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This article discusses the concept of the typology of ethnic process. Sociologists, social and cultural anthropologists, ethnographers and students of other social sciences have increasingly concentrated on the problem of ethnic processes which have received an enormous impetus from the unfolding scientific and technological revolution. Ethnic processes are generally understood to imply changes in ethnic communities, so that an indispensable precondition for working out a typology of ethnic processes is a consideration of the accepted concepts on the type of ethnic communities. In accordance with the concepts of ethnic communities, the notion ethnic processes as used in modern Soviet literature embraces all the varieties and levels of such communities. Throughout its history, each ethnos is in a practically permanent state of ethno-evolutionary change due to inter-ethnic contacts as well as intra- and extra-ethnic factors. Perpetuation of the ethno-evolutionary changes is ensured by the intrinsic informational bonds of the ethnos. At the first stage, the active role is played by synchronous bonds which provide for the horizontal spreading of innovations within the ethnos. Transformational ethnic processes represent the sum of evolutionary ethnic changes and at the same time, their dialectic negation.

The article addresses the issue of whether the concept of cultural relativism is self-refuting. Cultural relativist arguments come in two forms not always clearly distinguished. The first form makes the unexceptionable claim that a commitment to the relativist thesis is merely a methodological or contingent device employed to remind investigators of the dangers of ethnocentrism; the second form makes the far-reaching claim that a necessary feature of all social explanation is that it must be cast in the form of culturally internal accounts. In the former version of the thesis, a relativist reminder is issued to counter the tendency of the social scientist to impute to the fabric of the world his own cultural idiosyncrasies. It is clearly true that, faced with alien or apparently unintelligible behavior, there is a temptation both to translate what is occurring into familiar categories and to indulge oneself in essaying moral judgments on that behavior. In the sociological arena, the very existence of the sub-discipline of the sociology of knowledge is predicated upon the methodological device of contingent relativism. Cultural relativism in this sense then operates as a slogan-system requiring the investigator to maximize his understanding of alien cultures by honest-to-God field work, moral charity, intellectual humility and a determination of the taken-for-granted assumption of both his own and others' cultural milieu.