Ethnicity and Practice

A perusal of the contents of any social science journal will indicate that ethnicity has been a popular topic during the past two decades. Yet despite the volume of material produced, this period has not seen a notable increase in theoretical sophistication in the field (Drummond 1983:803; Young 1983). For the most part students of ethnicity remain mired in antique arguments about motivation that obscure as much as they illuminate. The following discussion attempts to break through some entrenched conceptual blinders by drawing on the theory of practice outlined by Pierre Bourdieu (1977). This theory avoids the explanatory gaps and fallacious reasoning and at the same time allows richer interpretations of ethnic phenomena, individual and collective, than do conventional models of ethnicity. Since individual and collective expressions of ethnicity have elicited divergent theoretical treatments, the practice theory of ethnicity promises to give new unity to a fragmented field of study.