Novye Issledovaniâ Tuvy (Sep 2017)
Ethnic consciousness: theoretical construct and mental phenomenon
Abstract
The article presents an analysis of concepts of ethnicity as they were developed in Russian science in the 20th and 21st centuries, in their interconnection with foreign doctrines of nationalism. Studies on this issue are important for understanding the role of mental phenomena in the processes of ethnic mobilization, the importance of ethnic consciousness and ethnic identity for building positive inter-ethnic relations. At the moment, the conceptions of ethnic mentality, ethnic consciousness and ethnic identity are often used terminologically inaccurately, most often as synonyms of human awareness of the process of reproduction of the ethnicity. Soviet scholars first mentioned the importance of consciousness as ethnic determinant back in 1940s (P. Kushner) and then in 1960s (S. Tokarev, Yu. Bromley). But the main body of studies in ethnicity theory usually relied on the formational principle which categorized ethnic communities by stages of their development (tribes, nationalities, nations). Until 1970s, self-consciousness was not put on the list of ethno-forming features. However, there was a confrontation between supporters of a creative and a conservative interpretation of Marxism. In the 1970s, Yu. Bromley recognized ethnicity (without classification into stages) as an object of ethnographic research, independent from ideological doctrines. Soviet theory of ethnos was close to Western concepts of ethnicity (F. Bart). In the 1990s, Russian ethnology saw the rise of the theory of ethnic processuality (V.A. Tishkov). In this article, the author treats ethnic and national self-consciousness as a phenomenon of collective (supra-individual) consciousness, and ethnic identity, as a personality-based phenomenon. The author concludes that ethnic self-consciousness is an element within ethnic mentality, which also includes other categories, such as ‘the Other’, Space, Time, Material World, Social Organization and other significant universals of culture.
Keywords
