Theories of ethnicity and the dynamics of ethnic change in multiethnic societies

Abstract

I modify Fredrik Barth’s approach, which sees ethnic group building as a signaling system, to place it within a framework that draws from collective action and costly signaling theories. From these perspectives, ethnic signaling, although representing a costly penalty to group members, is one effective form of communication that facilitates collective management of resources. I then identify three contexts in which the benefits of ethnic group building are likely to outweigh its signaling costs: in politically chaotic refuge and periphery zones; in the context of long-distance specialist trading groups; and within the territorial scope of failed states. I point to selected data from the Mughal and Aztec polities to illustrate how a combination of effective public goods management, in highly collective states, and the growth of highly integrated commercial economies will render ethnic group building superfluous.

After Teotihuacan: A View of Collapse and Reorganization from the Southern Basin of Mexico

“…If distinctions in the material culture of Teotihuacan and Chicoloapan during the Metepec phase primarily reflect ethnic differences, this is also relevant to the political trajectory of the region and to the contraction of Teotihuacan's reach into outlying communities. In a recent article relating ethnic signaling to collective action and cooperative resource management, Richard Blanton describes how the construction of ethnic groups, via shared practices, material culture, and commitment to a “whole way of life” (Blanton :9177), is a political rather than merely a social process. He identifies the chaotic circumstances of poorly functioning or failing states as a specific context in which ethnic group building may be a particularly effective strategy for mobilizing local‐scale organization (Blanton :9179).…”

The Governance and Leadership of Prehispanic Mesoamerican Polities: New Perspectives and Comparative Implications

“…As Carneiro (1970) persuasively argued, volunteerism is a rather unconvincing tenet for enduring political affiliations as people generally do not acquiesce to giving up their political and economic autonomy without reason or return (see also Haas 1982). Purely functionalist perspectives on political evolution are even more weakly grounded empirically than they were decades ago since identities are constructed (Blanton 2015;Jones 2008;Nagel 1994) and past gene flows were significant (e.g., Kristiansen 2014). Consequently, long-standing, concretized group affiliations, ensconced in defined territories (e.g., Smith 2005), were, in reality, much rarer than once was presumed and likely not a convincing rationale for enduring altruism or individual actions directed repeatedly toward the good of the whole (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).…”

Anthropological Archaeology in 2016: Cooperation and Collaborations in Archaeological Research and Practice

“…Some of the archaeologists writing in 2016 seem to suggest as much, even though their treatment of collaboration and cooperation revolve around highly varied ways of looking at these practices. As Elizabeth DeMarrais () notes in “The Archaeology of Coalition and Consensus,” her introduction to a special themed section in World Archaeology , many of the recent approaches to collaboration and cooperation draw on theoretically diverse emphases, from heterarchy (Crumley , ; Cumming ), anarchy (Angelbeck and Grier ), identity politics, and collective‐action theory (Blanton ; Carballo ), to practice theory and relational perspectives. Nonetheless, many scholars have turned to ideas of collaboration, cooperation, and collective management as a way to highlight “bottom‐up,” dynamic, nonhierarchical, and alternative ways of thinking about social, environmental, and political economic processes.…”