ABSTRACT

The evolution of a social group into an ethnic group in a national context is largely the result of a modernist project of nation-state formation, and closely related to power relations; however, competing power relations functioning at different levels, in different periods, produce a plurality of understandings. Hence, ethnic identity is always subject to contestation and renegotiation – evidence of its versatile and adaptive nature. Even so, certain fundamental notions regarding racial and ethnic construction tend to persist, given the habituation of epistemological space.