A CRITICAL REVIEW ON ETHNICITY, ETHNIC GROUP AND ETHNIC IDENTITY

The terms “ethnicity,” “ethnic group,” and “ethnic Identity” mean different things to different people. To pre-empt misunderstanding, one needs to specify the meaning one is using. The term ‘Ethnicity” stands for a group's way of conceptualising and relating to society. It welds together individuals who share a history, culture and community, who have an amalgam of language, religion and regional belonging in common and perhaps most critical of all; they feel that they come from the same stock. (1a) Ethnicity is a concept probably first used by David Reisman in 1953 but the concept itself is not new “nor was the phenomenon new or un-recognised previously; it was merely labelled differently”. There are three competing approaches to the understanding of ethnicity such as primordialist, instrumentalist and constructivist. Primordialist views assert that ethnic identification is based on deep ‘primordial' attachments to a group or culture. The instrumentalist views treat ethnicity as a political instrument exploited by leaders and others in pragmatic pursuit of their own interests and the constructivist views emphasize the contingency and fluidity of ethnic identity, treating it as something which is made in specific social and historical contexts