Perspectives on ethnicity, gender and race and their empirical referents: a four-sided paradigm and critical review

Abstract

Based on a sample of general textbooks in sociology, this article proposes a heuristic, four-sided paradigm of the extant literature on ethnicity, gender and race and highlights their empirical referents: (1) order–integrative, which emphasizes the progressive adaptation of ethnic and racial groups to a dominant, Anglo-Saxonic, Eurocentric culture; (2) pluralist–multiculturalist, which emphasizes markers of social differentiation between ethnic and racial groups that are compatible with social diversity; (3) power–conflict–stratification, which frames successive generations of minority ethnics in contentious power relations amongst themselves relative to the perceived or actual mainstream white powerbrokers in society; and (4) gender–feminist, which critically analyses the white, male, heterosexual bias and hegemony built into the structures and practices of social institutions and social discourse. The paper concludes by suggesting further research on cross-national perspectives as developed countries become more diverse and, as a result, more culturally divisive.

Keywords:

• ethnicity
• gender
• race
• sociological perspectives