Polyethnicity refers to the proximity of people from different ethnic backgrounds within a country or other specific geographic region. It also relates to the ability and willingness of individuals to identify themselves with multiple ethnicities. It occurs when multiple ethnicities inhabit a given area, specifically through means of immigration, intermarriage, trade, conquest and post-war land-divisions. This has had many political and social implications on countries and regions.
Many, if not all, countries have some degree of polyethnicity, with countries like Nigeria and Canada having high levels and countries like Japan and Poland having very low levels (and more specifically, a sense of homogeneity). The amount of polyethnicity prevalent in some Western countries
has spurred some arguments against it, which include a belief that it
leads to the weakening of each society's strengths, and also a belief
that political-ethnic issues in countries with polyethnic populations
are better handled with different laws for certain ethnicities.
Conceptual history
In 1985, Canadian historian William H. McNeill gave a series of three lectures on polyethnicity in ancient and modern cultures at the University of Toronto. The main thesis throughout the lectures was the argument that it has been the cultural norm
for societies to be composed of different ethnic groups. McNeill argues
that the ideal of homogeneous societies may have grown between 1750 and
1920 in Western Europe due to a growth in the belief in a single nationalistic base for the political organization of society. McNeill believes that World War I was the point in time when the desire for homogeneous nations began to weaken.
Impact on politics
Polyethnicity divides nations, complicating the politics as local and national governments attempt to satisfy all ethnic groups. Many politicians in countries attempt to find the balance between ethnic identities within their country and the identity of the nation as a whole. Nationalism also plays a large part in these political debates, as cultural pluralism and consociationalism are the democratic alternatives to nationalism for the polyethnic state.
The idea of nationalism being social instead of ethnic entails a
variety of culture, a shared sense of identity and a community not based
on descent. Culturally-plural states vary constitutionally between a decentralized and unitary state (such as the United Kingdom) and a federal state (such as Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada). Ethnic parties in these polyethnic regions are not anti-state but instead seek maximum power within this state. Many polyethnic countries face that dilemma with their policy decisions. The following nations and regions are just a few specific examples of this dilemma and its effects:
The United States is a nation founded by different ethnicities frequently described as coming together in a "melting pot," a term used to emphasize the degree to which constituent groups influence and are influenced by each other, or a "salad bowl,"
a term more recently coined in contrast to the "melting pot" metaphor
and emphasizing those groups' retention of fundamentally distinct
identities despite their proximity to each other and their influence on
the overall culture that all of those groups inhabit.
A controversial political issue in recent years has been the question of bilingualism. Many immigrants have come from Hispanic America, who are native Spanish speakers, in the past centuries and have become a significant minority and even a majority in many areas of the Southwest. In New Mexico the Spanish speaking population exceeds 40%.
Disputes have emerged over language policy, since a sizeable part of
the population, and in many areas the majority of the population, speak
Spanish as a native language.
The biggest debates are over bilingual education for language
minority students, the availability of non-English ballots and election
materials and whether or not English is the official language. It has evolved into an ethnic conflict
between the pluralists who support bilingualism and linguistic access
and the assimilationists who strongly oppose this and lead the official English movement. The United States does not have an official language, but English is the de facto national language and is spoken by the overwhelming majority of the country's population.
Canada
Canada has had many political debates between the French speakers and English speakers, particularly in the province of Quebec. Canada holds both French and English as official languages. The politics in Quebec are largely defined by nationalism as French Québécois wish to gain independence from Canada as a whole, based on ethnic and linguistic boundaries. The main separatist party, Parti Québécois, attempted to gain sovereignty twice (once in 1980 and again in 1995) and failed by a narrow margin of 1.2% in 1995. Since then, in order to remain united, Canada granted Quebec statut particulier, recognizing Quebec as a nation within the united nation of Canada.
Belgium
The divide between the Dutch-speaking north (Flanders) and the French-speaking South (Wallonia) has caused the parliamentary democracy to become ethnically polarized. Though an equal number of seats in the Chamber of Representatives are prescribed to the Flemish and Walloons, Belgian political parties have all divided into two ideologically identical but linguistically and ethnically different parties. The political crisis has grown so bad in recent years that the partition of Belgium has been feared.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is a polyethnic nation consisting of 80 different ethnic groups and 84 indigenous languages.
The diverse population and the rural areas throughout the nation made
it nearly impossible to create a strong centralized state, but it was
eventually accomplished through political evolution.
Prior to 1974, nationalism was discussed only within radical student
groups, but by the late 20th century, the issue had come to the
forefront of political debate.
Ethiopia was forced to modernize their political system to properly handle nationalism debates. The Derg military government took control with a Marxist–Leninist ideology, urging self-determination and rejecting compromise over any nationality issues. In the 1980s, Ethiopia suffered a series of famines and after the USSR broke apart, it lost their aid from the Soviet Union and the Derg government collapsed. Eventually Ethiopia restabilized and adopted a modern political system that models a federal parliamentary republic.
It was still impossible to create a central government holding all power and so the government was torn.
The central federal government now presides over ethnically-based
regional states and each ethnic state is granted the right to establish
their own government and democracy.
Spain
In Spain from 1808 to 1814, the Spanish War of Independence took place in a multicultural Spain. Spain, at the time, was under the control of King Joseph, who was Napoleon I of France's brother. Because the nation was under the control of French rule, the Spanish formed coalitions of ethnic groups to reclaim their own political representation to replace the French political system then in power.
Significant long-distance labor migration that occurred during
the late 19th century and the early 20th century provided many different
types of ethnic diversity. Relations between the indigenous population of the region arose from regional variations of cultural and linguistic groups. Immigrant minorities, especially the Chinese, then developed as well.
Although there were extreme political differences for each minority and
religion, they were still legitimate members of political communities,
and there has been a significant amount of unity throughout history. This differs from both nearby East and South Asia.
Impact on society
Polyethnicity, over time, can change the way societies practice cultural norms.
Marriage
An increase in intermarriage in the United States has led to the blurring of ethnic lines. Anti-miscegenation laws
(laws banning interracial marriages) were abolished in the United
States in 1967 and now it is estimated that one-fifth of the population
in the United States by 2050 will be part of the polyethnic population. In 2000, self-identified Multiracial Americans numbered 6.8 million or 2.4% of the population.
While the number of interethnic marriages is on the rise, there are
certain ethnic groups that have been found more likely to become
polyethnic and recognize themselves with more than one ethnic
background. Bhavani Arabandi states in his article on polyethnicity
that:
Asians and Latinos have much higher rates of interethnic marriages
than do blacks, and they are more likely to report polyethnicity than
blacks who more often claim a single ethnicity and racial identity. This
is the case, the authors [Lee, J & Bean, F.D] argue, because blacks
have a "legacy of slavery," a history of discrimination, and have been
victimized by the "one drop rule" (where having any black blood
automatically labeled one as black) in the US.
Military
Maj.
Gen. William B. Garrett III, commander of U.S. Army Africa, Gen.
Nyakayirima Aronda, Chief of Defense Forces, Ugandan People's Defense
Force and Gen. Jeremiah Kianga, Chief of General Staff, Kenya, render
honors during the opening ceremony for Natural Fire 10, Kitgum, Uganda,
Oct. 16, 2009.
Presently, most armed forces are composed of people from different ethnic backgrounds. They are considered to be polyethnic due to the differences in race, ethnicity, language or background.
While there are many examples of polyethnic forces, the most prominent
are among the largest armed forces in the world, including those of the
United States, the former USSR and China. Polyethnic armed forces are not a new phenomenon; multi-ethnic forces have been in existence since the ancient Roman Empire, Middle Eastern Empires and even the Mongol Khans. The U.S. Military was one of the first modern militaries to begin ethnic integration, by order of President Truman in 1945.
Criticisms
There are also arguments against polyethnicity, as well as the assimilation of ethnicities in polyethnic regions. Wilmot Robertson in The Ethnostate and Dennis L. Thomson in The Political Demands of Isolated Indian Bands in British Columbia, argue for some level of separatism.
In The Ethnostate, Robertson declares polyethnicity as an ideal that only lessens each culture.
He believes that, within a polyethnic culture, the nation or region as a
whole is less capable of cultural culmination than each of the
individual ethnicities that make it up. Essentially, polyethnicity promotes the dilution of ethnicity and thus hinders each ethnicity in all aspects of culture.
In The Political Demands of Isolated Indian Bands in British Columbia, Thomson points out the benefits in some level (albeit small) of separatist policies. He argues the benefits of allowing ethnic groups, like the Amish and the Hutterites in the United States and Canada or the Sami in Norway, to live on the edges of governance.
These are ethnic groups that would prefer to retain their ethnic
identity and thus prefer separatist policies for themselves, as they do
not require them to conform to policies for all ethnicities of the
nation.
An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of presumed similarities such as common language, ancestry, history, society, culture, nation or social treatment within their residing area. 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.
The largest ethnic groups in modern times comprise hundreds of millions of individuals (Han Chinese being the 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.
The term ethnic is derived from the Greek word ἔθνοςethnos (more precisely, from the adjective ἐθνικός ethnikos, 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 Christianoikumene), as the Septuagint used ta ethne ("the nations") to translate the Hebrew goyim "the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews". 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").
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, 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. 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:
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
shared descent (ὅμαιμον - homaimon, "of the same blood"),
shared language (ὁμόγλωσσον - homoglōsson, "speaking the same language")
shared sanctuaries and sacrifices (Greek: θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι - theōn hidrumata te koina kai thusiai)
shared customs (Greek: ἤθεα ὁμότροπα - ēthea homotropa, "customs of like fashion").
Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists, such as anthropologistsFredrik 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.
One is between "primordialism" and "instrumentalism". In the primordialist view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as an externally given, even coercive, social bond. 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. This debate is still an important point of reference in Political science, although most scholars' approaches fall between the two poles.
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. Essentialists view such identities as ontological categories defining social actors.
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 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.
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.
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:
[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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
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.
"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". 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.
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".
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.
"Constructivism" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed,
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. 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 anthropologistsFredrik 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.
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.
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.
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". 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.
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. 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.
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.
Moreover, 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 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."
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.
Ethnicity and nationality
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 and Benedict Anderson
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. Under these conditions– when people moved from one state to another, 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 Germany or the 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)
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.
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.
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.
Race and ethnicity are considered as
related concepts. 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. It is assumed
that, based on power relations, there exist "racialized ethnicities"
and "ethnicized races". 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.
Before Weber (1864-1920), race and ethnicity were primarily seen
as two aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before, the
essentialist primordialist understanding of ethnicity predominated:
cultural differences between peoples were seen as being the result of
inherited traits and tendencies.
With Weber's introduction of the idea of ethnicity as a social
construct, race and ethnicity became more divided from each other.
"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'."
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.
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'.
In the U.S., the OMB
defines the concept of race as outlined for the US Census as 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".
Ethno-national 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).
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
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.
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.
A number of European countries, including France, 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 Roma, pejoratively known as Gypsies. They originated from India and speak the Romani language.
Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature is an 1863 book by Thomas Henry Huxley, in which he gives evidence for the evolution of man and apes from a common ancestor. It was the first book devoted to the topic of human evolution,
and discussed much of the anatomical and other evidence. Backed by this
evidence, the book proposed to a wide readership that evolution applied
as fully to man as to all other life.
Precursors of the idea
This
illustration was the frontispiece. Huxley applied Darwin's ideas to
humans, using comparative anatomy to show that humans and apes had a
common ancestor, which challenged the theologically important idea that
humans held a unique place in the universe. The drawing, like The March of Progress a century later, is arranged to support the now-discredited idea that evolution is progress toward a goal.
In the 18th century Linnaeus and others had classified man as a primate, but without drawing evolutionary conclusions. It was Lamarck, the first to develop a coherent theory of evolution, who discussed human evolution in this context. Robert Chambers in his anonymous Vestiges also clearly made the point.
On the natural history of the man-like Apes p1–56. This contains a summary of what was known of the great apes at that time.
On the relations of Man to the lower animals p57–112. This chapter and its addendum contained most of the controversial material, and is still important today.
On some fossil remains of Man p119–159. A neanderthal skull-cap and other bones had been found, and various remains of early Homo sapiens. Huxley compares these remains with existing human races.
Previous publication of the content
As Huxley said in his Advertisement of the Reader,
most of the content of his book had been presented to the public
before: "The greater part of the following essays has already been
published in the form of Oral Discourses, addressed to widely different
audiences, during the past three years." The oral presentations began in
1860. The publications in serials included:
1861. On the zoological relations of Man with the lower animals. Natural History Review (new series), p67–84.
1861. Man and the Apes. Letters to the Athenaeum, March 30 and September 21, p433 and 498.
1862. The Brain of Man and Apes. letter to Medical Times & Gazette, October 25, p449.
1862. On some fossil remains of Man. Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain3 (1858–1862), p420–422.
1862. On some fossil remains of Man. Medical Times & Gazette24, 159–161.
The central argument
The
second chapter contains the basic evidence for man as an animal. After
half a dozen preliminary pages Huxley introduces the study of
development: "that every living creature commences its existence under a
form different from, and simpler to, that which it eventually attains"
(p74).
Of course, this follows from fertilisation taking place in a single
cell. He follows the embryological development of a dog, and its
similarities with other vertebrates, before turning to man. "Without
question... [man's] early stages of development... [are] far nearer the
apes, than apes are to the dog" (p81).
Huxley next begins a comparison of the adult anatomy of apes with
man, asking "Is man so different from any of these apes that he must
form an order
by himself?" (p85). "It is quite certain that the ape which most nearly
approaches man is either the Chimpanzee, or the Gorilla..." (p86). "In
the general proportions of the body and limbs there is a remarkable
difference between the Gorilla and man (p87)... [but]... in whatever
proportion the Gorilla differs from man, the other apes depart still
more widely from the Gorilla and that, consequently, such differences of
proportion can have no ordinal value" (p89). Put simply, Huxley rejects
the idea that man should occupy an order separate from the apes.
Therefore, they are primates.
Next, the skull and brains. "The difference between a Gorilla's
skull and a man's are truly immense." (p92––93).... "Thus in the
important matter of cranial capacity, men differ more widely from one
another than they do from the apes; while the lowest apes differ as
much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from man"
(p95). There is much more detailed comparative anatomy,
leading to the same type of argument, for example: "Hence it is obvious
that, greatly as the dentition of the highest ape differs from man, it
differs far more widely from that of the lower and lowest apes" (p101).
"Thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their
modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result—that
the structural differences which separate Man from the Gorilla and the
Chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the Gorilla from the
lower apes" (p123). "But if man be separated by no greater structural
barrier from the brutes than they are from each other—then it seems to
follow that... there would be no rational ground for doubting that man
might have originated... by the gradual modification of a man-like
ape"... "At the present moment there is but one hypothesis which has any
scientific existence—that propounded by Mr. Darwin" (p125).
Huxley's conclusion, that man differs from apes at the level of a family, may be compared with the opinion today that the distinction between the great apes and man is at the level of a subfamily, the Homininae or at the level of the tribe, Hominini or even at the level of a subtribe: the Hominina. The Australopithecines separate man from the great apes, and the genus Homo is almost certainly an offshoot of the early australopithecines, upright apes of the wooded savannah (see human taxonomy). The general opinion today is that man is more closely related to apes than even Huxley thought.
The addendum
Animation showing the location of the hippocampus on either side in the lower central area of the brain.
The addendum to Chapter II was Huxley's account of his "Great Hippocampus Question" controversy with Owen about the comparison of human and ape brains. For the full text of the Addendum, see s:The cerebral structure of man and apes. In his Collected Essays this addendum was edited out, and is lacking in most later reprints.
A key event had already occurred in 1857 when Richard Owen presented (to the Linnean Society) his view that man was marked off from all other mammals by possessing features of the brain peculiar to the genus Homo. Having reached this opinion, Owen separated man from all other mammals in a subclass of its own. No other biologist before or since has held such an extreme view.
The subject was raised at the 1860 British Association's Oxford meeting, when Huxley flatly contradicted Owen, and promised a later demonstration of the facts.
"I redeemed that pledge by publishing, in the January number of the Natural History Review for 1861, an article wherein the truth of the three following propositions was fully demonstrated (loc cit p71):
1. That the third lobe is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, seeing that it exists in all the higher quadrumana. 2.
That the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle is neither peculiar
to, nor characteristic of, man, inasmuch as it also exists in the higher
quadrumana. 3. That the 'hippocampus minor' is neither peculiar to,
nor characteristic of, man, as it is found in certain of the higher
quadrumana."
In fact, a number of demonstrations were held in London and the
provinces. In 1862 at the Cambridge meeting of the B.A. Huxley's friend William Flower gave a public dissection to show that the same structures (the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and the hippocampus minor)
were indeed present in apes. Thus was exposed one of Owen's greatest
blunders, revealing Huxley as not only dangerous in debate, but also a
better anatomist.
As he says, Huxley's ideas on this topic were summed up in January 1861 in the first issue (new series) of his own journal, the Natural History Review: "the most violent scientific paper he had ever composed". The substance of this paper was presented in 1863 as chapter 2 of Man's place in Nature, with the addendum giving his account of the Owen/Huxley controversy about the ape brain.
In due course, Owen did finally concede that there was something
that could be called a hippocampus minor in the apes, but said that it
was much less developed and that such a presence did not detract from
the overall distinction of smaller brain size. Interpreted as an attempt to defend his original decision, Owen's point on brain size was answered by Huxley in Man's Place (excerpt above), and repeated when he wrote a section comparing ape and human brains for the second edition of Darwin's Descent of Man:
"Again, as respects the question of absolute size, it is
established that the difference between the largest and the smallest
healthy human brain is greater than the difference between the smallest
healthy human brain and the largest chimpanzee's or orang's brain." and
"A character which is thus variable within the limits of a single group
can have no great taxonomic value."
The extended argument on the ape brain, partly in debate and partly
in print, backed by dissections and demonstrations, was a landmark in
Huxley's career. It was highly important in asserting his dominance of
comparative anatomy, and in the long run more influential in
establishing evolution amongst biologists than was the debate with Samuel Wilberforce. It also marked the start of Owen's decline in the esteem of his fellow biologists.
Structure of the book
The first edition of Man's Place in Nature is arranged as follows: 8vo, 9x57/8 inches
(23x15 cm), [viii]+159+[i]+8ads. Bound in dark green pebbled cloth with
blind-stamped borders on boards, gilt lettering on spine as follows:
head: Man's place in nature / [rule] / T.H. Huxley; foot: Williams and
Norgate. Dark brick red advertisement end-papers front and back, with
Williams & Norgate's publications. Frontispiece diagram of ape skeletons, photographically reproduced, after drawings by Waterhouse Hawkins, from specimens in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Title bears Williams & Norgate's medallion logo; date is 1863.
Translations and other editions
English: The original edition was reprinted in 1864. The American edition was first published in New York by Appleton in 1863. The type was reset and the format was slightly smaller than the London edition: 8vo, 81/4x51/4 inches (21x13.3 cm), ix+9–184+8ads+[ii].
German: translated by Victor Carus as Zeugnisse für die Stellung des Menschen in der Natur. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig (Brunswick). 1863
Russian: translated by Vladimir Kovalevskii, published at St Petersberg. There were two separate editions of Man's Place prepared before Darwin's Origin was translated.
French: Paris 1868 and 1910.
Italian: Milan 1869.
Polish: Warsaw 1874.
Chinese: Shanghai 1935.
Japanese: Tokyo 1940.
Comparison with Lyell's Antiquity of Man
In assessing Huxley's work, the content of Charles Lyell's The Antiquity of Man
should be considered. It was published in early February 1863, just
before Huxley's work, and covered the discoveries of traces of early man
in the palaeolithic (Pleistocene).
However, Lyell avoided a definitive statement on human evolution.
Darwin wrote: "I am fearfully disappointed at Lyell's excessive caution"
and "The book is a mere 'digest' ". In other respects Antiquity
was a success. It sold well, and it "shattered the tacit agreement that
mankind should be the sole preserve of theologians and historians." But when Lyell wrote that it remained a profound mystery how the huge
gulf between man and beast could be bridged, Darwin wrote "Oh!" in the
margin of his copy. For this reason, despite its merits, Lyell's book did not anticipate the crucial arguments which Huxley presented.
Comparison with the Descent of Man
Eight years after Man's Place, Darwin's Descent of Man was published. In it Darwin faced the same task of persuading the reader of man's evolutionary heritage. He took, in Chapter 1 The evidence of the descent of man from some lower form, an approach which made good use of his vast supply of information on the natural history of mammals.
Darwin starts: "It is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals..." (p6)
He goes on to discuss infections by similar diseases, the similarity of
non-contagious diseases compared with monkeys, the liking of monkeys
for tea, coffee and alcohol. He draws a wonderful word picture of
baboons grumpily holding their aching heads the day after a drinking
session (p7). He was aware that closely related animals always seemed to
suffer from closely related parasites. He follows Huxley in his account
of man's embryonic development, and then considers the evidence of vestigial organs, which he (and Huxley) called rudiments
(p11). The discussion of a rare human hereditary condition permitting
its possessors to move their scalps is connected to the regular use of
this ability in many monkeys. The fine lanugo, a covering of hair on the human foetus,
is thought by Darwin to be a vestige of the first permanent coat of
hair in those mammals which are born hairy. The existence of
non-erupting third molars is connected to the shortening of the jaw in humans, and, like the shortened caecum in the alimentary canal, is an adaptation to the human change of diet from full herbivory (humans are omnivores) (p20––21).
"The bearing of the three great classes of facts now given
is unmistakable... [the facts] are intelligible if we admit their
descent from a common ancestor, together with their subsequent
adaptation to diversified conditions... Thus we can understand how it
has come to pass that man and all other vertebrate animals have been
constructed on the same general model, why they pass through the same
early stages of development, and why they retain certain rudiments in
common. Consequently we ought frankly to admit their community of
descent" (p25).
Later, in Chapter 6, Darwin produces his famous passage on the
birthplace and antiquity of man, quoting the Chimpanzee and Gorilla as
evidence that "...as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it
is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the
African continent than elsewhere" (p155).
