The Poverty of Primordialism by Eller and Coughlan

Eller and Coughlan wrote an article, “The poverty of Primordialism” which does not only disfavor the Greetz’s approach but also criticizes the basic concepts of it. According to them, all the concepts and features that are used to construct a group identity cannot be derived naturally without any social interactions because every group identity is socially constructed. In addition to this they also objected the concepts of ineffability and affectivity of Greetz’s Primordial concepts and concluded this concept as a “bankrupt” concept for ethnicity (Eller and Coughlan, 45-51).

As Eller and Coughlan say, Greetz’s idea of given features or the natural inflexible features have been proved wrong by the recent studies. People tend to claim their ethnic group they belong to and the Greetz’s natural features or given features are needed to be analysed and modified time to time. In addition to this, the emergence of new ethnic groups in the colonial states of India and Africa show that the ethnic groups are not naturally made but they are socially constructed. Sometimes these groups are constructed by activating the dormant cultural resources or by creating a new and unique group or a new ethnic group. So, the given features are derived from some social interactions and modified time to time (Eller and Coughlan, 47).

The concept of ineffability is easily challenged since these ties depend on circumstances in practice. Ethnic feeling is generated when there is threat against the ethnic group. The rise of opposition creates in the rising of ethnic feeling in the individuals in the group. Higher the concentration of opposition or threat, higher is the chances of ethnic group being engendered. This may sometime activate the dormant cultural practices within the group and so on. This is how the ethnic feeling is expressed in front of the others (Eller and Coughlan, 49).

Although hardly critical about the affectivity part, still Eller and Coughlan tend to mark this part as genetic dead end for analysis. Ethnicity can be seen as large form of kinship where people tend to believe in the same ancestry form. It allows people render emotional senses towards ethnic group and the construction of these emotions sometimes are in approachable. Still this does not make ethnicity primordial (Eller and Coughlan, 50).

To conclude, Eller and Coughlan not only disfavor primordialism but they tend to mark this theory useless and term it as a “bankrupted theory” (Eller and Coughlan, 50).

References:

Eller, Jack, and Reed Coughlan. "The Poverty of Primordialism." Ethnicity. 1996 ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. 45-51. Print.