An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of humans based on people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area.[1][2][3] Ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is separate from, but related to the concept of races.
By way of language shift, acculturation, adoption and religious conversion, individuals or groups may over time shift from one ethnic group to another. Ethnic groups may be subdivided into subgroups or tribes, which over time may become separate ethnic groups themselves due to endogamy or physical isolation from the parent group. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a pan-ethnicity and may eventually merge into one single ethnicity. Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis.
Modern scholarship regards an ethnic group as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society.[4][5]
France,[68] and Switzerland do not collect information on the ethnicity of their resident population.
An example of a largely nomadic ethnic group in Europe is the Roma, pejoratively known as Gypsies. They originated from India and speak the Romani language.
Serbian province of Vojvodina is recognizable for its multi-ethnic and multi-cultural identity.[69][70] There are some 26 ethnic groups in the province,[71] and six languages are in official use by the provincial administration.[72]
a[djective]
...
2.a. About race; peculiar to a race or nation; ethnological. Also, about or having common racial, cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics, esp. designating a racial or other group within a larger system; hence (U.S. colloq.), foreign, exotic.
b ethnic minority (group), a group of people differentiated from the rest of the community by racial origins or cultural background, and usu. claiming or enjoying official recognition of their group identity. Also attrib.
n[oun]
...
3 A member of an ethnic group or minority. Equatorians
(Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, online version as of 2008-01-12, s.v. "ethnic, a. and n.")
^ὅμαιμος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
^ὁμόγλωσσος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
^I. Polinskaya, "Shared sanctuaries and the gods of others: On the meaning Of 'common' in Herodotus 8.144", in R. Rosen & I. Sluiter (eds.), Valuing others in Classical Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 43-70.
^ὁμότροπος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus)
^Herodotus, 8.144.2: "The kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life."
^Athena S. Leoussi, Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture, and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations, Edinburgh University Press, 2006, p. 115
^"Challenges of measuring an ethnic world". Publications.gc.ca. The Government of Canada. April 1, 1992. Ethnicity is a fundamental factor in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience
^ abFredrik Barth, ed. 1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference; Eric Wolf 1982 Europe and the People Without History p. 381
^Geertz, Clifford, ed. (1967) Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Africa and Asia. New York: The Free Press.
^Cohen, Abner (1969) Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in a Yoruba Town. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
^Abner Cohen (1974) Two-Dimensional Man: An essay on power and symbolism in complex society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
^J. Hutchinson & A.D. Smith (eds.), Oxford readers: Ethnicity (Oxford 1996), "Introduction", 8-9
^Gellner, Ernest (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
^T.H. Eriksen "Ethnic identity, national identity and intergroup conflict: The significance of personal experiences" in Ashmore, Jussim, Wilder (eds.): Social identity, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction, pp. 42–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press'. 2001
^Banton, Michael. (2007) "Weber on Ethnic Communities: A critique", Nations and Nationalism 13 (1), 2007, 19–35.
^ abcdeRonald Cohen 1978 "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology", Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 383-384 Palo Alto: Stanford University Press
^ abNoel, Donald L. (1968). "A Theory of the Origin of Ethnic Stratification". Social Problems. 16 (2): 157–172. doi:10.1525/sp.1968.16.2.03a00030.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
^ abcBobo, Lawrence; Hutchings, Vincent L. (1996). "Perceptions of Racial Group Competition: Extending Blumer's Theory of Group Position to a Multiracial Social Context". American Sociological Review. American Sociological Association. 61 (6): 951–972. doi:10.2307/2096302. JSTOR2096302.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
^Walter Pohl, "Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies", Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, (Blackwell), 1998, pp13–24, notes that historians have projected the 19th-century conceptions of the nation-state backward in time, employing biological metaphors of birth and growth: "that the peoples in the Migration Period 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 SevilleGens est multitudo ab uno principio orta ("a people is a multitude stemming from one origin") which continues in the original Etymologiae IX.2.i) "sive ab Alia national Secundum program collection distinct ("or distinguished from another people by its properties") was a myth.
^Aihway Ong 1996 "Cultural Citizenship in the Making" in Current Anthropology 37(5)
![[icon]](/php/SummaryGet.php?FindGo=File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg "France"){kind=small}
France,[68] and Switzerland do not collect information on the ethnicity of their resident population.