THE QUESTION OF ETHNIC IDENTITY

Abstract

There exists an overriding need to rethink our cognitive and perceptual approaches to the problem of inter-group living and the development of an ethnic person identity in terms of human behavior and development. Two conceptual models are needed: Socialization is a matter of learning about man-made structure; and individuation is a matter of understanding processes of human nature. What the individual must learn and will repress in order to live in his society is not identical with what he can learn or wishes to forget. We may speak of the individual way of perceiving and living with ethnicity; It is a way of behaving according to a special sense of coming face-to-face and to terms with one's own. Then there is the group way within and for the sake of ethnicity. It is a pattern of living and working, of presenting and performiny among fellow man with historical symbols, special legends, and cwiventional social pieties or actualities. The structural aspects of ethnicity ways can be understood in terms of readily identifiable processes of becoming a person and learning a distinctive ethnic style of learning. (Author/JM) COUNCIL on ANT113E%074°4DDIDGY and