Concept Of Ethnicity Research Articles

Whose Minority? The Resistant Identity of the Moldavian Csangos

Abstract The article is based on my fieldwork in 2002 in a village in Eastern Romania with a multi-confessional population made up mostly of Roman Catholics/Csangos and Orthodox Christians. The core premise of the analysis is that the collective identity manifested here transcends ethnic and confessional divides. The field data about the village’s cross-cultural life fall into the following categories: the oral history of the village, the performing of rituals, and the local history of modernization. These topics inform a single collective identity that is grounded in an expressive culture (Fredrik Barth) and as such requires critical reflection on the cultural complexity of collective identities as the Csangos, which have been formed within multiple and overlapping social and historical contexts. The subject is the different temporalities that emerge during political modernization. In conclusion, in the Csangos’ case, the constructivist concept of ethnicity should be revisited and complemented with an acknowledgment of Csangos’ benign self-identification, which sheds light on their discrete or hidden identity.

A Dry Branch on the Nation’s Body: The Nation’s Biological Reproduction between Gender and Sexuality

Abstract The article proceeds from the thesis that discriminatory discourses in the field of gender and sexuality in Slovenia are based on ideas surrounding the nation’s biological reproduction and that increasing the fertility rate is crucial for the nation’s viability. The authors substantiate this thesis with Foucault’s biopolitical governmentality, Balibar’s concepts of nationalism and fictive ethnicity, and Yuval-Davis’ analysis of women’s roles in the construction of ethnic and national collectivities. The research question is how the assumption of the nation’s biological origin affects the understanding of the state and citizenship. We analyse political debates in Slovenia over a period of 30 years, focusing on those that expose any relation between gender and sexual norms and the understanding of the state as an ethnic rather than a civic category: the right to abortion, biomedically assisted reproduction, and the legal equality of intimate partnerships.

Roma, Race and Socially Engaged Television on the Fringes of Europe

This article contributes to the work of scholars of Eastern Europe who insist on the relevance of race and racism to the region. The text analyzes a contemporary Bulgarian documentary TV series, called Nichia Zemia (No Man’s Land) and its representation of Roma minorities. The study traces the connections between rising inequalities, poverty, and demographic change that accompany post-socialist neoliberalism and the portrayals of Roma as an external Other, criminals and a demographic threat. The text shows the limits of the concept of ethnicity and highlights the need for a systematic analysis of the role media play in the proliferation of racism in this part of the world.

Geist oder Gesellschaft. Über die Konstruktion sozialer Akteure in der Literaturwissenschaft in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts

Abstract In the first decades of the 20th century, literary studies in the history of ideas (Geistesgeschichte) experimented with sociological and socio-historical perspectives and concepts in search of a stable basis. In doing so, it reacts to the problems of historical-philological research that focuses on social aspects of literary change. In the competition for the sovereignty of interpretation, holistic(national, ethnic) concepts also prevail against empirical findings.

Review: Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, by Anthony Kaldellis

Review: <i>Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium</i>, by Anthony Kaldellis

POLISH POLITICAL SCIENTIST ON THE ETHNIC FACTOR OF THE POST-SOVIET NATION-BUILDING IN MULTINATIONAL RUSSIAN REPUBLICS

The processes that led to the collapse of the USSR continue to affect the development of the post-Soviet space. Interest in this is maintained not only in Russian but also in foreign academic science. Purpose: to analyze a practically unknown in our country monograph by Polish researcher W. Zajonczkowski on the history of national policy and nation-building in the USSR on the example of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and Buryatia, to reveal the author's exclusive viewpoint on the role and influence of the ethnic factor in these processes. Methods: the authors apply system analysis of the problem, diachronic study of ethno-political processes throughout several historical epochs, study of political and public personalities, comprehensive use of non-contradictory provisions of the world's leading concepts of ethnicity. Results: the achievements and shortcomings of the author's research are identified, the practical relevance of his conclusions is shown, the degree of their importance for national science is determined.

Caught In-Between: Diversifying Tamil Women’s Voices From the Sri Lankan Civil War

This is an autoethnographic invitation to make space for different standpoints of women caught in war. This multi-genre project reflects on the standpoint of the author’s family as a female-led, female-only household in the capital of Sri Lanka amid the civil war. Grounded on the concept of ethnicity without groups and feminist standpoint theory, this piece adds to the often-homogenized voices of Tamil women. Using integrated crystallization to challenge the dichotomy of art and science, this layered piece weaves together storytelling and theory-based critique to open conversations about wholesome representation. The stories reveal the multichrome nature of ethnicities that often get painted as monochromes. The analyses highlight the intersectionality of women’s position and sound the alarm for possible marginalization within the marginalized through a unidimensional expression. The author invites more voices to diversify the standpoints of women caught in the Sri Lankan civil war and contribute to a more comprehensive reality of their experiences.

The phenomenon of ethnicity in the context of linguistics and its significance in the concept of European transcultural educational centers functioning

Due to intercontinental connections provided by air and shipping, tourism, freight transfer, flexibility and expanding labor mobility, expanding the potential of human capital, the borders between states and their societies have been erased, and the international cultural society has become more diverse. The relevance of this study is conditioned by the activities of the centres established in the European Union for transcultural education, transdisciplinary research in the field of sociology, etc. One of the key features of their activities is the understanding of the concept of ethnicity as defining for these centers. The purpose of the study was to investigate the conceptual activities of European centres of transcultural education, to clarify the features of ethnolinguistic science as the main background for the establishment and development of the study of the phenomenon of ethnicity in general. The leading approach to research has become the gradual application of a complex of interrelated methods, such as collection and processing of factual research material, description and analysis of dictionary entries, analysis of the concepts of the activities of European centers, etc. The object of the study is the structural components of the concept of ethnicity. The study identified the principles of functioning of European centres for transcultural education in the context of introducing the experience of educational centres for integration, adaptation, and development of the national identity of immigrants.

Jewish American Literature Against the World

Abstract By way of a brief genealogy of the Jewish American literary field and through the lens of recent attempts to imagine how comparative literature-based thinking about a concept of “world literature” can be critically productive for Jewish literary study, this article analyzes Jewish American literary studies’ prestige problem. Because it has persistently failed to theorize the intellectual and methodological assumptions underlying its practice, Jewish American literary study remains burdened by the essentialist implications of an ethnological historicism. This article ultimately argues that Jewish American literary study needs to take more seriously the possibilities offered by a materialist epistemology rather than the Jewish studies-based historicist ontology it has mostly taken for granted. “My hope is that a Jewish American epistemology can operate outside the penumbra of a tired and played-out concept of ethnicity—a term that unavoidably, if spectrally, posits a biologistic object at the heart of its historicist project—even as it might still claim the mantle of Jewish-y-ness.”

PRINCIPALES EJES DE ESTUDIO DE LA CUECA CHILENA: UNA ACTUALIZACIÓN

This paper analyzes the concepts of origin, ethnicity, nation, imaginary and gender in the discursive canon (Spencer 2009) of the Chilean cueca. My main goal is to show how these concepts introduce analytical categories that are not only present in the most important texts on gender, but also help to construct it. On the other hand, I wish to note the growth of the ideas of imaginary and gender. I use the idea of discursive canon to the case of the cueca, separating texts according to their approach. I also analyze the implied content of some of the aforementioned categories (authenticity, miscegenation, nationalism) and how they have contributed to essentialize the idea of cueca as a unitary and unalterable genre. I base my analysis on the concepts of textual category (Castelo Branco 2008) and on the difference between history as discourse (narration) and history as knowledge (Chartier 2007).

Aspects of ethnocultural values in the strategy for creating an author's brand

The article presents the results of the study of ethnocultural values in the strategy of creating an author's brand. Topical aspects are formulated that form the resources of the brand of the future, with the potential of a sustainable business idea working ahead of schedule. The relevance of the studied topic is revealed in connection with the request of the target audience for self-identification, the need for an original product and the aesthetic value of this product in the fashion industry. And also the emergence of interest in local cultures, as a result — in local brands, and the interaction of identity and competition. It also considers the aspect of emotional satisfaction and the departure from the realities of life's problems through narratives, which resulted in the processes of forming a new reality that affect the whole industry, and an appeal to cultural traditions. The authors analyze the formation of the connection of identities with territory, ecology, psychology, culture, economics. Is considered the influence of tradition and fashion on the landscape of the cultural map of the world. When designers not only create the visual language and design codes of our time, but also preserve the traditional values of folk culture, create a connection with history, invest new meanings in modern fashion, and respond to the requests of entire generations. The article describes the main problems and tasks that the designer should take into account, choosing ethnic conception as the main idea of the brand. The theoretical and applied significance of the work is that the study creates a model of the value of cultural meanings for implementation commercial projects. The work contains illustrative material that renders examples of working with references and using them when creating collections.

The resurgence of the Selk'nam. Dynamics of ethnoheterogenesis, ethnicity, and legal recognition in the Tierra del Fuego

This article has two central objectives, on the one hand, to analyze the process by which the Selk'nam population was declared extinct on the island of Tierra del Fuego, putting special emphasis on the process of colonization and the consequences this brought, especially the process of assimilation and ethnocide. Subsequently, a theoretical review is made of the concepts of ethnicity and ethnogenesis as processes through which the resurgence of groups of individuals who currently recognize themselves as members of the indigenous Selk'nam group can be explained. In this sense, the concept of Ethnoheterogenesis is linked as a model through which the current processes of self-recognition of individuals with ethnic groups can be explained. To conclude the article focuses the discussion on recognizing those cultural aspects present today, the action of ethnic groups, and the need for legal and symbolic recognition of the current existence of Selk'nam ethnic groups.

Trumpist Ethnonationalism and the Federal Response to the COVID-19 Crisis and Other Natural Disasters in Puerto Rico (2017–21)

The federal political system we call the United States is both a multinational and a multiethnic state. Puerto Rico has been a peripheral part of the United States since 1898, and its inclusion in the outward edges of the U.S. state apparatus turns the U.S. into a multinational democracy, exhibiting a form of peripheral multinationalism. In recent years, the rise of Trumpism and the transformation of the Republican Party have energized those who envision an ethnonationalist view of U.S. national identity: a political momentum is strengthening, sustaining a nativist, white majority nation reaction that would revive ancestral racial and ethnic concepts of U.S. national identity. This of course is not a favorable development for the accommodation and the fair treatment of Puerto Rico within the U.S. federation and has multiple ramifications, including the foot dragging behind the Republican federal government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis of 2020–21, and the other major natural disasters that have impacted the island, especially the devastation caused by Hurricane María.

SYMBOLIC VALUES AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE GRAND ETHIOPIAN RENAISSANCE DAM PROJECT IN ETHIOPIAN IDENTITY POLITICS

This paper attempts to show how the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) ’s economic and political gains could help develop a shared outlook to regulate Ethiopia’s opposing political trajectories, i.e., the ethnocentric and pan-Ethiopian nationalist camps. Presently, different ethnic-based “in-group and out-group” contrasting political discourses have dominated Ethiopian polity. The paper reviews and exposes relevant philosophical concepts, including “mirror identity,” primordial and instrumental conception of ethnicity. Notably, following Anderson’s (2006) line of thought, nationalism as a “cultural artefact” and expression of an “imagined community,” the paper argues that GERD could serve as a shared symbolic and developmental language to reshape Ethiopian national consciousness and imagination by improving the political and economic domains of the country. Accordingly, the GERD covertly or overtly helps reform the polity’s self-recognition mechanisms and circuitously re-approaches outstanding political differences by inspiring trust-based relations among major political actors. Ethnocentric motivations raise political questions such as secession, the right to linguistic and cultural recognition, economic equality, and political security and representation by using their respective ethnic lines as means of political mobilization. In current Ethiopia, political identities have been practically blended with ethnic identity. In this sense, as diverse ethnic groups exist, political borders sustain among the multiple ethnic-based nationalists and between pan-Ethiopian and ethnocentric actors. Thus, a comprehensive dialogue and constructive political cross-fertilization are required between various political actors, horizontally and vertically, among ethnocentric nationalists and the pan-Ethiopian advocates. In Ethiopia, the realization of internal political consensus requires an instantaneous remedial mechanism. Accordingly, the politically drawn antithetical ethnic demarcations and occasionally fabricated historical narratives have undeniably pushed politics into unfavourable conditions. That is why, as the paper maintains that developmental projects such as the GERD would have pertinent economic and political mechanisms to developing a national sentiment, which in turn symbolically facilitate national consensus among the major political actors. Hence, borrowing Fukuyama’s (2018) notion of “creedal national identity”, one could resonate that developmental projects can help realize symbolic worth by constructively enabling citizens to recognize their countries’ foundational ideals and elevating common factors. The present paper does not examine the GERD project’s external geopolitical and legal concerns concerning scope, although these topics are worth examining for further investigations.

Dominant and Subordinate Ideologies in South America: Old Traditions and New Faiths

The first part of this article discusses the dominant ideologies about the Indians of the Andean Highlands and the Amazon Basin in Colonial, post-Colonial, and contemporary times. The analysis concentrates on the “image of the Indian” or the ideological conceptions of ethnicity that emerge in the context of changing social relations among Indians, representatives of the State, dominant classes, and missionaries. Some of the anthropological approaches to the problem of ethnicity are also discussed. The second part of the article examines the attempts made by indigenous organizations to reformulate ethnicity as an oppositional ideology under present social, economic, and political conditions.

A Historical Approach Towards Analyzing Rwandan Genocide of 1994

The Rwandan genocide that happened to be one of the worst in human history had its root to ethnic differences created by Belgian colonialists who came to Rwanda in 1916. They perceived the Tutsis to be more superior to the Hutus. This manifests in favoring the Tutsis more in education, jobs and other important aspects of human endeavor. As a corollary, resentments and envy among the Hutus led to the bloodiest genocide in Africa. However, one of the most important tools of identification of either of the ethnic groups in the genocide was the identity card show casing the tribe you belong to, others include their race, height or dialect. This paper has tried to explain the causes or what led to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 through historical approach. The analysis was however guided by historical approach. The paper has been able to conceptually clarify the concept of genocide, Tutsi, Hutu, and ethnicity. It also explained in detail the genesis of the Rwandan genocide using the historical approach. Finally, it gave out the conclusion and references.

Mapping the North: Ethnicities, Territories and the Networks of Archaeology

The Saami, the indigenous population of northern Fennoscandia, have constantly been conceptualized as the others in relation to the (pre-)history writing of the modern nation-states. Here, the discussion focuses on Saami archaeology and representations of Saami prehistory in Sweden. It is emphasized that all ethnic, national and territorial concepts are embedded in networks of power, and that the connections and separations behind the concepts need to be explored. In this article a relational network approach is suggested as an alternative to dualistic thinking about ethnicities and territories. Ethnicity is here seen as one set of relationships, interwoven into many networks stretching over time and space. The network approach is in part inspired by actor-network theory, which is briefly described together with some possible points of interest for archaeological studies.

Resolving Ethnic Relations in Vietnam: A Case in Lam Dong Province in the Central Highlands

The paper briefly presents the concept of ethnicity and nationality. Based on the definition and scope of the concept, the paper presents the characteristics of ethnic groups and analyzes the history of ethnic relations in Lam Dong. From these analyzes, the paper focuses on interpreting the importance of building ethnic relations in the process of industrialization and modernization in Lam Dong province: i) To create opportunities and conditions for ethnic groups in the province to cooperate and develop in all aspects, together successfully realize the cause of industrialization and modernization. ii) To build up ethnic relations so that the ethnic groups in the province can consolidate their mutual understanding and trust, thus avoiding conflict and tension leading to the danger of ethnic separateness, obstructing the process of industrialization and modernization.

Hoe een inheems perspectief de archeologische interpretatie kan verbreden

How Indigenous-focused research can inform broader archaeological practice. In Europe, archaeologists have traditionally engaged less with the concept of Indigenous archaeology—and the various cultural-anthropological tenets underpinning it—than with the related, but distinct, concepts of ethnicity, nationalism and even autochthony, which are ostensibly more congruent with the various forms of social organization observed across the continent from pre-Neolithic times to the present. In this article, we argue that due to their recognition and embracing of unique systems of knowledge production (ontologies), contemporary Indigenous understandings of the past can inform the archaeologies of regions currently without Indigenous populations. We draw upon our experiences carrying out fieldwork amongst Indigenous peoples and within their traditional territories.

Language as a consolidating factor of ethnic identity of the russian germans

The article aims at identifying the attributes of ethnic identity and ethnic concepts of minority groups living in the territory of the Russian Federation, in particular, the Russian Germans living in the city of Glazov and the Vyatka-Kama region. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to understand and to study the shared characteristics of the ethnic identity of the German ethnic group: national self-awareness, preservation and revival of the ethnic culture and traditions, language preservation. The materials of the research are the tape recordings of unprepared German and Russian speech which were made during dialectological and ethnographic expeditions to Glazov. The speech of three informants is analyzed in the study. Nine main parameters of the ethnic identity are examined in relation to the Russian Germans of Glazov: common history, common territory, religion, living environment, family background, folklore, behavior standards, mentality of the ethnic group, and the common language. The language is described in more detail in the study. The results of the study suggest that the ethnic identity of the Russian Germans in question is a changing dynamic category. In our opinion, the language is the most important consolidating factor of the cultural integrity of an ethnic group, an instrument for sharing culturally important information and experience; so it is one of the core parameters of ethnic identity of the Russian Germans living in Glazov. This article will be of interest to researchers in the field of German dialectology and German speech islands.