ABSTRACT
In the last decade, there has been a resurgence of ethnic identification as the basis for effective political action in widely divergent societies. This chapter relates ethnicity to major macrosocial trends in the world today in order to see what may be illuminated thereby. It presents a schematic outline of major social trends which are reworking the structures of society. The chapter looks at an inventory of the macrosocial units in a society in order to identify the conditions under which one or another of these units becomes salient. The inventory is what can be regarded as major social changes in the Western world, particularly in advanced industrial society, which create new problems and force new realignments. The chapter also examines the relation of ethnic groups to the other social units, and to these major social trends.
