ABSTRACT
Fredrik Barth states that the subject of the subsequent critique is the ideal typical definition of ethnic group as it “is generally understood in anthropological literature”; he then continues that “such a formulation prevents from understanding the phenomenon of ethnic groups and their place in human society and culture”. But it is precisely this very definition Reminick presents as Barth’s own definition of ethnic group. Banks mentions as examples of this phenomenon Benedict Anderson’s Imagined communities, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s The invention of tradition and–Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Ethnicity is a conceptual tool of the researcher. The concept of ethnicity, as all concepts, is a good servant bud a bad master and researchers “ought to be critical enough to abandon the concept of ethnicity the moment it becomes a straitjacket rather than a tool for generating new understanding”. Even the excellent study by Eriksen entitled “The epistemological status of the concept of ethnicity” shows identical difficulties.
