SOC102H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Orthodox Marxism, Institutional Racism, Homo Sapiens
Document Summary
The sociology of ethnic and racial relations concerns primarily the study of how power and resources are unequally distributed among ethnic and racial groups. Ethnicity and race: the social construction of difference. Although we are born with certain parents and skin colours, we do not necessarily have fixed and unalterable ethnic and racial characteristics or identities. Sociologists believe that it is more useful to see race and ethnicity as certain kinds of achieved statuses statuses that are acquired by virtue of social definition. Objective definitions of ethnicity assume that ethnic groups exist because of people"s social attachments. Ethnicity is something people possess because of differences in language, culture, customs, national origin, and ancestry. Subjective approaches to ethnicity - focus on the process ethnic identification. Emphasize that ethnicity is socially constructed, ethnicity is a transactional process belonging to the same ancestral or cultural group. Ethnic groups are made up people who identify themselves, or are identified by others as.
