An ethnic group is a group A group can be defined as two or more humans that interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and share a common identity. By this definition, society can be viewed as a large group, though most social groups are considerably smaller of humans Humans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving members of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed.[1][2] This shared heritage may be based upon putative common ancestry, history, kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance. Members of an ethnic group are conscious of belonging to an ethnic group; moreover ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness.[3] [4]
According to "Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World: Science, politics, and reality", a conference organised by Statistics Canada Statistics Canada is the Canadian federal government department commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. The bureau is commonly called StatCan or StatsCan although StatCan is the official abbreviation. It has regularly been considered the best statistical and the United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data. As part of the United States Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau serves as a leading source of data about America's people and economy (April 1–3, 1992), "Ethnicity is a fundamental factor in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience."[5] However, many social scientists, like anthropologists Anthropology is the study of humanity. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology", pronounced /ænθrɵˈpɒlədʒi/, is from the Greek ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos, "human", and -λογία, -logia, "discourse" or "study", and was Fredrik Barth Thomas Fredrik Weybye Barth is a Norwegian social anthropologist who has published several ethnographic books with a clear formalistic view. He is professor in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University, and has previously held professorships at the University of Oslo, the University of Bergen (where he founded the Department of Social and Eric Wolf Eric Robert Wolf was an anthropologist, best known for his studies of peasants, Latin America, and his advocacy of Marxian perspectives within anthropology, 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.[6]
Processes that result in the emergence of such identification are called ethnogenesis Ethnogenesis is the process by which a group of human beings comes to be understood or to understand themselves as ethnically distinct from the wider social landscape from which their grouping emerges. By self-invention, ethnic groups are "present at their own creation", in the phrase of E. P. Thompson. This recognition of culture. Members of an ethnic group, on the whole, claim cultural continuities over time. Historians An historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time. If the individual is concerned with events preceding written history, and cultural anthropologists Cultural anthropology is one of four or five fields of anthropology . It is the branch of anthropology that examines culture as a meaningful scientific concept have documented, however, that often many of the values, practices, and norms that imply continuity with the past are of relatively recent invention.[7][8]
According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen Thomas Hylland Eriksen is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has done field work in Trinidad and Mauritius. His fields of research include identity, nationalism and ethnicity. Eriksen finished his dr. polit.-degree in 1991, and was made professor in 1995, at the age of 33. In the years 1993-2001 he was editor of the, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently. One is between "primordialism" and "instrumentalism". In the primordialist Primordialism can be traced philosophically to the ideas of German Romanticism, particularly in the works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Johann Gottfried Herder. For Herder, the nation was synonymous with language group. In Herder's thinking, language was synonymous with thought, and as each language was learnt in community, then each community view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as an externally given, even coercive, social bond.[9] The instrumentalist In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that a concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality approach, on the other hand, treats ethnicity primarily as an ad-hoc element of a political strategy, used as a resource for interest groups for achieving secondary goals such as, for instance, an increase in wealth, power or status.[10][11] This debate is still an important point of reference in Political science Political science is a social science concerned with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. It is often described as the pragmatic application of the art and science of politics defined as "who gets what, when and how", leaving out of the picture most of the ", although most scholars' approaches fall between the two poles.[12]
The second debate is between "constructivism" and "essentialism". Constructivists view national and ethnic identities as the product of historical forces, often recent, even when the identities are presented as old.[13][14] Essentialists view such identities as ontological Ontology (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: of being and -λογία, -logia: science, study, theory) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, categories defining social actors, and not the result of social action.[15][16]
According to Eriksen, these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology Anthropology is the study of humanity. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology", pronounced /ænθrɵˈpɒlədʒi/, is from the Greek ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos, "human", and -λογία, -logia, "discourse" or "study", and was, by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicised forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in the Caribbean The Caribbean is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands , and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and Northern America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America and South Asia South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as the Indian subcontinent south of the.[17]
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It is preposterous to think that the protesters in Iran would join the assinine ideas of those who want Iran torn up and in turmoil by its ethnic groups . ...
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ue, 09 Feb 2010 07:02:30 GM
The Hakka's are a unique . ethnic group. of "Han" Chinese originally active around the Yellow River area. They are thought to be one of the earliest "Han" settlers in China. One theory has it that many of the early Hakka's were affiliated ...
