Salience Of Ethnic Identity Research Articles

Examining Ethnicity: The Context of Mizos in Bengaluru

The continued salience of ethnic consciousness even in an urban setting evokes keen interest among the scholars. Why is that despite being located in an apparently urban context, ethnic identity continues to be dominant is the question that has not been adequately theorised. This article seeks to engage with this question. The excessive dependence on the primordialist or instrumentalist approach to explain the salience of ethnicity has increasingly been questioned. Neither approach alone would enable us to have a proper grasp of the issue of ethnic identity. This article makes use of the oppositional approach which seeks to combine both these approaches and explain the salience of ethnic identity in a more satisfactory manner. The fieldwork has been conducted among the Mizos living in Bengaluru.

Patterned Fluidity of Chinese Ethnic Identity: Networks, Time, and Place

This study tests the salience/prominence of Chinese ethnic identity by applying identity theory, social identity theory, and social network analysis. Using survey data of Chinese graduate students in two universities in the United States, I show how Chinese ethnic identity salience varies with the percentage of Chinese in an individual’s ego network revolving around him or her. In addition, among newcomers to the United States, as the percentage Chinese in ego networks increases, the decline of Chinese identity salience/prominence declines, but for old timers in the United States, as the percentage Chinese increases, the decline of Chinese identity salience/prominence is reversed. The ethnic identity salience lapses with time unless the respondents keep a cohort of co-nationals. Moreover, a cosmopolitan sociocultural environment is conducive to the maintenance of ethnic identity when an individual has many co-nationals in his or her ego network while having many co-nationals does not stop the decline of ethnic salience in an isolated social environment.

Playing up and playing down cultural identity: Introducing cultural influence and cultural variability.

Cultural variability (CV) is introduced as an overlooked dimension of cultural identity development pertaining to emphasizing and de-emphasizing the influence of a single cultural identity (i.e., cultural influence [CI]) on daily interactions and behaviors. The Cultural IDentity Influence Measure (CIDIM) is introduced as a novel measure of CI and CV, and hypothesis-driven validation is conducted in two samples along with exploration of associations between CV and well-being. A multicultural sample of 242 emerging adults participated in a daily diary study (Mage = 19.95 years, SDage = 1.40) by completing up to eight daily online surveys containing the CIDIM, criterion measures (ethnic identity, other group orientation, ethnic identity salience and daily variability in salience, social desirability), and measures of personal and interpersonal well-being. A second validation sample (n = 245) completed a 1-time survey with the CIDIM and a subset of criterion measures. Results using both samples show evidence of CI and CV and demonstrate the validity, reliability, and domain-sensitivity of the CIDIM. Further, CV made unique and positive contributions to predicting interaction quality after accounting for ethnic salience and variability in ethnic salience. An analytic approach utilizing standard deviations produced near-identical results to multilevel modeling and is recommended for parsimony. Ethnic minority and majority individuals make daily adjustments to play up and play down the influence of cultural identity on their social interactions and behaviors, and these adjustments predict interpersonal well-being. Cultural influence and cultural variability contribute to our emerging understanding of cultural identity as dynamic and agentic. (PsycINFO Database Record

Consociationalism and Identity in Ethnically Divided Societies: Northern Ireland and Malaysia

AbstractThis article tests the hypothesis that ethnic identities in divided societies lose their significance after the implementation of consociational power‐sharing arrangements. It analyses and compares the cases of Northern Ireland and Malaysia, as both have a substantially different experience of liberal consociationalism. In Northern Ireland, power sharing is strictly enforced through the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement of 1998, whilst in Malaysia it is exercised more informally within the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has governed the state since independence in 1957. Malaysia, therefore, has a considerably longer history of consociationalism than Northern Ireland. It is thought that if a mitigation of the salience of ethnic identities is taking place, ethnic political parties would become less prevalent. This article argues that these parties remain highly significant and, therefore, a shared identity is not being realized in either case. This conclusion does not, however, demonstrate a shortcoming of consociational theory but instead shows that managing conflict in divided societies is not the same as removing it altogether.

Local Ethnic Geography, Expectations of Favoritism, and Voting in Urban Ghana

African democracies are increasingly urban. While ethnicity is generally correlated with vote choice, recent research suggests there may be less ethnic voting in cities. But I show that voting for ethnically affiliated parties is as common in some neighborhoods in urban Ghana as in rural areas, while virtually non-existent in other neighborhoods elsewhere within the same city. This intra-urban variation is not explained by differences in the salience of ethnic identities or other individual-level characteristics of voters themselves. Instead, it is influenced by the diversity and wealth of the local neighborhoods in which parties and voters interact. These neighborhood characteristics change otherwise similar voters’ expectations of the benefits they will receive from an ethnically affiliated party when living in different places, producing intra-urban differences in the importance of ethnicity for vote choice.

Tracking and Racialization in Schools

The tracking literature examines how academic hierarchies contribute to race and class differences in academic achievement, but it pays scant attention to how school structures also influence students’ racial and ethnic identities. Relatedly, race/ethnicity and immigration scholars focus on how schools serve as sites for observing the social construction of racial and ethnic identities but do not account for how school structures actively shape these identity outcomes. This study makes a contribution to the immigration, race/ethnicity, and education literatures by examining how academic tracking influences the racial and ethnic identities of second-generation West Indian students. Consistent with the tracking literature, the author finds that Mayfield High School’s academic hierarchy contributes to the racialization of West Indian students and, in doing so, intensifies their racial group consciousness. It also shows how academic tracking simultaneously increases the salience of ethnic identity among Afro-Caribbean students. These findings point to the significance of educational institutions in shaping racialization processes in schools and contribute to broader conversations regarding the evolution of the color line in American society.

Kikuyu or Kenyan? Government Service Provision and the Salience of Ethnic Identities

Ethnicity has dominated recent political science research on Africa. Ethnic divisions, ethnic politics and salient ethnic identities have been blamed for a whole host of political and economic dysfunctions, in particular countries and continent-wide. But why do some ethnic identities become salient? And why do we observe such significant variation in identity salience within countries where ethnicity is thought to be uniformly important? Drawing on social-psychological theories of identity formation, I argue that ethnic identification is rooted, in part, in weak service provision by central governments. State action is a visible reminder of one's national identity. In the absence of state service provision, African citizens have few links to an imagined community at the national level. Instead, parochial sub-national identities remain. I develop a new survey-based tool to measure ethnic identification in the presence of social stigma and use it to test the effect of government service provision on ethnic identification in Kenya. In a survey experiment, I find that respondents who are primed to recall a set of services provided by the Kenyan government exhibit significantly lower levels of ethnic identification. The results have implications for studies that take ethnic diversity as a fixed characteristic of societies, and the study of ethnic politics more broadly.

Values-Based Leadership Effectiveness in Culturally Diverse Workplaces

Purpose The extant literature is replete with suggestions, findings, etc., about how best to manage or lead a culturally diverse workforce. However, very few studies have focused explicitly on leading with values in a workplace that may be fraught with disparate cultural value systems. In this paper we assess, conceptually, the relative effectiveness of values-based leadership (VBL) in culturally diverse workplaces and attempt to provide an answer to the questions: What factors determine the effectiveness of VBL in culturally diverse workplaces and what is the probability that VBL will be effective in a culturally diverse workplace? Design/methodology/approach We explore VBL within the context of two models. The first model assesses the relative effectiveness of VBL in culturally diverse workplaces from a deterministic perspective. The second model assesses VBL effectiveness from a probabilistic perspective. At the core of the deterministic model is the notion that the relative effectiveness of VBL can be determined by the cultural recompositioning of a firm's workforce. At the core of the second model is the notion that the likelihood of VBL effectiveness can be derived when conditions are created by the interface of the ethnic identity salience of culturally diverse workers and the organizational culture of the firm. Findings A conceptual finding from the deterministic model is that the relative effectiveness of VBL is determined by the historical level of cultural diversity in a firm’s workforce and the rate at which cultural recompositioning takes place in its workforce. A question addressed by the probabilistic model is: What factors create conditions for assessing the likelihood of VBL effectiveness? A conceptual finding from the probabilistic model is that the strength of a firm’s organizational culture and the ethnic identity salience of culturally diverse workers are two major factors that create these conditions. Research limitations/implications One of the major theoretical implications/contributions is the deterministic and probabilistic models introduce new variables (i.e., historically level of cultural diversity in the workforce, rate of cultural recomposition, strength of workers’ ethnic identity salience, and strength of organizational culture) that have the potential to enhance our understanding of VBL by adding to the list of possible determinants of its effectiveness as well as the conditions under which it is likely to be effective. One limitation is the conceptual nature of the models. Empirical validation of the models will be required to test the veracity of the propositions derived from them. Practical implications A major implication for practice is the need for leaders to develop a values management strategy. Such a strategy entails developing or having a strong set of core values for the organization, clearly communicating those values, and having reward and management systems to reinforce those values. This strategy implies that once implemented the tendency for culturally distinct workers (incoming and existing) to identify with their own values will decrease and the tendency for them to identify with the values of the organization will increase. Originality/value Prior studies have not fully explored the conditions under which VBL is likely to be effective in culturally diverse workplaces. Since diversity in the workplace is considered one of the main challenges for human resource management, the models we discuss address a very timely issue and provide a framework that leaders in organizations around the globe might use to better understand and manage the relationships described in the models. This under-explored topic represents a major gap in the literature. Helping to narrow this gap is an important contribution that our conceptual study makes to the literature related to this topic.

Ethnic identity salience improves recognition memory in Tibetan students via priming.

Social identity salience affects group-reference effect in memory. However, limited studies have examined the influence of ethnic identity salience on group-reference effect among minority group people in conditions where the minority group dominates. In the present research, we aim to investigate, in a Tibetan-dominant context, whether the salience of ethnic identity among Tibetan students could display an influence on their group-reference effect via priming method. We recruited 50 Tibetan and 62 Han Chinese students from Tibetan University in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region, where Tibetans were the majority. A month before the experiment, we tested the baseline of ethnic identity salience of both Tibetan and Han Chinese students using the Twenty Statements Test. In the formal experiment, we assessed the effectiveness of priming method first and then conducted a recognition memory test 2 week later via priming approach. The results showed that the ethnic identity both of Tibetan and Han Chinese participants was not salient in the baseline assessment. However, it was successfully induced via priming among Tibetan students. Tibetan students showed a significant group-reference effect in recognition memory task when their ethnic identity was induced via priming. On the contrary, Han Chinese students did not show increased ethnic awareness and superiority of ethnic in-group reference memory after being primed. Current research provides new evidence for the influence of salience of ethnic identity on group-reference effect, contributing to the application and extension of social identity theory among minority group people.

Tweeting identity? Ukrainian, Russian, and #Euromaidan

Why and when do group identities become salient? Existing scholarship has suggested that insecurity and competition over political and economic resources as well as increased perceptions of threat from the out-group tend to increase the salience of ethnic identities. Most of the work on ethnicity, however, is either experimental and deals with how people respond once identity has already been primed, is based on self-reported measures of identity, or driven by election results. In contrast, here we examine events in Ukraine from late 2013 (the beginning of the Euromaidan protests) through the end of 2014 to see if particular moments of heightened political tension led to increased identification as either “Russian” or “Ukrainian” among Ukrainian citizens. In tackling this question, we use a novel methodological approach by testing the hypothesis that those who prefer to use Ukrainian to communicate on Twitter will use Ukrainian (at the expense of Russian) following moments of heightened political awareness and those who prefer to use Russian will do the opposite. Interestingly, our primary finding in is a negative result: we do not find evidence that key political events in the Ukrainian crisis led to a reversion to the language of choice at the aggregate level, which is interesting given how much ink has been spilt on the question of the extent to which Euromaidan reflected an underlying Ukrainian vs. Russian conflict. However, we unexpectedly find that both those who prefer Russian and those who prefer Ukrainian begin using Russian with a greater frequency following the annexation of Crimea, thus contributing a whole new set of puzzles – and a method for exploring these puzzles – that can serve as a basis for future research.

Land Institutions and Political Ethnicity in Africa: Evidence from Tanzania

Existing work on land politics in Africa suggests that governments, by creating and upholding neocustomary land tenure regimes, create powerful incentives for individuals to embrace state-recognized ethnic identities. This paper strengthens this argument about the institutional determinants of ethnicity's high political salience through the use of contrasting evidence from Tanzania. In Tanzania, non-neocustomary land tenure institutions prevail, and the political salience of ethnic identity is low. Even in a hard-test region of high in-migration and high competition for farmland, the political salience of ethnic identity in land politics is low. The findings suggest that political science needs to take seriously the role of state institutions in producing politically-salient ethnic identities in Africa.

Xenophobic Rhetoric and Its Political Effects on Immigrants and Their Co‐Ethnics

Though political scientists generally understand the origins of native‐born reactions to foreigners, less is known about how anti‐immigrant contexts trigger a political response within immigrant groups. I address this question by studying the connection between xenophobic rhetoric and Latino politics. I claim that xenophobic rhetoric raises the salience of ethnic identity and impugns its worth. This identity threat leads high‐identifying group members to engage in political efforts that assert their group's positive value, whereas low identifiers shun political opportunities to bolster their group's devaluation. I test these claims with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative opinion survey of Latino adults. In light of xenophobic rhetoric, I find that relative to low identifiers, high‐identifying Latinos become less politically trusting, more ethnocentric, and increasingly supportive of policies that emphasize ingroup pride. These results clarify xenophobic rhetoric's role in amplifying the influence of ethnic identity on immigrant politics.

Sites of intersectional identity salience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences relating to and the nature of the episodes that raise individuals’ salience of their intersecting gender, ethnic and senior organizational identities. This paper is based on a presentation given at a British Academy of Management Joint Gender in Management and Identity Special Interest Groups Research Seminar entitled “Exploring Intersectionality of Gender and Identity”. Design/methodology/approach – Based on identity-heightening incidents elicited through diaries and interviews from minority ethnic women and men in middle- and senior-management positions, the paper adopts a multilevel, intersectional framework to present “sites” of intersectional identity salience. Identity-salient sites were analysed from accounts of episodes that raised the salience of gender, ethnic and senior identities for respondents. Researcher reflections on identity salience are also analysed. Findings – This paper draws on subjective accounts of identity salience from researcher and respondent experiences on pre-defined identity dimensions. Research limitations/implications – This paper uses rich, in-depth accounts of everyday experiences to reveal the dynamics of intersectional identity salience. Gender, ethnic and senior identities infuse each other with significance and meaning simultaneously and consecutively in everyday experiences. Originality/value – This paper’s originality is drawn from the advancement of intersectionality studies through empirical research based on collecting identity-heightening qualitative data.

The Polarization Trap

This article studies the association between ethnic conflicts and political attitudes. It employs a new data set on the casualties of the ethnic conflict in Turkey to identify the effects of the Kurdish insurgency on the electoral behavior of the Turkish voters. The results indicate that the conflict leads to the political polarization of the society along ethnic nationalist lines. Further investigation of the data also provides some empirical support for the constructivist argument that the salience of ethnic identities is subject to change in response to external stimuli, of which ethnic conflict constitutes a drastic example.

Changes in Ethnic Identity and Competence in Middle Adolescents

Evidence suggests that the construct of ethnic identity (EI) in adolescents changes over time and is related to factors including social connectedness, social competence, coping, and self-worth. Transitional changes of EI in middle adolescence have not been studied. This analysis, part of a longitudinal study of health behaviors, explored how EI changes from the first year of high school to the last, and it examined relationships among EI, social connectedness, indicators of social competence, coping, and self-worth in 602 youth (49% Hispanic, 59% female). EI was significantly related to social connectedness, social competence, coping, and self-worth as adolescents entered and prepared to exit high school. EI increased significantly over time for both genders and for Hispanics more so than for non-Hispanics. Findings support and extend the conceptual framework and previous research. Socialization with one's ethnic group is associated with developing competence and self-worth. EI development continues throughout high school. Findings extend our understanding of the salience of EI in adolescents in transition throughout high school. Strengthening EI may contribute to adolescents' feelings of self-worth, skills in coping, and competence within an ethnically diverse society. Nurses might plan interventions to strengthen EI throughout adolescence.

Using Policy to Engineer Identity: How Singapore's National Service Shapes Ethnic and Civic Identities to Reduce the Divisive Potential of Ethnic Diversity

Extensive research has associated ethnic diversity with a range of negative outcomes. But the relationship between diversity and these outcomes is not a simple or inevitable one. Ethnic diversity only affects outcomes when it forms the basis of social or political divisions. Why is ethnicity highly divisive in some places, but less so in others? Excellent scholarship has focused on a wide range of explanations, but the role of public policy has often been overlooked, despite its ability to shape the conditions under which ethnic groups interact. This paper examines the efficacy of Singapore’s National Service program, which is designed in part to bridge ethnic divisions in the highly diverse nation. I find considerable evidence that the program has purposefully altered the identity of conscripts in a manner that has a durable effect on their attitudes and behaviors in inter- and intra-ethnic interactions. Specifically, I find that the program is effective at constraining the divisive potential of ethnic diversity among its conscripts by reducing the salience of their ethnic identities and increasing the salience of their shared civic identities. I isolate the causal effects of the program by exploiting a natural experiment that produces exogenous variation in the intensity of the National Service treatment. An innovative measurement strategy that relies on vignettes and survey experiments provides effective measurements of identity. The analysis demonstrates the central role that policy plays in determining the salience of ethnic and civic identities, which in turn determine the outcomes of ethnic diversity. Beyond this, the findings shed important light on the conditions under which policy can effect in shaping identities and outcomes.

Campaign appeals in Nigeria's 2007 gubernatorial elections

Ethnicity has emerged as a prominent issue in electoral contests around the world, particularly in countries that have embraced multiparty elections in the past few decades. What factors influence ethnic mobilization and the politicization of ethnicity? Although a number of factors have been hypothesized to influence the politicization of ethnicity in the comparative politics literature, many of these relationships have not been established through empirical testing. This study empirically tests a number of the hypotheses derived from the literature with our unique data set on candidates' ethnic appeals in the Nigerian 2007 gubernatorial elections. We find that political parties' use of ethnic appeals is correlated with the competitiveness of the election, nature of the campaign, partisan attachments, and social, demographic, and economic characteristics of the states. Of particular note is the finding that the salience of ethnic identity in the electorate influences political leaders' use of ethnic appeals.

“I am not a skinny toothpick and proud of it”: Latina adolescents’ ethnic identity and responses to mainstream media images

Using a quasi-experimental design, 118 Latina girls, ages 13–18, viewed five color photographs of White women. Girls viewed either images of sexualized women or images of non-sexualized women. After viewing the images, girls were asked to complete the sentence stem, “I am…” 20 times. Thirty percent of girls spontaneously described their ethnicity in one of their sentence completions. Spontaneous use of ethnicity was taken as an indicator of the salience of ethnic identity. Among girls who viewed sexualized, thin-ideal White media images, spontaneously using an ethnic descriptor was related to more positive descriptions of one's own body and appearance. Analyses supported the premise that ethnic identity may act as a protective factor, buffering Latina girls from the negative effects of viewing sexualized, thin-ideal White media images.

The Application of Experience Sampling Approaches to the Study of Ethnic Identity: New Developmental Insights and Directions.

In this article, we review how the application of experience sampling methods (ESM) has advanced knowledge of the developmental importance of ethnic identity for youth outcomes. In particular, ESM approaches have allowed researchers to explore the construct of salience, the context-dependent and fluid component of ethnic identity. We highlight new information on the importance of context for variability in ethnic identity salience, and the association between ethnic identity and psychological well-being.

Post Socialist Slovakia and Albania: Diverging Nationalist Paths

This study explores the diverging nationalist paths adopted by post-socialist Slovak and Albanian elites within the time frame of 1991-1997. It argues that following the fall of regime’s collapse domestic politics of both states developed along opposite axis: In Slovakia, elites engaged in nationalist politics that infringed upon the rights of ethnic minorities and increased the salience of ethnic identities. In Albania however, political elites opted for a path of ethnic accommodation and non-nationalist politics that contradicted their originally nationalist inclinations. I present three hypotheses that seek to explain the Albanian puzzle and the diverging paths between the two countries: differences in ethnic consciousness of the Slovak and Albanian polity, the structure of party systems and finally the impact of international actors on the domestic politics of both countries. My findings suggest that the non-nationalist path of Albanian post-socialist elites was primarily due to the structure of the Albanian party system and rational economic incentives that urged the country’s elites to comply with international pressures regarding the rights of ethnic minorities.