Search Results

In the late 11th century, English society was permeated by an awareness of ethnic difference, and of the contrast between English and Normans. Most strikingly, awareness of ethnic difference spread throughout bureaucratic systems and documents. An understanding of the level of the cultural divide between the English and the Normans, and the nature of the precise differences, is an important prerequisite to understanding the interaction between them. This chapter focuses on cultural differences that contemporaries described, because those are the ones most likely to have served as markers of ethnic difference in post-conquest England. Fortunately for the development of ethnic harmony, the English and the conquerors had much in common, thus lessening the possibility of irreconcilable cultural clashes that could permanently divide them. Nonetheless, the cultural differences were by no means negligible, and this chapter shows that a fair amount of acculturation was necessary before the two peoples could hope to become one.

While researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and service providers ask increasingly for solutions to the enduring problems of youth violence, key issues have gone unaddressed. For example, questions remain about the disparity in the prevalence of violence for African American adolescents. It is unclear whether risk and protective factors for violent behavior differ for youth of color as compared to White youth, although several theories suggest that African American youth may be socialized differently to the use and outcomes of violence. To the extent that differences in violence and associated variables are understood, researchers and practitioners will be positioned to more fully meet the needs of particularly vulnerable and marginalized groups. The purpose of Chapter 3 is to distill key race differences in violence, as well as the many risk and protective factors found in the literature. Theories that position race in the etiology of violence are reviewed. The chapter examines race and ethnic differences in the prevalence of violence as well as group variation in risk and protective factors for violence.

In both the US and the UK, data limitations have greatly hampered investigations of ethnic inequalities in health and how they might be structured by social and economic disadvantages. This chapter illustrates the impact of some of these limitations on how data are interpreted, and suggests that social and economic inequalities are fundamental causes of ethnic inequalities in health. It then relates the socio-economic patterning of ethnic inequalities in health to the potential explanations for such inequalities explored in other chapters in this book. The chapter concludes by suggesting that an adequate understanding of racism is fundamental to an understanding of ethnic inequalities in health.

This chapter argues that efforts to create racial and ethnic classifications have led to numerous insights, particularly that the process is arbitrary, subjective, context-specific, purpose-driven, and imprecise. The process is atheoretical in that there is no coherent theoretical factor that underpins classifications. Topics discussed include the challenges of studying racial and ethnic differences without creating stigma or inequity; devising population groups using the concepts of race and ethnicity — historical and contemporary examples; analysing the facets of race and ethnicity that population groupings are based on; and the development of population groupings into comprehensive classifications of race and ethnicity, past and present.

Failure to account for overlapping forms of violence and risk within and across settings has contributed to an incomplete and possibly inaccurate understanding of the risk environments in which many vulnerable children reside. In this chapter, the author examines the intersection of violence across key settings and the impact of violence exposure on children’s development. The summary overview of research includes a discussion of possible race/ethnic and gender differences in rates of exposure, developmental processes, and outcomes of violence exposure in children.

This chapter reports some findings from the first three surveys of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) on the nature and extent of ethnic differences in early childhood environment and outcomes up to age 5. It examines ethnic differences in child outcomes, together with background and mediating factors that are likely to have impacted on these outcomes. It outlines how ethnic groups are defined and then shows how the outcomes of interest vary by ethnic groups. It examines how some possible explanatory factors of ethnic gaps vary by ethnic group, namely selected family background characteristics and selected measures of the early childhood environment. It presents the multivariate analysis it carried out to see the extent to which family background characteristics and the early childhood environment can act as mediating factors — in some sense ‘explaining’ the ethnic divide in early child development.

The fifth chapter traces the replacement of the ‘stage tinker’ by the more even-handed portrayals of Travellers in the work of politically sensitive dramatists Bryan MacMahon, Tom Murphy, and John Arden that emerged after the minority’s politicization in the 1960. In terms of Abbey Theatre tradition, these more nuanced portrayals are considered as the homecoming of the empathetic Syngean impulse to the National Theatre after decades of exclusionary depictions of farcical and threatening ‘tinkers‘. As a result, the floodgates were opened to the emergence of Traveller writers who challenged traditional representations of their community, and the discourse of exoticness to which the minority had been subject was thereby transformed into the empowering rhetoric of ethnic difference. The chapter concludes with a survey of the contention with normative values of Traveller oral literature, and the response to Synge of Traveller writers Juanita Casey and Rosaleen McDonagh.

This chapter utilizes A.R. Luria’s method of neuropsychological investigation to shed light upon recent advances in neuroimaging and emerging paradigms in the cognitive neurosciences such as cognitive phenomics. Particular attention is focused on the theoretical power of Luria’s method for understanding the emerging literature in cultural neuropsychology which is challenging the notion of psychic unity and revolutionizing the field’s understanding of cognition. An argument is made for embracing biological and cultural diversity by recasting neurocognition as being completely culturally-constituted. Other themes covered in the chapter include: Goldberg’s gradiental theory, activity theory, the effects of bilingualism and other experience-based influences on brain plasticity, biocultural co-constructivism, and the cultural-historical method for understanding neurocognition.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about ethnic differences and disadvantage in Great Britain. The book considers the patterning of ethnic disadvantage in a number of key areas of social life and describes the demographic characteristics of people from minority ethnic groups. The discussion in each chapter is framed by analyses of continuity and change, with particular emphasis on the persistence of ethnic penalties and evidence of continued discrimination, even in the face of upward mobility.

This chapter asks whether there is a trend towards more same-ethnicity friendship groups and discusses what this can tell about desire for ethnic mixing. It considers housing aspirations of people from different ethnic groups to uncover the extent to which there is unwillingness to mix residentially. It also considers social attitudes and particularly whether there is a fear of mixing and fear of ethnic difference. It tackles the issue of whether school choice is creating ethnic segregation. It clarifies that this chapter is not disputing the need to reduce social conflict where it exists, but seeks to challenge the identification of segregation as a cause of conflict, and inward-looking retreat by minorities as a cause of segregation.

In ancient Greece, pretending to belong to a different ethnic group was a significant source of humour. In Thesmophoriazusae the tritagonist, who had earlier in the play appeared in such histrionically extravagant roles as Agathon and Cleisthenes, faced the most demanding ‘ethnic’ role in the extant Greek comic repertoire: for the last quarter of the play he needed to pretend to be not only unfree and untutored in theatre, but an import into Athens from the far-flung northern shore of the Black Sea. The role of the Scythian archer is one of the most remarkable in the drama of the period. This chapter argues that Thesmophoriazusae is a comic response to a very particular type of role in tragedy — the villainous barbarian monarch in Euripides' innovative escape tragedies. For many decades, indeed until the middle of the 1980s, the only aspect of this role to attract any significant attention from scholars was the element of linguistic caricature.

As discussed in Chapter 5, there are many high risk environments that expose children to violence. Research on how children and youth in high risk environments overcome the odds of negative outcomes is crucial to the development of prevention and intervention efforts. Chapter 6 explores the concepts of resilience and protection with respect to violence exposure in children. Issues of race and gender are again considered. Implications for both targeted and universal prevention and intervention programs are discussed briefly.

This chapter explores the cultural politics surrounding ABC's 2006 prime-time hit Ugly Betty. Mainstream entertainment coverage, audience blogs, and online discussion boards about the show provide insight into the hypervisibility of Latinidad as central to the future growth of global cultural industries. While the show's use of the personal and professional lives of two young second-generation Mexican women potentially disrupts popular conceptions of Latinas, their difference is ultimately contained through an emphasis on universal deracialized story lines dealing with love, family, beauty, and social acceptance. Thus, Ugly Betty illustrates the ways in which Latinas embody media industry efforts to use ethnic difference, racial ambiguity, and multicultural accents to sell products and programming to global audiences. However, the program's queer story lines and performance of working-class ethnic femininity symbolically ruptures the show's more homogenized construction of Latinidad. Readings of online audience and fan responses reveal nuanced negotiations surrounding the commodification of Latina panethnicity as a global multicultural product.

The pathophysiological process of atherosclerosis, which ultimately leads to cardiovascular disease, begins in childhood and young adulthood. This chapter describes the life course trajectories in blood pressure, lipids, glucose, insulin, and non-invasive assessments of vascular structure and function and, explores differences between males and females and by ethnic group. It reviews evidence regarding the associations of pre-adult risk factors with these trajectories, explores whether puberty, pregnancy, and the perimenopause are key periods when the trajectories show distinct changes, and describes how changes in the trajectories relate to cardiovascular disease. Higher blood pressure, low density lipoprotein cholesterol, and fasting glucose in adolescence and early adulthood are associated with adverse cardiometabolic events in older age. Despite cohort studies in children and adults often repeatedly measuring cardiometabolic markers, few have appropriately modelled change with age in relation to risk factors, or explored how different patterns of change relate to future disease risk.

This chapter introduces a book that provides a state-of-the-science examination of the extent and causes and correlates of racial and ethnic differences in the processing of youths within the juvenile justice system. This effort has been undertaken during a period when the juvenile court and its assorted institutional appendages have come under increased scrutiny and criticism from both within and without. Much recent public discourse regarding how children are cared for and disciplined appears quite reminiscent of the debates occurring in the decades leading to the establishment of the United States' first juvenile courts and correctional facilities. Public attitudes toward youths, juvenile law, and the administration of justice in the country have always reflected a myriad of interacting and often competing social forces. Public perceptions of race, ethnic, social class, and place-of-birth differences and their relevance for criminal involvement have always figured prominently in that ideological, political, and socioeconomic array of forces.

This chapter examines two of Indonesia's most noted traditional conflict resolution methods in the context of recent ethnoreligious conflicts. It shows that Pela Gandong of Ambon and Motambu Tana of Poso are ties of brotherhood across religious and ethnic differences that have emerged over centuries in specific locales. These practices have proved successful over time for managing violent conflict, including when they were used as a ‘last resort’ in recent communal conflict. But there are problems in the prevailing tendency to view as static and even primordial the inherently dynamic practices of Pela Gandong and Motambu Tana. These practices derive their efficacy from long-standing concrete local interactions. To frame them as unchanging ignores the grounds of their efficacy and compromises efforts to revive Pela Gandong and Motambu Tana at a time when they are under pressure from state-led forces of modernisation and the introduction of modern Western conflict resolution practices.

This chapter examines how residents in Beyoğlu — the most diverse district in the Turkish city of Istanbul — designate others, and the effects of this designated ‘otherness’ on social cohesion in this area. It shows how residents in Beyoğlu use a variety of attributes to define others, most notably socioeconomic and occupational attributes, or whether they are established or new residents or come from the same hometown. Ethnic and cultural differences are not so important, although the aforementioned attributes are strongly linked to certain ethnic and cultural categories since most new residents are migrants with a low socioeconomic status and usually of Kurdish ethnicity. A majority of the respondents regard living with others as something positive because of the possibility of getting to know different people and learning about their cultures. Still, the rapidly changing demographic composition and character of the district is seen as a threat to local social cohesion.

This chapter takes a look at DJ Shadow, a member of one of the wealthiest local clans in SMX. The discussion introduces the One Love ideology, which is the assertion of a universal human identity and a privileging of individuality above ethnic and national differences. It discusses Rastafari and the Rastafari message of egalitarianism, and even identifies the secrets of DJ Shadow's success. The chapter also introduces DJ Shadow's notion of Rastafari individuality, which is a way to promote an inclusive politics of belonging without explicitly addressing socioeconomic inequalities.

This chapter examines how the intertextual politics of cultural Catholicism manifested itself as aesthetic style in the work of Italian painter Domenico Tiepolo, American popular artist Madonna and Italian American filmmaker Martin Scorsese. The findings reveal that the ethnic and religious differences manifested themselves most compellingly within the intertextual or parodic form, in which implicit dialogues become established between conventional or generic expectations and various forms of narrative deviance. The chapter argues that the attempt to describe religious ethnicity as embodying some kind of idealised or essentialist quality is no longer feasible for any number of theoretical reasons.