Approaches to Ethnicity

It is possible to distinguish four major approaches and a number of subapproaches, some of which cut across the major ones. They are ethnicity conceived as a primordial phenomenon, as an epiphenomenon, as a situational phenomenon, and as a purely subjective phenomenon. The primordialist approach is the oldest in sociological and anthropological literature. It argues that ethnicity is something given – ascribed at birth and deriving from the kin structure of human society – and hence more or less fixed and permanent.

The other three approaches emerged in confutation of the primordialist view. The epiphenomenon interpretation is best represented by Michael Hechter’s theory of internal colonialism and the cultural division of labour and to a lesser extent by the writings of Edna Bonacich. Hechter divides the economic structure of society into two sectors, the centre and the periphery. The periphery consists of marginal jobs where the products are not unimportant to society, as, for example, in agricultural work, but which offer little in the form of compensation when compared to employment at the centre. It is this sector of the social structure that gives birth to ethnicity and the people concentrated in this peripheral labour area who become ethnic groups. They develop solidarity and maintain their own culture. Thus, as an epiphenomenon, ethnicity refers to minority groups only. It is something created and maintained by an uneven economy, a product of economic exploitation.

The logic of the situational approach is based on the theory of rational choice. According to this interpretation, ethnicity is something that may be relevant in some situations but not in others. Individuals may choose to be regarded as members of an ethnic group if they find it to their advantage. Perhaps the best examples of this approach are found in the work of Michael Banton, Daniel Bell, and Jeffrey Ross. Banton sees it as a rational choice for an individual in any circumstance, while Bell and Ross emphasize the political advantage of the choice of ethnic membership. Thus, for Ross, ethnicity is “a group option in which resources are mobilized for the purpose of pressuring the political system to allocate public goods for the benefit of the members of a self-differentiating collectivity.” In more general terms, it refers to the actor’s pliant assumption of ethnic identity in order to organize the meaning of his social relationships within the requirements of variously structured situations. This approach appears to have been particularly popular in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s.

Perhaps the most interesting of the four approaches is the subjective one, which sees ethnicity as essentially a socio-psychological reality or a matter of perception of “us” and “them” in contradistinction to something given, which exists objectively, as it were, “out there.” This interpretation does not mean that subjectivists reject all objective aspects of ethnicity; some give them significant attention. But they tend to make them dependent on the socio-psychological experience. Two factors have stimulated the emergence of the subjectivist approach in the study of ethnicity during the past twenty years. First, Fredrik Barth’s seminal work on ethnic group boundaries, published in 1969, had a strong influence on both anthropologists and sociologists. Secondly, in American and Canadian scholarship the approach has been spurred by empirical studies of ethnic generations, particularly the third.

Barth himself took a rather extreme position: for practical purposes, he jettisoned culture from the concept of ethnicity. Ethnic boundaries for him were psychological ones, and ethnic culture and its content were irrelevant. An ethnic group thus was the result of group relations in which the boundaries were established through mutual perceptions and not by means of any objectively distinct culture. A less extreme position has been that of the “symbolic ethnicity” approach as formulated by Herbert Gans. The idea here is that ethnicity is not what it used to be: it has lost its practical everyday value and has survived at a purely symbolic level, at which it works to identify people who otherwise are acculturated and assimilated into a different, predominantly urban, American culture and society.

Another subjectivist approach to the study of ethnicity – one that appears to be connected with the postmodernist movement in contemporary thought – is constructionism. It is represented by the work of William Yancey, Michael Moerman, Susan Smith, Hanna Herzog, and to some extent Jonathan Okamura and Wsevolod Isajiw. Theoretically, this approach lies somewhere between Michel Foucault’s emphasis on construction of the metaphor and Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of practice and habitus as the basic factors shaping the structure of all social phenomena. The essential concept in this approach is that ethnicity is something being negotiated and constructed in everyday living. It is a process that continues to unfold and has much to do with the exigencies of survival. It is constructed in the course of feeding, clothing, schooling, and conversing with the family and others.

Definitions of Ethnicity

The meaning of ethnicity depends on the definition of several other concepts, particularly those of “ethnic group” and “ethnic identity.” Ethnic group is the most basic notion and the one from which the others are derived. It refers to ethnicity as a collective phenomenon. Ethnic identity describes ethnicity as an individually experienced phenomenon, while ethnicity itself is an abstract concept that includes an implicit reference to both the collective and the individual aspects. There are several basic dimensions to ethnicity at either the collective or the individual level. It can be said to possess both an objective and a subjective dimension. The objective aspects are those that can be observed as facts in the existence of institutions, including that of kinship and descent, and in the overt behaviour patterns of individuals and groups. The subjective aspects comprise attitudes, values, and preconceptions whose meaning must be interpreted in the context of communication.

Nevertheless, despite some contemporary approaches, the point of departure for our understanding of the nature of ethnicity has to be the idea of a distinct culture. Culture is conceived here partially in the traditional anthropological sense of distinct customs and beliefs, but it does not necessarily mean simply following in one’s life a set of specific everyday customs, although many people do so. Rather, it refers to sharing and identifying with the unique historical experience of a group. Culture is in essence a system of encoding such experience into a set of symbolic patterns, and sharing a culture means identifying with these patterns, not necessarily following all of them in one’s overt behaviour. How different the elements of one culture are from another is not significant. A distinct culture is a manifestation of a group’s historical experience, and its product is a sense of unique peoplehood. This emphasis on culture as the point of departure for our understanding of the nature of ethnicity is not intended to imply that members of an ethnic group must always share the same culture to the exclusion of any other. Instead, it suggests that individuals who include themselves in an ethnicity have some relation to a group that either now or at some point in the past has shared a unique culture.

We can now define an ethnic group as a community-type group of people who share the same culture, or as the descendants of such people who may not share this culture but who identify themselves with the ancestral group. The objective dimensions of an ethnic group include the presence of at least some community institutions or organizations, ancestors and descendants who transmit the culture and contribute to the formation of identity, and a “script” for cultural behaviour, in the form of customs, rituals, and preconceptions, which provides the content to culture and which members of the group are expected to follow in their overt behaviour.

The subjective aspect of an ethnic group refers to what, since Barth, have been known as “ethnic boundaries.” These are socio-psychological borders that determine group inclusion and exclusion. There are two types of ethnic boundaries, those formed from within the group (internal boundaries) and those established from outside (external ones). In many ways, the dynamics of interethnic relations depends on the interaction between these two kinds of boundaries. The internal ones function in the area of self-inclusion within the ethnic group; they overlap with the process of self-identity and articulate feelings of sympathy and loyalty towards other members of the group. The external boundaries determine the perimeter of exclusion, the space occupied by outsiders.

In a multi-ethnic society in which members of different groups interact and compete with one another, the existence of internal boundaries will inevitably produce external ones. Individuals will be identified by others as belonging to one or another ethnic group, even if they no longer actively share any cultural patterns with that group, as long as a link to their ancestors can be made. Identification by others in turn usually stimulates self-identification and may condition new forms of social organization. Hence ethnicity is a matter of a double boundary: one from within, maintained by the socialization process, and one from without, established through intergroup relations. If the external boundary is rigid, such as when there is much discrimination against a group in employment, housing, education, and other areas of life, this fact may lead to self-organization on the part of the group in order to fight such treatment and thus increase its self-awareness. In the United States since the 1950s, for example, opposition by black Americans to all types of discrimination has resulted in the establishment of many organizations which through their activities have helped to form a more self-conscious Afro-American community.

It is in the relationship between the two types of boundaries that comparisons between ethnicity in Canada and the United States can fruitfully be made. The principal difference lies in the external borders. It is not so much a matter of faster or slower assimilation and non-assimilation, as it is – more significantly – of how the various ethnic groups are perceived by the power-holding, policy-making, and influence-wielding bodies in the two societies. External ethnic boundaries are reflected in the rationales behind specific immigration policies, cultural programs, and the like. The state and public opinion in the United States has traditionally favoured the quick assimilation of diverse ethnicities, known as the ideology of the melting pot. In Canada governments and the public have been more tolerant of ethnic pluralism. The Quebec Act of 1774 and the British North America Act of 1867 built English-French pluralism into the Canadian constitution. This fact has led other ethnic groups to expect some kind of recognition of their own identities. Their position was acknowledged in the policy of multiculturalism adopted by the federal government in 1971 and in the addition to the Canadian constitution in 1982 of article 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which recognizes the multicultural nature of Canadian society.

Similarly, the British Royal Proclamation of 1763 gave recognition to the identities of the aboriginal peoples of Canada by accepting the principle of the aboriginal right to land as long as it was not formally ceded through treaties. The Indian Act of 1876 reinforced this principle even though it also defined a formal land-surrender process. By article 25, recognition of the aboriginal identity was also built into the Canadian Constitution of 1982.

External ethnic boundaries are also the source of racial distinctions and of race as a group phenomenon. In itself, race refers to a biological occurrence: it refers to the physical characteristics possessed by individuals and classifies them according to genetically determined characteristics, such as skin and hair colour, the shape of the head or body, and the blood type. Unlike culture, these characteristics are not possessed in common, but are held individually. As a social phenomenon, race is an external categorization and the exclusion of people with one type of biological characteristics by members of a group who possess different traits. By itself it is not an internal identity-generating force. Rather, the group’s response to racial classification by outsiders engenders internal identity. But the internal boundaries that determine ethnicity are formed only when some cultural construction takes place. As the evolution of the Afro-American movement in the past half-century has shown, even when members were activated by racial discrimination, internal ethnic boundaries were not established until the movement reached for the roots of its culture in Africa and found its own patterns and values in a new interpretation of American history.

External boundaries, however, are an important source of political mobilization and the sense of community that this process brings. This unity should not be confused with the feelings that are generated by internal boundaries. External boundaries contribute significantly to pan-ethnicity, as can be seen in the case of native peoples involved in disputes over land claims in Canada and among African Americans, Caribbeans, and Hispanics in the United States.

The scope of internal ethnic boundaries will determine the difference between ethnic and regional groups as, for example, between the Calabresi and other Italians. A regional group may have a way of life that can be seen as a culture, but to the extent that its identity is perceived as one of a number making up a larger group, it is a sub-identity and subculture of a broader ethnic identity and culture. Thus to the degree that the Calabresi see themselves as Italians alongside natives of other regions such as Friuli and Tuscany, regional identity is a sub-group of the broader Italian ethnicity. In Canada, Newfoundland, for example, has a way of life that can be seen to be distinct. Yet, to the extent that its people identify themselves with the way of life, including the language, that they share with other Canadians, they exist as a region rather than a separate ethnicity.

There are, of course, groups that may otherwise be regional ones, but which refuse to see themselves as part of larger identities, such as the Basques in Spain. Since they have a history of their own and their culture includes distinct elements, they are a different ethnic group rather than simply a regional one. Internal boundaries also include multiple ethnicities, deriving, for example, from ethnically mixed parentage. Ethnic identities are not necessarily exclusive of one another, but in this case ethnicity is an individual phenomenon.

At the individual level, ethnicity is a socio-psychological process that gives a person a feeling of belonging and identity. It is, of course, one of a number of social phenomena that produce this sense. Ethnic identity can be defined as a way in which people, on account of their ethnic origin, locate themselves psychologically in relation to one or more social systems and in which they perceive others as placing them in relation to those systems. By ethnic origin is meant either that a person’s ancestors, biological or symbolic, have been members of the group or that a person has been socialized into it by his or her biological or symbolic parents. The social systems may be the individual’s ethnic community or society at large, other ethnic communities and societies or groups, or a combination of all these.

Locating oneself in relation to a community and society is not only a psychological phenomenon, but also a social one in the sense that internal psychological states express themselves objectively in external patterns of behaviour that come to be shared by others. Thus individuals locate themselves in one or another community internally by states of mind and feelings, such as self-definitions or feelings of closeness, and externally by behaviour appropriate to these states of mind and feelings. Behaviour that is based on cultural patterns is therefore an expression of subjective identity and can be studied as an objective indicator of its character.

Thus, we can distinguish external and internal aspects of ethnic identity. The external aspects refer to, first, observable behaviour, both cultural and social, such as speaking a particular language and practising ethnic traditions; second, participation in such ethnic personal networks as those of family and friends; third, involvement in ethnic institutions, including churches, schools, enterprises, and the media; fourth, participation in voluntary associations – clubs, societies, and youth organizations; and fifth, activity in functions sponsored by ethnic organizations, such as picnics, concerts, public lectures, rallies, and dances. The internal aspects of ethnic identity refer to images, ideas, attitudes, and feelings. These, of course, are interconnected with external behaviour, but it should not be assumed that, empirically, the two types are always dependent upon each other. Indeed, they may vary independent of one another; for example, a third-generation person may retain to a higher degree the internal, rather than the external, aspects of identity.

There are at least four types of internal aspects: cognitive, moral, affective, and fiducial. The cognitive dimension of identity includes, first, self-images and images of one’s group. These may be stereotypes held by the individual or group or by others. The cognitive dimension also includes knowledge of the group’s heritage and its historical past. This knowledge may not necessarily be extensive or objective; rather, it may focus on selected aspects or events or on historical personalities that are highly symbolic of the group’s experiences and have thus become legendary. Finally, the cognitive dimension includes awareness of the group’s values, since these are part of its heritage.

Some ethnic groups perceive themselves as victims, others as having a sense of entitlement; some regard themselves as efficient and achievers, others as conflictual or slow to change; some groups believe that they are warm and expressive, others that they are cool and controlled; some consider themselves respectful of authority, others as anti-authoritarian; and so on. Usually, members of ethnic groups see themselves in terms of the history, literature, or lore of their people. Thus they may believe that they are the inheritors of the legacy of their group’s monarchy or the glory of its nobles, poets, philosophers, and musicians. Others may view themselves as part of a peasant folk, a regional or local geography, or a religious people founded and led by prophets.

Comparative studies of the values held by different ethnic groups show that they all accept the concept of achievement, but that it has a variety of meanings among different communities. Some studies have shown that for Canadians of British descent, achievement means climbing the socio-economic ladder. For Italian Canadians it involves acquiring a family and security; for the Japanese Canadians, an occupation that brings honour to the family. Among the Mennonites, the concept has a religious connotation and signifies doing work that brings one closer to God. In general, among ethnic groups one can distinguish values with an orientation towards individualistic behaviour and those with a familistic or communitarian character.

The moral dimension of identity involves a sense of obligation to the group. In general, such feelings have to do with the importance that a person attaches to his or her community and the implications that the group has for the person’s behaviour. These would include such elements as the importance of teaching the group’s ancestral language to one’s children, marrying within the group, or helping other members to find a job. The sense of obligation accounts for the commitment that an individual has to the group and the group solidarity that results. It can be said to constitute the central dimension of subjective identity.

The affective dimension of identity refers to a sense of attachment to the group. Two types of feelings can be distinguished: sympathy and associative preference for members of one’s group over those of other communities; and comfort with the cultural patterns of one’s group as against those of other groups or societies. An example of the affective aspects of identity is the tendency to form closer friendships with members of one’s ethnic group. In North America this phenomenon is quite noticeable, even in the third generation. Another example is the sympathy that members of an ethnic group often experience when good luck or misfortune befalls it. They may feel personally mortified if something embarrassing happens to the group, or they may be discouraged or even experience personal pain when a tragic event occurs. Alternatively, they may feel elated, encouraged, and more self-confident if the group is successful. The tendency to be more comfortable with the cultural patterns of one’s own group, if one has been raised within them, can be seen in a preference for ethnic food, song, dance, religious ritual, language, style of conversation and interaction, and the like.

Finally, the fiducial dimension of identity involves the trust that an individual has in his or her group and the sense of security that such trust can generate. It is a belief that “when the chips are down,” one can turn to the community for assistance or that one can rely on it for support in ventures such as fund-raising for a group cause or starting a new business. The fiducial dimension is thus the reverse side, as it were, of the moral aspect of identity. It encompasses the support that an individual can expect from the group in return for fulfilling his or her obligations to it. The fiducial aspect of ethnic identity is the basis for reliance by ethnic enterprises on a clientele made up of members of the group, especially in the early stages of the business. It also underlies the tendency of individuals to seek out health professionals, such as physicians, therapists, and counsellors, from the same ethnic background as themselves.

Types of Ethnicity

Confusion as to the nature of ethnicity often results from the lack of an adequate typology of ethnic groups and identities. The significant criteria for classification are those that refer to the characteristics which have an influence on interethnic group relations and on interaction among individuals from different backgrounds. What follows is not a complete classification of types of ethnic groups, but one limited to the following criteria: locus of group organization, degree and nature of self-awareness, structural location in interethnic relations, and number of generations. According to these measures we can distinguish several types: primary and secondary groups; folk-community and nationality-community groups; dominant-majority and subordinate-minority groups; and immigrant, or “young,” and established, or “old,” groups.

The distinction between primary and secondary groups refers to the geographic area where the group’s culture emerged as a distinct entity. Primary ethnic groups are those that exist in the same place in which their culture and identity have historically been formed. They are referred to as indigenous or autochthonous communities. Examples include the French in France, the Basques in Spain, and the Inuit in North America. Secondary ethnic groups are those that have their origin in a society different from the one in which they currently live, such as the Italians or Germans in Canada and the United States. These groups have been transplanted through migration; they derive their cultural and historical background from the country of origin, but they do not depend any longer on the original society for their existence.

In many cases, primary ethnic groups have themselves been formed from secondary ones. For example, German ethnicity has its roots in the Goths, Visigoths, Varangians, and other groups, most of whom were originally migratory peoples. Historically, the shift from secondary to primary has required long periods of time. In the past, great movements of peoples occurred only in certain eras. The original migrations of peoples who provided the bases for the primary European ethnic groups took place in prehistoric times, and the formation of most European ethnicities – German, French, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and so on — was a long historical process.

In modern times, however, Canadian, American, and a number of other ethnicities can be said to be in the process of formation as primary ethnic groups out of secondary, or immigrant, ones. American ethnicity, as a primary identity, may be described as more developed than Canadian ethnicity in that peculiarly American cultural traits are easier to distinguish than Canadian ones. For example, a rather high value placed on individual achievement, a degree of anti-authoritarianism, and a pragmatic activism can be identified as distinctive American characteristics. Canadian cultural traits have been less obvious, but they appear to include a relatively high respect for public authority and for authority in general, a dislike of open conflict and violence, and an emphasis on compromise without abrupt change to the general status quo.

Both Canadian and American cultures have derived principally from British roots, but although, outside Quebec, these influences still predominate, North American cultures have been substantially modified by the impact of other ethnicities and by the historical experiences of the two societies. The fact that the United States cut itself off from Britain during the colonial period, while Canada’s dependence on the imperial power lingered well into the twentieth century, has been an important element in the different rate of development of primary ethnicities in the two countries. The evolution of secondary ethnic groups has been a much more common phenomenon in modern times, especially in the context of migration to the Americas and Australia, and it can be argued that the emergence of such groups will be even more prevalent in the future as international migration increases.

The distinction between folk community and nationality community as types of ethnic groups was originally drawn by Ihor Zielyk. It can be used here with some modifications. An ethnic group that is a folk community is one whose members are predominantly of peasant background and are little differentiated in social status. The character of social relationships among its members is determined by kinship and close family friendships. In such groups the centre of social organization is the church, which exerts a pervasive influence on the community and around which other institutions develop. Folk-community groups lack a developed concept of their history as legacy. The culture is what Robert Redfield has described as the “little tradition,” embodied in custom and song and transmitted through proverb. An example of a predominantly folk-community group in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s was the Portuguese, who originated mainly in the rural areas of the homeland. This characteristic was also true of the Italians, the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Mennonites, and many others who came to this country in earlier periods. By the late twentieth century the evolution of these groups away from folk communities is already well advanced.

In contrast, members of a nationality community are differentiated in social status. Many of them have been socially mobile and moved into professional occupations, and some individuals form an intellectual elite. The community is also differentiated organizationally; community life tends to be secularized and may revolve around a variety of social institutions. The culture of the nationality community develops what Redfield calls a “great tradition,” including literary, artistic, and intellectual achievements. The community is one that has become self-aware and self-conscious. Its members share an image of themselves as a collectivity united by a distinct culture rather than by their kin, clan, or village. An essential part of this image is a conception of the group’s history as legacy, and the organizational life of the community articulates this image in its normative systems. As Max Weber has pointed out, the significance of nationality is anchored in the concept of uniqueness – the irreplaceability of cultural values that are seen as preservable only through the efforts of the group itself. Thus it has a sense of collective mission.

Modern history is characterized by many previously folk-community groups transforming themselves into nationality groups. In this process they focus their ideology around a territory that they claim to be legitimately theirs. In the nineteenth century, as a result, many western European peoples, such as the Germans and Italians, became unified. Contemporary examples would include the Québécois and the aboriginal peoples of Canada, Australia, and other parts of the world. The restoration of territory and the concept of sovereignty or self-determination are important features of the ideology of these groups.

When an ethnic group makes territorial claims based on what can be considered legitimate grounds, it becomes a nation, a term used by many groups at this stage of their development. The Dene, who have a long history of land claims in Canada, have described themselves as a nation for many years, and in the 1980s Canadian and American native peoples began to call themselves First Nations. The legitimacy of claims to a territory may be legal, historical, or cultural or a combination of all these. Nationhood can thus be seen as the outgrowth of a high degree of self-awareness among an occupationally differentiated ethnic group with a territorial claim.

When a nation gains territorial sovereignty, it becomes a nation-state. In essence, the idea of sovereignty implies legislative and policy-making powers within the territory claimed by a nation. It does not necessarily mean absolute self-sufficiency or freedom from dependence – economic, political, cultural, or otherwise – on people or countries outside the territory. An important aspect of nation-states throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century is that they are usually identified, by the people themselves and by outsiders, with a single ethnicity and culture, such as Spanish, Rwandan, Fijian, Malay, or American. Yet virtually all nation-states in the world are made up of many ethnic groups, a fact that highlights the historical process through which one ethnic group typically becomes the most active element in the development of nationality and the nation-state, and evolves as the dominant or “majority” group within a territory, to which other ethnic groups within the area come to be subordinated. Historically, there have been a number of ways in which one ethnic group might emerge as dominant; these include conquest, annexation, colonization, and immigration. Whatever the historical route, the result has always been a structure of ethnic stratification, with a dominant group on top and others in lower positions. Often this relationship becomes a source of interethnic conflict, latent or active.

In the process of a group’s transformation from folk community to nation-state, nationalism is a central force. Nationalism is an ideology propounded by a socio-political movement, and like all ideologies, it consists of a set of principles and a program of group action related to political and social change, with the aim of either accomplishing or forestalling such change. The basic principle is national self-determination or self-assertion. Also, like all ideologies, nationalism develops into different forms of expression. Depending on the nature of the group, it can take a liberal, radical, conservative, or reactionary orientation. The first two types are usually associated with minority ethnic groups that pursue self-determination. Liberal nationalism, also known as cultural or linguistic nationalism, argues for the recognition of the ethnic minority’s cultural or linguistic rights, acknowledgement of its identity, or self-determination through a legal-democratic process. It does not desire the full control of all social institutions and their subordination to the political centre. On the other hand, radical nationalism, sometimes called integral or extreme nationalism, contends for central control. It is a holistic ideology, frequently reflected in the totalitarian character of the movement’s organization. It envisages not only a politically independent state but also a society in which all aspects of life, activity, and thought are subordinated to one goal and one principle, that of the supremacy of the nation-state.

An example of liberal nationalism in Canada is the policy of the Liberal Party in Quebec, which emphasizes the maintenance of the French language and culture in public life, equality with the anglophones in Canada, and greater rights for the province, but within the Canadian system rather than outside it. The Front de libération du Québec, active in the late 1960s and early 1970s and remembered for its kidnapping of a Quebec politician and a British diplomat, could be said to exemplify the radical form of nationalism. The Parti québécois had its roots in radical nationalism, but although it has retained the ideas of separation and sovereignty, since coming to power, it has moved towards liberal nationalism in most respects.

Conservative or reactionary nationalisms are identified with the majority ethnic groups, that is, groups that usually have their own nation-state but that must relate to neighbouring nation-states as well as to minority ethnic groups within their own borders. Conservative nationalism is analogous to cultural nationalism. It usually emphasizes the importance of cultural and social identity as distinct from those of other, often neighbouring, states. It also contends that its social and cultural institutions are of the greatest benefit to all people in the country, including members of minority ethnic groups. Conservative nationalism tends to emphasize the social, economic, educational, and occupational benefits of assimilation into the culture of the dominant group.

Reactionary nationalism is analogous to the radical form in that it asserts a nation’s distinctness from neighbouring nation-states and their societies and cultures, and it often develops the idea of its superiority to other states and nations. Although logically it is distinct from racism, some form of racist ideology is often present, by which an inherent cultural or genetic superiority is claimed over other people. This form of nationalism also tends to develop a holistic or totalitarian view of society and of socio-economic organization. The Nazi regime in Germany exemplifies an extreme form of reactionary nationalism. The communist era in the Soviet Union, during which all institutions of the constituent republics were centralized under the rule of Moscow and subject to a policy of Russification, provides another example.

Canadian nationalism has usually taken a conservative, non-reactionary form. It has often manifested itself as a mild anti-Americanism that emphasizes the worth of Canadian institutions and draws attention to the differences between Canadian and American values and the potential threat posed by the latter. In its internal aspects, conservative nationalism in this country can be exemplified by an emphasis on a distinct culture, as represented by, for instance, an English-Canadian literature that is different from other literatures in English. It is also typified by an ideology that emphasizes the assimilation of immigrants into anglophone culture for reasons of its supposed “greater value” or “more civilized” behaviour patterns, or simply in order to guarantee newcomers a “better opportunity” for socio-economic advancement. The latter argument appears to be a “liberal” one, analogous to the liberal nationalism of minority ethnic groups, but in the context of the institutions of the majority group it represents a conservative position.

Self-awareness also develops among ethnic minority groups of immigrant origin. This process occurs because of change or breakdown in folk-type communities during the first, or immigrant, generation as a result of increased education and the diversification of social status. It is also a consequence of the fact that immigrants today are already better educated and more highly skilled and may be more conscious of themselves as a group. But heightened self-awareness also occurs among members of the second and subsequent generations who have largely become acculturated into the broader society but have also retained or rediscovered some form of their ancestral ethnic identity. Since, as a rule, immigrant groups make no claims to territory in their host societies, they do not raise issues of sovereignty. But they too develop a political aspect to their self-awareness, which may take at least two forms. Some groups become interested in the statehood of their ancestral homelands; they may even actively support causes in the country of origin. Among the examples of such activity are the Catholic Irish in North America, who early in this century supported the independence of the homeland or, more recently, the activities of the Irish Republican Army. Similarly, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Armenians, and others have supported the independence of their countries of origin after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Jews have provided assistance to the state of Israel.

The other political expression of group self-awareness is illustrated in the claims made on the host society for equal rights and recognition. These may include demands for equity in employment or affirmative action, for redress for injustices done to the minority group in the past by the dominant group, or for greater public recognition of its presence in society. In Canada, Asian and black Canadian groups have demanded the elimination of discrimination in employment, housing, and other services, and the Japanese and Ukrainians have sought redress for the internment of their families in “enemy alien” and labour camps. In the early 1970s Ukrainians and other groups of eastern and southern European origins led a movement for multiculturalism as a public policy and in the early 1980s demanded the recognition in the Canadian constitution of the concept of a multicultural society.

In sociological terms, the concept of majority and minority ethnic groups refers not to numbers but to power. Simply stated, the distinction is between those that have or do not have dominance in a society. Often the concept of ethnicity is confused with that of a minority, and all ethnic groups are seen as minorities. This notion assumes that the majority groups are not ethnicities. Such an interpretation, however, makes it impossible to understand the culture of the general society: the so-called mainstream society would then appear to have no culture or any community supporting it. Not only is such a view contradicted by readily observable facts, but if consistently accepted, it would make the process of interethnic relations unintelligible.

The majority, or dominant, ethnic groups are those that determine the character of the society’s principal institutions, especially its political, economic, and cultural ones. They set the norms of society as a whole, including its legal system, and their culture becomes that of the “total” society, into which the minority ethnic groups assimilate. The minorities themselves introduce cultural distinctions into this society. They may preserve their own institutions and culture to a greater or lesser degree, and they may influence the character of the dominant institutions to some extent. But as a rule, the framework for interethnic and all intergroup processes is provided by the institutions that have their origin in the culture of the majority groups. In Canada, outside Quebec, the character of the main political institutions derives from British parliamentary practice, English common law, and an emphasis on individual human rights originally deriving from the English experience. Likewise, the values underlying the Canadian economy originate in the British concept of individual ownership of property and the rights that such ownership bestows. The principles underlying interethnic relations themselves are rooted in the old British colonial policy of pluralism and “tolerance.”

Historically, ethnic groups have acquired minority positions by being pushed aside by stronger or more active neighbouring groups, by being conquered militarily, or by emigration to a country with a different ethnicity. The initial contact usually structures the relationship between majority and minority groups for years to come. Because of their position of power, the majority groups form the top strata of a society, and the status of other ethnic groups is determined in relation to them. Majorities are the main definers of external ethnic boundaries, and hence they are in a position to decide on public policies and legislation regarding minorities and immigration.

Much of the dynamics of interethnic relations derives from the structure of dominance and subordination involved in majority-minority group relations. Majority groups often retain their superior position by the negative stereotyping of minorities and by restricting the opportunities available to them through legislation or discriminatory practices. In turn, minority groups often come into conflict with the majority groups through attempts to change their own subordinate position, through economic competition with the majority groups, or because their different culture presents a symbolic threat to the majority.

A common confusion in the discourse on ethnicity is the relation between it and immigration. Ethnicity often is erroneously identified with immigrants, yet they make up only one type of ethnic group. Among secondary groups we can distinguish young ones, that is, those consisting predominantly of the first generation and whose second generation is either small in size or young in age, and old groups – those already established in the larger society, with a higher proportion of adult second and subsequent generations. According to this distinction, it is incorrect and misleading to speak of all ethnic groups as if they were immigrants. Members of the older, established communities usually do not like to be confused with newcomers.

As well, the issues that concern the two types of groups are different. Those facing the young groups can be characterized as immigrants’ problems of adjustment to society at large, including finding employment, housing, and schooling for the children, learning the language, translating the skills acquired elsewhere into those accepted in the host society, and psychological adjustment to a new environment. The concerns of older groups have to do with their continuance: maintaining the cultural, religious, and educational institutions of the community, teaching the children the ethnic language and culture, and insuring some degree of equality or gaining recognition and influence in the general society.

Among old ethnic groups in Canada, in addition to the native peoples, are the French, British, Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Jews, Doukhobors, Mennonites, Chinese, Japanese, and African Canadians, except for those from the Caribbean and Africa. Relatively young groups include the Greeks, Portuguese, various Latin American communities, and South Asians, except for the Sikhs. In classifying ethnic groups as young or old, one should take regions into account. Groups that are old may be so in one area of the country but not in another. The Chinese, for example, are an old group in western Canada, but relatively young in Toronto.

The old ethnic groups can be further subdivided into those that add significantly to their population through continuing immigration and those that have few newcomers and hence can increase only by natural growth. The French and the Doukhobors are examples of the latter type. Groups with a continuous stream of immigrants face special problems of interrelationship between the old and new sectors of the community. Among the issues are the extent to which the ethnic institutions and organizations of the old community are able to serve the needs of new arrivals, the degree to which status or class differences between established members and new immigrants create tensions and conflict, and how the demands exerted on society by the newcomers differ from those placed on it by the old community. In the same way, we can distinguish between old and young primary ethnic groups; thus we can speak of old nations or nation-states and young nations or nation states. The difference between the two also signals different concerns and issues.

Forms of Ethnic Identity

The retention of ethnic identity from one generation to another does not necessarily mean the continuance of both external and internal aspects, or of all the components of each aspect to the same degree. Some elements may be retained more than others, and some not at all. A member of the third generation may subjectively identify with his or her ethnic group without having any knowledge of the ethnic language and without practising the group’s traditions or participating in its organizations. Conversely, he or she may practise some traditions without having strong feelings of attachment to the group. Also, elements of external identity may acquire a different subjective meaning for various generations, ethnic groups, or sub-groups within the same ethnic group. Therefore it should not be assumed that the ethnic identity retained by the third generation is the same as that held by the first or the second. Furthermore, an ever-increasing number of individuals in multi-ethnic societies have more than one identity.

Various combinations of external and internal components in a particular individual allow us to distinguish a number of types of ethnic identity. For example, a high level of retention in the practice of ethnic traditions, accompanied by a low level of such subjective elements as feelings of group obligation, might be described as a ritualistic-traditional ethnic identity. By contrast, a high sense of group obligation, together with limited practice of traditions, would represent a completely different form – an ideological identity – with distinct implications for the collective aspects of ethnic group behaviour. Negative images of one’s own group, combined with a high degree of awareness of ancestry, might be called a rebellious identity, while positive images of the ancestral group, together with frequent practice of highly selected traditions, particularly in the third or subsequent generations, could be described as an identity of ethnic rediscovery. Yet another type, that of ethnic functional identity, might combine the practice of selected public traditions and feelings of attachment to the group with an emphasis on pragmatic opportunities, such as those of an occupational, economic, or political nature, and reliance on the community for the fulfilment of personal ambitions. Finally, the retention of a few selected images of one’s ancestral group without any feelings of obligation towards it and only the occasional recreational practice of traditions constitutes yet another form, the ethnic secular identity.

A person may change the form of his or her identity at different periods in life or may include elements of several or all forms of identity. It can be assumed, however, that at any given time one form will tend to predominate and that for most individuals frequent shifts from one type to another do not happen easily. There is evidence to show that particular generations tend to develop predominantly one form. Thus the first generation of minority ethnic groups usually possesses a traditional type of identity, the second generation a rebellious one, and the third or later generations a greater diversity in that they acquire identities of ethnic rediscovery or the functional or secular forms.

A multi-ethnic society inevitably produces multiple ethnic identities. A single identity occurs either when both parents claimed to be of the same ethnicity or when, in a multi-ethnic society, an individual identifies only with the general society, without any knowledge of his or her ancestors other than those of the predominant ethnic group. But such cases are probably the exception rather than the rule. Multiple identities can be said to be of two types. Hyphenated ones reflect an individual’s identification with both the larger society and his or her ancestral ethnicity, such as in the designation “Canadian-Italian.” Or they may represent multiple ancestral ethnicities with or without reference to the society at large, as, for example, in the terms “Ukrainian-English,” “Scottish-Irish,” “Japanese-Polish,” or “Italian-Irish-Canadian,” “Korean-Scottish-Canadian,” “Polish-Jewish-American,” and the like. There is, however, some empirical evidence to suggest that individuals with multiple ancestral identities tend to choose one – the father’s – as being more important to them. This phenomenon indicates that individuals usually organize their multiple identities in some meaningful, hierarchical order. But variation is possible here also, and more research is needed to determine the patterns that occur.

The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Ethnic Identity

The objective and subjective aspects of ethnicity are dynamically interrelated. The objective aspects are often the subjective aspects externalized, and conversely, the subjective ones are meaningful interpretations of and feelings towards the objective facts. In culturally pluralistic contexts, particularly in North America, pressures are exerted on all the aspects of ethnicity to adapt. The process of deconstruction and reconstruction is the mechanism through which this adaptation is achieved. It is the way in which individuals in their everyday living come to modify the meaning of their own identity and change at least some of their ethnic behaviour patterns without necessarily divesting themselves of all of them. It should be emphasized that what is referred to here is not a change in ethnicity determined by outside forces, such as government policies of assimilation. Rather, it refers to adjustment made by individual members of ethnic groups themselves in their everyday interaction with outsiders and each other, without external “official” compulsion.

Deconstruction consists of some objective aspects of ethnic identity losing their meaning and use, others losing their meaning without being completely given up, and still others retaining their meaning even when they are no longer used. Although some aspects of one’s identity may be abandoned and patterns from different cultural sources be acquired and become more meaningful, other aspects may be retained and continue to have significance. Similarly, at a certain point, an individual’s ethnic background or group experience may acquire new meaning and be objectified in fresh, visible ethnic patterns; this is the process of identity reconstruction. It is likely that over the generations, some highly selective old patterns will be recovered and given new significance. New collective experiences, in particular, work to create new meanings for communities. Different forms of ethnic identity emerge according to the particular ethnicity, social status or class, generational links, or period of time involved. It is important to note that ethnicity does not necessarily disappear; rather, a variety of new forms of ethnic identity emerge that are more adapted to the surrounding social and cultural conditions and the times in which they develop. These forms represent reconstructed ethnicity. An example of deconstructed and reconstructed identity is the individual who does not speak the ancestral language, belong to any ethnic organizations, or participate in the community’s celebrations, but who has an interest in financially supporting community causes or combatting defamation of the community in the larger society. Such a person also represents the ideological form of ethnic identity.

Another example of identity deconstruction might be an individual, often of the second generation, who has been raised in the culture of both the ethnic community and the larger society, who knows the ethnic language and may have belonged to one or more ethnic organizations, but who has been educated in the public school system, is mobile in the society at large, and uses its language most of the time. This person may continually criticize the ethnic community for its shortcomings and deny his or her own minority identity, insisting that this identity is the same as that of the mainstream society. Such an individual is also an instance of a rebellious identity.

Yet another example of both deconstruction and reconstruction is the third-generation individual who does not use or is unable to use the ethnic language in everyday life, but who participates in some community celebrations, such as religious ones on selected holidays, and wears a brooch symbolic of his or her ancestral ethnicity. Such individuals may from time to time, in conversation with others of the same ethnic background, include a word or a phrase in the ethnic language. Some exhibit in their homes a few art objects representing their cultural background, but that may be the extent of their “objective” ethnic identity. What is important here is that, subjectively, even a small number of items from the ancestral background may have a highly symbolic meaning for these people and express a strong bond with others of similar origin. Such individuals represent the type of identity called ethnic rediscovery. Among this type are also those persons of the third or consecutive generations whose parents have been mostly assimilated and who themselves were raised in the culture of the majority society, but who as adolescents develop an interest in their ancestral background and consciously seek out and learn the culture and language of their group.

The deconstruction and reconstruction of ethnicity is not unique to North American ethnic groups; it is an instance of a wider social process, one that has been occurring in many societies, even highly traditional ones. In North America, however, the process has been accelerated by several factors: first, the presence of a large number and great diversity of ethnicities; second, relatively rapid technological and sociocultural change, accompanied by a constant stream of immigration from the early nineteenth century to the present; third, a tendency to see one mainstream socio-economic structure as the legitimate locus of aspirations for all groups, reinforced by the strong value placed on social mobility and achievement, and the perception of alternative structures as marginal; and finally, a democratic-individualistic ideology that places an emphasis on personal freedom and a philosophy of “live and let live.” The deconstruction-reconstruction process makes multiple identities possible. As a result, at the collective level, it enables a democratic, multicultural society to function.