Thanks for staying alive: ethnos after its funeral mass

Abstract

For centuries, the division of humankind into ethne seemed quite natural in the light of the observed differences in human communities. From the point of view of the philosophy of science, ethnos is a theoretical entity, the existence of which is assumed in order to explain observational data. However, in recent decades, the reality of theoretical entities has been doubted by the adherents of the constructivist approach in the philosophy of science. The main objection against the existence of ethnos is the lack of identity due to its fuzziness and change over time. Meanwhile, there is no striking difference in this respect between the ethnos and many other entities, the identity and existence of which are indisputably recognized. This, taken with the significant explanatory power arising from the reality of the ethnos, makes the existence of ethnos as a theoretical entity almost certain. In Russian ethnology, realist and constructivist approaches are often associated with S.M. Shirokogoroff and V.A. Tishkov respectively. For this reason, their views can serve as a convenient starting point for discussing the ontological status of the ethnos.