“Lapps” or “Norwegians”: On the Influence of Cultural Nationalism and Scandinavian Raciology on Barth’s Theory of EthnicityThe author proposes to analyse Fredrik Barth’s theory of ethnicity (1969) by recontextualising it within the framework of Norwegian national ideology, whose origin derives, as well as that of Finland, from the association of a performative identification with a cultural-political category opposed to another, and northern racialist theories of the 19th century (which lead to the representation of a national entity constituted by the coexistence, without merging, of an « ethnic majority » and « ethnic minorities »), and will ponder on the ambiguity of importing such a theory into France, when it ignores any categorization referring to a hierarchized whole (to be Breton and French) and recognizes only conflictual and permanent oppositions (to be Lapp or Norwegian, Gypsy or Norwegian, Breton or French, « Beur » or French).