¹ I would like to thank Charles F. Keyes, Lorna Rhodes, and Ralph Litzinger for their helpful comments.

² This feature distinguishes ethnic groups from lineages, clans, and other actual (or putative) genealogical groupings. In this definition, a claim to shared descent (i.e., fictive kinship) is privileged over the other components in what Nash describes as the “single recursive metaphor” of kinship, commensality, and religious cult which both expresses and constitutes ethnicity. See Keyes, Charles F., “Towards a New Formulation of the Concept of Ethnic Group,” Ethnicity 3:3 (1976), 202–13;Google ScholarNash, Manning, The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 11.Google Scholar

³ Carter Bentley, G., Ethnicity and Nationality: A Bibliographic Guide (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981);Google ScholarIdem., “Theoretical Perspectives on Ethnicity and Nationality,” Sage Race Relations Abstracts, 8:2 (1983), 1–53;Google Scholar 8:3 (1983), 1–26.

⁴ Cohen, Abner, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969);Google ScholarIdem., Two Dimensional Man, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974);Google ScholarPubMedEpstein, A.L., Ethos and Identity: Three Studies in Ethnicity (Chicago: Aldine, 1978).Google Scholar Although their work has significantly influenced thinking about ethnicity, in light of the ethnicity literature as a whole, Epstein's and Cohen's models hardly represent polar theoretical types. Yelvington would find far more dramatic contrasts between, for instance, Geertz and Isaacs on the primordialist side, and Brass, Patterson, and Steinberg on the instrumentalist. See Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Old Societies and New States Geertz, Clifford, ed. (New York: Free Press, 1963), 105–57;Google ScholarIsaacs, Harold P., Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (New York: Harper and Row, 1975);Google ScholarBrass, Paul R., Language, Religion, and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974);Google ScholarPatterson, Orlando, Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse (New York: Stein and Hill, 1977);Google ScholarSteinberg, Stephen, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America (New York: Atheneum, 1981).Google Scholar

⁵ Epstein, Ethos and Identity. Although I have learned much from Epstein's sensitive and lucid case studies, I did not find in his book a theoretical model that could address the sorts of issues I raised in my paper. This is by no means to belittle his contributions to my thinking, several of which I cite in “Ethnicity and Practice” (see, e.g., pp. 33, 49).

⁶ See Peel, J.D.Y., “Making History: The Past in the Ijesha Present,” Man (n.s.), 19:1 (1984), 111–32;CrossRefGoogle ScholarConnerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);CrossRefGoogle ScholarHobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds., Invented Traditions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983);Google ScholarArcher, Margaret S., “Morphogenesis versus Structuration,” British Journal of Sociology, 33:4 (1982), 455–83;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedArcher, Margaret S., Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

⁷ Most of the sources cited by Yelvington are, in fact, included in the bibliography of “Ethnicity and Practice.”

⁸ Yelvington, Kevin, “Ethnicity as Practice? A Comment on Bentley,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 33:1 (1991), 158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Carter Bentley, G., “Ethnicity and Practice,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29:1 (1987), 29.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Neither is this true of theories of practice in general. As I note in “Ethnicity and Practice” (p. 9), “In the final instance, practice is determinative of consciousness, but not in any simple or mechanical way.”

¹¹ In earlier articles concerning ethnogenesis in the Sulu Archipelago and the Lanao region of the Philippines, I have considered differentiation processes in considerable detail. See Carter Bentley, G., “Migration, Ethnic Identity, and State Building in the Philippines: The Sulu Case,” in Keyes, Charles F., ed., Ethnic Change (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 117–53;Google ScholarIdem., “The Evolution of Muslim-Christian Relations in the Lanao Region, Philippines,” Dansalan Quarterly, 3 (1982), 125–87.Google Scholar

¹² See Barth, Fredrik, “Introduction,” in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, Barth, Fredrik, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 9–38.Google Scholar Nash and Williams have recently reiterated this position with arguments that ethnicity is a product of the modern rise of nationalism rather than a vestige of premodern social orders. Like Barth, they emphasize that identity consciousness arises out of encounters with different others. See Nash, The Cauldron of Ethnicity, and Williams, Brackette F., “A Class Act: Anthropology and the Race to Nation Across Ethnic Terrain,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 18 (1989), 401–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ See, for instance, Schwartz, Theodore, “Cultural Totemism: Ethnic Identity Primitive and Modern,” in Ethnic Identity, 2d ed., De Vos, George and Romanucci-Ross, Lola, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 106–31;Google ScholarPubMedDrummond, Lee, “Structure and Process in the Interpretation of a South American Myth: The Arawak Dog Spirit People,” American Anthropologist, 79 (1977), 842–68;CrossRefGoogle ScholarIdem., “The Serpent's Children: Semiotics of Cultural Genesis in Arawak and Trobriand Myth,” American Ethnologist, 8 (1981), 633–60;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGalaty, John G., “Being ‘Maasai’: Being ‘People-of-Cattle’: Ethnic Shifters in East Africa,” American Ethnologist, 9 (1982), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Carter Bentley, G., “Ethnicity and Practice,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29:1 (1987), 34.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Yelvington, “A Comment on Bentley,” 162.

¹⁶ Ibid., 163–4.

¹⁷ I find Bourgois' recent study a particularly well-balanced treatment in this vein. See Bourgois, Philippe I., Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Similarly, if I argued, as Yelvington claims I do, that practice directly specified identity, then ambivalence would not be an issue for my model at all.

¹⁹ In contrast to Yelvington, “A Comment on Bentley,” 162–3. I do not believe the question of emotional authenticity can be reduced to one of adherence to cultural ideals.

²⁰ See Bentley, “Ethnicity and Practice,” 39.

²¹ Ibid., 43–48.

²² See “Ethnicity and Practice,” 33; Epstein, Ethos and Identity, 140.

²³ See Epstein, Ethos and Identity, 149ff.

²⁴ Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Nice, Richard, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Here, Yelvington follows the line of critique set out by Connell, R.W., Which Way is Up? Essays on Sex, Class, and Culture (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), 140–61.Google Scholar

²⁶ “Tied as they are to temporal processes of reproduction and change, ethnic identity transformation and political mobilization reveal their real import only when viewed in historical perspective” (“Ethnicity and Practice,” 49; see, more generally, pp. 43–50).

²⁷ Yelvington seems less aware of this difficulty than either Connell or Archer. See Connell, Which Way Is Up, and Archer, Culture and Agency.

²⁸ For a defense of this “operational dualism,” see Archer, Culture and Agency.

²⁹ Yelvington's nod to Emile Durkheim takes on more meaning here, as this argument is nearly identical to Durkheim's, in The Rules of Sociological Method (New York: Free Press, 1938).Google Scholar

³⁰ Yelvington, “A Comment on Bentley,” 165.

³¹ Ibid., 168.

³² See Frankenberg, Ruth A.E., “White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness” (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1988).Google Scholar