Question: How many ethnic groups do they have?
About the article "Nigeria", section "Ethno-linguistic groups".

Candidate passages:
Both stances, according to Ambrosio, are unrealistic.
The uncritical embrace of ethnic interests in the formulation of foreign policy, as favored by the "enriching multiculturalism" interpretation, is problematic because:  "It is fundamentally undemocratic because it allows a small minority to determine policy for the vast majority (just as it is fundamentally undemocratic to allow any small interest group to determine foreign policy."
The traditional foreign policy debating "process itself tends to moderate policies; that is; extremism will be more likely if the process is circumvented" by ethnic lobbies.
"It is a recipe for conflict: if a policy needs to be determined towards a specific region where ethnic groups are in conflict, how do we determine which diaspora should effective make foreign policy?"
Equally unworkable is the complete exclusion of ethnic participation in foreign policy formulation advocated by the "parochial capture" interpretation:  It "is fundamentally undemocratic to arbitrarily exclude certain groups from legitimate expressions of political preference."
Trying to enforce a ban on ethnic involvement "would be nearly impossible: ethnic identity groups have ingeniously found ways around bans on ethnic mobilization."
Many "interest groups that support a specific ethnic agenda may argue that they are not ethnic-specific."
"Undistinguished" ethnic groups are ethnic groups that have not been officially recognized or classified by the central government.
The group numbers more than 730,000 people, and would constitute the twentieth most populous ethnic group of China if taken as a single group.
The vast majority of this group is found in Guizhou Province.
These "undistinguished ethnic groups" do not include groups that have been controversially classified into existing groups.
For example, the Mosuo are officially classified as Naxi, and the Chuanqing are classified as Han Chinese, but they reject these classifications and view themselves as separate ethnic groups.
Citizens of mainland China who are of foreign origin are classified using yet another separate label: "foreigners naturalized into the Chinese citizenship" (外国人入中国籍).
However, if a newly naturalized citizen already belongs to a recognized existing group among the 56 ethnic groups, then he or she is classified into that ethnic group rather than the special label. 
Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society.
Examples of such approaches are: primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.
""Primordialism"", holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that modern ethnic groups have historical continuity into the far past.
For them, the idea of ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations and is rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity as being divided into primordially existing groups rooted by kinship and biological heritage.
* ""Essentialist primordialism"" further holds that ethnicity is an "a priori" fact of human existence, that ethnicity precedes any human social interaction and that it is basically unchanged by it.
This theory sees ethnic groups as natural, not just as historical.
This understanding does not explain how and why nations and ethnic groups seemingly appear, disappear and often reappear through history.
It also has problems dealing with the consequences of intermarriage, migration and colonization for the composition of modern day multi-ethnic societies.
* ""Kinship primordialism"" holds that ethnic communities are extensions of kinship units, basically being derived by kinship or clan ties where the choices of cultural signs (language, religion, traditions) are made exactly to show this biological affinity.
In this way, the myths of common biological ancestry that are a defining feature of ethnic communities are to be understood as representing actual biological history.
A problem with this view on ethnicity is that it is more often than not the case that mythic origins of specific ethnic groups directly contradict the known biological history of an ethnic community.
* ""Geertz's primordialism"", notably espoused by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, argues that humans in general attribute an overwhelming power to primordial human "givens" such as blood ties, language, territory, and cultural differences.
In Geertz' opinion, ethnicity is not in itself primordial but humans perceive it as such because it is embedded in their experience of the world.
""Perennialism"", an approach that is primarily concerned with nationhood but tends to see nations and ethnic communities as basically the same phenomenon, holds that the nation, as a type of social and political organisation, is of an immemorial or "perennial" character.
Smith (1999) distinguishes two variants: "continuous perennialism", which claims that particular nations have existed for very long spans of time, and "recurrent perennialism", which focuses on the emergence, dissolution and reappearance of nations as a recurring aspect of human history.
* ""Perpetual perennialism"" holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously throughout history.
* ""Situational perennialism"" holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, change and vanish through the course of history.
This view holds that the concept of ethnicity is basically a tool used by political groups to manipulate resources such as wealth, power, territory or status in their particular groups' interests.
Accordingly, ethnicity emerges when it is relevant as means of furthering emergent collective interests and changes according to political changes in the society.
Examples of a perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are also found in Barth, and Seidner who see ethnicity as ever-changing boundaries between groups of people established through ongoing social negotiation and interaction.
* ""Instrumentalist perennialism"", while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that identified different ethnics groups and limits through time, explains ethnicity as a mechanism of social stratification, meaning that ethnicity is the basis for a hierarchical arrangement of individuals.
According to Donald Noel, a sociologist who developed a theory on the origin of ethnic stratification, ethnic stratification is a "system of stratification wherein some relatively fixed group membership (e.g., race, religion, or nationality) is utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions".
Ethnic stratification is one of many different types of social stratification, including stratification based on socio-economic status, race, or gender.
According to Donald Noel, ethnic stratification will emerge only when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with one another, and only when those groups are characterized by a high degree of ethnocentrism, competition, and differential power.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture, and to downgrade all other groups outside one's own culture.
Some sociologists, such as Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings, say the origin of ethnic stratification lies in individual dispositions of ethnic prejudice, which relates to the theory of ethnocentrism.
Continuing with Noel's theory, some degree of differential power must be present for the emergence of ethnic stratification.
In other words, an inequality of power among ethnic groups means "they are of such unequal power that one is able to impose its will upon another".
In addition to differential power, a degree of competition structured along ethnic lines is a prerequisite to ethnic stratification as well.
The different ethnic groups must be competing for some common goal, such as power or influence, or a material interest, such as wealth or territory.
Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings propose that competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and results in inevitable stratification and conflict.
""Constructivism"" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed, and rejects the notion of ethnicity as a basic human condition.
It holds that ethnic groups are only products of human social interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as valid social constructs in societies.
*""Modernist constructivism"" correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards nationstates beginning in the early modern period.
Proponents of this theory, such as Eric Hobsbawm, argue that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such as nationalism, are purely modern inventions, appearing only in the modern period of world history.
They hold that prior to this, ethnic homogeneity was not considered an ideal or necessary factor in the forging of large-scale societies.
Ethnicity is an important means by which people may identify with a larger group.
Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, do not consider ethnic identity to be universal.
They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups.
Processes that result in the emergence of such identification are called ethnogenesis.
Members of an ethnic group, on the whole, claim cultural continuities over time, although historians and cultural anthropologists have documented that many of the values, practices, and norms that imply continuity with the past are of relatively recent invention.
Ethnic groups differ from other social groups, such as subcultures, interest groups or social classes, because they emerge and change over historical periods (centuries) in a process known as ethnogenesis, a period of several generations of endogamy resulting in common ancestry (which is then sometimes cast in terms of a mythological narrative of a founding figure); ethnic identity is reinforced by reference to "boundary markers" - characteristics said to be unique to the group which set it apart from other groups. 
The concept of ethnic origin is an attempt to classify people, not according to their current nationality, but according to commonalities in their social background.
For example somebody living in a monocultural environment, speaking English for example and clearly a member of an English-speaking cultural milieu, may be descended from immigrants speaking some other language and still participate in some of aspects their culture.
Ethnic origin implies one or more of the following:   shared origins or social background;  shared culture and traditions that are distinctive, maintained between generations, and lead to a sense of identity and group;  a common language  a common religious tradition.
Ethnic origin has become a popular classification in statistics, where the concept of races has been largely discarded since World War II, for various reasons.
A reaction against the abuses of the Nazis and apartheid made it hard to collect, store or publish racial data.
Social scientists in general have lost interest in race as useful concept of study, with many other differences between population groups more significant.
However the relative prosperity of distinguishable groups remain of interest in public policy discussions.
In the US, however, the use of the term race is still current.
The census asks questions about race, though the classification used is no different from what would be termed ethnic origin elsewhere.
The concept of ethnic origin in practice may seem arbitrary and without a rigorous definition of how to assign a person to the particular categories.
If a person was asked for their ethnic origin and answered "how do I tell what ethnic origin I am?"
it may not be clear whether they are being asked for: their country of birth, the country of birth of their parents, or more distant ancestors (how distant?
), or for a description of their appearance, such as skin colour or hair type, or for their cultural behaviour such as food, clothing, language and the people they associate with.
The answers to these questions may be contradictory and suggest different ethnic origins.
The answer of interest to the questioner is probably whether the person considers themselves to be a member of a particular ethnic subdivision of society, or are considered a member of a such a group by others.
This would affect whether they were possibly subject to discrimination etc.
However the question is still open to interpretation, since a person may be identified differently depending on the mode of contact, e.g., considering outward appearance such as skin colour or clothing, name, or use of written or oral language, etc.
This raises the question of whether ethnic origin is just another term for ethnic group. 
The theory views ethnocentrism and racism as nepotism toward extended kin and an extension of kin selection.
In other words, ethnic nepotism points toward a biological basis for the phenomenon of people preferring others of the same ethnicity or race; it explains the tendency of humans to favor members of their own racial group by postulating that all animals evolve toward being more altruistic toward kin in order to propagate more copies of their common genes.
"The myth of common descent", proposed by many social scientists as a prominent ethnic marker, is in his view often not a myth at all.
"Ethnicity is defined by common descent and maintained by endogamy".
To guard one's genetic interests, Frank Salter notes altruism toward one's co-ethnics:Hamilton's 1975 model of a genetic basis for tribal altruism shows that it is theoretically possible to defend ethnic genetic interests in an adaptive manner, even when the altruism entails self sacrifice.
He argued mathematically that an act of altruism directed towards the tribe was adaptive if it protected the aggregate of distant relatives in the tribe.
In sexually-reproducing species a population's genetic isolation leads to rising levels of interrelatedness of its members and thus makes greater altruism adaptive.
Low levels of immigration between tribes allow growing relatedness of tribal members, which in turn permits selection of altruistic acts directed at tribal members, but only if these acts "actually aid in group fitness in some way..." Closely related individuals are less likely to free ride and more likely to invest in and thus strengthen the group as a whole, improving the fitness of its members.
Regarding how this translates into politics and why homogeneous societies are more altruistic, Frank Salter writes:Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism.
For example, the degree of ethnic homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic product as well as the average wealth of citizens.
Case studies of the United States, Africa and South-East Asia find that multi-ethnic societies are less charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure.
Moscow beggars receive more gifts from fellow ethnics than from other ethnics.
A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public goods in the United States found that ethnically or racially diverse cities spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public services than do the more homogenous cities.J.
Philippe Rushton has complemented kin selection and ethnic nepotism by his genetic similarity theory which proposes that "genetically similar people tend to seek one another out and to provide mutually supportive environments such as marriage, friendship, and social groups.
This may represent a biological factor underlying ethnocentrism and group selection".
He has also argued that:fellow ethnics carry copies of the same genes, ethnic consciousness is rooted in the biology of altruism and mutual reciprocity.
Thus ethnic nationalism, xenophobia and genocide can become the ‘dark side’ of altruism.
Moreover, shared genes can govern the degree to which an ideology is adopted.
Some genes will replicate better in some cultures than in others.
Religious, political and class conﬂicts become heated because they affect genetic ﬁtness.
Karl Marx did not take his analysis far enough: ideology may be the servant of economic interest, but genes inﬂuence both.
Since individuals have a greater concentration of genetic interest (inclusive ﬁtness) in their own ethnic group than they do in other ethnic groups, they can be expected to adopt ideas that promote their group over others.
Political ethologist Frank Salter refers to ideologies as ‘ﬁtness portfolios’, and psychologist Kevin MacDonald has described co-ethnics as engaging in "group evolutionary strategies.
"In Rushton's interpretation it is not clear whether the proposed genetic likeness that supports ethnic nepotism is limited to external appearance, or it also includes other loci.
If that is the case, it would be difficult to deduct how similar blood types or creatine levels, or others, among the multitude of invisible phenotype traits, contribute to determine the bonding behavior towards people carrying the alleged similar alleles.
Also, there is no clue offered as to which of these specific alleles are the most important for expression of ethnic nepotism.
Hamiltonian kin selection (in itself very controversial) refers exclusively to defined sets of discrete behaviors that are innate, not learned and increase the reproductive fitness among very close kin, whereas ethnic nepotism would appear to depend heavily on social interactions and on social constructs.
According to research by Van der Dennen, "ethnocentrism-cum-xenophobia" seems universally present in preindustrial societies (and in many primate and social carnivore species).
Tatu Vanhanen in his 1999 book "Ethnic Conflicts Explained by Ethnic Nepotism" empirically examined the relationships between the degree of ethnic homogeneity, the degree of ethnic conflicts, and the degree of democratization in the nations of the world.
He found that more ethnically heterogeneous nations had more ethnic conflicts.
The degree of democratization explained very little of the degree of ethnic conflicts except that very authoritarian states such as the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia could suppress ethnic conflicts.
Ethnic conflicts were only slightly less common in more economically developed countries.
They appeared within all racial groups, cultures, and geographical regions.
In Vanhanen's view, people have a genetic tendency to easily learn ethnic attitudes and psychological mechanisms leading to prejudice, scapegoating, and discrimination.