Transnational cyberpublics: new political spaces for labour migrants in Asia

This article offers a cultural interpretation of transnational solidarities that Asian political activists are generating through electronic telecommunications networks. Its focus is on the experiences of the Migrant Forum in Asia [MFA], a network of non-government organizations that question issues of human rights, citizenship and working conditions of labour migrants in the Asian region. MFA's networking activities are being transformed as email enables daily conversations across multiple national borders, and new 'imagined' communities of political action have emerged. English has been chosen as the language of solidarity, and photographs have become important in communicating activities and ideas. These media are innovative modes of transnational communication and shape political spaces that exist in symbiotic relation to the 'real'. Attention to these practices, spaces and the symbolic meanings activists attach to these communities helps to illuminate a cultural politics of transnational activism in this region.     

Commitment and paradox in sociological research: School integration in Israel*

Panethnicity ‐ the development of bridging organizations and the generalization of solidarity among ethnic subgroups ‐ is important theoretically because it focuses attention on ethnic change, and allows one to assess the relative importance of structural and cultural factors. In this article we present a framework for the study of panethnicity, generate research questions from this framework, and then test these questions by examining panethnicity within four broad racial/ethnic groupings: Asian Americans, Native Americans, Indo Americans and Latinos in the United States. A review of these four cases demonstrates that those groups with the greatest cross‐subgroup structural similarity (Asian Americans and Indo Americans) also display the greatest panethnic development and potential, despite their considerable cultural diversity. This suggests that structural factors are more important for understanding the development of panethnicity and, by extension, for understanding ethnic change generally.     

A resynthesis of the primordial and circumstantial approaches to ethnic group solidarity: Towards an explanatory model

Social scientists who have attempted to explain ethnic group solidarity have tended to use either the primordial or the circumstantial approach. The first approach accounts for strong ethnic attachments on the basis of their ineffable affective significance. Moreover, this affective significance most often surrounds images of the group's distinctive past, thus giving a historical dimension to the concept of primordialism. The second approach views ethnic group solidarity as resulting from certain social circumstances, both internal and external, under which the members of the group exist. It is argued that neither approach alone offers a sufficient explanation ‐ i.e., that the primordial approach cannot readily account for fluctuating ethnic group solidarity and that the circumstantial approach tends to ignore the affective significance of ethnic ties ‐ and that previous attempts to synthesize them have been inadequate as explanatory models. Such a synthetic model is offered, which is based on the oppositional approach originated by Edward Spicer and which maintains that fluctuating ethnicity, along with fluctuating primordial sentiments, can be best explained on the basis of the circumstance of fluctuating opposition.     

Nations: Old and new Comments on Anthony D. Smith's ‘The myth of the “Modern Nation” and the myths of nations’

Abstract

Do common ethnicity and ethnic solidarity constitute preconditions for the successful formation of modern nations? In response to Anthony Smith's contention to this effect, it is here argued that ethnic solidarity at a large‐enough scale to constitute a nation is a problematic notion. Solidarities beyond small local communities require ideological and political underpinning. Rather than being preconditions of nation‐formation, ethnic homogeneity and solidarity are often products of a stable history of state and nation formation. The failures of some modern nation‐states with diverse ethnic compositions are an indication of inadequacy of resources for achieving stable ‘governability’.     

Afropolitan projects: African immigrant identities and solidarities in the United States

This article explores how Africans born or raised in the United States employ ethnicity to understand their racial and cultural identities. I argue that African immigrants engage positive narratives about Africa along with their experiences of anti-black racism to articulate identities as “Africans of the world”. I call this articulation of identity Afropolitan projects. The Afropolitan as an ethnicity is not meant to shield Africans from anti-black racism, but instead helps articulate a particular relationship to this form of inequality. The following analysis derives from a qualitative case study of a voluntary association comprising Ghanaians primarily raised in the United States. I find that the group’s identity is as much about being black, African, and American as it is about being middle-class, Christian, and heterosexual. Through their Afropolitan projects, this group emphasizes solidarities with a global middle-class heterosexual patriarchy while foreclosing solidarities with working class, queer, and other people of colour.     

Kin selection and ethnic group selection

Ethnicity looks something like kinship on a larger scale. The same math can be used to measure genetic similarity within ethnic/racial groups and relatedness within families. For example, members of the same continental race are about as related (r = 0.18–0.26) as half-siblings (r = 0.25). However (contrary to some claims) the theory of kin selection does not apply straightforwardly to ethnicity, because inclusive fitness calculations based on Hamilton's rule break down when there are complicated social interactions within groups, and/or groups are large and long-lasting. A more promising approach is a theory of ethnic group selection, a special case of cultural group selection. An elementary model shows that the genetic assimilation of a socially enforced cultural regime can promote group solidarity and lead to the regulation of recruitment to groups, and to altruism between groups, based on genetic similarity – in short, to ethnic nepotism. Several lines of evidence, from historical population genetics and political psychology, are relevant here.     

西南地区文化多样性时空格局

我国西南地区少数民族类别众多,各民族在历史发展中形成了许多优秀的文化传统和独特的生态意识。本研究以县级行政区为基本研究单元,基于民族类别及其人口定量测度了西南地区的文化多样性指数,并比较了1990年、2000年与2010年的动态变化。西南地区文化多样性指数具有明显的空间异质性,整体上呈现西北低东南高的格局。虽然文化多样性指数在时间序列上有一定程度的增加,但总体上县域尺度的文化多样性水平偏低。此外,随着空间尺度的扩大,文化多样性指数逐渐增加,即西南地区整体上表现为"大杂居,小聚居"的分布格局。省域尺度上,文化多样性的差异总和与各组分差异均随时间的推移而减少,同时,其民族构成的相似性趋于增加,表明西南地区各民族人口的分布更加融合,民族交融成为趋势。在西南地区的生态环境背景下,文化多样性的空间分布与平均坡度密切相关。研究探讨了民族融合的社会历史背景,分析了阶梯过渡带具有较高文化多样性的原因,并呼吁加强对西南地区优秀传统文化的重视与保护。     

‘We've got team spirit!’: ethnic community building and Japanese American youth basketball leagues

This article examines the role co-ethnic youth basketball leagues play in shaping ethnic community among third- and fourth-generation Japanese American youth. With dwindling rates of Japanese immigration, increased rates of out-marriage, and fewer cultural hubs available, finding a thriving ethnic community has become a particular challenge for later-generation Japanese Americans. Drawing from ethnographic data, I argue that even among highly ‘assimilated’ Japanese Americans, youth basketball leagues serve as an active space for constructing and preserving ethnic community and social networks. I demonstrate how through social, cultural, and spatial interactions facilitated by sports, some Japanese Americans have found a sense of ethnic ‘connectedness’ within basketball leagues while performing their own renditions of ethnic identity that is simultaneously attentive to fluid local and global connections. These findings illuminate the role and importance of sport through which Japanese Americans challenges the racial contours of American-ness and belonging while claiming their place, locally, nationally, and transnationally.     

The Relationship between Cultural Anxiety and Ethnic Essentialism: The Mediating Role of an Endorsement of Multicultural Ideology

Many studies have explored the social consequences of ethnic essentialism in recent decades. In addition, a few studies have focused on the impact of perceived cultural context on ethnic essentialism. However, it is not clear why perceived cultural context can lead to changes in ethnic essentialism. In the present study, we hypothesized that the cultural anxiety of ethnic minorities may trigger a strong endorsement of and support for a multicultural ideology, thereby affecting beliefs about ethnic groups. To address the issue, 226 Tibetan and 102 Hui college students from Mainland China completed our questionnaires. The results across the two samples showed that (1) cultural anxiety was positively associated with both the endorsement of a multicultural ideology and ethnic essentialism, (2) cultural anxiety and the endorsement of a multicultural ideology positively predicted ethnic essentialism after controlling for demographic variables, and (3) cultural anxiety had both a direct effect on ethnic essentialism and an indirect effect on ethnic essentialism through the endorsement of a multicultural ideology. Our findings suggest that when ethnic minorities experience cultural anxiety, they might endorse a multicultural ideology and adopt essentialism to affirm their ethnic identities.     

Sibling solidarity in a polygamous community in the USA: unpacking inclusive fitness

This pilot study explores the degree of solidarity felt between full and half siblings who are raised in a Mormon Fundamentalist polygamous community. The community under study is unique in that, at the level of official culture, it actively promotes full and half sibling solidarity through an ethos that strives to downplay genetic differences in favor of a harmonious family living together in one household. This community is an ideal cultural setting in which to examine the suitability of inclusive fitness theory for understanding the factors that promote family cohesion, sibling solidarity, and rivalry. Our main question becomes: is the degree of sibling solidarity a manifestation of genetic closeness or a natural byproduct of emotional closeness that arises from being raised together? We found evidence for more solidarity between full siblings than between half siblings. Our data suggest that, despite the force of religious ideals, and notwithstanding the continued close physical proximity of half siblings in the polygamous family, there is a pronounced clustering of feeling and affection in the polygamous family that is consistent with inclusive fitness theory.     

The origins of nations

Although the nation, as a named community of history and culture, possessing a common territory, economy, mass education system and common legal rights, is a relatively modern phenomenon, its origins can be traced back to pre‐modern ethnic communities. Such named ethnies with their myths of common descent, common memories, culture and solidarity, and associations with a homeland, are found in both the ancient and the medieval periods in many areas of the world. Two kinds of ethnie are important for the origins and routes of the formation of nations. Territorial, ‘civic’ nations tend to develop from aristocratic ‘lateral’ ethnies through a process of ‘bureaucratic incorporation’ of outlying regions and lower classes into the ethnic culture of the upper classes, as occurred in France, England and Spain. The more numerous ‘ethnic’ nations, on the other hand, have emerged from demotic ‘vertical’ ethnies through processes of cultural mobilization that turn an often religiously defined and passive community into an active, politicized nation. Here the intellectuals and professionals replace the state as agents of popular mobilization, creating new ‘maps’ and ‘moralities’ through the uses of landscape and golden ages of a rediscovered and reconstructed communal past, as in Ireland, Finland and Switzerland. It is from these often ancient ties and sentiments that modern nations draw much of their power and durability today.     

The social side of ethnic entrepreneur breakout: evidence from Latino immigrant business owners

This article examines the social uses of immigrant business spaces that correspond to different stages of breakout, or the movement of a business from a limited, primarily co-ethnic customer base to a wider, primarily non-co-ethnic customer base. Using participant observation and interview data from three Latino immigrant-dominated shopping malls in the USA, we assess how the degree of breakout at each mall and the resulting degree of heterogeneity in customers is associated with different kinds of social uses of the spaces. We find that Latino immigrant business spaces that have yet to begin a transition towards breakout are important sites of bonding for Latino immigrants and serve to strengthen their ethnic solidarity. Latino immigrant business spaces that are in the midst of transitioning towards breakout facilitate casual interaction between Latino immigrant and non-Latino residents, while those Latino immigrant entrepreneur spaces that have achieved breakout act as spaces of cultural consumption by non-Latinos.     

Levelling the playing field: patterns of ethnic philanthropy among Los Angeles' middle- and upper-class Latino entrepreneurs

This paper examines whether middle- and upper-class Latino entrepreneurs retain a sense of ethnic solidarity expressed through community giving that is aimed at promoting the mobility of co-ethnics. I find that middle-class Latino entrepreneurs engage in more unstructured philanthropic activities, such as volunteering their time at Latino-centric organizations or mentoring low-income Latinos. In contrast, elite Latino entrepreneurs are creating ethnic social structures that focus on education and Latino business development.     

The Influence of Culture on Agroecosystem Structure: A Comparison of the Spatial Patterns of Homegardens of Different Ethnic Groups in Thailand and Vietnam

Different ethnic groups have evolved distinctive cultural models which guide their interactions with the environment, including their agroecosystems. Although it is probable that variations in the structures of homegardens among separate ethnic groups reflect differences in the cultural models of the farmers, empirical support for this assumption is limited. In this paper the modal horizontal structural patterns of the homegardens of 8 ethnic groups in Northeast Thailand and Vietnam are described. Six of these groups (5 speaking Tai languages and 1 speaking Vietnamese) live in close proximity to each other in separate villages in Northeast Thailand, and 2 of the groups (one Tai-speaking and one Vietnamese-speaking) live in different parts of Vietnam. Detailed information on the horizontal structure of homegardens was collected from samples of households belonging to each group. Although each ethnic group has a somewhat distinctive modal structure, the groups cluster into 2 different types. The Tai speaking Cao Lan, Kalaeng, Lao, Nyaw, and Yoy make up Type I while both of the Vietnamese groups, along with the Tai speaking Phu Thai, belong to Type II. Type I gardens have predominantly organic shapes, indeterminate boundaries, polycentric planting patterns, and multi-species composition within planting areas. Type II homegardens have geometric shapes, sharp boundaries, lineal planting patterns, and mono-species composition of planting areas. That the homegardens of most of the Tai ethnic groups share a relatively similar horizontal structural pattern that is quite different from the pattern shared by both of the Vietnamese groups suggests that the spatial layout of homegardens is strongly influenced by their different cultural models.     

Making the cosmopolitan canopy in Boston's Haymarket Square

Using ethnographic data on Boston's Haymarket Square, this paper demonstrates how public space and a market opportunity can generate solidarity among people of different ethnicities in the form of a cosmopolitan canopy, and how a single ethnic tradition can nurture an open, public multi-ethnic environment. The paper illustrates how Haymarket vendors' treatment of ethnic and racial difference is actively deployed in the construction of new groups that largely transcend such distinctions. This article outlines the mechanisms by which a cosmopolitan canopy is sustained, and how it serves a constructive social function within the city.     

Ethnic minorities and brothers in arms: competition and homophily in the military

Although the solidarity of brothers in arms is an important feature of the military, when it comes to ethnic minorities there is a pivotal paradox. On the one hand the military aims at drawing boundaries between soldiers and civilians by blurring existing ethnic and racial divisions inside the military. On the other hand the military is a highly national institution which prides itself on conservative values. Can these contradictions work? And how soldiers understand them? This paper examines the construction of ethnic boundaries in inter-group relations by focusing on the tension between ethnic hierarchy and competition versus homophily – the preference for maintaining ties with persons who are similar. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews with Dutch soldiers before and during deployment in Bosnia and Kosovo I ask when each strategy is put into work and why.     

The formation of class fractions in the Gilded Age

Data available from employment records of manual labour occupations in larger northeastern American cities in the years 1890 and 1900 are used to support an argument in contrast to human capital theory that economic discrimination can be explained as the rational behaviour of identifiable groups in particular market positions. Craft unionists from 1900 on, particularly in the building trades, satisfied at least minimal criteria to be regarded as a distinctive stratum or class fraction. Craft union workers utilized organizational capacities based on ethnic solidarity and barriers to entry in order to develop a distinctive stratum of skilled labourers, wage differentials reflecting at least partly craft unions' capacity to control access to training and employment.     

The ‘peace of the market’ in the midst of violence: A symbolic analysis of markets and exchange in western Guatemala*

The peasant markets of the western highlands of Guatemala present a field of public solidarity and constitute sources of sociocultural information. The information is expressed in the specific physical arrangements and in the types of interactions carried out in each context. The open, quasi festive plaza presents one model of and for behavior that corresponds to the traditional Indian conceptual framework, the public reunion strengthens the group solidarity and serves as a barrier against external aggression. The compartmentalized enclosed market, instead, follows and serves as a model which corresponds to Ladino conceptual guidelines, one which emphasizes the power of the product over the ethnic category as an organizational parameter. The traditional open plaza constitutes a communitas‐type framework where multiple interactions are peacefully conducted and the ‘Other’ is identified through the practice of bargaining.     

The first collective protest of black African migrants in postcolonial France (1960–1975): a struggle for housing and rights

The study of the political activism of black African diasporas in France after the independence era remains a neglected area of research. This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring the first notable postcolonial protests in the country by sub-Saharan migrants. The struggle of black African workers against their dire housing conditions opened up a ‘cycle of collective action’ that led to the better-known Sonacotra migrant hostels (foyers) rent strike of 1975–1980. Even before the Sonacotra strike, however, black African workers had been able to call on the authorities from both their origin and residence countries and to mobilize transnational networks in order to support their demands. This article provides the first comprehensive historical study of this decisive period. It highlights how ethnic ties are intertwined with political and social ones, focusing on the solidarities that these migrants developed in political networks and in their neighbourhoods.     

Surfies versus Westies: Kinship,Mateship and Sexuality in the Cronulla Riot

In the predominantly affluent and Anglo Sutherland Shire in southern suburban Sydney, neighbourhood and extended kinship ties continue to exert powerful forces shaping local identities. During the riot of 11 December 2005 these identities were brought into relief by being pitted against the Lebanese immigrant youth who have been spatially and morally separated from Anglo‐Australians. I argue that the strong homosociality exhibited in several different contexts by young Anglo‐Australian men (the barbecue area, a sports team's ‘gang bang’, the violent defence of a neighbourhood controlled beach) and young Lebanese Australian men (paternal cousin and fraternal solidarities, an infamous series of gang rapes, their response to the White riot at Cronulla) are forms of separation that produce particular kinds of male sexual, class and ethnic subjects. I propose that a study of the role of kinship and cohort relationships in Anglo‐Australian and Lebanese‐Australian male groups should include the nature of incestophobia as an essential component of the precipitating fantasies leading to the riot and the subsequent retaliation.