[PREV - MULTIETHNIC_JAPAN]    [TOP]

MULTIETHNIC_MEANING

                                             October 10, 2016

                                                       MULTIETHNIC_JAPAN

John Lie tries to get a handle on what
we mean by ethnic divisions,
in "Multi-Ethnic Japan" (2001):

  "Given that no one would deny that there are               The ellipsis
  non-Japanese people living in Japan, whether Japan is      and brackets
  monoethnic or multiethnic is a matter of degrees and       are John Lie's,
  definitions.  Indeed, the very term ethnicity-- as         on this one
  well as its cognates, race, nation, and people-- is        quote.
  contentious.  The philosopher W. B. Gallic (1964:138)
  is right to observe that most social terms are
  'essentially contested concepts ... which inevitably
  involve endless disputes about [their] proper uses.'
  Suffice it to say that I stress the historical and
  socially contingent character of social
  classification and categorization." (p.2)


  "Contemporary categories of peoplehood are fraught with
  confusion and contention, but there are only three
  terms that are widely used: race, ethnicity, and nation."
  (p.3)

  "The categories ... are all groping toward a social grouping
  larger than kinship (whether family or lineage) but smaller
  than humanity.  They seek, so to speak, to divide people
  horizontally.  They are categories salient in the modern
  era, in contradistinction to the preponderance of vertical,
  hierarchical categories, such as cast and status, in
  premodern civilizations." (p.3)


  "There is no getting around the essentially ambiguous definition
  of nation or ethnicity.  I follow E. J. Hobsbawm (1990:8) in
  considering 'any sufficiently large body or people whose members
  regard themselves as members of a 'nation'' as a national or
  ethnic group.  In addition to ethnic or national consciousness,
  discrimination and differentiation by outsiders sustain national
  and ethnic distinctions.  In this regard, there is really no
  simple criterion or a set of criteria in differentiate nation
  and ethnicity.  Formally, it is possible to posit a distinction
  by noting whether there is a sovereign state attached to a group.
  However, in practice, the distinction is conflated. ...  Whether
  to call Palestinians in Israel a national or ethnic minority
  seems ultimately moot." (p. 3)

  "Because neither the Japanese census nor sociologists' surveys
  recognize ethnic diversity in Japan, we can only estimate the
  population of non-Japanese Japanese.  Statistics-- as neutral
  and objective as they may seem-- are stepped in political and
  social assumptions.  For example, because we have no systematic
  data on how many Korean Japanese have become naturalized
  Japanese, we have no way of ascertaining how many Korean
  Japanese there are.  The problem is compounded by the
  persistence of discrimination against non-Japanese Japanese.
  Fearing obstacles in employment and marriage, many people
  attempt to pass as 'ordinary' Japanese and hide their ethnic
  background.  Hence, people of Ainu ancestry may identify
  themselves as ethnic Japanese.  Although the official Ainu
  population was about 25,000 in the early 1990s, some estimates
  run as high as 300,000 (Sjoberg 1993:152), and others suggest
  even higher figures." (p.4)


--------
[NEXT - KOREAN_JAPANESE]