Chapter 9: Ethnicity, Race, Gender

Question 1

Ethnicity

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

Tribal Names

Answer 2

when translated it means “the people” or “human being”

Question 3

Ethnicity in Flux

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

Gumlao and Gumsa

Answer 4

• Gumlao: egalitarian, headless groups
• Gumsa: ranked lineages, hereditary chieftainships
• two different ethnicities at first
• Gumsa used to be Gumlao

Question 5

Ethnicity as Boundary Formation

Answer 5

• 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)

Question 6

Race

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Classification for Race: Canada

Answer 7

based on self-identification and phenotype (physical trails)

Question 8

Classification for Race: U.S.A

Answer 8

based on descent and ancestry

Question 9

Classification for Race: Brazil

Answer 9

• based on phenotype
• can be different race as parents if you have a different hair or eye colour (tipos)

Question 10

Race in Andean Peru

Answer 10

based on where you live, wear, and speak

Question 11

Sex

Answer 11

• chromosomes
• anatomy
• physiology

Question 12

Gender

Answer 12

• cultural discourse of male & female
• behaviour

Question 13

Gender Variants

Answer 13

• third genders
• gender change during the life course

Question 14

Third Genders

Answer 14

men with women roles and attributes touched by the Gods

ex. Zuni berdache

Question 15

Gender Change

Answer 15

• 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

Question 16

David Suggs (Redistributing Masculinity in
Kgatleng Bar)

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

Julie Peteet (Male Gender and Rituals of
Resistance in the Palestinian)

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

Ethnogenesis

Answer 18

a gradual emergence of a new, distinct ethnic identity in response to changing social circumstances

Question 19

Acculturation

Answer 19

loss of a minority group’s cultural distinctiveness in relation to the dominant culture

Question 20

Assimilation

Answer 20

pressure placed on minority groups to adopt the customs and traditions of the dominant culture