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Ethnic and National Identity

Ethnic and National Identity. Theories of development and change. Table of contents. The characteristics of ethnicity What ethnicity is not Immigration and cultural change. Definitions: Little agreement. 27 different definitions (Isajiw, 1974) Many different meanings (Burkey, 1978)

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Ethnic and National Identity

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  1. Ethnic and National Identity Theories of development and change

  2. Table of contents • The characteristics of ethnicity • What ethnicity is not • Immigration and cultural change

  3. Definitions: Little agreement • 27 different definitions (Isajiw, 1974) • Many different meanings (Burkey, 1978) • A cultural group • An ancestral group • A racial group • A minority group • An immigrant group • Any group that wears colorful clothes • People unlike ourselves (Banks & Gay, 1978)

  4. Definitions • Ethnic group: A social collective made up of people who are defined as sharing important cultural, physical, or ancestral attributes (Jaret) • Ethnicity: Properties of either an ethnic group as a whole or of individual members of an ethnic group, including customs, language, religion, and political and economic interests.

  5. Ethnicity is not race From C. Jaret’s Contemporary Racial and Ethnic Relations • Ethnic groups can be racial sub-categories • Racial groups can be ethnic sub-categories • Racial and ethnic groups are two kinds of groups

  6. Ethnicity is not nationality/state • A nation is a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own (dictionary.com) • A state is a territory of an [independent and autonomous] government (dictionary.com)

  7. Ethnicity is not religion From 2001 study of U.S. congregations called "Faith Communities Today” by Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religious Research

  8. Central characteristics of ethnicity • Peoplehood • Culture • Territoriality • Ethnocentrism • Ascribed membership (Essentialism)

  9. Peoplehood • Refers to a special feeling of attachment to other group members • Can have many origins • Shared ancestry • Shared sense of victimization • Shared aspirations • Can be local or cross-national • Fixed or flexible?

  10. Culture • Definitions (again) vary • Basic or core values • Human nature (good – neutral – evil) • Time (past – present – future) • Relationship between people (individualistic – collectivistic) • Institutional behavioral patterns • Language • Family roles and interaction styles • Food • Religion • Celebrations and traditions • Style and appearance

  11. Ethnocentrism • A point of view in which one’s own group is the center of everything. • Tendency to judge other groups by the standards of one’s own group • Opposite of multiculturalism • Has two outcomes • in-group cohesiveness • out-group antagonism

  12. Essence Question 1

  13. Essence Question 2

  14. Essence Question 3

  15. Descent often seen as necessary and sufficient • Sample size = 41 • Order of questions is randomized

  16. Ethnic Group? • Jews • African Americans

  17. Jews • Sense of peoplehood • Shared culture (e.g., religion, food, holidays, Hebrew/Yiddish language) • Shared connection to specific geographic territory (Israel) • Have sovereignty (in Israel) • Ethnocentrism • Essentialism: Jewish law (Halakha) specifies rules of descent

  18. African Americans • Sense of peoplehood (complicated) • No: Ancestors from different tribes from different parts of Africa • Maybe: Some feel a connection to Africa, or West Africa • Yes: History of racialization has created sense of peoplehood • Shared culture (sort of) • lots of within-group diversity • substantial overlap with mainstream culture (e.g., language) • Shared connection to specific geographic territory (No: most do not want to live in Africa • Have or want sovereignty (No)

  19. How do people reconcile multiple identities? • Are some identities more important than others? • Do some identities have a different meaning than others? • Does the country of residence influence ethnic identity (for members of the same ethnic group)?

  20. Building a Diaspora:Russian Jews in Israel, Germany and the USA Brill Press Olaf Glockner (historian) Eliezer Ben-Rafael (sociologist) Paul Harris (political scientist)

  21. Are some identities more important?

  22. The meaning of identity (U.S. data)

  23. The meaning of identity: host culture

  24. Feeling part of host culture (peoplehood)

  25. Peoplehood as function of time in host country 0=not at all 1=a little 2=moderately 3=extremely

  26. Identification with host culture

  27. How do people reconcile multiple identities? • Are some identities more important than others? • Do some identities have a different meaning than others? • Does the country of residence influence ethnic identity (for members of the same ethnic group)? Next lecture: Acculturation and cultural acquisition

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