Ethnicity in sociology

In sociology, ethnicity is a concept referring to a shared culture and a way of life.

This can be reflected in language, religion, material culture such as clothing and
cuisine, and cultural products such as music and art. Ethnicity is often a major
source of social cohesion as well as social conflict.

The world is home to thousands of ethnic groups, from the Han Chinese—the
largest ethnic group in the world—to the smallest indigenous groups, some of
which include only a few dozen people. Almost all of these groups possess a
shared history, language, religion, and culture, which provide group members
with a common identity.

Learned Behavior
Ethnicity, unlike race, is not based on biological traits, except in the case of ethnic
groups that recognize certain traits as requirements for membership. In other
words, the cultural elements that define a particular ethnic group are taught, not
inherited.

This means that the boundaries between ethnic groups are, to some degree, fluid,
allowing for individuals to move between groups. This can happen, for example,
when a child from one ethnic group is adopted into another, or when an
individual undergoes a religious conversion.

It can also happen through the process of acculturation, whereby members of a

native group are forced to adopt the culture and manners of a dominating host
group.

Ethnicity should not be confused with nationality, which refers to citizenship.

While some countries are largely composed of a single ethnic group (Egypt,
Finland, Germany, China), others are composed of many different groups
(United States, Australia, Philippines, Panama).

The rise of nation-states in Europe in the 1600s led to the creation of many
countries that are still ethnically homogenous today. The population of Germany,
for example, is 91.5 percent German.

Countries that were founded as colonies, on the other hand, are more likely to be
home to multiple ethnicities.

Examples
Different ethnic groups do not use the same criteria to define group membership.
While one group may emphasize the importance of a shared language, another
may emphasize the importance of a shared religious identity.

French Canadians are an ethnic group for whom language is paramount. It is

what connects them to the French colonists who first settled Canada in the 1600s
and what distinguishes them from English Canadians, Scottish Canadians, and
Irish Canadians. Other aspects of culture, such as religion, are less significant
when it comes to defining who is and is not French Canadian. Most French
Canadians are Christians, but some are Catholic and others are Protestant.

In contrast, religion is an essential part of ethnic identity for groups such as the
Jews. Unlike French Canadians, Jews do not define themselves based on a single
shared language. In fact, Jewish communities throughout the world have
developed a variety of different languages, including Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino
(Judeo-Spanish), Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Aramaic (not to mention the many
Jews who speak English, French, German, or any other of the world's many
languages).

Because ethnic groups are self-defined, it is important to remember that no single

aspect of group identity (language, religion, etc.) can be used to sort people into
one group or another.

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Race vs. Ethnicity

Unlike ethnicity, race is based on physical traits that are inherited, such as skin
color and facial features. Racial categories are broader than ethnic categories.

Today, for example, the U.S. Census divides people into five racial categories:
White, Black or African American, Indigenous or Alaska Native, Asian,
and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

Modern scientists regard race as a social construct, and racial categories, like
ethnic categories, have changed over time.

What Is My Ethnicity?
Because ethnicity is more of a cultural practice than a science, you probably grew
up understanding your own ethnicity in a way that tests will never be able to
measure. The food you ate, the traditions you practiced, and the language(s) you
spoke are all essential aspects of your ethnic identity.

If you are interested in learning more about your exact ancestry, you can do so
using a variety of DNA testing services.

DNA Testing for Ethnicity

DNA testing—available through services such as 23andMe, MyHeritage, and
LivingDNA—allows people to explore their genealogy using their genetic
information.

Examining DNA can reveal information about a person's ancestry and ethnic
background. While the principles of DNA testing are sound, the private
companies that offer this service through home-testing kits have been criticized
for their methodologies.

Sheldon Krimsky, a scientist at Tufts University, says that these companies "don’t
share their data, and their methods are not validated by an independent group of
scientists."

Since each company uses a different database of genetic information, Krimsky

says the tests can only give an indication of probabilities:

"The results are in no way definitive; instead each company uses common genetic
variations as the basis for saying the  probability is that 50 percent of your DNA
is, for example, from North Europe and 30 percent is from Asia, based on how it
compares to the information in its database. However, if you send DNA to a
second company, you might get different results, because it has a different
database."

The popularity of DNA testing for ancestry has also generated concerns about
data privacy.

Cite this Article 

Ethnic group
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"Ethnicity" redirects here. For other uses, see Ethnicity (disambiguation).

"Ethnicities" redirects here. For the academic journal, see Ethnicities (journal).

An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on

the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a
common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion or
social treatment within their residing area.[1][2][3] Ethnicity is sometimes used
interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is
separate from, but related to the concept of races.
Ethnicity can be an inherited status or based on the society within which one lives.
Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural
heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect, symbolic
systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art or physical
appearance. Ethnic groups often continue to speak related languages and share a
similar gene pool.
By way of language shift, acculturation, adoption and religious conversion, individuals or
groups may over time shift from one ethnic group to another. Ethnic groups may be
subdivided into subgroups or tribes, which over time may become separate ethnic
groups themselves due to endogamy or physical isolation from the parent group.
Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a pan-ethnicity and may
eventually merge into one single ethnicity. Whether through division or amalgamation,
the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis.
The nature of ethnicity is still debated by scholars. 'Primordialists' view ethnic groups as
real phenomena whose distinct characteristics have endured since the distant past.
[4]
 Others view ethnic groups as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based
on rules made by society.[5][6]

Terminology[edit]
The term ethnic is derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos (more precisely, from the
adjective ἐθνικός ethnikos,[7] which was loaned into Latin as ethnicus). The inherited
English language term for this concept is folk, used alongside the latinate people since
the late Middle English period.
In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to
mean heathen or pagan (in the sense of disparate "nations" which did not yet participate
in the Christian oikumene), as the Septuagint used ta ethne ("the nations") to translate
the Hebrew goyim "the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews". [8] The Greek term in early
antiquity (Homeric Greek) could refer to any large group, a host of men, a band of
comrades as well as a swarm or flock of animals. In Classical Greek, the term took on a
meaning comparable to the concept now expressed by "ethnic group", mostly translated
as "nation, people"; only in Hellenistic Greek did the term tend to become further
narrowed to refer to "foreign" or "barbarous" nations in particular (whence the later
meaning "heathen, pagan").[9] In the 19th century, the term came to be used in the sense
of "peculiar to a race, people or nation", in a return to the original Greek meaning. The
sense of "different cultural groups", and in American English "racial, cultural or national
minority group" arises in the 1930s to 1940s,[10] serving as a replacement of the
term race which had earlier taken this sense but was now becoming deprecated due to
its association with ideological racism. The abstract ethnicity had been used for
"paganism" in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an "ethnic
character" (first recorded 1953). The term ethnic group was first recorded in 1935 and
entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972.[11] Depending on the context that is used,
the term nationality may either be used synonymously with ethnicity or synonymously
with citizenship (in a sovereign state). The process that results in the emergence of an
ethnicity is called ethnogenesis, a term in use in ethnological literature since about
1950. The term may also be used with the connotation of something exotic (cf. "ethnic
restaurant", etc.), generally related to cultures of more recent immigrants, who arrived
after the dominant population of an area was established.
Depending on which source of group identity is emphasized to define membership, the
following types of (often mutually overlapping) groups can be identified:

 Ethno-linguistic, emphasizing shared language, dialect (and possibly script) –

example: French Canadians
 Ethno-national, emphasizing a shared polity or sense of national identity –
example: Austrians
 Ethno-racial, emphasizing shared physical appearance based on genetic origins –
example: African Americans
 Ethno-regional, emphasizing a distinct local sense of belonging stemming from relative
geographic isolation – example: South Islanders of New Zealand
 Ethno-religious, emphasizing shared affiliation with a particular religion, denomination or
sect – example: Jews
In many cases, more than one aspect determines membership: for
instance, Armenian ethnicity can be defined by citizenship of Armenia, native use of
the Armenian language, or membership of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Definitions and conceptual history[edit]

Ethnography begins in classical antiquity; after early authors
like Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus in c. 480 BC laid the foundation
of both historiography and ethnography of the ancient world. The Greeks at this time did
not only describe foreign nations but had also developed a concept of their own
"ethnicity", which they grouped under the name of Hellenes. Herodotus (8.144.2) gave a
famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) ethnic identity in his day, enumerating

1. shared descent (ὅμαιμον – homaimon, "of the same blood"),[12]

2. shared language (ὁμόγλωσσον – homoglōsson, "speaking the same language")[13]
 3. shared sanctuaries and sacrifices (Greek: θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι – theōn
hidrumata te koina kai thusiai)[14]
4. shared customs (Greek: ἤθεα ὁμότροπα – ēthea homotropa, "customs of like fashion").[15]
[16][17]

Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the

exact definition used. Many social scientists, [18] such as anthropologists Fredrik
Barth and Eric Wolf, 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. [19][irrelevant citation]
According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two
distinct debates until recently.

 One is between "primordialism" and "instrumentalism". In the primordialist view, the

participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as an externally given, even coercive, social
bond.[20] The instrumentalist 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.[21][22] This
debate is still an important point of reference in Political science, although most scholars'
approaches fall between the two poles.[23]
 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.[24][25] Essentialists view such identities
as ontological categories defining social actors.[26][27]
According to Eriksen, these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology,
by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicized 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 and South Asia.[28]
Max Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social
construct) because they were based on a subjective belief in
shared Gemeinschaft (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 monopolize 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".[29]
Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth, 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. [30] 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
priority 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. [30]
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.[30]
According to Paul James, formations of identity were often changed and distorted by
colonization, but identities are not made out of nothing:
[C]ategorizations about identity, even when codified and hardened into clear typologies
by processes of colonization, state formation or general modernizing processes, are
always full of tensions and contradictions. Sometimes these contradictions are
destructive, but they can also be creative and positive. [31]
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.[32] Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is
"a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness". [30] 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.[30] 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.
Kanchan Chandra rejects the expansive definitions of ethnic identity (such as those that
include common culture, common language, common history and common territory),
choosing instead to define ethnic identity narrowly as a subset of identity categories
determined by the belief of common descent.[33]
Approaches to understanding ethnicity[edit]
Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social
scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and
society. As Jonathan M. Hall observes, World War II was a turning point in ethnic
studies. The consequences of Nazi racism discouraged essentialist interpretations of
ethnic groups and race. Ethnic groups came to be defined as social rather than
biological entities. Their coherence was attributed to shared myths, descent, kinship, a
commonplace of origin, language, religion, customs, and national character. So, ethnic
groups are conceived as mutable rather than stable, constructed in discursive practices
rather than written in the genes.[34]
Examples of various approaches are primordialism, essentialism, perennialism,
constructivism, modernism, and instrumentalism.

 "Primordialism", holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that
modern ethnic groups have historical continuity into the far past. For them, the idea of
ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations and is rooted in the pre-Weber
understanding of humanity as being divided into primordially existing groups rooted
by kinship and biological heritage.
o "Essentialist primordialism" further holds that ethnicity is an a priori fact of human
existence, that ethnicity precedes any human social interaction and that it is unchanged
by it. This theory sees ethnic groups as natural, not just as historical. It also has
problems dealing with the consequences of intermarriage, migration and colonization for
the composition of modern-day multi-ethnic societies.[35]
o "Kinship primordialism" holds that ethnic communities are extensions of kinship units,
basically being derived by kinship or clan ties where the choices of cultural signs
(language, religion, traditions) are made exactly to show this biological affinity. In this
way, the myths of common biological ancestry that are a defining feature of ethnic
communities are to be understood as representing actual biological history. A problem
with this view on ethnicity is that it is more often than not the case that mythic origins of
specific ethnic groups directly contradict the known biological history of an ethnic
community.[35]
o "Geertz's primordialism", notably espoused by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, argues
that humans in general attribute an overwhelming power to primordial human "givens"
such as blood ties, language, territory, and cultural differences. In Geertz' opinion,
ethnicity is not in itself primordial but humans perceive it as such because it is
embedded in their experience of the world.[35]
 "Perennialism", an approach that is primarily concerned with nationhood but tends to see
nations and ethnic communities as basically the same phenomenon holds that the nation,
as a type of social and political organization, is of an immemorial or "perennial" character.
[36]
 Smith (1999) distinguishes two variants: "continuous perennialism", which claims that
particular nations have existed for very long periods, and "recurrent perennialism", which
focuses on the emergence, dissolution and reappearance of nations as a recurring aspect
of human history.[37]
o "Perpetual perennialism" holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously
throughout history.
o "Situational perennialism" holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, change and
vanish through the course of history. This view holds that the concept of ethnicity is a
tool used by political groups to manipulate resources such as wealth, power, territory or
status in their particular groups' interests. Accordingly, ethnicity emerges when it is
 relevant as a means of furthering emergent collective interests and changes according
to political changes in society. Examples of a perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are
also found in Barth and Seidner who see ethnicity as ever-changing boundaries
between groups of people established through ongoing social negotiation and
interaction.
o "Instrumentalist perennialism", while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that
identified different ethnics groups and limits through time, explains ethnicity as a
mechanism of social stratification, meaning that ethnicity is the basis for a hierarchical
arrangement of individuals. According to Donald Noel, a sociologist who developed a
theory on the origin of ethnic stratification, ethnic stratification is a "system of
stratification wherein some relatively fixed group membership (e.g., race, religion, or
nationality) is utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions".[38] Ethnic
stratification is one of many different types of social stratification, including stratification
based on socio-economic status, race, or gender. According to Donald Noel, ethnic
stratification will emerge only when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with
one another, and only when those groups are characterized by a high degree of
ethnocentrism, competition, and differential power. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to
look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture, and to downgrade
all other groups outside one's own culture. Some sociologists, such as Lawrence Bobo
and Vincent Hutchings, say the origin of ethnic stratification lies in individual dispositions
of ethnic prejudice, which relates to the theory of ethnocentrism.[39] Continuing with
Noel's theory, some degree of differential power must be present for the emergence of
ethnic stratification. In other words, an inequality of power among ethnic groups means
"they are of such unequal power that one is able to impose its will upon another".[38] In
addition to differential power, a degree of competition structured along ethnic lines is a
prerequisite to ethnic stratification as well. The different ethnic groups must be
competing for some common goal, such as power or influence, or a material interest,
such as wealth or territory. Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings propose that
competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and results in inevitable stratification
and conflict.[39]
 "Constructivism" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed,[39] and
rejects the notion of ethnicity as a basic human condition. It holds that ethnic groups are
only products of human social interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained
as valid social constructs in societies.
o "Modernist constructivism" correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement
towards nation states beginning in the early modern period.[40] Proponents of this theory,
such as Eric Hobsbawm, argue that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such as
nationalism, are purely modern inventions, appearing only in the modern period of world
history. They hold that prior to this, ethnic homogeneity was not considered an ideal or
necessary factor in the forging of large-scale societies.
Ethnicity is an important means by which people may identify with a larger group. Many
social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, 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.
[19]
 Processes that result in the emergence of such identification are called 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.[41]
Ethnic groups can form a cultural mosaic in a society. That could be in a city like New
York City or Trieste, but also the fallen monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or
the USA. Current topics are in particular social and cultural differentiation,
multilingualism, competing identity offers, multiple cultural identities and the formation
of Salad bowl and melting pot.[42] Ethnic groups differ from other social groups, such
as subcultures, interest groups or social classes, because they emerge and change
over historical periods (centuries) in a process known as ethnogenesis, a period of
several generations of endogamy resulting in common ancestry (which is then
sometimes cast in terms of a mythological narrative of a founding figure); ethnic identity
is reinforced by reference to "boundary markers" – characteristics said to be unique to
the group which set it apart from other groups.[43][44][45][46][47]
Ethnicity theory in the United States[edit]
Ethnicity theory says that race is a social category and is but one of several factors in
determining ethnicity. Some other criteria include: "religion, language, 'customs,'
nationality, and political identification". [48] This theory was put forth by sociologist Robert
E. Park in the 1920s. It is based on the notion of “culture”.
This theory was preceded by over a century where biological essentialism was the
dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism is the belief that white European
races are biologically superior and other non-white races are inherently inferior. This
view arose as a way to justify slavery of Africans and genocide of the Native Americans
in a society which was supposedly founded on freedom for all. This was a notion that
developed slowly and came to be a preoccupation with scientists, theologians, and the
public. Religious institutions asked questions about whether there had been multiple
genesis's (polygenesis) and whether God had created lesser races of men. Many of the
foremost scientists of the time took up the idea of racial difference. They would
inadvertently find that white Europeans were superior. One method that was used as
the measurement of cranial capacity.[49]
The ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined his four steps
to assimilation: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of explaining
the marginalized status of people of color in the United States with an inherent
biological inferiority, he instead said that it was a failure to assimilate into American
culture that held people back. They could be equal as long as they dropped their culture
which was deficient compared to white culture.
Michael Omi and Howard Winant's theory of racial formation directly confronts both
ethnicity theory's premises and practices. They argue in Racial Formation in the United
States that ethnicity theory was exclusively based on the immigration patterns of a white
ethnic population and did not account for the unique experiences of non-whites in this
country.[50] While this theory identities different stages in an immigration process –
contact, conflict, struggle, and as the last and best response, assimilation – it did so
only for white ethnic communities.[50] The ethnicity paradigm neglects the ways that race
can complicate a community's interactions with basic social and political structures,
especially upon contact.
And assimilation – shedding the particular qualities of a native culture for the purpose of
blending in with a host culture – did not work for some groups as a response to racism
and discrimination as it did for others.[50] Moreover, once the legal barriers to achieving
equality had been dismantled, the problem of racism became the sole responsibility of
already disadvantaged communities.[51] It was assumed that if a Black or Latino
community was not 'making it' by the standards that had been set by white ethnics, it
was because that community did not hold the right values or beliefs. Or they must be
stubbornly resisting dominant norms because they did not want to fit in. Omi and
Winant's critique of ethnicity theory explains how looking towards a cultural defect for
the source of inequality ignores the "concrete sociopolitical dynamics within which racial
phenomena operate in the U.S."[52] In other words, buying into this approach effectively
strips us of our ability to critically examine the more structural components of racism
and encourages, instead, a “benign neglect” of social inequality. [52]

Ethnicity and nationality[edit]

Further information: Nation state and minority group

In some cases, especially involving transnational migration or colonial expansion,

ethnicity is linked to nationality. Anthropologists and historians, following the modernist
understanding of ethnicity as proposed by Ernest Gellner [53] and Benedict
Anderson[54] see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state
system in the 17th century. They culminated 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 19th 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 based on equality or seek autonomy,
sometimes even to the extent of complete political separation in their nation-state.
[55]
 Under these conditions – when people moved from one state to another,[56] or one
state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries – ethnic groups
were formed by people who identified with one nation, but lived in another state.
Multi-ethnic states can be the result of two opposite events, either the recent creation of
state borders at variance with traditional tribal territories, or the recent immigration
of ethnic minorities into a former nation-state. Examples for the first case are found
throughout Africa, where countries created during decolonization inherited arbitrary
colonial borders, but also in European countries such as Belgium or United Kingdom.
Examples for the second case are countries such as Netherlands, which were relatively
ethnically homogeneous when they attained statehood but have received significant
immigration during the second half of the 20th century. States such as the United
Kingdom, France and Switzerland comprised distinct ethnic groups from their formation
and have likewise experienced substantial immigration, resulting in what has been
termed "multicultural" societies, especially in large cities.
The states of the New World were multi-ethnic from the onset, as they were formed as
colonies imposed on existing indigenous populations.
In recent decades feminist scholars (most notably Nira Yuval-Davis)[57] have drawn
attention to the fundamental ways in which women participate in the creation and
reproduction of ethnic and national categories. Though these categories are usually
discussed as belonging to the public, political sphere, they are upheld within the private,
family sphere to a great extent.[58] It is here that women act not just as biological
reproducers but also as 'cultural carriers', transmitting knowledge and enforcing
behaviors that belong to a specific collectivity.[59] Women also often play a significant
symbolic role in conceptions of nation or ethnicity, for example in the notion that 'women
and children' constitute the kernel of a nation which must be defended in times of
conflict, or in iconic figures such as Britannia or Marianne.

Ethnicity and race[edit]

The racial diversity of Asia's ethnic groups, Nordisk familjebok (1904)

Ethnicity is used as a matter of cultural identity of a group, often based on shared

ancestry, language, and cultural traditions, while race is applied as a taxonomic
grouping, based on physical or biological similarities within groups. Race is a more
controversial subject than ethnicity, due to common political use of the term. Ramón
Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) argues that “racial/ethnic identity” is one
concept and that concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used as separate and
autonomous categories.[60]
Before Weber (1864-1920), race and ethnicity were primarily seen as two aspects of the
same thing. Around 1900 and before, the primordialist understanding of ethnicity
predominated: cultural differences between peoples were seen as being the result of
inherited traits and tendencies.[61] With Weber's introduction of the idea of ethnicity as a
social construct, race and ethnicity became more divided from each other.
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.), stated:
"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'."[62]
In 1982, anthropologist David Craig Griffith summed up forty years of ethnographic
research, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different
ways that people from different parts of the world have been incorporated into a global
economy:
The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through
appeals to "racial" and "ethnic" distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different
categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets, relegating stigmatized
populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from
below. Capitalism did not create all the distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to
set off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor
mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their effective values. [63]
According to Wolf, racial categories were constructed and incorporated during the
period of European mercantile expansion, and ethnic groupings during the period
of capitalist expansion.[64]
Writing in 1977 about the usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great
Britain and the United States, Wallman noted 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 descendants 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'.[65]
In the U.S., the OMB states the definition of race as used for the purposes of the US
Census is not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural
characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that
are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference". [66]

Ethno-national conflict[edit]
Further information: Ethnic conflict

Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or
its constituents. In the 20th 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 19th 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 19th-
century consolidation and expansion of the German Empire and the 20th century Nazi
Germany. Each promoted the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were only
acquiring lands that had always been inhabited by ethnic Germans. 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. Such
conflicts usually occur within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, as in
other regions of the world. Thus, the conflicts are often misleadingly labeled and
characterized as civil wars when they are inter-ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic state.

Ethnic groups by continent[edit]

Africa[edit]
Main article: Ethnic groups in Africa

Ethnic groups in Africa number in the hundreds, each generally having its
own language (or dialect of a language) and culture.
Many ethnic groups and nations of Africa qualify, although some groups are of a size
larger than a tribal society. These mostly originate with the Sahelian kingdoms of the
medieval period, such as that of the Akan, deriving from Bonoman (11th century) then
the Hobyo Sultanate (17th century).[67]

Asia[edit]
Main article: Ethnic groups in Asia

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve

this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (January 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template
message)
The Assyrians are the indigenous peoples of Northern Iraq.

Ethnic groups are abundant throughout Asia, with adaptations to the climate zones of
Asia, which can be the Arctic, subarctic, temperate, subtropical or tropical. The ethnic
groups have adapted to mountains, deserts, grasslands, and forests.
On the coasts of Asia, the ethnic groups have adopted various methods of harvest and
transport. Some groups are primarily hunter-gatherers, some
practice transhumance (nomadic lifestyle), others have been agrarian/rural for millennia
and others becoming industrial/urban. Some groups/countries of Asia are completely
urban, such as those in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. The colonization of Asia
was largely ended in the 20th century, with national drives for independence and self-
determination across the continent.
Russia has over 185 recognized ethnic groups besides the 80% ethnic
Russian majority. The largest group is the Tatars 3.8%. Many of the smaller groups are
found in the Asian part of Russia (see Indigenous peoples of Siberia).
Europe[edit]
Main article: Ethnic groups in Europe

The Basque people constitute an indigenous ethnic minority in both France and Spain.

Sámi family in Lapland of Finland, 1936.

The Irish are an ethnic group indigenous to Ireland of which 70-80 million people worldwide claim ancestry.[68]

Europe has a large number of ethnic groups; Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct
"peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign
state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities within every state they inhabit
(although they may form local regional majorities within a sub-national entity). The total
number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people or
14% of 770 million Europeans.[69]
A number of European countries, including France,[70] and Switzerland do not collect
information on the ethnicity of their resident population.
Russia has over 185 recognized ethnic groups besides the 80% ethnic
Russian majority. The largest group is the Tatars 3.8%. Many of the smaller groups are
found in the Asian part of Russia (see Indigenous peoples of Siberia).
An example of a largely nomadic ethnic group in Europe is the Roma, pejoratively
known as Gypsies. They originated from India and speak the Romani language.
Serbian province of Vojvodina is recognizable for its multi-ethnic and multi-
cultural identity.[71][72] There are some 26 ethnic groups in the province, [73] and six
languages are in official use by the provincial administration. [74]
North America
An Introduction to Ethnicity

While the idea of race implies something fixed and biological, ethnicity is a source of
identity which lies in society and culture. Ethnicity refers to a type of social identity
related to ancestry (perceived or real) and cultural differences which become active in
particular social contexts.

For comparative purposes you might like to read this post: an introduction to the
concept of race for sociology students. 

The concept of ethnicity has a longer history than ‘race’ and is closely related to the
concepts of ‘race’ and nation. Like nations, ethnic groups are ‘imagined communities’
whose existence depends on the self-identification of their members. Members of ethnic
groups may see themselves as culturally distinct from other groups, and are seen, in
turn, as different. In this sense, ethnic groups always co-exist with other ethnic groups.

Several characteristics may serve to distinguish ethnic groups, but most usual are
language, a sense of shared history or ancestry, religion and styles of dress.
clothing can be an important aspect of ethnic identity to some people

Ethnicity is learned, there is nothing innate about it, it has to be actively passed down
through the generations by the process of socialisation. It follows that for some people,
ethnicity is a very important source of identity, for others it means nothing at all, and for
some it only becomes important at certain points in their lives – maybe when they get
married or during religious festivals, or maybe during a period of conflict in a country.

Problems with the concept of ethnicity

Majority ethnic groups are still ‘ethnic groups’. However, there is often a tendency to
label the majority ethnic group, e.g. the ‘white-British’ group as non-ethnic, and all
other minority ethnic groups as ‘ethnic minorities’. This results in the majority group
regarding themselves as ‘the norm’ from which all other minority ethnic groups diverge.

There is also a tendency to oversimplify the concept of ethnicity – a good example of this
is when job application forms ask for your ethnic identity (ironically to track equality of
opportunity) and offer a limited range of categories such as Asian, African, Caribbean,
White and so on, which fails to recognize that there are a number of different ethnic
identities within each of these broader (misleading?) categories.
Ethnicity

Brief

An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with one another through
a common cultural heritage.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

 Criticize the concept of ethnicity from the perspective of Max Weber’s and Ronald
Cohen’s theories of social constructionism, referencing the approaches of
primordialism, perennialism, and constructivism

KEY TAKEAWAYS

 An ethnicity is a socially constructed category, the traits and parameters of

which can change depending on the prevailing social and political context.
 A situational ethnicity is an ethnic identity that is particular to a social setting or
context.
 The various approaches to understanding ethnicity include
primordialism, essentialism, perennialism,
constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.
 Ethnicity is distinct from race because ethnicity is based on social traits, while
race is based on the belief that a certain group of people share particular
biological characteristics.
 Ethnicity is distinct from race because ethnicity is based on social traits, while race
is based on the belief that a certain group of people share particular biological
characteristics.
 Ethnic nationalism is a political ideology which is the result of tying the concepts
of cultural heritage and nationalism together.

KEY TERMS

 ModernismA school of thought with regards to ethnicity that ties the emergence
of ethnic groups to the emergence of modern nation-states.
 InstrumentalismA perspective towards ethnicity that sees ethnic classification as
a mechanism of social stratification or as the basis for a social hierarchy.

Full Text
Ethnicity is a term that describes shared culture—the practices, values, and beliefs of
a group. This might include shared language, religion, and traditions, among other
commonalities. An ethnic group is a collection of people whose members identify with
each other through a common heritage, consisting of a common culture which may also
include a shared language or dialect. The group’s ethos or ideology may also stress
common ancestry, religion, or race. The process that results in the emergence of an
ethnicity is known as ethnogenesis.

Conceptual History of Ethnicity

Ethnicity is a constructed category, the characteristics and boundaries of which have

been renegotiated and redefined over the years to suit different contexts and objectives.

Sociologist Max Weber asserted that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e.

a social construct) for three reasons. Firstly, they were based on a subjective belief in
shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not
create the group; rather, the group created the belief. Thirdly, group formation resulted
from the drive to monopolize power and status.

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.

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. 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.

Therefore, the socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples of different

ethnicities do not necessarily stem from inherited traits and tendencies derived from
common descent; rather, the identification of an ethnic group is often socially and
politically motivated.

“Ethnies” or Ethnic Categories

The following categories – “ethnic categories,” “ethnic networks,” “ethnies” or “ethnic

communities,” and “situational ethnicity” – were developed in order to distinguish the
instances when ethnic classification is the labeling of others and when it is a case of
self-identification.
  An “ethnic category” is a category set up by those who are outside of the category.
The members of an ethnic category are categorized by outsiders as being
distinguished by attributes of a common name or emblem, a shared cultural
element and a connection to a specific territory.
 At the level of “ethnic networks”, the group begins to have a sense of
collectiveness; at this level, common myths of origin and shared cultural and
biological heritage begin to emerge, at least among the elites of that group.
 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 elites”. In other words, an ethnie is self-defined
as a group.
 A “situational ethnicity” is an ethnic identity that is chosen for the moment based
on the social setting or situation.

Approaches to Understanding Ethnicity

Different approaches have been used by different social scientists to attempt to

understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. Examples of
such approaches include primordialism, perennialism, constructivism,
modernism, and instrumentalism.

 Primordialism holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and
that modern ethnic groups have historical roots far into the past. According to this
framework, the idea of ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations and is
rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity as being divided into
primordially existing groups rooted by kinship and biological heritage.
 Perennialism holds that ethnicity is ever changing and that while the concept of
ethnicity has existed at all times, ethnic groups are generally short lived before the
ethnic boundaries realign in new patterns.
 Constructivism sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically
flawed and holds that ethnic groups are only products of human social
interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as valid social
constructs in societies.
 Modernism
 Instrumentalism

Ethnicity and Race

Ethnicity, while related to race, refers not to physical characteristics but social traits that
are shared by a human population. Some of the social traits often used for ethnic
classification include nationality, religious faith and a shared language and culture.
Like race, the term ethnicity is difficult to describe and its meaning has changed over
time. And like race, individuals may be identified or self-identify to ethnicities in complex,
even contradictory, ways. For example, ethnic groups such as Irish, Italian American,
Russian, Jewish, and Serbian might all be groups whose members are predominantly
included in the racial category “white. ” Conversely, the ethnic group British includes
citizens from a multiplicity of racial backgrounds: black, white, Asian, and more, plus a
variety of racial combinations. These examples illustrate the complexity and overlap of
these identifying terms. Ethnicity, like race, continues to be an identification method that
individuals and institutions use today—whether through the census, affirmative
action initiatives, non-discrimination laws, or simply in personal day-to-day relations.

A Tour of Chinese Ethnic Minorities (Preview) – YouTube

Provides a glimpse into the many and diverse ethnic groups to be found in China.

Ethnicity And Race: Anthropology

Views 2,118,471Updated

Ethnicity and Race: Anthropology

Ethnicity, as defined in the public domain, is "the cultural

characteristics that connect a particular group or groups of
people to each other" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicity).
Twenty-first-century anthropologists, however, are likely to
complicate simple notions of ethnicity, or they might refuse to
accept a general definition of the concept without first
demanding accounts of the particular formation of an ethnic
identity in a unique place and time. Citizens of the United
States, for example, are enculturated to associate ethnicity with
a mapping of cultural or national origin to language, religious
practices, styles of adornment, types of non (or un-) American
foods, and oftentimes, physical looks. Anthropologists,
however, are much more interested in ethnicity as a historically
and politically situated set of identity practices, rather than as a
state of natural or expected correspondence between
physicality, behaviors, and attitudes. Such a nuanced view of
ethnicity has not always been the norm in anthropology or in

Franz Boas, Ethnicity, and Contemporary

Physical Anthropology: Continuing Tensions
Franz Boas (1858–1942), widely considered to be the father of
American anthropology, spent much of his career arguing
vigorously against racism and theories of the fixed physiological
nature of ethnicity. Though fondly remembered by most
anthropologists as a rigorous ethnographer and mentor to such
famous names as Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston, he
remains a contradictory and complicated figure for two
disparate groups: Native Americans and physical
anthropologists. First, for some Native American people, his
participation—along with many of his museum curator and
academic contemporaries—in the looting and desecration of
Native graves for the collection of "specimens" for comparative
anatomical research has forever tarnished his reputation.
Likewise, some of the research methods of the time, considered
controversial both when they were practiced and into the
twenty-first century, included a simple anthropometry, or the
measurement and comparison of certain continuous human
characteristics. Native Americans and other nonwhite people
are often and rightly suspicious of such techniques, since
anthropologists used them to substantiate racist hierarchies.
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Boas, however, employing the same anthropometric

methodology, stringently critiqued the assumed fixity of human
cranial dimensions, arguing that even slight changes in
developmental and environmental conditions could make the
simple measurements meaningless for human classification.
For example, a ratio of the length to the width of the skull—the
cranial index—was considered by early anthropologists to be a
reliable measurement for distinguishing people of different
ethnicities from each other, such as Hungarians, Poles, and
European Jews. Boas disagreed.
Concerned about the rise of anti-immigrant prejudice in
the United States, Boas, a German Jewish immigrant himself,
secured funding from Congress in 1908 to undertake a massive
cranial measurement study of immigrants in New York City,
ostensibly to substantiate his views on human cranial plasticity
and to prove the uselessness of the cranial index (see Boas).
His conclusions, that the children of immigrants are different
physically from their "ethnic" parents and therefore successfully
integrating into American society, were embraced by
sociocultural anthropologists (but not politicians, to Boas's
dismay) as undeniable proof of the intergenerational flexibility of
bodies. Cranial morphology was proven to neither be a direct
function of ethnicity, culture, or language group.
Anthropologists, then, could no longer pin ethnicity reliably and
regularly to physical type, at least in the anthropological
literature. Boas also argued, given his analysis, that
anthropologists could not use cranial size and shape to link past
skeletal populations with living human groups.
Boas's historical place among the physical anthropologists in
the twenty-first century, though, especially given the
methodological similarities between them, is growing even more
complicated. Physical anthropologists, while no longer
participating in the construction of racial taxonomies, often use
detailed anthropometric techniques to track morphological
changes and microevolution in human populations through time.
Many physical anthropologists claim that new and detailed
cranial metric techniques can distinguish different past groups
from each other by culture or ethnicity, directly contradicting
Boas's earlier findings. Some of these comparisons, ironically,
are used to assign cultural labels to Native American skeletal
remains for repatriation and reburial under the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, P.L. 101–
601).
In the early 2000s Boas's landmark study of cranial plasticity
was the subject of a debate between two teams of physical
anthropologists. Both teams reevaluated some of Boas's data
using updated statistical methods. Sparks and Jantz conclude:
"[O]ur analysis reveals high heritability … and variation among
the ethnic groups, which persists in the American environment"
(p. 14637). Gravlee and his colleagues, however, contradicted
the first team, affirming Boas's conclusions that statistically
significant differences exist between U.S.-born children and
their foreign-born parents.
However this debate is resolved, most anthropologists still have
Franz Boas to thank for his early critiques of the former
assumption that race or ethnicity should correspond with
language and culture.
Furthermore, sociocultural anthropologists have little interest in
quantifying morphological difference between people. Physical
or biological anthropologists, however, are still struggling to
define the meaning of some of the differences they find,
especially when comparisons between different past skeletal
populations have policy implications in the present.
social science. A central story of ethnicity in anthropology is its
labored disentanglement from now discredited biological and
evolutionary notions of "race," ideas that continue to contribute
to the general public's conceptualization of the "ethnic" as a
physically distinct type of person.
In the mid-nineteenth century the terms ethnic and racial first
came into common use, employed by pre-and post-Darwinian
scientists, and later anthropologists, to construct human racial
and cultural taxonomies. As the social corollary of race, "ethnic"
(ethnicity as a unique term does not emerge in the United
States until the 1950s) initially served to reinscribe physical
notions of racial, and in some cases national, identity onto
groups of people often naively assumed to have a shared
cultural, historical, or even evolutionary past.
Throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, race,
was the dominant concept for the scientific, social, and political
classification of human groups in the Western world. Though
scientific and popular ideas of what makes a race, who
embodies race, and what being of a certain race means have
changed drastically through time, the eighteenth-
century Enlightenment ushered in a very specific scientific
classification of human beings, particularly the ordering of non-
European and colonized peoples. Before the scientific
community accepted the theory of evolution by natural
selection in the nineteenth century, human races were thought
to be the product of divine creation. Following the Adam and
Eve story closely, monogenists believed in a single creation
from which all people and consequently all races arose.
Polygenists, though, believed that there was a separate
creation for each major race. Furthermore, proponents of both
of these pre-evolutionary models used continental labels for
creating physical races as bounded groups. Anthropologists
assumed that all Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Native
Americans were naturally distinct from each other—even on the
level of the species—through differentiation over time
(monogeny) or through natural, created difference (polygeny).
Cultural-historical notions of identity as essentially unchanging
and the delineation of fixed anatomical categories also served
to determine a certain people's "racial type."
The adoption of an evolutionary framework for understanding
human difference, however, did little to transform early
anthropologists' fixed ideas of race and racial connections to
ethnic identity. Instead, scientists quantified human variation
through morphology, mostly using erroneous comparisons of
skull size and shape. These practices became the basis for the
development of methodology in physical (or biological)
anthropology in the United States and Europe. Based on
misinterpreted and even falsified anthropometric data, physical
anthropologists wrongly assigned labels of either "less evolved"
or "degenerated" to nonwhite peoples. Evolutionary ideas
initially applied to global racial taxonomies were also used to
classify people on other physical, behavioral, or cultural scales.
Anthropologists also considered white women, European and
European-American people of lower socioeconomic classes,
convicted criminals, disabled people, and people who practiced
homosexual or other seemingly scandalous sexual practices
(such as adulterers and prostitutes) lower on natural scales of
evolution and development. Similarly, nonwhite people were
wrongly thought to be more naturally susceptible to various
behavioral and cultural vices, damaging stereotypes that persist
among racists and cultural isolationists in the United States in
the early twenty-first century.
Likewise, until ethnicity's emergence in the 1960s and 1970s as
a term describing more fluid social processes of identity
formation, social scientists used ethnic to describe a natural or
fixed category of person. In the United States, especially during
the intense debate over Eastern European and Mediterranean
immigration in the early portion of the twentieth century, an
"ethnic" was a person of a marked, lower, category, opposed to
a bourgeois white identity. Ethnics, in this context, became
lower-class whites, Jews, and nonwhite, colonized, or
indigenous peoples.
Ideas of ethnicity have, therefore, consistently been relational;
that is, one's ethnic identity, either physical or cultural, is
defined through both assumed similarities within a group and
assumed differences between groups. Franz Boas's 1912 study
of cranial plasticity in American immigrants, however, was the
first and arguably most influential anthropometric contestation of
the fixed physical nature of ethnicity and racial identity. Among
some anthropologists, though, fear of the negative or racially
degrading influence of a large ethnic presence in America was
used to argue against Boas's conclusions, and for increasingly
strict immigration policies and the establishment of eugenics
programs across the nation.
Moreover, after the devastating results of such "Aryan" hysteria
in Europe during World War II, greater anthropological use of
the term ethnic group coincided with a general repudiation of
biological determinism and racism within the social sciences as
a whole, as well as with a particularly anthropological
recognition of the emergence of anticolonial nationalism outside
the First World. Specifically, anthropologists
replaced tribe or tribalism with ethnic group, especially when
describing African migrants to colonial urban centers. Still, all
these early uses of the term ethnic in anthropology imply a
bounded set of cultural traits, historical commonalities, or
mental similarities between people of the same ethnic group,
even if they later became delinked from physical or racial
characteristics.

Cultural Fundamentalism and Instrumental

Ethnicities
Disengaging race and ethnicity from biology, though, does not
automatically imply equality under the law or in all aspects of
political, economic, and social life. As theorists rejected race
biology in the mid-twentieth century, a new "cultural
fundamentalism" emerged in many places in the world.
Anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena eloquently describes this
shift: "The academic repudiation of biological notions of race
was significant for anthropology, as it meant the emergence of
the concept of 'ethnic groups' to explain human differences … it
implied the reification of culture, which thus potentially
prolonged the naturalization of sociohistorical differences earlier
contained in the European notion of biological race" (p. 28). In
the twentieth century, ethnicities were just as stable and
unchanging whether they were formed out of biology or culture.
As well, the initial glosses of ethnic described above were also
etic in nature. That is, most ideas of ethnicity in anthropology
before the late twentieth century served as theoretical or
methodological techniques of classification from outside the
group being classified. Anthropologists and other social
scientists were not alone, though, in reifying or naturalizing
ethnic groups and ethnicity. From approximately the end
of World War II to the 1970s, "ethnics," nonwhite and other
marginalized or oppressed people across the world fought for
and won greater sovereignty, more influential voices on regional
or national political stages, and generally more civil and political
rights to self-representation.

Archaeologies of Ethnicity
Traditional archaeologists, whose field developed in the same
racialized and colonial context as the rest of anthropology, were
typically concerned with tracking the material remains of
contemporary groups into the past. This cultural historical
approach and the search for ethnicity in the archaeological
record often led archaeologists to uncritically project modern
and national identities into the past. Prominent examples
include French claims to Roman and Gallic
identities, Nazi projections of past "Aryan" peoples onto much of
Northern and Western Europe, and general European
continental claims to the material heritage of
ancient Greece and classical Egypt (see Jones).
New approaches to identity in archaeology, though, are leading
to more accurate and complex reconstructions of past peoples.
Moreover, archaeologies of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity are
encouraging researchers to include different and historically
marginalized voices, such as African resistance to slavery
in Kenya and African-American cultural expressions in the
colonial archaeology of the United States. Researchers in these
areas generally resist drawing simplistic conclusions between
desires to trace "ethnic origins" in the past for mobilization and
political use in the present.
This new agency, though patently different in different areas of
the world, empowered previously colonized or oppressed
people to create and affirm ethnic identities for use in varied
political spheres. These uses, though, often included the
drawing of fixed boundaries around ethnicities or cultures and
the exclusion of individuals who were not perceived to be ethnic
enough. For example, most federally recognized Native
American nations or tribes use blood quantum, or the proportion
of "Indian blood" within a person calculated by the percent
within their parents or grandparents, to determine who makes
the official membership rolls. Widespread implementation of
blood quantum rules have effectively excluded Indian people of
African descent from official membership in communities they
and their families have lived in for centuries (see Brooks).

Ethnicity and Difference

In early-twenty-first-century sociocultural anthropology, ethnicity
is envisioned as a complicated, fluid, politically charged,
perhaps even ephemeral quality or qualities of individual or
group identity that map differently to various social categories
depending on people's particular histories. The formation or
maintenance of an ethnicity, then, is not a necessary by-product
of predictable biological, cultural, or social forces.
Anthropological thinking on ethnicity is also informed by newer
theories of race as a political category, differently expressed
and marked within particular political and cultural struggles.
Anthropologists are also adapting frameworks from fields
theorists in cultural studies, who focus on difference not to the
exclusion of others, but toward the multiplication of meanings
and the highlighting of marginal identities. As Stuart Hall
cautions: "We are all … ethnically located and our ethnic
identities are crucial to our subjective sense of who we are. But
this is also a recognition that this is not an ethnicity which is
doomed to survive … only by marginalizing, dispossessing,
displacing, and forgetting other ethnicities" (p. 447).
Further, acceptance of the social construction of race in the
humanities and social sciences, and lately by progressives in
the U.S. public at large, has spurred anthropologists to more
widely publicize disciplinary views on race and ethnicity as both
educational and policy recommendations. In particular the
American Anthropological Association's "Statement on Race"
deconstructs the dangers of relying on fixed notions of identity
in social and cultural research and interactions, saying that
"racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human
capabilities or behavior." Likewise, myths of ahistorical,
unchanging ethnicities are also falling by the wayside in
anthropological thought.
See also Anthropology ; Other, The, European Views
of ; Race and Racism .

bibliography
American Anthropological Association. Statement on
Race. 1998. Available
at http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
Banks, Marcus. Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions. New
York: Routledge, 1996.
Boas, Franz. "Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of
Immigrants." American Anthropologist 14 (1912): 530–563.
Brooks, James F, ed. Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-
Black Experience in North America. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2002.
Cadena, Marisol de la. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of
Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991. Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 2000.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1981.
Grant, Madison. The Passing of the Great Race; or the Racial
Basis of European History. New ed., rev. and amplified, with a
new preface, by Henry