The Internal Dynamics of Ethnicity: Clan Names, Origins and Castes in Southern Zimbabwe

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Periodical article

Title:	The Internal Dynamics of Ethnicity: Clan Names, Origins and Castes in Southern Zimbabwe
Author:	Lindgren, Björn
Year:	2004
Periodical:	Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:	74
Issue:	2
Pages:	173-193
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Zimbabwe
Subjects:	Ndebele (Zimbabwe) ethnicity Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/3556929
Abstract:	Since the late 1960s, researchers have primarily regarded ethnicity as the result of increasing international relations, and thus often as a comparative phenomenon. Although this research has been immensely important for its critique of essentialist notions of ethnicity, analyses of the historically formed specificity of ethnicity have been somewhat neglected. In this article, using an example from Zimbabwe, the author highlights the internal dynamics of ethnicity. The article shows how people in southern Zimbabwe use various clan names, origins, and 'castes' in a practice of naming, and how this practice breaks the category Ndebele into parts. The author argues that instead of studying ethnic categories as unbreakable wholes, focusing on smaller units of analysis gives a more complex picture of ethnicity. This view challenges some more or less established truths on ethnicity deduced from comparative studies. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]