Guest,Kenneth J., Cultural Anthropology, Ch 6

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

Origin Myth

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

Ethnic Boundary Marker

a practice or belief, such as food, clothing, language, shared name, or religion, used to signify who is in a group and who is not

Situational Negotiation of Identity

an individual's self-identification with a particular group that can shift according to social location

Identity Entrepreneurs

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

Genocide

Deliberate extermination of a ethnic or religious group

Ethnic Cleansing

efforts by representatives of one ethnic or religious group to remove or destroy another group in a particular geographic area

Melting Pot

a metaphor used to describe the process of immigrant assimilation into U.S. dominant culture

Assimilation

the process through which minorities accept the patterns and norms of the dominant culture and cease to exist as separate groups

Multiculturalism

a pattern of ethnic relations in which new immigrants and their children enculturate into the dominant national culture and yet retain an ethnic culture

State

an 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

Citizenship

legal membership in a nation-state

Nation

a term once used to describe a group of people who shared a place of origin; now used interchangeably with nation-state

Nationalism

the desire of an ethnic community to create and/or maintain a nation-state

Imagined Community

the invented sense of connection and shared traditions that underlies identification with a particular ethnic group or nation whose members likely will never all meet

Diaspora

Group of people living outside of their ancestral homeland yet maintaining emotional and material ties to home