Ethnicity
•A group of people who share a common
ancestry and cultural tradition , often living as
a minority group in a larger society.
•They Identify with a group of people who
share the cultural traditions of a particular
homeland or hearth
Ethnicity and Race
Ethnic Group: A group of people who share a
common ancestry and cultural tradition , often
living as a minority group in a larger society.
Race: A classification system that is sometimes
understood as
1) arising from genetically significant differences
among human populations,
2) or visible differences in human physiognomy,
3) or as a social construction that varies across
time and space
(both definitions: Jordan p. 119)
U. S. Ethnicity: One View (among many)
http://www.longwood.edu/staff/hardinds/Maps/USethnic.jpg
Los Angeles
Ethnicity:
1990
http://www.patbrowninstitute.org/maps/images/race90.gif
Ethnicity and
Migration:
Los Angeles
http://www.patbrowninstitute.org/maps/imagesshift.jpg
See also: http://www.patbrowninstitute.org/maps/
Racism
• (Book) The belief that human capabilities are determined by
racial classification and that some races are superior to others.
(Jordan, p. 119)
• Blatant Racism
– Segregation
• Apartheid,
– Separation of races into different areas
– South Africa
• Separate but Equal access
– Separate services are unequal in fact.
– Doctrine struck down in the Supreme Court.
Acculturation
• Acculturation
• Entry  isolation: Ghettos (why?)
– Examples: Venice, Jerusalem
• Intra-regional Migration  ethnoburbs (why?)
• Then, acculturation (why?)
• Then, assimilation (why?)
Aggregation and Differentiation
•
•
•
•
Homelands: people, isolation time, identity
Islands: people, isolation time, identity
Ethnic neighborhood (subset of ~ island)
Substrate: ethnic distinctiveness
Cultural Diffusion
• Chain Migration
• Why Migrate?
– Why leave family and friends for some faraway place where the people are not normal,
often don’t speak your language, and treat
you as an outsider?
War,3 ethnicity, and dark humor:
• The sad part is that such an individual is ‘lucky’.
Many are executed for their ethnicity and/or religion,
even after a ransom is taken.
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20070928/cx_db_uc/db20070928
accessed October 5, 2007
Migration
• Chain Migration
• Involuntary migration
• Ethnic cleansing
– Genocide (different purpose)
• Return migration
• Channelization
– Why?
Nationality, Nation State
• Nationality:
– Identity with a group of people who share legal
attachment and personal allegiance to a particular
country
• Nationality and States
– Nation State: a state with a territory corresponding to an
ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality.
– Multi-National State (Multi-Nation state)
• United Kingdom
• Former Yugoslavia
• Former Soviet Union
Ethnic Clash
Often occurs when there is:
• Competition to Dominate Nationality
• Division of Ethnicity across multiple states
Possible contributing causes:
– Legacy of colonialism (borders, favoritism)
– Remnant of previous wars and empires
– Strong immigration of a different ethnicity
– Internal changes in depth of ethnic identification
Read the text for examples.
Yugoslavia: A fractured history
• http://monarch.gsu.edu/jcrampton/bosnia/maps/histo_settle.jpg
(Language is a part of the identity.)
• http://www.unc.edu/~rdgreenb/dialectmap_small.gif
Religion also enters into the
picture…
• Christian
– Roman Catholic
– Orthodox (Serbian)
• Muslim
Former Yugoslavia: Ethnicity
• http://www.montenet.org/home/yugoslav.jpg
Ethnic Cleansing
• Ethnic Cleansing: the removal of unwanted ethnic minority
populations from a nation-state through mass killing,
deportation, or imprisonment (Jordan, p. 132)
– Other means exist. What are they?
• How do dominant groups cause other ethnicities to disappear?
• Genocide: (different goal)
– An extreme form of ethnic cleansing.
– Involves murder, or other acts
• Kidnapping, extreme physical or mental distress, forced prevention of
reproduction,
– Goal: destruction in part or whole of an ethnicity.
– (Ethnic cleansing often a euphemism for genocide.)
Ethnic cleansing? It can’t happen in
Europe. They/we are too civilized.
Well, they are East Europeans after all,
and not really civilized like us.
After all, we never carried out genocide.
Oh, that. Well, that was a long time ago,
and not actually genocide…really!
World War II? Well, that was an aberration.
Well, America didn’t have genocide, except
for a few Indian wars.
Oh, all right, aside from the broken
treaties, genocide, germ warfare,
starvation, and poor reservations…
O.K. We did too, but not any more!
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/vijecnica/vijecnic
a2.gif
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports.html
How Many People?
Genocide, Massacre in the 20th Century:
Armenian Genocide - 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths
Ukraine Famine (Stalin) - 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Nanking Massacre - 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
History of the Holocaust - 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
Pol Pot (in Cambodia) - 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
Genocide in Rwanda - 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
Bosnia Genocide - 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
(All numbers are approximate. Ongoing conflict  more deaths
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/genocide_massacre.htm
(These were only the big recent genocides, and not total deaths.)
Concentration or ‘Relocation’ Camps
•
http://adamjones.freeservers.com/bosnia_camps.jpg
•
http://adamjones.freeservers.com/malerape.htm
Mobilization
This can be any people. All you need is the right set of cultural triggers.
http://img.stern.de/_content/52/24/522438/rwanda10_600.jpg
Story in German: http://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/?id=522438&nv=fs&cp=4
Weapons: can be simple.
http://www.trumanwebdesign.com/~catalina/2machete.jpg
Massacre
• These are easier to recognize. More subtle methods include
coerciaon, child theft, re-education, denying jobs, food, anything that
is needed for the maintenance of the culture ion the region.
www.iansa.org/images/massacre_congolais.jpg
www.iansa.org
Fight for Control
Compare this claimed homeland to your book. (p.249)
Opinions change over time, and from group to group. (Also, posturing)
http://www.economist.com/images/20041016/CAS967.gif
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3294801
Ethnic Ecology
• Ethnicities use their customary tools and
methods to alter the land to suit them.
• Ethnicities look for land most suited to the
tools and methods they know.
• Cultural preadaptation (definition)
– Pre-trained, primed for success
• Cultural maladaptation (definition)
– Right tools, but WRONG PLACE.
Ethnic Ecology
• Environment as refuge
– Physical barriers to cultural intrusions (various)
• Barriers:_________________________________
• Intrusions: _______________________________
• Environmental racism
– Push undesired populations
Interaction
• Preferential isolation
• Preferential service provision
• Employment patterns
Ethnic landscapes
•
•
•
•
•
•
Flags (cultural patterns, including murals…)
House styles
Murals and art
Front yards
Re-creation
Food
– Now, go local, make it real for you!
• What do you see that shows this pattern?
Positive aspects:
• Beliefs
– Different ways of thinking about the same things
– Ways of considering different things
• Activities
– Cool events
– Festivals, markets, ceremonies, etc.
• (Check them out BEFORE they are gone!)
• Artifacts
– Cool things,
– useful,
– locally adaptive to environment
Comic relief with a punch line:
• If not successfully integrated into the social fabric of a
country, ethnicities will want more self-governance.
– Give respect
– Make a level playing field for ethnic citizens.
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20070929/cx_db_uc/db20070929
End of presentation slides