A Practical Task: Ethnicity as a Resource in Social Interaction

Abstract

Ethnicity has been treated historically in social sciences as a past-oriented feeling of "peoplehood." Despite seminal language and social interaction (LSI) scholarship that treats ethnicity as an ongoing, situated practical accomplishment (see Moerman, 1988; Wieder & Pratt, 1990), there is a paucity of scholarship that expressly considers how ethnicity is utilized by participants as a resource in conducting the business of, and in attending to myriad exigencies in, social interaction. In this analysis, which employs membership categorization analysis in examining a 19-min span of a public planning meeting, I show how ethnicity emerges in social interaction as a resource for participants in discussing the merits of a proposed charter school. Implications for ethnicity's place in LSI scholarship are discussed.