Ethnicity / Steve Fenton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fenton, Steve, 1942-

Series:

Key concepts (Polity Press)

Key concepts

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnicity.

Ethnic relations.

Race relations.

Physical Description:

x, 220 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Polity ; Oxford ; Malden, MA : Blackwell, 2003.

Summary:

In this concise and accessible introduction, Steve Fenton navigates the reader through 100 years of literature on ethnicity. Drawing on a wider range of theorists and illustrations from around the world, Fenton explores and clarifies the core meanings and the shifting ground of this contested concept. He shows how race, ethnicity and nation must be regarded as distinguishable at the margins but otherwise representing a closely related set of images and realities. From here he raises the question of the centrality of ethnic difference: Does it matter? When does it matter? Is it as important as many have assumed? The answer is that its importance can only be understood within a wider context of the culturally and socially subversive consequences of late modernity and a triumphant capitalist world order. In this way, this book re-connects the discourse of ethnicity to a series of other discourses from which it has become detached. Ethnicity will be an invaluable text for students of sociology, politics and international relations coming to the subject for the first time. It will also be enjoyed by the interested general reader, and its innovative and challenging approach will appeal to more advanced scholars of race and ethnicity.

Contents:

Ethnos: descent and culture communities

Discourses of ethnicity in three settings: USA, the UK and Malaysia

The demise of race: the emergence of 'ethnic'

The primordialism debate

Key points in the ethnicity literature

Migration, ethnicity and mobilization

Conditions of ethnicity: global economy and precarious states

States, nations and the ethnic majority: a problem of modernity

Ethnicity and modernity: general conclusions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [198]-209) and index.

ISBN:

0745622860

0745622879

OCLC:

50644031