The Emergence of Ethnicity in Israel

Since the 1960s the study of ethnicity has become a forum for vigorous inquiry among anthropologists, in part, I suspect, because it allowed us to rejuvenate the central discourse of our discipline, on the concept of culture. Is ethnicity to be understood expressively, as a matter of primordial sentiments whose symbolizing properties dominate and shape behavior and social relations? Is ethnicity to be understood instrumentally, as a reservoir of resources whose adaptive properties are dominated and shaped by the situational exigencies of behavior and social relations?