How thick is blood? The plot thickens . . .: if ethnic actors are primordialists, what remains of the circumstantialist / primordialist controversy?

An investigation of the cognitive models underlying ethnic actors’ own ideas concerning the acquisition/transmission of an ethnic status is necessary in order to resolve the outstanding differences between “primordial” and “circumstantial” models of ethnicity.This article presents such data from a multiethnic area in Mongolia that found ethnic actors to be heavily primordialist, and uses these data to stimulate a more cogent model of ethnicity that puts the intuitions of both primordialists and circumstantialists on a more secure foundation. Although many points made by the circumstantialists can be accommodated in this framework, the model argues that ethnic cognition is at core primordialist, and ethnic actors’ instrumental considerations – and by implication their behaviours – are conditioned and constrained by this primordialist core. The implications of this model of ethnicity for ethnic processes are examined, and data from other parts of the world are revisited for their relevance to its claims.