26 - National Identity and the Idea of Race in the Dinaric Region

Summary

Notions of shared collective identity or ethnos are ancient belief systems imbibed at an early age, codified in literature, and transmitted through learned or sacred texts and “common knowledge.” There may be elements of logic in such beliefs that become harder to uncover with the passage of centuries. For example, notions of collective identity often perpetuate the belief that the stranger brings danger and only “kin-culture communities” (to use Azar Gat’s term) can be trusted.¹ Perhaps logical caution developed into custom and was perpetuated by political practice (i.e. the formation of states). The modern idea of race, which views human populations as fundamentally different from each other in measurable ways, can be linked most emphatically to colonial exploitation in the early modern and modern eras. In its assumption about nature, it is thus fundamentally different from earlier ideas about ethnos or collective identity.