Race, Ethnicity

An Introduction

Litterature • Ethnicity and Nationalism (Thomas Hylland Eriksen

1993) • Chap. V Ethnic groups, Economy and Society (Max

Weber 1922) • Elementary strategies of ethnic boundary making

(Andreas Wimmer 2008) • The manipulation of ethnicity: from ethnic cooperation

to violence and war in Yugoslavia (Anthony Obershall 2000)

• Additional: • Ethnicity and Practice (G. Carter Bentley 1987)

Race

• “Race” : A useless concept in Biology, Genetics… • Social sciences: • “Race” is a fiction that has been made real”

Wacquant. • “Concepts of race can nevertheless be important

to the extent that they inform people’s actions; at this level, race exists a cultural construct.” Eriksen

Racialization “Racism builds on the assumption that personality is somehow linked with hereditary characteristics which differ systematically between races.”Eriksen

• Classification of human differences • Classification of bounded groups Wacquant: “From its inception, the collective fiction labeled “race”, namely that humanity is composed of bounded grouping between whom social differences are the product of physical differences (visible or not) and thus liable to be explained by (overt or covert) reference to biology rather than history, this fiction has always mixed sciences with common sense and traded complicity between them.” (For an analytic of racial domination).

• Mechanisms of inclusion • Mechanisms of exclusion

Racialization

• processes by which race is used to classify individuals or groups

• Group closure: maintain boundaries • Europeans/ non Europeans/ Roma • How does racialization impact our daily lives?

– personal relations, friendships, networks, sex, marriage

– Housing – Education – Employment, labor market

Racialization

• Social meaning and history – Perceived or constructed physical differences – Social significance varies by historical context and

power relations. USA/South Africa/Brazil/France – Folk concepts

• ≠ Biology and genetics – Certain physical differences – Common descent, Blood, inherited – physical variations

Ethnicity

• Definitions and relations

Ethnicity

• Relatively new field of research for a growing phenomenon.

• Anthropology 1960. Social sciences (Sociology-Political Science…) 1970

• of scholarly publications since 80-90 • Growing visibility of Ethnic and National

“identities” in societies and political life. (Migrants/Indigenous population/Decolonization…)

• Explosion of internal conflicts described as “Ethnic” (35/37 Conflicts in the World in 91)

Ethnic studies: a battle within two big

camps • A) Primordialist-Essentialist-Perenialist:

• Ethnic Communities, culture and identities:

• Membership acquired by birth, given characteristic of the social world.

• Provide stability across different social contexts. • Represent one of the most stable principles of social

organization in Human history and some has survived for millennia.

Ethnic Studies/Two Camps

• B) Constructivist-Instrumentalist-Circumstantialist:

• Ethnic Communities, culture and identities:

• Products of and contingents to social forces and history. (Modernists/Emergence of the Nation State)

• Individuals choose and use them as they see fit. • Individuals may identify themselves with different ethnic

categories depending on the changing logics of the situation.

And the winner is • Constructivist camp !!

Consensus among scholars for a :

“Constructed, contested and contingent character of ethnicity”

This is not an ontological definition of empirical reality: therefore one may find cases with sharp ethnic boundaries, high degree of social closure among ethnic lines and where ethnicity is a master principle of social organization.

Ethnicity (Eriksen)

• The difficulty of a definition : Ethnicity lumps together a great number of

very different social phenomena and relations • Social meaning/Cultural practices/Language • Shared history /Ancestry (real or

imagined)/Common descent • Religion…

Ethnicity

• The difficulty of a definition :

• “Ethnicity is essentially an aspect of relationship not a property of a group”.

• “Ethnicity is an aspect of social relationship between agents who considers themselves as culturally distinctive from members of other groups with whom they have a minimum of regular interaction.”

Ethnicity

• Ethnic relations: • Urban Ethnic minorities • Indigenous Peoples • Proto-nations (Ethno-nationalist movements) • Ethnic Groups in plural societies

Ethnicity • Lumad Mindanao Bangsamoro Islamic Liberation Front

Philippines/Mindanao

Population in Mindanao

France/Ethnic Minorities

Ethnicity

• Analytical concepts and Native concepts: • “Who are the Lue” ?

Emic category of ascription Vs

Etic category of ascription • Distinctions between our own concepts and

models, ‘native’ concepts and model, and social process

Ethnicity

• Social construction of Ethnicity and closure • (Weber)

Social Construction, (Weber)

• The Belief in Common Ethnicity (Subjective belief)

• “Ethnic Membership is a presumed identity” (vs Kinship)

• Cultural traits : markers of identification and differentiation. (Language, Customs, “Way of life”, fashion, …)

• Reproduction/transformation/Assimilation

Social Construction, (Weber)

• Ethnic group/Status group

– “Ethnic honor is a specific honor of the masses” (White Trash)

– Belief in common ethnicty delimits “social circles” – Ethnic membership facilitates group formation

Social Construction (Weber)

• From political community to Common ethnicity (fictional kinship…)

• Rational association (resources/power) turning into personal relationship

• Ethnic fiction as a lower form of rationalization

Closure and Boundaries (Weber)

• Racial membership and relations: American Example • Emancipation and Equal civil rights/Jim Crow laws

(1876) • “One drop blood” (1924) • Interracial sexual relations • Monopolization of social power and honor (White

Trash) • Interracial sexual relations (The conventional

connubium) is far less impeded by anthropological differences than by status differences, that means differences due to socialization and upbringing.

Ethnic Boundary Making

• Elementary Strategies of ethnic boundary making • Wimmer

Ethnic Boundary Making • “Ethnicity is not primarily conceived as a matter of relations between pre-

defined, fixed groups -such as in the ‘race relations’ or ‘ethnic competition’ approach (e.g. Banton 1983)- but rather as a process of constituting and re-configuring groups by defining the boundaries between them."

• Agent based. What kind of strategy agent use in order to deal with ethnic group boundaries?

• Agent can be individual or corporate (social movement, institutions…)

Ethnic Boundary Making • Three levels of action:

• Redraw a boundary: – Expansion or Contraction – ↑or ↓domain of people in one’s ethnic category

• Modify existing boundary

– Challenge hierarchical ordering (inversion…) – Change own position within a boundary system (ladder)

• Emphasize other, nonethnic forms of belonging

(Universal/Religion…)

Ethnic Boundary Making

• 5 Strategies: • 1)Redraw a boundary:

– Expansion – Contraction

• 2)Modify existing boundary

– Positional move – Transvaluation

• 3) Emphasize other, nonethnic forms of belonging

– Blurring

Expansion • Fusion:

– Expand Boundaries – Reduces the number of categories

• Ex. Nation-building (Incorporation A+B = A/Amalgamation A+B=C/Superposition A/B/C) – Boundary expansion: France (incorporation )

• Redefines existing ethnic group as the nation- everyone should fuse – generalize from one. A+b=A

• Ex. Ethnogenesis (“making minorities often entails second process of

shifting boundaries”) – Comanche: USA (Amalgamation of different sub groups in one ethnic

group. A+b=C)

Contraction

• Fission – Splitting categories or Shifting to lower level – Dis-identification with ascribed categories – smaller, more specific categories

• Ex: Immigrants – Resist broad Ethnic categories for specificity – ≠ “Asians” but Chinese or Taiwanese or Japanese – ≠ “Southeast Asians” but regional affiliation such as

Punjabi – ≠ In the 50s, African American elite differentiate

between “Lighter” and “Darker” black.

Transvaluation • Reinterpret or change normative principles of stratified

ethnic systems – Redefining the meaning of ethnic boundaries – Re-identification with “new” positive image, identity, culture… – Reversing stigmata of ethnic identity ascription – Ex: “Black is beautiful” vs “bloodthirsty white wolves”

• Normative inversion – Black Power – First Nations

• Moral and political equality – Civil Rights Movement, USA – Marche pour l’égalité, France

Transvaluation

Positional moves

• Status change – Boundary crossing – Re-positioning

• Assimiliation – Boundary crossing – Nation building: incorporation, fewer groups

Blurring

• Blurred boundaries • Reduce salience of ethnicity • Local community or • Global community of belonging (Religion…) • Particular or universal (Humanity/Human

Rights)

Blurring

Taxonomy of boundary-making strategies

Yugoslavia: An example of Ethnic Conflict

• “The manipulation of ethnicity: from ethnic cooperation to violence and war in Yugoslavia” Obershall

• Yugoslavia conflict: 1991-1999, implosion of the Federal republic of Yugoslavia. Wars between the republics and minorities enclave inside.

• Populations : Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Kosovars • Religions: Orthodox, Catholics, Muslims • War crimes, Mass crimes, ethnic cleansings…

“The manipulation of ethnicity: from ethnic cooperation to violence and war in Yugoslavia”

Obershall

• Before the wars, Yugoslavia was characterised by high level of cooperation and

interpersonal ethnic relation (Mixing, intermarriage, multiethnic neighbourhoods, towns and areas)

• How nationalist and ethnic haters elites were able to

receive tacit or open support from the population ? • Yugoslavs had two cognitive frames on ethnic relations: • “A cognitive frame is a mental structure which situates and connects events, people and groups into a

meaningful narrative in which the social world that one inhabits makes sense and can be communicated and shared with others (Snow et al. 1986)"

1. A cooperative frame in time of peace and security (50-90s) 2. A dormant frame anchored in family history and collective memories of

previous wars and ethnic atrocities

“The manipulation of ethnicity: from ethnic cooperation to violence and war in Yugoslavia”

Obershall

• Obershall shows the concatenation of Ethnic Manipulation/Fear-

insecurity/Cognitive frame of crisis/Organized Ethnic Violence/Ethnic cleansing

• “In the waning days of Communism, nationalists activated the crisis frame on ethnicity by playing on fears of ethnic annihilation and oppression in the mass media, in popular culture, in social movements, and in election campaigns. Élite crisis discourse resonated at the grass roots, made for ethnic polarization, and got nationalists elected. Once in office, nationalists suppressed and purged both moderates in their own ethnic group and other ethnics. They organized militias who perpetrated acts of extreme violence against innocent civilians”

• “Without the tacit, overt or confused support of the majority, the nationalist leaders could not have escalated ethnic rivalry and conèict into massive collective violence."

Extended Literature

• Race/Racialisation/Racialized State: – Wacquant, Loic J.D. « For an analytic of racial domination ». Political Power and Social

Theory 11 (1997): 221-234. Print. – Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. « Rethinking racism: Toward a structural interpretation ».

American sociological review (1997): 465–480. Print. – Loveman, Mara. « Is “Race” Essential? » American Sociological Review 64.6 (1999): 891.

CrossRef. Web. 6 avr. 2014.

• Ethnicity: – Fearon, James D., et David D. Laitin. « Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic

Identity ». International Organization 54.4 (2000): 845-877. CrossRef. Web. 21 mars 2013.

– Brubaker Rogers, et David D. Laitin. “Ethnic and Nationalist violence”. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24 (1998), pp. 423-452

– Bowen, John Richard. « The myth of global ethnic conflict ». Journal of democracy 7.4 (1996): 3–14. Print.

Questions

• Do you think that ethnic minorities exist in Sweden ? Do you think that ethnic boundary making exists in Sweden?

• Could you frame the nation building history of Sweden in Wimmer taxonomy?

• Through Obershall article and other sources that you can find, could you specify examples of ethnic manipulation and propaganda and examples of ethnic cooperation?