ABSTRACT
St. Clair Drake (1963), F.K. Lehman (1967), and Fredrik Barth (1969) use a theoretical perspective that treats the categorization of humans in society as cultural and social constructions. In the work of these scholars, cultural categories are not interpreted as reflections of natural divisions of humankind or as having any intrinsic foundation in biological or cultural characteristics; instead, they are viewed as human conceptual inventions used for various social and political purposes. This perspective has become an important benchmark of contemporary social scientific description and analysis.
