This paper explores the cultural dynamics of ethnicity in a context of a post-colonial African state, Zambia. The opening sections seek to define ethnicity and to pinpoint its central dilemma: while unmistakably constructed and thus selectively empowering the brokers co-ordinating the construction process, ethnicity yet tends to pose as unchangeable, innate and inescapable. The paper then presents a detailed analysis of the recent Kazanga festival among people identifying as Nkoya in Western Zambia. As an instance of ethnic self-representation vis-à-vis the national state, the annual festival brings out the extent to which cultural reconstruction in ethnicity radically transforms local historical cultural forms towards a global idiom of performance, inequality along class and gender lines, and commodification or folklorisation of culture. Yet such transformation is shown to have a revitalising effect on local expressive culture and on the historic kingship, and is argued to be a survival strategy for local cultural forms in a globalising world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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