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: The authors argue that while the LHR movement has much to offer, particularly in articulating how minority languages might come to enjoy some of the privileges currently accorded to majority (national) languages, it must also address more adequately a number of key issues.
Abstract: This paper outlines some of the key complexities and controversies that surround the advocacy of minority language rights, most notably via the movement of Linguistic Human Rights (LHR). I argue that while the LHR movement has much to offer, particularly in articulating how minority languages might come to enjoy some of the privileges currently accorded to majority (national) languages, it must also address more adequately a number of key issues. The first is a widespread rejection of any intrinsic link between language and identity. The second concerns the difficulty of what actually constitutes a 'group' and whether, on that basis, any group-based rights (such as language rights)can be accorded. The third concerns the valorisation of individual over collective rights, particularly within modern, liberal-democratic nation-states. Finally, these issues are also framed within a wider discussion of the historical and contemporary construction of nation-states, and the attendant stigmatisation and marginalis...
125 citations
Cites background from "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The S..."
...…of ethnicity which argue that ethnicity is determined by particular objective cultural characteristics such as language, ancestry and history – what Barth (1969) has described as the ‘cultural stuff’ of ethnicity – is rejected out of hand as reified and essentialist.4 In its place is posited a…...
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TL;DR: As a group whose members are Hispanic, American, and largely of African descent, Dominican Americans must negotiate distinctive issues of identity in the United States. Language is central to these negotiations, both as a symbol of identity and as a medium through which to construct and display local social meanings as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: As a group whose members are Hispanic, American, and largely of African descent, Dominican Americans must negotiate distinctive issues of identity in the United States. Language is central to these negotiations, both as a symbol of identity and as a medium through which to construct and display local social meanings. Dominican Americans use linguistic forms from multiple varieties of two codes, Spanish and English, to situationally activate various facets of their multiple identities. This multivariety linguistic and interactional construction of identities undermines implicit assumptions of uniformity and essentialism in U.S. linguistic and ethnic/racial categories, particularly in the construction of the category "African American."
125 citations
Book•
30 Nov 2009
TL;DR: Social Computing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications uncovers the growing and expanding phenomenon of human behavior, social constructs, and communication in online environments.
Abstract: Social Computing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications uncovers the growing and expanding phenomenon of human behavior, social constructs, and communication in online environments. This multiple volume publication presents the latest research on social change, evolving networks, media, and interaction with technology to offer audiences a comprehensive view.
124 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined U.S.-Mexico border security in both the pre- and post-September 11th, 2001 periods and argued that, in response to a number of transnational threats, a gradual merging of societal and state security has occurred in both periods.
124 citations
TL;DR: In the UK, a phone booth advertisement that read: ‘Send money home from closer to home.’ It went on to announce that you can send funds to locations around the world from any British Post Office as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: On a phone booth in Manchester, England — where I now live as a transmigrant — I saw an advertisement that read: ‘Send money home from closer to home.’ It went on to announce that you can send funds to locations around the world from any British Post Office. The Post Office, whose sales operations have now been privatized, has joined businesses around the world that seek to profit from migrant remittances. Spanish banks extend mortgages to migrants living in Spain who are building houses ‘back home’ in Ecuador and elsewhere in Latin America, while appliance stores in Brazil process orders for customers whose source of payment comes from family members living abroad (Lapper, 2007a). Migrants’ money transfers, purchases of costly commodities, and homeland investments figure large in the recent policies of powerful globe-spanning financial institutions, such as the World Bank, which have proclaimed migrant remitters as the new agents of international development (De Haas, 2007; Fajnzylber and Humberto Lopez, 2008; Lapper, 2007b; World Bank, 2006). Meanwhile, researchers of development and migration, while noting the possibilities and contradictions of migrant remittances on sending and receiving localities, take for granted that migrants are both local and transnational actors (Faist, 2008; Fauser, Chapter 6 in this volume). Yet at the same time that the transnationality of migrants is being both routinely documented and celebrated, politicians and the mass media in Europe and the United States are focusing their concern primarily on questions of ‘integration’, portraying migrants’ transnational ties as threats to ‘national security’.
124 citations