`ETHNICITY' IS GENERALLY understood to be one `part' of a polity that contains, at least, other `ethnicities' and probably many other kinds of groupings or categories, including race, sex, colour, status groups and classes (after Max Weber, 1978:302-310,385-398; or Karl Marx, for instance 1970:82; Eriksen 1993:1-15). It is the thesis of this argument that categories such as ethnicity (as well as other similar types of social categories) are perceived, felt and talked about as `parts' of a larger whole, and that this image of a social whole composed of social `parts' that are to some extent appreciated in aesthetic terms. In order to understand ethnicity, we must seek to understand why it is that people believe that countries, nations and states are composed of `parts' and to understand how those parts are visualized and `imagined'. This approach allows us to see ethnicity in the broader context of performance and aesthetic experience, and permits us to see how ethnicity might work intellectually and cognitively for those who understand themselves to be `ethnic'. I want to try to say something, then, about what `ordinary' people might believe about ethnicity. Beyond that, I hope to say something about an alternative approach to understanding the nature of ethnicity. This is a purely conceptual analysis, a first attempt, and not an empirical analysis of what real people say. It is, moreover, an attempt by a social scientist who is committed to the ideas that history is not predictable; that real social processes are necessarily more complex than simple social theories can entirely comprehend; that people imagine their worlds, construct the terms under which they live in those worlds and yet continue to believe that those worlds are uniquely real; and that life is lived by means of, and in terms of systems of values, symbols and signifiers. I believe that a thorough-going conceptual analysis is necessary before new data can be collected that will do more than simply confirm old beliefs. To say that the parts of a social whole are imagined, of course, does not mean that they are thought of as merely `imaginary', but rather that they depend on images and beliefs (see Weber 1970:389 for instance). In short, ethnicity may be conceptualised quite literally in terms of parts of maps, as puzzle-pieces, as blocks or masses, as groups or sets, as levels or layers. Ethnicity can be also understood at a higher level of generalisation as one moment, or part, of a complex visualisation of other sorts of social entities such as the state, the family, the economy, or spiritual and ancestral groupings. Ethnic groups in popular imagination often come in all colours and sizes; they are `bears' (Russians), `frogs' (French), `wolves' (Turks) or `bulldogs' (English); they have smells, dress strangely and make odd sounds; they stand, dance, walk or sit in distinctive ways; they are what they eat and their difference is often believed to be constituted in part by their foods; they have different textures of skin or hair; different `blood', breasts, noses, penises and eyes. In short, they are apprehended aesthetically in all physical aspects. And, where there are no actual physical differences, physical differences that can be judged aesthetically are invented for them. Nevertheless, the aesthetic aspect of ethnicity has usually been ignored in the social sciences that attempt to account for ethnicity. Ethnicity, seen in this way then, appears not as some special `social formation', but rather as a special case of the visualisation and metaphorisation of social relations as part of social wholes. The approach taken here extends in new directions that are taken by Frederik Barth in the path-breaking Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969) where Barth argues (and many would agree conclusively) that ethnic groups are defined by their boundaries and by boundary maintenance, wholly apart from whatever distinctive cultural content they might or might not have, and without reference to histories or origins. …