Jenkins on Ethnicity: A Dialectic of Difference and Similarity

How do people come to see themselves as part of an ethnic group? And why do those identities feel so real and enduring, even when they are constantly shifting? Richard Jenkins, Professor of Sociology at the University of Sheffield and author of the influential works Social Identity and Rethinking Ethnicity, offers a model that cuts through older, static views. For Jenkins, ethnicity is not a fixed trait you are born with – it is something actively made and remade through everyday social life, through a continuous interplay of difference and similarity.

What Jenkins means by ethnicity 🔗

Jenkins defines ethnicity broadly as a collective identification – one that is socially constructed with reference to perceived cultural similarity and difference. This is a deliberate move away from treating ethnicity as a biological fact or a stable cultural essence inherited through ancestry. Instead, Jenkins situates power relations and social categorization alongside group formation as necessary and interrelated aspects of ethnic identification, arguing that earlier approaches failed to account for how groups are also defined from the outside, not just from within.

This matters because it shifts our gaze from what groups are to what groups do – the processes through which ethnic identities get produced, sustained, and transformed over time.

The dialectic of difference and similarity 🔗

At the core of Jenkins’ model is what he calls the internal-external dialectic of identification. Jenkins focuses on the processes of identification, calling his model the “internal-external dialectic of identification.” In plain terms, this means that ethnic identity is always shaped by two forces operating simultaneously: how a group defines itself from the inside (internal identification), and how it is defined by others from the outside (external categorization).

These two forces are not separate – they feed into each other constantly. When an ethnic group asserts its own distinct identity, it is also responding to how others see and categorize it. And when outsiders categorize a group, those categorizations can, over time, shape how group members come to see themselves. Social identification, involving both similarity and difference, is constituted in this dialectical interplay between internal and external identification – and external identification is essentially categorization.

This is what makes the model a dialectic: neither side determines the other completely. It is an ongoing, back-and-forth relationship. As Jenkins observes in Social Identity, group identity is the product of collective internal definition, but in our relationships with significant others we draw upon identifications of similarity and difference to generate those group identities.

Similarity and difference: two sides of the same coin 🔗

The dialectic between similarity and difference is not contradictory – it is structurally necessary. Logically, inclusion entails exclusion, if only by default. To define the criteria for membership of any group is, at the same time, to create a boundary, everything beyond which does not belong. You cannot say who belongs without also saying who does not.

Cultural differentiation: marking the boundary 🔗

Cultural differentiation refers to the way ethnic groups select and highlight certain markers – language, religious practice, food traditions, clothing, or behavioral norms – that become meaningful signals of group membership. These markers serve a dual purpose: they communicate identity inward to fellow members and outward to the broader society.

Consider how ethnically specific behaviors constitute a system of signals with the dual purpose of establishing intergroup boundaries and, intragroup, confirming members’ commitment to the shared value orientations of the group – a point developed first by Fredrik Barth and taken further by Jenkins. What matters is not that every member of a group shares exactly the same culture, but that certain markers are treated as significant enough to draw a line between “us” and “them.”

Crucially, this does not mean groups try to maximise their difference from everyone else. Differentiation is selective – only some cultural features get elevated into ethnic markers at any given time, and which features those are can change depending on social context.

Shared culture and internal similarity 🔗

While differentiation creates boundaries, similarity creates belonging. Jenkins argues that shared culture provides the raw material for ethnic identity, but culture alone does not automatically produce ethnicity. It takes active social work – shared rituals, collective memory, communal gatherings, everyday interactions – to transform cultural similarity into a felt sense of group membership.

This internal dimension is what produces group solidarity. People who share a language, a history of migration, a set of religious practices, or a common experience of discrimination can draw on those shared elements to build and sustain collective identity. Jenkins emphasised the relational nature of identity as a continuous process of distinguishing individuals and collectivities from other individuals and collectivities. Similarity, in this framework, is not a pre-given condition but something actively cultivated and maintained.

Ethnicity as a social process, not a possession 🔗

One of Jenkins’ most significant contributions is his insistence that ethnicity is not something people simply have – it is something they do. This is a direct challenge to essentialist views of ethnicity, which treat it as a primordial or biological attribute passed down through generations. While ethnicity as a social construct is imagined, its effects are far from imaginary in the lives and experiences of individuals.

Every conversation in a community language, every cultural celebration attended, every act of solidarity with group members, every experience of being categorized by an outsider – all of these are moments in which ethnic identity is being produced and reproduced. Primary identifications like gender and ethnicity are neither fixed nor timeless; identification is something that individuals do, it is a process.

This means ethnicity must be understood at three levels: the individual, the interactional, and the institutional. At the individual level, people carry a subjective sense of ethnic belonging. At the interactional level, that sense is confirmed, challenged, or modified in everyday encounters. And at the institutional level – schools, legal systems, state policies, media – ethnic categories get codified and reinforced in ways that can shape individual and group life profoundly.

The role of power and categorization by others 🔗

Jenkins is careful to point out that the internal-external dialectic is not between two equal parties. External categorization often involves power. States classify populations through censuses and border controls. Employers make hiring decisions based on perceived ethnic background. Institutions create policies that shape which groups are recognized and which are marginalized.

Jenkins situates power relations and social categorization alongside group formation as necessary and interrelated aspects of the process of ethnic identification, pointing out a major weakness in established views: the failure to take serious account of the local, cultural content of ethnic identity. Being labeled by a dominant group – as a minority, as foreign, as belonging to a particular category – can be as consequential for one’s ethnic identity as self-identification. In some cases, it is more so.

This is why Jenkins insists that any serious study of ethnicity must account for categorization from the outside, not just group self-definition. A purely internal account of ethnic identity would miss half the story.

Ethnicity as dynamic and changing 🔗

Because ethnicity is a process rather than a fixed property, it changes over time. The cultural markers that define a group can shift. The internal sense of solidarity can strengthen or weaken. External pressures – discrimination, migration, political conflict, periods of acceptance – all alter how ethnic identity is expressed and experienced.

Jenkins shows how identity emerges from the interplay of self-identification and external categorization across a wide range of settings, including workplaces, educational institutions, and political contexts. This dynamic quality is not a sign of inauthenticity. It is simply the nature of social identity – all identity, not just ethnicity, requires constant work to sustain.

This has practical implications. Jenkins sees growing concerns about identity as strongly related to the social changes led by modernity – the reorientation of work and family, class and status mobility, migration, and the redrawing of political borders. In other words, the intensification of ethnic identity politics in contemporary societies is not a return to ancient tribalism. It is a response to the specific social conditions of modern life.

Understanding ethnicity as dynamic also reframes how we think about ethnic conflict. Tensions between ethnic groups are not the inevitable product of cultural difference. They arise from particular social, economic, and political conditions that shape how groups interact and how boundaries get drawn and enforced. This means they can, in principle, be addressed by changing those conditions – rather than treating conflict as hardwired into cultural difference itself.

Jenkins and Barth: building on a tradition 🔗

Jenkins’ model builds directly on the foundational work of Fredrik Barth, whose landmark 1969 collection Ethnic Groups and Boundaries argued that what defines an ethnic group is not the cultural content within it but the boundaries that separate it from others. Jenkins extends this insight by foregrounding the dialectical relationship between self-identification and external categorization more explicitly, and by placing greater emphasis on power, institutions, and the active social work required to sustain ethnic identities.

Where Barth focused primarily on boundary maintenance through interaction, Jenkins asks the broader question of how identity formation works across the individual, interactional, and institutional orders simultaneously. The result is a richer, more sociologically complete picture of how ethnicity operates in complex, multicultural societies.

What do you think? If ethnicity is actively constructed through social interaction rather than simply inherited, what does that mean for how institutions – schools, workplaces, governments – should respond to ethnic diversity? And can the distinction between “internal” self-identification and “external” categorization help explain why some groups embrace their ethnic identity more strongly in certain contexts than in others?

References

1. https://www.routledge.com/Social-Identity/Jenkins/p/book/9780415706926
2. https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Ethnicity-Explorations-Richard-Jenkins/dp/0803976771
3. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/3910319
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287638007_Social_identity_Third_edition
5. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011392100048003003
6. https://konspektikaust.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/richard-jenkins-social-identity/
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4522809/
8. https://1library.net/article/concept-identity-identity-formation-sociology-macro-micro.q20o1djz
9. https://books.google.com/books/about/Ethnic_Groups_and_Boundaries.html?id=QaAQAAAAQBAJ