Ethnicity as a dependent variable : the "Nkoya" ethnic identity and interethnic relations in Zambia

Zambian ethnicity cannot be regarded as an independent input variable, based on ascriptive membership of a rural "tribe" and determining social relations and processes, as Central African sociological and historical research to date has tended to think. On the contrary, ethnicity forms a dependent variable within a social-structural framework determined by political and economic incorporation processes and social stratification. The author supports this contention with an analysis of the Nkoya ethnic identity in Zambia, in both a diachronic and an urban-rural perspective. He isolates three fields - language and language politics, local and national politics, and urban life - in which the Nkoya ethnic identity can be demonstrated to be a dependent variable