Ethnogenesis (From Greek: ethnos(nation)+"genesis(birth), Greek: Εθνογένεσις) is the process by which a group of human beings comes to be understood or to understand themselves as ethnically distinct from the wider social landscape from which their grouping emerges. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly By self-reinvention ethnic groups are "present at their own creation", in the phrase of E. P. Thompson, setting traditional teleological nation-building narratives, that were once uncritically accepted as history, into the framework of legend. Edward Palmer Thompson ( February 3, 1924, Oxford &ndash August 28, 1993, Worcester) was an English historian Teleology ( Greek: telos: end purpose is the philosophical study of design and Purpose. A legend ( Latin, legenda, "things to be read" is a Narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to

Contents 1 Passive or active ethnogenesis 2 Language revival 3 Religion 4 Geography 5 Specific case I: the creation of the Moldovan identity in the Soviet Union 6 Specific case II: the Amerindian North American Southwest 7 Ethnogenesis in historical scholarship 8 Notes 9 See also

Passive or active ethnogenesis

Ethnogenesis can occur passively, in the accumulation of markers of group identity forged through interaction with the physical environment, cultural and religious divisions between sections of a society, migrations and other processes, for which ethnic subdivision is an unintended outcome. It can occur actively, as persons deliberately and directly 'engineer' separate identities in order to attempt to solve a political problem - the preservation or imposition of certain cultural values, power relations, etc. Since the late eighteenth century such attempts have often been related to language revival or creation of a new language, in what eventually becomes a "national literature. A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them This is a list of Literature, categorized by Country, Language, or Cultural group. " Furthermore, in the twentieth century, societies challenged by the obsolescence of those narratives which previously afforded them coherence can fall back on ethnic or racial narratives, as a means of maintaining or reaffirming their collective identity, or polis. A narrative or story is a construct created in a suitable format (written spoken poetry prose images song Theater, or Dance) that describes a sequence of

Language revival

Language is a critical asset for authenticating ethnic identities. The process of reviving an antique ethnic identity often poses an immediate language challenge, as obsolescent languages will lack expressions for contemporary experiences. In Europe in the 1990s, proponents of ethnic revivals are from the Celtic fringes in Wales and the Basque country. Celts (ˈkɛlts or /ˈsɛlts/, see Names of the Celts The Basque Country ( Basque Euskadi, Spanish País Vasco) is an autonomous community in northern Spain. The rebirth of Occitan language in some activist groups in the 1970s in France is a similar attempt, as well as the Fennoman in 19th century Grand Duchy of Finland which aimed to intensify the language strife and to raise the Finnish language from peasant-status to the position of a national language and status. Occitan ( IPA BrE: /ˈɒksɪtn/ AmE: /ˈɑksəˌtɑn/ known also as Lenga d'òc or Langue d'oc (native name occitan The Fennomans were the most important political movement in the 19th century Grand Duchy of Finland. The Grand Duchy of Finland (Magnus Ducatus Finlandiæ Великое княжество Финляндское ' Velikoe knjažestvo finljandskoe) was the Predecessor The language strife was one of the major conflicts of Finland's national history and domestic politics Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside The Fennoman also founded the Finnish Party to pursue their nationalist aims. The Finnish Party (in Finnish Suomalainen Puolue) was a Fennoman conservative political party in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and independent The publication in 1835 of the Finnish national epic, Kalevala, was a founding stone of Finnish nationalism and ethnogenesis, while Finnish became the official language of Finland only in 1892. A national epic is an epic poem or similar work which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular Nation; not necessarily a The Kalevala is a book and epic poem which the Finn Elias Lönnrot compiled from Finnish and Karelian Folklore in the nineteenth An official language is a Language that is given a special legal status in a particular Country, State, or other territory Fennomans were opposed by the Svecomans, headed by Axel Olof Freudenthal (1836-1911), who supported the use of Swedish and considered, according to scientific racism contemporary theories, that Finland harbored two "races", one speaking Swedish and the other Finnish. The Svecoman (Swedish Svekoman, literally Svecomaniac) movement was a nationalist movement that arose in the Grand Duchy of Finland at the end of the 19th Axel Olof Freudenthal ( 12 December 1836 &ndash 2 June 1911) was a Finland Swedish philologist and politician Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the Scientific racism denotes the use of scientific or ostensibly scientific findings and methods to support or validate racist attitudes and worldviews The historical definition of race was an immutable and distinct type or Species, sharing distinct racial characteristics such as constitution temperament The Svecomans claimed that the Swedish, "Germanic race," was superior to the Finnish people.

Religion

The set of cultural markers that accompanies each of the major religions may become a component of distinct ethnic identities, although one does not necessarily recovers the others. A religion is a set of Tenets and practices often centered upon specific Supernatural and moral claims about Reality, the Cosmos Furthermore, the definition may be subject to change over time (for example, in 19th Century Europe it would be commonplace to conceive of Jews and Arabs as one 'ethnic' bloc, the Semites). In Linguistics and Ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical " Shem " Hebrew שם translated as "name" Arabic: ساميّ Powerful distinctions between - for example - Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim ethnicities arise on the basis of languages each religion historically favoured (Latin and Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Arabic respectively). Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language The sources of religious differentiation are contested, among sociologists and among anthropologists as much as between the faith groups themselves. The sociology of religion is primarily the study of the practices Social structures historical backgrounds development, universal themes and The anthropology of religion involves the study of religious institutions in relation to other social institutions and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across Cultures

Furthermore, the line between a well-defined religious sect and a discrete ethnicity cannot be sharply defined. In the Sociology of religion a sect is generally a smaller religious or political group that has broken off from a larger group for example from a Sects which most observers would accept as constituting a separate ethnicity usually have, as a minimum, a firm set of rules censuring those who 'marry-out' or who fail to raise their children in the proper faith. Examples might include:

• Amish, or more controversially Mennonite Christians. The Amish (ˈɑːmɪʃ are members of an Anabaptist Christian denomination best known for Simple living, Plain dress and resisting modern conveniences The Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons (1496&ndash1561 though his teachings were a relatively

Geography

Geographical factors can lead to both cultural and genetic isolation from wider human society. Genetics (from Ancient Greek grc-Latn genetikos, “genitive” and that from grc-Latn genesis, “origin” a discipline of Biology, is Groups which settle remote habitats and intermarry over generations will acquire distinctive cultural and genetic traits, evolving from the information brought with them and through interaction with their unique environmental circumstances. Ethnogenesis in these circumstances typically results in an identity which is less value-laden than one forged in contradistinction to competing populations. Particularly in pastoral mountain peoples, social organization tends to hinge primarily on familial identification, not a wider collective identity. Pastoral, as an adjective refers to the lifestyle of Shepherds and Pastoralists moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability A collective identity refers to individuals' sense of belonging to a group (the Collective)

Specific case I: the creation of the Moldovan identity in the Soviet Union

The separate Moldovan ethnic denomination was promoted under Soviet rule in the 1920s, first to support territorial claims to the then-Romanian territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and then, after the occupation of the two in 1940, to counter potential re-unification claims. Moldovans, or Moldavians (original name Moldoveni; Молдовень in the Moldovan Cyrillic script, used nowadays only in Transnistria Bessarabia ( Basarabia in Romanian, Бесарабія in Ukrainian, Бессарабия in Russian, Бесарабия in Bulgarian Bukovina (Bucovina Буковина/ Bukovyna; German and Polish: Bukowina; see also other languages) is a historical region on the On June 26 1940, Romania received an Ultimatum from the Soviet Union, demanding the evacuation of the Romanian military and administration from

The recognition of Moldovans as a separate ethnicity, distinct from Romanians, is today a controversial subject. Moldovans, or Moldavians (original name Moldoveni; Молдовень in the Moldovan Cyrillic script, used nowadays only in Transnistria The Romanians (dated Rumanians or Roumanians; Romanian: români or historically and today rather seldom and only regional rumâni On one side, the Moldovan Parliament (which had a Communist majority) adopted in 2003 "The Concept on National Policy of the Republic of Moldova", which states that Moldovans and Romanians are two distinct peoples and speak two different languages, Romanians form an ethnic minority in Moldova, and that the Republic of Moldova is the legitimate successor to the Principality of Moldavia. On the other side, Moldovans are recognized as a distinct ethnic group only by former Soviet states. For instance, in the United States, no difference is made between Romanians and Moldovans. In the 2004 census, out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova, 16. The 2004 Republic of Moldova Census was carried October 5 &ndash October 12, 2004. 5% (558,508) chose Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas 60% chose Moldovan. While 40% of all urban Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose Romanian as their mother tongue, in the countryside hardly each 7th Romanian/Moldovan speaker indicated Romanian as his or her mother tongue. ^[1]

Specific case II: the Amerindian North American Southwest

With the arrival of the Spanish in southwestern North America, the Native Americans of the Jumanano cultural sphere underwent social changes partly in reaction, which spurred their ethnogenesis, Clayton Anderson has observed. Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States ^[2] Ethnogenesis in the Texas plains and along the coast took two forms: a disadvantaged group identified with a stronger group and became absorbed into it, on the one hand, and on the other hand, cultural institutions were modified and in a sense reinvented. The seventeenth-century Jumanano disintegration, a collapse in part engendered through introduced diseases, was followed by their reintegration as Kiowa, Nancy Hickerson has argued. The Kiowa (ˈkaɪoʊwə are a nation of American Indians who migrated from what is now Canada to their present location in Southwestern Oklahoma. ^[3] The exterior stresses that produced ethnogenetic shifts preceded the arrival of the Spanish and their horse culture: recurring cycles of drought had previously forced non-kin to band together or to disband and mobilize, and inter-tribal hostilities forced weaker groups to associate with stronger ones.

Ethnogenesis in historical scholarship

Within the historical profession, the term "ethnogenesis" has been borrowed as a neologism to explain the origins and evolution of so-called barbarian ethnic cultures,^[4] stripped of its metaphoric connotations drawn from biology, of "natural" birth and growth. A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been "Barbarian" is a pejorative term for an uncivilized person either in a general reference to a member of a nation or Ethnos perceived This view is closely associated with the Austrian historian Herwig Wolfram and his followers, who argue that such ethnicity was not a matter of genuine genetic descent ("tribes"), as in Isidore of Seville's definition of gens,^[5] but rather, in Reinhard Wenskus' term Traditionskerne ("nuclei of tradition")^[6] in which small groups of aristocratic warriors carried ethnic traditions from place to place and generation to generation; followers would coalesce or disband around these nuclei of tradition - ethnicities were freely available to anyone who might want to participate in them with no requirement for being born into a "tribe". Saint Isidore of Seville ( Spanish: es ''San Isidro'' or es ''San Isidoro de Sevilla'' Latin: latin ''Isidorus Hispalensis'' (c In Ancient Rome, a gens (pl gentes) was a Clan, Caste, or group of Families, that shared a common name (the Thus questions of race and place of origin became secondary, and proponents of ethnogenesis will often claim it is the only alternative to the sort of ethnocentric and nationalist scholarship that is commonly seen in disputes over the origins of many ancient peoples such as the Franks, Goths, and Huns. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own Culture. Historiography is the study of how history is written One pervasive influence upon the writing of history has been Nationalism, a set of beliefs about The Franks or Frankish people (Franci or gens Francorum) were West Germanic tribes first identified in the 3rd century as an Ethnic group The Goths ( Gothic: Gothic usvg|14px|u]]Gothic asvg|14px|a]]Gothic s The Huns were an early confederation of Central Asian equestrian nomads or semi-nomads with a Turkic core of aristocracy ^[7]

Notes

See also

• Imagined communities
• Nation-building
• Y-DNA haplogroups by ethnic groups

The imagined community is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson which states that a Nation is a Community socially constructed which is to say For nation-building in the sense of enhancing the capacity of state institutions building state-society relations and also external interventions see State-building Listed here are notable Ethnic groups by Y-DNA Haplogroups based on relevant studies

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