Professional Documents
Culture Documents
K5 Lecture
K5 Lecture
K5 Lecture
Social Statuses
Race
• Cultural category rather than a
biological reality
– Not possible to define human races
biologically
– Better to use term “ethnic group” instead of
“race” to describe any social group
Hypodescent: Race
in the United States
• In American culture, one acquires his or
her racial identity at birth
– Rule of Descent – assigns social identity
on basis of ancestry
– Hypodescent – automatically places
children of a union or mating between
members of different groups in the minority
group
• Helps divide American society into groups that
have been unequal in access to wealth, power,
and prestige
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Americans Reporting
They Belonged to Just One Race
Nationalities and
Imagined Communities
• Nationalities – groups that now have,
or wish to have or regain autonomous
political status
– Nationalities are imagined communities
• Diasporas – dispersed populations
spread out from a common center or
homeland
Assimilation
• When minority adopts the patterns and
norms of a host culture
– “Melting pot” model
– Incorporates into the dominant culture to
point where it no longer exists as a
separate cultural unit