Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: Groupism and Cognition

Abstract The text focuses on a revision of the narrative about and status of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969), touted as a ground-breaking publication which heralded a historic turning point in the study of ethnicity. In the first part, the author demonstrates that the understanding of ethnic groups, as presented in this work, was in no way original in its time; rather, it exemplified an already well-established and generally accepted theoretical model. In the second part, the author provides an alternative explanation for the fame and success of this text. He reveals that the central concept of the book – the bounded (ethnic) group – resonates very well with the mental module of “groupism” – part of the human cognitive apparatus. The generally favourable reception of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries is therefore not rooted in its novelty but rather in that it explicitly formulated a fundamental component of the human cognitive apparatus.