race and ethnicity: anthropological and sociological ...inequality in income, education, and...

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Race and Ethnicity:Anthropological and

Sociological PerspectivesRaymond Scupin, Lindenwood University

In 1999, 21-year-old Benjamin Smith spent the July 4th weekend cruising in his car in Chicagoand central Indiana areas shooting at African Americans, Orthodox Jews, and Asians. In thisthree-day shooting spree, two were killed and nine were wounded before Smith shot and killedhimself during a police chase. The African American killed was Rick Birdsong, a former basket-ball coach at Northwestern University. He was jogging with his children when he was shot in theback. Won Joined Soon, a Korean graduate student at Indiana University, was killed outside of aKorean church.

Benjamin Smith was a former member of the World Church of the Creator, which iscurrently led by Matt Hale of East Peoria, Illinois. Hale refers to himself as Pontifex Maximusand teaches that only white Anglo-Saxons are true human beings, descendants of Adam and Eve.Jews are believed to be illegitimate offspring of Eve and Satan, and African Americans and otherpeople of color are descendants of inferior non-Adamite anthropoids called “mud people.” Thechurch believes that the United States should be “cleansed” of all Jews and nonwhites.The church’s Web site features a discussion of the mental inferiority of African Americans, witha reference to Canadian psychologist Philippe Rushton’s “scientific” research confirmingthis view.

Although groups such as the World Church of the Creator are small, with only a fewthousand members, their influence seems to be on the rise. For many years, most social scientistsbelieved that racism and ethnic conflict were going to decline. However, the Southern PovertyLaw Center (splcenter.org), a group that has been a leading authority on reporting hate groups,indicates that since 2000 there are a record number of 926 hate groups in the United States, anincrease of more than 50 percent. These hate groups include Klu Klux Klan cells, Neo-Nazisects, white nationalists, racist skinheads, and other merchants of hate. Despite the fact that thecurrent U.S. president is an African American and the United States has politicians who are

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President Barack Obama.

2 Chapter 1 • Race and Ethnicity: Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives

Jewish, Muslim, and Hispanic, hate groups andracism are still a reality in U.S. society and theworld.

Some commentators have suggested thatsince Obama was elected as president, the UnitedStates has become a post-racial society. Inone major interpretation of this post-racial phe-nomenon, Obama represents the fulfillment ofDr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famed “I Have aDream” speech in 1963 in which he suggested afuture U.S. society where all humans would bejudged by the content of their character, ratherthan the color of their skin. This interpretation ofpost-racial suggests that President Obama’s elec-tion has ended prejudice and discrimination basedon skin color or ethnicity and the reduction ofinequality in income, education, and politicalpower. However, as the various chapters in thistextbook will indicate, the term post-racialappears to be a greatly exaggerated interpretationof Barack Obama’s 2008 election. Racial prejudice

and discrimination persists in U.S. society (andelsewhere throughout the world). The claim thatrace or ethnicity does not matter any longer in theUnited States or elsewhere has to be viewed witha great deal of skepticism.

And in other parts of the world, extremistracist and ethnic groups have emerged within thepast two decades. For example, in the former EastGermany there has been a rise of a neo-Nazimovement among German youth who resent theimmigration of nonwhites into their society.Ethnic extremism among the Hutu and Tutsipeoples in Central Africa has resulted in tragicgenocidal policies. Conflicts among Serbs,Croatians, and Bosnians in Yugoslavia, Tamilsand Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Jews and Arabs inIsrael, and so-called “white Europeans” and “peo-ple of color” in the United States are ongoing.Everywhere one looks, ethnic conflict seems tobe emerging worldwide. Although the causes ofthese conflicts are very complex, ethnic and raceconflicts remain a continuing global problem inthe twenty-first century.

Currently, we live in societies that arebecoming more globalized, with more extensivecontact among peoples of different ethnic back-grounds and cultures. Globalization refers to theexpansion and interlinking of the world’s econ-omy through the spread of market capitalism,communications technology, and industrializa-tion and their consequences. One of the results ofglobalization has been the transfer of capital,technology, labor, and media throughout theworld. Global migration trends have been radi-cally transformed since the 1950s. Immigrationfrom Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia,Africa, and the Middle East—the so-called ThirdWorld—to the industrial societies of Europe,the United States, Australia, and Canada hasincreased substantially. For example, Englandand France have growing numbers of immigrantsfrom their former colonies in Africa and Asia.Furthermore, the societies in the Third World arealso being transformed by new trends in immigra-tion. Refugees and migrants are becomingincreasingly mobile throughout the world.

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Chapter 1 • Race and Ethnicity: Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives 3

Societies that may have been very homogeneousor ethnically similar in the past are now facingquestions about their increasing multicultural andmultiethnic differences.

As we will see in later chapters, U.S. societyin the nineteenth and early twentieth centuriesfaced similar issues. Immigrants flowed into theUnited States from many areas of the world.Currently, the United States is again encounteringthe challenge of multiculturalism. For example, atypical elementary school in Los Angeles mayhave as many as 20 different native languages spo-ken by members of the school population. In 2000,California became the first U.S. state where thewhite ethnic population became a minority. Due tothe increase of Hispanic and Asian populations,the white ethnic population was 49.9 percent.Event calendars in daily newspapers announceethnic festivals in major U.S. cities that originatedin many nations. All of these changes haveresulted in some reservations regarding the newethnic patterns and multiculturalism in the UnitedStates. In 1991, the distinguished historian ArthurSchlesinger wrote a book entitled The Disunitingof America, which argued that ethnic and racialseparatism was the major obstacle for a truly inte-grated multicultural society in the United States.Schlesinger believes that extreme versions of mul-ticultural education and what he terms the “cult ofethnicity” are tearing apart the U.S. social andpolitical fabric. He suggests that the growingemphasis on multicultural heritage exalts racialand ethnic pride at the expense of social and polit-ical cohesion. On the other hand, other scholars,such as Nathan Glazer in his book We Are AllMulticulturalists Now, argue that all childrenshould be taught mutual tolerance and respect forall of the various ethnic groups in U.S. society.

As societies become more multicultural andmultiethnic, they confront new challenges. Inmany circumstances, ethnic groups may be incompetition with each other over political andeconomic resources. In other cases, they may be atodds over religious or other cultural differences.Conversely, some people are benefiting from themulticultural trends in their society by learning

from one another’s cultures, thereby discoveringthat multicultural environments can enrich one’sexperience and be extremely rewarding.

In any case, many people are seekinganswers to basic questions regarding these newchanges in race and ethnic trends within their soci-eties in the twenty-first century. What are thereasons for these continuing race and ethnic con-flicts and problems? Do the claims of people likeMatt Hale and the World Church about superiorand inferior racial groups have any scientificvalidity? What are the significant distinctionsamong the races? What is the difference betweenrace and ethnicity? What is the basis of one’sethnic identity? Why do some societies andcountries have less race and ethnic conflict thanothers? Why has there been a recent increase inracial and ethnic conflict around the globe? Havethese racial and ethnic conflicts always existed?Under what conditions do increases in race andethnic conflict occur? Under what societal condi-tions do race and ethnic prejudice and discrimina-tion develop? In what interracial and interethnicsituations can race and ethnic prejudice bereduced? Under what conditions do differentethnic groups live peaceably together and benefitfrom each other’s experience?

Sociologists and anthropologists are cur-rently engaged in major research efforts in anattempt to answer some of these questions. Infact, both disciplines have an intimate acquain-tanceship with questions about race and ethnicityissues. Anthropology was the first field devotedto systematic scientific investigations into ques-tions about race and ethnicity. These questionspersist as one of the fundamental prioritieswithin the research efforts of contemporaryanthropologists.

This textbook will cover some of the mostimportant research on race and ethnicity by bothsociologists and anthropologists. Although theauthors of the various chapters are anthropolo-gists, most of them have drawn from sociologicalstudies, too. But, first, we will discuss the interre-lationship between these questions about race andethnicity and the discipline of anthropology.

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ANTHROPOLOGY: THE FOUR FIELDSAND RACE AND ETHNICITY ISSUES

The word anthropology stems from the Greekwords anthropo, meaning “human beings” or“humankind,” and logia, translated as “knowledgeof” or “the study of.” Thus, we can define anthro-pology as the systematic study of humankind. Thefield of anthropology emerged in Western societyin an attempt to understand non-Western peoples.Europeans, including Christopher Columbus, hadbeen exploring and colonizing the world since thefifteenth century. They had encounters with non-Western peoples in the Americas, Africa, theMiddle East, and Asia. Various European travel-ers, missionaries, and government officials haddescribed some of these non-Western societies,cultures, and races. By the nineteenth century,anthropology had developed into the primarydiscipline and science for understanding thesenon-Western societies, races, and cultures. Themajor questions that these early nineteenth-century anthropologists grappled with had to dowith the basic differences and similarities ofhuman societies, cultures, and races throughoutthe world.

The predominant explanation that nine-teenth-century anthropologists offered to explainthe differences and similarities among humansocieties, cultures, and races became known asunilineal evolution. Charles Darwin had devel-oped his theory regarding the evolution of life in1859, with the publication of his book On theOrigin of Species. Many anthropologists of thenineteenth century were influenced by Darwin’sthesis, and attempted to apply these evolutionaryconcepts to the study of human societies, cul-tures, and races. These early anthropologists tookthe descriptions of early historians, archaeolo-gists, classical scholars, travelers, missionaries,and colonial officials for their basic data. Basedon these data, they proposed that all societies andcultures had developed from early, original“savage” stages through a stage of “barbarian-ism,” and eventually some evolved into “civi-lized” stages. Thus, these early anthropologistsdeveloped models of the stages of humankind’s

universal history using the concept of unilinealevolution.1 They constructed a model of a hierar-chy of societies that could be ranked from savageto civilized based on differences in society,culture, technology, and race.

Since the nineteenth century, anthropologyas a field has continued its research efforts of dif-ferent societies, cultures, and “races.” However,beginning in the twentieth century, many of theideas of nineteenth-century theorists were thor-oughly criticized and debunked through systematicand scientific research techniques. The efforts ofnineteenth-century anthropologists need to beunderstood within their own historical setting.These early anthropologists did not have a veryprecise understanding of the concept of “culture,”nor did they comprehend the roles of genetics andheredity. The development of a more thoroughconcept of culture and a scientific understanding ofheredity and genetics did not develop until thetwentieth century. Because of their limited under-standing of culture and heredity, they laboredunder many misconceptions about non-Westernsocieties, cultures, and races. One of the basicunderlying assumptions was that their own societyand culture were superior to those of any other.This is an example of what is known as ethno-centrism, the belief that one’s own society andculture are superior to any other. In addition,during the nineteenth century, most of these earlyanthropologists were convinced that their ownso-called “race” was superior to that of any other“race.” This is known as racism, the belief thatthere are distinctive biological “races” and that onecan rank and categorize superior and inferiorbiological “races” within the human species.

It was only after twentieth-century anthro-pologists absorbed the new findings of geneticsand heredity, developed a more sophisticatedcomprehension of the concept of culture, and hada better appreciation of concepts of “race” and“ethnicity” that these earlier views could becriticized exhaustively. One of the major anthro-pological projects that critiqued these early viewswas associated with the efforts of Franz Boas(1858–1942). Boas had been born, educated, andtrained in physics in Germany. Later, he became


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interested in geography and culture and didresearch among the Eskimo in the CanadianArctic. Through these experiences he turned to thestudy of anthropology, immigrated to the UnitedStates, and taught for many years at ColumbiaUniversity. While at Columbia, Boas and hisstudents carried out extensive research in physicalanthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and cul-tural anthropology (or ethnology), providing thecontemporary foundations for the systematicinvestigation of such topics as race, culture, andethnicity (Degler 1991; Stocking 1968). One ofthe primary aspects of research that Boas empha-sized was the “fieldwork” experience in anthro-pology. Instead of speculating on various theoriesabout the evolution of culture based on writtenmaterials, anthropologists had to go into the“field” and do empirical research among thepeople in different societies.

In the United States, Boas’s research activi-ties developed into what has become known as the“four-field approach” within anthropology. MostU.S. anthropology programs feature four sub-disciplines, or subfields, that bridge the naturalsciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.These four subdisciplines—physical anthropol-ogy, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, andethnology—give anthropologists a broad, holisticapproach to the study of humanity through spaceand time. In addition, all four of these fields haveenabled contemporary anthropologists to con-tribute significantly toward the study of race andethnicity. Though these four subfields demarcatethe fields within which most anthropologicalresearch is conducted, we need to emphasize thatwithin these four fields anthropologists draw onthe findings of many other disciplines, such asbiology, history, psychology, economics, sociol-ogy, and political science, to examine race andethnic relations. These four fields, however, offeranthropologists a unique perspective for assessingquestions of race and ethnicity.

Physical Anthropology

Physical anthropology (or biological anthropol-ogy) is the branch of anthropology most closely

related to the natural sciences. Physical anthro-pologists conduct research in two major areas:human evolution and human variation. Themajority of physical anthropologists focus onhuman evolution. Some investigate fossils, thepreserved remains of bones and living materialsfrom earlier periods, to reconstruct the evolutionand anatomical characteristics of early humanancestors. The study of human evolution throughanalysis of fossils is called paleoanthropology(the prefix paleo means “old” or “prehistoric”).Paleoanthropologists use a variety of sophisti-cated scientific techniques to date, classify, andcompare fossil bones in order to determine thelinks between modern humans and their biologi-cal ancestors. For example, paleoanthropologistsare studying the relationship of early populationsof Homo erectus and Neandertals to determinetheir precise connections with modern humans.

As we will see in Chapter 3, on race, pale-oanthropologists have been doing basic researchon the evolution of physical characteristics ofancestral populations in all parts of the world.Paleoanthropologists have developed elaboratetechniques to measure observable physical char-acteristics of humans based on their fossilremains, primarily fossil bones and teeth. Earlypaleoanthropologists tried to establish clear-cutcriteria for distinguishing the evolution of various“races” in different regions of the world.However, modern paleoanthropologists have con-cluded that these early attempts were based onsimplistic categories of racial differences. Today,paleoanthropologists have much more sophisti-cated methods and techniques for differentiatingancestral human populations, and they exerciseextreme caution when evaluating the evolution ofdifferent races.

Another group of physical anthropologistsfocuses their research on the range of physicalvariation within and among different “modern”human populations. These physical anthro-pologists study human variation by measuringphysical characteristics such as body size, bycomparing blood types, and by examining differ-ences in skin color or hair texture. Human osteol-ogy is the particular area of specialization within

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physical anthropology dealing with the compara-tive study of the human skeleton and teeth.Physical anthropologists are also interested inevaluating how disparate physical characteristicsreflect evolutionary adaptations to different envi-ronmental conditions, thus shedding light on whyhuman populations vary. Noting how specificphysical traits have enabled these populations toadapt to different geographic environments, theseanthropologists reveal how human populationshave developed. Early physical anthropologistswanted to use biological attributes to classify var-ious living populations throughout the world intodistinctive “races.” Eventually, however, physicalanthropologists developed advanced researchtechniques and methods that led to the abandon-ment of simplistic constructions of “race” amonghuman populations. As physical anthropologistshave learned more about physical variationamong human populations, they became moreaware of how difficult it was to classify humansinto distinguishable “racial” populations. Theydiscovered that traditional biological charac-teristics such as skin color did not necessarilycorrelate with other physical characteristics thatdemarcate one “race” from another. In fact, thevast majority of anthropologists have rejected theconcept of “race” as a useful scientific concept.Thus, today, physical anthropologists havelearned to be extremely careful with their assess-ment procedures in attempting to study biologicalcharacteristics and classifications among humanpopulations.

An increasingly important area of researchfor some physical anthropologists is genetics, thestudy of the biological “blueprints” that dictatethe inheritance of physical characteristics.Research on genetics examines a wide variety ofquestions. It has, for example, been important inidentifying the genetic sources of some diseasessuch as sickle-cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, andTay-Sachs disease. Genetics has also become anincreasingly important complement to paleoan-thropological research. Through the study of thegenetic makeup of modern humans, geneticistshave been working on calculating the genetic dis-tance among modern humans, thus providing a

possible means of inferring evolutionary relation-ships within the species. For example, geneticstudies have been used to determine the physicaland evolutionary connections between NativeAmerican Indians and Asian peoples.

Archaeology

Through archaeology, the branch of anthropologythat seeks out and examines the artifacts of pastsocieties, we learn much about the lifestyles,history, and evolution of those societies. Artifacts,the material remains of former societies, providetangible clues to the lifestyle, environments, andpolitical economies of extinct societies. Somearchaeologists investigate past societies that didnot have written documents through which to leavea record of their past. Known as prehistoricarchaeologists, these researchers study the artifactsof groups such as Native Americans to understandhow these people lived. Other archaeologists,called classical archaeologists, conduct researchon ancient civilizations, such as Egyptian, Greek,and Roman, in collaboration with historians andlinguists. Another group of archaeologists, knownas historical archaeologists, pursue research withhistorians and investigate the artifacts of societiesof the more recent past. For example, many histor-ical archaeologists are probing the remains of plan-tations in the southern United States to gain anunderstanding of the lifestyles of slaves and slaveowners during the nineteenth century.

Only after intensive analysis do archaeolo-gists cautiously interpret the data they havecollected and begin to generalize about a past soci-ety. Unlike the glorified adventures of fictionalarchaeologists, the real-world field of archaeologythrives on the intellectually challenging adventureof careful, systematic, detail-oriented scientificresearch that enhances our understanding of pastsocieties.

Modern archaeologists have developed agreater in-depth understanding of past societies invarious parts of the world, and have shown howenvironmental circumstances and prehistoric orhistoric conditions have influenced the societaldevelopment of human populations in different

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regions. They have illuminated through carefulresearch how nineteenth-century archaeologistswere misled by their simplistic categorizations,and racist and ethnocentric beliefs, in assessingthe societal developments of other cultures. Thus,recent archaeological research has refuted racistand ethnocentric views about non-European ornon-Western societies.

Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistics, the study of language, has a longhistory that dovetails with the discipline of phi-losophy, but it is also one of the integral subfieldsof anthropology. Linguistic anthropology focuseson the relationship between language and culture,how language is used within society, and how thehuman brain acquires and uses language. FranzBoas was the founder of linguistic anthropologyin North America, and his pioneering linguisticresearch revolutionized the study of language,culture, and ethnicity.

As do researchers in other fields withinanthropology, linguistic anthropologists seek todiscover the ways in which languages are differentfrom each other as well as how they are similar.Two wide-ranging areas of research in linguisticanthropology are structural linguistics andhistorical linguistics. Structural linguisticsexplores how language works. Structural linguistscompare grammatical patterns and other linguisticelements to learn how contemporary languagesmirror and differ from one another. Structurallinguistics has uncovered some intriguing rela-tionships between language and thought patternsamong different groups of people. Do people whospeak different languages with different grammat-ical structures think and perceive the world differ-ently from each other? For instance, do nativeChinese speakers think or view the world and lifeexperiences differently from native English speak-ers? This is just one of the questions that structurallinguists attempt to answer. Such questions bearon the relationship among language, culture, andethnicity.

Linguistic anthropologists also examine theconnections between language and social behavior

in different cultures. This specialty, called socio-linguistics, focuses on both how language is usedto define social groups and how belonging toparticular groups leads to specialized languageuse. For example, a number of linguists have beendoing research on Ebonics, a distinctive variety ofAmerican English spoken by some AfricanAmericans. The term Ebonics is derived from thewords “ebony” and “phonics,” meaning “blackspeech sounds” (Rickford 1997). These linguisticanthropologists find that Ebonics is no more alazy form of English than Italian is a lazy form ofLatin. Instead, Ebonics is a different languagewith systematically ordered grammar and pro-nunciation usages. Linguistic research such asthis has helped to undo racist and ethnocentricassumptions about various ethnic minorities.

Another area of research of interest tolinguistic anthropologists is historical linguistics.Historical linguistics concentrates on the compar-ison and classification of different languages todiscern their historical links. By examining andanalyzing grammatical structures and sounds oflanguages, researchers are able to discover rulesfor how languages change over time, as well aswhich languages are related to each other histori-cally. This type of historical linguistic research isparticularly useful in tracing the migration routesof various groups through time, confirmingarchaeological and paleoanthropological datagathered independently. For example, historicallinguistics has been used to confirm the migrationof the Navajo Native American Indians fromCanada down into the southwest region of theUnited States.

Cultural Anthropology

Cultural anthropology is the subfield of anthro-pology that examines contemporary societies.Contemporary cultural anthropologists do field-work in all parts of the world, from the tropical rainforests of Africa and Latin America to the Arcticregions of Canada, from the deserts of the MiddleEast to the urban areas of China. Until recently,most cultural anthropologists conducted researchon non-Western or remote cultures in Africa, Asia,

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the Middle East, Latin America, and the PacificIslands, and on the Native American populations inthe United States. Today, however, many anthro-pologists are doing research on their own culturesin order to gain a better understanding of theirinstitutions and cultural values. In fact, as will beseen in chapters in Part II, which focuses on theUnited States, ethnographers have been activelyengaged in research on ethnic groups in the UnitedStates for decades.

Cultural anthropologists use a uniqueresearch strategy in conducting their fieldwork indifferent settings. Unlike the early nineteenth-century “armchair” anthropologists, contempo-rary ethnologists live for an extended amount oftime within the societies that they study. TheAmerican Franz Boas and the Polish-born BritishBronislaw Malinowski are two examples of thosewho used this important research strategy intwentieth-century anthropology. They knew thatthe early studies relied too heavily on superficial,nonquantifiable descriptions and comparisonsfrom classical scholars, travelers, missionaries,and colonial government officials.

Boas and Malinowski promoted and institu-tionalized the practice of doing intensive fieldworkin the various societies around the world—aresearch strategy called participant observation,which involves learning the language and cultureof the group being studied by participating in thegroup’s daily activities. Through this intensive par-ticipation, the ethnologist becomes deeply familiarwith the group and can understand and explain thesociety and culture of the group as an insider.Presently, many anthropologists use the term eticto refer to the description of the culture by theanthropologist, and emic to refer to the natives’point of view of their culture.2

The results of the fieldwork of the culturalanthropologists are written up as an ethnography,a description of a society. The typical ethnographydescribes the environmental setting, economicpatterns, social organization, political system,and religious rituals and beliefs of the societyunder study. However, some ethnographies con-centrate on particular areas such as religiousbeliefs and practices, whereas others may focus on

environmental conditions or political institutions.The description of a society is based on whatanthropologists call ethnographic data. The gath-ering of ethnographic data in a systematic manneris the specific research goal of the ethnologist orcultural anthropologist. Some anthropologists useethnographic data to do comparative cross-cul-tural studies of different societies. These compara-tive studies are extremely important in discoveringboth differences and similarities among peoplethroughout the world—one of the major objec-tives of the anthropological project.

Most contemporary cultural anthropolo-gists do their research in a much more differentmanner than Boas or Malinowski did in thebeginning of the twentieth century. Today, in thetwenty-first century, many of the so-called nativeswith whom ethnographers interact are combiningtheir traditional understanding of their own cul-ture with formal education, and some are evenchoosing to become anthropologists themselves.Thus, cultural anthropologists are becoming morelike colleagues with the people they are studying,collaborating on research projects together.Instead of the “lone ranger” cultural anthropolo-gist doing research alone on an island amongisolated tribal populations, contemporary anthro-pologists are more likely to reside in urban areasand work with teams of people from the nativepopulation to comprehend the effects of global-ization and related processes and change withinlocal regions of the world. And, as we will see inthis text, many present-day cultural anthropolo-gists are working with ethnic groups within theirown society and collaborating on research pro-jects to gain insights into ethnic interaction andcultural change within multicultural societies.

Most U.S. anthropologists are exposed toall four subfields of anthropology in their educa-tion. Because of all the research being done inthese different fields, however, with more than300 journals and 100 of books published everyyear dealing with anthropological research, noone individual can keep abreast of all the develop-ments across the discipline’s full spectrum.Consequently, anthropologists usually specializein one of the four subfields. Though the four-field

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approach tends to be an ideal for anthropology inthis age of proliferating information and researchdata, the research in these different disciplineshas been important in establishing basic conclu-sions regarding race, culture, and ethnicity.

As emphasized earlier, anthropology doesnot limit itself to its own four subfields to realizeits research agenda. Although it stands as a dis-tinct discipline, anthropology is interdisciplinaryand has strong links to other fields of study.Cultural anthropology, for instance, is closelyrelated to the fields of history, cultural studies,and in particular sociology. In the past, culturalanthropologists examined traditional, whereassociologists focused on modern societies. Today,cultural anthropologists and sociologists exploremany of the same societies using similar researchapproaches. For example, both rely on statisticaland nonstatistical data whenever appropriate intheir studies of different types of societies. Inlater chapters, we will see how basic sociologicalresearch has informed ethnographic studies ofethnicity. A recent, allied field that has influencedanthropology is cultural studies, which combinesa number of disciplines with the concept of cul-ture to do research on a number of topics relatedto ethnic and race relations. Likewise, anthropol-ogy dovetails considerably with the field ofhistory, which, like anthropology, encompasses abroad range of events. Studies of ethnicity couldnot be conducted without a comprehensive histor-ical perspective. These fields, as well as others,which will become evident throughout this text-book, have contributed to the anthropologicalperspective on race and ethnic relations.

Through their interdisciplinary approach,sociologists and anthropologists have emphasizedboth a holistic and a global perspective. The holis-tic and global perspectives enable sociologists and

anthropologists to consider the biological, envi-ronmental, psychological, economic, historical,social, and cultural conditions of humans at alltimes and in all places. Sociologists and anthro-pologists do not limit themselves to understandinga particular ethnic group or set of societies but,rather, they attempt to demonstrate the intercon-nections among different societies. This combinedholistic and global perspective is used throughoutthis text to demonstrate how different ethnicgroups have developed unique interrelationshipsand patterns throughout the world.

In this age of rapid communication, world-wide travel, and increasing economic interconnec-tions, young people preparing for careers in thetwenty-first century must recognize and be able todeal with the cultural and ethnic differences thatexist among peoples while also understanding thefundamental similarities that make us all distinctlyhuman. In this age of cultural diversity andincreasing internationalization, sustaining thisdual perception, of underlying similar humancharacteristics and outward cultural differences,has both practical and moral benefits. Althoughnationalistic, ethnic, and racial bigotry are rife inmany parts of the world, our continuing survivaland successful adaptation depend on greatermutual understanding and cooperation. Anthro-pology promotes a cross-cultural perspective thatallows us to see ourselves as part of one humanfamily in the midst of tremendous diversity. Oursociety needs citizens that have skills in empathy,tolerance of others, and an understanding of acomplex interlocking world. We need world citi-zens who can function in inescapably multiculturaland multinational environments to work coopera-tively and become productive citizens, as well ashelping to solve humanity’s pressing problems ofbigotry, poverty, and violence.

References Cited

DEGLER, CARL N. 1991. In Search of Human Nature: TheDecline and the Revival of Darwinism in AmericanSocial Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

RICKFORD, JOHN R. 1997. Suite for ebony and phonics.Discovery 18(2):82–87.

STOCKING, JR., GEORGE W. 1982 [1968]. Race, Culture,and Evolution: Essays in the History ofAnthropology. Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress.

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Notes

1. The British Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917) is oneof the best-known nineteenth-century anthropol-ogists. Tylor’s major anthropological andtheoretical works are Primitive Culture, 2 vols(volume 2 is titled Religion in Primitive Culture,part II of Primitive Culture, Harper Torchbooks,1871/1958); Researches into the Early Historyof Mankind and the Development of Civilization(John Murray, 1881); and Anthropology: AnIntroduction to the Study of Man (D. Appleton,1881/1898). The other well-known nineteenth-century anthropologist is the American LewisHenry Morgan (1818–1881). Morgan did anearly anthropological work entitled League ofthe Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois (2 vols, NewYork), a detailed description of one group of

Seneca Indians living in upstate New York.Morgan’s later work included a cross-culturalanalysis text called Ancient Society (1877),which had an enormous influence on nineteenth-century thought.

2. The terms etic and emic are derived from thewords “phonetic” and “phonemic,” as used inlinguistics. Phonetics refers to the different typesof sound units in languages. Thus, there is anInternational Phonetic Alphabet used to desig-nate various sound units of languages through-out the world. In contrast, a phoneme is a soundunit that is understood to have a meaning withina particular language. Phonemics refers to thesound units understood by the native speaker ofa specific language.

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