SO203 Lecture 1

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SO203Lecture 1

• The sociology of ethnicity
• What is ethnicity

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The nature of ethnicity

• Common language
• Common inherited culture
• Common inherited religion
• Common historical experience
• Combination of 1 or 2 or more

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C
H
L
R
C
H
L
L
C
4
Ethnicity as collective

• Not individualized
• Shared values
• Shared experiences
• Shared norms

5
Ethnic boundaries
Classical boundaries
Globalization and pluralism
Globalization and ethnicity
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Race

• Social construction based on biologically
  determined variables
• Culture determined by biology
• Dismissed by sociologists as insignificant

7
Racial myth-making

• Classical classification Caucasoids,Negroids,
  Mongoloids
• Discarded

8
Pacific racial-mythmaking
9
Austronesian language system
10
Global genetic mapping
Kalahari bushman

• Shift from looking at differences to looking at
  similarities and origins

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Ethnicity and race

• Recent growth in biology/culture convergence
• Close association but minus the determinist
  assumptions
• Genetics projects destroys racial boundaries
• Ethnicity as category increasingly becoming
  questioned

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Next week

• Theories of ethnicity