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Unit 8: Race and Ethnicity

•“Perpetual perennialism” holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously Notes
throughout history.
•“Situational perennialism” holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, change and vanish
through the course of history. This view holds that the concept of ethnicity is basically a
tool used by political groups to manipulate resources such as wealth, power, territory or
status in their particular groups’ interests. Accordingly, ethnicity emerges when it is relevant
as means of furthering emergent collective interests and changes according to political
changes in the society. Examples of a perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are also found
in Barth, and Seidner who see ethnicity as ever-changing boundaries between groups of
people established through ongoing social negotiation and interaction.
•“Instrumentalist perennialism”, while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that
identified different ethnics groups and limits through time, explains ethnicity as a
mechanism of social stratification, meaning that ethnicity is the basis for a hierarchical
arrangement of individuals. According to Donald Noel, a sociologist who developed a
theory on the origin of ethnic stratification, ethnic stratification is a “system of stratification
wherein some relatively fixed group membership (e.g., race, religion, or nationality) is
utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions”. Ethnic stratification is one of
many different types of social stratification, including stratification based on socio-economic
status, race, or gender. According to Donald Noel, ethnic stratification will emerge only
when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with one another, and only when
those groups are characterized by a high degree of ethnocentrism, competition, and
differential power. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the
perspective of one’s own culture, and to downgrade all other groups outside one’s own
culture. Some sociologists, such as Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings, say the origin
of ethnic stratification lies in individual dispositions of ethnic prejudice, which relates to
the theory of ethnocentrism. Continuing with Noel’s theory, some degree of differential
power must be present for the emergence of ethnic stratification. In other words, an
inequality of power among ethnic groups means “they are of such unequal power that one
is able to impose its will upon another”. In addition to differential power, a degree of
competition structured along ethnic lines is a prerequisite to ethnic stratification as well.
The different ethnic groups must be competing for some common goal, such as power or
influence, or a material interest, such as wealth or territory. Lawrence Bobo and Vincent
Hutchings propose that competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and results in
inevitable stratification and conflict.
• “Constructivism” sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed, and
rejects the notion of ethnicity as a basic human condition. It holds that ethnic groups are only
products of human social interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as
valid social constructs in societies.
• “Modernist constructivism” correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards
nationstates beginning in the early modern period. Proponents of this theory, such as Eric
Hobsbawm, argue that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such as nationalism, are purely
modern inventions, appearing only in the modern period of world history. They hold that
prior to this, ethnic homogeneity was not considered an ideal or necessary factor in the
forging of large-scale societies.
Defining Ethnicity
There is a long trajectory of discourse on ethnicity as it is a culturally specific conception of the
social world. As such, the idea of ethnicity is immanently transformative. Always, ethnicity is
related to some basic aspects of society such as language, religion, region and styles of life, etc.

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