Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference

TLDR

The collection comprises seven essays from a 1967 Bergen symposium, offering detailed case studies on diverse ethnic groups across Norway, Asia, Africa, and Central America, and highlighting Scandinavian scholars’ significant contributions to world ethnography. The study seeks to identify which ethnic groups can be delineated by boundaries for comparative analysis.

Abstract

The seven brief essays appearing in this collection were, with a few others, originally written for a symposium held in Bergen in 1967. They bear the marks of a well-prepared and well-managed conference, although they are perhaps not quite so unified in their theoretical character as the editor's Preface might lead one to think. Each essay is worth very close study for what it says about a particular case or group of cases; and one ought to recognize, with admiration and gratitude, the remarkable contribution to world ethnography now being made by Scandinavian scholars. Two essays deal with Norwegian situations; the others are concerned with material from Asia, Africa and Central America. How lucky we are that the authors have been willing to go to the trouble of writing in English. But one may be less certain about the book of which the essays are components. What are the ethnic groups between which there can be boundaries to study? Harald Eidheim writes on a mixed