Ethnogenesis

In its basic semantics, the word ethnogenesis is composed of the Greek words ethnos

“volk,” “tribe,” “group of people”) and genesis “creation,” “origin,” “a coming into being”). The term ethnogenesis is first mentioned by the American poet Henry Timrod (1828–1867) in his poem of the same name concerning the birth of his own nation, the Confederate States of the American South.

As a scientific concept, ethnogenesis refers to the processes by which a group of people come into being as a definable group, aggregate, or category at some point in history. These people could then be understood or understand themselves as ethnically distinct from the wider sociocultural context from which their grouping emerges. The history and historicity of people are main points in the conceptual understanding of these processes. Other key features are language, appearance, religion, name, or the whole cultural context as distinct from other ones. The complementary dimension of ethnogenesis could be understood as ethnocide, which is the conscious effort by powers to obliterate a people's lifestyle.

The process-related understanding of ethnogenesis could be studied under several aspects and in several ways. There are three main approaches—namely, the sociobiological, functionalist, and symbolical approaches.

The sociobiological approach has been considerably influenced by the theory of evolutionism. The processes by which a group of people came into a definable category are usually conceptualized as based in biology and determined by genetic and geographical factors. Explicitly within the Russian and former Soviet anthropology, the result of ethnogenesis was seen as a unity of “blood and soil.” This perception was derived from Herder's neo-romantic concept of the volk. The processes of ethnogenesis were determined to be geographic and a combined effect of landscape and endogamy (a marriage rule in which marriages are only approved within a specific group, such as one's own caste, etc.). Ethnos is understood here as a group originating from successful genetic-biological reproduction and thus, over time and space, an expanded group of related families. In this primordial sense, ethnic groups are objective and homogeneous entities with certain inherent sociobiological characteristics, such as language, territory, mentality, and economy.

In the functionalist approach, the processes of creating ethnicity were defined in terms of the objective cultural structure and institutions of a given society. Ethnicity was a product of political myth, created and manipulated by sociocultural elites in their pursuit of advantages and power. The cultural forms, values, and practices of ethnic groups become resources for elites in competition for political power and economic advantage and in the dynamics of elite competition within the borders determined by political and economic realities.

The third and most influential approach, symbolical and constructivist in its theoretical foundation, could be understood as symbolic in verbal and nonverbal form. This means that these processes are value laden and can move people to action. The ethnogenetic processes could be interpreted as the dialectical negotiating of the objective and subjective within a set of sociocultural diacritics such as physical appearance, name, language, history, nationality, and religion. These sets define a shared identity by inclusion and exclusion. The signs always convey meaning, and therefore, they are to be understood as reference points of a cultural context—“webs of significance man himself has spun” (Geertz, 1973, p. 5).

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