Ethnic Scale and Intensity: The Zimbabwean Experience

Sociologists' preoccupation with Western race and ethnic models has led to the distortion, or neglect, of Third World contexts, and has retarded the development of frameworks adequate for broad comparative analysis. The Zimbabwe setting illustrates two of many issues requiring more rigorous examination: (1) changing scale of ethnic boundaries, and (2) the effect of countervailing or coinciding factors on ethnic intensity. Contrary to prevailing expectations, the organizational potential of large-scale modem boundaries can be seen in Zimbabwe's pattern of ethnicity; the main determinants of intensity have tended to diminish ethnic cleavages among the general citizenry. If sociology's comparative method is to flourish, the study of ethnicity and its impact on societal development and change in less advanced areas of the world should not go, by default, to other disciplines.