Social Sciences
Ethnic Groups in America
Ethnic groups in America refer to the diverse cultural, racial, and national backgrounds of people living in the United States. These groups contribute to the rich tapestry of American society, bringing unique traditions, languages, and customs. The study of ethnic groups in America encompasses their history, experiences, and contributions to the country's social, political, and economic landscape.
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eBook - PDFAmerican Culture
Myth and Reality of a Culture of Diversity
- Larry Naylor(Author)
- 1998(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity The term ethnic has changed considerably from its original meaning. As originally conceived, an ethnic group was composed of people who shared a common tribal origin, in essence, shared customs and traditions as well. In its original sense, it could easily be seen as just another world for culture. Ethnic groups were generally identified as groups within larger societies who could be identified on the basis of language or some other distinctive tradition(s) or custom (food, dress, mode of life, etc.). In today's usage of the term, an ethnic group can be a social category or an actual cultural group. More often than not, it is used to refer to those social categories created for some purpose in the complex societies. When used in this way, the ethnic group identification is a prescribed one that overlays the more preferred cultural identity of all those grossly grouped into it. A social group characterization can become a means of self-identity when persons so grouped together perceive there is a value or strength that can come with it, primarily for social interaction (Salamone 1997). There is some justification for suggesting that social groups will ultimately become cultural groups out of necessity in the complex environment, as people come to understand the social or political advantage(s) in it. The social category can then represent political, economic, and social action strategies for people in the group, as a way to cope within the multicultural context. Other scholars suggest that ethnic identities have become the paradox of the times, as globalization of the market exchange systems spreads and populations move, not just to a new nation-state, but, back and forth across national boundaries, maintaining much of the cultural tradition they take with them as they do so. Again, this refers more to a cultural group than an ethnic category.
eBook - PDFEthnicity and International Law
Histories, Politics and Practices
- Mohammad Shahabuddin(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
what does ‘ethnicity ’ mean? 13 Similarly, Richard Schermerhorn defines an ethnic group ‘ as a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of their people-hood’. 9 Likewise, although Paul Brass admits that defining an ethnic group on the basis of objective features is problematic, in that it is usually extremely difficult to determine the boundaries of ethnic categories in this way, one of his definitional criteria of an ethnic group is having at least one distinguishing cultural feature that clearly separates one group of people from another, whether that be language, territory, religion, colour, diet, or dress. 10 More recently, Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr, too, define ethnic groups in non-biological terms and as ‘“psychological communities” whose members share a persisting sense of common interest and identity that is based on some combination of shared historical experience and valued cultural traits – beliefs, language, ways of life, a common homeland’. 11 Another widely used textbook defines an ethnic group as a large or small group of people, in either traditional or advanced societies, who are united by a common inherited culture (including language, music, food, dress, and custom and practices), racial similarity, common religion, and belief in common history and ancestry and who exhibit a strong psychological sentiment of belonging to the group. 12 Thus, ethnicity, as the character-making element of ethnic groups, is perceived broadly: going far beyond mere biological features, it incorpo- rates a wide range of cultural attributes including language and religion. In the context of Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1996), Capotorti argues that ‘the substitution of 9 Richard Schermerhorn, ‘Ethnicity and Minority Groups’ in Ethnicity, ed.
eBook - PDFAmerica Classifies the Immigrants
From Ellis Island to the 2020 Census
- Joel Perlmann(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Harvard University Press(Publisher)
Rather, they must be considered in the context of advanced societies, especially modern ones. They are best under-stood in terms of culture and minority status: “Ethnic communities are groups bound together by common ties of race, nationality or culture, living together within an alien civilization but remaining culturally distinct. . . . In its strict meaning the word ethnic denotes race; but when applied to communities in the above sense it is loosely used, in the ab-sence of any more comprehensive term to cover the more general con-cept of culture.” 36 The essay surveys crucial features of ethnic communities, particularly in the history of Europe and North America. In the latter context, she in-cludes both American black descendants of slaves and communities formed by voluntary immigration. The latter “developed and survived” in part through replenishment of newly arrived immigrants and in part as a re-sult of discrimination by the host society. This discrimination tended to force them back into their ghettos, where they might seek their place among their own kind. Of low economic status, without an intelligentsia (except in the case of the Jews), leaderless and with a From “Race” to “Ethnic Group” 269 tendency to lose successful members, since the price of success is often the severing of group ties, these immigrant communities hung on in most American cities, ignored by many and condemned by others as un-American. They have all developed certain characteristic features . . . mutual benefit societies . . . [specialized] food stores and restaurants . . . a church follows the first signs of prosperity [and eventually often school and press]. . . . Professional men of the group perform their sciences; traditional forms of entertainment develop; and the community becomes so complete that its members practically never leave it except to move from one such community to another.
- Fenwick W. English(Author)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Since individuals who share the same ethnicity do not nec-essarily operate the same way in terms of their respec-tive ethnic affiliations, ethnic identity becomes a complex issue to not only define but also to assess. Most historical and contemporary discussions of ethnicity as a significant cultural or social variable are based on the assumption that the concept is impor-tant primarily as it relates to minority group members. Thus by implication, ethnicity is then most often used as a construct to describe minority people with regard to their values, belief systems, psychological phenom-ena, and/or an investigative variable upon which social behavior is believed to be associated. Taken a step further, discussions of ethnicity often become segregated from mainstream American psychology and education and placed in the realm of the cross-cultural or multicultural arena. At least one problem-atic outcome of this secondary placement is that it limits the delineation of more universal processes that may be related to ethnicity and ethnic identity in gen-eral as well as it allows avoidance of how ethnic variables play a role in the psychological and social behavior of White people. There is, however, by definition no true justification for removing White 356 ——— Ethnicity ethnic groups from meaningful discussions related to ethnicity and associated variables of culture. In the United States, the term ethnicity is used to refer to broad groupings of people on the basis of both race and culture of origin in spite of the fact that ethnic categories are social constructs that are imprecise and arbitrary. The U.S. Census Bureau uses 5 basic groups (Hispanic, non-Hispanic White, Black, Native American, and Asian/Pacific Islander), which are in some cases expanded into 14 groups by subdividing the Hispanic and Asian categories.
Available until 15 Jan |Learn moreThe Study of Ethnicity and Politics
Recent Analytical Developments
- Adrian Guelke, Jean Tournon, Adrian Guelke, Jean Tournon(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Verlag Barbara Budrich(Publisher)
Ethnicity: What are We Talking About? 19 …an activity within a process. “ No group can be defined or understood save in terms of the other groups of the given time and place (…) No group has meaning except in its relation to other groups. No group can even be con-ceived of as a group (…) except as set off by itself and, so to speak, made a group by the other groups” (217). “The activities are all knit together in a system, and indeed only get their appearance of individuality by being ab-stracted from the system; they brace each other up, hold each other together, move forward by their interactions, and in general are in a state of continuous pressure upon one another”(218). To the political scientist, “a crude attempt at illustration” of the system is offered (207-9) in the form of a geometrical picture: “If we take all the men of [a] society (…) and look upon them as a spherical mass, we can pass an unlimited number of planes through the center of the sphere, each plane representing some principle of classification”, for instance, ethnicity. “Now, if we take any one of these planes and ignore the others, we can group the whole mass of the sphere by means of an outline or diagram traced upon the circle which the plane makes by its intersection with the sphere”, but the set of groups distinguished on the basis of that plane only cannot be an adequate grouping of the whole society: “A classification by [origins] answers some purpose, but not many unless it is fortified, as it may or may not be, by the coincidence with it of the planes of many other classifi-cations. One would be hard put, for example, to justify emphasis on a distinction between Germans and English in treating the local politics of a city like Chicago. And the same would be true of other [origins], Italians, Poles, or any that are present in no matter how large numbers (…)”. Conclusion: “The great task in the study of any form of social life is the analysis of [the] groups.
- Josué M. González(Author)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Information Age Publishing(Publisher)
While there is no single way of being American, central tendencies are 38 Conflicts, Disputes, and Tensions Between Identity Groups discernible. We further acknowledge that our national identity is not static and is subject to change. It is likely that other modalities of group identity will emerge as the new century reveals changes in the collective perception of who we are as a people. We have noted that in the classic teachings of anthropology, our initial group identity or identities stem from the happenstance of having been born to a particular family at a particular time and place. For the young, there is little or no choice involved. Without ceremony, the cultural identity of the group into which we are born becomes our own. In this chapter, we explore questions related to these ideas from a different perspective. The overarch- ing question we will explore is, Is it possible for forces other than those of cultural heritage to lessen the power of first-acquired values and beliefs and make them no longer dominant? If so, what are the origins of such forces? The short answer is a definite yes, but the manner in which these changes occur and the direction they take can be diverse and complex. Historically, U.S. society has tended to consider only a few groups as key elements in in- tergroup relations. We have tended to define diversity as the presence of the larger, more visible groups: Asians, Hispanics or Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans. Intergroup relations have often been implicated in the nation’s social conflicts, and most Americans are uncomfortable with these tensions. They would like nothing better than to find ways to resolve these problems, but they are not sure how to best do so. While the reasons for the slow progress in intergroup relations are nu- merous, one of the most important is a conceptual one.
eBook - PDFRemaking Modernity
Politics, History, and Sociology
- Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, Ann Shola Orloff, Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, Ann Shola Orloff, George Steinmetz(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Duke University Press Books(Publisher)
1. Foundational discussions include Cooley (1962 [1909]: ch. 3) and Homans (1950) in sociology; Nadel (1957: ch. 7) in anthropology; and Bentley (1908: ch. 7) and Truman (1951) in political science. More recent discussions include Hechter (1987), M. Olson (1965), and C. Tilly (1978). Ethnicity without Groups 471 ‘‘Group’’ functions as a seemingly unproblematic, taken-for-granted con-cept, apparently in no need of particular scrutiny or explication. As a result, we tend to take for granted not only the concept ‘‘group,’’ but also ‘‘groups’’—the putative things-in-the-world to which the concept refers. My aim in this chapter is not to enter into conceptual or definitional casuistry about the concept of group. It is rather to address one problematic consequence of this tendency to take groups for granted in the study of ethnicity, race, and nationhood and in the study of ethnic, racial, and na-tional conflict in particular. This is what I will call groupism: the tendency to take discrete, sharply di√erentiated, internally homogeneous, and externally bounded groups as basic constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units of social analysis. ≤ In the domain of ethnicity, nationalism, and race, I mean by ‘‘groupism’’ the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations, and races as substantial entities to which interests and agency can be attributed. I mean the tendency to reify such groups, Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, of Catho-lics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, of Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, of Turks and Kurds in Turkey, or of Blacks, Whites, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans in the United States as if they were internally homogeneous, externally bounded groups, even unitary collective actors with common purposes. I mean the tendency to represent the social and cultural world as a multichrome mosiac of monochrome ethnic, racial, or cultural blocs.
eBook - PDFA Postmodern Psychology of Asian Americans
Creating Knowledge of a Racial Minority
- Laura Uba(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- SUNY Press(Publisher)
Demographic Versus Emergent Ethnicity Ethnicity’s meaning is a construction which has generally been equated with membership in a group that behaves and interprets in ways that reflect shared ancestral background, history, cultural values, notions of acceptable behaviors, and options (Sorenson, 1996; Zane & Sasao, 1992). Insofar as 113 114 a postmodern psychology of asian americans cultural groupings constitute ethnic groups, definitions of culture as a shared consciousness or an imagined, abstract equivalence among members of a collective also define ethnicity (Bandlamudi, 1994; Lowe, 1998). Although ethnicity has been used as a metonym for relatively stable, shared, and presumed psychological characteristics, such as a sense of peoplehood, reified values, behaviors, and interpretive habits arising from a culture, ancestry has outweighed culture or a sense of peoplehood as an indicator of ethnicity both in casual conversations and in operational definitions. The synecdochic use of ethnicity as a categorical stand-in for complex, diverse cultural propensities is matched by social science’s opera- tional treatment of ethnicity as an objective, demographic characteristic, grossly assessed by self-reports in terms of conventional ethnic–group classifications. Reduced to Asian ancestry, ethnicity has been treated as a categorical predictor or independent variable. 1 Both the aforementioned conceptual definitions and their operational counterparts overlook much, and that has had typically unstudied conse- quences. For example, the treatment of ethnicity or shared ancestry as a synonym for historical, cultural experiences or a historical, sociocultural sense of peoplehood (Torres & Ngin, 1995; Zane & Sasao, 1992) seems to imply that ancestry has a deterministic effect on a sense of peoplehood and hides the ways in which a sense of peoplehood is constructed rather than auto- matic and isomorphic with ancestry.
eBook - PDF- Yu. Bromley(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Not so long ago the expression "people con- stituting a component part of a nation" appeared in our Press and has since had a certain currency in ethnographic literature, where narod 'People' was used without adequate grounds for part of the nation (Jackson, 1959). 76 v. KOZLOV the possibility of employing ethnic community in a broader sense. Thus Levin and Cheboksarov, who were among the first to employ it in Soviet ethnographic literature, considered it a wider concept than narod because it could be used also for "a group of peoples related by language and culture", for example, all the Slav peoples, as well as for "a part of a people having certain specific linguistic and cultural features", for example, regional groups of Russians (the Pomors of the White Sea coast; the Don Cossacks, etc.) (Levin, Cheboksarov, 1957:11; Cheboksarov, 1964). In practice, however, ethnic community is almost never thus used since it could lead to undesirable confusion of concepts. In order to designate linguistically related groups of peoples it is custom- ary to employ ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUP, and for designating a part of a people, ETHNOGRAPHIC GROUP, RELIGIOUS GROUP, DIALECT GROUP, etc. The poor development of our sociology, in particular the absence of a developed classification of various social forms that could help us define the place of the ethnic community among other social categories and its links with them, also complicates this problem. The term SOCIAL GROUP, employed by our sociologists which could also, it might seem, be applied to ethnic communities, is as a rule employed by them only for the class division of society. 3 Recently Semenov proposed the methodo- logically important category of SOCIAL ORGANISM, but unfortunately so limited his definition of the concept (as "a separate, individual society, as an independent unit of social development" [Semenov, 1966b:94]) that it is quite difficult to employ it for purposes of classification.
eBook - PDF- Michael Banton(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Berghahn Books(Publisher)
chapter 6 Ethnic Origin and Ethnicity In the United States, from the end of the nineteenth century, citizens of German and Irish origin were sometimes disparaged as ‘hyphen- ated Americans’. It was alleged that they hesitated to become ‘100 per cent’ Americans because they still clung to other ‘loyalties’. ‘Ethnic group’ seems to have come into popular use as a more acceptable name for ‘hyphenated Americans’. In Te Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups, written by W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole and published in 1945, the expression ‘ethnic group’ was used to designate eight cultural minorities of white ‘race’, resident in Massachusetts, who were on their way to becoming ‘one hundred per cent Americans’. 1 Te authors made no mention of ‘ethnicity’; the frst recorded use of that word is dated from 1953, when the sociologist David Riesman referred to ‘the groups who, by reason of rural or small-town location, ethnicity, or other parochialism, feel threatened by the better educated upper-middle-class people’. 2 Whether or not he intended this, Riesman’s change from the ad- jective ‘ethnic’ to the noun ‘ethnicity’ implied that there was some distinctive quality in the sharing of a common ethnic origin that ex- plained why people such as those he referred to might feel threat- ened by upper-middle-class people, who, apparently, did not attach the same signifcance to their own ethnic origins. Tey did not count as ‘ethnics’. Census Categories In the English-speaking world, popular conceptions of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ have been powerfully infuenced by the requirements of governments when they carry out population censuses, issue pass- ports and visas and compile ofcial records. US censuses have, from This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. Ethnic Origin and Ethnicity | 97 the beginning, employed racial classifcations.
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