Ethnicity and race
- 1. Soc 111 Introduction to Anthropology ETHNICITY AND RACE
- 2. 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?
- 3. 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.
- 4. 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.
- 5. 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.
- 6. 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.
- 7. 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
- 8. Race • Race: an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis • Racism: discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis
- 9. 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
- 10. 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.
- 11. 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.
- 12. 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
- 13. 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.
- 14. 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
- 15. 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.
- 16. 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.
- 17. 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.
- 18. 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