Alpha Ethnicity

November 6th, 2007 Posted in Group, Ethnicity, Alpha ethnicity

Ethnic means the people. Biological reproduction is recognized in kinship forms. People trace back to a common ancestor, sometimes identified as a common place or a common experience. Start with the reproducing couple and their children, and build up over time to the larger groupings: siblings, cousins, kin, bands, tribes, nations.

Think of this kin group in isolation, alone in the universe. The imputed biological unity is accompanied by a cultural unity of shared language, religion, values, and by a shared place or sense of territory, and by a shared social and economic organization, and a shared technology, and a shared cadre function with a tradition of governance. This group has the means and the capacity to sustain itself and its members. It is a complete human social experience. Call it the alpha ethnic group. Alone it has no special ethnic identity. In this situation we call ourselves the people. We carry the heritage and hope of our species.

It is only in contact that we can see our differences and at that moment we take on a special ethnic identity, a name, a tag, that distinguishes us from the other parallel peoples.

One people—the universal species. Two peoples—ethnic groups.

It is important to recognize that in the contact of parallel (and now ethnic) groups each group (at least initially) retains the capacity for full independent development. Each group has the capacity to become the universal people. Isn’t that the archaeological theory? Start with a small band, the original alpha group, in east Africa and expand to cover and use the entire planet. But in the process we have lost the original connection.

So the reality is that ethnicity implies more than one group. This plurality arises from two processes—splitting and contact. Splitting is the key. It appears to be an inevitable process. The original unity is constantly on the verge of breaking up.

The physical dispersal where the universal alpha grouping spreads out and loses touch. The constant search for new recourses entices sub-groups off in different directions. A disagreement over management and plans. Disagreement over ideology, religious belief and practice. Elopement: boy and girl wander off seeking privacy and Eden. And sio on.

A social separation, is also possible where differences in social status lead to different group identities. This leads to beta ethnicity–a partial ethnic unity missing or refusing (for the moment) the possibility of full independent development. ( We will get to this complication in our next blog post.)

And then there is plurality from the outside. Two alpha groups in newly developing contact—strangers meeting—find their ethnic differences in the encounter.

And there you have it. A simple process over time leading to the experience of many kinds of ethnic relationships, all so different that we can hardly credit that they fit into this single ethnic identity model.

These processes assure us that even if we could magically negotiate our way through all of our differences and experiences and cultures and our prior histories and assert again the original alpha unity of the whole, the very next moment the splitting process would begin again. New ethnic groups are constantly building up. Expect no end to ethnicity (though there might be vast differences and changes in ethnic identities).

Bet on it.

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