Nachtrag zum Tutorium vom 18.11.05: Ethnizität

Nachdem es gestern die Frage zu "Ethnizität" gab, hier ein paar Hintergrundinfos zu diesem doch wichtigen Konzept.

Frederic Barth schrieb, wie erwähnt, Ethnic groups and Boundaries eines der grundlegenden Werke über dieses Thema. Thomas Hylland Eriken schrieb ein weiteres interessantes Werk zum Thema, nämlich: "Ethnicity and nationalism". Eine kurze Erklärung zum Begriff "Ethnic group" findet sich in der Wikipedia.

Einige Definitionen zu Ethnicity finden sich in der Einleitung zu Eriksens Buch:

In everyday language, the word ethnicity still has a ring of "minority issues" and "race relations", but in social anthropology, it refers to aspects of relationships between groups which consider themselves, and are regarded by others, as being culturally distinctive. Although it is true that "the discourse concerning ethnicity tends to concern itself with subnational units, or minorities of some kind or another" (Chapman et al., 1989: 17), majorities and dominant peoples are no less "ethnic" than minorities. This will be particularly evident in Chapters 6 and 7, which discuss nationalism and minority-majority relationships.

Ethnicity is an aspect of social relationship between agents who consider themselves as being culturally distinctive from members of other groups with whom they have a minimum of regular interaction. It can thus also be defined as a social identity (based on a contrast vis-a-vis others) characterised by metaphoric or fictive kinship (Yelvington, 1991: 168). When cultural differences regularly make a difference in interaction between members of groups, the social relationship has an ethnic element. Ethnicity refers both to aspects of gain and loss in interaction, and to aspects of meaning in the creation of identity. In this way, it has a political, organisational aspect as well as a symbolic one.