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An ethnic group or '''ethnicity''' is a Population of Human Being s whose members identify with each other, either on the basis of a presumed common Genealogy or ancestrySmith 1987 or recognition by others as a distinct group,"Anthropology. The study of ethnicity, minority groups, and identity," ''Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007. or by common Cultural , Linguistic , Religious , or physical traits. Processes that result in the emergence of such identification are summarized as Ethnogenesis . Members of an ethnic group, on the whole, claim cultural continuities over time, although Historian s and Anthropologist s have documented that many of the cultural practices on which various ethnic groups are based are of relatively recent invention.Friedlander 1975 ''Being Indian in Hueyapan'', Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983 ''The Invention of Tradition'', Sider 1993 ''Lumbee Indian Histories''. DEFINING ETHNICITY The sociologist Max Weber once remarked that "The whole conception of ethnic groups is so complex and so vague that it might be good to abandon it altogether." Nevertheless, Weber proposed a definition of ethnic group that became standard among social scientists: human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.Max Weber [1922 1978 ''Economy and Society'' eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, trans. Ephraim Fischof, vol. 2 Berkeley: University of California Press, 389 Anthropologist Ronald Cohen, in a review of anthropological and sociological studies of ethnic groups since Weber, confirmed that while many ethnic groups subjectively claimed common descent and cultural continuity, objectively there was often compelling empirical evidence that countered such claims.Ronald Cohen 1978 "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology" in ''Annual Review of Anthropology'' 7: 385 Palo Alto: Stanford University Press Harold Isaacs has identified other ''diacritics'' (distinguishing markers) of ethnicity, among them physical appearance, name, language, history, and religion;Isaacs, H. 1975 ''Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change'' New York: Harper'' this definition has entered some dictionaries.2006 ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition'' Boston:Houghton Mifflin Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character.Joan Vincent 1974 "The Structure of Ethnicity" in ''Human Organization 33(4): 375-379 Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness".Ronald Cohen 1978 "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology" in ''Annual Review of Anthropology'' 7: 387 Palo Alto: Stanford University Press He confirms Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization.Ronald Cohen 1978 "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology" in ''Annual Review of Anthropology'' 7: 386 Palo Alto: Stanford University Press This may be why descent is ''sometimes'' a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic bondaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation. ETHNICITY AND RACE Ethnicity and race are related concepts in that both are usually defined in terms of shared , the UNESCO statement '' The Race Question '', signed by internationally renowned scholars (including Ashley Montagu , Claude Lévi-Strauss , Gunnar Myrdal , Julian Huxley , etc.), suggested that if people are referring to a group marked by shared religion, geography, language or culture, they should "''drop the term 'race' altogether and speak of 'ethnic groups'''."A. Metraux (1950) "United nations Economic and Security Council Statement by Experts on Problems of Race" in ''American Anthropologist 53(1): 142-145) ETHNICITY AND NATION In some cases, especially involving transnational migration, or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality. Many anthropologists and historians, following the work of Ernest GellnerGellner 2006 ''Nations and Nationalism'' Blackwell Publishing and Benedict AndersonAnderson 2006 ''Imagined Communities'' Verson see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the seventeenth century, culminating in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like had little to do with those heroic (or sometimes brutish) clichés is now generally accepted among historians," he remarked. Early medieval peoples were far less homogeneous than often thought, and Pohl follows Reinhard Wenskus,''Stammesbildung und Verfassung''. (Cologne and Graz) 1961, whose researches into the "ethnogenesis" of the German peoples convinced him that the idea of common origin, as expressed by Isidore Of Seville ''Gens est multitude ab uno principle orta'' ("a people is a multitude stemming from one origin") which continues in the original ''Etymologiae'' IX.2.i) ''"sive ab alia natione secundum propriam collectionem distincta'' ("or distinguished from another people by its proper ties") was a myth. Under these conditions - when people moved from one state to anotherAihway Ong 1996 "Cultural Citizenship in the Making" in ''Current Anthropology'' 37(5), or one state conquored or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries - ethnic groups formed by people who identified with one nation, but who lived in another state. ETHNO-NATIONAL CONFLICT Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or its constituents. In the twentieth century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry , have argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view the state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries of the nation-state. The nineteenth century saw the development of the political ideology of Ethnic Nationalism , when the concept of Race was tied to Nationalism , first by German theorists including Johann Gottfried Von Herder . Instances of societies focusing on ethnic ties arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context have resulted in the justification of nationalist goals. Two periods frequently cited as examples of this are the nineteenth century consolidation and expansion of the German Empire and the Third (Greater German) Reich , each promoted on the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were only acquiring lands that had always been ethnically German. The history of late-comers to the nation-state model, such as those arising in the Near East and south-eastern Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the former USSR, is marked by Inter-ethnic Conflicts that usually occurs within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, in other regions of the world; thus, those other conflicts are often misleadingly labelled and characterized as "civil war." In last decades of the twentieth century, mass migrations have occurred in most countries of the Northern hemisphere. The legal system as well as the official ideology emphasized race equality, and prohibited ethnic-based discrimination. It has been suggested by The Social Capital Foundation that this new ideology could be regarded as the reversal of the previous racialised ethnocentrism in the form of an ideology of systematic ethnic mixing and cross-breeding. ETHNICITY IN SPECIFIC COUNTRIES In the United States, collectives of related ethnic groups are typically denoted as "ethnic". Most prominently in the U.S. , the various Latin American ethnic groups plus a racial mix of the Spanish or Portuguese are typically collectivized as, depending on the part of the country you are in, either " Hispanics " or " Latinos ". The many previously designated ' Oriental ' ethnic groups are designated as Asia n ethnic groups and similarly lumped together as "Asians". The terms " Black " and " African-American ," while different, usually describe the descendants whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa . Even the racial term " White American s" are generally peoples originally from Europe , who now live in North America . " Middle East erners" are peoples from the Middle-East, i.e. Southwest Asia and North Africa . These countries include Iran , Saudi Arabia , Egypt , et cetera. (For a list of official ethnic categories according to the U.S. Census Bureau , see Ethnicity (United States Census) ). In the United Kingdom, the classification of ethnic groups has attracted controversy in the past: particularly at the time of the 2001 Census where the existence and nature of such a classification, which appeared on the Census form, became more widely known than general. Different classifications, both formal and informal, are used in the UK. Perhaps the most accepted is the National Statistics classification, identical to that used in the 2001 Census in England and Wales (for list, see Ethnicity (United Kingdom) ). In terms of use as opposed to official policy there is one main difference, the use of the term Oriental is widespread and without negative connotation in the UK and Europe while in the UK Asian is generally reserved for people from the Indian subcontinent (see Oriental and British Asian for more details). China officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups of which the most numerous are the Han Chinese . Many of the ethnic minorities maintain their own individual culture and language, although many are also becoming more like the Han Chinese. Some of these groups suffered during the Cultural Revolution . Han Chinese dominate the whole of China with the exception of Tibet and Xinjiang where the Han are still in the minority. Sometimes people are given the choice of which ethnic group they wish to belong to, but 'mixed-race' is not an option. All ID cards in China state which ethnic group the holder belongs to. (For more details, see List Of Ethnic Groups In China and Ethnic Minorities In China .) Currently, the worlds most ethnically diverse city is Toronto , Ontario , Canada . RESEARCH The Human Genome Diversity Project ( HGDP ) has attempted to map the DNA that varies between humans, which is a less than 1 % difference. This data may shed light on the origin of some ethnic groups. SEE ALSO
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