Ethnicity

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Ethnicity

• How Does It Differ From Race and Culture?

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Recap from last time . . .

• Race is a biological term used to describe
  subspecies of organisms.
• The physical variation in humans, though perhaps
  seemingly great, is genetically minimal.
• During the history of humanity, populations have
  never been isolated long enough to become true
  biological races.
• Social races are cultural constructs.

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Example of great variability within a species
Dogs

• Dogs, though diverse in appearance, are
  genetically indistinguishable from wild wolves
  from which they descend.

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Ethnicity and Race

• An ethnic group may define themselves as
  different because of their language, religion,
  geography, history, ancestry, or physical traits.
• An ethnic group that is assumed to have a
  biological basis is called a race.

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What do most people think about ethnicity?

• Most Americans fail to distinguish between
  ethnicity and race.
• Many people think that ethnicity is just a
  politically correct term for race.
• Ethnicity is based on cultural traditions, while
  races are based mainly on biological traits.

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Ethnic Markers, Identities, and Statuses

• Ethnic groups are formed around virtually the
  same features as cultures common beliefs,
  values, customs, history, etc.
• Ethnicity entails identification with a given
  ethnic group, but it also involves the
  maintenance of a distinction from other groups.
• Status refers to any position in a society that
  can be filled by an individual.

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Status in Society

• Ascribed status Status into which people enter
  automatically without choice, usually at birth or
  some special event in the life cycle.
• Achieved status Status that people acquire
  through their own individual accomplishments and
  actions in life.
• Within complex societies, ascribed status can
  describe large subgroups minority groups,
  majority groups, and races are all examples as
  ascribed statuses.
• Differences in ascribed status are commonly
  associated with differences in socio-political
  power.

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Minority Status

• The definitive feature of a minority group is
  that its members systematically experience lesser
  income, authority, and power than other members
  of their society.
• A minority group is not necessarily a smaller
  population than other groups.

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Status Shifting

• Most status can change, particularly through the
  influence of social contexts.
• Adjusting or switching ones status in reaction
  to different social contexts is called the
  situational negotiation of social identity.
• The application of a social category label, such
  as an ethnic label, to a particular individual
  depends on the perception by others of that
  persons status, as well as that persons own
  assertions of status.

10
Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities

• Nation and nation-state an autonomous,
  centrally organized political entity.
• Ethnic groups are not necessarily so formally
  politically organized.
• The majority of all nation-states have more than
  one ethnic group, and the multiethnicity of all
  countries is increasing with migration/immigration
  .

11
Nationalities and Imagined Communities

• Nationalities are ethnic groups that aspire to
  autonomous statehood.
• The term imagined communities has been used to
  describe nationalities, since most of their
  members feel a bond with each other in the
  absence of any real acquaintance (No
  Palestinian will ever meet every member who
  considers themselves Palestinian).
• Mass media and literature has helped to form such
  imagined communities by becoming the means of
  establishing a commonalty of values, motivations,
  language, etc.

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Colonialism

• Colonialism refers to the political, social,
  economic, and cultural domination of a territory
  and its people by a foreign power for an extended
  period of time.
• Colonialism helped create imagined communities as
  different ethnic groups under the control of the
  same colonial administration rose in opposition
  to colonial power.

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Colonialism can fuel imagined communities

• Negritude (African identity) developed by black
  intellectuals out of the common experience of
  French colonial rule in Western Africa and the
  Caribbean.
• The fact the negritude crosses several
  present-day national boundaries makes it no more
  or less an imagined community than any
  nation-state.

14
Ethnic Nationalism Run Amok

• The breakup of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines in
  the early 1990s is an example of the interplay
  between history, ethnic identity, and
  nationalism.
• Serbs, Croat, Albanians, and Muslim Slavs are
  divided into various groups based on religion,
  culture, and political and military history
  (particularly, Serb retaliation for actions taken
  against them by Croat during the Second World
  War.
• Serbian ethnic cleansing, the policy of killing
  or driving out non-Serbs, took place in Bosnia.

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Assimilation

• Assimilation describes the process of change when
  a minority ethnic group adopts the patterns and
  norms of its host culture.
• Assimilation is not uniform it may be forced or
  relatively benign depending on historical
  particularities.
• Brazil (as opposed to the United States and
  Canada) is cited as a highly assimilative society
  where ethnic neighborhoods are uncommon.

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The Plural Society

• Plural society refers to a multi-ethnic
  nation-state wherein the subgroups do not
  assimilate but remain essentially distinct, in
  (relatively) stable coexistence.
• Fredrik Barth defines plural society as a society
  combining ethnic contrasts and the economic
  interdependence of the ethnic groups.
• Such interdependence tends to be structured by
  ecological specialization.
• Cultural differences are part of the natural
  environment of ethnic groups, thus egalitarian
  coexistence is possible when there is no
  competition for resources.

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Multicutluralism vs. Assimilation

• Multiculturalism is the view of cultural
  diversity in a country as something good and
  desirable.
• This is opposed to assimilation, which expects
  subordinate groups to take on the culture of the
  dominate group while abandoning their own.
• Basic aspects of multiculturalism at the
  government level are the official espousal of
  some degree of cultural relativism along with the
  promotion of distinct ethnic practices.

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Multiculturalism in the U.S.

• A number of factors have caused the United States
  to move away from an assimilationist stance and
  towards a more multicultural model.
• Large-scale migration has brought in substantial
  minorities in a time span too short for
  assimilation to take place.
• An ethnic consciousness may take root in reaction
  to consistent discrimination.
• Studies have demonstrated that closely maintained
  ethnic ties have been a successful strategy for
  recent immigrants.

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Prejudice and Discrimination

• Prejudice is the devaluation of a given group
  based upon the assumed characteristics of that
  group.
• Discrimination is disproportionately harmful
  treatment of a group, which can be de jure or de
  facto.

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More Discrimination

• Attitudinal discrimination is discrimination
  against a group based only upon its existence as
  a group (example the KKK)
• Genocide is the deliberate elimination of a group
  through mass murder (example Nazi Germany).
• Institutional discrimination is the formalized
  pursuance of discriminatory practices by a
  government or similar institution (example
  apartheid).

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When Multiculturalism Slips. . .

• Despite the fact that the 1992 Los Angeles riot
  began as a reaction to the first Rodney King
  verdict, much of the violence played out along
  ethnic lines prosperous, culturally isolated
  Korean merchants were targeted for looting and
  violence.
• Subsequent public discussion indicated that much
  of the enmity was due to culturally based
  miscommunication.

22
The Politics of Cultural Oppression

• Ethnic differentiation sometimes interferes with
  the dominant groups consolidation of power.
• Such conditions, perceived or real, have resulted
  in brutal discrimination forced assimilation,
  ethnocide, ethnic expulsion, and cultural
  colonialism.

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Summary

• Aspects of culture and race used to define
  ethnicity.
• Statuses exist in all societies, some of which
  are flexible.
• Nation-states are formal governments that contain
  multiple ethnic groups.
• Colonialism by nation-states has often resulted
  in subjugation of ethnic minorities
• Multiculturalism and truly plural societies are
  possible.