SOC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Remittance, Contact Hypothesis, Elijah Anderson
Document Summary
The role of culture: inventing ethnicity and race. Race and ethnicity are not rooted in biological fact; both are cultural creations. Ethnicity: shared cultural heritage, often deriving from a common ancestry and homeland. Can include language, traditions, customs, symbols, music and food. Ethnicities are social constructions that exist only to the extent that people embrace them. Race: a category of people widely perceived as sharing socially significant physical characteristics such as skin color. The term became popular in the 18th century, when european scientists began systematically to name and classify the plants and animals of the natural world. When they started on humanity, it became pseudo- science because of their bias. Racism: the pseudo-science claims laid the groundwork for (cid:498)scientific(cid:499) justifications of racism, aka the belief that one race is inherently superior to another. In 19th century china, people drew distinctions based on body hair rather than skin tone. To them, extensive facial hair marked european missionaries as uncivilized.
