Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference

When originally published in Norway, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries marked the transition to a new era of ethnic studies. Today this much-cited classic is regarded as the seminal volume from which stems much current anthropological thinking about ethnicity. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries opens with Barth’s invaluable thirty-page essay that introduces students to important theoretical issues in the analysis of ethnic groups. Following is a collection of seven essays—the results of a symposium involving a small group of Scandinavian social anthropologists—intended to illustrate the application of Barth’s analytical viewpoints to different sides of the problems of polyethnic organization in various ethnographic areas, including Norway, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mexico, Afghanistan, and Laos.