PEOPLES OF THE WORLD is unquestionably an ambitious topic for a single book. The anthropologists and demographers consulted on this project estimate that there are thousands of ethnic groups—or peoples—worldwide, more groups, in fact, than have ever appeared on any one list or in any single database, volume, or series of volumes. But beyond the sheer numbers is a more ineffable problem: What exactly is a "people"? What elements must coalesce to produce an ethnic group, to create a culture?
As David Maybury-Lewis explains in his thought-provoking introduction to this book, "Ethnicity is a kind of fellow feeling that binds people together and makes them feel distinct from others, yet it is difficult to say precisely what kind of feeling it is and why and when people will be strongly affected by it." Our objective in selecting the groups for inclusion in this book was to identify when that "fellow feeling" created a distinctive culture. Almost always ethnicity arises out of a shared history and language, shared traditions and values. But sometimes a shared religion creates a sense of not just spiritual but also cultural distinctive-ness. On the other hand, nationality, in its strictly political sense, was never a basis for inclusion. While ethnic groups occasionally lay claim to their own nations, political boundaries in and of themselves do not create—or confine—cultures.
Placing each group geographically posed its own problems. We have organized the book into nine major areas that have their own broad cultural cohesion, and within each area we have featured groups that historically have been a prominent part of the ethnic mix. Many of the groups that we placed in one region may also have a strong presence in other regions or may have formed immigrant communities far from their homelands; others may be in the process of returning to their homelands, as political boundaries reopen or are redrawn. Owing to the mobility of humans across the face of the globe and to the space limitations of a single volume, we could not, in most cases, cover immigrant groups and the hybridized cultures that they have formed—though, on occasion, when an immigrant group has evolved into its own highly distinctive culture, we have included it. Finally, as a coda to the book, we have also provided an exhaustive list of more than 5,000 ethnic groups worldwide.
In Wade Davis's afterword, he warns that cultures and languages are vanishing at a rate unprecedented in history. But, despite the threat that globalization poses to diversity, it is clear from the wealth of photographs in this book that humans relish their distinctiveness and their ability to express themselves as part of a particular group, whether that expression takes the form of the elaborately hennaed hands of a bride in the Middle East or the pig-tusk nose ornament of a man in Melanesia. Peoples of the World celebrates that diversity and the National Geographic's long fascination with the rich and colorful play of human cultures.
K. M. Kostyal