
Alf Hornborg
Professor emeritus

Theorising ethnolinguistic diversity under globalisation : Beyond biocultural analogies
Författare
Summary, in English
This paper seeks to advance our theoretical understanding of diversifying and homogenizing processes in human societies by exploring the sources of and threats to ethnolinguistic or cultural diversity. Invoking concepts such as ethnogenesis, schismogenesis, and structural transformations, it discusses the parallels as well as the divergences between biological and cultural theory. Models in historical linguistics risk importing unwarranted assumptions about diversification from biological models of speciation. A more pertinent theorization of ethnolinguistic diversity might build on anthropological perspectives such as those of Fredrik Barth, Gregory Bateson, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, all of whom recognized that such diversity reflects interaction rather than isolation. The empirical test of these considerations is the ethnography and history of language use among Indigenous peoples in Amazonia and the Andes. The conclusion is that premodern expansions of language families, in tolerating local cultural autonomy, multilingualism, and diglossia, did not threaten ethnolinguistic identities as has modern globalization.
Avdelning/ar
- Humanekologi
Publiceringsår
2024-06-27
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
990-1008
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Globalizations
Volym
21
Issue
5
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Routledge
Ämne
- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Aktiv
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1474-774X