Read the summary and the most important questions on Ethnicity and Nationalism | 9780745330426 | Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

• 1 What is Ethnicity?

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• social scientists: identity

  involves a link between the personal and the social

  is relational and contectual

  is socially constructed

  requires active engagement (identify with someone)

  requires awareness and choice

  structure (ascribed identity)

  agency (chosen identity)

  no perfect fit between how we see ourselves and how others ee us

  symbols and representation are important in sharing identities

  differences are the basis for identification

  people can have multiple at the same time

  it is rather a process than fixed

  it can change over time

• banton: race and ethnicity

  race: negative group categorisation

  ethnicity: positive group identification

• ethnicity is wider than race

  because it also deals with cultural differences

• analytical concepts versus native ones

  etic to the analysts point of view, the scientist/researcher. These concepts are adopted by the larger society.

   

• critique on park (chicago school)

  simplicity: rural versus urban

  egalitarianis: rural

  inevitable conformity: rural

  
  

• critique on the view as cultural units

  - cultural uniqueness presupposes groups tend to be isolated

  - imply maintainence of ethnic boundaries is unproblematic

• theory of plural societies: furnivall and smith

  wrote on colonies

  objective approach

  ethnicity is..

  - identifiable difference

  - independent variable

  - influenced by structure

  - cannot be chosen

  the only thing groups had in common was the political and economical system

  plural societies are unstable because they lack a common will (smith)

  society is then viewd as a unit of disparate parts

  
  

• critique on social constructivism

  then you only study people's perceptions of culture (subjective) and not their real actions

• relation ethnicity and identity

  both are socially constructen

  ethnicity is blood, birth, culture, place, language, etc. it is part of your identity

• gramsci - cultural hegemony

  talks about the role of ideas concerning power. 

  notion of cultural hegemony:

  minority take over the ideolofy and values and norms of the majority. Symbolic power (like education, etc). They internalize this unequal power distribution. this can be a reason why the people dd not unite for a recolution. consent in the subordinate structure!