Identity Formation and Ethnic Relations

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INTRODUCTION There is a strong disagreement on the question whether identities in society are socially constructed or naturally formed. Perhaps the disagreement is because of the common definition of identity. The definition of identity as a “social category” captures almost all groups in our society – those believed to be socially constructed like “engineers as a category of people in society” and those believed to be naturally formed like “religious groups”. This paper will focus on ethnic identity, its formation and how formed ethnic identities affect relations in society. Ethnic Identities are socially constructed. This assertion is commonplace among social scientists. To understand this statement better it is important to explain what identity means. Identity means “a social category”. In our case, a category of people different from others by character, ideologies, views and so on for example Kenyans, Catholics, Protestants, and Muslim etc. Social categories are therefore made of sets of people who bear a label(s) which distinguish them from others mainly on the basis of rules of membership to that category or by a set of characteristics thought to be unique to the members of that category (such as physical attributes, moral beliefs and desires). The category ‘‘professor,’’ for example, has rules of membership defined by a credentialing process and the requirement of being employed as a professor, and a content that includes a host of norms for proper behavior. Ethnic identities are understood to be defined mainly by descent rules of group membership and content typically composed of cultural attributes, such as religion, language, customs, and shared historical myths. What does it mean, then, to say that ethnic identities are socially constructed? It is important to understand the claim to be that social categories, their membership rules, content,
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