This chapter deals with a complex topic that has generated much scholarly debate. The following questions and tasks will get you started on the road to understanding the issues.
- Give a one-sentence definition of ethnicity. List some features often associated with ethnicity. Identify some other terms that also might suggest ethnicity?
- Why do many scholars now think it is incorrect to define ethnicity in terms of shared culture? How do they now prefer to define it?
- If race is not biological category, and it is not a cultural category, what is it? How does Appiah prove that racial identification is not necessarily a cultural affair?
- In what way do social classes seem to exhibit cultural differences?
- What is the difference between a country, a nation, and a nation-state? How is a nation like an ethnic group, and how is it different?
- Identify two forms of nationalism. How are they similar and how are they different? What does the work of Theiss-Morse teach us about American national identity?