ETHNICITY - VICISSITUDES OF A CONCEPT

In spite of recent criticisms the concept of ethnicity should be retai ned in anthropological analysis to designate more or less coherent cul tural entities. These entities will be fluctuating, of course, due to their position in a larger social space where women, goods, ideas, and institutions are exchanged. Ethnicity is not as some have argued, a c olonial invention, but an incontestable anthropological fact, where id entity is nurtured by otherness. Ethnicity does not of itself have a p olitical vocation: traditional African states were more often than not pluri-ethnic. The 'national' phenomenon, the convergence of the State and ethnicity is rare in pre-colonial African history. The nation-sta te is a modern phenomenon, the product of a more or less arbitrary man ipulation by an elite having a certain number of ethnic traits; a poli tical re-modelling of collective identity.