On Reconciling Constructivism and Primordialism: Tribute to Andrei Vladimirovich Golovnev

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The article brings forward the idea of ethnic plurality as an alternative to multinationalism (mnogonarodnost).The author employs the constructivist approach to reality, which does not renounce primordialism, but helps to understand how primordial feelings and loyalties are invoked and manifest themselves.The paper outlines the critical contributions of constructivism to the study of ethnicity and ethnopolitics.Constructivism expounds massive shifts in identities and, hence, ethnic composition, the emergence and disappearance of new groups through procedures of re-identification and rewriting.Constructivism explains how ethnic divisions can be created and changed through political influence or indoctrination.The constructivist approach overcomes the negative content when ethnic diversity is associated with risks to nation-building, with less democratic, less well-governed, and more contentious societies.Finally, the paper proposes a development to the theory of ethnicity by updating the language of description and by focusing not on quantitative markers (classifications, numbers) but on the reproduction, management, and use of ethnicity.The author supports the idea of two forms of ethnic identity, i. e., the nominal and activated forms.