Ethnicity: Racism, Class and Culture

273 Pages·1999·14.872 MB·English

by  Steve Fenton (auth.)

Ethnicity
Also by Steve Fenton
Durkheim and Modern Sociology
Ethnicity
Racism, Class and Culture
Steve Fenton
MACMILLAN
© Steve Fenton 1999
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1999
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Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
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and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-66225-0 ISBN 978-1-349-27560-1 (eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-1-349-27560-1
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
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Editing and origination by
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Contents
Acknowledgements Vlll
Preface ix
Introduction Conceptualising Ethnicity 1
Discourses of race and ethnicity 1
Ethnic and racial-what's in a name? 3
Historical associations of the idea of race 4
Ethnic, ethnicity, social discourse,
sociological discourse 6
Ancestry 7
Culture and language 8
Ethnicity as relationships, as process 10
The construction of categories and identities ll
Ethnicity: global and local, the grand and
minor scale, de jure/de facto 12
Volition and constraint 18
The construction of categories 19
Ethnicity in contexts 21
Summary 27
Chapter 1 Ethnicity and the Modern World: Historical
Trajectories 28
Historical trajectories and types of ethnicity 28
Ethnicity or ethnicities 29
International migrations and diasporas 30
Ethnicity-making situations 31
Five types of modem ethnicity 32
Typologies, history and social change 43
Complementary or opposing frames of reference?
Capitalism, modernity and culture 48
A crisis in the sociology of racism? 51
Polity and economy, gender and ethnicity 53
Beyond similarities: the intersection of gender
and ethnicity 55
Universalism and particularist principles 58
s~m~ 58
v
Ethnicity: Modernity, Racism, Class and Culture
VI
Chapter 2 Ethnicity and Racism 61
Ethnicity and racism 62
Political domination and economic exploitation:
Universalism and racism 69
What are other men like? 72
Exploration, colonies and the appropriation
of the Other 79
Racism, class and history 82
Dikotter: China and ideologies of ancestry 83
Summary 86
Chapter 3 Hot and Cold Ethnicity: Theories of Origin
and Intensity 88
Contexts of ethnicity: structure and action 88
Motive and meaning 89
Kinship and ancestry: hot and cold ethnicity 90
Theories of intensity 92
Theories of decline and persistence 96
New states and the integrative revolution 102
Affect and kinship 107
Summary Ill
Chapter 4 Racialisation and Ethnicity in the
Economic Context 114
The interdefinition of ethnicity and class 114
Racialisation, ethnicisation and classes 119
The USA: slavery, racialisation and class 120
William Julius Wilson: the significance of race 131
Marginalisation and ethnicity 133
Cultural survival 135
The race and racism discourse 137
Summary 139
Chapter 5 Class Structures, Ethnic Formations: Malaysia,
Hawai'i, Britain 141
After slavery: 'coolie' labour, colonies and
post -colonies 141
Malaysia: ethnic formation, class structure 143
Hawai 'i: indigenous dispossession 149
Britain and Europe: post-colonial migrants to
the metropolitan centres 158
Class and ethnicity: migration and
urban minorities 161
Summary 169
Chapter 6 Politics and Ethnicity 170
States, nation-states and ethnic groups 171
The politics of culture 174
Language and cultural symbols 176
Types of ethnicity, historical context and
the politics of culture 177
Contents vn
Making political ethnicities: the USA 178
Cultural struggle 182
Malaysia and the post-colonial plural societies 184
Summary 191
Chapter 7 The Politics of Ethnicity: Hawai'i, Britain,
Continental Europe 192
The politics of ethnicity in land-dispossession
societies 192
The politics of culture in Europe: proto-nations
or ethnonationalism 201
Post-war politics of immigration, ethnicity,
nation and racism - Britain and Europe 203
Ethnic identities and British sociology 208
Summary 210
Chapter 8 Ethnicity, Racism and Social Theory 212
Ethnicity, ethnonationalism, nationalism,
religious identity, racism 214
The liberal expectancy 224
The politics of recognition 231
Conclusion: social theory and ethnicity 234
Bibliography 239
Author Index 255
Subject Index 257
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank all my colleagues at the University of Bristol,
Department of Sociology, including Rohit Barot my friend and
colleague for so long. More than anyone else, Harriet Bradley has
given me huge support, encouragement and invaluable advice;
without her encouragement I am not sure I would have kept going
through the worst spells. I am grateful to Ivan Huey for reading the
first typescript and giving me canny advice and to Steve May for
our lively discussion and every kind of assistance. Sole responsi
bility for the text is the author's.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to the University of Hawai 'i and its
distinguished Department of Sociology. They welcomed me as a
Visiting Professor in 1978, 1981 and 1986 and as a visitor again in
1996. I am very grateful for the help and guidance I received from
the late Andrew Lind, and from Kyoshi Ikeda, David Chandler,
Gene Kassebaum and many others. I was greatly assisted by the
University Library and its fine Hawai'i and Pacific collection and
their patient and kind staff.
I would like to dedicate this book to Jenny, Alex and Lynda who
have been wonderful throughout. They may not read it but I'll bet
they're glad it's finished.
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if
any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be
pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
Preface
The demise of the sociological idea 'race relations' has been slow
but certain. As a phrase in popular discourse it retains a meaning as
signifying the better or worse state-the presence or absence of ill
feeling- of relations between peoples perceived as different. But it
founders on the analytic ambiguity of the term 'race' implying as it
does peoples who are inescapably different and between whom
relations are essentially problematic. The term ethnic, and hence
'ethnic groups' and 'ethnic relations' escapes the invalidity of the
term race. But the term ethnic relations is flawed by the implication
that there is a special type of relationship in which ethnic sentiment
preponderates. In all those social situations marked by some
measure of 'ethnic relevance' we cannot presume how strong the
ethnic dimension is.
Historically, the difficulty with the term ethnicity has been its
largely anthropological provenance and its seemingly central focus
on the concept of culture. For this reason a concern with ethnicity
has appeared to sidestep the problem of racism and to neglect the
hard-edged inequalities which are evident in racialised societies -
societies which are marked by the belief in racial difference and the
practice of social domination. In this book we have, by reuniting
ethnicity with the economic and the political, sought to reap the
benefits of the focus on culture without omitting economic inequal
ities or the subtle and not-so-subtle exercise of power. The fact that
racist doctrines have encompassed ideas of racial divisions and
cultural difference further ensures that a concern with ethnicity does
not become a cue for a retreat from class and power.
To achieve this end we have insisted on contextualising ethnicity,
on setting the study of ethnicity within the characteristic contexts of
economy and polity whose historical and present forms constitute
the stage on which ethnic dramas are played out.
We have set out to define the characteristic contexts of ethnicity.
Three historical trajectories are specified: that of slavery and
post-slavery in the modem world; that of the world as colonial and
post-colonial; and the formation of nation-states in the capitalist
West and beyond. That is to say that the enslavement of Africans in
IX