Key Takeaways
1. Rethinking Ethnicity: Beyond Herderian Assumptions
Few authors today dare to argue for the givenness, transsituational stability, and deep-rooted character of ethnic cultures and identities, although such notions are still widespread in the ethnic studies departments of American universities and among non-specialized researchers in economics or philosophy who happen to stumble across the ethnic phenomenon.
Challenging old paradigms. For decades, the study of ethnicity has been trapped in dichotomous debates, such as "primordialist" versus "instrumentalist" views. While constructivism has gained ground, it often overemphasizes fluidity without explaining why ethnicity matters differently across societies. This book argues for a more nuanced "comparative analytic of ethnic forms" to move beyond these limitations.
Herder's enduring legacy. Much of our understanding of ethnicity, particularly in fields like assimilation theory, multiculturalism, and ethnic studies, is rooted in Johann Gottfried Herder's 18th-century philosophy. Herder posited a world of distinct "peoples," each with a unique culture, strong communal solidarity, and a shared identity. This "Herderian ontology" often leads researchers to assume ethnic groups are self-evident units of analysis, rather than phenomena that need to be explained.
Beyond simplistic views. The book critiques this Herderian legacy, arguing that it fails to account for the vast empirical variation in how ethnicity manifests. It also pushes back against radical constructivism, which sometimes exaggerates the ephemeral nature of ethnicity. Instead, a robust framework must explain when and how ethnic boundaries become stable, consequential, and deeply rooted, or conversely, when they remain fluid and contested.
2. The Boundary Metaphor: A Dynamic Lens on Group Formation
Focusing on social and categorical boundaries allows us to study the formation and dissolution of ethnic groups with more precision than standard sociological approaches that take the existence and continuity of such groups and categories for granted.
Barth's foundational insight. The "boundary metaphor," introduced by Fredrik Barth, is central to this approach. It posits that social and symbolic boundaries emerge when actors differentiate between ethnic categories and treat members of these categories differently. This perspective shifts the focus from studying "ethnic groups" as static entities to understanding the dynamic processes of their formation and dissolution.
Infusing Bourdieu and Weber. To dynamize Barth's framework, the book integrates insights from Pierre Bourdieu and Max Weber. Bourdieu's concept of "classification struggles" highlights how actors contend over which social boundaries are considered legitimate and what their consequences should be. Weber's analysis of "social closure" emphasizes how ethnic group formation often involves monopolizing resources, power, or prestige, preventing outsiders from accessing them.
Categorical and social dimensions. A boundary has both a categorical dimension (how people classify the social world into "us" and "them") and a social or behavioral dimension (the actual networks of relationships that result from connecting or distancing). A true social boundary exists when these two dimensions align, meaning ways of seeing the world correspond to ways of acting in it. This framework allows for boundaries to be fuzzy, porous, or sharp, reflecting empirical variation.
3. Strategies of Boundary Making: Shifting, Modifying, Blurring
Toiling through this vast and diverse empirical literature, I distinguish between strategies that attempt to change the location of existing boundaries (“boundary shifting”) by “expanding” or “contracting” the domains of the included and those that do not aim at the location of a boundary but try to modify its meaning and implication by challenging the hierarchical ordering of ethnic categories (“normative inversion”), de-emphasizing ethnicity and emphasizing other social divisions (“blurring”), or changing one’s own position vis-à-vis the boundary (“positional moves”).
A taxonomy of action. Actors are not passive recipients of ethnic categories; they actively engage in "boundary making" through various strategies. This book introduces a comprehensive typology of these strategies, applicable across diverse historical and geographical contexts, from "racial" to "cultural" groups, and from dominant majorities to subordinate minorities.
Shifting boundaries. One set of strategies involves changing the topography of existing boundaries:
- Expansion: Broadening the scope of an ethnic category.
- Nation-building: State elites redefine an existing group as the nation (e.g., France turning peasants into Frenchmen) or create a new national category through amalgamation (e.g., Mexico's mestizaje).
- Ethnogenesis: Smaller groups are merged into larger ethnic categories, often by state institutions (e.g., Ottoman millet system, panethnicities like "Asian" in the US).
- Contraction: Narrowing boundaries, disidentifying with broader categories (e.g., Taiwanese emphasizing their identity over "Asian," African-American elites distinguishing by skin tone).
Modifying boundaries. Other strategies focus on changing the meaning or membership associated with existing boundaries:
- Transvaluation: Altering the normative hierarchy.
- Normative Inversion: Reversing the rank order, making a despised category superior (e.g., Black Power movement).
- Equalization: Seeking moral and political equality (e.g., Civil Rights Movement).
- Positional Moves: Changing one's place within the hierarchy.
- Individual Crossing: Assimilating into a dominant group (e.g., "passing" as white, "indios" becoming "ladinos").
- Collective Repositioning: An entire group moving up the social ladder (e.g., Chinese in Mississippi crossing the color line).
- Blurring: Reducing ethnicity's importance by emphasizing other social divisions (e.g., local community, global humanity, shared civilization). Examples include multiethnic neighborhoods or universalizing religious discourse.
4. Enforcing Boundaries: Power, Discourse, and Violence
By tying the distribution of life chances to membership in ethnic categories, discrimination powerfully aff ects the way individuals defi ne themselves and represents a more eff ective tool to enforce a specifi c distinction between ethnic “us” and “others” than categorization and symbolization.
Means of inscription. Beyond strategic choices, actors employ various "means" to make their preferred boundaries consequential and inscribe them into social reality. These means range from subtle symbolic acts to overt physical force, reflecting the unequal distribution of power in society.
Symbolic and discursive power. State institutions, in particular, wield immense power to define and legitimize ethnic distinctions through:
- Categorization: Census forms, public rituals, history books, and official statistics (e.g., creating "Hispanic" or "Asian" categories).
- Identification: Using symbolic markers like behavioral patterns, visible cues (phenotype, dress, scars), or official documents (passports, identity cards) to identify group members and police boundaries.
These tools shape public perception and can make certain ethnic divisions appear natural and self-evident.
Discrimination and exclusion. Tying life chances to ethnic membership is a potent enforcement mechanism. This can manifest as:
- Legalized discrimination: Citizenship laws (e.g., denying rights to Koreans in Japan), differentiated rights for citizens (e.g., African Americans in the Jim Crow South), or denaturalization.
- Institutionalized discrimination: Quota systems (e.g., affirmative action, Soviet bureaucracy).
- Informal discrimination: Everyday practices in job, housing, and marriage markets leading to social closure (e.g., residential segregation, endogamy rules).
These forms of discrimination reinforce boundaries by creating tangible consequences for group membership.
Mobilization and coercion. Collective action and violence are ultimate means of boundary enforcement:
- Political mobilization: Social movements rally mass opinion to make ethnic divisions politically salient, demanding recognition or challenging existing hierarchies (e.g., nationalist movements).
- Coercion and violence: Forced assimilation (e.g., Bulgarization of Turkish names, forced adoption of indigenous children), ethnic cleansing (e.g., Holocaust, Bosnian War), terror, and communal riots. These extreme measures aim to physically or symbolically redraw boundaries, often with devastating human cost, by forcing homogeneity or clear demarcation.
5. Explaining Boundary Variation: Institutions, Power, and Networks
The model assumes that ethnic boundaries result from the interactions between actors who pursue the diff erent strategies and are equipped with the various means of boundary making outlined in chapter 3.
A multi-level process theory. The book proposes a theoretical framework to explain the variation in ethnic boundaries, moving from macro-structural factors to individual agency and back. This framework identifies three key characteristics of social fields that shape boundary-making struggles:
- Institutional frameworks: These provide incentives for actors to emphasize certain types of boundaries (ethnic, class, gender) over others. The modern nation-state, for instance, strongly encourages ethnonational distinctions through its principles of representation and territorial definition, influencing both state elites and minority entrepreneurs.
- Distribution of power: An actor's position in power hierarchies dictates their interests and the level of ethnic differentiation they prioritize. It also determines the means available to them for enforcing their preferred categorization. Powerful actors can impose their classifications, while subordinates may develop counter-strategies like blurring or inversion.
- Political networks: The reach and structure of existing alliances influence where boundaries are drawn, determining who is included in an "us" category. For example, extensive transracial clientelist networks in Brazil led to a more inclusive national identity compared to the US, where such networks were absent.
Dynamics of change. This framework also accounts for how boundaries stabilize or change over time:
- Exogenous shifts: Major events like imperial conquest or democratization alter institutional structures, power distributions, or introduce new actors (e.g., international organizations).
- Endogenous shifts: Cumulative consequences of actors' strategies can lead to cascades, transforming existing hierarchies and alliances (e.g., the Mexican Revolution expanding the concept of the Mexican nation).
- Exogenous drift: New boundary-making strategies can diffuse globally (e.g., the civil rights movement inspiring other ethnic movements).
6. Consensus and Conflict: The Negotiation of Social Reality
According to this theory, a consensus between individuals and groups endowed with diff erent resources is more likely to emerge if their interests at least partially overlap and strategies of classifi cation can, therefore, concur on a shared view.
The emergence of shared understanding. When different actors pursue diverse boundary-making strategies, the social field is characterized by competition and contestation. The crucial question is how, or if, a shared understanding of the location and meaning of ethnic boundaries can emerge from these struggles, especially given diverging interests.
Cultural compromise. The book introduces the concept of "cultural compromise" to explain this. A consensus is more likely when actors, despite their different resources and interests, find a domain of overlapping or complementary interests. This allows their classification strategies to converge on a shared view of social divisions. This is not about identical interests, but about a mutually beneficial exchange of economic, political, or symbolic resources.
Examples of compromise. Nation-building often exemplifies such a compromise: state elites promote an expanded national boundary for legitimacy, while diverse individuals accept assimilation to gain legal equality and political participation. This convergence of strategies shapes where the boundary between the nation and its minorities is drawn. Even in more localized settings, like indigenous communities or urban neighborhoods, compromises can emerge, binding members despite internal power differences.
Asymmetrical and partial consensus. Consensus is not always total. It can be "asymmetrical," where only one side of a boundary agrees on its relevance (e.g., established residents excluding newcomers). It can also be "partial," where there's agreement on who belongs where, but strong disagreement on the meaning or implications of the boundary (e.g., the black-white divide in the US, where the line is clear but its meaning is contested). These struggles constantly reinterpret the compromise, limiting the possibilities for future action.
7. Local Realities: Non-Ethnic Boundaries in Immigrant Neighborhoods
It is more important whether the courtyard is kept tidy and the rules of the building are followed than whether a family is black or white or of Swiss or foreign origin.
Beyond ethnic lenses. A study of immigrant neighborhoods in Switzerland (Basel, Bern, Zurich) reveals that everyday group formation often defies conventional ethnic or racial classifications. Instead of dividing society along ethnonational lines, residents, both Swiss and long-established immigrants, primarily use a "scheme of order" to categorize people.
The "scheme of order." This scheme emphasizes "petit bourgeois" virtues like cleanliness, punctuality, quiet, and stable social relationships. Those who adhere to this order are considered "insiders" or "decent," while those who don't—including new Swiss alternative scene members and recent immigrants from ex-Yugoslavia or non-European countries—are labeled "outsiders." This distinction, rather than citizenship or perceived cultural distance, dictates social boundaries.
Immigrant perspectives. Established Italian and Turkish immigrants largely share this "scheme of order." They often contract boundaries, differentiating "legitimate" guest workers (like themselves) from "illegitimate" asylum seekers and refugees, whom they perceive as undermining social order and exploiting the welfare system they helped build. Some older Turkish immigrants even align Islamic values with the "decent Swiss" ideal, creating an inclusive category of "morally worthy" individuals.
Generational shifts and convergence. Second-generation immigrants show more varied strategies: some Turks assimilate, others blur boundaries by emphasizing universal values. Second-generation Italians ("Secondi") often engage in normative inversion, celebrating a "Latin" spontaneity against "narrow-minded Swiss" but still exclude newer immigrant cohorts. Despite these internal differences, a strong consensus emerges: the exclusion of most new immigrants, reflected in sparse social ties and clear social closure against them. This contradicts both Herderian and radical constructivist views, showing that xenophobia can be driven by perceived cultural displacement and loss of social order, not necessarily "racialization."
8. Network Dynamics: Disentangling Racial Homophily from Other Ties
First, much of the racial boundedness of networks is actually a consequence of preference for individuals of the same ethnic background, i.e. homophily based on lower, ethnic levels of categorical diff erentiation that are nested into the more encompassing racial categories.
Unpacking network homogeneity. Studies consistently show high racial homogeneity in American social networks, often attributed solely to "racial homophily" (preference for same-race friends). This chapter, using Facebook "picture friend" data from a US elite college, challenges this by disentangling racial homophily from other tie-generating mechanisms.
Beyond simple racial preference. The analysis reveals that racial homogeneity is a complex outcome of several factors:
- Ethnic homophily: A significant portion of observed "Asian homophily" is spurious, actually driven by preferences for specific ethnic groups (e.g., Chinese befriending Chinese, Vietnamese befriending Vietnamese). This highlights the importance of considering nested ethnoracial categories.
- Balancing mechanisms: Reciprocity (friends returning friendship) and triadic closure (friends of friends becoming friends) amplify racial homophily. These mechanisms, based on a general human tendency for symmetry in social relations, can generate additional same-race ties independently of racial preference.
- Sociality: Some racial groups (e.g., "mixed" students) are simply more sociable, forming more ties overall, which can inflate perceived homophily.
- Indirect effects: Overlaps between racial categories and other attributes (e.g., socioeconomic status, regional origin) or sorting into shared activities (e.g., academic majors) contribute marginally to racial homogeneity.
Racial homophily in context. While racial homophily remains a factor, especially for Black students (likely due to historical discrimination and solidarity), it is not the dominant principle of tie formation. Other factors prove more influential:
- Propinquity: Co-residence in dorm rooms or shared academic majors (e.g., economics, microbiology) are far stronger predictors of friendship.
- Other homophilies: Preferences based on elite boarding school background, regional origin (e.g., Illinoisans), or cultural tastes (e.g., fans of R&B/hip hop) can be as strong or stronger than racial homophily.
This nuanced view suggests that while "race matters," its influence is often co-produced and amplified by other social dynamics, challenging simplistic interpretations of network composition.
9. Culture and Values: The Consequence of Social Closure, Not Distance
Value diff erences are not the result of a large distance between ethnic cultures but of social closure along ethnic lines that brings about, over time, a diff erentiation of the values held by dominant majorities and excluded minorities.
Challenging cultural determinism. This chapter directly confronts the Herderian assumption that ethnic groups inherently possess distinct cultural values, and the "cultural distance" argument that posits greater value divergence with more remote linguistic or religious origins. Instead, it argues that value differentiation is a consequence of social closure and political exclusion.
Empirical findings from Europe. Using data from the European Social Survey across 24 countries and 380 ethnic groups, the study reveals:
- Limited ethnic variance: Only 2-3% of the variation in individual values is attributable to ethnic group membership, significantly less than country-level or individual-level factors. This undermines the Herderian view that ethnic cultures are primary drivers of values.
- Ethnicity's relevance: Despite low variance, ethnic minority status does significantly correlate with value heterodoxy, rejecting radical constructivist claims that ethnicity is irrelevant. However, its impact is comparable to, or sometimes less than, other social class variables like education or family status.
- No "Islamic values" divide: Individuals identifying as Muslim do not diverge more from mainstream values than Catholics, challenging popular narratives of an inherent clash between "Islamic" and "Western" values. Secular individuals show the most divergence.
- Closure, not distance, drives divergence: When political exclusion is accounted for, linguistic and religious distance from the majority become statistically insignificant. Politically excluded minorities consistently show greater divergence from mainstream values.
Dynamic of exclusion. A dynamic analysis of immigrant generations further supports the closure argument:
- First-generation immigrants' values diverge from the mainstream due to "value distance" from their country of origin.
- However, second-generation immigrants' divergence is not explained by their parents' origin country values. Instead, it is strongly predicted by political exclusion in the host country. Excluded second-generation immigrants are significantly more heterodox, suggesting either blocked assimilation or the development of an oppositional culture.
This demonstrates that social boundaries, particularly those enforced through political exclusion, actively shape and differentiate cultural values over time.
10. The Limits of "Race": Disentangling Ethnic from Non-Ethnic Processes
Avoiding the logic of the trial that plagues studies of race and racism (Wacquant 1997), we fi nd that popular resentment against new cohorts of immigrants in Switzerland is driven by perceived cultural distance rather than racial diff erence.
Beyond the "racial lens." A central methodological principle of this book is the imperative to "de-ethnicize" research designs and avoid automatically attributing social patterns to "race" or "ethnicity." This means using non-ethnic units of observation (individuals, localities, classes, institutions) and carefully disentangling ethnic processes from other social forces.
Swiss xenophobia: cultural, not racial. The Swiss case study (Chapter 5) illustrates this by showing that anti-immigrant sentiment and social exclusion in neighborhoods are primarily driven by a "cultural protectionism" centered on a "scheme of order," rather than explicit racial discrimination. While racist comments exist, the logic of exclusion targets those perceived as culturally distant or disorderly, regardless of their "race" or citizenship. This challenges "racialization" theories that might over-interpret such phenomena through an American-centric racial framework.
US networks: race is one factor among many. The US college network study (Chapter 6) further demonstrates that while race is an important factor in friendship formation, it is often co-produced and amplified by other mechanisms. Racial homophily is not the sole or even dominant force; propinquity, balancing mechanisms, and other forms of homophily (e.g., socioeconomic status, specific ethnic groups) play equally or more significant roles. This nuanced view prevents overstating the singular causal power of "race" in shaping social ties.
Values: exclusion, not inherent difference. The European values study (Chapter 7) concludes that value differences are a consequence of political exclusion and social closure, not an inherent property of ethnic groups or a function of "cultural distance." This means that while ethnic divisions can lead to cultural divergence, the causal arrow points from social structure (exclusion) to culture, rather than the other way around. This critical stance helps avoid "cultural racism" by showing that perceived cultural differences are often products of social dynamics, not their immutable cause.
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