The Cultural Contexts of Ethnic Differences

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Man.Discarding simplistic conceptions of 'cultures' as bounded entities for research, recent social anthropological studies have descnbed ethnicity as those aspects of social relationships and processes in which cultural difference is communicated. This approach is endorsed here, but it is argued that it is also necessary to understand vanrations in the forms of cultural difference communicated through ethnicity. Thus, variations in the significance of cultural differences in otherwise comparable inter-ethnic situations must be understood comparatively. Drawing on the Wittgensteinian concept of language-games, the article demonstrates and discusses such vanations as they are expressed in different inter-ethnic contexts in Trinidad and Mauritius. It is argued that a concept of culture which fully acknowledges the contextual character of shared meaning in any society must be dual: culture is continuously created and re-created through intentional agency, but it is simultaneously a necessary condition for all agency to be meaningful.The objective of this article is to contribute to the development of analytical devices for dealing comparatively with cultural differences made relevant in systems of interaction. First, the strengths and limitations of a leading social anthropological perspective on ethnicity are considered. Thereafter, certain aspects of ethnicity in two so-called poly-ethnic societies, Trinidad and Mauritius, are described and contextualized analytically. Finally, a general classification of inter-ethnic contexts is suggested. The criterion suggested to distinguish contexts in this respect is the varying cultural significance of ethnicity. The proposed classification is not, however, incompatible with certain other attempts to compare ethnic phenomena.Although my point of departure is a concept of ethnicity which is relational and processual, that is what I call a formalist view, I nevertheless insist that an understanding of the scope of cultural differences must supplement an appreciation of the formal features of ethnicitywhether they are to be localized to the level of the social formation or to the level of interaction. In order to achieve this, I shall draw on Wittgenstein's (1983 [1953]) concept of language-games. An implication of the analysis of ethnicity, briefly discussed at the end of the article, is that a sensible concept of culture must depict culture both as an aspect of concrete, ongoing interaction and as the meaning-context for the very same interaction. Conceptualizing ethnicity: a critical reviewOne of our most wides...

Ethnic boundaries and boundary-making in handicrafts: examples from northern Norway, Sweden and Finland

“…Ethnicity may hence be partly seen as a creative choice and discursive construction -as malleable depending on the situation or the audience (Barth 1969;see also: Eidheim 1971;Waters 1990;Eriksen 1991;Nagel 1994;Barker 2001;Kramvig 2005). Typically, people put forward arguments that revolve around ancestry, language, culture, appearance, locality or religion to talk about and "prove" their ethnicity (Nagel 1994).…”

“…This setting is particularly relevant in that people live in mixed communities and often have multiple ethnic backgrounds and lifestyles that may, in many cases, not differ significantly. From a Barthian perspective, they can hence adhere to several ethnic identities, commit partially or fully to different ethnic choices and even shift these choices depending on the situation (Barth 1969;Eidheim 1971;Waters 1990;Eriksen 1991;Nagel 1994). This makes it particularly interesting to ask: In what ways do handicraft crafters/sellers in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland construct ethnicity and draw ethnic boundaries in relation to handicrafts?…”

Where is the Border? Fieldwork Biases and Problems of Scale in Ethnic Structuration in Sápmi

“…Para ello propondré la idea de que estas imágenes conviven en diferentes escalas de práctica, y que una de las tareas fundamentales que ha de emprender nuestra disciplina en este terreno es mostrar, con el mayor detalle posible, cómo es que esas escalas se articulan en la acción y en el discurso público, y a qué clases de procesos sociales responden (Cf. Jenkins 1994, Barth 1992Eriksen 1991).…”

“…Como se ha señalado en innumerables ocasiones, el uso real de esos nombres es indicativo, indexical, y su referencia concreta sólo puede aprehenderse, en cada caso, a través del contexto comunicativo general y en relación con un mensaje concreto (Shaw 1994, Cf. Okamura 1981, Eriksen 1991. En rigor, el punto de partida semiótico debe ser considerar a esos nombres, no en su función de substantivos con referencia relativamente precisa, sino en su función pronominal, pues siempre apuntan hacia un sujeto cuyo contenido biográfico y sociocultural concreto es desbordante.…”

“…Okamura 1981, Eriksen 1991, Díaz de Rada 2004 estados, en las que las definiciones identitarias operan fijando históricamente criterios de sujeto. Estas instituciones burocráticas definen y fijan claramente sus fronteras y sus territorios estratégicos de manera dicotómica.…”