Ethnic group

An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of presumed similarities such as a common language, ancestry, history, society, culture, nation, religion, race or social treatment within their residing area.[1][2] Ethnicity is often used synonymously with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is separate from, but related to the concept of races.

"Ethnicity" redirects here. For other uses, see Ethnicity (disambiguation).
"Ethnicities" redirects here. For the academic journal, see Ethnicities (journal).
Anthropology
Before the 1970s, the Korowai people of
Papua were an uncontacted people. Their population numbers no more than 3,000.
Key concepts

Ethnicity is usually an inherited status based on the society in 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, it is sometimes possible for individuals or groups to leave one ethnic group and become part of another. The social construct that ethnic groups share a similar gene pool has been contradicted within the scientific community as evidenced by data finding more genetic variation within ethnic groups compared to between ethnic groups.[3]

The largest ethnic groups in modern times comprise more than one billion individuals each (Han Chinese being the single largest), while the smallest are limited to a few dozen individuals (numerous indigenous peoples worldwide). 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.

Terminology

The term ethnic is derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos (more precisely, from the adjective ἐθνικός ethnikos,[4] 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".[5] 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").[6] 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,[7] 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.[8] 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:

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

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 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"),[9]
  2. shared language (ὁμόγλωσσον - homoglōsson, "speaking the same language")[10]
  3. shared sanctuaries and sacrifices (Greek: θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι - theōn hidrumata te koina kai thusiai)[11]
  4. shared customs (Greek: ἤθεα ὁμότροπα - ēthea homotropa, "customs of like fashion").[12][13][14]

Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists,[15] 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.[16]

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.[17] 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.[18][19] This debate is still an important point of reference in Political science, although most scholars' approaches fall between the two poles.[20]
  • 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.[21][22] Essentialists view such identities as ontological categories defining social actors.[23][24]

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.[25]

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".[26]

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.[27] 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.[27]

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.[27]

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.[28]

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.[29] Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness".[27] 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.[27] 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.

Approaches to understanding ethnicity

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.[30]

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.
    • "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.[31]
    • "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.[31]
    • "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.[31]
  • "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.[32] 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.[33]
    • "Perpetual perennialism" holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously throughout history.
    • "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.
    • "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".[34] 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.[35] 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".[34] 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.[35]
  • "Constructivism" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed,[35] 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.
    • "Modernist constructivism" correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards nation states beginning in the early modern period.[36] 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.[16] 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.[37]

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.[38][39][40][41][42]

Ethnicity theory

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".[43] 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.[44]

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.[45] 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.[45] 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.[45] Moreover, once the legal barriers to achieving equality had been dismantled, the problem of racism became the sole responsibility of already disadvantaged communities.[46] 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."[47] 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.[47]

Ethnicity and nationality
Further information: Nation state and minority group
Part of a series on
Political and
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Status and rank
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Polities
Law and custom
Social and cultural anthropology

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[48] and Benedict Anderson[49] 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.[50] Under these conditions – when people moved from one state to another,[51] 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)[52] 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.[53] 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.[54] 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
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.[55]

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.[56] 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'."[57]

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.[58]

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.[59]

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'.[60]

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".[61]

Ethno-national conflict
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

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 Kingdom of Ashanti (17th century).[62]

Asia
Main article: Ethnic groups in Asia
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.

Europe
Main article: Ethnic groups in Europe
The Basque people constitute an indigenous ethnic minority in both France and Spain.
The Irish are an ethnic group indigenous to Ireland of which 70-80 million people worldwide claim ancestry.[63]

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.[64]

A number of European countries, including France,[65] 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.[66][67] There are some 26 ethnic groups in the province,[68] and six languages are in official use by the provincial administration.[69]

North America
Main articles: Ethnic origins of people in Canada, Ethnic groups in Central America, Demographics of Mexico, and Ethnic groups in the United States

South America

Oceania

New Zealand
Australia
Main articles: Indigenous Australians and Native white Australians
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See also

References
  1. "ethnicity: definition of ethnicity". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 28 December 2013.
  2. People, James; Bailey, Garrick (2010). Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (9th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage learning. p. 389. In essence, an ethnic group is a named social category of people based on perceptions of shared social experience or one's ancestors' experiences. Members of the ethnic group see themselves as sharing cultural traditions and history that distinguish them from other groups. Ethnic group identity has a strong psychological or emotional component that divides the people of the world into opposing categories of “us” and “them.” In contrast to social stratification, which divides and unifies people along a series of horizontal axes based on socioeconomic factors, ethnic identities divide and unify people along a series of vertical axes. Thus, ethnic groups, at least theoretically, cut across socioeconomic class differences, drawing members from all strata of the population.
  3. Heyer, E. (1 September 2009). "Genetic diversity and the emergence of ethnic groups in Central Asia". BMC Genetics. 10 (49): 49. doi:10.1186/1471-2156-10-49. PMC 2745423. PMID 19723301.
  4. ἐθνικός, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  5. ThiE. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman, History and Ethnicity (London 1989), pp. 11–17 (quoted in J. Hutchinson & A.D. Smith (eds.), Oxford readers: Ethnicity (Oxford 1996), pp. 18–24)
  6. ἔθνος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  7. Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, online version as of 2008-01-12, "ethnic, a. and n.". Cites Sir Daniel Wilson, The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland 1851 (1863) and Huxley & Haddon (1935), We Europeans, pp. 136,181
  8. Cohen, Ronald. (1978) "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology", Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1978. 7:379-403; Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan (1975) Ethnicity – Theory and Experience, Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press. The modern usage definition of the Oxford English Dictionary is:
    a[djective]
    ...
    2.a. About race; peculiar to a race or nation; ethnological. Also, about or having common racial, cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics, esp. designating a racial or other group within a larger system; hence (U.S. colloq.), foreign, exotic.
    b ethnic minority (group), a group of people differentiated from the rest of the community by racial origins or cultural background, and usu. claiming or enjoying official recognition of their group identity. Also attrib.
    n[oun]
    ...
    3 A member of an ethnic group or minority. Equatorians
    (Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, online version as of 2008-01-12, s.v. "ethnic, a. and n.")
  9. ὅμαιμος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  10. ὁμόγλωσσος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  11. I. Polinskaya, "Shared sanctuaries and the gods of others: On the meaning Of 'common' in Herodotus 8.144", in R. Rosen & I. Sluiter (eds.), Valuing others in Classical Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 43-70.
  12. ὁμότροπος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus)
  13. Herodotus, 8.144.2: "The kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life."
  14. Athena S. Leoussi, Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture, and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, Edinburgh University Press, 2006, p. 115
  15. "Challenges of measuring an ethnic world". Publications.gc.ca. The Government of Canada. April 1, 1992. Ethnicity is a fundamental factor in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience
  16. Fredrik Barth, ed. 1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference; Eric Wolf 1982 Europe and the People Without History p. 381
  17. Geertz, Clifford, ed. (1967) Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Africa and Asia. New York: The Free Press.
  18. Cohen, Abner (1969) Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in a Yoruba Town. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  19. Abner Cohen (1974) Two-Dimensional Man: An essay on power and symbolism in complex society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  20. J. Hutchinson & A.D. Smith (eds.), Oxford readers: Ethnicity (Oxford 1996), "Introduction", 8-9
  21. Gellner, Ernest (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
  22. Ernest Gellner (1997) Nationalism. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  23. Smith, Anthony D. (1986) The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell.
  24. Anthony Smith (1991) National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  25. T.H. Eriksen "Ethnic identity, national identity and intergroup conflict: The significance of personal experiences" in Ashmore, Jussim, Wilder (eds.): Social identity, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction, pp. 42–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press'. 2001
  26. Banton, Michael. (2007) "Weber on Ethnic Communities: A critique", Nations and Nationalism 13 (1), 2007, 19–35.
  27. Ronald Cohen 1978 "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology", Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 383-384 Palo Alto: Stanford University Press
  28. James, Paul (2015). "Despite the Terrors of Typologies: The Importance of Understanding Categories of Difference and Identity". Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 17 (2): 174–195. doi:10.1080/1369801X.2014.993332.
  29. Vincent, Joan (1974), "The Structure of Ethnicity" in Human Organization 33(4): 375-379
  30. David Konstan, "Defining Ancient Greek Ethnicity", Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 6, 1 (1997), pp. 97–98. Overview of J.M. Hall's book "Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity", Cambridge University Press, 1997
  31. (Smith 1999, p. 13)
  32. Smith (1998), 159.
  33. Smith (1999), 5.
  34. Noel, Donald L. (1968). "A Theory of the Origin of Ethnic Stratification". Social Problems. 16 (2): 157–172. doi:10.1525/sp.1968.16.2.03a00030.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  35. Bobo, Lawrence; Hutchings, Vincent L. (1996). "Perceptions of Racial Group Competition: Extending Blumer's Theory of Group Position to a Multiracial Social Context". American Sociological Review. American Sociological Association. 61 (6): 951–972. doi:10.2307/2096302. JSTOR 2096302.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  36. (Smith 1999, pp. 4–7)
  37. Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), The Invention of Tradition, Sider 1993 Lumbee Indian Histories.
  38. Camoroff, John L. and Jean Camoroff 2009: Ethnicity Inc.. Chicago: Chicago Press.
  39. The Invention of Tradition, Sider 1993 Lumbee Indian Histories
  40. O'Neil, Dennis. "Nature of Ethnicity". Palomar College. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
  41. Seidner,(1982), Ethnicity, Language, and Power from a Psycholinguistic Perspective, pp. 2–3
  42. Smith 1987 pp. 21–22
  43. Omi & Winant 1986, p. 15
  44. Omi & Winant 1986, p. 58
  45. Omi & Winant 1986, p. 17
  46. Omi & Winant 1986, p. 19
  47. Omi & Winant 1986, p. 21
  48. Gellner 2006 Nations and Nationalism Blackwell Publishing
  49. Anderson 2006 Imagined Communities Version
  50. Walter Pohl, "Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies", Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, (Blackwell), 1998, pp 13–24, notes that historians have projected the 19th-century conceptions of the nation-state backward in time, employing biological metaphors of birth and growth: "that the peoples in the Migration Period had little to do with those heroic (or sometimes brutish) clichés is now generally accepted among historians," he remarked. Early medieval peoples were far less homogeneous than often thought, and Pohl follows Reinhard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung. (Cologne and Graz) 1961, whose researches into the "ethnogenesis" of the German peoples convinced him that the idea of common origin, as expressed by Isidore of Seville Gens est multitudo ab uno principio orta ("a people is a multitude stemming from one origin") which continues in the original Etymologiae IX.2.i) "sive ab Alia national Secundum program collection distinct ("or distinguished from another people by its properties") was a myth.
  51. Aihway Ong 1996 "Cultural Citizenship in the Making" in Current Anthropology 37(5)
  52. Nira Yuval-Davis, "Gender & Nation" (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997)
  53. Nira Yuval-Davis, "Gender & Nation" (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997) pp. 12-13
  54. Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis "Woman–Nation-State" (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 9
  55. Grosfoguel, Ramán (September 2004). "Race and Ethnicity or Racialized Ethnicities? Identities within Global Coloniality". Ethnicities. 315-336. 4 (3): 315. doi:10.1177/1468796804045237. Retrieved 2012-08-06.
  56. Banton, Michael. (2007) "Weber on Ethnic Communities: A critique", Nations and Nationalism 13 (1), 2007, 19–35.
  57. A. Metraux (1950) "United Nations Economic and Security Council Statement by Experts on Problems of Race", American Anthropologist 53(1): 142-145)
  58. Griffith, David Craig, Jones's minimal: low-wage labor in the United States, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993, p.222
  59. Eric Wolf, 1982, Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley: University of California Press. 380-381
  60. Wallman, S. "Ethnicity research in Britain", Current Anthropology, v. 18, n. 3, 1977, pp. 531–532.
  61. "A Brief History of the OMB Directive 15". American Anthropological Association. 1997. Retrieved 2007-05-18.
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  65. (in French) article 8 de la loi Informatique et libertés, 1978: "Il est interdit de collecter ou de traiter des données à caractère personnel qui font apparaître, directement ou indirectement, les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques, philosophiques ou religieuses ou l'appartenance syndicale des personnes, ou qui sont relatives à la santé ou à la vie sexuelle de celles-ci."
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Further reading
  • Abizadeh, Arash, "Ethnicity, Race, and a Possible Humanity" World Order, 33.1 (2001): 23-34. (Article that explores the social construction of ethnicity and race.)
  • Barth, Fredrik (ed). Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969
  • Beard, David and Kenneth Gloag. 2005. Musicology, The Key Concepts. London and New York: Routledge.
  • Billinger, Michael S. (2007), "Another Look at Ethnicity as a Biological Concept: Moving Anthropology Beyond the Race Concept", Critique of Anthropology 27,1:5–35.
  • Craig, Gary, et al., eds. Understanding 'race'and ethnicity: theory, history, policy, practice (Policy Press, 2012)
  • Danver, Steven L. Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues (2012)
  • Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (1993) Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, London: Pluto Press
  • Eysenck, H.J., Race, Education and Intelligence (London: Temple Smith, 1971) (ISBN 0-85117-009-9)
  • Healey, Joseph F., and Eileen O'Brien. Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change (Sage Publications, 2014)
  • Hartmann, Douglas. "Notes on Midnight Basketball and the Cultural Politics of Recreation, Race and At-Risk Urban Youth", Journal of Sport and Social Issues. 25 (2001): 339-366.
  • Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, editors, The Invention of Tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
  • Hutcheon, Linda (1998). "Crypto-Ethnicity" (PDF). PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 113 (1): 28–51. doi:10.2307/463407. JSTOR 463407.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kappeler, Andreas. The Russian empire: A multi-ethnic history (Routledge, 2014)
  • Levinson, David, Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook, Greenwood Publishing Group (1998), ISBN 978-1-57356-019-1.
  • Magocsi, Paul Robert, ed. Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples (1999)
  • Merriam, A.P. 1959. "African Music", in R. Bascom and, M.J. Herskovits (eds), Continuity and Change in African Cultures, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
  • Morales-Díaz, Enrique; Gabriel Aquino; & Michael Sletcher, "Ethnicity", in Michael Sletcher, ed., New England, (Westport, CT, 2004).
  • Omi, Michael; Winant, Howard (1986). Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Inc.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Seeger, A. 1987. Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
  • Seidner, Stanley S. Ethnicity, Language, and Power from a Psycholinguistic Perspective. (Bruxelles: Centre de recherche sur le pluralinguisme1982).
  • Sider, Gerald, Lumbee Indian Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
  • Smith, Anthony D. (1987). "The Ethnic Origins of Nations". Blackwell. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Smith, Anthony D. (1998). Nationalism and modernism. A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism. London; New York: Routledge.
  • Smith, Anthony D. (1999). "Myths and memories of the Nation". Oxford University Press. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Thernstrom, Stephan A. ed. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1981)
  • ^ U.S. Census Bureau State & County QuickFacts: Race.
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Ethnicity
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