Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Race

Term race has two meaning. The first one has classificatory connotation and refers to various types and samples of people. While the second one is assosiated with genetics, as it is bound with the idea of family and ancestors. In the era of enlightens, another connotation was added to this concept: the term race was used to describe the various sub-groups of humanity, according to morphological differences: color of skin, shape of head, etc. As a result of significant development of philology, language was considered as an important determinant of nations’ “race” by European intellectuals and thus these two terms were mixed erroneously. Shortly, in the 19th century there existed two confronted viewpoints about nation: in the first case, subjective will of individual was stressed and highlighted (conceptualized by Ernest Renan in 1880’s), while the other was biological version, underling the various aspects, like fatality of birth, blood and genes[1].
[1]Ghelabi V.Y. Ethnicity in International Conflicts: Revisiting an Elusive Issue

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