ABSTRACT
The idea that the modern welfare state, with its growing intrusion into community institutions on one hand, and its increasing bureaucratisation on the other, encourages what has come to be known as ‘new ethnicity’, has by now been extensively explored (see Glazer and Moynihan 1975; Fox et al. 1982; Walzer 1982). The term ‘ethnic group’, indicate Glazer and Moynihan, is no longer associated with marginal groups at the edges of society, destined to disappear or barely survive. Rather, it denotes groups which are ‘major elements of a society’ (Glazer and Moynihan 1975:5). Novak proceeds from this observation to suggest that technology and modernism lie behind the resurgence of ethnicity. Whereas technology ‘liberates certain energies for more intense self-consciousness’ (Novak 1982: 32), the secular, pragmatic nature of modernism drives people to seek for their ‘roots’. Yet even in one and the same place, the upsurge of ethnicity is not uniformly spread. In line with Cohen’s (1969, 1974) earlier proposition that interest is a major force in the making and maintenance of ethnic groups, Glazer and Moynihan contend that it is the struggle for power that is ultimately responsible for this new type of ethnicity. It is a matter of ‘strategic efficacy’, they add, which leads states to pursue the support of groups which are large enough to produce some gains, but smaller than the ‘loosely aggregated’ social classes.
