Over the recent years, a rich body of work has begun to explore and implore the contours of minority culture present within each society. It is an on-going debate over the nature of ethnicity, Yelvington (1991) defines culture as a form of fictive kinship, criticizing Bentley's (1987) suggestion, inspired by a reading of Bourdieu, that ethnic differences have their origin in differences of habitus.
In Yelvington's view, the concept that ethnic identity is an aspect of habitus is regarded as a "native" concept than an analytical one. However, the members of “tribes”, “nations” or “ethnic groups” have slowly appropriated European ideas of nationhood and ethnic identity, and as a result of this, a social world that consists of many minor, negotiable differences have increasingly developed into one consisting of but a few major and more solid ones.
A new exploration of an avenue with this respect being made is in the comparative study of culture, especially regarding its use in the definite and plural form. The anthropological concept of culture has the same origin as the concept of nationhood, and suffers from the same analytical shortcomings: "Cultures" are, at bottom, neither clearly bounded, neither essentially unchanging nor traditionally conceptualized as "cultures" in "native" representations. Today, however, reifying notions of culture are today very common among the world's peoples, and this has doubtless contributed to the present anthropological concept concerning the concept of culture.
It may be that these attempts at refashioning traditional concepts of culture are more or less directly caused by the uncomfortable and intellectually difficult that is politically motivated appropriation of anthropological concepts of culture by a many social movements.
Have these movements most, of which are ethno nationalistic, have compromised and parodied traditional concepts of culture. As Hviding remarks in a paper dealing with "indigenous essentialism" in.........
