The term "Ethnicity" redirects here. For the album of the same name by Yanni, see
Ethnicity (Yanni album)
An ethnic group or ethnicity is a population of human beings whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry.[1] Ethnicity is also defined from the recognition by others as a distinct group[2] and by common cultural,
linguistic, religious, behavioural or biological traits.[1][3]
According to some, "Ethnicity is a fundamental factor in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience."[3] According to others, however, ethnic identities
only arise under specific conditions.[4] Processes that
result in the emergence of such identification are summarized as 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.[5]
Defining ethnicity
The sociologist Max Weber once remarked that "The whole conception of ethnic groups is so complex and so vague that it might
be good to abandon it altogether."[6]
In any case, Weber proposed a definition of ethnic group that became accepted by many social scientists:
[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.[6]
Anthropologist Ronald Cohen, in a review of anthropological and sociological studies of ethnic groups since Weber, claimed
that while many ethnic groups subjectively claimed common descent and cultural continuity, objectively there was often evidence
that countered such claims.[7] Harold Isaacs has
identified other diacritics (distinguishing markers) of ethnicity, among them physical appearance, name, language,
history, and religion;[8] this definition has entered some
dictionaries.[9] 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.[10] Ronald
Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness".[7] 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.[7] 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.
Ethnicity and race
Ethnicity and race are related concepts in that both are usually defined in terms of shared genealogy.[11] Often, ethnicity also
connotes shared cultural, linguistic, behavioural or religious traits. Race, by contrast, refers to "some concentrations, as
relative to frequency and distribution, of hereditary particles (genes) and physical characters, which appear, fluctuate, and
often disappear in the course of time by reason of geographic and or cultural isolation." In 1950,
the UNESCO statement The Race Question, signed
by some of the internationally renowned scholars of the time (including Ashley Montagu,
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gunnar Myrdal,
Julian Huxley, etc.), suggested that: "National, religious, geographic, linguistic and
cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated
genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term “ race ” is
used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term ” race ” altogether and speak of
'ethnic groups'." [12]
Ethnicity and nation
In some cases, especially involving transnational migration, or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality. Many
anthropologists and historians, following the work of Ernest Gellner[13] and Benedict Anderson[14] see
nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the seventeenth century, culminating in the
rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries.
Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation,
developed in the context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and
capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time that
state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the nineteenth century, modern
states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations." Nation-states, however, invariably include populations that have been excluded from national life for one
reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion on the basis of equality, or seek
autonomy, sometimes even to the extent of complete political separation in their own nation-state.[15] Under these conditions - when people moved from one state to another,[16] or one state conquored or colonized peoples beyond its
national boundaries - ethnic groups formed by people who identified with one nation, but who lived in another state.
Ethno-national conflict
Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or its constituents. In the twentieth
century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and
should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry, have argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights
of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view the state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity
but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka argue that the
notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity
and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries of the
nation-state.
The nineteenth century saw the development of the political ideology of ethnic
nationalism, when the concept of race was tied to nationalism, first by German theorists including Johann Gottfried
von Herder. Instances of societies focusing on ethnic ties arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context have
resulted in the justification of nationalist goals. Two periods frequently cited as examples of this are the nineteenth century
consolidation and expansion of the German Empire and the Third (Greater German) Reich, each promoted on the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were only
acquiring lands that had always been ethnically German. The history of late-comers to the nation-state model, such as those
arising in the Near East and south-eastern Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as
those arising out of the former USSR, is marked by inter-ethnic conflicts that usually
occurs within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, in other regions of the world; thus, those other conflicts are
often misleadingly labelled and characterized as "civil war."
In last decades of the twentieth century, mass migrations have occurred in most countries of the Northern hemisphere. The
legal system as well as the official ideology emphasized race equality, and prohibited ethnic-based discrimination.
Ethnicity in specific countries
In the United States, collectives of related ethnic groups are typically denoted as "ethnic". Most prominently in the
U.S., the various Latin American ethnic
groups plus a racial mix of the Spanish or Portuguese are typically collectivized as, depending on the part of the country you are in, either
"Hispanics" or "Latinos". The many previously designated
'Oriental' ethnic groups are designated as Asian ethnic groups
and similarly lumped together as "Asians". The terms "Black" and "African-American," while different, usually describe the descendants whose ancestors, usually in
predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. Even the racial term "White Americans" are generally peoples originally from Europe, who now
live in North America. "Middle Easterners" are
peoples from the Middle-East, i.e. Southwest Asia and North Africa. These countries include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, et cetera. (For a list of official ethnic categories
according to the U.S. Census Bureau, see Ethnicity (United States Census)).
In the United Kingdom, the classification of ethnic groups has attracted controversy in the past: particularly at the time of
the 2001 Census where the existence and nature of such a classification, which appeared on the Census form, became more widely
known than general. Different classifications, both formal and informal, are used in the UK. Perhaps the most accepted is the
National Statistics classification, identical to that used in the 2001 Census in England and Wales (for list, see
Ethnicity (United Kingdom)). In terms of use as opposed to official policy
there is one main difference, the use of the term Oriental is widespread and without negative
connotation in the UK and Europe while in the UK Asian is generally reserved for people from the Indian subcontinent (see
Oriental and British Asian for more details).
China officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups of which the most numerous
are the Han Chinese. Many of the ethnic minorities maintain their own individual culture and
language, although many are also becoming more like the Han Chinese. Some of these groups suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Han Chinese dominate the whole of China with the exception of Tibet and Xinjiang where the Han are still in the minority. Sometimes people are
given the choice of which ethnic group they wish to belong to, but 'mixed-race' is not an option. All ID cards in China state
which ethnic group the holder belongs to. (For more details, see List of ethnic
groups in China and Ethnic minorities in China.)
Currently, the world's most ethnically diverse city is Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[citation needed]
Research
The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) has attempted to map the DNA that varies between
humans, which is a less than 1 % difference. This data may shed light on the origin of some ethnic groups.[citation needed]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Smith 1987
- ^ "Anthropology. The study of ethnicity, minority groups, and identity,"
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.
- ^ a b Statistics Canada Definition of Ethnicity
- ^ Frederick Barth ed. 1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social
Organization of Cultural Difference; Eric Wolf 1982 Europe and the People Without History p. 381
- ^ Friedlander 1975 Being Indian in Hueyapan, Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983
The Invention of Tradition, Sider 1993 Lumbee Indian Histories.
- ^ a b Max Weber [1922]1978 Economy and Society eds. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich, trans. Ephraim Fischof, vol. 2 Berkeley: University of California Press, 389
- ^ a b c Ronald Cohen 1978
"Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology" in Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 385 Palo Alto: Stanford University
Press
- ^ Isaacs, H. 1975 Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political
Change New York: Harper
- ^ 2006 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
Edition Boston:Houghton Mifflin
- ^ Joan Vincent 1974 "The Structure of Ethnicity" in Human Organization
33(4): 375-379
- ^ Abizadeh 2001
- ^ A. Metraux (1950) "United nations Economic and Security Council Statement
by Experts on Problems of Race" in American Anthropologist 53(1): 142-145)
- ^ Gellner 2006 Nations and Nationalism Blackwell Publishing
- ^ Anderson 2006 Imagined Communities Verson
- ^ Walter Pohl, "Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies" Debating the Middle Ages: Issues
and Readings, ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, (Blackwell), 1998, pp 13-24, notes that historians have
projected the nineteenth-century conceptions of the nation-state backwards in time, employing biological metaphors of birth and
growth: "that the peoples in the Migration Period had little to do with those heroic
(or sometimes brutish) clichés is now generally accepted among historians," he remarked. Early medieval peoples were far less
homogeneous than often thought, and Pohl follows Reinhard Wenskus,Stammesbildung und Verfassung. (Cologne and Graz) 1961,
whose researches into the "ethnogenesis" of the German peoples convinced him that the
idea of common origin, as expressed by Isidore of Seville Gens est multitude ab
uno principle orta ("a people is a multitude stemming from one origin") which continues in the original Etymologiae
IX.2.i) "sive ab alia natione secundum propriam collectionem distincta ("or distinguished from another people by its
proper ties") was a myth.
- ^ Aihway Ong 1996 "Cultural Citizenship in the Making" in Current
Anthropology 37(5)
References
- Abizadeh, Arash, "Ethnicity, Race, and a Possible Humanity" World Order, 33.1 (2001): 23-34. (Article that explores the social
construction of ethnicity and race.)
- Billinger, Michael S. (2007), "Another Look at Ethnicity as a Biological Concept: Moving Anthropology Beyond the Race Concept" Critique of
Anthropology 27,1:5–35.
- Dunnhaupt, Gerhard, "The Bewildering German Boundaries", in: Festschrift for P. M. Mitchell (Heidelberg: Winter
1989).
- Eysenck, H.J., Race, Education and Intelligence (London: Temple Smith, 1971) (ISBN 0-8511-7009-9)
- Friedlander, Judith, Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in
Contemporary Mexico (New York: Saint Martin's Press, 1975).
- Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, editors, The Invention of Tradition.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
- Morales-Díaz, Enrique; Gabriel Aquino; & Michael Sletcher, "Ethnicity", in Michael Sletcher, ed., New England,
(Westport, CT, 2004).
- Sider, Gerald, Lumbee Indian Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
-
Smith, Anthony D. (1987), The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Blackwell
- ^ U.S. Census Bureau State & County QuickFacts: Race.
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