The Wealth of Ethno-Nations: Notes on the Identity Economy

Abstract

The commodification of culture as intellectual property and the corporatization of identity — the two constitutive elements of what have come to be known as “ethnicity, inc.” and “nationality, inc.” — have intensified greatly across the world in the past few decades. Ethnicity has been repurposed in the process, animating new species of value, new claims to sovereignty, territory, and property, new kinds of sociality, sensibility, and political subjectivity. And nationality has, of late, come ever more to mimic ethnicity, albeit on a larger scale. This essay explores the commodification of difference, its material, political, social, cultural, and juridical implications. The 21st century identity economy, it is argued, is at once a political economy, a moral economy, a cultural economy, and an affective economy. What is more, its recent historical development has had significant implications not merely for the ways in which ethnic groups and nations capitalize on their cultural difference. It also has a direct effect on the nature of ethnicized/racialized labor, and transnational labor migration, across the contemporary world.