Family relations and the attitude towards ethnic minorities as close kin by marriage

Using data from a nationally representative survey (N=6,632), this study examines among native Dutch adults the relationship between current family characteristics and the attitude towards having ethnic minority members as close kin by marriage. The findings indicate that the opposition to intermarriage is quite high but differs towards different ethnic minority groups. Family cohesion – strength of family ties, the adherence to family norms and contact frequency – is related to lower acceptance of inter-ethnic marriage. This supports the idea that when the ties are tightly knit, family members have an incentive to keep ‘cultural strangers’ out of the family. In contrast, family warmth – feelings of affection and emotional support – is related to higher acceptance of inter-ethnic marriage. This is in agreement with the idea that warm and emotionally supportive family relationships can lead to the development of generalized trust, empathy and open-mindedness.     

The Effect of Perceived Regional Accents on Individual Economic Behavior: A Lab Experiment on Linguistic Performance,Cognitive Ratings and Economic Decisions

Does it matter if you speak with a regional accent? Speaking immediately reveals something of one’s own social and cultural identity, be it consciously or unconsciously. Perceiving accents involves not only reconstructing such imprints but also augmenting them with particular attitudes and stereotypes. Even though we know much about attitudes and stereotypes that are transmitted by, e.g. skin color, names or physical attractiveness, we do not yet have satisfactory answers how accent perception affects human behavior. How do people act in economically relevant contexts when they are confronted with regional accents? This paper reports a laboratory experiment where we address this question. Participants in our experiment conduct cognitive tests where they can choose to either cooperate or compete with a randomly matched male opponent identified only via his rendering of a standardized text in either a regional accent or standard accent. We find a strong connection between the linguistic performance and the cognitive rating of the opponent. When matched with an opponent who speaks the accent of the participant’s home region—the in-group opponent –, individuals tend to cooperate significantly more often. By contrast, they are more likely to compete when matched with an accent speaker from outside their home region, the out-group opponent. Our findings demonstrate, firstly, that the perception of an out-group accent leads not only to social discrimination but also influences economic decisions. Secondly, they suggest that this economic behavior is not necessarily attributable to the perception of a regional accent per se, but rather to the social rating of linguistic distance and the in-group/out-group perception it evokes.     

The ‘successful’ return: Caribbean narratives of migration,family, and gender

Research on female migrant caregivers has tended to focus upon the emotional and social problems they encounter working abroad, given women's traditional role as caregivers for their own families. This article analyses how Caribbean women who have returned after a period abroad as domestic workers inscribe their migration experiences within the gendered narrative of the good relative who migrates to help the family left behind and therefore deserves social recognition in the community of origin. It argues that this narrative allows the women to both affirm and reinterpret local family and gender roles within the context of migration. This analysis points to the close connection between narrative structures, accounts of migration experiences, and self‐presentations and suggests that narratives about family and gender roles not only reflect people's lives, but are also a malleable resource that can be (re)shaped to validate a variety of life‐courses.     

‘They think of a family only in their thirties’: gendered subfertility and emergent intimate modernities in India

Recent anthropological scholarship on marriage in South Asia has chronicled a shift towards companionate marriage, with ideals of companionate conjugality becoming central to middle-class self-representations. However, the role of child-bearing and fertility within these marriages, as emerging life projects related to new family ideals, has not received much attention, even as literature on India has recorded extensive family concern with fertility. In this article, I focus on the endocrine disorder polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) – one of the leading causes of female infertility world-wide – to examine emerging conceptions of fertility and intimate modernities among the urban middle class in India. I argue that a comparatively limited concern with fertility forms a part of this class's self-representations and practices of distinction. Such attitudes to fertility, enabled by new orientations towards medical risk and ideals of companionate marriage, also function as markers of the emerging ‘modern’ subjectivity of this class.     

Ethnic diversity,segregation and the social cohesion of neighbourhoods in London

The question of whether and how ethnic diversity affects the social cohesion of communities has become an increasingly prominent and contested topic of academic and political debate. In this paper we focus on a single city: London. As possibly the most ethnically diverse conurbation on the planet, London serves as a particularly suitable test-bed for theories about the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on prosocial attitudes. We find neighbourhood ethnic diversity in London to be positively related to the perceived social cohesion of neighbourhood residents, once the level of economic deprivation is accounted for. Ethnic segregation within neighbourhoods, on the other hand, is associated with lower levels of perceived social cohesion. Both effects are strongly moderated by the age of individual residents: diversity has a positive effect on social cohesion for young people but this effect dissipates in older age groups; the reverse pattern is found for ethnic segregation.     

Affiliative ethnic identity: a more elastic link between ethnic ancestry and culture

This paper explains the development of affiliative ethnic identity: an individual identity rooted in knowledge, regular consumption and deployment of an ethnic culture that is unconnected to an individual's ethnic ancestry until that individual regards herself, and may be regarded by others, as an affiliate of a particular ethnic group. While ethnic culture remains identifiably linked to a particular ethnic ancestry, ideological, institutional and demographic changes have elasticized the link between ancestry and culture, making the formation of affiliative ethnic identity possible. Multiculturalism and its accompanying value of diversity have become institutionalized such that individuals regard ethnic difference as something to be recognized and celebrated. The prevalence of ethnic culture in schools, ethnically infused products of popular culture, demographic changes and growing interethnic contact allow individuals, regardless of ethnic ancestry, ready access to multiple ethnic cultures, providing the basis for the formation of affiliative ethnic identity.     

Like one of the family: race,ethnicity, and the paradox of US national identity

The tensions between individual rights promised to US citizens and group discrimination targeted against African Americans and similar racial/ethnic groups constitute one enduring paradox of US society. This essay examines this paradox by exploring how a gendered family rhetoric contributes to understandings of race and US national identity. Using African American women's experiences as a touchstone for analysis, the article suggests that African American women's treatment as second-class citizens reflects a belief that they are 'like one of the family', that is, legally part of the US nation-state, but simultaneously subordinated within it. To investigate these relationships, the article examines 1) how intersecting social hierarchies of race and ethnicity foster racialized understandings of US national identity; 2) how the gendered rhetoric of the American family ideal naturalizes and normalizes social hierarchies; and 3) how gendered family rhetoric fosters racialized constructions of US national identity as a large national family.     

Ethnic variation in network composition in Ürümchi: do state policies matter?

This paper examines the inter-group difference in social leverage ties between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in Ürümchi, China. Social leverage ties refer to high-status ties such as professionals and managers who can provide egos with information or access to education, training, employment, etc. Existing studies have suggested three hypotheses (i.e. retention of culture, homophily and neighbourhood poverty) for the mechanisms of ethnic differences in network composition. Based on the survey data the author collected in 2005, this paper suggests another main mechanism – state policies – in explaining the ethnic variations. State policies have led to in-group association and ethnic inequalities, which have limited Uyghur access to high-status individuals. Data analysis shows the Uyghur–Han difference in social leverage ties controlling for key background characteristics.     

Gender,Ethnicity, Marital Status,and Body Weight in the United States

Married individuals tend to be heavier than those who are unmarried, particularly men, and individuals in different ethnic categories vary in their involvement in marriage and in their body weights. We examined gender and ethnic differences in relationships between marital status and body weight using cross‐sectional data from the 1999–2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for 3,947 women and 4,019 men. The findings revealed that compared to married men in the same ethnic category, white divorced men, black never‐married men, and all Hispanic men except for widows had lower odds of being overweight. Compared to married women in the same ethnic category, white women's weights did not significantly differ by marital status, black separated women had greater odds of being overweight, and Hispanic never‐married women had lower odds of being overweight. Associations of marriage with body weight appear to be at least partly contingent upon gender and ethnicity, which may reflect larger societal patterns of involvement in marriage, commitment to family, and body‐weight norms and expectations.     

Conceiving Reproduction: New Reproductive Technologies and the Redefinition of the Kinship Narrative in New Zealand Society

This paper focuses on technologies for assisting conception and considers how normative notions of conception and family formation have informed the rejection, incorporation and adaptation of technologies and their regulation in New Zealand. Drawing on a textual analysis of primary written materials and secondary sources generated between 1965 and 2004, the paper reveals how these technologies help various groups in New Zealand society make explicit their understandings of relatedness, identity and social and cultural belonging. Whilst biological/genetic connection and social connections inform understandings of kinship, reproduction, parenthood and social structure for many New Zealanders, the boundaries between the biological and social are often blurred and precedence of one over the other is very much context dependent. The incorporation of the new reproductive technologies has been an inherently politicised process, with barriers to access to these technologies emerging in relation to ethnic identity and race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, gender, and marital status.     

Cultural barriers associated with large gene frequency differences among Italian populations.

Analysis of geographic variation for eight red cell markers in Italy shows significant spatial structure for most alleles. Effective population sizes estimated from FST values at these loci are much smaller than those predicted from data on consanguineous marriage, suggesting the presence of factors (presumably barriers) that have reduced gene flow and enhanced the evolutionary weight of genetic drift. Most regions of sharp gene frequency change correspond to geographic and linguistic barriers. Two allele frequencies are significantly correlated with measures of linguistic differentiation but not with indexes describing broad religious and social attitudes. The similarity between patterns of genetic and linguistic variation in Italy, also observed in a previous study, suggests that in specific areas linguistic diversity has acted as a biological barrier constraining mating, dispersal, or both. There is no evidence for a similar role of other extent cultural barriers.     

The Chinese family as instituted fantasy: or,rescuing kinship imaginaries from the ‘symbolic’

This article revisits well‐travelled ethnographic portrayals of traditional Chinese family dynamics to draw attention to desire as a product of family life and to how crucial elements of family organization and ideology can be understood, in turn, as effects of desire – that is, as instituted fantasies. Although my case in point is the Chinese family, the analysis addresses the category ‘family’ cross‐culturally. In any of its variations, the ‘family’ exists at two synergistically implicated levels: first, it comprises an important part of the reality into which individuals are socialized; second, it embodies in instituted form individuals' attempts to realize – to bring into being – social arrangements as they would like them to be. In the Chinese case, at least two ironies are embedded in this synergy. First, women are primary producers and reproducers of the family in the ‘real world’, despite the fact that patriliny as ‘instituted fantasy’ downplays or veils their agency. Second, the normative subordination of the son to a patriarchal father, expressed and mediated through institutions including ancestor worship and valorization of filial piety, veils a valorizing of the son as agent or protagonist of filial action. Although ultimately unrealizable, patrilineal and familial fantasies animate Chinese family life and are thus an important constituent of Chinese realities. To these ends the analysis re‐purposes ‘the symbolic’ and ‘imaginaries’, categories widely employed in contemporary gender studies and social theory, arguing that understanding kinship enjoins incorporating desire's role both in defining institutions and in motivating their creators.     

Diversity and the economy: a cross-country,comprehensive study

Using Alesina et al.'s (2003) fractionalization indices that separately measure ethnic (E), linguistic (L) and religious (R) diversity for 180 countries, a cluster analysis is performed to group the countries into three distinct clusters based on their similarities in the three diversity measures. Given these country clusters, this study examines how these different clusters perform, on average, in regard to thirteen different economic and political indicators. The results presented for the economic indicators suggest that ethnic and linguistic diversity measures might be relatively more important in affecting economic outcomes compared to religious diversity. In terms of the political indicators considered in this analysis, the countries in the most ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse cluster performed statistically lower on average relative to the other country clusters.     

Ethnic school context and the national and sub-national identifications of pupils

In various European countries, policy-makers strive for educational desegregation to enhance pupils' national identifications. Since little empirical evidence supports such a policy and social identity theorists emphasize the importance of context, this article examines the impact of ethnic school composition – measured by the proportion of non-natives and ethnic heterogeneity – on the national (Belgian) and sub-national (Flemish) identifications of pupils. Multi-level data analyses from the surveying of 2,845 pupils (aged 10–12) in sixty-eight Flemish primary schools reveal differential effects for natives and non-natives. While the proportion of non-natives at school is negatively associated with non-native pupils' identifications, it is positively related to native pupils' identifications. In general, the ethnic heterogeneity of the school is negatively associated with pupils' national and sub-national identifications. Our findings indicate that the relation between ethnic school composition and pupils' identifications is mediated by the latter's inter-ethnic friendships. The consequences of these findings for educational policy are discussed.     

Immigrant transit camps ‐ The formation of dependent relations in Israeli society

In this article three approaches to define and explain negative ethnic attitudes are discussed: the anthropology of cultural misunderstanding, the sociology of how differences in group positions are justified ideologically, and the social psychology of maintaining self‐esteem through intergroup differentiation. The‐ aim is to integrate these approaches into an interdisciplinary model. Social identity theory is used as a frame for this integration. The argument developed is that ingroup values are used for intergroup differentiation and evaluation. This leads to the development of stereotypes. Stereotypes reflect misunderstanding, but also anchor social representations of a hierarchy of group positions (ethnic hierarchy). Depending on the ethnic composition of the larger society, majority and minority groups will differ in their ethnic hierarchies. Discrepancies between ethnic hierarchies will lead to ethnic tension. From the perspective developed, a number of hypotheses is derived about how changes in the socio‐economic position of minority groups will affect intergroup evaluations. Hypotheses based on the category differentiation model and the social identity model are specified with respect to the expected changes in stereotypes and intergroup discrimination of the ethnic majority and minority groups.     

Gender,family configuration,and the effect of family background on educational attainment

Abstract

A comprehensive model of family influences on educational resemblance of siblings expands the traditional sibling pair model to a full sibship model in order to investigate how gender, gender composition of sibships, and a measure of ordinal position moderate the effect of social origins on educational attainments of siblings. One common family factor is sufficient to explain the variation of educational attainment among brothers and sisters. Although effects of social origin variables on brothers are larger than on sisters, the relative effects of measured social origins are virtually the same among sisters and brothers. The disparity between educational attainments of brothers and sisters persists across sex composition and family size. Ordinal position does not alter the effects of social origins on educational attainment nor does it directly affect educational attainment. Father's and mother's education are equally important for all siblings regardless of birth order, gender composition, and family size.     

Clan, language, and migration history has shaped genetic diversity in Haida and Tlingit populations from Southeast Alaska

The linguistically distinctive Haida and Tlingit tribes of Southeast Alaska are known for their rich material culture, complex social organization, and elaborate ritual practices. However, much less is known about these tribes from a population genetic perspective. For this reason, we analyzed mtDNA and Y-chromosome variation in Haida and Tlingit populations to elucidate several key issues pertaining to the history of this region. These included the genetic relationships of Haida and Tlingit to other indigenous groups in Alaska and Canada; the relationship between linguistic and genetic data for populations assigned to the Na-Dene linguistic family, specifically, the inclusion of Haida with Athapaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit in the language family; the possible influence of matrilineal clan structure on patterns of genetic variation in Haida and Tlingit populations; and the impact of European entry into the region on the genetic diversity of these indigenous communities. Our analysis indicates that, while sharing a "northern" genetic profile, the Haida and the Tlingit are genetically distinctive from each other. In addition, Tlingit groups themselves differ across their geographic range, in part due to interactions of Tlingit tribes with Athapaskan and Eyak groups to the north. The data also reveal a strong influence of maternal clan identity on mtDNA variation in these groups, as well as the significant influence of non-native males on Y-chromosome diversity. These results yield new details about the histories of the Haida and Tlingit tribes in this region.     

Gender and ethnic identity among second-generation Indo-Caribbeans

This article discusses second-generation Indo-Caribbean (West Indian of Indian descent) teenagers’ ethnic identities, through a look at their taste preferences and self assertions of identity. Both Indo-Caribbean young men and women draw from multiple influences on their identities. In terms of tastes in clothing and movies, however, girls are more interested in things Indian, and in “Indian culture”. Boys, on the other hand, choose to distance themselves from an Indian identity. Three factors explain these gender differences in choices about ethnic identity: (1) different media images for South Asian men and women; (2) a school context lending different levels of peer symbolic status to perceived Indian boys and girls; and (3) a gendered process of migration by which women maintain stronger cultural roots in the new country. The findings in this article point to the need to pay attention to gender differences when considering ethnic incorporation.     

Christian nationalism and white racial boundaries: examining whites' opposition to interracial marriage

How does the convergence of national and religious identities potentially fortify white racial boundaries in the USA? Focusing on openness to racial exogamy as an indicator of racial boundaries, we examine the link between Christian nationalism and white Americans' views towards their hypothetical daughter marrying an African American, Latino, or Asian. Drawing on insights from social identity complexity theory, we argue that the convergence of religious and national identities serves to reinforce in-group boundaries, thereby fortifying notions of white purity, and consequently, strengthening whites' discomfort with potential race-mixing in marriage. Multivariate analyses of national survey data demonstrate that Christian nationalism is strongly associated with an increase in white Americans' discomfort with a daughter marrying any racial minority, and particularly African Americans. We demonstrate how the convergence of religious and national identities in Christian nationalism influences whites' regulating of racial boundaries (evidenced in intermarriage attitudes) above and beyond the independent effects of political conservatism or religious exclusivism.