An ethnic group is a group In the social sciences a group can be defined as two or more humans who 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 people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed- sharing cultural characteristics[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 agency 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, such as 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 anthrōpos , "human", and -logia (-λογία), "discourse" or "study", and was first used by Franç 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 A 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, the 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, globalisation and identity politics. Eriksen finished his dr. polit.-degree in 1991, and was made professor in 1995, at the age of 33. In the years 1993-2001, 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. Political scientists "see themselves engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions. And from these revelations they attempt to construct, 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 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 anthrōpos , "human", and -logia (-λογία), "discourse" or "study", and was first used by Franç, 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 North 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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Defining ethnicity
The terms "ethnicity" and "ethnic group" are derived from the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of word ethnos, normally translated as "nation" or commonly said people of the same race that share a distinctive culture. The term "ethnic" and related forms were used in English in the meaning of "pagan/ heathen" from the 14th century through the middle of the 19th century. ThiE. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman, History and Ethnicity (London 1989), pp. 11-17 (quoted in J. Hutchinson & A.D. Smith (eds.), Oxford readers: Ethnicity (Oxford 1996), pp. 18-24)</ref>
The modern usage of "ethnic group", however, reflects the different kinds of encounters industrialised states have had with subordinate groups, such as immigrants and colonised subjects; "ethnic group" came to stand in opposition to "nation", to refer to people with distinct cultural identities who, through migration or conquest, had become subject to a foreign state. The modern usage of the word is relatively new—1851[18] — with the first usage of the term ethnic group in 1935,[19] and entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972.[20][21]
The modern usage definition of the Oxford English Dictionary' is:
a[djective]
- ...
- 2.a. Pertaining to race; peculiar to a race or nation; ethnological. Also, pertaining to or having common racial, cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics, esp. designating a racial or other group within a larger system; hence (U.S. colloq.), foreign, exotic.
- b ethnic minority (group), a group of people differentiated from the rest of the community by racial origins or cultural background, and usu. claiming or enjoying official recognition of their group identity. Also attrib.
n[oun]
—Oxford English Dictionary "ethnic, a. and n."[22]
- ...
- 3 A member of an ethnic group or minority. orig. U.S.
Writing about the usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States, Wallman notes that
- The term 'ethnic' popularly connotes 'race' in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, 'race' most commonly means color, and 'ethnics' are the descendents of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. 'Ethnic' is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no 'ethnics'; there are only 'ethnic relations'.[23]
Thus, in today's everyday language, the words "ethnic" and "ethnicity" still have a ring of exotic peoples, minority issues and race relations.
Within the social sciences The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship that explore aspects of human society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These include: anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, political science, international, however, the usage has become more generalized to all human groups that explicitly regard themselves and are regarded by others as culturally distinctive.[24] Among the first to bring the term "ethnic group" into social studies was the German sociologist Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Subject matter Max Weber Maximilian Carl Emil "Max" Weber (21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist and political economist, who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the remit of sociology itself. Weber's major works dealt with the rationalization and so-called "disenchantment" which he associated with the rise of, who defined it as:
[T]hose human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.[25]
Conceptual history of ethnicity
Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft Tönnies' concepts of both terms “Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft” were published first 1887. Seven more German editions came out during his life time, the last 1935. The second edition of 1912 turned out to be an unexpected but lasting success, and the antagonism of these two terms belonged to the general stock of concepts German pre-1933 (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolise power and status. This was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race The term race or racial group usually refers to the categorization of humans into populations or ancestral groups on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics. The physical features commonly seen as indicating race are salient visual traits such as skin color, cranial or facial features and hair texture. Conceptions of race, as well".[26]
Another influential theoretician of ethnicity 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, whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of the term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s.[27] Barth went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates, or logical a prioris to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with a focus on the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: "[...] categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories."
In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities:
... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed.[27]
In this way, he pointed to the fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage, the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had the added value of being able to describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states.[27]
Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character.[28] Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness".[27] He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization.[27] This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation.
Ethnies and ethnic categories
In order to avoid the problems of defining ethnic classification as labelling of others or as self-identification, it has been proposed to distinguish between concepts of "ethnic categories", "ethnic networks" and "ethnic communities" or "ethnies".[29][30]
- An "ethnic category" is a category set up by outsiders, that is, those who are not themselves members of the category, and whose members are populations that are categorised by outsiders as being distinguished by attributes of a common name or emblem, a shared cultural element and a connection to a specific territory. But, members who are ascribed to ethnic categories do not themselves have any awareness of their belonging to a common, distinctive group.
- At the level of "ethnic networks", the group begins to have a sense of collectiveness, and at this level, common myths of origin and shared cultural and biological heritage begins to emerge, at least among the élites.[30]
- At the level of "ethnies" or "ethnic communities", the members themselves have clear conceptions of being "a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, and one or more common elements of culture, including an association with a homeland, and some degree of solidarity, at least among the élites". That is, an ethnie is self-defined as a group, whereas ethnic categories are set up by outsiders whether or not their own members identify with the category given them.[31]
- A "Situational Ethnicity" is an Ethnic identity that is chosen for the moment based on the social setting or situation.[32]
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:24:30 GMT+00:00
Nigerian Compass Each state will receive one ton of the cake, while every ethnic group will be represented at the unveiling of the cake at the Abuja Stadium on October 1. ...
(Dianne)
ue, 24 Aug 2010 21:24:00 GM
The camp was divided into separate sections for each . ethnic group. of prisoners. Languages spoken at Crystal City included Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, and English; ages of the prisoners ranged from newborn to elderly. ...
