Geographies of race and ethnicity

Question 1

Race definition - Jackson

Answer 1

controversial marker of human difference, usually based on biological distinctions or physical criterial such as skin colour and colour of hair (Jackson, 2000).

Question 2

Ethnicity definition

Answer 2

Culture and lifestyle of a particular group linked by birth, which makes them out as being different from others. This encompasses both self-perception and social stratification.

Question 3

Social Darwinism

Answer 3

where the fittest survive, led to notions of competitive evolutionary and biological struggle being seen as less or more superior. At the same time, this appeared to owns support to imperialist notions of racial superiority.

Question 4

Race as a social construction?

Answer 4

We can argue that ‘race’ is a social construction through which groups of people are categorised on the basis of physical or biological criteria imposed from outside that social group.

Question 5

Ethnicity should be considered

Answer 5

Ethnicity, on the other hand, should be best considered as a ‘series of more or less self-conscious strategies employed by subordinate groups to “handle” or contest their structural subordination’

Question 6

Why black ghettos were created

Answer 6

through white exclusionary tactics adopted to ‘protect’ their own residential areas. These tactics included the widespread use of restricted covenants: agreements amongst property owners that they would not sell to black people.

Question 7

Byrne, 1999

Answer 7

While the concept of ‘social exclusion’ has several meanings (Byrne, 1999), it reflects a general shift in language and perspective in social geography and elsewhere which has refocused attention onto white majority groups and the processes by which minority groups are labelled as ‘different’.

Question 8

White, 1999

Answer 8

looks at 4 types of social exclusion affecting European ethnic minorities

Question 9

White (1)

Answer 9

Exclusion through legal mechanisms - granting ot denial of citizenship, ‘difference’ between host population and minority group is perpetuated in a highly formal way.

Question 10

White (2)

Answer 10

Exclusion through the ideologies of ‘othering’ - where ‘everyday’ attitudes within the majority population deny the rights of minority groups to live how and where they do.

Question 11

White (3)

Answer 11

Exclusion through denying minorities access to social capita; - where there is a failure to recognise group-specific needs in order to facilitate the reduction of inequalities and processes of social inclusion.

Question 12

White (4)

Answer 12

Exclusion through poverty and economic marginalisation - where patterns of economic disadvantage and exclusion are perpetuated from one generation to the next.