ETHNICITY IN POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

PREPARED BY
DR. S.A. SOVYA SHEPHYR
ETHNICITY
The term “ethnicity” has gained prominence
since the 1960s as a means to understand
human diversity based on
culture, tradition, language, and ancestry,
in contrast to the discredited concept of
race

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 Ethnicity
Fusion of many traits that belong to the nature of any ethnic group

Tastes
Values
Norms
Beliefs

Memories
Consciousness
of kind
Behaviours Experiences

Loyalties

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ETHNICITY VS. RACE

Ethnicity Race

• A person’s ethnic group - Powerful Identifier -

when chooses to remain in it – it is an identity
that cannot be denied, rejected or taken away by • Race – emerged – Establishing a
others hierarchical division between Europe &
• Deployed as an Expression of positive self- its ‘others’
perception that offers certain advantages to its
members
• Identifies people according to the genetic
criteria
• Membership - certain agreed criteria – nature or
the combination and the importance of those
criteria may be debated or may change over time

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DEFINITION OF ETHNICITY
• Twenty-seven definitions of ethnicity in the United
States alone.
• Why? - Ethnic groups - although they may seem to be
socially defined - distinguished both from inside and A group that is socially
outside the group on the basis of cultural criteria-
defining characteristics of a particular ‘ethnicity’ - distinguished or set apart, by
depended upon the various purposes for which the
group has been identified
others and/or by itself,
• Not every ethnic group will possess the totality of primarily on the basis of
possible defining traits, but all will display various
combinations to varying degrees.
cultural or national
• Furthermore, both ethnicity and its components are characteristics
relative to time and place, and, like any social
phenomenon, they are dynamic and prone to change

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ETHNICITY - NATION
• Greek – Ethnos - ‘Nation’

• In its earliest English use the word ‘ethnic’ - culturally different ‘heathen’
nations
• The first use of ethnic group in terms of national origin developed in the
period of heavy migration from Southern and Eastern European nations to the
USA in the early twentieth century
• The name by which an ethnic group understands itself - most often the name
of an originating nation
• The term ‘ethnicity’ however, really only achieves wide currency when these
‘national’ groups find themselves as minorities within a larger national
grouping - aftermath of colonization - through immigration to settled colonies
such as USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or by the migration of
colonized peoples to the colonizing centre
• Consequence of this movement - older European nations can no longer claim
to be coterminous with a particular ethnic group but are themselves the 6
heterogeneous and, in time, hybridized, mixture of immigrant groups
ETHNICITY IN CONTEMPORARY USE

• A feature of the use of the term is that the element of

marginalization evident in the earliest uses of ‘ethnic’
often seems to remain implied in contemporary usage
A group or category of persons who have a common
• Where it originally referred to heathen nations, it now
suggests groups that are not the mainstream, groups
that are not traditionally identified with the dominant ancestral origin and the same cultural traits, who have
national mythology
a sense of peoplehood and of group belonging, who are
• Thus in settler colonies of the British Empire the
dominant Anglo-Saxon group is usually not seen as an
of immigrant background and have either minority or
ethnic group because its ethnicity has constructed the
mythology of national identity
majority status within a larger society.
• Such an identification is not limited to colonial
experience, but does reveal the ‘imperialistic’ nature of
national mythology, and the political implications of (Isajaw 1974: 118)
any link between ethnicity and nation.

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• In a 1974 study of twenty-seven definitions of ethnicity, only one
included the trait ‘immigrant group’, while twelve included
‘common national or geographic origin’, eleven included ‘same
culture or customs’, ten included ‘religion’ and nine included ‘race
or physical characteristics’.
• The intervening decades have seen a great change in the ways in
which the term ‘ethnicity’ is used: there are fewer ethnic groups in
which religion has the greatest influence in the way its members see
its character; the concept of race – with some notable exceptions,
such as African Americans – has become more and more distinct
from ethnicity because of the greater specificity of the latter
• In the societies in which ethnicity is most discussed, the practical
and social implications of the group’s status as an immigrant group
have often outweighed memories of a common national origin.
• Recent studies have revealed that ethnic groups are not necessarily
marginalized cultural groups, but that all ethnic groupings, and
indeed the concept of ethnicity itself, have come to exert a powerful
political function. Regardless of the status of the particular group, its
ethnicity is a key strategy in the furtherance of group political
interests and political advancement
• In as much as group power is always a favoured
solution to individual powerlessness, the ethnic
group is a salient formation in the bid for political
power within a society.
• However, the impermeability of an ethnic group’s
borders, the difficulty of moving in, and indeed out,
of the group, along with its tendency to cut across
class divisions, set it apart from other political
groupings such as trade unions and political parties
and suggests that its political nature is often largely
unconscious.
• Nevertheless, the ‘ethnic revolution’, as Fishman
(1985) calls it, was a direct consequence of the use,
from the 1960s, of cultural identity and the
assertion of ethnicity in political struggle.
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A collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry (that is, memories of a shared historical past

whether of origins or of historical experiences such as colonization, immigration, invasion or slavery); a shared consciousness

of a separate, named, group identity; and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of their

peoplehood. These features will always be in dynamic combination, relative to the particular time and place in which they are

experienced and operate consciously or unconsciously A significant feature of this definition is the function of those

‘symbolic elements’ that may provide a sense of ethnic belonging. Examples of such symbolic elements are: kinship patterns,

physical contiguity, religious affiliation, language or dialect forms, tribal affiliation, nationality, physical features, cultural

values, and cultural practices such as art, literature and music. Various combinations of these elements (‘one or more’) may be

privileged at different times and places to provide a sense of ethnicity. 9

• This definition accommodates the complex status of groups such as black Americans or black British,
whose identity may be putatively constructed along racial as well as ethnic lines. The ‘ethnic revolution’ -
construction of various such new ethnicities - more consciously political in origin than other - Indeed,
black ethnicity in America and Britain becomes more intricately dependent upon politics in the process of
ethnic legitimation than is evident with white ethnic groups.
• Ethnic identities thus persist beyond cultural assimilation into the wider society and the persistence of
ethnic identity is not necessarily related to the perpetuation of traditional cultures.
• In most cases, a very few features of traditional culture need to be selected as ‘symbolic elements’ around
which ethnic identity revolves - individuals need experience very few of the defining criteria (e.g. common
ancestry) to consider themselves members of the group.
• No ethnic group is completely unified or in complete agreement about its own ethnicity and no essential
feature can ever be found in every member of the group.
• Nevertheless, this dynamic interweaving of identifying features has come to function as an increasingly
potent locus of identity in an increasingly migratory, globalized and hybridized world.
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