Ethnicity from Ethnolinguistic Identity to Commodified Exploitation

The concept of ethnicity has advanced and retreated as an object of anthropological interest. A central concern of studies of nationalism and modernity, it faded from view, only to reappear more recently tied to questions around the commodification of identity. This article traces the relational concept of ethnicity, understood to be part of a semiotic constellation with nation and race, as linked to the legitimization of social inequality in the rise of liberal democracy and industrial capitalism. Ethnicity was initially mobilized in the making of the modern nation-state as tied to criteria of access to political rights (through which access to economic resources was distributed). However, the most recent crisis of capitalism, often understood as “globalization,” has rendered the semiotic attributes of ethnicity as an identity category tied to political rights available to be mobilized as economic resources in and of themselves. This shift has destabilized the workings of this category, leading to difficulties in boundary production and reproduction, as well as sapping its ability to serve as a basis for mobilizing resistance to inequality.