Yulian Vladimirovich Bromley (; 21 February 1921 – 4 June 1990) was a Soviet and Russian

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

who gained an international recognition. He became Director of the Institute of Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1966 and held the post until 1989. Bromley’s main focus was studying the

South Slavs South Slavs are Slavic people who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, ...

, despite not actually engaging in fieldwork himself. His research framework led, in the words of Ernest Gellner, to a minor revolution which consisted of turning

ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

into the study of "Ethnos-es", often referred to as

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

by Western anthropologists. He wrote more than 300 texts, although he did not engage in fieldwork himself.

Ethnos

Bromley described the term Ethnos as a word with many meanings, but the “closest” word of the term Ethnos, according to Bromley, is “people.” Ethnos is used to analyze communities. The term Ethnos has such a broad definition to prevent anthropologists from limiting their scopes to small, backwards communities, but instead view people as a whole. With this in mind, Ethnos can be used to view communities that go into the millions of people. Bromley states the main task of the word Ethnos is to define the common, generic name of community formations such as “tribe”, “nationality” and “nation” Bromley also states that all Ethnoses are unique for each possess a certain internal unity and specific features that distinguish themselves from other communities. As for what should be studied, Bromley defines three points of study: 1) folk culture, 2) to define the subject matter in terms of the method of direct observation, and 3) the subject matter of ethnography is determined by the range of problems which it is studied.

Stance on race

Bromley also claimed that racial distinctions as a whole do not play any essential ethno-distinctive role, and that there are no "pure" racially unmixed people as by the absence of clearcut anthropological boundaries between contiguous peoples or ethnoses belonging to one of the major races. According to Bromley's framework, race does not matter when viewing the community structure as a whole, and racial purity is impossible.

References

* ''The Routledge Dictionary of Anthropologists'' by Gérald Gaillard, Peter James Bowman, Routledge, 2002 * ''Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions'' by Marcus Banks, 1996 * Stocking Jr, George W., and Yulian Bromley: "Academician Bromley on Soviet Ethnography" in ''History of Anthropology Newsletter'' 11.2 (1984): 6-10. * Bromley, Yulian: "On the typology of ethnic communities", n.d. * Bromley, Yulian, 1978

pp. 15–21 {{DEFAULTSORT:Bromley, Yulian 1921 births 1990 deaths 20th-century Russian historians Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Recipients of the USSR State Prize Russian ethnographers Soviet ethnographers Soviet historians Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery