.

Since the 1960s scholars have increasingly come to appreciate the centrality of ethniccleavages in the operation of states, but they have tended to underestimate the role ofethnicity as a regulative cultural and political principle in world affairs. There has alsobeen a relative neglect of the deeper historical roots of ethnicity. A longer-termperspective reveals the significance of ethnic ties and sentiments in every period ofrecorded history, even when there are problems in interpreting their meaning anddiffusion in our often-fragmentary records. It is these historical and comparative



dimensions, and the shared memories and symbols through which they are activated,that lend to modern ethnic identities and antagonisms their peculiar passion andintensity, raising questions about the degree to which modernity, as is so oftenassumed, constitutes a radical break with the past.

"The Concept of Ethnie," Ethnicity, Ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 5-7.The key term in the field is that of ‘ethnic group’ or ‘ethnic community,’ but it is one forwhich there is no agreed stipulative or ostensive definition. The issue is complicated bythe levels of incorporation which named human culture communities display.Handelman has distinguished four such levels: that of ethnic category, the loosest level ofincorporation, where there is simply a perceived cultural difference between the groupand outsiders, and a sense of the boundary between them. In the next stage, that ofethnic network, there is regular interaction between ethnic members such that thenetwork can distribute resources among its members. In the ethnic association themembers develop common interests and political organizations to express these at acollective, corporate level. Finally, we have the ethnic community, which possesses apermanent, physically bounded territory, over and above its political organizations; anexample would be an ethnie in command of a national state (Handelman, 1977). ….

‘An ethnic group is defined here as a collectivity within a larger society having real orputative common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus onone or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of their peoplehood. Examples ofsuch symbolic elements are: kinship patterns, physical contiguity (as in localism orsectionalism), religious affiliation, language or dialectic forms, tribal affiliation,nationality, phenotypical features, or any combination of these. A necessaryaccompaniment is some consciousness of kind among members of the group.’(Schermerhorn, 1978: 12) ….

In other words, ethnies habitually exhibit, albeit in varying degrees, six main features:

1.

2.

3.

a common proper name, to identify and express the ‘essence’ of the community;

a myth of common ancestry, a myth rather than a fact, a myth that includes the ideaof a common origin in time and place and that gives an ethnie a sense of fictivekinship, what Horowitz terms a ‘super-family’ (Horowitz,1985: ch 2);

shared historical memories, or better, shared memories of a common past or pasts,



4.

5.

6.

including heroes, events, and their commemoration;

one or more elements of common culture, which need not be specified but normallyinclude religion, customs, or language;

a link with a homeland, not necessarily its physical occupation by the ethnie, only itssymbolic attachment to the ancestral land, as with diaspora peoples;

a sense of solidarity on the part of at least some sections of the ethnie’s population(A.D. Smith, 1986: ch 2).

This brings out the importance of shared myths and memories in the definition ofethnies, and the subjective identification of individuals with the community; without theshared myths and memories, including myths of origin and election, and the sense ofsolidarity they engender, we would be speaking of an ethnic category rather than acommunity. The second key element is the orientation to the past: to the origins andancestors of the community and to its historical formation, including its ‘golden ages,’the periods of its political, artistic, or spiritual greatness. The destiny of the communityis bound up with its ethno-history, with its own understanding of a unique, shared past.

The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Anthony D. Smith. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1986, pp. 31-32.The six ‘components’ of ethnie which I have isolated here afford a working definition ofethnicity, one which enables us to delimit the field from the adjacent ones of class andreligious communities, and from territorial polities. In practice, some of the elements orcomponents vary in degree of clarity, scope and intensity; myths of ancestry may beconfused, historical memories may seem sketchy and the lines of cultural differenceappear hazy and blurred. Nevertheless, enquiry into these six dimensions will generallyreveal the extent to which we are dealing with an ethnie or an ethnic category, or simplysome regional variation of an ethnie, or indeed a class or religious community or polity.

Similarly, we would claim that collectivities in the process of ‘ethnic formation’ willgenerally seek to augment their shared characteristics and differences along those of thesix dimensions they appear to be deficient in – in so far as this is within their power.But, then, given the important element of subjective perception, will, symbolism andcommunication involved, it is not impossible for would-be ethnie to develop theircultural differences, find appropriate names, re-construct an appropriate history andpedigree, or even a mythical homeland, out of the hazy memories, existing cultural



markers and sense of shared origins and community that have given an impetus toethnic formation in the first place.

In other words, if a group of people feel they are a community, because of sharedmemories and an association with a territory or a myth of shared ancestry, it will notprove impossible to find a name, extend their solidarity and gradually formulate theirown culture (based on separate religion, or customs, or language, or institutions orcolour), so as to become an ethnie in the full sense of the term. It is, I should add, farmore difficult to create an ethnic community which possesses a territory and even someelement of separate culture, but little in the way of historical memories or myths ofdescent. Herein lies the problem of new and revolutionary would-be nations.

Download - Аслан Альянс_the Role of Religion in Society

Top Related