Biology,boundaries and borders

Towards Justice and Peace is a splendid title for a symposium and book to honour Professor Sunderland. It is also a very difficult title for a biological anthropologist. I make the distinction from social anthropology with some apology. There are of course many subdisciplines and traditions within Anthropology and I most associate Professor Sunderland's support of my university and myself with our attempts to foster cross-disciplinary discussion, towards a “Biosocial Anthropology”, as it were. So, while for specialists in fossilization of bones, sequences of DNA molecules or analysis of urine, the title, Towards Justice and Peace might cause problems, I should like to discuss some biosocial anthropology on an international frontier, which, after centuries of military aggression and defence, is now a peaceful line on a map within the European Community. HMM.     

Liberal ethnicity: beyond liberal nationalism and minority rights

This article tries to make the case for a variant of the good life based on a synthesis of liberalism and ethnicity. Liberal communitarianism's treatment of ethnicity tends to fall under the categories of either liberal culturalism or liberal nationalism. Both, it is argued, fail to come to terms with the reality of ethnic community, preferring instead to define ethnicity in an unrealistic, cosmopolitan manner. By contrast, this essay squarely confronts four practices that are central to ethnic communities: symbolic boundary-maintenance; exclusive and inflexible mythomoteurs ; the use of ancestry and race as boundary markers; and the desire among national groups to maintain their ethnic character. This article argues that none of these practices need contravene the tenets of liberalism as long as they are reconstructed so as to minimize entry criteria and decouple national ethnicity from the state. The notion of liberal ethnicity thereby constitutes an important synthesis of liberal and communitarian ends.     

Marriage and the maintenance of ethnic group boundaries: the case of Mauritius

Research on how cognitive and cultural biases shape marital decisions in Mauritius suggests that ethnic endogamy will remain the norm and maintain ethnic group boundaries. Results of a pile sorting exercise of Mauritian university students intimates that preferences for ethnic endogamy are paramount and override class-based considerations. Thus, despite socio-economic stratification within each ethnic group, inter-ethnic marriage is not common. Results from in-depth interviews suggest that individuals and their parents prefer to marry within their ethnic group to ensure that their spouse will abide by ethnically-specific norms and conventions, increasing the chances of coordinating reciprocal exchanges within a marriage. The presence of some inter-ethnic marriage does not weaken the boundaries between groups because children of inter-ethnic marriages tend to take on the ethnic identity and corresponding cultural norms of a single parent as a strategy to better negotiate social relations, and to marry someone of that same ethnicity.