摘要：Ethnicity has become a major field of interest within the social sciences, partly because of the
ethnic conflicts and the general phenomenonof ethnic appraisal when it comes to politics. . Yet, it has not
developed as a single concept, but in close relationship with gender and race. It involves knowledge, concepts,
and methods from history, geography, sociology, anthropology, psychology, linguistics, which provide
specific interpretative perspectives. ¡®Ethnicity¡¯ is a complex and fluid term, and both an interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary field of study. The concepts it operates with complicate and challenge many of the
¡®traditional¡¯ perspectives. The postmodernist trend is to consider ethnicity in its psychological, symbolic
dimension, as something inherent in every individual that is activated accordingto different social contexts, so
as to differentiate the group the individual feels part of from other groups. What links people together is the
sense of collectivity, even if they are individually different, even if they do not live within the same
geographic space.
