Ethnicity

Because there is no authoritative definition that is universally accepted, ethnicity is used with varying meanings in different contexts, and those understandings change over time and across space. Most scholars agree that ethnicity is a social classification that categorizes different groups of people by particular cultural characteristics. Ancestry is the most common identifier of ethnicity, though many other cultural features have been used to differentiate ethnic groups, including a shared homeland, language, or dialect; religious faith or faiths, traditions, values and symbols, literature, folklore and music, food preferences, social and political ties that transcend kinship, neighborhood and community boundaries, and/or migratory status. Ethnicity is also the product of structural forces, social organization, and cultural representation, rather than solely the result of innate characteristics and hereditary factors. In other words, ethnicity derives from both an internal sense of distinctiveness and an external perception of difference. Recent critiques and theorizations have exhibited a greater sensitivity to the social construction of ethnicity and the dynamics of racialization, with a particular focus on the sociospatial structuration of ethnic and racial communities and the spatialization of ethnicity and race in the contemporary world. Because there is a complex relationship between ethnicity as an analytical concept and ethnicity as it relates to various forms of social relations, such as migration, race, and class, the term is subject to ongoing debate.