Chapter 9: Ethnicity, Race, Gender Flashcards
Ethnicity
- development of kinship
- identity, contextual, corporate
- active boundary foundation to keep one’s ethnicity separate from others
- primordial attachments
- ethnicity as descent
- ethnicity and the nation-state (often collapse bc of it)
- learned and socialized into, not born with it
Tribal Names
when translated it means “the people” or “human being”
Ethnicity in Flux
- Edmund Leach (1954) Political Systems of Highland Burma book
- Kachin: highland slash-and-burn rice cultivators (Gumlao and Gumsa)
- Shan: lowland river valleys, irrigation rice agriculture
- Kachin had the option to change to Shan ethnicity who were more civilized and modern
Gumlao and Gumsa
- Gumlao: egalitarian, headless groups
- Gumsa: ranked lineages, hereditary chieftainships
- two different ethnicities at first
- Gumsa used to be Gumlao
Ethnicity as Boundary Formation
- Fredrik Barth (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries book
1. Ethnicity is not an inventory of cultural traits
2. Ethnicity as active boundary formation (based on study of Swat Pashto people of Afghanistan)
Race
- an attempt to categorize humans based on observed physical differences
- adaptive traits due to climate and vitamin D
- blood type cant be used to classify race as it has no separate gene pool
- phenotypic traits
- cultural constructs
- the state defines race
Classification for Race: Canada
based on self-identification and phenotype (physical trails)
Classification for Race: U.S.A
based on descent and ancestry
Classification for Race: Brazil
- based on phenotype
- can be different race as parents if you have a different hair or eye colour (tipos)
Race in Andean Peru
based on where you live, wear, and speak
Sex
- chromosomes
- anatomy
- physiology
Gender
- cultural discourse of male & female
- behaviour
Gender Variants
- third genders
- gender change during the life course
Third Genders
men with women roles and attributes touched by the Gods
ex. Zuni berdache
Gender Change
- ex. transgender
- ex. Hua nu (PNG): men lose the lifeforce after too much sex and called women, women after giving birth called men and allowed to enter the forbidden men’s house
David Suggs (Redistributing Masculinity in
Kgatleng Bar)
- fieldwork-based research mid-1980s-1992
- town of Mochudi, unlike much of Botswana
- alcohol in the pre-capitalist (made by women and consumed by men during seasonal work parties)
- how seasonality affected beer-drinking patterns: social responsibility of chiefs, seasonality of work parties, only chiefs could trade beer
- beer became a commidity and nothing special
- drank by young men with salary wages
- older men stopped drinking since they had no status = money
Julie Peteet (Male Gender and Rituals of
Resistance in the Palestinian)
- fieldwork-based research, 1990, occupied West Bank
- getting beaten changed to meaning gaining status and true masculinity
- rite of passage
- reproduce gender hierarchy by being more strict to women
- abused men looked down on older men that were not abused
- Israeli army diminishes their status by sexually abusing prisoners
Ethnogenesis
a gradual emergence of a new, distinct ethnic identity in response to changing social circumstances
Acculturation
loss of a minority group’s cultural distinctiveness in relation to the dominant culture
Assimilation
pressure placed on minority groups to adopt the customs and traditions of the dominant culture
