106-480: A number of different systems of classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom exist. These schemata have been the subject of debate, including about the nature of ethnicity , how or whether it can be categorised, and the relationship between ethnicity , race , and nationality . The 1991 UK census was the first to include a question on ethnicity. Field trials had started in 1975 to establish whether
212-504: A host of men, a band of comrades as well as a swarm or flock of animals. In Classical Greek , the word took on a meaning comparable to the concept now expressed by "ethnic group", mostly translated as " nation , tribe, a unique people group"; only in Hellenistic Greek did the term tend to become further narrowed to refer to "foreign" or " barbarous " nations in particular (whence the later meaning "heathen, pagan"). In
318-454: A "Mixed or multiple ethnic groups" write-in area. There were calls for the 2011 national census in England and Wales to include extra tick boxes so people could identify their ethnic group in category A as English , Welsh and Cornish . The tick boxes at the time only included "British", Irish or any other. Some experts, community and special interest group respondents also pointed out that
424-457: A Department for Education approved list of extended categories. The National Pupil Database attempts to match pupils' educational attainment to their characteristics gathered in the school census, including ethnicity. However, according to HM Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales , the database contains data inaccuracies. A few of the local authorities and schools had also never accessed
530-421: A focus on the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: "... categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact, and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in
636-503: A mercurial character. Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness". He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization." This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity
742-412: A number of "persistent problems with salient collective terminology". These problems are ambiguity in respect of the populations that are described by different labels, the invisibility of white minority groups in official classifications, the acceptability of the terms used to those that they describe, and whether the collectivities have any substantive meaning. A number of academics have pointed out that
848-519: A preoccupation with scientists, theologians, and the public. Religious institutions asked questions about whether there had been multiple creations of races (polygenesis) and whether God had created lesser races. Many of the foremost scientists of the time took up the idea of racial difference and found that white Europeans were superior. The ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined four steps to assimilation: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of attributing
954-412: A process known as ethnogenesis, a period of several generations of endogamy resulting in common ancestry (which is then sometimes cast in terms of a mythological narrative of a founding figure ); ethnic identity is reinforced by reference to "boundary markers" – characteristics said to be unique to the group which set it apart from other groups. Ethnicity theory argues that race
1060-468: A question could be devised that was acceptable to the public and would provide information on race or ethnicity that would be more reliable than questions about an individual's parents' birthplaces. A number of different questions and answer classifications were suggested and tested, culminating in the April 1989 census test. The question used in the later 1991 census was similar to that tested in 1989, and took
1166-466: A question on ethnicity. The following are the options the ONS currently recommends for ethnicity surveys: In addition to the above "tick-box" options, respondents can also make use of the "please describe" options, also known as "write-in" answers. To do this, they would have to select one of the "any other" tick-boxes on the census form and write in their answer in the box provided. The police services of
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#17327902394061272-742: A shared cultural heritage , ancestry, origin myth , history , homeland , language , dialect , religion, mythology , folklore , ritual , cuisine , dressing style , art , or physical appearance . Ethnic groups may share a narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, depending on group identification, with some groups having mixed genetic ancestry. By way of assimilation , acculturation , amalgamation , language shift , intermarriage , adoption , and religious conversion , individuals or groups may over time shift from one ethnic group to another. Ethnic groups may be divided into subgroups or tribes , which over time may become separate ethnic groups themselves due to endogamy or physical isolation from
1378-706: A single registrar, the sheriff was empowered to divide it into districts. Registers were to be produced in duplicate, and one was to be sent to the Office of the Scottish Registrar General in Edinburgh. Compulsory civil registration began in Scotland on 1 January 1855, and coverage seems to have been complete for marriages and deaths. Birth registration took rather longer to bed down, but by the time of his first annual detailed report, published in 1861,
1484-519: A stand-in for "paganism" in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an "ethnic character" (first recorded 1953). The term ethnic group was first recorded in 1935 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. Depending on context, the term nationality may be used either synonymously with ethnicity or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign state). The process that results in emergence of an ethnicity
1590-478: A victim, a witness or a suspect compared to that person's own description of their ethnicity. When a person is stopped by a police officer exercising statutory powers and asked to provide information under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act , they are asked to select one of the five main categories representing broad ethnic groups and then a more specific cultural background from within this group. Officers must record
1696-518: A year, until the appointment of Sir Stair Agnew KCB. The last person to hold the combined posts was Sir James Patten McDougall KCB, in office from May 1909 to March 1919. Originally, this was the supervision of birth, death and marriage registration. It was expanded to include the conduct of the 1861 Census and all subsequent ones (working closely with the Registrar General to ensure consistency) and other statistical functions. In 1920
1802-548: Is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a people of a common language , culture , common sets of ancestry , traditions , society, religion , history, or social treatment. The term ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation , particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism . Ethnicity may be construed as an inherited or societally imposed construct. Ethnic membership tends to be defined by
1908-738: Is a nebulous concept". The ethnicity data used in UK national statistics relies on individuals' self-definition. The Office for National Statistics explain this as follows: Is a person's ethnic group self-defined? Yes. Membership of an ethnic group is something that is subjectively meaningful to the person concerned, and this is the principal basis for ethnic categorisation in the United Kingdom. So, in ethnic group questions, we are unable to base ethnic identification upon objective, quantifiable information as we would, say, for age or gender. And this means that we should rather ask people which group they see themselves as belonging to. This self-defined categorisation
2014-443: Is a social category and is only one of several factors in determining ethnicity. Other criteria include "religion, language, 'customs', nationality, and political identification". This theory was put forward by sociologist Robert E. Park in the 1920s. It is based on the notion of "culture". This theory was preceded by more than 100 years during which biological essentialism was the dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism
2120-423: Is called ethnogenesis , a term in use in ethnological literature since about 1950. The term may also be used with the connotation of something unique and unusually exotic (cf. "an ethnic restaurant", etc.), generally related to cultures of more recent immigrants, who arrived after the dominant population of an area was established. Depending on which source of group identity is emphasized to define membership,
2226-420: Is called ethnogenesis. Members of an ethnic group, on the whole, claim cultural continuities over time, although historians and cultural anthropologists have documented that many of the values, practices, and norms that imply continuity with the past are of relatively recent invention. Ethnic groups can form a cultural mosaic in a society. That could be in a city like New York City or Trieste , but also
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#17327902394062332-655: Is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no "ethnics"; there are only "ethnic relations". In the U.S., the OMB says the definition of race as used for the purposes of the US Census is not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference". Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by
2438-442: Is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation. Kanchan Chandra rejects the expansive definitions of ethnic identity (such as those that include common culture, common language, common history and common territory), choosing instead to define ethnic identity narrowly as a subset of identity categories determined by
2544-483: Is still based on a limited set of Census categories", and that "these categories do not begin to convey the extent and modes of diversity existing within the population today". User consultation undertaken by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the purpose of planning the 2011 census in England and Wales found that most of the respondents from all ethnic groups that took part in the testing felt comfortable with
2650-431: Is the belief that some races, specifically white Europeans in western versions of the paradigm, are biologically superior and other races, specifically non-white races in western debates, are inherently inferior. This view arose as a way to justify enslavement of African Americans and genocide of Native Americans in a society that was officially founded on freedom for all. This was a notion that developed slowly and came to be
2756-463: The Caribbean and South Asia . Max Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct ) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolize power and status. This
2862-570: The London Borough of Lambeth have argued that broad ethnic groupings such as "black African" or "white other" can hide significant variation in educational performance, so they instead recommend the use of language categories. The ethnic group categories used in the National Health Service in England are based on the 2001 census. It has been argued that this causes problems, as other agencies such as social services use
2968-455: The New World were multi-ethnic from the onset, as they were formed as colonies imposed on existing indigenous populations. In recent decades, feminist scholars (most notably Nira Yuval-Davis) have drawn attention to the fundamental ways in which women participate in the creation and reproduction of ethnic and national categories. Though these categories are usually discussed as belonging to
3074-598: The Registrar General (Scotland) Act 1920 was passed which provided for the appointment by the Secretary of State for Scotland a whole-time Registrar General, Dr James Craufurd Dunlop , (previously Medical Superintendent of Statistics ) was appointed. On the formation of National Records of Scotland, the positions of Registrar General and Keeper of the Records of Scotland were initially kept separate, but on
3180-554: The South Asians with BAME) are racially separate from the ethnic minority population, and for including under a single label heterogenous groups with little in common with each other. A survey published in November 2020 found that the term "BAME" offended those whom it attempts to describe, with "ethnically diverse communities" preferred when speaking broadly, and relevant terms for a specific community or person. In December 2021,
3286-430: The "Asian" group and 23 per cent of both the "Caribbean" and the "African" group in 1991 had switched to another group by 2001. They suggested that conscious changes in affiliation explained little of this instability, whereas unreliability of the question was significant, partly due to the ambiguous nature of the categories used and partly due to imprecision in the imputation of missing values. It has also been argued that
Classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom - Misplaced Pages Continue
3392-542: The "Black" and "White" categories from the earlier 2001 census were inconsistent with the "Asian" categories, thereby resulting in an unfair, double standard; and that the positioning of the "White" category atop the "non-White" categories implied a racial hierarchy , with "White" at the top. To redress this, the GOS established new, separate "African, African Scottish or African British" and "Caribbean, Caribbean Scottish or Caribbean British" tick boxes for individuals from Africa and
3498-621: The 'Black African' category was too broad. They remarked that the category did not provide enough information on the considerable diversity that existed within the various populations currently classified under this heading. This concealed heterogeneity ultimately made the gathered data of limited use analytically. To remedy this, the Muslim Council of Britain proposed that this census category should be broken down instead into specific ethnic groups. The National Association of British Arabs (NABA) and other Arab organisations also lobbied for
3604-569: The 19th century, the term came to be used in the sense of "peculiar to a tribe, race, people or nation", in a return to the original Greek meaning. The sense of "different cultural groups", and in American English "tribal, racial, cultural or national minority group " arises in the 1930s to 1940s, serving as a replacement of the term race which had earlier taken this sense but was now becoming deprecated due to its association with ideological racism . The abstract ethnicity had been used as
3710-501: The 2001 census. From 1 April 2003, police forces were required to use this new system. Police forces and civil and emergency services, the NHS and local authorities in England and Wales may refer to this as the "6+1" system, named after the 6 classifications of ethnicity plus one category for "not stated". The IC classification is still used for descriptions of suspects by police officers amongst themselves, but does risk incorrectly identifying
3816-550: The 2011 census. As with earlier censuses, individuals who did not identify as "Black", "White" or "Asian" could instead write in their own ethnic group under "Other ethnic group". Persons with multiple ancestries could indicate their respective ethnic backgrounds under a "Mixed or multiple ethnic groups" tick box and write-in area. Between 2004 and 2008, the General Register Office for Scotland (GOS) conducted official consultation, research and question testing for
3922-538: The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 committed not to use the term "BAME", in order to provide better representation of specific ethnic groups. In November 2022, the Labour -run Westminster City Council committed to replace BAME with " global majority ." However, Conservative MP John Hayes remarked that the change was "deeply sinister and must be resisted at every turn." Ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group
4028-606: The Caribbean, respectively, who did not identify as "Black, Black Scottish or Black British". It found that most testing participants thereafter chose to tick "African" or "Caribbean" instead of "Black". In the write-in area, they also noted their own respective ethnic groups, with few opting to write-in "Black". Additionally, individuals who did not identify as "Black", "White" or "Asian" could write in their own ethnic group under "Other ethnic group". Persons with multiple ancestries could indicate their respective ethnic backgrounds under
4134-775: The General Register Office had been located in General Register House. The building was erected on its present site near the Old Register House. The site was acquired in 1856 and the building was opened on 30 March 1861, though not completed until 1864 at a total cost of £40,000. GROS had two other main buildings: Ladywell House, in the Corstorphine area of Edinburgh, where population, household and vital statistics data (including Scotland's census) are housed; and Cairnsmore House on
4240-610: The Greeks. Herodotus (8.144.2) gave a famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) ethnic identity in his day, enumerating Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf , do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen ,
4346-530: The State. The Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages (Scotland) Act 1854 created the General Register Office of Births, Deaths and Marriages, headed by the Registrar General with the appointment of registrars in every parish. It also provided that the Registrar General should produce an annual report to be forwarded to the Home Secretary to be laid before Parliament, containing a general abstract of
Classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom - Misplaced Pages Continue
4452-547: The UK began to classify arrests in racial groups in 1975, but later replaced the race code with an Identity Code (IC) system. One of the recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was that people stopped and searched by the police should have their self-defined ethnic identity recorded. In March 2002, the Association of Chief Police Officers proposed a new system for self-definition , based on
4558-467: The UK such as Black, Black African, and African American hide the huge heterogeneity within these groups, which weakens the value of ethnic categorisation as a means of providing culturally appropriate health care, and in understanding the causes of ethnic differences in disease. Such broad terms may not fit with self definition of ethnicity". Since the Second World War, many minority groups in
4664-474: The UK were collectively referred to as " coloured ", a term that is deprecated and offensive in modern-day usage. From the 1970s until the early 1990s, those who subscribed to the notion of political blackness used the term "black" to refer to all ethnic minorities in the UK; however, this also came under scrutiny in the 1990s, especially from British Asians , who did not feel "black". A number of terms have been used, by government and more generally, to refer to
4770-525: The United States that the ethnicity theory was exclusively based on the immigration patterns of the white population and did take into account the unique experiences of non-whites in the United States. While Park's theory identified different stages in the immigration process – contact, conflict, struggle, and as the last and best response, assimilation – it did so only for white communities. The ethnicity paradigm neglected
4876-516: The Welsh Assembly Government's national free school meal (FSM) benchmark data, which ranks a school's performance relative to other groups of schools with comparable free school meal levels. Around 55 per cent of schools and local authorities deemed the benchmark data very useful, 35 per cent considered it fairly useful, and only about 10 per cent regarded it as being of limited use. Additionally, researchers conducting analysis for
4982-994: The added value of being able to describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states. According to Paul James , formations of identity were often changed and distorted by colonization, but identities are not made out of nothing: Categorizations about identity, even when codified and hardened into clear typologies by processes of colonization, state formation or general modernizing processes, are always full of tensions and contradictions. Sometimes these contradictions are destructive, but they can also be creative and positive. Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have
5088-520: The beginning of the school year in August. The guidance notes on data collection note that ethnicity is a personal, subjective awareness, and that pupils and their parents can refuse to answer the ethnicity question. The codes used are based on the categories used in the 2001 UK census, with added "Travellers of Irish heritage", "Gypsy/Roma heritage" and "Sri Lankan Other" categories. If these codes are judged to not meet local needs, local authorities may use
5194-449: The belief of common descent. Jóhanna Birnir similarly defines ethnicity as "group self-identification around a characteristic that is very difficult or even impossible to change, such as language, race, or location." Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. As Jonathan M. Hall observes, World War II
5300-525: The boundaries of the nation-state. General Register Office for Scotland The General Register Office for Scotland ( GROS ) ( Scottish Gaelic : Oifis Choitcheann a' Chlàraidh na h-Alba ) was a non-ministerial directorate of the Scottish Government that administered the registration of births , deaths , marriages , divorces and adoptions in Scotland from 1854 to 2011. It
5406-412: The census form included tick-boxes for "Gypsy or Irish Traveller" under the "White" heading, and "Arab" under the "Other ethnic group" heading. However, in the ONS's testing in England and Wales prior to the census, no Kurdish, Iranian, Berber, Somali or Egyptian participants chose to identify as Arab. Discussing the inclusion of nationalities such as "British" and "Irish" in the ethnic group categories of
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#17327902394065512-540: The census, Nissa Finney and Ludi Simpson argue that "on purely technical grounds, this is a mistake, confirmed by enumerators reporting that some Asian respondents had ticked 'British', having seen it as the first box and wishing to confirm their British identity and nationality". Samira Shackle, writing in the New Statesman , argues that "the fact that hundreds of thousands choose to describe their own ethnicity as Welsh, Scottish, or Cornish shows that 'ethnic British'
5618-413: The censuses measure ethnicity, especially the use of dimensions that many claim have little to do with ethnicity, such as skin colour, race, and nationality". In 2007, Simpson and Bola Akinwale also studied the stability of individuals' responses to ethnic group questions between the 1991 and 2001 census. They concluded that the membership of the "White" category was stable, whereas 7–9 per cent of those in
5724-493: The collective ethnic minority population. These include "black and minority ethnic" (BME), "black, Asian and minority ethnic" (BAME) and "black and ethnic minority" (BEM). These terms have been criticised on a number of grounds, including for excluding national minorities such as the Cornish, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish from the definition of ethnic minorities, for suggesting that black people (and Asian people, specifically
5830-573: The context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time that state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the 19th century, modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations". Nation-states , however, invariably include populations who have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion based on equality or seek autonomy, sometimes even to
5936-422: The course of individual life histories." In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities: ... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed. In this way, he pointed to
6042-526: The cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term "race" is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term "race" altogether and speak of "ethnic groups". In 1982, anthropologist David Craig Griffith summed up forty years of ethnographic research, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different ways people from different parts of
6148-582: The custody of the local registrars. These registers were to be retained by the registrars for 30 years, after which they were to be sent to the GROS. On 1 April 2011 GROS was merged with the National Archives of Scotland, with which it already had close ties and shared management of the Scotland's People Centre in Princes Street , Edinburgh , to form National Records of Scotland. From 1855
6254-451: The distant past. Perspectives that developed after the 1960s increasingly viewed ethnic groups as social constructs , with identity assigned by societal rules. The term ethnic is ultimately derived from the Greek ethnos , through its adjectival form ethnikos , loaned into Latin as ethnicus . The inherited English language term for this concept is folk , used alongside
6360-452: The distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to set off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their effective values. According to Wolf, racial categories were constructed and incorporated during the period of European mercantile expansion , and ethnic groupings during the period of capitalist expansion . Writing in 1977 about
6466-430: The ethnicity classification employed in the census and other official statistics in the UK since 1991 involve confusion between the concepts of ethnicity and race . David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel argue that this is the case in many censuses, and that "the case of Britain is illuminative of the recurring failure to distinguish race from ethnicity". Aspinall notes that sustained academic attention has been focused on "how
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#17327902394066572-530: The extent of complete political separation in their nation-state. Under these conditions when people moved from one state to another, or one state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries – ethnic groups were formed by people who identified with one nation but lived in another state. In the 1920s, Estonia introduced a flexible system of ethnicity/nationality self-choice for its citizens, which included Estonians Russians, Baltic Germans and Jews. Multi-ethnic states can be
6678-414: The fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage, the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had
6784-528: The fallen monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the United States. Current topics are in particular social and cultural differentiation, multilingualism, competing identity offers, multiple cultural identities and the formation of Salad bowl and melting pot . Ethnic groups differ from other social groups, such as subcultures , interest groups or social classes , because they emerge and change over historical periods (centuries) in
6890-521: The first Registrar General for Scotland, William Pitt Dundas, claimed that: "there is good reason for believing that very few births indeed now escape registration." In 1855 and 1860, two Acts, the Registration (Scotland) Act, 1855 (18 & 19 Vict., c.29) and the Registration (Scotland, Amendment) Act, 1860 (23 & 24 Vict., c.85), were passed which amended some of the sections of the 1854 Act. The original Act had placed considerable burdens on
6996-596: The following types of (often mutually overlapping) groups can be identified: In many cases, more than one aspect determines membership: for instance, Armenian ethnicity can be defined by Armenian citizenship, having Armenian heritage, native use of the Armenian language , or membership of the Armenian Apostolic Church . Ethnography begins in classical antiquity ; after early authors like Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus , Herodotus laid
7102-672: The foundation of both historiography and ethnography of the ancient world c. 480 BC . The Greeks had developed a concept of their own ethnicity, which they grouped under the name of Hellenes . Although there were exceptions, such as Macedonia, which was ruled by nobility in a way that was not typically Greek, and Sparta, which had an unusual ruling class, the ancient Greeks generally enslaved only non-Greeks due to their strong belief in ethnonationalism. The Greeks sometimes believed that even their lowest citizens were superior to any barbarian. In his Politics 1.2–7; 3.14, Aristotle even described barbarians as natural slaves in contrast to
7208-558: The genes. Examples of various approaches are primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism, and instrumentalism. Ethnicity is an important means by which people may identify with a larger group. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf , do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. The process that results in emergence of such identification
7314-575: The inclusion of a separate "Arab" entry, which would include under-reported groups from the Arab world such as Syrians , Yemenis , Somalis and Maghrebis . NABA reasoned that "lack of recognition of Arabs as a separate ethnic group, and hence their exclusion, has serious consequences for the planning of services and monitoring of such problems as racial discrimination". The specimen 2011 Census questions were published in 2009 and included new "Gypsy or Irish Traveller" and "Arab" categories. The final version of
7420-433: The kernel of a nation which must be defended in times of conflict, or in iconic figures such as Britannia or Marianne . Ethnicity is used as a matter of cultural identity of a group, often based on shared ancestry, language, and cultural traditions, while race is applied as a taxonomic grouping, based on physical similarities among groups. Race is a more controversial subject than ethnicity, due to common political use of
7526-654: The latinate people since the late Middle English period. In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to mean heathen or pagan (in the sense of disparate "nations" which did not yet participate in the Christian ecumene ), as the Septuagint used ta ethne 'the nations' to translate the Hebrew goyim "the foreign nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews". The Greek term in early antiquity ( Homeric Greek ) could refer to any large group,
7632-485: The marginalized status of people of color in the United States to their inherent biological inferiority, he attributed it to their failure to assimilate into American culture. They could become equal if they abandoned their inferior cultures. Michael Omi and Howard Winant 's theory of racial formation directly confronts both the premises and the practices of ethnicity theory. They argue in Racial Formation in
7738-483: The modernist understanding of ethnicity as proposed by Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the 17th century. They culminated in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation , developed in
7844-725: The new body. Initially ministers of the Church of Scotland were responsible for keeping parish records of baptisms and marriages , but only for their own church members. Later the Privy Council of Scotland , following the suggestion of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland enacted that all parish ministers should keep a record of baptisms , burials and marriages. This situation continued until 1854, when Parliament passed an Act transferring responsibility to
7950-399: The newer 2011 census categories. In Scotland , the 2011 Scottish census categories are now used. In 2011, Scotland started to record ethnicity on death certificates , becoming the first country in the world to do so. Ethnicity data is not routinely recorded on birth certificates in any part of the UK. Whether the official UK ethnic group classifications are useful for research on health is
8056-454: The numbers of births, deaths and marriages registered during the previous year. The first general abstract (relating to 1855) was submitted in 1856. The parochial and burgh divisions in Scotland were adopted as the basis of registration, and the session clerks of the Church of Scotland were, in most cases, appointed as the first registrars under the Act. Where the parish or burgh was too large for
8162-551: The parent group. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a panethnicity and may eventually merge into one single ethnicity . Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis . Although both organic and performative criteria characterise ethnic groups, debate in the past has dichotomised between primordialism and constructivism. Earlier 20th-century "Primordialists" viewed ethnic groups as real phenomena whose distinct characteristics have endured since
8268-450: The problem of racism became the sole responsibility of already disadvantaged communities. It was assumed that if a Black or Latino community was not "making it" by the standards that had been set by whites, it was because that community did not hold the right values or beliefs, or were stubbornly resisting dominant norms because they did not want to fit in. Omi and Winant's critique of ethnicity theory explains how looking to cultural defect as
8374-433: The public, political sphere, they are upheld within the private, family sphere to a great extent. It is here that women act not just as biological reproducers but also as "cultural carriers", transmitting knowledge and enforcing behaviors that belong to a specific collectivity. Women also often play a significant symbolic role in conceptions of nation or ethnicity, for example in the notion that "women and children" constitute
8480-571: The purpose of planning the 2011 Scottish census, with key evidence informing the new classification drawn from similar workshops carried out by the Office for National Statistics, the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG), and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). The GOS found that "Black" was a polarising term for many focus group participants and interviewees. Some participants opposed
8586-408: The repository, and some of these institutions were unaware of its existence. The NPD was also used least by the majority of local authorities and schools, with 65 per cent deeming this method of educational data analysis to be of limited use, about 23 per cent considering it to be fairly useful, and only around 11 per cent regarding it as being very useful. Most schools and local authorities instead used
8692-407: The respondent's answer, not their own opinion. The "6+1" IC code system remains widely used, when the police are unable to stop a suspect and ask them to give their self-defined ethnicity. The Department for Education 's annual school census collects data on pupils in nurseries , primary , middle , secondary and special schools . This includes ethnicity data for pupils who are aged 5 or over at
8798-571: The result of inherited traits and tendencies. With Weber's introduction of the idea of ethnicity as a social construct, race and ethnicity became more divided from each other. In 1950, the UNESCO statement " The Race Question ", signed by some of the internationally renowned scholars of the time (including Ashley Montagu , Claude Lévi-Strauss , Gunnar Myrdal , Julian Huxley , etc.), said: National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and
8904-488: The result of two opposite events, either the recent creation of state borders at variance with traditional tribal territories, or the recent immigration of ethnic minorities into a former nation-state. Examples for the first case are found throughout Africa , where countries created during decolonization inherited arbitrary colonial borders, but also in European countries such as Belgium or United Kingdom . Examples for
9010-465: The retirement of Duncan Macniven in August 2011, George Mackenzie was appointed Registrar General in addition to his existing role as Keeper. New Register House , which houses the registration side of the former GROS's business, is close to the east end of Princes Street in Edinburgh. It was designed by Robert Matheson , the Clerk of Works at the Office of Her Majesty's Works in Scotland . Initially,
9116-603: The role of accumulating and publishing statistics from data has fallen to one person. These people were: The Registrar General was also Deputy to the Lord Clerk Register . The Deputy Clerk Register had to be an Advocate of not less than ten years standing. William Pitt Dundas was the first holder of the combined post of Deputy Clerk Register and Registrar General from September 1854 until April 1880. His successor, Roger Montgomerie , died six months after his appointment, and Mr Pitt Dundas resumed office for around
9222-467: The same format on the census forms in England, Wales and Scotland. However, the question was not asked in Northern Ireland. The tick-boxes used in 1991 were "White", "Black-Caribbean", "Black-African", "Black-Other (please describe)", "Indian", "Pakistani", "Bangladeshi", "Chinese" and "Any other ethnic group (please describe)". Sociologist Peter J. Aspinall has categorised what he regards as
9328-588: The second case are countries such as Netherlands , which were relatively ethnically homogeneous when they attained statehood but have received significant immigration in the 17th century and even more so in the second half of the 20th century. States such as the United Kingdom , France and Switzerland comprised distinct ethnic groups from their formation and have likewise experienced substantial immigration, resulting in what has been termed " multicultural " societies, especially in large cities. The states of
9434-564: The sheriffs of the Scottish counties, who had already played a role in the taking of decennial censuses. The amending Acts reduced their responsibilities by appointing registration district examiners to inspect the registers. They also made revised provision for the transmission of the parochial registers up to the year 1820 to the General Register Office Scotland (GROS), and the registers for the years 1820–1855 to
9540-420: The source of inequality ignores the "concrete sociopolitical dynamics within which racial phenomena operate in the U.S." It prevents critical examination of the structural components of racism and encourages a "benign neglect" of social inequality. In some cases, especially those involving transnational migration or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality. Anthropologists and historians, following
9646-407: The state or its constituents. In the 20th century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry, have argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view,
9752-441: The state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka , argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within
9858-512: The study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently. According to Eriksen , these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology , by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicized forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in
9964-511: The subject of debate. Peter Aspinall argues that the 2001 census categories fail to adequately break down the "white" group and ignore ethno-religious differences between South Asian groups, amongst other issues. Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health , Charles Agyemang, Raj Bhopal and Marc Bruijnzeels argue that: "The current groupings of African descent populations in the USA and
10070-524: The term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Barth went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates or logical a priori to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with
10176-446: The term. Ramón Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) argues that "racial/ethnic identity" is one concept and concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used as separate and autonomous categories. Before Weber (1864–1920), race and ethnicity were primarily seen as two aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before, the primordialist understanding of ethnicity predominated: cultural differences between peoples were seen as being
10282-468: The usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States , Wallman noted The term "ethnic" popularly connotes "[race]" in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, "[race]" most commonly means color, and "ethnics" are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. "[Ethnic]"
10388-472: The use of such terms, while others supported them. Opposition to the term "Black" was strongest among individuals originating from ethnic groups in Africa and the Caribbean, especially the former. The main reasons cited for this opposition were that racial terms like "Black" and "White" were invalid, socially constructed concepts not based on empirical reality; that skin colour was distinct from ethnicity; that
10494-402: The use of the terms "Black" and "White". However, some participants suggested that these colour terms were confusing and unacceptable, did not adequately describe an individual's ethnic group, did not reflect his or her true skin colour, and were stereotypical and outdated terms. The heading "Black or Black British", which was used in 2001, was changed to "Black/African/Caribbean/Black British" for
10600-448: The ways in which race can complicate a community's interactions with social and political structures, especially upon contact. Assimilation – shedding the particular qualities of a native culture for the purpose of blending in with a host culture – did not work for some groups as a response to racism and discrimination, though it did for others. Once the legal barriers to achieving equality had been dismantled,
10706-424: The wording of the ethnicity question in the 2001 census, "What is your ethnic group?", embodies "an essential being ethnic" as opposed to "a constructed belonging to an ethnicity". The latter would be reflected in a question such as "choose one box to best describe your ethnic group", which was subsequently added in the 2011 census. Sociologist Steven Vertovec argues that "much public discourse and service provision
10812-442: The world have been incorporated into a global economy: The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through appeals to "racial" and "ethnic" distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets, relegating stigmatized populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from below. Capitalism did not create all
10918-483: Was a turning point in ethnic studies. The consequences of Nazi racism discouraged essentialist interpretations of ethnic groups and race. Ethnic groups came to be defined as social rather than biological entities. Their coherence was attributed to shared myths, descent, kinship , a common place of origin, language, religion, customs, and national character. So, ethnic groups are conceived as mutable rather than stable, constructed in discursive practices rather than written in
11024-621: Was also responsible for the statutes relating to the formalities of marriage and conduct of civil marriage in Scotland. It administered the census of Scotland's population every ten years. It also kept the Scottish National Health Service Central Register . On 1 April 2011 it was merged with the National Archives of Scotland to form National Records of Scotland . All the former department's functions continue as part of
11130-408: Was also used for classifying ethnicity in the 2001 UK Census . Slightly different categories were employed in Scotland and Northern Ireland , as compared with England and Wales , "to reflect local differences in the requirement for information". However, the data collected still allow for comparison across the UK. Different classifications were used in the 1991 Census, which was the first to include
11236-407: Was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race". Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth , whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of
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