ABSTRACT
Anthropologists of mainland South East Asia have long debated questions of ethnic identity. In the colonial period anthropologists tended to think in terms of a naturalistic kind of pluralism. Later a more politico-economic and historical approach emerged, for instance in the work of Leach (1954), Lehman (1963), and Keyes (1977). It became clear that an ethnic systerTI or group was not necessarily bound by historically persistent genetic relations, but that ethnic sub-groups could change affiliation and become members of a different ethnic system. These changes tended to be determined by politico-economic variables (Friedman, 1971, 1975). Since the 1970s the concept 'ethnic minority (group)' emerged as that of an ethnic group in a disadvantaged, unequal politico-economic situation, and in a way dependent on a dominant 'majority group' (Geusau, 1986).
