Population, Ethnicity, And Nation-building

Calvin Goldscheider

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000307726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume focuses on the linkages between ethnicity and population processes in the context of nation-building. Using historical and contemporary illustrations in a variety of countries, parts of this complex puzzle are scrutinized through the prisms of sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and demography Themes of ethnic group formation and transformation, persistence and assimilation, demographic transitions and convergences, and the processes of political mobilization and economic development are described and compared. Case studies from Southeast Asia, China, Africa, Brazil, Israel, the former Soviet Union, Canada, Europe, and the United States are presented by leading scholars. The examples illustrate the diversity of contexts that connect population, ethnicity, and nation-building, raising new questions and comparative problems. The importance of ethnic conflict for issues of inequality and group disadvantage in the emerging societies of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East; in the politics of race and immigration in western societies; and in European and American history emerges from the research. The multidisciplinary emphasis addresses core themes of ethnicity and nation-building in comparative perspectives.

1
Population, Ethnicity, and Nation-Building: Themes, Issues, and Guidelines¹

Calvin Goldscheider

Ethnic conflicts have been among the most-reported international events in the early 1990s. While some observers may have expected the decline or demise of ethnicity in industrialized and in post-industrialized nations and the weakening of ethnic ties in Third World countries undergoing nation-building, ethnic conflicts continue to underlie social cleavages in many countries. In the economic, social, political, and cultural upheavals around the globe, ethnicity remains important; ethnic conflict is continuous; and ethnic loyalties are a major axis of social definition. Ethnicity is a powerful source of intergenerational stratification and a key factor in the control of resources.

Why did social scientists, among others, expect ethnicity to wither away? Why did some scientists expect social class to replace ethnic identification as the primary basis of social stratification? What has redirected our thinking back toward ethnic issues? Did our theories of universalistic social change distort our expectations about the importance of ethnic particularism? Have ethnic and tribal loyalties experienced a revival of past patterns, or have they been transformed, linked to but different from the past? These are complex questions that require systematic, comparative, and historical analysis. However we resolve these issues, it is clear that we have tended too often to view changes in ethnicity as ethnic decline.

At times we have observed transformation, and have interpolated linear patterns of continuous reduction from this. We have identified ethnic differences and defined them as ethnic "revival." Our viewpoint often has treated ethnicity as "primordial" in origin, and individualistic in terms of self identity. As a result, we have missed the social networks, economic enclaves, and political interests that shape ethnic communities. We have concentrated on ethnic identity and the "assimilation" of ethnic groups, rather than on the processes that lead ethnic groups to form and the settings that enhance ethnic continuity and change.

The studies in this volume examine ethnic processes in the contexts of nation-building and demographic change. The comparative and historical study of ethnic group formation, ethnic identity, and ethnic conflict first requires the detailed accumulation of case studies to identify the many factors in ethnicity, and to specify the settings that shape ethnic expressions. As part of these analyses, we focus on demographic transformations in industrialized nations and Third World countries. Our collective goal was to enrich our comparative studies of ethnicity, and to gain insight into the dimensions of ethnicity in the processes of nation-building and demographic change.

We examine the social structural and the cultural bases of ethnicity in political and ideological settings. Our orientation considers the dichotomy between ethnicity as structure or as culture to be false and misleading. Within each context and for each variable we can identify both structural and cultural dimensions, so it is not valuable to debate the primacy of one over the other. We separate the structural features of ethnicity from their associated values and do not infer one set from the other. We also argue (and this is our bias) that culture derives from context; that values are variables, not constants; and that changes in the context are more likely than not to alter values. Whether values are determinants or consequences of structure, we assume that values are always anchored in a social context and are not suspended in abstraction.

General Guidelines in Studying Ethnicity

Several theoretical and methodological guidelines inform our understanding of ethnic differences. We treat ethnic differences as variable over time, as the distinctiveness of groups changes and as differences among them in some areas of social life narrow or widen. The importance of ethnic differentiation compared to the importance of other characteristics such as education, region, or occupation may be more pronounced among some social-economic groups. Convergence of ethnic differences in some areas of social life do not necessarily imply convergence in all areas. Therefore, ethnic differentiation may end in time and vary from one social dimension to another. It follows that the changing contexts of ethnic differences need to be considered explicitly for a period of time among groups, and for various spheres of social life.

There are many ways to identify ethnic groups in comparative and historical contexts. Ethnic groups have been identified by the birth place of the individual, regional area of parental birth or origins, and generation in the country of destination. Other, more subjective measures include language usage, religious affiliation, ethnic self-identification, and ancestry. Ethnicity is almost always some combination of self-identification and a label imposed by others. As distance from immigrant origins increases, or as ethnic groups are integrated politically, mixed ethnic parentage may become more common. As a side effect of political mobilization, economic development, social integration, and cultural changes, the boundaries defining some ethnic origins have become fuzzy. Who is in and who is out of the group tends to become more variable as time passes, depending on how one defines affiliation and group identification. The increasing fluidity of boundaries among ethnic groups and the varying definitions of ethnicity makes it more difficult to compare the same group historically and among communities.

A wide range of groups-race, religion, and national origin-are included within the rubric "ethnic," especially in cross-national and historical contexts. Within the United States, for example, we include diverse populations: African Americans (and other black Americans such as West Indian immigrants), Hispanics (including Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and recent immigrants from other Spanish-speaking countries), Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and others), and Native Americans. When Europeans of ethnic origins such as German, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, French Canadian, Russian, Polish, and Jewish are included (the data are collected less often on ethnic white non-Hispanics), the range widens considerably. Some have argued that racial variation should be distinguished from ethnic groupings, and that both should be distinguished from differences of religion, but the lines dividing these constructed categories are often blurred. Comparisons among a wide range of groups allow us to isolate the unique and culturally specific, and to generalize about what is shared among ethnic groups. We know that it is problematic to generalize from the findings about one group to other groups, as it is from one time period to another. Our focus is on processes and connections that may characterize ethnic and racial groups in general, even as we recognize the unique culture of individual groups, their special histories, and their particular features in different contexts.

It is unlikely that one grand theory will provide a systematic explanation for the complex linkages between ethnic groups, on the one hand, and social life, on the other. The diversity of ethnic groups in contemporary societies; the dimensions that comprise social life; and the changes over time in the meaning of ethnic differentiation weigh against overarching theories of ethnic assimilation or pluralism.

We do not intend to construct such a grand theory to cover the case studies in this volume. Rather we identify general guidelines for studying ethnicity. These include the following:

1. Macro, socio-historical, political, and economic contextual features are critical in examining ethnic differences. These include the historical bases of ethnic ideologies, policies, and practices, along with changes in the labor market and in socioeconomic opportunities. Among the factors that shape ethnic patterns are demographic processes that affect the size and distribution of populations, their reproductive patterns, and their migration. These processes interact with socio-historical and economic dynamics.

2. The state has an eminent role in reinforcing ethnic differentiation. It has a direct influence in enforcing policies that are ethnically specific, and an indirect influence through its policies about school patterns, real estate and housing, business practices, jobs, public welfare, and health systems. Changes in the entitlement system of welfare states and their link to ethnic factors often are critical in understanding ethnic continuities and change. The nature of political regimes and political change, including colonialism and nation-building, are particularly important in historical context.

3. Formal and informal discrimination in jobs, housing, schools, and government allocations reinforce ethnic distinctiveness. In particular, we need to consider different economic and social opportunities, along with different access to them. However, the perception that discrimination occurs (independent of whether it can be documented objectively) may have implications for ethnic distinctiveness.

4. The changing overlap of socioeconomic factors with ethnic differentiation needs to be addressed directly. The concentration of ethnic groups in particular jobs, neighborhoods, industries, and schools can imply socioeconomic disadvantage and inequalities. Usually, the ethnic-social class overlap indicates more intensive interaction within the ethnic community than outside it. This overlap combines with broad family-economic networks to forge bonds of community and generational continuities.

5. Part of the meaning of ethnic group attachment is in the ways that power is distributed and the extent to which political institutions are affected by and affect ethnic groups. Ethnic loyalties are enhanced when it is in the political and economic interests of persons and institutions to express them. When the allocation of resources favors some ethnic groups; when the entitlement system is unequal and the basis of inequality is ethnic; when power and position are linked to one's own group; ethnicity becomes entrenched within the political system. An ethnic group's sharing of common values and culture may matter less than their shared political power and access to economic resources. Political interests and economic commonality are the cornerstones of ethnicity, even when the cultural symbols are more conspicuous.

6. Changes in the generational reproduction of groups and their general demographic contours are important in understanding ethnic group change. Population size, structure, and cohort succession are features that bring marriage markets, childbearing, schooling, and the socialization of the next generation into the ethnic community. Internal migration (and for some groups, immigration), residential concentration, and intra-ethnic marriage patterns are significant in the generational continuity of ethnic groups at both the national and community levels. The demographic connection operates as part of the societal context and at the level of family, gender roles, and community.

7. Ethnic institutions are also important in sustaining group continuity. These include family, political, social, cultural, and community-based institutions that reinforce ethnic distinctiveness or weaken ethnic attachments by emphasizing national loyalties. In the absence of discrimination or ethnic markers that distinguish groups, and in the presence of ethnic convergences in social characteristics and socioeconomic opportunities, ethnic institutions are among the major constraints on the assimilation of ethnic populations.

Using these guidelines, we should be able to identify the political, economic, and historical sources of ethnic group formation; to disentangle cultural from social class factors of ethnic groups; to separate issues of perception from issues of access; to distinguish technological factors from those embedded in the social, demographic, political, and economic structure; and to analyze settings that reflect intergenerational continuities and those that are cohort-specific. We should separate individual factors from those that relate to the family and household, the community, the state, and the broader society. We also should be able to link institutional and community contexts to individual ethnic identification over the life course in order to identify which contexts reinforce or weaken ethnicity.

When we study ethnic distinctiveness in the context of nation-building and also emphasize demographic factors, we introduce the connection between the life course and ethnicity. Emphasis on the relationship between ethnic categories and the life course appears odd at first glance, since ethnic categories are often viewed as fixed at birth and constant throughout the life course. However, such a view may be distorted. The classification of persons into ethnic categories is a social construction that varies with who categorizes, who is categorized, and when these categories are applied within the life course. For example, young adults living alone may be less likely to identify themselves ethnically, while families with young children may be linked to ethnic communities through family networks, jobs, schools, friends, and neighborhoods. Since the boundaries dividing some ethnic groups tend to be flexible, people can shift between groups, and often these shifts occur at particular points during the life course.

Multiple social identities have emerged in modern pluralistic societies. The prominence of any one identity varies with the particular context, so life course transitions are of special importance because of the link between the life course and family networks. As persons marry and form new families, become ill or seek medical treatment, have children or die, issues of community and family support and of local institutions and networks that are based on ethnic origins become more highlighted. In contrast, at points in the life course where there is an emphasis on independence, individual goals, and autonomy, ethnic networks are likely to be less prominent.

Life course transitions occur in a cohort context. Consider, for example, ethnic variation in terms of the composition of generations (who has relatives and family for support in times of health care needs, reflecting in part the fertility and family history of the group); the history of migration (who lives where and near whom, revealing degrees of generational family access); the pattern of family structure and work (the extent of divorce and remarriage; and the changing proportion of women working). Cohort contexts reveal exposure to integration policies, economic opportunities, distance from origins, and connections to cultures. Combined with effects of time, the cohort perspective is of particular importance in the study of ethnic differentiation over the life course.

A related consideration in the study of ethnic groups is the examination of the intensity of ethnic affiliation. Research should focus on the intensity of ethnic commitments and the variety of attachments within ethnic communities, not only on the categories of ethnic affiliation. Generation status and language usage are obvious bases for greater ethnic intensity among some groups. The ethnic composition of neighborhoods or the participation in an ethnic economic enclave or in ethnic political institutions are other bases of ethnicity. The composition of neighborhoods or the presence of other ethnic groups competing for services is also important. There also may be specific family values or norms that are generationally transmitted or institutional structures that facilitate their continuity within ethnic communities.

Ethnic intensity is likely to be greater when the ethnic origins (and hence the intergenerational bonds) of a married couple are the same. When ethnic family members live close to each other; attend the same schools; have similar jobs and leisure activities; marry within their own ethnic groups; and are involved in ethnic social and political institutions, ethnic attachments within groups are more intense. Examining the intensities of ethnic attachments reinforces the belief that ethnic classifications should be treated not only with movable boundaries in time, but also with varying involvements in the ethnic community over the life course.

The complexities of ethnic pluralism and the extent of formal and informal discrimination against particular groups are important contexts for exploring the macro links between ethnicity and social life. In this regard, the state as a socio-political institution shapes the extent of ethnic pluralism; in designing and enforcing policies the state may reduce or increase ethnic differentiation. Entitlement systems that encourage ethnic political mobilization often become the basis of new forms of institutional expressions of ethnic interests. The state has an influence on ethnic communities through local policies about socioeconomic opportunities, housing, education, and residence. In these ways, the focus on nation-building and state are of major significance in unraveling changes in ethnicity over time.

Operating between the life course changes of the individual and the influence of the state is the level of families and households, with their extensive patterns of exchanges that we call community. Community and family factors seem to be the social basis of ethnic continuity, shaping the ways individuals identify themselves. The conjunction between ethnicity and social life may be most conspicuous at the community level. The shift away from an emphasis on populations and groups toward the self-identification of individuals has often resulted in an overemphasis on questions of "identity" and individual based constructs, rather than social contexts.

Ethnicity has often been assumed to diminish with passage of time and longer exposure to the place of destination. As the number of generations exposed to a place of destination increases, the impact of the place of origin recedes in memory and diminishes in effect on the life of the group. As the third and fourth generations are socialized in places of destination; are integrated into the economy; are dispersed residentially and geographically; and are exposed to educational institutions and mass media, they get homogenized into the larger culture and become undifferentiated through inter-group marriages and national identification. This view assumes the importance of the past to the continuity of groups in the present, and emphasizes too much the individual to the exclusion of family and community. In the past, an awareness of the cultures of communities of origin was needed to retain connections to ethnic origins, as was language and foreignness. As a result, ethnicity was viewed as part of the past and our question was: how much of the past could be retained in the face of pressures toward integration and cultural homogenization? How long would it take before ethnicity becomes "nostalgia" and more difficult to transmit to new generations?

This is a limited perspective, misguided by the assumptions that underlie it and distort the questions we need to ask. Ethnicity is often constructed (or reconstructed) out of the present circumstances and reinforced by selected elements from the past. Ethnicity is shaped not simply by what was, but by what is, incorporating selected pieces from the past into the present. Ethnicity revolves around institutions created to sustain ethnic communities, either by the groups themselves or by the state. In the process, new ethnic cultural forms emerge, as different institutions develop to sustain them. Both the emergent culture and the adapting institutions are constructed from the past, but are shaped by the present. Even when cultural differences weaken, institutions can retain and reshape communities. These institutions include family and kin, social, economic, cultural, and political organizations.

Interpreting Ethnic Differentiation: General Orientations

Three types of basic interpretations have been used to analyze ethnic variation.² The first is an emphasis on cultural aspects of ethnic groups that posits that ethnic variation reflects the culture or values of the group. Within this cultural perspective, ethnic differences are reduced over time through the acculturation of groups into the mainstream of society. Becoming culturally similar to the dominant group proceeds through increased educational attainment; contacts with others in schools, neighborhoods, and on the job; through changes in the use of a foreign language and adoption of local cultural values. The prominence of ethnic distinctiveness recedes as groups of many cultural origins adopt similar values. Residual ethnic differences reflect the legacy of the past that is temporary, or maintained by the state through multi-cultural policies.

To the extent that cultural factors are the primary sources of ethnic distinctiveness, they are more likely to characterize the foreign-born and their immediate family members, and those that speak a language other than that used by the majority, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Population, Ethnicity, and Nation-Building: Themes, Issues, and Guidelines
• 2 Ethnic Diversity and Change in Southeast Asia
• 3 Economic Patterns, Migration, and Ethnic Relationships in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China
• 4 Ethnic Conflict, History, and State Formation in Africa
• 5 Fact and Myth: Discovering a Racial Problem in Brazil
• 6 Ethnicity and Nation-Building in Israel: The Importance of Demographic Factors
• 7 Demographic Sources of the Changing Ethnic Composition of the Soviet Union
• 8 The Cultural Partitioning of Canada: Demographic Roots of Multinationalism
• 9 On the Structure of Ethnic Groups: Crisscrossing Ties of Ethnicity, Social Class, and Politics in Europe
• 10 Ethnic Definition, Social Mobility, and Residential Segregation in the United States
• About the Contributors
• About the Book