Social stratification and mobility
By A. Swaby-Burton, Contributor

IN THIS week's lesson, I would like you to focus your attention on a few questions that relate to social stratification and social mobility. See if you can come up with relevant answers separate from what I will give you to these questions.

(a) What is meant by the term 'ethnic group'?

(b) Explain the difference between 'ethnicity' and 'race'.

(c) 'Ethnicity becomes activated in different social and historical situations and often have meaning only for those situations'.

Explain how race and ethnicity are both socially constructed.

(a) From a sociological viewpoint, an ethnic group is a large number of people who, as a result of their shared cultural traits and high level of mutual interaction, come to regard themselves, and to be regarded, as a cultural unity. What you need to bear in mind is that members of ethnic groups see themselves as culturally distinct from the other groupings in society. According to Anthony Giddens, many different characteristics may serve to distinguish ethnic groups from one another, but the most usual are language, history or ancestry (real or imagined), religion, and styles of dress or adornment. Ethnic differences are wholly learned.

(b) Before we can identify and explain the differences between 'ethnicity' and 'race' we must first define each concept.

THE CONCEPT OF RACE

Whereas race refers only to physical characteristics, ethnicity refers to cultural feature or practices. These features, as stated earlier, include language religion, national origin, dietary practices and a sense of common historical heritage or any other distinctive cultural traits. Many groups, such as blacks and Indians (American), are both racially and ethnically different or distinct).

Looking at both definition it is not hard to arrive at the conclusion that 'ethnicity' is culturally defined, whereas 'race' is usually distinguished by common genetically transmitted, physical characteristics, as a biological concept, the word 'race' is almost meaningless'. "There are billions of people in the world, and they display a wide variety of skin colours, hair textures, limb-to-trunk ratios, and other characteristics, such as distinctive nose, lip and eyelid forms" (Robertson, 1984). As discussed by many, it is the belief that these physical differences have resulted from adaptations that human groups have made to the environments in which they live. For example, populations in tropical and sub-tropical areas tend to have dark skins which protects them against harmful rays from the sun.

PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES

There are clear physical difference between human beings, and some of these differences are inherited. Confronted with this vast range of physical types anthropologists have tried for decades to create some kind of conceptual order by dividing the human species into races and subraces. The physical differences between human groups, are therefore a biological fact. The intense sociological interest in race derives from its significance as a 'social fact' because people attach meanings to the physical differences real or imagined, between human groups.

As stated by Robertson (1984); from a sociological point of view, a race is a large number of people who, for social or geographical reasons, have interbred over a long period of time, as such they have developed identifiable physical characteristics and regard themselves, and are regarded by others as a biological unity. It is people's beliefs about race rather that the facts about race that influence race relations, for better or worse. Racial differences should, therefore, by understood as physical variations singled out by the members of a community or a society as ethnically significant.

(c) Both ethnicity and race are socially constructed, their meanings are negotiated overtime in specific socio-cultural contexts. Race and ethnic relations may follow many different patterns, ranging from harmonious co-existence to outright conflict. George Simpson and Milton Yinger (1972) identified six basic patterns of intergroup hostility or co-operation. All of these cover virtually all the possible patterns of race and ethnic relations. They include assimilation, pluralism, legal protection of minorities, population transfer continued subjugation and extermination. So it is obvious that some racial and ethnic groups are able to live together in conditions of equality and mutual respect, but others are in a state of constant inequality and conflict. There is therefore no inherent reason why different groups should be hostile to one another. Poor relations among racial and ethnic groups have social causes.

Thus, race and ethnic relations are the patterns of interaction among groups whose members share distinctive physical characteristics or cultural traits. People who have similar physical characteristics are socially defined as race, and people who share similar cultural characteristics are socially defined as an ethnic group. So, basically whatever the angle we look at or study race and ethnicity, they are both socially constructed.