SOCI 1121 Lecture Notes - Carl Linnaeus
Document Summary
We are assigned to racial categories not according to actual biological differences, but according to social definition (how we are defined in the social world). A position in the social world that we receive at birth, or that we take on either voluntarily or involuntarily later in life. Social constructionist theory of race: race as a social construct: Examples: social status, entitlements, goods, services unequally distributed (how) do we know what we are: how others categorize us vs. Four dimensions of social constructionism: meaning, geographic boundaries, ethnic practices, evaluation (has to do with judgement, hierarchies between ethnic categories, hierarchies within ethnic categories, interpretation. Ethnicity becomes real in the everyday lives of individuals when people in the wider community respond to meanings and evaluations about ethnicity as if: they are real(present, they always existed(past, they will always be the same (future, practice. Examples: social status, entitlements, unequally distributed immigration quotas.
