European Sociological Review Advance Access originally published online on July 22, 2005
European Sociological Review 2005 21(4):375-391; doi:10.1093/esr/jci026
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Predicting Ethnic Boundaries
Department of Sociology, University of Hawai, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. Tel.: +1 808 9567234; Fax: +1 808 9563707, Email: sunki{at}hawai.edu
It is increasingly accepted within the social sciences that ethnic boundaries are not fixed, but contingent and socially constructed. As a result, predicting the location of ethnic boundaries across time and space has become a crucial but unresolved issue, with some scholars arguing that the study of ethnic boundaries and predictive social science are fundamentally incompatible. This paper attempts to show otherwise, presenting perhaps the first general, predictive theory of ethnic boundary formation, one that combines a coherence-based model of identity with a rational choice model of action. It then tests the theory’s predictions, focusing in particular on the size of populations generated by alternative boundary criteria. Analysis is performed using multiple datasets containing information about ethnic groups around the world, as well as the countries in which they reside.
Manuscript received: March 2004.