ABSTRACT
The construction of a national culture by the centre is likely to provoke the resistance of ethnic groups of the periphery that differ from it in religious and linguistic terms. The fact that legitimating mechanisms often use historic religious beliefs explains the numerous tensions which exist throughout the world and increase the potential sources of centre-periphery conflict. In the long-term ethnic groups are socio-cultural groups, a product of a succession of generations that were constituted in social collective formations. In pre-modern ethnic groups and in modern groups that have hardly started processes of self-identification, ethnic personality is predominant over identity. Ethnic identity can be limited to the exhibition of group symbols, therefore remaining politically inactive. Cultural factors can surpass ethnic limits: entire civilisations that have been marginalized by past or present colonial processes develop reactive mobilisations whose manifestations are similar to those of ethno-national movements.
