Anthropology Chapter 6 - Ethnicity

Intersectionality

An analytical framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and ethnicity and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification. 

• Idea that people’s identities overlap and combine, creating unqieu experiences of discrimination or privilege. 

• Social Stratification

• Imperialist-white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy (Bell Hooks)

Social Straification

The hierarchal categorization of people within a society into layers based on various factors like wealth, power and social status, which determines access to privileges and opportunities.

Eugenics

The Method of improving the intellectual, economic, and social level of humans by allowing differential reproduction of superior people to prevail over those designated as inferior.  

• Positive/Negative

• Charles Davenport 

  • Influenced by Galton. 

  • Becomes father of American eugenics 

• 1914 - 12 States had passed laws that permitted sterilization of feeble-minded people

• 1920s-1940s- Surged in popularity, more states passes. Buck V Bell. Sterilization becomes more common in Great depression.

• 1970 - Congress passes Family Planning Act, which legalizes sterilization of the poor.

Positive Eugenics

Policies and practices that encourage targeted populations to have children 

Negative Eugenics

Policies and practices that aim to discourage or penalize reproduction in target populations 

Buck vs. Bell

Supreme Court case that upheld the forced sterilization of people considered “unfit to reproduce.”

• Carrie Buck, a young woman in Virginia, was institutionalized and labeled as “feebleminded.” The state wanted to sterilize her under a new eugenics law

• The Court, in an opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, said sterilization was constitutional. Holmes famously wrote: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

• This decision allowed thousands of forced sterilizations in the U.S. and was never officially overturned (though later discredited and rejected in practice).

Ethnicity

A sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group.  

• About what is important at a given time and place, can change.

What is NOT ethnicity?

• Not a polite way of saying “race” 

• Ethnic does not mean “not white” or “not fully white” 

• Ethnicity is not ONLY “Hispanic or Latino” 

Ethnic Boundary Market

A Practice of belief used to signify who is in a group and who is not; usually not clearly fixed or defined and may change over time.  

• Linguistic  

• Religious 

• Cultural Practices 

• Material Culture 

• Shared History

Ethnic Myths - Scottish “Clan Tartan”

The idea that each Scottish clan has its own ancient tartan pattern (the plaid designs we see on kilts) is mostly a modern invention, not a true centuries-old tradition.

• People often believe clans had unique tartans going back hundreds of years, like a family “uniform.”

• In reality, it’s based on dyes available, not tied to clans. 

• This shows how ethnic groups sometimes create or exaggerate traditions to build a stronger identity, pride, and sense of unity.

Imagined communities

The invented sense of connection and shared traditions that underlie identification with a particular ethnic group or nation whose members likely will never meet. An imagined community is forged through “invented traditions” 

Identity Entrepreneurs

Political, military, or religious leaders who promote a worldview through the lens of ethnicity and use war, propaganda, and/or state power to mobilize people against those whom they perceive as danger.  

Ethnic Origin Myths

A story told about the founding and history of a particular group to reinforce a sense of common identity.  

• Aztec Empire 

• The idea was that they searched for a place, an eagle carrying a serpent landed on a cactus, this was a sign for them, destined to live there.  

Creating “The Other”

Imagined communities simultaneously create images of the “other” --people outside of the imagined community.  

• Drawing boundaries between members of the nation-state and non-members and delineating them by different rights.  

• “Othering” is often about power, and discrimination and language plays a key role in this.  

• Every nation-state has targeted others living within boundaries, often racially, ethnically, and economically marginalized.  

• Historically, it can be dangerous to be marked as “the other”. Impoverish, different. Identity entrepreneurs can use this idea successfully to paint others as villains. 

State

Autonomous regional structure of political, economic, and military rule with a central government authorized to make laws and use force to maintain order and defend its territory 

Nation-State

A political entity, located within a geographic territory with enforced borders, where the [population shares a sense of culture, ancestry, and destiny as a people 

Nation

A term once used to describe a group of people with shared a place of origin; now often used interactable with nation-state.  

Divide-and-Rule

A strategy used by colonizers to emphasize differences among colonized people, making resistance to colonization more difficult.  

• Strategy of groups or rulers to stay in control by keeping the people they govern split into smaller, weaker groups instead of united.

  • If people are divided by race, religon, class, or region they are less likely to join together to challenge authority.