20 Harald Haarmann
of identity has to be regarded as the basic theory of all the humanities, on which the
more specialized ethnological and other anthropological disciplines...would have to
be based and elaborated” (Müller 1987: 391). If the identification process and the
driving force of intentionality are much stronger in modern humans than in early
hominids, then one must also expect that the most important vehicle for articulating
intentionality, language, is much more elaborate in modern humans than in their
predecessors.
In the dynamic process of identification, the relationships between the major constitu-
tive components may be specified in the following way:
Ecological
adaptation≫
Identification
process≫Intentionality
≫>Symbol making
and knowledge
construction≫>Technological
developmentSymbol making proliferates in a such a way that microsystems of signs, such as language,
play the role of instruments in constructing macrosystems of symbols, such as culture at
its most extensive.
If the process of identification is always a matter of finding a balance between conscious-
ness both of the Self as an individual and of the role played by the individual in group rela-
tions, then constructing one’s identity is naturally related to a person’s kinship relations
(identifying with one’s descent), to specific local conditions of community life (identi-
fying with cultural traditions), to a related worldview, and to a culturally specific value
system (identifying with a local group’s phenomenology) (Haarmann 1996, 1999). Con-
sequently, such processes are subject to cultural diversity and ethnic boundary-marking,
and “ethnic categories are reproduced and transformed in the ongoing processes of social
life” (Jones 1997: 84).
Human social existence is characterized by manifold group memberships. The first of
these are in-groups such as the family and kinship clusters. Networks of such in-groups,
at the most elementary level, have boundaries marked ethnically, labeled in various ways,
often rendered in English by terms such as “tribes” (in historical accounts) or “ethnic
groups” (in contemporary treatments of social breakdown; see Luraghi in this volume).
Ethnicity can be regarded as the most foundational dimension of identity in the construc-
tion of human society, regardless of the degree to which ethnic markers play an active
role in the individual’s behavior or are manipulated by outside factors—that is, regardless
of whether ethnicity is actively professed and stabilizes consciousness (witness the bois-
terous behavior of fans at the Olympics) or internalized as an unconscious ingredient
of a person’s group membership. A key ingredient of an ethnic group is its cohesion:
membership is stable as long as the network of sociocultural relations within the group
functions without disturbances or impediments. “Ethnic cohesion is achieved through
interaction between members of intimate networks like close family and friends, effective
networks such as kinship or occupation, and the extended networks of neighborhood or
social group” (Henson 2006: 19).