They Studying English in the Classroom Right Now

Socially defined category of people who place with each other

An
ethnic group
or an
ethnicity
is a group of people who place with each other on the footing of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, order, culture, nation, faith, or social treatment inside their residing area.^{[1]
[2]
[three]}
Ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of indigenous nationalism, and is separate from the related concept of races.

Ethnicity may exist construed equally an inherited or as a societally imposed construct. Indigenous membership tends to be defined past a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language, or dialect, symbolic systems^{[
commendation needed
]}
such every bit organized religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, or concrete advent. Ethnic groups may share a narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, depending on group identification, with many groups having mixed genetic ancestry.^[4]
[5]
[6]
Indigenous groups often proceed to speak related languages.

By manner of linguistic communication shift, acculturation, adoption and religious conversion, individuals or groups may over fourth dimension 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 grouping. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to grade a pan-ethnicity and may eventually merge into one unmarried ethnicity. Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a divide ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis.

Although both organic and performative criteria characterise ethnic groups, contend in the past had dichotomised betwixt primordialism and constructivism. Earlier 20th-century “Primordialists” viewed ethnic groups as existent phenomena whose distinct characteristics have endured since the distant past.^[7]
Perspectives that developed after the 1960s increasingly viewed indigenous groups as
social constructs, with identity assigned by societal rules.^[8]
[ix]

Terminology

[edit]

The term
indigenous
is derived from the Greek word ἔθνος
ethnos
(more than precisely, from the describing word ἐθνικός
ethnikos,^[10]
which was loaned into Latin equally
ethnicus). The inherited English language language term for this concept is
folk, used alongside the latinate
people
since the late Middle English period.

In Early on Modern English and until the mid-19th century,
ethnic
was used to hateful infidel or pagan (in the sense of disparate “nations” which did not notwithstanding participate in the Christian oikumene), as the Septuagint used
ta ethne
(“the nations”) to translate the Hebrew
goyim
“the nations, non-Hebrews, not-Jews”.^[11]
The Greek term in early antiquity (Homeric Greek) could refer to any large group, a
host
of men, a
ring
of comrades also every bit a
swarm
or
flock
of animals. In Classical Greek, the term took on a significant comparable to the concept now expressed by “ethnic group”, by and large translated as “nation, people”; just in Hellenistic Greek did the term tend to become further narrowed to refer to “strange” or “roughshod” nations in particular (whence the later pregnant “heathen, pagan”).^[12]
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 significant. The sense of “different cultural groups”, and in American English language “racial, cultural or national minority group” arises in the 1930s to 1940s,^[13]
serving as a replacement of the term race which had earlier taken this sense but was now becoming deprecated due to its clan with ideological racism. The abstract
ethnicity
had been used for “paganism” in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an “indigenous grapheme” (get-go recorded 1953). The term
ethnic grouping
was first recorded in 1935 and entered the Oxford English language Lexicon in 1972.^[14]
Depending on context, the term nationality may exist used either synonymously with ethnicity or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign land). The procedure that results in emergence of an ethnicity is chosen ethnogenesis, a term in use in ethnological literature since near 1950. The term may also exist used with the connotation of something exotic (cf. “indigenous eating place”, etc.), mostly related to cultures of more recent immigrants, who arrived after the dominant population of an surface area was established.

Depending on which source of group identity is emphasized to define membership, the following types of (often mutually overlapping) groups tin can exist identified:

• Ethno-linguistic, emphasizing shared language, dialect (and perchance 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 phenotype  – example: African Americans
• Ethno-regional, emphasizing a distinct local sense of belonging stemming from relative geographic isolation – example: S Islanders of New Zealand
• Ethno-religious, emphasizing shared affiliation with a particular faith, denomination or sect – example: Jews
• Ethno-cultural, emphasizing shared culture or tradition, frequently overlapping with other forms of ethnicity – example: Travellers

In many cases, more than than one aspect determines membership: for instance, Armenian ethnicity can be defined past Armenian citizenship, native employ of the Armenian language, or membership of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Definitions and conceptual history

[edit]

Ethnography begins in classical antiquity; after early on authors similar Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus laid the foundation of both historiography and ethnography of the ancient world
c.
 480 BC. The Greeks had adult a concept of their own “ethnicity”, which they grouped under the proper noun of Hellenes. Herodotus (8.144.2) gave a famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) indigenous identity in his mean solar day, enumerating

1. shared descent (ὅμαιμον –
   homaimon, “of the same blood”),^[16]
2. shared language (ὁμόγλωσσον –
   homoglōsson, “speaking the same linguistic communication”),^[17]
3. shared sanctuaries and sacrifices (Greek: θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι –
   theōn hidrumata te koina kai thusiai),^[18]
4. shared customs (Greek: ἤθεα ὁμότροπα –
   ēthea homotropa, “customs of like fashion”).^{[19]
   [20]
   [21]}

Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists,^[22]
such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a production of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups.^{[23]
[
irrelevant citation
]}

Co-ordinate to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the report of ethnicity was dominated by 2 distinct debates until recently.

• One is between “primordialism” and “instrumentalism”. In the primordialist view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, every bit an externally given, even coercive, social bond.^[24]
  The instrumentalist approach, on the other hand, treats ethnicity primarily as an ad hoc element of a political strategy, used equally a resource for interest groups for achieving secondary goals such as, for instance, an increase in wealth, power, or status.^{[25]
  [26]}
  This debate is still an important point of reference in Political scientific discipline, although most scholars’ approaches fall between the two poles.^[27]
• The 2nd contend is between “constructivism” and “essentialism”. Constructivists view national and indigenous identities as the product of historical forces, often recent, fifty-fifty when the identities are presented equally old.^{[28]
  [29]}
  Essentialists view such identities every bit ontological categories defining social actors.^{[30]
  [31]}

According to Eriksen, these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology, past scholars’ attempts to respond to increasingly politicized forms of self-representation by members of unlike ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such every bit the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and postal service-colonialism in the Caribbean and South asia.^[32]

Max Weber maintained that ethnic groups were
künstlich
(artificial, i.eastward. a social construct) considering they were based on a subjective belief in shared
Gemeinschaft
(community). Secondly, this conventionalities in shared Gemeinschaft did non create the group; the group created the belief. Tertiary, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolize power and status. This was contrary to the prevailing naturalist conventionalities of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from mutual descent, then called “race”.^[33]

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.^[34]
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 non discontinuous cultural isolates or logical
a priority
to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures every bit bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with a focus on the interface betwixt groups. “Indigenous Groups and Boundaries”, therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: “…categorical ethnic distinctions exercise non 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 ethnic realities:

… the named ethnic identities we accept, frequently unthinkingly, equally basic givens in the literature are frequently arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed.^[34]

In this manner, he pointed to the fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, eastward.yard. 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 every bit “cultural” or “tribal” when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, merely 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 betwixt colonized peoples and nation-states.^[34]

According to Paul James, formations of identity were often changed and distorted by colonization, merely identities are non made out of nothing:

Categorizations about identity, even when codified and hardened into clear typologies by processes of colonization, country formation or full general modernizing processes, are e’er full of tensions and contradictions. Sometimes these contradictions are destructive, only they tin also be creative and positive.^[35]

Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why unlike markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character.^[36]
Ronald Cohen ended that ethnicity is “a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness”.^[34]
He agrees with Joan Vincent’s ascertainment that (in Cohen’s paraphrase) “Ethnicity… can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization.^[34]
This may be why descent is sometimes a mark 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 state of affairs.

Kanchan Chandra rejects the expansive definitions of ethnic identity (such equally those that include common civilisation, common language, common history and common territory), choosing instead to ascertain ethnic identity narrowly as a subset of identity categories adamant past the belief of common descent.^[37]
Jóhanna Birnir similarly defines ethnicity as “group self-identification around a characteristic that is very difficult or fifty-fifty impossible to change, such as language, race, or location.”^[38]

Approaches to understanding ethnicity

[edit]

Dissimilar approaches to agreement ethnicity take been used past different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. As Jonathan M. Hall observes, Earth State of war 2 was a turning signal in indigenous studies. The consequences of Nazi racism discouraged essentialist interpretations of indigenous 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, organized religion, customs, and national character. So, ethnic groups are conceived equally mutable rather than stable, constructed in discursive practices rather than written in the genes.^[39]

Examples of diverse approaches are primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism, and instrumentalism.

• “Primordialism“, holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human being history and that modernistic ethnic groups have historical continuity into the far past. For them, the thought of ethnicity is closely linked to the thought of nations and is rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity every bit being divided into primordially existing groups rooted by kinship and biological heritage.
  • “Essentialist primordialism” farther holds that ethnicity is an
    a priori
    fact of human existence, that ethnicity precedes any human social interaction and that information technology is unchanged by information technology. This theory sees ethnic groups every bit natural, not simply as historical. Information technology likewise has bug dealing with the consequences of intermarriage, migration and colonization for the composition of modernistic-day multi-ethnic societies.^[40]
  • “Kinship primordialism” holds that ethnic communities are extensions of kinship units, basically being derived past kinship or clan ties where the choices of cultural signs (language, faith, traditions) are made exactly to prove this biological affinity. In this way, the myths of common biological ancestry that are a defining characteristic of ethnic communities are to be understood equally representing bodily biological history. A problem with this view on ethnicity is that information technology is more than often than not the instance that mythic origins of specific ethnic groups directly contradict the known biological history of an ethnic community.^[forty]
  • “Geertz’southward primordialism“, notably espoused by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, argues that humans in general attribute an overwhelming power to primordial man “givens” such every bit blood ties, linguistic communication, territory, and cultural differences. In Geertz’ opinion, ethnicity is not in itself primordial but humans perceive it as such because information technology is embedded in their experience of the world.^[40]
• “Perennialism“, an approach that is primarily concerned with nationhood merely tends to see nations and indigenous communities every bit basically the same phenomenon holds that the nation, every bit a type of social and political organization, is of an immemorial or “perennial” character.^[41]
  Smith (1999) distinguishes 2 variants: “continuous perennialism”, which claims that item nations take existed for very long periods, and “recurrent perennialism”, which focuses on the emergence, dissolution and reappearance of nations as a recurring attribute of man history.^[42]
  • “Perpetual perennialism” holds that specific indigenous groups accept existed continuously throughout history.
  • “Situational perennialism” holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, alter 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 gild. Examples of a perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are besides found in Barth and Seidner who encounter ethnicity every bit ever-changing boundaries between groups of people established through ongoing social negotiation and interaction.
  • “Instrumentalist perennialism“, while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that identified dissimilar ethnics groups and limits through fourth dimension, explains ethnicity as a mechanism of social stratification, pregnant 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 “arrangement of stratification wherein some relatively fixed group membership (e.g., race, organized religion, or nationality) is utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions”.^[43]
    Ethnic stratification is ane of many different types of social stratification, including stratification based on socio-economic condition, race, or gender. Co-ordinate to Donald Noel, indigenous stratification will emerge only when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with 1 another, and just 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’south ain civilisation, and to downgrade all other groups exterior one’s own civilization. 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.^[44]
    Continuing with Noel’due south theory, some degree of differential power must be present for the emergence of indigenous stratification. In other words, an inequality of ability among ethnic groups means “they are of such diff ability that i is able to impose its volition upon another”.^[43]
    In add-on to differential power, a degree of competition structured along ethnic lines is a prerequisite to ethnic stratification likewise. The different ethnic groups must be competing for some common goal, such as power or influence, or a material interest, such equally wealth or territory. Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings advise that competition is driven by cocky-interest and hostility, and results in inevitable stratification and conflict.^[44]
• “Constructivism” sees both primordialist and perennialist views equally basically flawed,^[44]
  and rejects the notion of ethnicity equally a basic man condition. It holds that ethnic groups are but products of human social interaction, maintained only in and so far every bit they are maintained as valid social constructs in societies.
  • “Modernist constructivism” correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards nation states first in the early modern period.^[45]
    Proponents of this theory, such every bit Eric Hobsbawm, fence that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such equally nationalism, are purely modern inventions, actualization only in the modernistic menses of world history. They agree that prior to this ethnic homogeneity was non considered an ideal or necessary factor in the forging of large-scale societies.

Ethnicity is an important means by which people may place with a larger group. Many social scientists, such every bit anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, do non consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-grouping interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to man groups.^[23]
The procedure that results in emergence of such identification is chosen ethnogenesis. Members of an indigenous group, on the whole, merits 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.^[46]
[47]

Indigenous groups can class a cultural mosaic in a club. That could be in a city like New York City or Trieste, but also the fallen monarchy of the Austro-hungarian empire or the United States. Current topics are in item social and cultural differentiation, multilingualism, competing identity offers, multiple cultural identities and the formation of Salad bowl and melting pot.^{[48]
[49]
[fifty]
[51]}
Ethnic groups differ from other social groups, such equally subcultures, involvement groups or social classes, considering they emerge and change over historical periods (centuries) in a process known as ethnogenesis, a period of several generations of endogamy resulting in mutual ancestry (which is then sometimes bandage 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 grouping which set it autonomously from other groups.^{[52]
[53]
[54]
[55]
[56]
[57]}

Ethnicity theory in the United States

[edit]

Ethnicity theory
argues that race is a social category and is only one of several factors in determining ethnicity. Other criteria include “religion, language, ‘customs’, nationality, and political identification”.^[58]
This theory was put forward past sociologist Robert E. Park in the 1920s. It is based on the notion of “civilization”.

This theory was preceded by more than 100 years during which biological essentialism was the dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism is the conventionalities that some races, specifically white Europeans in western versions of the paradigm, are biologically superior and other races, specifically non-white races in western debates, are inherently inferior. This view arose as a way to justify enslavement of African Americans and genocide of Native Americans in a lodge that was officially founded on freedom for all. This was a notion that developed slowly and came to exist a preoccupation with scientists, theologians, and the public. Religious institutions asked questions most whether at that place had been multiple creations of races (polygenesis) and whether God had created bottom races. Many of the foremost scientists of the time took up the idea of racial difference and constitute that white Europeans were superior.^[59]

The ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined four steps to absorption: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of attributing the marginalized condition of people of color in the The states to their inherent biological inferiority, he attributed it to their failure to assimilate into American culture. They could go equal if they abandoned their junior cultures.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant’due south theory of racial formation straight confronts both the premises and the practices of ethnicity theory. They argue in
Racial Formation in the United States
that the ethnicity theory was exclusively based on the immigration patterns of the white population and did take into account the unique experiences of non-whites in the U.s..^[60]
While Park’s theory identified different stages in the immigration process – contact, conflict, struggle, and as the last and best response, absorption – it did so only for white communities.^[sixty]
The ethnicity prototype neglected the means in which race can complicate a community’s interactions with social and political structures, especially upon contact.

Absorption – shedding the particular qualities of a native civilisation for the purpose of blending in with a host culture – did not work for some groups equally a response to racism and bigotry, though it did for others.^[sixty]
Once the legal barriers to achieving equality had been dismantled, the trouble of racism became the sole responsibleness of already disadvantaged communities.^[61]
It was causeless that if a Black or Latino customs was non “making it” by the standards that had been set by whites, information technology was because that community did not agree the right values or beliefs, or were stubbornly resisting ascendant norms considering they did not want to fit in. Omi and Winant’south critique of ethnicity theory explains how looking to cultural defect as the source of inequality ignores the “concrete sociopolitical dynamics within which racial phenomena operate in the U.S.”^[62]
Information technology prevents disquisitional examination of the structural components of racism and encourages a “benign neglect” of social inequality.^[62]

Ethnicity and nationality

[edit]

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^[63]
and Benedict Anderson^[64]
encounter nations and nationalism equally developing with the rise of the modernistic 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 commercialism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time state boundaries were being more conspicuously and rigidly defined.

In the 19th century, modernistic states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent “nations”. Nation-states, however, invariably include populations who have been excluded from national life for 1 reason or some other. Members of excluded groups, consequently, volition either demand inclusion based on equality or seek autonomy, sometimes even to the extent of complete political separation in their nation-state.^[65]
Under these conditionswhen people moved from one state to another,^[66]
or one state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries – indigenous groups were formed past people who identified with 1 nation, just lived in another land.

Multi-ethnic states can exist the result of two opposite events, either the recent creation of state borders at variance with traditional tribal territories, or the recent clearing of ethnic minorities into a former nation-state. Examples for the get-go instance are found throughout Africa, where countries created during decolonization inherited arbitrary colonial borders, just as well in European countries such equally Kingdom of belgium or United Kingdom. Examples for the 2d case are countries such as Netherlands, which were relatively ethnically homogeneous when they attained statehood simply take received meaning clearing in the 17th century and fifty-fifty more then in the second one-half of the 20th century. States such equally the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland comprised singled-out ethnic groups from their formation and have likewise experienced substantial immigration, resulting in what has been termed “multicultural” societies, especially in large cities.

United states of america of the New Earth were multi-indigenous from the onset, every bit they were formed equally colonies imposed on existing indigenous populations.

In recent decades feminist scholars (almost notably Nira Yuval-Davis)^[67]
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 normally discussed equally belonging to the public, political sphere, they are upheld within the private, family sphere to a great extent.^[68]
It is here that women act not but as biological reproducers but also every bit “cultural carriers”, transmitting cognition and enforcing behaviors that belong to a specific collectivity.^[69]
Women too often play a significant symbolic function 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 disharmonize, or in iconic figures such every bit Britannia or Marianne.

Ethnicity and race

[edit]

Ethnicity is used as a matter of cultural identity of a group, often based on shared ancestry, linguistic communication, and cultural traditions, while race is applied every bit a taxonomic group, based on physical similarities amidst groups. Race is a more controversial discipline than ethnicity, due to common political apply of the term. Ramón Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) argues that “racial/ethnic identity” is one concept and concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used equally divide and autonomous categories.^[70]

Before Weber (1864–1920), race and ethnicity were primarily seen equally ii aspects of the same affair. Around 1900 and before, the primordialist understanding of ethnicity predominated: cultural differences between peoples were seen as beingness the outcome of inherited traits and tendencies.^[71]
With Weber’due south 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.), said:

National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups accept no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term “race” is used in pop parlance, it would be ameliorate when speaking of human races to drop the term “race” altogether and speak of “indigenous groups”.^[72]

In 1982, anthropologist David Craig Griffith summed upwards forty years of ethnographic inquiry, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for dissimilar means people from different parts of the world take been incorporated into a global economy:

The opposing interests that carve up 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. Commercialism did not create all the distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to fix off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their constructive values.^[73]

According to Wolf, racial categories were synthetic and incorporated during the catamenia of European mercantile expansion, and ethnic groupings during the menstruation of capitalist expansion.^[74]

Writing in 1977 nearly the usage of the term “ethnic” in the ordinary language of United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and the United states of america, Wallman noted

The term “ethnic” popularly connotes “[race]” in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In Northward America, by contrast, “[race]” most commonly means color, and “ethnics” are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. “[Indigenous]” is non a substantive in Britain. In issue there are no “ethnics”; there are but “ethnic relations”.^[75]

In the U.S., the OMB says the definition of race every bit used for the purposes of the US Census is not “scientific or anthropological” and takes into business relationship “social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry”, using “appropriate scientific methodologies” that are not “primarily biological or genetic in reference”.^[76]

Ethno-national conflict

[edit]

Sometimes ethnic groups are discipline to prejudicial attitudes and actions past the state or its constituents. In the 20th century, people began to argue that conflicts among indigenous groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should exist resolved in i of two ways. Some, similar 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 non admit ethnic, national or racial identity simply rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, similar 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 exist accommodated within the boundaries of the nation-land.

The 19th century saw the evolution of the political ideology of ethnic nationalism, when the concept of race was tied to nationalism, first past High 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 equally 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 acquiring just lands that had always been inhabited by ethnic Germans. The history of late-comers to the nation-land model, such every bit those arising in the Near East and due south-eastern Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the sometime USSR, is marked by inter-ethnic conflicts. Such conflicts usually occur within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to betwixt them, equally in other regions of the world. Thus, the conflicts are often misleadingly labeled and characterized equally civil wars when they are inter-ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic country.

Ethnic groups by continent

[edit]

Africa

[edit]

Ethnic groups in Africa number in the hundreds, each generally having its own language (or dialect of a language) and culture.

Asia

[edit]

Ethnic groups are abundant throughout Asia, with adaptations to the climate zones of Asia, which can be the Chill, subarctic, temperate, subtropical or tropical. The ethnic groups have adapted to mountains, deserts, grasslands, and forests.

On the coasts of Asia, the indigenous groups take adopted diverse 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 every bit those in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. The colonization of Asia was largely concluded in the 20th century, with national drives for independence and self-decision across the continent.

In Indonesia lone, there are more than 1,300 ethnic groups recognized by the authorities, which are located on 17,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago

Russian federation has more than 185 recognized ethnic groups also the eighty percentage ethnic Russian majority. The largest group is the Tatars, iii.8 percent. Many of the smaller groups are constitute in the Asian part of Russia (run into Indigenous peoples of Siberia).

Europe

[edit]

Europe has a large number of indigenous groups; Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct “peoples of Europe”, of which 33 course the majority population in at least one sovereign country, while the remaining 54 plant ethnic minorities inside every state they inhabit (although they may class 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 meg Europeans.^[78]

A number of European countries, including France^[79]
and Switzerland, do not collect data on the ethnicity of their resident population.

An example of a largely nomadic ethnic grouping in Europe is the Roma, pejoratively known every bit Gypsies. They originated from Bharat and speak the Romani linguistic communication.

The Serbian province of Vojvodina is recognizable for its multi-ethnic and multi-cultural identity.^{[eighty]
[81]}
At that place are some 26 ethnic groups in the province,^[82]
and six languages are in official use by the provincial administration.^[83]

North America

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The indigenous people in North America are Native Americans. During European colonization, Europeans arrived in Northward America. Virtually Native Americans died due to Spanish diseases and other European diseases such every bit smallpox during the European colonization of the Americas. The largest indigenous grouping in the United States is White Americans. Hispanic and Latino Americans (Mexican Americans in particular) and Asian Americans have immigrated to the Us recently. In Mexico, most Mexicans are mestizo, a mixture of Spanish and Native American beginnings. Some Hispanic and Latino Americans living in the United states are not mestizos.^{[
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African slaves were brought to North America from the 16th to 19th centuries during the Atlantic slave trade. Many of them were sent to the Caribbean area. Ethnic grouping that live in the Caribbean are Ethnic peoples, Africans, Indians, white Europeans, the Chinese and the Portuguese. The starting time white Europeans to get in in the Dominican Republic were the Spanish in 1492. The Caribbean area was also colonized and discovered by the Portuguese, English, Dutch and French.^[84]

A sizeable number of people in the United States have mixed-race identities. In 2021, the number of Americans who identified as not-Hispanic and more than than one race was 13.5 million. The number of Hispanic Americans who identified every bit multiracial was 20.3 one thousand thousand.^[85]
Over the grade of the 2010s decade, there was a 127% increment in not-Hispanic Americans who identified as multiracial.^[85]

The largest ethnic groups in the Us are Germans, African Americans, Mexicans, Irish, English, Italians, Poles, French, Scottish, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Norwegians, Dutch people, Swedish people, Chinese people, West Indians, Russians and Filipinos.^[86]

In Canada, European Canadians are the largest indigenous group. In Canada, the indigenous population is growing faster than the not-indigenous population. Most immigrants in Canada come from Asia.^[87]

South America

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In South America, well-nigh people are mixed-race (mostly mulatto and mestizo), indigenous and European (especially of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry).

Oceania

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Nearly all states in Oceania accept majority ethnic populations, with notable exceptions being Australia, New Zealand and Norfolk Island, who have bulk European populations.^[88]
States with smaller European populations include Guam, Hawaii and New Caledonia (whose Europeans are known equally Caldoche).^[89]
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Indigenous peoples of Oceania are Australian Aboriginals, Austronesians and Papuans, and they originated from Asia.^[91]
The Austronesians of Oceania are further broken up into three singled-out groups; Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians.

Oceanic South Pacific islands nearing Latin America were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans in the 16th century, with nothing to indicate prehistoric human activeness by Indigenous peoples of the Americas or Oceania.^{[92]
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Contemporary residents are mainly mestizos and Europeans from the Latin American countries whom administer them,^[95]
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although none of these islands have extensive populations.^[97]
Easter Isle are the only oceanic island politically associated with Latin America to have an indigenous population, the Polynesian Rapa Nui people.^[98]
Their current inhabitants include indigenous Polynesians and mestizo settlers from political administrators Chile, in add-on to mixed-race individuals with Polynesian and mestizo/European ancestry.^[98]
The British overseas territory of Pitcairn Islands, to the west of Easter Island, accept a population of approximately 50 people. They are mixed-race Euronesians who descended from an initial grouping of British and Tahitian settlers in the 18th century. The islands were previously inhabited by Polynesians; they had long abandoned Pitcairn by the time the settlers had arrived.^[99]
Norfolk Isle, now an external territory of Australia, is also believed to take been inhabited by Polynesians prior to its initial European discovery in the 18th century. Some of their residents are descended from mixed-race Pitcairn Islanders that were relocated onto Norfolk due to overpopulation in 1856.^[100]

The once uninhabited Bonin Islands, subsequently politically integrated into Japan, have a minor population consisting of Japanese mainlanders and descendants of early European settlers.^[98]
Archeological findings from the 1990s suggested at that place was possible prehistoric human activity by Micronesians prior to European discovery in the 16th century.^[101]

Several political entities associated with Oceania are still uninhabited, including Baker Island, Clipperton Island, Howland Isle and Jarvis Island.^[102]
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There were brief attempts to settle Clipperton with Mexicans and Jarvis with Native Hawaiians in the early 20th century. The Jarvis settlers were relocated from the island due to Japanese advancements during Globe State of war Two, while most of the settlers on Clipperton ended upwards dying from starvation and murdering ane and other.^[104]
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Australia

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The first evident ethnic group to live in Australia were the Australian Aboriginals, a grouping considered related to the Melanesian Torres Strait Islander people. Europeans, primarily from England arrived first in 1770.

The 2016 Census shows England and New Zealand are the side by side virtually common countries of birth after Commonwealth of australia, the proportion of people born in China and India has increased since 2011 (from 6.0 per cent to 8.iii per cent, and five.six per cent to 7.four per cent, respectively).

The proportion of people identifying every bit beingness of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin increased from 2.five per cent of the Australian population in 2011 to ii.eight per cent in 2016.

See likewise

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References

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Farther reading

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External links

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• Ethnicity at Curlie
• Ethnicity
• American Psychological Association’s Function of Ethnic Minority Affairs
• Indigenous Power Relations (EPR) Atlas
• List of indigenous groups past country