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ARTICLES

Reconsidering primordialism: an alternative approach to the study of ethnicity

Pages 1639-1657 | Published online: 14 Oct 2009
 

Abstract

This theoretical article first clarifies the exclusive assumptions of primordialism and constructivism. Subsequently, it demonstrates that primordialism has substantial power to explain ethnic phenomena, since (a) ethnic identities persist even in the hardest cases, such as sub-Saharan Africa and the United States, and (b) the attributed significance of assumed kinship has psychological and sociological bases. Finally, this article formulates hypotheses based on the core primordialist assumptions and develops ethnic distance as an explanatory variable on the level of integration of immigrants. It defines ethnic distance as the degree to which two ethnic identities have been solidified as opposed to each other by their dyadic violent conflicts and religious and/or nationalistic education and hypothesizes that the higher the ethnic distance between immigrants and the host society the lower the level of integration.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Marcus Crepaz, Jeffrey Berejikian, Abdulahi Osman, Brian Turner, Jeffrey Thompson, Michael O'Keefe and two anonymous reviewers whose reviews greatly helped to improve the manuscript. All remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the author.

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