Explaining Ethnicity: A Review Article

In this article I want to review three different attempts to come to grips with the problem of the persistence and/or emergence of group ties. I wish at the same time to show that the shortcomings in Marxist analyses of ethnicity are a consequence of the inadequacy of the concept of social totality derived from the &dquo;Base/ superstructure&dquo; metaphor. I have chosen to comment briefly on the work of three writers M. Mamdami, C. Leys and M. Hechterl all of whom are critical of