“Explain the growing salience of ethnicity in the contemporary world with illustrations.” (2021)
Both modernisation theory and Marxism expected ascriptive loyalties to give way to citizenship or class. The opposite happened. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, 1975) admitted being “surprised” by the persistence of ethnic identification and conflict. Today ethnicity is among the strongest bases of collective action.
What ethnicity is
- Max Weber defined an ethnic group by a belief in common descent, which political communities often create.
- Fredrik Barth (Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, 1969) argued that what defines the group is the boundary it maintains, not the cultural content inside it.
Ethnicity is therefore flexible, and it can be activated or switched off. Its growing salience needs explaining.
Why ethnicity has become more salient
- Decline of overarching ideologies. Daniel Bell linked a “reduction of class sentiment” to the rise of ethnic identification, since ethnicity joins material interest to emotional belonging. After the Cold War, Yugoslavia broke up in ethnic wars and Rwanda saw the 1994 genocide.
- Globalisation and resistance identity. Manuel Castells (The Power of Identity, 1997) argued that homogenising global flows provoke defensive “resistance identities”. Arjun Appadurai (Fear of Small Numbers, 2006) showed how even majorities come to fear being swamped by minorities.
- Migration. Mass migration has made ethnic boundaries central to politics in receiving societies, from anti-immigrant parties in Europe to the 2016 Brexit vote. The flight of over 700,000 Rohingya from Myanmar in 2017 showed ethnicity turning refugees into stateless people.
- The state as distributor. Paul Brass (Ethnicity and Nationalism, 1991) showed that elites turn cultural markers into political resources when the state hands out goods to groups. In Manipur, a May 2023 High Court direction on Scheduled Tribe status for the Meitei triggered Meitei–Kuki-Zo violence. More than 260 people were killed, about 60,000 were displaced, and President’s Rule was imposed in February 2025.
- Uneven development and relative deprivation. Myron Weiner’s Sons of the Soil (1978) traced nativist movements to competition for jobs. In September 2025, protests in Ladakh for Sixth Schedule safeguards and statehood turned violent in Leh, and four people were killed. Protesters framed land, jobs and fragile ecology in ethnic terms.
- Citizenship and documentation. Assam’s National Register of Citizens (2019) left out about 19 lakh people, making ethno-linguistic origin a question of legal belonging.
- Digital media speed up rumour and mobilisation, which lets local ethnic grievances spread quickly.
Competing readings
- Primordialists such as Clifford Geertz (1963) say ethnic attachments were always strong and are only more visible now.
- Instrumentalists and constructivists reply that salience is produced by elites, states and markets.
- Salience is not only destructive. Ethnic assertion wins recognition and autonomy: the 2020 Bodo Accord created the Bodoland Territorial Region, and linguistic reorganisation of states arguably strengthened Indian unity.
- Marxists caution that much “ethnic” conflict is class conflict carried out in a cultural idiom.
Conclusion
Ethnicity has grown salient because it is the most available and emotionally charged language for claims over land, jobs, citizenship and dignity in a globalised, state-centred world. The sociological task is to separate the grievance from its ethnic framing, which calls for democratic accommodation rather than suppression.