Ethnicity

Ethnicity is a difficult concept to define. It is a relatively recent term; the first recorded use of the term was during the 1940s, and it first appeared in a dictionary in 1972. It is, however, linked to ethnic, which has a significantly longer history. The term ethnic originally referred to people who were neither Christian nor Jewish, but by the 19th century it had come to refer to the (often racialized) characteristics of particular groups. Ethnicity refers, therefore, to the characteristics of groups that allow those groups to be understood or perceived as distinct. However, ethnicity also refers to how individuals understand their participation in, and identity in relation to, those particular groups. As such, ethnicity refers to individual and collective senses of identity.

There is disagreement over the characteristics that identify ethnicity. Within geography, earlier understandings of ethnicity focused on biological and cultural aspects of group identity. These included race, religion, language, similar cultural practices, and a sense of a common or shared history. Ethnicity, in these early definitions, was also associated with minority status, particularly within national boundaries. Over time, the focus shifted from ethnicity as defined in terms of shared attributes to ethnicity as the perception of common identity. Now the idea of ethnicity as a social construct is prevalent, with some geographers theorizing the various ways in which ethnicity and ethnic identity work by constructing and maintaining difference. In addition, some geographers have started to take issue with the idea of ethnicity as linked to minority status, arguing that everyone—including members of majority groups—has an ethnicity. These changing definitions of ethnicity within geography draw liberally on the work of other social scientists, such as sociologists and anthropologists, as well as on the cultural turn within geography.

There is much debate on the form of the relationship between ethnicity and race. In some instances, commentators see ethnicity as a subset of race, where each category among a small number of racial categories contains a greater number of ethnic categories. In other instances, commentators describe ethnicity and race as virtually interchangeable. There are difficulties with both of these approaches. With the first, it is problematic to assume that humans can be neatly categorized in such a way, particularly with the general acceptance that there is no biological basis to the category of race. With the second, describing ethnicity and race as interchangeable ignores the fact that most societies tend to treat ethnic groups quite differently from races and that their treatment is often more benign. So, although there are similarities in the concepts of ethnicity and race, particularly because they represent interactions between diverse populations, it is important to realize that ethnic groups are not necessarily racial groups, that racial groups are not necessarily ethnic groups, and that both ethnicity and race are social constructs that have different meanings in different contexts. Some commentators distinguish further, arguing that racial categories are imposed, whereas ethnicity is a process of group self-definition.

The relationship between ethnicity and nationalism has also received attention from geographers. Nationalism may be broadly defined both as a feeling of belonging to a nation and as a desire for that nation to have sovereignty over a specific territory. There are obvious similarities between ethnicity and nationalism. Nationalism, like ethnicity, is concerned with establishing and maintaining a sense of collective identity. Nationalism is also concerned with drawing and enforcing boundaries. Nationalism also may be based on, reinforce, or reinvent ethnic ties, particularly in the event of the conquest of a territory by an external power. However, it is possible to distinguish between ethnicity and nationalism by arguing that nationalism is intrinsically concerned with territory and sovereignty, whereas ethnicity may be but is not necessarily so. It is also necessary to recognize the often conflicted status of minority ethnic groups within nationalist movements.

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