Ethnicity as Social Formation

A Critique of Ethnic Pluralism in the United States

Abstract

 In this essay, I redefine a concept of ethnicity as a broader social formation rather than an attribute or an ascription which a group of particular people possesses. The ethnicity theory in the United States has been developed in connection with normative discourses of ethnic pluralism in which each ethnic group is a basic constituent unit of a society. For example, studies of Japanese American ethnicity describe that “Japanese,” who had a distinct culture, has experienced its generational change with adaptation as well as ethnicization into “Japanese American.” In such studies, the idea of “ethnic American” has worked as a principle for the national integration in a plural society in which every member has its own ethnic ancestry. I propose the concept of social formation for the critical study of this ethnic pluralism in the United States. It means a structured social process, in which discourses on people sharing ancestries allocate socioeconomic resources, such as jobs, education, and welfare, along the ethnic boundaries. The social formation theory seeks what kinds of social power work on the recognition that some people belong to one group with an essential attribute and what kinds of consequences, including reinforcing racial hierarchy, such power dynamics lead to. Finally, sociologists should detach its concept of ethnicity from the norm of American ethnic pluralism and place it in the comparative and historical perspective on plural societies. (229/300 words)