Conceptualization and Construction of a People: Enacted Macedonianness in Australia

Contemporary literature widely agrees that the emic quality of distinctness of a people, in the form of a nation and/or ethnicity, is socially constructed as oppose to the descent essentialist approach rendering belonging to a people as an “immovable fact”. Nevertheless, despite the said agreement, there is paucity in literature exploring the ways in which the emic quality of distinctness of a people is constructed. The proponents of the performance/practice theory of ethnicity/ nation[alism] (Bentley 1987, 1991, Eriksen 1991, 1992, Dunn 2005, 2009) find that performance/practice is at the core of ethno-distinct collective formation. Inquiring into the dynamics of feeling and identifying as Macedonian in Australia, this paper presents the findings from the Australia-wide study conducted on ethno-Macedonians during 2006-2008. During this period five focus groups were conducted with a total number of 38 (N=38) participants and 817 (N=817) ethno-Macedonians were surveyed. The findings provided support and a further empirical ground for the proponents of the performance/practice theory of ethnicity/ nation[alism] by identifying six performance ethno-identity attributes (communal activity, Macedonian cuisine, Macedonian music, Macedonian Orthodoxy, Macedonian language, and respect and following of Macedonian traditions) and three non-performance (history, place of birth, and ancestry) of core relevance to Macedonianness in Australia. The findings also indicated that the affective and symbolic differentiation of material culture and performance as Macedonian has its roots in the shared habitus by ethno-Macedonians in Australia.