I don't have an ethnicity (or whatever).

I am reading about the Russian multi-ethnic empire right now. The book really isn't that great. It's good, solid history, and I appreciate it on that level, and respect the author for doing a detailed analysis of parts of the 1897 census and using Hroch to critically discuss the development of national movements, etc., etc. But it's not particularly interesting to read for me right now, because I'm just reading it for "general [comps] knowledge," and not for a specific project.

Reading this is making me think about ethnicities, nationalisms, etc. I believe in the whole "imagined communities" thing, which is to say that I think nations exist for real, but their defining characteristics are changeable; discourse creates nations. You know what I mean. They are important and meaningful, but they only exist because people/societies/institutions/whatever decide they do. Anyways, what's my point?

I don't have an ethnic group, as such. Yes, I'm white (which is terribly boring, eh?), and "culturally" Christian but spiritually agnostic (is that an oxymoron?). I am Canadian, because I (mostly) grew up here, and Anglophone, because English is really the only language I can speak with any fluency. I am educated -- I've been in university, studying humanities, social science-y stuff for a long time -- and "historically-minded," but not especially well-read in terms of classical (western) philosophy or "great books." I don't know much about anything except what I do, though I'm always happy to learn more! My mom is French-Canadian (in denial), and my dad's parents were American. So... this makes me what, exactly? I am young(ish) and female, urban, but not afraid of small-town life. I lived in Dar-es-Salaam for three years when I was a kid. I don't feel like I have any strong personal, familial, national, ethnic, whatever history that, because of my upbringing or schooling, has provided me with any kind of specifically identifiable ethnicity. I think I'm just me: Canadian (legally and because I choose that identity for myself), but that's it for anything with a label. But labelling me Canadian doesn't say very much about me. (It does mean, however, that I spell "labelling" with two "l"s, and can choose between "program" and "programme" depending on how American or British I'm happening to feel that day.)

Maybe one day I will be a yuppie. Does that count as something? How about historian? Multiple identities, man. Ramsay Cook was right: identities are not like hats.

See, this is why I find reading about ethnicity and other identities problematic. Of course they exist and are to some extent explanatory, but they are limited, and sometimes very much so. Which is why EC's research is so interesting. What is it about your Jews, EC, that makes them different from other people otherwise very much like them? And it's that difference that I think I don't have, because what makes me different is not that I'm part of a larger, identifiable group, but just that I'm an individual. Hmmm.