For Randall Collins the secret of ethnicity lies in the nature of the State and the geo-political relations among states.The strength of a particular state, which is dependent on its ability to permeate (civil) society and to mobilize its population for military purposes, determines simultaneously the State’s geo-political standing as well as the character of its inter-ethnic make up. Collins focuses on ethnic group mobilization which is, in his view, moulded for the most part by the policies as well as the reputation of the State in the wider geo-political environment. To fully understand the consequences of the State’s image and actions regarding the processes of ethnic group mobilization, one has to move beyond the events that constitute an ethnic group’s present and look at the macro history or the ‘history of the long-run’ which set the trajectories for present-day events.
Macro-historical analysis indicates that ethnic groups are not only reproduced but often created in the process of political mobilization. As Collins puts it: ‘conflict creates the framework that is projected backward into a primordial past. An ethnic group is not merely, or even primarily, a community that shares a common culture and identity. Its identity is constituted by dividing lines, by contrast with others.’ Echoing Weber he sees ethnic groups as metacommunities, ‘communities of communities’ that are constituted by social action and the ‘cultural labelling of group boundaries’. Just as in Weber’s original formulation, ethnic groups are formed as groups by the active participation of individuals as well as by the institutionalization, and later internalization of group markers that serve the purpose of setting group boundaries.Although any cultural marker can enhance group mobilization, Collins finds language and what he calls ‘somatotypes’ as the key factors for the process of social construction of ethnicity.
Somatotypes are socially constructed group differences based on physical markers. Although physical group differences are variable and in reality determined much more by social interaction than by biology, they are important markers of in-group identification and out-group categorization. However, the somatic group differences acquire their full meaning only in the context of broader historic changes. They mirror directions of migrations, invasions and conquests from past epochs and, as such, are ‘geopolitical markers inscribed on the bodies of human beings’. In other words, the attribution of physical markers has little to do with biology and a great deal to do with geo-political history. The nineteenth century ethnic Swedes sneered at all those who were very blonde, had fair skin and blue eyes and regarded them as ethnic Finns, that is, a group with low ethnic status.The basis of such an ethnic stereotype cannot be explained without reference to macro history which locates the source of this stereotype in Sweden’s two centuries of domination over Finnish lands and, especially, seventeenth-century control of the Swedish aristocracy over Finnish peasants. Thus it is primarily through the geo-political domination that somatic differences become indicators of social inferiority or supremacy.
In addition to somatotypes, language is also a powerful ethnic group marker. However, it is not the language in itself that is a potent predictor of social action, but rather its geo-political function.The interplay of historical contingencies determines which dialects transform into standardized vernaculars. The process of creating linguistic similarities goes hand in hand with state expansion:‘strong states foster linguistic uniformity, and highly mobilised linguistic ethnicities strive for an autonomous state’. Thus, just as somatotypes, linguistic differences do not constitute ethnic groups as groups, but are socially constructed through relatively long historical periods of time. For Collins ethnicity is a ‘real-life ideal type’, which is socially constructed by the actions of individuals in their everyday lives. It is constructed from a number of cultural markers such as somatic and linguistic differences, family names and so on.
However it is only small, well integrated and relatively isolated communities that can possess a high degree of cultural similarity on the basis of these markers. Modern complex societies can never be ethnic communities in the same sense. Nevertheless, this is where the paradox of ethnicity lies the more locally anchored such patterns are in practice, the less likely they are to be important for social action. It is the larger, looser metacommunities that group strangers into categories for political action, as well as for acts of discrimination and hostility or sympathy and support. In these larger ethnic metacommunities, the generalised notion of ethnicity becomes a social reality in itself in its shaping of macrodivisions in society.
Is ethnicity just an object of elite manipulation?
