Intersecting strands in the theorisation of race and ethnic relations

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Abstract
Social science should continue to dream of grand theory – the remote equivalent of Einstein's search for a unified field theory – but should never forget, if I can press the metaphor, that dreams only hint at reality through symbols of hidden and disguised meaning. The complexity of racial and ethnic relations requires that we examine them from several perspectives. Our dream should be to combine those perspectives, studying their mutual contradictions, identifying their gaps, and examining the effects of their interactions. Only in that way can their value for more general theory and their transferability to other sets of problems be tested. Some scholars, well represented in this volume, are not comfortable with complex, multivariable explanations of the phenomena of racial and ethnic relations. A few have sought one basic reductionist principle. To Marxists, it is the system of command–obey relationships, particularly in capitalist societies, that is fundamental. Some psychologists emphasise the structure of individual attitudes and identities. Recently van den Berghe has developed what he believes to be a parsimonious theory based on sociobiology: ‘ethnic and racial sentiments are extensions of kinship sentiments’ (van den Berghe, 1981, 80). They should therefore express the sociobiological principle of inclusive fitness.

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