Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-rnpqb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T06:40:54.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Ethnicity and society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2009

Eliezer Ben-Rafael
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Stephen Sharot
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
Get access

Summary

Many social scientists have perceived a “resurgence” or “revival” of ethnicity in recent decades in many societies. The analysis of the reassertion of ethnic identities, the emergence and growth of ethnic movements, and the pervasiveness of ethnic conflicts has been one of the most important growth areas of sociology in the last two decades. It is admitted that sociologists and political scientists in the 1950s and early 1960s had assumed that ethnicity was declining in importance, and that it would continue to decline in the future. Western states had been held up as “nation states” that had succeeded over the centuries to assimilate and amalgamate diverse peoples, and many expected that the newly independent states in Africa and Asia would follow suit. Ethnicity was often associated with traditional societies, and it was expected that the process of modernization would weaken such ascription-based groups.

The growth of ethnicity and ethnic conflict has been analyzed as a universal or world-wide phenomenon. Not only have “tribal” or ethnic differences posed acute obstacles to the “nation-building” of newly independent states, but ethnic groups have appeared to endanger what had been considered the accomplished unity of European states. In multinational states, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, ethnic divisions and conflicts have perhaps only become more manifest and politicized, but indigenous ethnic movements have also appeared in countries, such as Britain and France, which had been considered unified nations.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Ethnicity and society
  • Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, Stephen Sharot, Tel-Aviv University
  • Book: Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society
  • Online publication: 12 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511520600.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Ethnicity and society
  • Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, Stephen Sharot, Tel-Aviv University
  • Book: Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society
  • Online publication: 12 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511520600.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Ethnicity and society
  • Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, Stephen Sharot, Tel-Aviv University
  • Book: Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society
  • Online publication: 12 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511520600.002
Available formats
×