The Sociology of Ethnicity

by
Sinisa Malesevic

Ganda Upaya
Department of Sociology
Universitas Indonesia
 Ethnicity
• Ethnicity is not a thing or a collective asset
of a particular group; it is a social relation
in which social actors perceive themselves
and are perceived by others as being
culturally distinct collectivities
(Malesevic,2004: 4);
• Cultural difference framed as ethnic
difference is sociologically relevant only
when it is active, mobilized and dynamic,
and not a mere difference;
 Ethnicity
• The focus of ethnicity is to study cultural
boundaries within social interactions
between ethnic groups;

• We become interested only when cultural

difference is mobilized for ethnic interests;

• Why, when and how do individuals and

groups maintain ethnic boundaries?
 Classical Sociological Theory
• Karl Marx:

• 1. The primacy of the economic base over

the cultural and thus ethnic superstructure;

• 2. Ethnic particularity as an obstacle to the

universal progress of humanity as a whole;

• 3. The historical ascendancy of class over

ethnic identity;
 Classical Sociological Theory
• Durkheim:
• 1.Society is composed of ethnically
compact communities;
• 2. With the advent of modernization the
bonds of ethnic communities gradually
decline and they evolve into complex
culturally heterogeneous societies;
• Ethnic solidarity are shifted into devotion to
the nation (national solidarity);
 Classical Sociological Theory
• Simmel:
• 1. Ethnicity as a form of sociation;
• Form is a generalized pattern of
interaction;
• 2. Interactions among ethnic groups could
evolve either cooperative or conflicting
forms.;
• 3. A modern, complex society requires
people engaged in some webs of
affiliations;
 Max Weber
Definition:
• Ethnic groups as those human groups that
entertain a subjective belief in their
common descent because of similarities of
physical type or customs or both, or
because of memories of colonization and
migration; conversely, it does not matter
whether or not an objective blood
relationship exists (Weber, 1968: 389)
 Max Weber

• 1). Ethnicity as a form of status group.

• Status group membership provides individuals
with a sense of dignity, which is ingrained in the
prestige and social honor of their ethnic group.
• Sharing common descent---an hereditary status
group (status monopolies)
• Ethnic honor is defined as the conviction of the
excellence of one’s own customs and the
inferiority of alien ones’ (Weber, 1968: 391).
• Endogamy.
 Max Weber
• 2). Ethnicity as a mechanism of
monopolistic social closure.
• Status groups often operate on the basis of
social closure where their monopolistic position
is regularly used to prevent non-group members
from acquiring symbolic or material benefits.
• This was seen as a powerful mechanism for
maintaining out-group political, economic, and
symbolic dominance as well as in-group
solidarity and homogeneity.
 Max Weber
• 3) Multiplicity of Ethnic forms of social
organization.
• Ethnic groups can take the shape of class,
caste, or estate.
• When ethnic groups acquire the caste structure
they express deep and rigid status inequalities
with hierarchical ordering of ethnic groups in
terms of social honor and prestige.
 Max Weber
• 4) Ethnicity and political mobilization.

• Even though ethnicity is dependent on a belief in

common descent, that belief can only be created
and sustained through joint political action.
• The attributes of ethnicity are manipulated to
mobilize ethnic group to pursue political
interests.
• Ethnic group consciousness was primarily
formed by common political experience.
 Neo-Marxism
• One of the pressing aims for post-nineteenth-century
Marxist theory was providing a successful answer to the
question: Why have ethnicity and ‘race’become much
more potent sources of group solidarity in the
contemporary world than class as predicted by the
classics of Marxism?
• One more focused on the political economy of ethnic
group inequality and the other interested in the links
between ideology, cultural difference and class divisions.
• These two traditions of research also differ in terms of
methods and aims of analysis, wherein the political
economy perspective attempts to provide a scientific
explanation of social exclusion and ethnic group
inequality, while the cultural perspective is more
concerned with the strategies and tactics of class and
ethnic struggle.
 Capitalism and ethnic division of
labour: political economy of inequality
• According to Oliver Cox (1948) capitalist-driven
expansion required a substantial increase in
cheap labour, which was acquired through
colonialism and the transportation of slaves to
the New World.
• The cultural and physical differences between
African labour and domestic white workers
helped capitalists and big business to keep the
working class divided along ethnic lines.
 Edna Bonacich
• In addition to ordinary workers there is an ‘ethnic labour
aristocracy’ that constantly attempts to keep a monopoly
over the better paid and more privileged jobs.
• Thus, the labour market is, in Bonacich’s view, split
between three different interest groups: those who
control and own enterprises (‘the business class’), those
who are better paid (and/or are already employed under
certain ‘ethnic’ conditions), and those who are less well-
paid (or are seeking employment) because of their
ethnic/racial standing.
• Correspondingly, the main source of ethnic antagonism
is the ‘differential labour price’. Ethnic conflict does not
have to be connected with the position of the dominant
group: it is a class conflict between two differently paid
labour groups.
 Michael Hechter
• Hechter sees the split labour-market theory as
inadequate in accounting for a lack of class solidarity
among different ethnic groups who find themselves in
the same labour-market position:‘American Blacks and
Hispanics are disproportionately represented in the
secondary labour market, but neither group seems
willing to relinquish its separate identity, and efforts to
unite them into “rainbow coalitions” have proven
notoriously unsuccessful’ (Hechter, 1978: 296).
• Thus, ethnic solidarity is mainly a reaction of the
periphery/minority ethnic group to the discrimination and
oppression of the centre/dominant ethnic group.
 Robert Miles
• Robert Miles (1984, 1989) has developed a theory of the
‘political economy of labour migration.
• For Miles “ethnicity and race” not describe the reality of
group relations, since they are ideological products of an
exploitative society: capitalism reifies ethnic group
membership to hide real economic relationships.
• In Miles’ view this trap can be avoided by focusing
instead on the capitalist state and its responsibility for
the process of ‘racialisation’ and the ‘racialised fraction
of the working class.
 Culture, class and hegemony: the
Gramscian legacy
• The explanatory framework of this branch of
Marxism is distinctively cultural, focusing
predominantly on the role of ideology and
cultural hegemony in a capitalist society.
• Echoing the early Marx, Gramsci argues that the
capitalist state was successful in its prevention
of radical dissent not only through its control of
the means of material production but also (and
more importantly) through cultural and
ideological hegemony.
 Neo-Weberian Approach
• 1) Ethnicity and the monopolistic social
closure.
• John Rex and Frank Parkin
• A more economistic account of ethnicity
• 2) The geo-politics of cultural difference:
Ethnicity and the State.
• Randall Collins and Michael Mann
• The issues of state prestige and military power
to develop geo-political and state-centric
interpretation of ethnic relations.
 Ethnicity and the monopolistic social
closure (John Rex)
• Ethnic attachment do not create groups in
themselves. Rather they provide a skeleton
around which a group can be formed.
• Although social closure can involve prohibiting
entry to symbolic rewards, Rex sees this group
mechanism of control as most influential in
curtailing economic benefits for the out-group.
• A potent device of social exclusion by closing off
economic opportunities by one group as against
another.
 Ethnicity and the monopolistic social
closure (Frank Parkin)
• Not only that social closure represents the key
mechanism of social control, but also this
mechanism operates in three different ways--- as
exclusion, as usurpation, as a combination of the
two.
• Exclusion involves the exercise of power and
control from the top-down through restricting
entry and resources to other groups with less
power.
• Property---inheritance
• Professional qualifications and credentials.
 Ethnicity and the monopolistic social
closure (Frank Parkin)
• Usurpation refers to the attempts of the excluded
ethnic group to change their subordinated
position or to acquire more resources from the
dominant ethnic group.
• Collective mobilization in the making of strikes,
demonstrations, marches etc.
• Where exclusion and usurpation are combined,
the ethnic group experiences double closure.
 The geo-politics of cultural difference:
ethnicity and the state (RC)
• Collins locates the sources of state legitimacy in the
degree of military experience among its population.
• Military victories raise the prestige of the state rulers
while military defeats tarnish their status and diminish
their legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens.
• When the dominant ethnic groups identify with the power
prestige of the rulers directly translates into the geo-
political prestige of the dominant group.
• Consequently, military defeats and diplomatic
humiliations of the State affect the social standing of the
dominant ethnic group in a broader geo-political context.
 The geo-politics of cultural difference:
ethnicity and the state (MM)
• Michael Mann believes that what is commonly
referred to as an ethnic group is actually an
array of socially constructed macro aggregated
ethnicities, where aggregation stands for group
markers such as language, religion, race and so
on, around which groups can be mobilized.
• The role of state in the intensification of ethnic
forms of group animosity and ethnic mass
murder.
• The practice of ethnic cleansing intensified with
the expansion of the infrastructural powers of the
state.
 The geo-politics of cultural difference:
ethnicity and the state (MM)
• The extreme forms of systematic ethnic
violence have much more to do with the
process of democratization and
liberalization than with the behavior of
authoritarian regime.
• The genocide of Armenians was not
undertaken in the name of Allah or
imperial Ottoman glory but in the name of
a people conceived in modern ethno-
national terms.
 Anti-foundational Approaches:
Deconstructing Ethnicity
• These new approaches share a common
theoretical ground which is aimed at challenging
universalism, positivism, and the totalizing
objectives of “conventional “ sociology.
• The impossibility of a single universal truth
promised by the Enlightenment project.
• Neo-Marxism or functionalism have been
perceived as “hegemonic meta narratives”
(Lyotard, 1984) whose claim to truth are seen as
misleading and potentially dangerous since truth
is always provisional, contingent, and discursive.
 Anti-foundational Approaches:
Deconstructing Ethnicity
• By deconstruction it is meant that there is no
master key to unlock the secrets of social
relations, including ethnic relations.
• There are no ultimately privileged individual or
group discourses and there is no unequivocal
domination of one mode of signifying over
another.
• Anti-foundationalists argue that there are no
essential meanings, and hence no group identity
is real or definitive: ethnic group membership is
always discursive, open and conditional.
 De-centring Identity Claims
• Identities share with discourses the quality of
being relational.
• Individuals are dispersed through different
discursive formations where their social
positions and their collective identities remain
only partial fixations, never complete and never
finished.
• Any discourse is constituted as an attempt to
dominate the field of discursivity, to arrest the
flow of difference, to construct a centre.
 De-centring Identity Claims
• All meanings are constructed historically through
discursive practices.
• No reference to race and ethnicity is neutral or
socially detached.
• To deconstruct a grammar and the internal set of
rules that constitute a particular discursive
formation.
• Ethnicity and race have no essential or
fundamental features; rather they are discursive
devices through which individuals are
constituted.
Enjoyment thieves and Ethnic Patriarch
• Zizek analyses ethnicity through the
dissection of one’s desires and passions
as being primarily located in the Other.

• Ethnic enmity is about the theft of one’s

enjoyment.

• You are what you desire.