...fact of continuing dichotomization between member and outsiders" can remain (14). Simply stated, it is "the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses" (15). But what, then, is the function of this boundary process? For Barth and his fellow ethnographers...

...As Frederik Barth observed in the 1969 introduction to his pivotal Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, it is "the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses."14 In their celebration of diversity, proponents of cultural pluralism tend to privilege...

...of coercion the modern state had the might needed to claim and to defend boundries. It is in the end 'the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses', Barth insists.' 9 All having been said and done, the very identity ofthat cultural stuff (its 'unity',...

...not by group members, so that 'the critical focus of investigation from this point of view becomes the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses.'7 While Barth asserted that boundaries change with circumstance and over time, it is 'the...

...language. What we should concentrate on is not so much the ethnic category as the ethnic relationship: 'the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses' (Barth 1969: 10). Ethnic groupings are maintained by a process of continual construction and maintenance...

...they are a part. 12 Barth contends that by focusing on interaction, the emphasis of analysis "becomes the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses" (15). Earth's point does not so much quarrel with the substance of the attributes proposed for ethnic...

...maintain the boundaries. As Barth has observed in cases like this, "The critical focus . . . became the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses." (1969:277). Although many Jews might have preferred to become New Soviet Men or women, the fixed identity...

...independent of the construction of boundaries between one ethnie and another. As Bauman argues, however, 'it is the ethnic boundary that defines the group not the cultural stuff that it encloses . . . the very identity of the cultural stuff ... is an artifact of the firmly drawn and well-guarded...

...and Boundarics, says in part, "The critical focus of investigation from this point of view becomes the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses" (1969, 15). Since Barth wrote that, no one seems to have doubted that boundaries are the important...

...'linguistic border guards', as Armstrong calls them.12 Thus for Barth the 'critical focus of investigation' is 'the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff it encloses', while Armstrong deplores the tendency of theorists of nationalism to look for ' "essences"...