Defining ethnicity is a really difficult task, as evidenced by our discussion on Thursday. Also, have you seen Wikipedia’s list of ethnic groups? It’s ridiculous: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ethnic_groups. I’d like to try to propose a working definition though.
An ethnic group can be defined by more than one element of a complex matrix, including language, race, religion, ideology, shared history or experience (heritage), geographic proximity, among others. I think ethnicity is kind of a grab bag word used to explain why any group of people identifies with each other. For the most part, I think the word has been associated with characteristics of people that seem immutable, or are assigned to them. For instance, I consider my ethnic identity to be Hoklo Taiwanese because my ancestors are from the Fujian and we speak Taiwanese. These identifiers are things that I could not voluntarily change if I wanted to. That said, I think the way ethnicity is used and can be used in the modern context is changing. In many parts of the globalized world, there are more and more interracial marriages, mixed ethnicities (often due to migration), and individuals who find themselves checking the “other” box under ethnicity on censuses. Ideology has become the more dominant catalyst for group formation—this seems to be the case in the Arab world.
I have a question for you guys: how do you think globalization has changed our definition of ethnicity? If things like race become deemphasized, will people start associating sports team loyalties with ethnicity? How about language? How crucial do you think language will remain as an ethnic delimiter?
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