ANTH 2 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Enculturation, Melting Pot
Document Summary
What does ethnicity mean to anthropologists: ethnicity as identity. Over a lifetime, humans develop complex identities that connect to many people in many ways. We build a sense of relationship, belonging, and shared identity through connections to family, religion, hometown, language, shared history, citizenship, sports, age, gender, sexuality, education, and profession. These powerful identities influence what we eat, who we date, where we work, how we live, and even how we die. Ethnicity a sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group. How is ethnicity created and put into motion: for most people, ethnicity is not a pressing matter in daily life. But it can be can activated when power relationships undergo negotiation in a community or nation. The united states has a very complicated history of dealing with people of different ethnic backgrounds.
