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Un gruppo etnico o etnia è una popolazione di esseri umani i cui membri si identificano in un comune ramo genealogico o in una stessa stirpe e differenziandosi dagli altri come un gruppo distinto. Gli individui hanno spesso in comune cultura, lingua, religione o anche caratteristiche fisiche dovute all'adattamento al territorio in cui il gruppo vive.

Il termine si distingue da razza che si riferisce ad una classificazione dell'uomo in base a tratti fisici e genetici tipici di un gruppo etnico.

Etnia, nazione e razza

Un gruppo etnico può coincidere con una nazione, specialmente quando l'identità nazionale è definita soprattutto da una origine comune. I membri di una nazione possono anche identificarsi con gli altri, credendo in una comune stirpe, e generalmente si distinguono dagli altri gruppi con uno specifico nome. Le nazioni tendono ad avere caratteristiche comuni: cultura, lingua e religione. Un gruppo etnico che è anche una nazione può diventare uno stato nazionale. Alcuni gruppi etnici invece non hanno uno stato indipendente.

I membri di un gruppo etnico si rifanno spesso ad una lunga storia o tradizione, tuttavia storici e antropologi hanno dimostrato che molte pratiche culturali su cui si basano i gruppi etnici sono di invenzione relativamente recente.

La differenza principale fra etnia e razza è che l'etnia si basa sulla storia comune di una determinata poplazione, resa più forte dall'avere una stessa religione, una stessa lingua e cultura, mentre la razza si basa sui comuni tratti fisici e genetici. Nel 1950 l'UNESCO ha discusso la Questione della Razza, firmata da rinomati scienziati internazionali stabilendo l'impossibilità di parlare di razza per quanto riguarda la specie Homo sapiens sapiens, bensì di gruppi etnici.

Ethnic ideology

In the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation, developed in the context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time that state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the nineteenth century, modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations." Nation-states, however, invariably include populations that have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion on the basis of equality, or seek autonomy, sometimes even to the extent of complete political separation in their own nation-state.

Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or its constituents. In the twentieth century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry, have argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view the state ought not to acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity and should instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct, and that it is neither possible nor right to treat people as autonomous individuals. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries of the nation-state. This is the nationalist viewpoint.

In English, Ethnicity goes far beyond the modern ties of a person to a particular nation (e.g., citizenship), and focuses more upon the connection to a perceived shared past and culture. See also Kinship and descent, Romanticism, folklore. In some other languages, the corresponding terms for ethnicity and nationhood may be closer to each other.

The nineteenth century saw the development of the political ideology of ethnic nationalism, when the concept of race was tied to nationalism, first by German theorists including Johann Gottfried von Herder. Instances of societies focusing on ethnic ties arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context have resulted in the justification of nationalist goals. Two periods frequently cited as examples of this are the nineteenth century consolidation and expansion of the German Empire and the Third (Greater German) Reich, each promoted on the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were only acquiring lands that had always been ethnically German. The history of late-comers to the nation-state model, such as those arising in the Near East and south-eastern Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the former USSR, is marked by inter-ethnic conflicts that usually occurs within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, in other regions of the world; thus, those other conflicts are often misleadingly labelled and characterized as "civil war."

In last decades of the twentieth century, mass migrations have occurred in most countries of the Northern hemisphere. The legal system as well as the official ideology emphasized race equality, and prohibited ethnic-based discrimination. It has been suggested by The Social Capital Foundation that this new ideology could be regarded as the reversal of the previous racialised ethnocentrism in the form of an ideology of systematic ethnic mixing and cross-breeding.