Product Code Database
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, , society, religion, history or social treatment. Ethnicities may also have a narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, with some groups having mixed genetic ancestry. Ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism. It is also used interchangeably with race although not all ethnicities identify as racial groups.
By way of assimilation, acculturation, amalgamation, language shift, intermarriage, adoption and religious conversion, individuals or groups may over time shift from one ethnic group to another. Ethnic groups may be divided into subgroups or , 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 panethnicity and may eventually Melting pot. Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis.
Two theories exist in understanding ethnicities, mainly primordialism and constructivism. Early-20th-century primordialists viewed ethnic groups as real phenomena whose distinct characteristics have endured since the distant past. Perspectives that developed after the 1960s increasingly viewed ethnic groups as Social construct, with identity assigned by societal rules.
In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to mean or (in the sense of disparate "nations" which did not yet participate in the Christian ecumene), as the Septuagint used 'the nations' to translate the Hebrew goyim "the foreign nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews".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) The Greek term in Archaic Greece (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 word took on a meaning comparable to the concept now expressed by "ethnic group", mostly translated as "nation, tribe, a unique people group"; only in Hellenistic Greek did the term tend to become further narrowed to refer to "foreign" or "barbarians" nations in particular (whence the later meaning "heathen, pagan"). ἔθνος , Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
In the 19th century the term came to be used in the sense of "peculiar to a tribe, race, people or nation", in a return to the original Greek meaning. The sense of "different cultural groups", and in American English "tribal, racial, cultural or national minority group" arises in the 1930s to 1940s, 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 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 as a stand-in 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.Cohen, Ronald. (1978) "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology", Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1978. 7:379–403; Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan (1975) EthnicityTheory and Experience, Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press.
The modern usage definition of the Oxford English Dictionary is:
(Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, online version as of 2008-01-12, s.v. "ethnic, a. and n.")
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, Armenians ethnicity can be defined by citizenship, having Armenian heritage, native use of the Armenian language, or membership of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
However, earlier Greek individuals did not define the Greek ethnicity by blood. According to Isocrates in his speech Panegyricus: "And so far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and that the title Hellenes is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood".
Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists, such as the 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.
According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently.
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.
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".
Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was 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. 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 priori 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 the anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities:
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.
According to Paul James, formations of identity were often changed and distorted by colonization, but identities are not made out of nothing:
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.Vincent, Joan (1974), "The Structure of Ethnicity" in Human Organization 33(4): 375–379 Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness". 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." This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation.
Kanchan Chandra rejects the expansive definitions of ethnic identity (such as those that include common culture, common language, common history and common territory), choosing instead to define ethnic identity narrowly as a subset of identity categories determined by the belief of common descent. Jóhanna Birnir similarly defines ethnicity as "group self-identification around a characteristic that is very difficult or even impossible to change, such as language, race, or location."
Examples of various approaches are primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.
Ethnicity is an important means by which people may identify with a larger group. Many social scientists, such as the 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.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 The process that results in emergence of such identification is called ethnogenesis. Members of an ethnic group, on the whole, claim cultural continuities over time, although and cultural anthropologists have documented that many of the values, practices, and norms that imply continuity with the past are of relatively recent invention.Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), The Invention of TraditionSider 1993 Lumbee Indian Histories.
Ethnic groups can form a cultural mosaic in a society. That could be in a city like New York City or Trieste, but also the fallen monarchy of the Austria-Hungary or the United States. Current topics are in particular social and cultural differentiation, multilingualism, competing identity offers, multiple cultural identities and the formation of Salad bowl and melting pot.Pieter M. Judson The Habsburg Empire. A New History (Harvard 2016)Patricia Engelhorn "Wie Wien mit Meersicht: Ein Tag in der Hafenstadt Triest" In: NZZ 15 February 2020; Roberto Scarciglia Trieste multiculturale: comunità e linguaggi di integrazione (2011); Ibanez B. Penas, Ma. Carmen López Sáenz. "Interculturalism: Between Identity and Diversity". (Bern) 2006. p 15. Ethnic groups differ from other social groups, such as , or , 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 national myth 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.Camoroff, John L. and Jean Camoroff 2009: Ethnicity Inc. Chicago: Chicago Press. The Invention of TraditionSider 1993 Lumbee Indian HistoriesSeidner, (1982), Ethnicity, Language, and Power from a Psycholinguistic Perspective, pp. 2–3Smith 1987 pp. 21–22
This theory was preceded by more than 100 years during which biological essentialism was the dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism is the belief 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 society that was officially 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 creations of races (polygenesis) and whether God had created lesser races. Many of the foremost scientists of the time took up the idea of racial difference and found that White Europeans were superior.
The ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined four steps to assimilation: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of attributing the marginalized status of people of colour in the United States to their inherent biological inferiority, he attributed it to their failure to assimilate into American culture. They could become equal if they abandoned their inferior cultures.
Michael Omi's and Howard Winant's theory of racial formation directly 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 United States. While Park's theory identified different stages in the immigration processcontact, conflict, struggle, and as the last and best response, assimilationit did so only for White communities. The ethnicity paradigm neglected the ways in which race can complicate a community's interactions with social and political structures, especially upon contact.
Assimilationshedding the particular qualities of a native culture for the purpose of blending in with a host culturedid not work for some groups as a response to racism and discrimination, though it did for others. Once the legal barriers to achieving equality had been dismantled, the problem of racism became the sole responsibility of already disadvantaged communities. It was assumed that if a Black or Latino community was not "making it" by the standards that had been set by Whites, it was because that community did not hold the right values or beliefs, or were stubbornly resisting dominant norms because they did not want to fit in. Omi and Winant's 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." It prevents critical examination of the structural components of racism and encourages a "benign neglect" of social inequality.
In the 19th century modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations". Nation state, however, invariably include populations who have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion based on equality, or they will seek autonomy, sometimes even to the extent of complete political separation from their existing nation-state. 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 research into the "ethnogenesis" of the Germanic people 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. . Under these conditions, when people moved from one state to another,Aihway Ong 1996 "Cultural Citizenship in the Making" in Current Anthropology 37(5) or when 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 result from one of two opposite events:
Examples for the first case occur throughout Africa, where countries formed during decolonization inherited arbitrary colonial borders, but also in European countries such as Belgium or the 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 in the 17th century and even more so in 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 have been termed "multicultural" societies, especially in large cities.
The states of the New World were multi-ethnic from the onset, as they developed as settler colonies imposed on existing indigenous populations.
In recent decades, feminist scholars (most notably Nira Yuval-Davis)Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997) 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.Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997) pp. 12–13 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.Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis "Woman–Nation-State" (London: Macmillan, 1989), p.9 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.
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:
In 1982 the anthropologist David Craig Griffith summarized forty years of ethnographic research, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different ways people from different parts of the world have been incorporated into a global economy:
According to Wolf, racial categories were constructed and incorporated during the period of mercantilism, and ethnic groupings during the period of capitalism.
Writing in 1977 about the usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of the United Kingdom and the United States, Wallman noted
In the US the Office of Management and Budget says 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".
Ramón Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) argues that "racial/ethnic identity" is one concept and concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used as separate and autonomous categories.
Ethnicities that 'double up' as racial groups are also perceived as more legitimate by society even though ancestry does not exclusively define ethnicities, nor is it required to define one.
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 acquiring only 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 Soviet Union, is marked by ethnic war. 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 when they are inter-ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic state.
On the coasts of Asia, the ethnic groups have adopted various methods of harvest and transport. Some groups are primarily , 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.
In Indonesia alone, there are more than 600 ethnic groups, which are located on 17,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago.
Russia has more than 185 recognized ethnic groups besides the eighty per cent Russians majority. The largest group is the Tatars, 3.8 per cent. Many of the smaller groups are found in the Asian part of Russia (see Indigenous peoples of Siberia).
A number of European countries, including France 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." and Switzerland, do not collect information on the ethnicity of their resident population.
An example of a largely nomadic ethnic group in Europe is the Romani people, also known (often pejoratively) as Gypsies. They originated from India and speak the Romani language.
The province of Vojvodina is recognizable for its multiethnic and Multiculturalism identity. There are some 26 ethnic groups in it, and six languages are in official use by the provincial administration.
Enslaved Africans were brought to North America from the 16th to 19th centuries during the Atlantic slave trade. Many of them were sent to the Caribbean. Ethnic groups that live in the Caribbean are: indigenous peoples, Africans, Indians, White Europeans, Chinese and Portuguese. The first White Europeans to arrive in the Dominican Republic were the Spanish in 1492. The Caribbean was also colonized and discovered by the Portuguese, English, Dutch and French.
A sizeable number of people in the United States have mixed-race identities. In 2021, the number of Americans who identified as non-Hispanic and more than one race was 13.5 million. The number of Hispanic Americans who identified as multiracial was 20.3 million. Over the course of the 2010s decade, there was a 127% increase in non-Hispanic Americans who identified as multiracial.
The largest ethnic groups in the United States are Germans, African Americans, Mexicans, Irish Americans, English, Americans, Italians, Polish people, French people, Scottish people, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Norwegians, Dutch people, Swedish people, Chinese people, West Indies, Russians and Filipinos.
In Canada European Canadians are the largest ethnic group. The indigenous population is growing faster than the non-indigenous population. Most immigrants in Canada come from Asia.
Oceanic South Pacific islands nearing Latin America were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans in the 16th century, with nothing to indicate prehistoric human activity by Indigenous peoples of the Americas or Oceania.R. G. Crocombe (2025). 9789820203884, University of the South Pacific. Institute of Pacific Studies. . ISBN 9789820203884 (2025). 9781921313899, ANU Press. ISBN 9781921313899 Contemporary residents are mainly mestizos and Europeans from the Latin American countries whom administer them, although none of these islands have extensive populations. Easter Island are the only oceanic island politically associated with Latin America to have an indigenous population, the Polynesian Rapa Nui people. Their current inhabitants include indigenous Polynesians and mestizo settlers from political administrators Chile, in addition to mixed-race individuals with Polynesian and mestizo/European ancestry. The British overseas territory of Pitcairn Islands, to the west of Easter Island, have a population of approximately 50 people. They are mixed-race who descended from an initial group of British and Tahitians settlers in the 18th century. The islands were previously inhabited by Polynesians; they had long abandoned Pitcairn by the time the settlers had arrived. Norfolk Island, now an external territory of Australia, is also believed to have 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.
The once uninhabited Bonin Islands, later politically integrated into Japan, have a small population consisting of Japanese mainlanders and descendants of early European settlers. Archeological findings from the 1990s suggested there was possible prehistoric human activity by Micronesians prior to European discovery in the 16th century.
Several political entities associated with Oceania are still uninhabited, including Baker Island, Clipperton Island, Howland Island and Jarvis Island. 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 World War II, while most of the settlers on Clipperton ended up dying from starvation and murdering one and other.
The 2016 Census shows England and New Zealand are the next most common countries of birth after Australia. The proportion of people born in China and India has increased since 2011 (from 6.0 per cent to 8.3 per cent, and 5.6 per cent to 7.4 per cent, respectively).
The proportion of people identifying as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin increased from 2.5 per cent of the Australian population in 2011 to 2.8 per cent in 2016.
|
|
