Elementary strategies of ethnic boundary making

Abstract

This article offers a new taxonomy of how actors may change ethnic boundaries. I distinguish between five main strategies: to redraw a boundary by either expanding or limiting the domain of people included in one's own ethnic category; to modify existing boundaries by challenging the hierarchical ordering of ethnic categories, or by changing one's own position within a boundary system, or by emphasizing other, non-ethnic forms of belonging. The taxonomy claims to be exhaustive and accommodates a considerable number of historical and contemporary cases both from the developed and the developing world. It aims at overcoming the fragmentation of the literature along disciplinary and sub-disciplinary lines and prepares the ground for an agency-based comparative model of ethnic boundary making.

Keywords:

• Ethnic boundaries
• blurring
• assimilation
• nation-building
• ethnogenesis
• constructivism

Notes

1. The title of this article is inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss’ ‘Les structures élémentaires de la parenté’. Another formalist project is pursued by Fiske (1992).

2. For a critique of the post-ethnic cosmopolitanism literature, see Calhoun (2002) and Favell (2005). A powerful critique of the notion that ‘race’ and ethnicity are the outcome of entirely different social processes is offered by Loveman (1997).

3. See Wallman (1986), Loveman (1997), Wacquant (1997), Zolberg and Woon (1999), Lamont (2000), Tilly (2004) and Alba (2005).

4. An excellent recent contribution is Elman (2005).

5. For such an encompassing view of ethnicity, see Weber (1978, pp. 385–87) and many others who follow in his footsteps. For the reasons discussed in Horowitz (1971), this view is less accepted in the United States than elsewhere.

6. For the purposes of this typology, distinguishing between individual and corporate actors (such as social movements, institutions, corporate communities and the like) is not necessary. All the strategies that I review can be pursued by either type of actor, with the exception of individual border crossing which by definition is decided upon by individuals, even if the consequences might affect the entire group, as we will see further below.

7. Moerman (1965), Keyes (1976), Galaty (1982) and Jenkins (1997).

8. Okamura (1981), Burgess (1983), Waters (1990, pp. 52–8), Okamoto (2003) and Brubaker (2004, ch. 2).

9. Similarly, the definition of who is white was expanded in Puerto Rico after the First World War in such a way that children of ‘mixed’ marriages were now incorporated into the group of ‘whites’ (Loveman and Muniz 2006).

10. Creole nationalism in the Caribbean (Patterson 1975) or Brazil's ‘racial democracy’, canonized by sociologist Gilberto Freire, are other examples of nation-building through a strategy of amalgamation (Skidmore 1993 [1974]).

11. For a summary of recent debates on the millet question, see Grillo (1998, pp. 86–93).

12. In Rhodesia, missionaries amalgamated local Shona units into six language groups each subsequently endowed with bibles and schools and administered in separate provinces by the white settler state – the Koreko, Zezuru, Manyika, Ndau, Karanga and Kalanga that later appear as important categories in the political arena of independent Zimbabwe (Posner 2005).

13. Cohen (1978, pp. 396f.), Lanoue (1992) and Macmillan (1989).

14. Many more African examples are discussed in Horowitz (1975).

15. See the ‘ethnic blocks’ described by Geertz (1963), Horowitz (1975), Hannan (1979) and Chai (1996).

16. See also work on the Yoruba (Peel 1989), the Tsonga (Harries 1989), the ‘Northerners’ of Uganda (Kasfir 1976, pp. 98ff.), the Ibo of Nigeria and the Luba-Kasai of Zaire (Chai 1996) or the Fang of Gabon and Cameroon (Fernandez 1966).

17. Compare also first-generation middle-class immigrants to the United States from the Caribbean, who dis-identify with the category ‘black’ and emphasize country-of-origin identities (Waters 1999).

18. See Friedlander (1975), Colby and van den Berghe (1969, pp.179f.), Iwanska (1971, pp. 99ff.), Köhler (1990, p. 62) and so on. An exception seems to be the Nahuas described by Sandstrom (1991, pp. 68f.), who group all indigenous groups into the category of masehualmej, a term denoting commoners in the Aztec empire.

19. Compare Hoddie (2002) on Australia's aborigines.

20. In the wake of the civil rights movement, Japanese Americans shrugged off the stigma associated with Pearl Harbor and reinterpreted their story as one of redressing the injustice of dispossession and internment (Takezawa 1995).

21. For a case of ‘frame transformation’ in social movement literature terminology, see Snow et al. (1986).

22. For Colombia, see Wade (1995); for Ecuador, Belote and Belote (1984); for Brazil, Harris (1964).

23. See also Reina (1966, p. 31), Friedlander (1975), Deverre (1980) and O'Connor (1989, ch. 7). For crossing into the ‘blanco’ category in Ecuador, see Belote and Belote (1984).

24. A contrasting example is described by Driedger (1979).

25. See also Kertzer (1988, pp. 112–13) and Srinivas (1952, pp. 24–31).

26. The Mexican American middle class, by contrast, has sought to be accepted as ‘white’ but has generally not been successful in having their entire group reclassified (Oboler 1997). Later on, some segments of the educated elite shifted to a civil rights discourse, emphasizing the racial exclusion that they have been subjected to, and pursued a strategy of equalization rather than crossing (Skerry 1995).

27. In Eastern Rwanda, Hutu clans were re-classified as Tutsi if they became powerful enough to represent a challenge to the chieftain (Lemarchand 1966).

28. Similarly, on adolescents of Turkish origin in the Netherlands, see Milikowski (2000).

29. Compare Pacini Hernández (2003); the commercial aspects of Latino pan-ethnicity are emphasized by Dávila (2001).

30. A borderline case is the distinction between nation-building and ethno-genesis. It refers to different relationships to the modern state rather than to existing boundaries. Still, both sub-types refer to the formal characteristics of this relationship, rather than its content, as would be the case if one were to follow mainstream literature and distinguish, for example, between ethnic and civil nationalisms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andreas Wimmer

ANDREAS WIMMER is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles