Oscillation of Identity between Ethnie and Nation: Multiculturalism or Retribalism?

Ethnic identity is produced, formed, transformed, reproduced through the combination of many aspects like nationality, race, class, religion, gender and language. The aspects are intertwined while a particular identity is composed in reference to the mediation of its specific historical conditions and the aspects taking upper hand are highly correlated with these conditions. In this article, departing from its subjective and intersubjective dimensions and going through the interaction between ethnicity and nationality, the concept of identity is analysed. The multiculturalist paradigm, in which the link between particular and the universal is broken, is far from solving the identity conflicts. This paradigm implies the trend of retribalisation jeopardising the very bases of democratic society. In this respect, to address the contradictions of multiculturalism, the basic purpose of this article is to put forward the relationships between family concepts of ethnie and nation, and between ethnicity and nationalism resulting in fragmental societies