Blending worlds : On ethnic identities in late modernity

Can a perHon s i m u l taneously identi(y himor herself with two or more indi v i d u a l e t h n ic Hema nt ics? Can , in this sense, a person have several ethnic identi ties? And how i s this dealt with in theory, what kind of concepts do we have about such clouble l i ves and such hybrid identities? Why is ethnicity often defended as v i rt u al ly the l ast bastion of u nambiguity? Who is interested in this? The article centers around these questions. The empirical argumentation i H based primarily on the example of the Sorbs a Slavic minority in Germany. The theoretical m·gumentation tries to open up the ethnological cultural studies for some of the considerations of the system theory and the modern construct i v i sm . T h e article i s a plea for the hybridity o f cultures, ideas, politics , and for an ethnology which takes part in this construction.


Confessions and Attributions
In an essay with the title "Bikulturalitat und Selbstverstandnis" (Biculturalism and Self image), it is not without irony that the author Kito Lorenc writes about the ethnic classifica tion of his work as well as the events in the German-Sorbian Theater in Bautzen: "As you know, the Sorbian actors do not only co-act in German plays, and their German colleagues do not -depending on their fa culty of languageonly occasionally appear in plays performed in the Sorbian language. One respects and toler ates one another also in his or her respective ability or partial inability. And all of them will appear together in the tragic grotesque play Die wendische Schiffahrt (The Wendish or Sorbian Ship's Vo yage), a piece commissioned by this theater, which (I may say so as its author) is not merely a play written by a Sorbian playwright that is 'also produced in German', but rather, it is an original Sorbian piece, although its Sorb ian author originally wrote it in German and there was never a Sorbian version nor will there ever be one. Of course this piece is a part of Sorbian literature; however, at the same time, it is also a part of German or German-language stage literature" (Lorenc 1995: 43).
So much for his confession. But how do the humanities deal with the classification of such texts or cultural events? As an initial approach to this question, I would like to cite an example taken fr om the largely autobiographical novel Liebe und Mull (Love and Waste) by Ivan Kli ma. The central figure, a writer who fe ll into disgrace fo llowing the events of 1968, earns his living as a street sweeper in Prague, and in his fr ee time he occupies himself with the biogra phy of Kafka. His train of thought: "Franz Kafka undoubtedly belongs to the most re markable writers to have lived in Bohemia. He often cursed Prague and his parental home; however, he could not bring himself to tear himself away fr om either of them. Only upon superficial examination does the milieu of his fa ntastic stories have nothing to do with a real place. In reality, his hometown was more to him than just a backdrop fo r his tales. He was permeated by its multitude of voices and its melancholy, by its shadiness, its susceptibility.
[ . .. ] Kafka spoke perfect, at best somewhat rigid Czech; he wrote in German. He, who was not a German, but a Jew. Not a single Czech literary historian has ever summoned up the generosi ty, the courage or the tolerance to place him alongside Czech writers. The fe eling of being excluded and of loneliness which runs through his prose was certainly a result of his predispo sition, but also of his circumstances. He shared this with many of his peers" (Klima 1991: 89-90).
In the fo llowing contribution, we shall not simply be occupied with the question of wheth er a cultural text or event can be credited to more than one national culture: to the Czech or the Jewish, to the Sorbian or the German. Rather, this contribution centers around the question: Can a person simultaneously identify him-or herself with two or more individual ethnic semantics? Can, in this sense, a person have several ethnic identities? I am going to base my empirical argumentation primarily on the example ofthe Sorbs -a Slavic minority in Germany. 1 In this respect, my contribution is linked to some of the findings of research on minorities and migration, as well as to concepts 140 and research on the Self and the Other. Jlowev cr, my theoretical approach here i s concerned with the discourse surrounding-pure and mixed identities, surrounding cultural homogeneity and ditl' erence in late modernity.

Beyond Unambiguity
If we evaluate current biographical material on the members of ethnic minorities, we will find an abundance of material on how individuals declare their affiliation with two or more sepa rate ethnic semantics. The lyricist R6za Domas cyn a recently commented on this in an inter view in which she stated that she had grown up in Lausitz (Lusatia) with two languages, and explained how she composes her literary work in both Sorbian and German. "As a child, lan guage was like a game to me," she says . "If you possess two languages, you remain curious." 2 In her essay "Warum das alles?" (Why all of this?), she also speaks of the discontinuity and the ambivalence of a life on the boundary: "I recall the reading assignments we had in school. Fried rich Schiller's Glocke (The Bell) and the Sor bische Bekenntnis (Sorbian Confession) by Ja kub Bart-C isinski". But it was not so much Schiller and C isinski who left a lasting impres sion on her, says the writer, but rather "a lot of authentic banality": her own childhood, the dissonance in the deeply religious fa mily, the mother in traditional dress and herself in a miniskirt, the mother who secretly learns the Sorbian alphabet out of her daughter's school book3, the fa ther's accounts of the war, of the "German war", in particular what he left out, his states of panic, the Sorbian language, which was often fo rbidden or at best only silently held in contempt, the LPG4, the borders, idiomatic expressions like "pol'sche Wirtschaft" (sham bles), "wend'sche Hanka" (Wendish Hanka), "deutscher Michel" (the plain honest German), "die lwans" (the Russkies), "Heimatlieder" (songs about the homeland) and what they conceal. And all of this is bundled up with the constant desire "to be different" (Domascy na 1995).
But it is not only the writers and the intellec tuals who tell of a "divided, double life" -to cite the title of a poem by Domascyna. Research on the ethnic sense of be longing or the "simple people" in th e region supply an abundance of material on such an ambivalent life, e.g. the work by lnes Keller, Surbische und deutsch sorbische Fa milienr. (Sorbian and German-Sorb ian Families), which is based on extensive field research . The investigations on cultural identi ty carried out at the Sorbian High School in Bautzen verify this: in interviews with stu dents, events were portrayed which were de scribed by those questioned as "conflicting", "split personality", or "[ have somewhat mixed fe elings about it" ("das ist'n bil3chen gespalten bei mir").li And in a newspaper article under the spectacular title "Kamenzer Schulratin fii hrt ein Doppelleben" (Kamenz school inspector leads a double life), a situation is described which is not at all unusual for this region: "To a certain extent, the woman leads a double life. When she gets up in the morning, mumbles a sleepy 'Do bre Ranje!' to her husband, perhaps looks in on her mother, whom all her life she has only seen in traditional Sorbian dress, she is Lenka, Len ka Pj echowa. Everyone in Ralbicy, where she grew up as the oldest often children, knows her in this way. The people here only speak German when strangers ask for directions. Moments later, however, she climbs the steps leading to her office in Kamenz and slips, so to speak, into her second self. Her name is now Helene Pech, she is a senior civil servant responsible for 35 elementary schools in Upper Lusatia. Of course this includes the school in Ralbicy (Ralbitz) she once attended herself."7 Lausitz is a region where the people do not solely draw fr om the German-Sorbian relation of tension. Today, it is a border region where three countries meet -Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland. In past centuries, parts of the region belonged to Saxony, then to Bohe mia, Silesia, Poland, Brandenburg, Prussia. Typical for the region are also its many reset tiers and refugees who came here fr om the east and southeast after the Second World War. Today, radio broadcasts in different Slavic lan guages can be clearly received in this region. Part of the banality of everyday life is to make a quick trip to Poland or the Czech Republic: to go shopping, fill up the car's tank, or go out to eat. In addition to this there are school field trips, weekend and extended vacations, cultur al festivals, diverse encounters, as well as em ployment across the border. Characteristic for this is, e.g., the Sorbian High School, which is just celebrating the 50th anniversary of its fo unding: after the years ofN azi discrimination against the Sorbs in the Third Reich, the high school was first established in Czechia. But another part of the banality of every life are the typical inspections at construction sites in or der to catch people fr om the east doing illicit work, or as has recently been the case, the tightened controls by border guards in order to catch illegal border crossers fr om non-EU coun tries. These individual examples clearly illus trate that the people in this region exist beyond unambiguity.
In a similar vein, research on migrants, refugees and other fo reigners supplies informa tion on how they fa ll back on different areas of cultural semantics and practices and in many respects -including an ethnic one -lead double lives. In her book Der getOtete Pafl (The Mur dered Passport), Barbara Wolbert tells compact stories about people who come to the Federal Republic of Germany from Turkey to work here for ten or more years before returning to Tur key. Many of them move there and then back several times in their lives, and each return becomes a new experience. Some first genera tion migrants who receive retirement benefits in Germany live half the year here, the other half -there. Others, on the other hand, make more of an attempt to integrate themselves and to settle down -either here or there. However, all of these people live in a constant crossing of borders, in agreement with the allegedly una greeable, and their lives prove "that with mi grant labor, affiliations have developed which appear to make national statehood obsolete" (Wolbert 1995: 178).
Other empirical evidence for the liberal han dling of different ethnic semantics in concrete, human, everyday life situations could also be drawn on. But the question is: How is this dealt with in theory? What kind of concepts do we have about such double lives and such mixed identities? When we attempt to study the theo retical treatment of these questions, we are confronted with a series of uncertainties, often even ill-humor und re::;entmeni. Where doc::; this come f'rom? I low did the ideu of' ethnicity ori ginate? I would like to submit a bri ef outline.
Substantial research carried out in the last several years has conclusively verified how "the invention ofthe nati on" and "the construction of history" hav e occurred in Europe in the last two to three centuries. To d a y, we already know something about how the European frontiers oribrinatecl, how national and ethnical aflilia tions were produced, and which fu nction cul tu re hud in these proce::;ses. lt is known that the process of the development of nations, which was an important step in the direction of a modern society, took place inwardly -as the construction of' a unit -and outwardly -as a distinction. Within this social, economic and political process, those parts of the culture th at symbolized this process and were able to nur ture it gained in significance. Those parts ofthe culture that tended to express the similarities beyond national boundaries or emphasized in ternal differences were irrelevant to this pro cess, disruptive, which is why they were mar ginalized or denied -in the areas of both theory and politics. What was being sought after was that which could suggest homogeneity, unbro ken continuity and individuality within the nation and ethnos, and that which allowed a distinction fr om the neighbors, that which es tablished boundaries between one's self and the others . In the era of the development of nation states, the idea of a separate culture was taken on as something very special, uniform and con stant. In this regard, a selective method was practiced and ethnic and cultural identities were determined according to the either/or model: either this side or that side of the border. The idea: a people, a nation, a culture gained plausibility. Human beings became German, Polish, French, and pure culture, indeed any thing pure was favored.
To briefly summarize my standpoint: The claim to purity, homogeneity, obligation inwards (and thus the negation of all differences within the group) and the incomparability outwards (and thus the negation of all solidarity out wards) makes race, ethnos, national culture into "dangerous ideas" -to cite an important essay by Eric Wolf. And after two centuries of devastating examples of' National Socialism unci racism in Europe, today it is not surpris i ng that theory sometimes attempts to circumvent these concepts. However, if that is done, the danger arises that at the same time, ethnic identification as a part of socialization, as a purt of an individual's social ability to act is thereby circumvented . Because the scientific notion of ethnicity obliquely refers to (very soberly for mulated) only the following: "That groups of people possess a common cultural ground, share historical and contemporary experience with each other, have ideas about a common ances try, and based on this develop a certain con sciousness regarding identity and solidarity, is a social fa ct which did not just become known in the present day. This 'social fact' appears to be a general and fu ndamental characteristic of human socialization, a universal category com parable to categories like the division of labor, inequality, culture, power or socialization, which can be fo und in all societies, albeit in relevantly different manifestations and with differing sig nificance" (Heckmann 1992: 51-52).
So much for Heckmann's general definition. The ethnic problem is particularly significant for ethnic minorities, subcultures, and for other divergent groups who have become marginal ized into peripheral cultures in the process of the development of national cultures. In this case, the rejection of the notion of ethnicity can sometimes eventually serve to promote rather than expose certain potentially dangerous pow er structures. If we exclude ethnic semantics fr om our research, some processes of disrespect and discrimination can slip away fr om us, as well as something too of the human quest fo r acknowledgement and equality. How will we be able to understand that in the present day, someone can already be delighted that he or she is accepted as a human being just like the others in society? Like the Kamenz school in spector previously mentioned who leads a dou ble life, who endeavors to intensify the contact between German and Sorbian youths. In the article we read: "The contacts already reach as far as Dresden," she beams. "More and more German girls and boys are realizing: They are just like us, except that they speak one more language!" Perhaps another m odel besides the either/or one can help u::; to get out of' thi::; dilemma. We could con::;ider an either/and/or model. Research on ethn it: rn inoritie::; like the Sorb::;, but abo on migrants and other "fo rei gners", provides us with powerful evidence to this means. Similar to most members ofethnic minorities, the Sorbs are fu ndamentally bilingual and they draw, as the situation requires, fr om the cultural reser voirs of the minority as well as the majority culture. They also have two names -as do the place name signs here. The Tu rkish immigrant workers who live in the Federal Republic of Germany also produce their own, new culture out of diverse elements of various cultures. And this cultural blend is not accidental, and it is not to be accredited to inadequate conformity to the host culture. Rather, it is a concrete response to new circumstances. It is the creative handling of the inconsistencies of one's own life situation. These people have stridden through the grids of routine, inherent bonds and inherited affilia tions and are staking out new spheres of action, experience and communication for themselves. They have pointedly left the unblemished world of purity and unambiguity -whatever that may be -and have irrevocably decided in favor of a hybrid and ambivalent world. I do not mean to deny the difficulties, the constraint, the suffer ing, and the destroyed existences which often accompany fo reigners along the way, but these people overcome the barriers of an assigned existence, develop unknown capacities for ac tion, write their own biography, create new worlds.
Perhaps when we refer to minorities like the Sorbs, but also to migrants and other stranded existences, we can more adequately speak of an either/and/or identity. I call that -blending worlds. Over the last few years, the conceptual izations of ambivalence (Bauman 1991), Cre olization (Hannerz 1987) and hybrid cultures (Hall 1992) have opened the view to a new paradigm in this respect. the Chilean biologist and neurocybernetician Humberto R. Maturana. In the disciplines of ethnology/cultural science, too, the view of eth nicity as a construction has recently gained more plausibility. Ye t until this consideration has not been built into a coherent and system atic theory, it can easily be misunderstood. This is the case, e.g. , if a misleading opposition is put fo rward: construction versus reality and/or con struction versus effectivity. Such a perspective suggests that there is indeed somewhere and something "more real", "truer", or "more effec tive" than the ethnic construction just about to be deconstructed. Such a train of thought is theoretically unsound and politically danger ous. In particular when it is partially applied to minorities, migrants, and other border cross ers. Etienne Balibar recently also expressly warned of this: "Every discussion about bound aries refers to the establishment of certainnational and other -identities. Now, it is well established that to differing degrees, there are active and passive, desired and accepted, indi vidual and common identities or rather, identi-fications. Their multitude and the fact thut they can be explained a::; either cnn::;truction or fic tion deprive them of none of their eflectivity" (Balibar 1997: 7).
Over the last 20 years, the discourse of mod ern, or also so-called "radical", constructivism has developed more and more into a dynamic, interdisciplinary compl ex of discussions. As Siegfried J. Schmidt, one of the primary motors of this development, formulated, it is more and more concerned with producing empirical evi dence for the know ledge that "we never actually deal with reality itself, but rather always with the realities of our experience" (Schmidt 1994: 7). The new theoretical fr amework of the con structivists also implies a new evaluation of the social responsibility of science. The point is "that in particular, the su�ject dependency of our construction of reality can explain our suc cessful actions in a socially accepted and seem ingly objective physical world. Radical Con structivism supplies arguments for a sensible overcoming of European traditions of thought which have become intolerable. By taking leave of absolute notions of truth and reality, trans fo rming objectivity into intersubjectivity, and binding all knowledge to human beings and their actions, it refers at the same time to our complete responsibility for the natural and social environment in which we live" (Schmidt 1994: 8).
As far as I can see, up to now there have been few attempts to apply the concepts of Radical Constructivism to the ethnic problem in a the oretically adequate manner. However, this seems to me to be worthwhile, as it could per haps open up some of the muddled specialized discussions and help them achieve a discipli nary maturity, in particular in view of the new, politically explosive nature of the problems of ethnicity in Europe, and also in view of the current drawing up of new borders and the fo rmation of new alliances. Without going over their argumentation, here I only want to selec tively enlist a few of the considerations of the constructivists which are relevant for our prob lem.
In his essay "Konstruktivismus, Systemthe orie und Empirische Literaturwissenschaft" (Constructivism, System Theory, and Empiri-cal Li tera ry Studies), S.J. Schmidt summarizes a few bu::;ic ideas of the constructivist concept. His initial consideration is the consistent tak ing into account of the problem of observation: "In comparison, constructivists like myself con centrate on human agents as observers" (Schmidt 1994: 214). What is important here is the notion of empiricism: "At the same ti me [ ... ) empiricism is demonstrated according to a con structivist understanding of processes and so cial criteria, and not of'reality'; in other words, 'empirical research' is defined as a systematic (because it is led by theory) observation of the second order, the results of which can be socially stabilized, because and/or as far as there is an (implicit or explicit) consensus within the re spective relevant groups of observers regarding the concepts and criteria of the act of observing, and as far as these results and their conse quences agree with the socially accepted crite ria of reality for objects and events in the ob servers' world of experience" (Schmidt 1994: 215).
The idea of observation of the second order emphasizes the difference between the descrip tion level and the object level. Social systems can thus be conceived according to action theory or -fo rmulated another way -agent theory. Central to the constructivist concept is the so called "text-agent-context syndrome". Here, the reciprocal constitutional context of communi cation, social agents, collective knowledge, and culture is moved into the fo reground. Thus the question about the relations of power and influ ence within the fr amework of sociostructural orders can also be raised. It should perhaps be noted in brackets that constructivism has al ready become accepted in particular in the area of empirical literary studies, so that in the case of the "text-agent-context syndrome", the ini tial concern was with the literary text.
If we maintain this perspective, ethnicity could be conceived of as action. This would open up the possibility of shifting the fo cus of re search fr om the question "What is ethnici ty?" to the question "Who does what with ethnicity and why?". In this way, the use of ethnic semantics can be described as a response to a person's respective living conditions and life situations while doing justice to theory. A conception of action could serve to clear up ::;orne aspects of our problem ofblendingworlds. It thus becomes possible to co-conceive the relation between cognition, communication, social system, insti tutions, and media fr om a th eoretical perspec tive. The relation between the macro-level and the micro-level, e.g. between system level, life world and agents, can be meaninbrf'ully mod elled in this way. What is decisive for me here is first and fo remost to consistently trace the individual performance of the acting subject the activity of the individual -and to move the agents into the center of the fo rmation of theory. At the same time, this enables more effective investigation of the respective power relations and power struggles in society.

The Ye ast of Society
In an essay on minorities, Iso Camartin, who lives in Switzerland and among other things has studied the Rhaetians, refers to minorities as "the yeast of society". He writes: "The state of contentment into which minorities are capable of settling nevertheless remains one ofthe most effective gauges for measuring the political quality oflife in a nation. As majority decisions will never guarantee fr eedom to those who are meant to be different, it is part of the political culture of a country that its elected holders of office, i.e. parliament and government, accept responsibility for implementing measures for the provision of such fr eedom" ( Camartin 1987: 130-131).
As we all know, research is not exempt from this process of the fo rmation of structures and opinions. However, before we devote more thought to minorities as the yeast of society, it would be important to understand how contem porary European society (for which I use the term late modernity) fu nctions and how indi viduals create their world and their ethnic identity within this systematic framework of conditions. System theory -in particular Max Weber, Niklas Luhmann and Ulrich Beckprovides good reference aids for this purpose. With regard to their systematic fr amework of conditions, modern European societies are in creasingly shaped as "formal-rational" and at the same time "subject-free" -to borrow Max Weber's terminology (Weber 1976178). Viewed fr om the perspective of f'u nctional-rational sys tem theory, society's modernization process is presented as a process of social differentiation: as a transition of societies with hierarchical stratificatory differentiation to societies with fu nctional diffe rentiation (Luhmann 1980(Luhmann / 1989. Contrary to feudal, pre-modern and early modern societies, within the context of fu nc tional differentiation individuals no longer be long to one -and only one -subsystem in society. Rather, they must be "assumed" to be "socially placeless", i.e. individuals do not com pletely belong to one of the subsystems, and none of the subsystems can make a complete claim to any one individual. Here they arc fu ndamentally "placeless and fo reign". Late modern society requires, so to speak, a person's simultaneous affiliation with various subsys tems. In this way, the fu nctional systems of society are again clustered in the individual and "his world": "Everything which appears separate fr om a system theoretical perspective becomes an integral part of the individual biog raphy: fa mily and gainful employment, educa tion and occupation, administration and trans port and communication, consumption, medi cine, educational theory, etc. Partial system boundaries are valid for partial systems, but not for people in individual situations depend ent on institutions. [ ... ] partial system bounda ries pass through individual situations" (Beck 1986: 218).
The act of clustering diverse subsystems is an individual's personal achievement, and pre cisely this fact constitutes his or her individual ity. If we think out this logic fu rther, we are able to conceive of a mixed existence or -as I call it -blending worlds as a model for late modern society and for life today.
Because in late modernity, it is not just a matter of mixtures between individual subsys tems: profession, family, politics, gender, con fe ssion, status, etc. It is also a matter of perme ability within the individual subsystems: gen der, generation, art, etc. Countless examples can be cited: opera greats like Luciano Pavarot ti sing with pop and rock stars; fathers take a leave of absence fr om work to care for their chi ldren, and mothers become the breadwin ners of the f' amily; young people know more about computers and new media than their parents, not to mention their grandparents; on the other hand, parents sometimes listen to music louder than their children do. Billions of people recently experienced it on television: For Lady Diana's fu neral ceremony, the boundary between th e fu neral protocol appr.opriate for an aristocrat and a commoner was breached: "The Royal Family was now required to do the splits," commented a guest of the television station SAT 1 during the television broadcast on Sep tember 6, 1997. Much theoretical thought has been devoted to all of these mixtures, some of which appears to have already gained acceptance today. But th is is not the case for ethnic questions. In this regard, we come across diverse reservations. This is particularly prominent in the German discourse. Why is it so difficult to imagine that someone can cluster two or three ethnic identi fications in his or her world? Why is the idea that a person has either one ethnic affiliation or none at all so predominant? Why is ethnicity defended as virtually the last bastion of unam biguity? Who is interested in this?
The research carried out in Lusatia is in structive for answering these questions. We can observe how unambiguity, purity, and authen ticity are conceived of with regard to "that which is Sorbian": "Where for centuries the Church and national traditions have entered into a symbiosis, that is where ethnicity is intact," e.g. the Catholic parish priest Ml.nein Salowski assures us when asked about "that which is Sorbian", without taking the least notice of the significant numbers of Protestant, non-denominational or loosely denominational Sorbs. "It is obvious that even today, the Chris tian faith determines the lives of the Catholic Sorbs. Faith and a national consciousness are very pronounced here, and they complement one another. It is not lastly because thousands of people here attend church services held in the Sorbian language every Sunday and holiday that the fa ith and the language are kept alive. Sorbian fe asts and celebrations, the social bond with the village community, the parish and the fa mily provide support and security. Christian-ity strengthens and fo sters the culture of the Sorbs, just as one cannot imagine European culture without the Christian fai th . A culture cannot be established with disregard for or desperate rejection of that which one under stands as cu.ltusworship and respect" (Salowski 1993: 144).
Such ideas arc often held by the clergy, but also by "simple people". I have already attempt ed above to show that today, such conceptions, which in a way propagate a uniform and static, i.e., substantial ethnic identity which is binding for everyone and always retrieveable -a kind of anti-modernity -can mean two things. On the one hand: a past imagined as having been secure is intended to provide security in uncer tain times. It can only be hinted at here: high unemployment in the region (at 20.6%, the administrative district ofBautzen has the high est unemployment rate in Saxony, and in Sep tember 1997, Saxony had an unemployment rate of 17.5% -twice as high as in any of the old states)8, a dramatic shortage of apprenticeship positions, a high rate of migration, breakdown of the customary fo rms of life and social net work after the collapse of socialism, loss of social status, devaluation of individual biogra phies, unknown social, ecological, and other uncertainties. The problem with such concep tions is that as long as support and confidence are sought in the past, the opportunities for consciously and actively tackling the problems of the present are more likely to be wasted than taken advantage of. On the other hand, howev er, such concepts are part of current power struggles: they are about achieving and secur ing privileges, they are about resources and spheres of influence, and they are about how the new elite of interpreters and spokespersons of society will constitute and assert themselves. These are real struggles about power and dis tribution which -after the collapse of socialism and upon the reorganization of society -are being fo ught with both a claim to "authentic" Sorbian culture and to the right to define what it is and is "allowed to be" Sorbian (Tschernoko shewa 1995).
The notion of an authentic Sorbian culture, however, does not only originate internally, fr om within the ranks of the minority itself. It is often the expectations and attributions fr om the outside that produce this "authenticity". And this is not only done in a historical sense: with the construction of a "pure" German na tional culture, the Sorbian culture was also constructed. As we know, this is the fu ndamen tal principle of construct for ethnic minorities in Europe. To day as well, minorities are to be thought of only in relation to the majority. For the purpose of distinction, minorities like the Sorbs are presently often fo rced into a "pre modern", fo lkloristic, often rustical corner by the majority -if the latter, so to speak, makes sole claim to progress and modernity. And this distinction is also often thought of in a hierar chical way, thus going hand-in-hand with the placement of ethnic minorities in the lower stratum of society. Even in the year 1997, we can read the fo llowing in the Berliner Zeitung: '"Yesterday is here' -this is the title of an exhibition of 50 photographs by Michael Her rmann in the fo yer of the Axel Springer Ve rlag in KochstraBe 50. From 1992 to 1996, the pho tographer fr om Berlin traced the development in Lusatia and the life of the Sorbs." The title of the report is: "Pictures of everyday life in Lusa tia" -"The Sorbs are presently responsible for upholding established traditions" -is a quota tion taken fr om a lengthy article which ap peared in the Frankfurter Rundschau in 1996. "The Sorbs are most Sorbian when they sing and pray in Sorbian" -is a statement fr om a television fe ature by the MDR with the title "The Sorbs -a life against time".9 The fo lklorization of minorities like the Sorbs is part of a comprehensive national power con struct. It is a product, and it more or less openly accompanies the idea of a homogenous national culture, which is historically passe and has been for a long time. And this is where I see an essential reason why blending worlds -living a life beyond ethnic unambiguity -is sorely ac cepted by many. I would like to cite Nora Rathzel in this regard: "That is perhaps a fu rther reason why ethnic minorities are discriminated against and marginalized. They could prove that the perspective of one's lifo lies in the irreverent crossing of all boundaries, in self-determined action. A perspective that deprives the border guards of all 'cultures' of the basis for their existence" (Rathzel 1996: 62).

Different Ye t Similar at the Same Time
W.-D. Bukow and R. Llaryora -in my opinion two of the most profound researchers in the field of minorities in German-speaking areashave summarized the inappropriate localiza tion of ethnicity as fo llows: "In comparison with many traditional societies, in the Federal Re public, as in other advanced industrial societies in Europe, ethnicity plays a rather curious role. As a rule, ethnic components are perceived, picked out as a central theme, and questioned solely fr om a very special point of view. They are almost exclusively sought and fo und in recently immigrated minorities -this being the same for all of these groups -and are then incorporated in a 'minority-centered' way. This is first of all true fo r the daily discourse on the street and in the media, but then also for the poli tical arena, and finally even fr equently for the scientific discussion itself' (Bukow/Llaryora 1988: 159).
This ethnization observed by Bukow and Llaryora in the conceptualization of newly im migrated minorities can also be observed with regard to "resident" minorities like the Sorbs. I do not mean to minimize the differences be tween these minorities regarding citizenship and other fa ctors; however, structurally we are dealing with the same phenomenon. And in practice, strategies and points of view are al ready being rehearsed with a nation's "own fo reigners" which are then also applied to the "foreign fo reigners": fo lklorization, othering, social relegation. The reverse way is also possi ble.
At this stage I want to point out a paradox which for me is one of the most serious of late modernity. It concerns the question of the in herent or acquired identity of people who are blending worlds. As outlined above, these peo ple are living that pluralization of forms of life symptomatic for modern life -per definitionem, so to speak. They have escaped all fo rces of subsumptive situating -blood, soil, unambigu- ity -and have chosen "being different" over security, and "a place elsewhere" over roots. Their biographies show that they have left the illusion of an inherent ethnicity behind them, and are visibly creating ethnicity as an ac quired world. The paradoxical thing is that it is precisely these people whom the citizens and institutions of their host country, or the mem bers of the majority, do not position based on their biographies -i.e. on what they have ac quired, what they have lived -but rather, they position them exclusively according to attribut ed, allegedly inherent characteristics. These heralds of a differentiated modernity are often gauged according to the standards and ways of thinking of early or pre-modernity. This is a very "narrow", even "feudal" perspective which, however, is unfortunately not rarely held and which for me is a conception geared towards the stabilization of social inequalities. This is pre cisely what happens with immigrants and with other fo reigners when they are ethnicized, as is often the case with immigrant workers fr om Turkey. This is also what happens with minor ities when they are fo lkloricized, which is often the case with the Sorbs: they are often thought of "only as Sorbs", e.g. as an ethnic group pref� erably recognizable by their traditional dress. People coming fr om Turkey to Germany do not become "Turkish" until they have arrived here (as they are now viewed as "German" in Tur key), and they remain "Turkish" for years after leaving Turkey, even in the second or third generation. Today, there are 7.3 million people living in the Federal Republic without a Ger man passport; more than half of these have lived in Germany for more than ten years; 1.3 million of them were born here (Mi.inz/Sei fe rt 1997). These "fellow citizens fr om foreign parts" (to quote the title of an article by Bukow/ Llaryora) have been denied fu ndamental rights of just this modern life: civil rights (the right to vote -to vote in fe deral elections, to be voted into political office, at the same time to be taken account of by candidates for political office), an unrestricted right to employment (they require work permits), the right to travel (restrictive visa ordinances), etc. After 15 years of residen cy, German citizenship can be taken into con sideration; however, the other passport must be relinquished in this case. Thus migrants are again placed before the either/or dilemma, pre-cisely thai dilemma whit:h they wanted io es t:ape from by blending worlds. O riginal ly, f(H· the migra nt -as for the Sorbs, indeed, for all of us -ii was a matter ofihe right io be different and still belong. An d each time that happens, modern society robs iiselfofa perspective which has model t:haracier.
After the collapse ofthe social ist system, all ofthose people in ihe former Eastern bloc have, in a sense, bet:ame migrants . They are blending their lives with iwo worlds. They are blending their lives in time. To day, we can observe how "the East" is being eihnicized, folkloricized, alienated and socially relegated fr om the out side. 10 This is also happening as a reaction to the imminent integration ofEurope and in view of the drawing up of new borders between the "EU area" and the "non-EU area". This is the great, new construction in Europe, and our discipline should be more watchful and expose the exuberant ideologization being practiced here as a symptom of current fo rces of power and distribution. I am thinking here of, e.g., press reports like ihe fo llowing one: "Saxony wants electronic border controls" -so the title of an article in the Siichsische Zeitung announc ing this novelty. The article continues: "In fu ture, electronic surveillance equipment shall secure some sections of Saxony's border to Po land and the Czech Republic. "11 In my opinion, old and new minorities, stran gers of all kinds, people blending worlds pro vide a good opportunity fo r theory to give some thought to the idea that difference does not mean the opposite of similarity, but rather that in today's world, that which is similar resides in that which is different. The Similar finds ex pression, concretization, and action in Diffe r ence. For me, this insight is of fu ndamental significance. It equips theory with a new set of conceptual tools. At the same time, it under mines the fo undation of current power rela tions, namely the idea that nations or ethnici ties are homogenous and cannot be compared. If we maintain this view we can not only find powerful theoretical arguments against xeno phobia, but we can also find arguments fo r the creation and support of new alliances. In order to tread this path, it would be important to first bring together the concepts underlying minor-iiy researt:h and majority rcscart:h . Then it will become clear that blending worlds docs not only affect minorities or migrants, but al l people: We are all blending worlds.
In closing, I would like to formulate a provo cation and direct it to our discipline. The street sweeper in Prague in Klima's novel f'u rther motivates me to do this, because in ethnic terms, he creates his own world similar to Kafka. My consideration is as follows: At the latest, with the advent of modern constructiv ism we have recognized that any scientific achievement is a construct, and that science cannot exist otherwise. We should then perhaps somewhat more courageously and openly stand by our own scientific constructs. In his novel Th e Satanic Ve rses, and later in his defense of the novel and the Impure, Salman Rushdie provides us with an example of how this could be done: "The Satanic Ve rses celebrates hybrid ity, impurity, intermingling, the transforma tion that comes of new and unexpected combi nations of human beings, cultures, ideas, poli tics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fe ars the absolutism of the Pure. Melange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and that, is how new ness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world and I have tried to embrace it. The Satanic Ve rses is fo r change-by-fusion, change-by-co-joining. It is a love-song to our mongrel selves" (Rushdie 1991: 394).