ethnicity and race
TRANSCRIPT
Soc 111 Introduction to Anthropology
ETHNICITY AND RACE
Ethnicity and Race
• What is social status, and
how does it relate to ethnicity?
• How are race and ethnicity
socially constructed in various
societies?
• What are the positive and
negative aspects of ethnicity?
Ethnicity and Race
• Ethnicity is based on cultural similarities and differences in a society or nation.
• What is an ethnic group and what is ethnicity?
Members of an ethnic group share certain beleiefs, values, habits, customs and
norms because of their common background.
Ethnicity and Race
• Ethnic Group: a collective name, belief in common descent, common history, same sense of solidarity, an origin from a specific territory.
• Ethnicity: feeling part of an ethnic group and exclusion from other groups because of this feeling.
Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity
• Status: any position that determines where
someone fits in society
– Ascribed status: little or no choice about
occupying the status given
For ex: Age, Race, Gender
– Achieved status: gained through choices,
actions, efforts, talents, or accomplishments
For ex: to be a political leader, to be a
father/mother, to be a union member etc.
Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity
• Situational Negotiation of Social Identity
To have different status for a person in different settings.
For ex: A woman maybe a mother at home and a professor at university.
2 different statuses.
Status Shifting
• Some statuses, particularly
ascribed ones, are mutually exclusive
– Some statuses are contextual.
– Minority groups: have an ascribed status
that is associated with their position in
the sociopolitical hierarchy
• Inferior power and less secure access
to resources than majority groups
Race
• Race: an ethnic group assumed
to have a biological basis
• Racism: discrimination against
an ethnic group assumed to
have a biological basis
Race and Ethnicity
• Race is a cultural category rather than a
biological reality.
– It is not possible to define
human races biologically.
– Only cultural constructions of race are
possible.
– Better to use ethnic group than race
Race and Ethnicity
• Today, scholars in many fields argue that race as it is understood now, was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America.
• Thus, race was a mode of classification linked specifically to people in the colonial situation.• The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans and Indians, established a rigid
hierarchy of socially exclusive categories, an unequal rank, status differences and people
believed that this inequality was natural or God given.
Race and Ethnicity
• It was not limited to colonial situation.
• In the second half of the 19th century, it was employed by Europeans to rank one another and to justify social, economic and political inequalities among their people.
• Race, thus evolved as a world view, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior.
Ethnic Groups, Nations,
and Nationalities
• Nation: a society sharing a common language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship
– State: a stratified society with a formal, centralized government
– Nation-State: an autonomous political entity; a country• Migration, conquest, and
colonialism led most nation-states not to be ethnically homogeneous
Nationalities and Imagined Communities
• Ethnic groups that one had, or wish to have or regaion, autonomous political status are called nationalities.
• Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities
– Language and print played a crucial role in various European national consciousnesses.
– Colonialism (the long-term foreign domination of a territory and its people) often erected
boundaries that corresponded poorly with pre-existing cultural divisions.
Assimilation
• Assimilation: when
a minority adopts the
patterns and norms
of the host culture
• Incorporates the
dominant culture to the point
where it no longer exists
as a separate cultural unit
The Plural Society
• Plural society: a culture combining ethnic
contrasts, ecological specialization, and
economic interdependence
• Frederick Barth is the anthropologist who came with the idea of plural society.
• Barth: Ethnic boundaries are the most stable
and enduring when groups
occupy different ecological niches.
Multiculturalism & Ethnic Identity
• Multiculturalism: The view of
cultural diversity as valuable and worth
maintaining in its own right
• Multiculturalism seeks ways for people to
understand and interact with a respect for their
differences.
• Multiculturalism is related to globalization.
• Migration has effect on multiculturalism.
Roots of Ethnic Conflict
• Ethnicity based on perceived cultural similarities and differences in a society or
nation, can be expressed in peaceful multiculturalism or in discrimination or violent
interethnic confrontation.
• The roots of ethnic conflict can be political, economic, religious, linguistic, cultural or
racial.
Roots of Ethnic Conflict
• Prejudice: the devaluing of a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, or attributes– Stereotypes: fixed ideas
about what the members of a group are like
• Discrimination: policies and practices that harm a group and its members
o Genocide
o Ethnocide
o Forced Assimilation
o Cultural Colonialism