ABSTRACT
In the history of the ‘western’ human sciences, a concern with human physical and cultural diversity has been primarily located in the realm of anthropology, where diversity has been a central motif. Indeed, Stocking (1988:3) has retrospectively characterized the history of anthropological thought as ‘the systematic study of human unity-in-diversity’. However, despite this enduring concern with diversity, the concepts that have been used in the classification of difference have not remained static, and their meaning and orientation have been influenced by different questions at different times during the history of anthropology. In the last two to three decades there has been a rapid growth in the study of ethnicity, and the term ‘ethnic’ has been applied to a wide range of socio-cultural groups formerly defined as racial, cultural, tribal, linguistic and/or religious. The adoption of the concept of ethnicity did not merely represent a change in terminology, it also embodied one of a number of theoretical shifts in the way in which human groups have been conceptualized and understood within the history of the human sciences. Concepts such as ‘ethnic’, ‘race’, ‘tribe’ and ‘culture’ do not reflect universal and unchanging divisions of humanity. On the contrary, they represent specific, historically contingent ways of looking at the world, which intersect with broader social and political relations. Furthermore, earlier approaches to the classification of human diversity often constrain, influence and persist alongside more recent perspectives.
