Men, Women, … Tribes, Peoples: What Does a Person’s Life Look Like Among His/Her Constructs?

The article is the second (final) part of the essay devoted to the analysis of social constructivist explanations of gender and ethno-national phenomena. In particular, the author refers to the ideas of the classics of ethno-sociological constructivism – B. Anderson, E. Gellner and E. Hobsbawm, including the argumentation presented in the concept of «imagined communities». A general description of the mechanisms and technologies of practical (including symbolic and discursive) «production» of ethnic identities, construction and «invention» of nations and peoples is given as procedures carried out by intellectuals and politicians in different regions of the world. A specifically «modern» (rooted in the nature of modern societies) context for the formation of nation-states and nationalism as a special political movement and ideological doctrine is revealed. 

social constructivism, ethnicity, nation, nationalism, «imagined communities», historical memory, primordialism, identity, stereotype, sociology of ethnic and national relations