Ethnic Hierarchy Research Articles

Foreign policy priorities and ethnic return migration policies: group-level variation in Greece and Serbia

ABSTRACTWhy do ethnoculturally defined states pursue favourable policies to integrate some returnees from their historical diasporas while neglecting or excluding others? We study this question by looking at members of two historical diasporas that, in the 1990s, returned to their respective ethnic homelands, Greece and Serbia, but were not treated uniformly by their respective governments. Utilising a wide range of primary sources, we consider evidence for a number of plausible explanations for such policy variation, including the economic profile of an ethnic returnee group, its status in internal ethnic hierarchies, its lobbying power, and dynamics of party politics. We find, instead, that the observed variation is best explained by the role that each particular group played in the ruling elites’ ex ante foreign policy objectives. Elites discouraged the repatriation of co-ethnics from parts of the world they still had claims over, by pursuing unfavourable repatriation policies. Conversely, absent a revisionist claim, states adopted favourable repatriation policies to encourage their repatriation and facilitate their integration upon return. Methodologically, the article illustrates the importance of focused comparisons across dyads of states and particular sub-diaspora groups.

Bamboo Beating Bandits: Conflict, Inequality, and Vulnerability in the Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh

Summary Bangladesh contributes little to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Based on semi-structured research interviews as a conduit to a literature review, this paper shows how the processes of enclosure, exclusion, encroachment, and entrenchment impede the vitality of its climate change adaptation efforts. Enclosure refers to when adaptation projects transfer public assets into private hands or expand the roles of private actors into the public sphere. Exclusion refers to when adaptation projects limit access to resources or marginalize particular stakeholders in decision-making activities. Encroachment refers to when adaptation projects intrude on biodiversity areas or contribute to other forms of environmental degradation. Entrenchment refers to when adaptation projects aggravate the disempowerment of women and minorities, or worsen concentrations of wealth and income inequality within a community. In the case of Bangladeshi, climate change policies implemented under the country’s National Adaptation Program of Action have enabled elites to capture land through public servants, the military, and even gangs carrying bamboo sticks. Exclusionary forms of adaptation planning exist at both the national and local scales. Climate protection measures have encroached upon village property, char (public) land, forests, farms, and other public commons. Most egregiously, community coping strategies for climate change have entrenched class and ethnic hierarchies ultimately trapping the poor, powerless, and displaced into a predatory patronage system that can aggravate human insecurity and intensify violent conflict. Planners and practitioners of adaptation need to become more cognizant of the potential for projects to harm others, or admit complicity in the processes of enclosure, exclusion, encroachment, and entrenchment, if they are ever to be eliminated.

Editor's Introduction

Editorial| October 01 2017 Editor's Introduction: Betterment Mark Lynn Anderson Mark Lynn Anderson Mark Lynn Anderson is an associate professor of film and media studies in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he hosted the Eighth International Women and the Silent Screen conference in 2015. He is currently writing a book on early histories of the studio system, posterity, and the rise of public relations. He is the author of Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s America (University of California Press, 2011). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Feminist Media Histories (2017) 3 (4): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2017.3.4.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Lynn Anderson; Editor's Introduction: Betterment. Feminist Media Histories 1 October 2017; 3 (4): 1–9. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2017.3.4.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFeminist Media Histories Search One of the sad ironies of twentieth-century political life in the United States is how the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which extended voting rights to all women citizens of the republic, effectively worked thereafter to mark almost every social, political, and cultural initiative mounted by women as only “special interest.” Prior to the amendment's ratification in 1920, the suffrage movement had provided women of various ideological stripes and from diverse backgrounds a context for both complaint and action within a public sphere where their very disenfranchisement was increasingly grounds for both acknowledging and granting them a voice in cultural enterprises, regulatory and reform institutions, and even social policy formation, albeit stratified by those hierarchies of race, ethnicity, age, religion, and class that operated everywhere else in American society. By the 1910s it was practically unthinkable to hold a hearing on a pressing social problem, form a commission addressing inequities... You do not currently have access to this content.

Befriending the same differently: ethnic, socioeconomic status, and gender differences in same-ethnic friendship

ABSTRACTThis study examines same-ethnic friendship variation between students from different ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender groups. Hypotheses based on a theoretical framework of opportunities, preferences, and third-party influence are tested on data of 11,063 students in English, German, Dutch, and Swedish school classes. Using structural equation modelling, the results indicate that ethnic groups differ in absolute and relative same-ethnic friendship because of different meeting opportunities with same-ethnic peers in class and a different status in the ethnic hierarchy. Socioeconomic status groups differ in same-ethnic friendship because socioeconomic status sorts students into more or less diverse school classes but not consistently so across countries and groups. Little further evidence is found for a relation between socioeconomic status and same-ethnic friendship preferences. Lastly, boys and girls do not seem to differ much regarding same-ethnic friendship.

Escaping the “Balkanizing” Gaze? Perceptions of Global and Internal Developmental Hierarchies in Romania

The article presents the perceptions of global and internal developmental hierarchies in Romania. According to our empirical results, the Western-centred developmental paradigm has deeply penetrated the worldviews of ordinary people in Romania. As a consequence, national self-perceptions, respectively, constructions of internal regional and ethnic differences in Romania, are powerfully shaped by the idea of East–West developmental hierarchies. Melegh introduced the concept of an “East–West slope” to denote a discursive construction used since the eighteenth century. This construction suggests that there is a gradual decline of development (or “civilization”) as one moves from the West (North West) toward the East (South East). The author argues that this framework not only defines how Romanians position themselves in the global developmental hierarchy but also how they define their internal (regional and ethnic) hierarchies. The article also discusses Todorova’s concept of Balkanism. This interpretive framework not only defines the perceptions of external observers but (following a process of cultural penetration) may also shape the self-perceptions of those involved. This article argues that Romanians have succeeded in avoiding—at least partially—the most severe consequence of the “Balkanizing gaze,” which is a constant sense of inferiority. It is also important, however, that this Balkanizing gaze can be reproduced at a national/local level and (in interrelation with other types of developmental discourses) can organize internal hierarchies.

Good and Everlasting Friends: Letter-Writing and Friendship in a "Boy-Saving" Reform Endeavor in Progressive-Era America, 1896 to 1906

This essay examines the familiar and intimate correspondence between poor boys from America's industrial cities (ages twelve to eighteen) who were confined to the George Junior Republic, a Progressive-Era juvenile reform program, and Thomas Mott Osborne, the organization's board chairman and wealthy benefactor. By focusing on the social act of writing letters and the relationships these acts engendered, it uncovers the dynamic interplay of interest, power, and feelings in the relationships of the boys and their patron Osborne. In doing so, the essay complicates the more familiar view of such relationships as instruments of social control. Regarding the "friendships" as the boys and Osborne believed them to be—that is, as actual friendships—reveals the intense emotional ties that bound the boys and their older and more powerful benefactor across hierarchies of age, class, and ethnicity. The letters show that friendship between the comparatively powerful and powerless was not only possible; it also tempered the inequalities of incarceration and enabled the boys to resist the more coercive instruments of uplift by declaring their right to sympathy, compassion, and love.

Early Modern Jewish History

Whereas most fields devoted to the study of minorities define the subjects of their inquiries in opposition to the ethnic, racial, religious, or gender hierarchies of society, Jewish studies has, traditionally fashioned itself along the norms of the European, western humanistic tradition. In this essay I suggest that the study of Jews and Jewish life in and out of early modern Europe provides an opportunity to revise this paradigm and offer two directions for the future of the field: the synthesis of the Jews’ histories of persecution and integration in Europe; and the exploration of the Jews’ role in global history.

Choice within constraint: An explanation of crime at the intersections

Intersectionalities have become central to theory and research on sex, gender and crime. Viewing crime through an intersectionalities lens allows us to move beyond deterministic views of the relationship between social structures and offending by emphasizing that structures of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality weave together to create a complex tapestry of opportunities and motivations that shape variation in crime and violence across groups and situations. In this essay, we propose a “choice within constraint” framework that focuses on how multiple, interlocking inequalities come together to shape micro-level interactions while also allowing room for agency in how people choose to respond to social and structural opportunities and constraints. More specifically, we cull insights from qualitative studies to build a framework emphasizing how individuals’ active engagement with intersecting cultural meanings of gender (masculinities and femininities) explain variability in decisions to offend across and within hierarchies of sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and age.

Making the city of nations and nationalities: the politics of ethnicity and roads in Hawassa, Ethiopia

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between the politics of ethnicity and road construction in Hawassa, Ethiopia. The Ethiopian state has recently invested unprecedented amounts of money in the construction of urban roads. These roads both undermine and reinforce longstanding ethnic hierarchies within Ethiopian cities. Contrary to the image promoted by the state of harmony among residents of different ethnic backgrounds, our research revealed a great deal of tension, particularly concerning the distribution of benefits from state-led infrastructural development. The experiences of residents in rapidly changing neighbourhoods, demonstrate that the benefits of recent road construction are not necessarily distributed according to the policies of the current regime. Instead, historical inequalities interact with contemporary urban development in ways that may actually disrupt the state's vision of unity through diversity. Stratification is built into the city and attempts to reshape the city necessarily interact with recent and long-standing inequalities.

Group differences in the legitimization of inequality: Questioning the role of social dominance orientation.

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is conceived as an individual's level of support for group-based hierarchy in general that causes support for more specific group hierarchies. According to social dominance theory, group differences in SDO underpin ideological and behavioural group differences related to specific group hierarchies. Using representative 5-year longitudinal panel data from New Zealand (N=3,384), we test whether SDO mediates effects of sex and ethnicity on legitimizing myths (LMs) relating to gender and ethnic hierarchy over time. The SDO mediation hypothesis is supported in the case of hostile sexism. However, it is unsupported in the case of benevolent sexism and LMs relating to ethnic hierarchy, where there was no cross-lagged effect of SDO. Moreover, being in the dominant ethnic group is associated with more legitimization of ethnic hierarchy but less legitimization of gender hierarchy, which is inconsistent with the notion of a general orientation underpinning group differences in legitimation. There was mixed evidence for a reverse path whereby specific LMs mediate group differences in SDO across time. We argue for the need to find alternative ways to theorize ideological consensus and difference between groups.

Immigrants as settler colonists: boundary work between Dakota Indians and white immigrant settlers

ABSTRACTWith territorial expansion of the US came dispossession of Native Americans, supported by policies that made white immigrants settler colonists. On Indian reservations, the federal government encouraged land-taking by allotting land to Indians and making land available to homesteaders, many of them recent immigrants. Few scholars have studied relationships between Natives and newcomers. This paper draws on the concept of boundary work to analyse intergroup relations at the Spirit Lake Dakota Indian Reservation, where white settlers (principally Scandinavians) lived alongside Dakotas. To survive and coexist, Indians and immigrants marked and interpreted boundaries of belonging and exclusion. By establishing common practices, they enacted a mutuality that both reflected and subverted racial–ethnic hierarchies.

Patterns of criminal threat in television news coverage of ethnic minorities in Flanders (2003–2013)

ABSTRACTDespite a strong cognitive association in the minds of native citizens between ethnic minority presence and crime, compelling evidence demonstrating a real-world relationship between crime and ethnic diversity is limited. This study adopts a media-based approach to contribute to the debate on the origin of the perception of criminal threats. By means of a content analysis of 11 years of crime news (2003–2013) in Flanders (the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), portrayals of ethnic minority and majority perpetrators are systematically compared to assess whether ethnic minorities are portrayed in a significantly more threatening way. Moreover, building on ethnic hierarchy theories, comparisons are made between various outgroups. Findings demonstrate that ethnic minority perpetrators are depicted in a more threatening manner: they are more likely to be associated with violent, property, and gang-related crime. Additionally, they are more likely to be anonymised and to be associated with explicit manifestations of threat. Group differences exist, however, as the most distant outgroup (i.e. North Africans) is covered in a more threatening way than the other outgroups. Implications for intergroup relations are discussed.

Social capital in Singapore: Gender differences, ethnic hierarchies, and their intersection

Our inquiry probes the association of the ascriptive categories of gender and ethnicity with different kinds and amounts of social capital in Singapore. For both forms of inequality, people most easily meet contacts in occupations dominated by their own categories (e.g., women are more likely to meet nurses as they are overrepresented in nursing; likewise, dominant ethnic groups are more likely to meet managers and CEOs, being overrepresented in high-status roles). Yet we also find distinctive patterns: childcare is a major factor influencing women's contact with teachers, cashiers, and cleaners. Education is a major factor affecting ethnic groups’ unequal access to contacts such as professors and bankers, cleaners and taxi drivers. Examining the intersection of gender and ethnicity, we find Malay men have less access to contacts in high-status occupations compared with Malay women, Non-Malay men, and Non-Malay women. Moreover, a university education accrues social capital at a slower rate for Malay men than for the other combinations of gender and ethnicity.

Ethnic and gender discrimination in recruitment: Experimental evidence from Finland

We ask (1) how the position of an ethnic (majority or minority) group in the local ethnic hierarchy affects the amount of recruitment discrimination faced by applicants from that group, and (2) whether gender discrimination is dependent on occupational gender stereotypes in the same way among ethnic majority and minority applicants. We use the situation testing method for the first time in Finland: In an experimental study (Study 1), 103 dentistry students made recruitment decisions based on the CVs of three bogus applicants from different ethnic groups (Finnish, Austrian and Polish) and in a field experiment (Study 2), four test applicants (male and female Finns and Russians) with equivalent CVs applied for 1,258 vacant jobs, addressing gender discrimination in relation to occupational gender stereotypes as well as ethnic discrimination. Together these studies cover both skilled (Study 1) and semi-skilled jobs (Study 2) and applicants from ethnic minority groups originating from within as well as outside the EU. Results show that majority group members are more likely to be hired compared to minority members (both Studies) and that minority members from a higher status group are more likely to be hired than those from a lower status group (Study 1). Results also show that male applicants from the majority group were discriminated compared to women in occupations characterised as feminine, while Russian men faced recruitment discrimination compared to Russian women independently of the job’s gender stereotype (Study 2). Implications of recruitment discrimination based on ethnicity and gender are discussed.

Ethnic minorities and brothers in arms: competition and homophily in the military

ABSTRACTAlthough the solidarity of brothers in arms is an important feature of the military, when it comes to ethnic minorities there is a pivotal paradox. On the one hand the military aims at drawing boundaries between soldiers and civilians by blurring existing ethnic and racial divisions inside the military. On the other hand the military is a highly national institution which prides itself on conservative values. Can these contradictions work? And how soldiers understand them? This paper examines the construction of ethnic boundaries in inter-group relations by focusing on the tension between ethnic hierarchy and competition versus homophily – the preference for maintaining ties with persons who are similar. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews with Dutch soldiers before and during deployment in Bosnia and Kosovo I ask when each strategy is put into work and why.

Singapore, Big Village of the Dead: Cities as Figures of Desire, Domination, and Rupture among Korowai of Indonesian Papua

An important theme in the anthropology of space is that specific spatial forms often work for people as mediations of historical consciousness. I analyze here the example of cities in recent experience of Korowai of Papua, and I develop two theoretical points. First, a spatial form's power as a focus of consciousness rests in how it draws together multiple different elements of the historical field. In the example of Korowai thought about cities, these elements include foreigners as a type of people, consumer culture as an economic system, and urban superiority as a new social hierarchy. Second, a spatial form can be a powerful sign through which people engage specifically with emotional features of their historical condition, including emotional contradictions entailed in subjection to new hierarchies. I look at a striking Korowai pattern of associating cities with death, which I suggest is motivated by death and cities both being objects of contradictory feelings of simultaneous desire and repulsion or involvement and separateness. The power of specific kinds of spaces to attract contradictory but conjoined emotions is also an important reason why people often seize upon them to reckon cognitively with history at large. [rural–urban articulations, space, structures of feeling, ethnic hierarchy, wealth, historical consciousness]

Ethnic Hierarchy and Public Attitudes towards Immigrants in Russia

Ethnic Hierarchy and Public Attitudes towards Immigrants in Russia

Does education ‘trump’ nationality? Boundary-drawing practices among highly educated migrants from Turkey

ABSTRACTInspired by a super-diversity approach, this paper seeks to explore the influence of the ‘ethnic hierarchy’ of ‘old’ minority groups over the way ‘new’ migrants from Turkey negotiate their interaction in the daily life in three settings: Amsterdam, London and Barcelona. By focusing on highly educated migrants from Turkey who by virtue of their country of origin or religion are positioned at the bottom of ‘ethnic hierarchies’, it strives to understand the significance of these different sources of diversity in daily interaction. Applying boundary-drawing strategies developed for ethnic boundaries, this paper argues that education does not necessarily ‘trump’ nationality, but allows for substantial claims of difference. New migrants from Turkey carve out a space for themselves by on the one hand homogenizing Turkish or other Muslim communities through attributing ‘unwanted’ behaviours and on the other re-defining the boundaries of their individual identity with emphasis on different sources of diversity.

Transnational Organising and Feminist Politics of Difference and Solidarity: The Mobilisation of Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

Domestic work represents a significant share of global wage employment, but domestic workers – the majority of whom are women – remain to a large extent excluded from the scope of labour laws and, consequently, from the legal protection enjoyed by other workers. Since they work behind the closed doors of private homes, domestic workers are also shielded from public attention and are often hard to mobilise. In Hong Kong, women’s activism involving local and migrant domestic workers illuminates points of connection and distance as they are simultaneously privileged and marginalised along the hierarchies of class, ethnicity and nationality. Building on feminist and social movement scholarship, I illustrate how global frames facilitate our understanding of feminist solidarity among local and migrant domestic workers. I argue that the meanings of solidarity that dominate at any particular moment are not stable and enduring, but rather formed out of negotiation and struggle within and across domestic workers’ unions. This framing process involves these women working deliberately to make connections between global processes and local contexts.

The City of Terrorism or a City for Breakfast

This article focuses on the image of the city of Diyarbakir as it is presented in the TV series Sultan (28 May 2012 to 29 October 2012). It considers the sense of place as portrayed on screen and assesses the sociopolitical implications of the spatial representations of the TV series. It questions the concept of a real image of the city, as discussed by commentators and viewers of Sultan, to show how ‘public chatter’ (Öncü 2011) about the show reinforces arbitrary depictions of Diyarbakir. Finally, this article considers how efforts to commodify the city for the tourist market affect Sultan’s depiction of urban space. All traces of political conflict, violence and traumatic memory are erased, while a tacit ‘ethnic hierarchy’ (Scalbert-Yücel 2015) that structures the Turkish mosaic of cultures informs the series.