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CAS21EthnicityandRace--Part23-3-20212.pptxETHNICITY AND “RACE” — PART 2: contesting/questioning the concepts of ethnicity and race
Readings: Rynkiewich, Ch. 9, pp. 155-168
Quijano, “Questioning ‘Race,’” pp. 45-53
Resources: David Livermore, “Twenty-first Century CQ” and “CQ 101,” in Livermore, Cultural Intelligence (2009), 21-31 and 45-59
Elizabeth Tuleja, “Developing Cultural Intelligence for Global Leadership through Mindfulness,” Journal of Teaching in International Business 25 (2014): 5-24
1
ETHNIC GROUPS AND ETHNICITY
Conrad Kottak observes that “members of an ethnic group share certain beliefs, values, habits, customs, and norms because of their common background. They define themselves as different and special because of cultural features. This distinction may arise from language, religion, historical experience, geographic placement, kinship, or ‘race’.... Markers of an ethnic group may include a collective name, belief in common descent, a sense of solidarity, and an association with a specific territory, which the group may or may not hold.” (Kottak, Mirror, 213-214 — emphasis added).
Example of Ron and “Quem fala?”
2
ETHNICITY AS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED
Michael Rynkiewich raises the question of whether ethnicity is inherent or socially constructed. After briefly touching on the respective rationales for both positions, he predictably weighs in on the side of social construction, in keeping with his affinity with postmodernism and sensitivity to globalization (Rynkiewich, 164-166).
“Ethnicity is about a relationship negotiated with a dominant cultural group and shared with other ‘minorities’ in a given society....Ethnic identity does not derive entirely from within the ethnic group but in interaction with other groups.... (continued)
ETHNICITY AS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED
(cont.)
....The issues that stand in marked contrast to the nearest neighbor or most powerful neighbor tend to be emphasized while other issues are downplayed because they do not make a difference in that context.”
Rynkiewich cites Fredrick Barth’s research that redirected attention from the core to the periphery of ethnic groups to focus on boundary maintenance as the key factor in the likelihood of the group assimilating into the larger culture: the stronger the internal conformity (e.g., Amish vs. German-American), the less likely assimilation is.
CASTE AND ETHNICITY IN INDIA
Rynkiewich cites the example of caste in India as the most extreme system of social hierarchy in the world, with four major classes derived from the Hindu creation myth of the sacrifice of Purusha, the Cosmic Man, whose body gave rise to everything in the universe, including the four major classes in the caste system (Rynkiewich, 154-156).
CASTE AND ETHNICITY IN INDIA
The four major classes in the caste system, which comprises more than 1,000 individual castes altogether:
Brahmins (priests)
Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors)
Vaishyas (merchants
Shudras (peasants
the Untouchables (now known officially as “scheduled classes”) are outside the caste system
HINDU NATIONALISM (HINDUTVA)
Rynkiewich also discusses the extreme form of Hindu nationalism known as “Hindutva.” The government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently issued a decree stripping thousands of Indian Muslims of their citizenship.
HUMAN BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND “RACE”
Conrad Kottak says, “When an ethnic group is assumed to have a biological basis (distinctively shared ‘blood’ or genes, it is called a race. Discrimination against such a group is called racism.”
However, Kottak agrees with Rynkiewich and Anibal Quijano (and the vast majority of cultural anthropologists today) that “race” is a concept that has been shown to have no authoritative biological basis; instead, “race” is socially constructed on the basis of people’s subjective perceptions. This means that Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid no more valid scientifically than white, black, and yellow; where, for example, do Polynesians, Native Americans, Native Australians, and darker-skinned southern Indians fit?
QUIJANO’S QUESTIONING OF THE “RACE” CONCEPT
An important aspect of Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano’s critique of the “race” concept is his framing of it as part of the legacy of the “coloniality of power”:
“The idea of ‘race’ is surely the most efficient instrument of social domination produced in the last 500 years. Dating from the very beginning of the formation of the Americas and of capitalism (at the turn of the 16th century), in the ensuing centuries it was imposed on the population of the whole planet as an aspect of European colonial domination....It was taken as the principal determinant of the world’s new social and geocultural identities: on the one hand, ‘Indian,’ ‘black,’ ‘Asiatic,’ ‘white,’ and ‘mestizo’; on the other, ‘America,’ ‘Europe,’ ‘Africa,’ ‘Asia,’ and ‘Oceania.’ (continued)
QUIJANO’S QUESTIONING OF THE “RACE” CONCEPT
(cont.)
On its basis was constituted the Eurocentering of capitalist world power and the consequent global distribution of labor and trade.”
“In this way, ‘race,’ a phenomenon and an outcome of modern colonial domination, came to pervade every sphere of global capitalist power. Coloniality thus became the cornerstone of a Eurocentered world. This coloniality of power has proved to be more profound and more lasting than the colonialism in which it was engendered and which it helped to impose globally” (Quijano, 45-46).
QUIJANO’S QUESTIONING OF THE “RACE” CONCEPT
“There is a profound, tenacious, and virtually universal assumption that ‘race’ is a phenomenon of human biology which has necessary implications for the natural history of the species and hence for the history of power relations among people. This is surely what accounts for the exceptional efficiency of this modern instrument of social domination. Nonetheless, what we are dealing with here is a blatantly ideological construct, which has literally nothing to do with anything in the biological structure of the human species, and everything to do — by contrast — with the history of the power relations of Eurocentered colonial/modern global capitalism” (Quijano, 48).
