In this paper I will be reviewing literature, mostly from cognitive science, related to the human brain’s processes of categorization

C.‘Ethnie’ is a privileged category

Is this essentialism about ethnies true for other descent categories? If all descent categories exhibit a similar essentialism then there is nothing particular about ethnic groups, as distinct from other descent categories. Some have argued that ethnicity is just kinship writ large, and van den Berghe (1987) has presented the most complete theory exploring this view. From the cognitive point of view, if ethnic groups are processed as another (a more extended) form of kinship, this should be revealed in similarities and parallels in the processing of ethnic groups on the one hand, and kinship-based descent categories (e.g. clans) on the other. But if ethnicity is not primarily processed as a kinship category (but is merely occasionally rendered as one for the purposes of mobilization), then there should be differences in the processing of ethnic and kinship categories.

The Torguuds of Bulgan Sum divide themselves into 5 omog. These have most of the properties that are usually associated with ‘clans’. They are named groups (Bangyakhan—my host community, Taajinkhen, Beelinkhen, Khovog, and Khoshuud); membership requires biological descent from other members; they have sacred ‘totems’ particular to each clan (in this case, mountains); each is small enough that everybody knows everybody else; and its members stick together and occupy a common territory. I am unaware of any putative eponymous ancestors, and there are no rigid rules of clan exogamy. In fact, the clans are highly endogamous, and it is virtually impossible to find two people among the Bangyakhan who are not related to each other in one way or another. The exogamous units are named patrilineages within the clans, called eleg (although people are beginning to lose track of the eleg they belong to). In order to investigate whether clans are processed in similar or dissimilar ways to ethnies, I presented several individuals with the setup for question 3 but substituted Torguud clan names for the ethnic groups. The child-giving family was Bangyakhan and the adopting family was Beelinkhen. All other details were the same: the child didn’t know of the adoption, he never met any Bangyakhan, and he learned Beelinkhen customs and would speak with a Beelinkhen accent. When I was done with the setup I would ask them: “Will this child be exactly like the Beelinkhen or will he be somewhat different, somewhat like the Bangyakhan.” I had earlier pretested, with a different sample, to see whether most Bangyakhan thought there were cultural differences among the clans. Almost everybody in that sample did, even though they thought they were very minor and were absolutely incapable of listing them (except for slight differences in speech and perhaps some wedding songs).

A very interesting thing happened: question 3 suddenly became very difficult to understand. Every time I asked the question “Will this child be exactly like the Beelinkhen or will he be somewhat like the Bangyakhan?” people began talking about individual differences. This answer was typical: “Well, they will have the biological parents’ face and character but everything else will be like the adoptive parents.” It was extremely difficult to get them to see that the question had to do with being exactly like the Beelinkhen (vs. somewhat like the Bangyakhan) as a group, rather than exactly like the adoptive Beelinkhen parents vs. somewhat like the biological Bangyakhan parents. This is a misunderstanding that virtually never occurred (perhaps no more than twice) when the categories used were ‘Mongol’ and ‘Kazakh’. The novel difficulty is in itself telling. Moreover, every single time I finally succeeded in conveying the meaning of the question as I intended it, my subjects responded that the kid would be exactly like the Beelinkhen.

On one occasion, I administered the question to my friends Tömörbaaatar, Mukhtar, Batsükh, and Tsoloo. They all answered non-essentially. After scribbling their answers on my notebook, I went further and made notes to myself concerning my thoughts on why people were giving different answers from the question that used ethnic categories. My furious scribbling piqued their curiosity so I explained that their responses were very interesting to me because people didn’t always answer like they just had when the groups used were ‘Mongol’ and ‘Kazakh’, instead of ‘Beelinkhen’ and ‘Bangyakhan’. Seeing is believing, so I asked the essentialism question with the regular Mongol/Kazakh setup (which they had never heard). This time my four respondents split two ways. Tömörbaatar and Tsoloo gave non-essentialist answers (but see above for a deeper examination of Tsoloo’s thoughts), and Mukhtar and Batsükh gave essentialist answers. Mukhtar, in particular, was adamant: there was no way a child of Mongols adopted by Kazakhs could become exactly like the Kazakhs. Both essentialists agreed that the child would speak and have Kazakh customs, but insisted that her thoughts and character would be Mongol.

Batcükh’s answer in particular illustrates the whole distinction. A little while later I came up to him and said:

“Look, you initially told me in the ‘clan’ question that the kid would take after the biological mom and dad in terms of character, but is that a Bangyakhan character or the character of biological mom and dad?”

“Biological mom and dad.”

“Okay. And you also told me in the Mongol/Kazakh question that the child would not become just like a Kazakh, but would have a Mongol character. But is that a Mongol character or just the character of biological mom and dad?”

“A Mongol character.”
Then I asked him to clarify the ‘clan’ question again for me so that he could see very clearly the distinction I was after. His answer did not change.

I conclude from this that ethnies are not processed simply as a large form of kinship-based descent group (though I am aware that ethnies are often popularly rendered as such and this is interesting). Kinship seems to prime schemas that deal with individually varying differences, such as one will find in the personalities of different individuals within an ethnie. Ethnicity, on the other hand, seems to prime essentialist thinking about qualities that are taken to be general among all members of the kind.