Abstract
This paper attemps to reconcile the two different tendencies in the study of ethnicity in terms of objective and subjective approach. The bifurcation of the argument into these two aspects derives from the processual nature of ethnicity construction, which is to be analysed in view of how a certain difference among other differences is picked up and is activated so that the hypothetical ‘ethnicity’ is materialised or reified through the process of what I call the ‘hypercycle of difference’ according to Eigen's biochemical process of autocatalysis.
