ETHNICITY AND POLITICS: TERMINOLOGICAL DEBATES AND NODAL POINTS OF INTERSECTION

Abstract

Abstract: A critical interpretation of the existing academic texts devoted to various phenomena related to ethnic politics raises the following questions: what are the criteria for ethnicity? What are the nodal points of intersection of ethnicity and politics? Based on the constructivist interpretation of ethnicity as a changeable concept that cannot be reduced to cultural and linguistic originality, the definition of an ethnic group as a social group that has distinctive cultural features (in the broadest sense) and the idea of the hereditary transmission of group membership is proposed. Based on this definition, it is proposed not to limit the subject field of ethnopolitical science to the interaction of the state with ethnic groups, but to include populism (in the form of right-wing populism, understood as ethnopopulism) and nationalism (as a product of ethnic mobilization). Particular attention is paid to regionalism as a particular but very important case of nationalism. The conclusions are supported by examples from Western European political practice. Based on the extremely inclusive constructivist definition of ethnicity, it is possible and necessary to understand the subject field of ethnopolitical science as broadly as possible in order to strengthen its position in the circle of sociopolitical disciplines, in particular, in studying sociopolitical processes in the European Union.