This article discusses Fredrik Barths approach to the problem of ethnicity based on a wide-ranging analysis of his work. Analysis focuses on various key ideas recurrent in the authors programmatic and theoretical-methodological writings, as well as his ethnographic studies. A critical evaluation is made of the explicatory power of ecological and demographic factors in his model, the importance of his thesis of relative identity, the genealogy of theoretical influences found in Barthian explanations and the problem of the rational actor as the binding element in his interactionist conception of social relations.
Barth; Ethnicity; Identity; Anthropological theory; Sociological theory