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: A lesson learned from this comparative study is the need to remove barriers that prevent the adoption of contraceptives by Muslim minorities in India and to design family planning programmes that takes into account their religious needs.
Abstract: This paper seeks to answer the question of how Muslim women interpret and negotiate religion in order to realise their reproductive aspirations. A close reading of lived experiences of 32 Muslim women from a varied educational background yields a wider perspective of the different interpretations of reproductive norms employed by adherents of the same religion (Islam), situated in two countries (India/Bangladesh) and group (majority/minority) contexts. Further, this comparative study yields a deeper understanding of agency that is employed by Muslim participants in each country. Muslim women – both in India and Bangladesh – are not passive followers of religious norms, but have agency to bring change in their own life and take an active role in planning their family, thereby transgressing religious norms in reproductive matters. Muslim women in India exercise their agency by adopting sterilisation – a method proscribed by Islam – without the knowledge of their significant others. Muslim women in Banglades...
25 citations
Cites background from "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The S..."
...Boundary maintenance signifies a process through which either group tries to maintain a distinct identity and ensures that there is least similarity of behaviour between communities (Barth 1969)....
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TL;DR: The Contrasta, a genre of Italian verbal art, has been analyzed in this paper, where the authors use performance as a key to look at the connections between ethnic identity and place.
Abstract: This article on a genre of Tuscan Italian verbal art, the Contrasta, uses performance as a key to look at the connections between ethnic identity and place. The Contrasta takes its name, “contrast”, from its humorous representation of a verbal duel among entities, people or ideas. Structurally, it is formed by a series of chained Octets, in hendecasyllables. After an initial discussion of the current definitions of ethnic identity, the article is articulated in two parts. First, through the analysis of the “openings” of several Contrasti, 1 will show how a “repertoire” of ethnic identities becomes evident in the way the artists choose to represent themselves across contexts. These identities are connected to place. They are instead connected to towns, villages, valleys and mountains, monuments and historical events and legends. Tuscan ethnic identities emerge in the dialogue between the poets and their public. In the second part of the article, the in depth analysis of a Contrasta furnishes a key to understand how performance names and defines, but also contests, definitions of places and the associated identities. Performance brings to view the layers of complexity of ethnic identity, warning us against fixing and simplifying descriptions of it.
25 citations
TL;DR: The second part of the twentieth century could be rightly labeled as the century of migration as discussed by the authors, where vast numbers of people are moving from their country of origin to new countries in order to find better living conditions.
Abstract: The second part of the twentieth century could be rightly labeled as the century of migration. Vast numbers of people are moving from their country of origin to new countries in order to find better living conditions. A rich output of literature treats a variety of problems concerning both the immigrants and the host country. It is a universally accepted assumption that migration creates "social problems for both sides". For the immigrants the separation from their roots, culture, social ties and the taken-for-granted pattern of daily life is a traumatic separation. No less traumatic is the entrance into the new society. The status of 'stranger', of immigrant, is, to say the least, an uncomfortable status. There is a new culture, often a new language, unknown customs and norms, undefined or not well understood demands. The host society is mostly ambivalent toward the strangers. The influx of strangers raises feelings of uneasiness. Even when the immigrants are needed, as was the case with the "guest- workers" in various European countries and in Israel, they were not accepted socially. No society can tolerate large numbers of people who are "outside" the society. They have to be taken in at some level while at the same time they are also excluded from full integration. Integration is usually demanding the adaptation of the immigrant to the new way of life, involvement and interaction in the formal-institutional and on the informal-social level of the society. At the same time exclusionary practices make adaptation difficult and closure of the dominant group jeopardizes the creation of mixed social networks (Bar-Yosef, 1998). Under the impact of a considerable number of immigrants some dormant problems are emerging with more virulence, existing conflicts are intensified, accepted values are questioned and new values are emerging. A society after accepting a considerable number of immigrants is not the same society as it was before the wave of immigrants. It is usually assumed that the migrant is a working age male and much of the literature deals with problems of occupational adaptation. Less interest was shown to other groups such as women who came independently or as wives, elderly parents and children.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue for a performative view of festivals as instances of group making, remaking and unmaking, and show how festivals can be viewed as contentious sites for the production of new transnational and ethnic socialities and identities.
Abstract: Festivals have provided an important arena for debates in anthropology and the social sciences. A focus of these debates has been the characterisation of the links between festivals, social groups and collective identities. While revisiting these debates, this paper argues for a performative view of festivals as instances of group making, remaking and unmaking. Based on Holy Ghost festas in the Azores and among Azorean migrants in North America it shows how festivals can be viewed as contentious sites for the production of new transnational and ethnic socialities and identities. The paper highlights the importance of this view of festivals for a critical assessment of current efforts aimed at the ‘heritagisation’ of festive cultures.
24 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the impact of dual socioeconomic revolutions that spread across Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries - export agriculture and print technologies -on ethnicity via their effects on politicization and boundary-making is examined.
Abstract: What are the origins of the ethnic landscapes in contemporary states? Drawing on a pre-registered research design, we test the impact of dual socioeconomic revolutions that spread across Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries - export agriculture and print technologies. We argue these changes transformed ethnicity via their effects on politicization and boundary-making. Print technologies strengthened imagined communities, leading to more salient yet porous-ethnic identities. Cash crop endowments increased groups' mobilizational potential but with more exclusionary boundaries to control agricultural rents. Using historical data on cash crops and African language publications, we find that groups exposed to these historical forces are more likely to be politically relevant in the post-independence period, and their members report more salient ethnic identities. We observe heterogenous effects on boundary-making as measured by inter-ethnic marriage; relative to cash crops, printing fostered greater openness to assimilate linguistically-related outsiders. Our findings not only illuminate the historical sources of ethnic politicization, but mechanisms shaping boundary formation.
24 citations
Cites background from "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The S..."
...The former encompasses the construction and maintenance of social differences (Barth 1969) in which individuals employ “points of social reference,” such as ascriptive, cultural, or other markers, to place themselves and others into groups to “order” the world (Hale 2004)....
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...The former—the sine qua non of ethnicity (Barth 1969)—encapsulates the social boundaries that regulate group membership and shape inter-ethnic ties....
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