Ethnosymbolism and the Dynamics of Identity

The book combines, diachronically, the ideas and logic of social evolution with a synchronic approach that draws upon the so-called “instrumentalist” view of ethnic phenomena. It explores the cultural landscape of available ethnic notions and terms that were utilised as expressions of Bulgarian ethnic identity, but which also, in that process, reshaped all this in response to the changing conditions of Bulgarian society in the nineteenth century. As such, the book offers an in-depth investigation of how ideas of national identity were formed and changed within a modernist framework. Furthermore, it shows how ethnosymbolism, used as a tool and instrumentarium for national identity construction, can reveal the main patterns that contribute to what is defined as a discursive construction of identity dynamics.