Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference
About: This article is published in British Journal of Sociology.The article was published on 1970-06-01. It has received 4205 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Social organization & Ethnic group.
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TL;DR: In this article, a group of Brazilian academics who have studied in Europe and the United States have dealt with stereotypical notions of Brazilians as "warm people" who establish friendship "easily".
Abstract: In this article, I examine how stereotypes are deployed in the process of experiencing national identities. Specifically, I analyse how a group of Brazilian academics who have studied in Europe and the United States have dealt with stereotypical notions of Brazilians as “warm people” who establish friendship “easily.” Ideas about a “greater emotionality,” which were often seen as negative from a European colonial perspective, are embraced and re-signified by them as a positive feature of Brazilian national identity, particularly when compared to the supposed “closed nature” of some Europeans. I argue therefore that the presence of such stereotypes contributes to reinforce a subjective sense of Brazilianess and also reveals the negotiations of power relations in the process of elaborating Brazilian national identity.
29 citations
Cites background from "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The S..."
...…stereotypes, Brazil, friendship, emotionality The notion that identities are constructed through contrasts between “we” and “them” has been present in the social sciences literature for some decades, particularly due to studies about ethnic groups (Barth 1969; Eriksen 1993; Oliveira 1976)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that interpersonal population diversity, rather than fractionalization or polarization across ethnic groups, has been pivotal to the emergence, prevalence, recurrence, and severity of intrasocietal conflicts.
Abstract: This research advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that interpersonal population diversity, rather than fractionalization or polarization across ethnic groups, has been pivotal to the emergence, prevalence, recurrence, and severity of intrasocietal conflicts. Exploiting an exogenous source of variations in population diversity across nations and ethnic groups, as determined predominantly during the exodus of humans from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, the study demonstrates that population diversity, and its impact on the degree of diversity within ethnic groups, has contributed significantly to the risk and intensity of historical and contemporary civil conflicts. The findings arguably reflect the contribution of population diversity to the non-cohesivnesss of society, as reflected partly in the prevalence of mistrust, the divergence in preferences for public goods and redistributive policies, and the degree of fractionalization and polarization across ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups.
29 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the relationship between whiteness and communication through analysing how white business community members acknowledge their own, usually invisible, white identity, and found that white people acknowledge their whiteness in their own discourse.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between whiteness and communication through analysing how white business community members acknowledge their own, usually invisible, white identity. Discourse...
29 citations
Cites background from "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The S..."
...There is also a discrepancy between “self-ascription” and “ascription by others” (Barth 1969, 13)....
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TL;DR: Painted ceramic vessels of the Late Classic Maya, depicting scenes of the royal court, provide an entry into understanding the courtly community as an institution built on relationships and embodied through lived practice as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Painted ceramic vessels of the Late Classic Maya, depicting scenes of the royal court, provide an entry into understanding the courtly community as an institution built on relationships and embodied through lived practice. By examining these ceramics both as circulating objects, representing the materialized form of courtly values, and as vehicles for imagery that conveys idealized representations of the court hierarchy and how it was enacted, archaeologists may more profoundly integrate material and iconographic investigations. Assertions of identity and status are examined through the ways in which they are “contained” by these decorated vessels and emerge as characterized by a series of simultaneous unifications and oppositions. A focus on bodily behaviors and interactions, and the ways in which objects played courtly roles in their own right, yields an animated understanding of a dynamic court and a larger perspective on the enactment of identity and difference in Classic Maya contexts.
29 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the politics of Hindu revivalism among Tamils in Malaysia and examines the dramatic pilgrimage and ritual of Thaipusam and the activities of a leading Hindu reform and performing arts organization.
Abstract: This article examines the politics of Hindu revivalism among Tamils in Malaysia. In examining the dramatic pilgrimage and ritual of Thaipusam and the activities of a leading Hindu reform and performing arts organization, it is argued that the present resurgence of Hinduism is related to a growing sense of displacement experienced by Tamils in Malaysia. Thaipusam, while representing a collective assertion of Tamil and Hindu identity, also signifies "Indian" within an Islamic-modernist discourse of the Malaysian nation. Becoming an ethnic subject within a multicultural nationalist discourse, in turn, produces ambivalence among some Tamils which is manifested in status concerns and social distancing within the Tamil community. Many elite Hindus, in turn, are drawn to the apparently ecumenical and modernist teachings within Hindu reform organizations. The vicissitudes of Malaysian Hinduism bring into focus some of the complex ways that diasporic sentiments are produced and differentiated along lines of status...
29 citations
Cites background from "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The S..."
...They are aided in the categorization by the presence of visible signs—distinctive lifestyles, language, or religious practices. . .”(1975: 40; see also Barth 1969)....
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