Social Construction Of Ethnicity Research Articles

Giving meaning to ‘division of labour’: is Malaysia sliding into ethnic labour caucuses?

ABSTRACT The paper assesses the prevalent assumption in Malaysia, which equates certain ethnic groups with particular labour roles. It looks at how this situation has developed over the years to the extent that today certain ethnic groups are seen as the ones with the requisite guile and mastery of some particular skills and, therefore, with the ability to fill those roles. The paper investigates this phenomenon and provides a theoretical effort to unpack how ethnicity intersects with other forms of work. The resulting new framings of identity (ethnic, work and otherwise) provide the basis for our paper. The paper finds that this social construction of ethnicity has facilitated its appropriation by ethnic groups and employers.

Race and Filipina/o drug use: rethinking ethnicity among Filipina/o Americans through drug consumption, racial profiling, and the social construction of ethnicity

This research uses 23 in-depth interviews of Filipina/o Americans seeking out treatment for drug use to understand the role of ethnicity as they experience drug use, recovery, and attempts to integrate back into society. Past literature has focused on the role of ethnicity as a buffer against drug use in host societies, with highly acculturated groups more prone to at-risk behavior. Such scholarship usually relies on static notions of ethnic culture. By contrast, using a social constructionist approach to ethnicity, I argue that meanings of ethnicity to the users go beyond homeland traditions and, in this case, reflect racialized police profiling of users in their neighborhoods and also their understanding of the methamphetamine epidemic in the Philippines. The interviewees affiliate their ethnic experiences with larger social conditions that point to neocolonialism in the homeland, racialization in the host society, and the war on drugs in both countries. This has implications for treatment programs that use culturally-appropriate services for addiction programs, so that providers complicate acculturation and assimilation models of ethnicity to understand social factors that affect the meaning of ethnic identity for Filipina/os.

Creative Dissonance: Performance of Ethnicity in Banal Spaces

This article analyzes material culture and spatial behavior of storeowners and customers in two South Asian grocery stores in Berkeley, CA in order to argue that the social construction of ethnicity is often inflected by the social and spatial circumstances of individuals and groups who interact inside these places. Order and clutter within these stores are put forth as embodied forms of spatial knowledge that influence the way individuals experience and reproduce peoplehood. Certain communicative and representational ways-of-being in this world—like theatrical performances—frame such experiences. The knowledge of South Asian-ness produced as a result of operating within the immigrant cultural landscape can be varied. In order to decipher such spatial orders, this article draws on data from participant observation and interviews with storeowners and customers, as well as spatial and material culture analyses of the two South Asian grocery stores.

Training Researchers in Cultural Psychiatry: The McGill-CIHR Strategic Training Program

The authors aim to summarize the pedagogical approaches and curriculum used in the training of researchers in cultural psychiatry at the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University. We reviewed available published and unpublished reports on the history and development of the McGill cultural psychiatry programs to identify the main orientations (conceptual and methodological), teaching methods, curriculum and course content. Student evaluations of teaching were reviewed. Follow-up data on research and other academic activities and employment of trainees who graduated from the program was obtained by e-mail questionnaire. The McGill program includes a Master of Science program, an intensive summer school, annual Advanced Study Institutes, and the McGill-CIHR Strategic Training Program in Culture and Mental Health Services Research. The interdisciplinary training setting emphasizes the cultural history and embedding of psychiatric knowledge and practice; the social construction of ethnicity, race, and cultural identity; the impact of globalization, migration, and ideologies of citizenship on individual identity and the configuration of cultural communities; and the integration of quantitative and qualitative ethnographic methods in basic and evaluative research. This critical transdisciplinary approach provides researchers with conceptual tools to address the impact of the changing meanings of culture and ethnicity difference in the contemporary world on mental health services.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEXICAL ITEMS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNOLINGUISTIC IDENTITY: A CASE STUDY OF ADOLESCENT SPOKEN AND ONLINE LANGUAGE

Sociolinguistic studies of ethnically contrastive communities have typically focused on the analysis of phonological and morphosyntactic processes as a basis for delimiting the linguistic boundaries speakers mark between themselves and other groups. However, regionally influenced ethnic varieties may not always manifest differences in traditional variationist-based studies of diagnostic phonological and morphosyntactic variables. This study examines how members of an adolescent friendship group in the small black Appalachian community of Texana, North Carolina, use lexical items and meta-commentary on the use of these items when their phonological and morphological variables converge. Since most Texana residents maintain regional speech patterns, we argue that lexical items may serve a significant indexical function in the social construction of ethnicity in this community. Our data suggest that lexical items may take on marked significance as symbolic vehicles through which speakers assert and negotiate their ethnic identity.

"Half the Battle": Cultural Resonance, Framing Processes, and Ethnic Affectations in Contemporary White Separatist Rhetoric

A recent critique of frame analysis in social movements suggested that future studies (I) be sensitive to bridging micro- and macro-levels of analysis, and (2) attend better to human agency and emotions in the framing process. This paper addresses those and other issues in an examination of the “new racist” (NR) rhetoric of contemporary white separatists (WS's) who focus on legitimating their movement using a cultural pluralist master-frame. In the context of theories about social movements, affect, and the social construction of ethnicity, I describe how NRWS's engage in frame-transformation and frame-alignment by (a) consciously packaging a “hate-free” racism, (b) developing strategies of equivalence and reversal–presenting whites as equivalent to ethnic and racial minorities, and (c) deploying ideas about “love,” “pride,” and “heritage-preservation” to evidence both their putative lack of animosity toward others as well as their ethnic credentials. I interpret these ethnic affectations as contextually bound efforts at truth construction that offer an opportunity to explore the role of affect in social movements. I conclude that the product of these claims is Kultural Pluralism: a blurring of distinctions between Cultural Pluralism and white supremacist racism, designed to emotionally appeal broadly to moderate and mainstream conservative whites.

White Supremacists and the (Pan‐)Ethnic Imperative: On “European‐Americans” and “White Student Unions”

Working from literature on the social construction of ethnicity and on white ethnic identity, I explore contemporary white supremacist discourse aimed at presenting whites as a “pan‐ethnic” community of European descendants, whose ethnicity is equivalent to that of established ethnic and minority communities. First, I look at how white supremacists struggle with uniting all “whites,” negotiate the meanings and boundaries of “whiteness” and “European‐American,” and conceptualize their putative ethnicity as lamentable. Second, I look at discourse on efforts to organize “White Student Unions.” The use of the hyphenated‐American strategy and the development of white student unions both reflect tactical breaks with the past and are part of a “new racist” focus on putting forth a more presentable image for white supremacy and presenting whites as an ethnic/minority group, with ethnic‐like concerns and traits. If indeed there is an emergent pan‐ethnic phenomenon among “European‐Americans,” then it may prove important to recognize when this phenomenon is rooted in white supremacy and when it is not.

Pathways: Approaches to the Study of Society in India.

Intellectual traditions grow through a process of critical assessment, and Pathways: Approaches to the Study of Society in India is an important contribution in this area. The autobiographical element makes the essays in this book specially interesting. Works of this kind are rare in the social sciences in India, and the present book provides an excellent model for further research. The book is divided into two parts: 'Pathfinders' and 'In Search of a Path'. In 'Pathfinders' Professor Madan critically examines aspects of the work of several outstanding scholars who span two generations - his teachers, D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar and others, M.N. Srinivas, Louis Dumont, David Mandebaum and Milton Singer, who have influenced his work in different but important ways. His discussion of the work of these scholars includes a commentary on the major theoretical and methodological perspectives which have illumined the study of society in India during the last fifty years. In this part of the book he dwells on functionalism, structuralism, marxism, cultural analysis and ethnomethodology. 'In Search of a Path' is an account of the author's 'engagement' with anthropology. He describes how his conception of anthropology has changed over time. Professor Madan ends the book with interesting and insightful comments on some of the substantive concerns of Indian sociology, such as the social construction of ethnicity and intellectual responses to the modern West. He seeks understanding through cultural comparison throughout these essays in the book. Professor T.N. Madan is a senior member of the faculty at the Institute of Economic Growth (University of Delhi). He is Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and Docteur Honoris Causa of the University of Paris X (Nanterre). His recent publications include Non-renunciation: Themes and Interpretations of Hindu Culture (OUP, 1987), Family and Kinship: A study of the Pandits of Rural Kashmir, second enlarged edition (OUP, 1989) and as editor Religion in India (OUP, 1991).

The social construction of ethnicity and nationality: The case of Cyprus

This study analyzes the processes by which two ethnonationalisms ‐ Greek and Turkish ‐ were constructed in Cyprus. As such it is of vital relevance to the current rise of ethnicity and nationalism in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia. The transformation is traced from a pre‐nationalist era during the Ottaman Empire in which social integration characterized the Muslims and Christians to the present situation of ethnic strife and division of the island. The role of British colonial policy, Greek irredentism, Greek and Turkish national interests and competing local political elites, contributed to the structuring of ethnic identities.