Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland
The article addresses the problems of defining an indigenous people by deconstructing the Sámi debate in Finland, which has escalated with the government’s commitment to ratify ILO Convention No. 169. We argue that the ethnopolitical conflict engendered by this commitment is a consequence of groupis...
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crsagepubl:10.1177/1468796816654175 2024-09-15T18:33:51+00:00 Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland Valkonen, Jarno Valkonen, Sanna Koivurova, Timo 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468796816654175 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1468796816654175 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/1468796816654175 en eng SAGE Publications http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license Ethnicities volume 17, issue 4, page 526-545 ISSN 1468-7968 1741-2706 journal-article 2016 crsagepubl https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796816654175 2024-07-08T04:29:26Z The article addresses the problems of defining an indigenous people by deconstructing the Sámi debate in Finland, which has escalated with the government’s commitment to ratify ILO Convention No. 169. We argue that the ethnopolitical conflict engendered by this commitment is a consequence of groupism, by which, following Rogers Brubaker, we mean the tendency to take discrete groups as chief protagonists of social conflicts, the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations and races as substantial entities and the tendency to reify such groups as if they were unitary collective actors. The aim of the article is to deconstruct groupist thinking related to indigenous rights by analytically separating the concepts of group and category. This allows us to deconstruct the ethnicised conflict and analyse what kinds of political, social and cultural aspects are involved in it. We conclude that indigeneity is not an ethnocultural, objectively existing fact, but rather a frame of political requirements. Article in Journal/Newspaper Sámi SAGE Publications Ethnicities 17 4 526 545 |
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SAGE Publications |
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crsagepubl |
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English |
description |
The article addresses the problems of defining an indigenous people by deconstructing the Sámi debate in Finland, which has escalated with the government’s commitment to ratify ILO Convention No. 169. We argue that the ethnopolitical conflict engendered by this commitment is a consequence of groupism, by which, following Rogers Brubaker, we mean the tendency to take discrete groups as chief protagonists of social conflicts, the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations and races as substantial entities and the tendency to reify such groups as if they were unitary collective actors. The aim of the article is to deconstruct groupist thinking related to indigenous rights by analytically separating the concepts of group and category. This allows us to deconstruct the ethnicised conflict and analyse what kinds of political, social and cultural aspects are involved in it. We conclude that indigeneity is not an ethnocultural, objectively existing fact, but rather a frame of political requirements. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Valkonen, Jarno Valkonen, Sanna Koivurova, Timo |
spellingShingle |
Valkonen, Jarno Valkonen, Sanna Koivurova, Timo Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland |
author_facet |
Valkonen, Jarno Valkonen, Sanna Koivurova, Timo |
author_sort |
Valkonen, Jarno |
title |
Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland |
title_short |
Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland |
title_full |
Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland |
title_fullStr |
Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland |
title_full_unstemmed |
Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland |
title_sort |
groupism and the politics of indigeneity: a case study on the sámi debate in finland |
publisher |
SAGE Publications |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468796816654175 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1468796816654175 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/1468796816654175 |
genre |
Sámi |
genre_facet |
Sámi |
op_source |
Ethnicities volume 17, issue 4, page 526-545 ISSN 1468-7968 1741-2706 |
op_rights |
http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796816654175 |
container_title |
Ethnicities |
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17 |
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4 |
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526 |
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545 |
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1810475586277081088 |