Abstract
When considering engaging in conflict to secure control of a resource, a group needs to predict the amount of post-conflict leakage due to infiltration by members of losing groups. We use this insight to explain why conflict often takes place along ethnic lines, why some ethnic groups are more often in conflict than others (and some never are), and why the same groups are sometimes in conflict and sometimes at peace. In our theory ethnic markers help enforce group membership: in homogeneous societies members of the losing group can more easily pass themselves as members of the winning group, and this reduces the chances of conflict as an equilibrium outcome. We derive a number of implications of the model relating social, political, and economic indicators such as the incidence of conflict, the distance between ethnic groups, group sizes, income inequality, and expropriable resources. One of the insights is that the incidence of ethnic conflict is nonmonotonic in expropriable resources as a fraction of total resources, with a low incidence for either low or high values. We use the model's predictions to interpret historical examples of conflict associated with skin pigmentation, body size, language, and religion.
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a group of people with inherited physical characteristics that distinguish it from another group
the attempt to destroy a group of people because of their presumed race or ethnicity
refers to people who identify with one another on the basis of common
ancestry and cultural heritage
people who are singled out for unequal treatment and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination
*doesn't have anything to do with numbers
a group that has the greater power and privilege than others
Ways a Group Becomes a Minority
1) Expansion of Political Boundaries
2) Migration (can be voluntary)
the way people construct their ethnicity
pg. 218
an action; unfair treatment directed towards someone
-can be based on many characteristics: age, sex, height, weight, skin color, clothing, speech, income, education, marital status, sexual orientation,
etc.
when the basis of discrimination is someone's perception of race
a prejudging of some sort, usually in a negative way
-there is also a positive aspect
Individual Discrimination
the negative treatment of one person by another
the practice of blaming their troubles -normally on- racial or religious minorities
Authoritarian Personality
highly prejudiced people that have a deep respect for authority and are submissive to authority figures
the division
of workers along racial-ethnic and gender lines
another term for the unemployed
prejudice shaped by the social environment
focuses on how groups compete for scarce resources
stress that the labels we learn affect the way we perceive people
labels cause to see certain things while they blind us to others
to separate their acts of cruelty from their sense of being good and decent people
ex] "labeling the targeted group as inferior or even less than fully human facilitates genocide"
-2 types: indirect & direct
achieved
by making life so miserable for members of a minority that they leave "voluntarily"
occurs when a dominant group expels a minority
ex] the U.S. Government relocating Native Americans to reservations and transferring Americans of Japanese descent to internment camps during WWII
describes the way in which a country's dominant group exploits minority groups for its economic advantage;
the dominant group manipulates the social institutions to suppress minorities and deny them full access to their society's benefits
the separation of racial or ethnic groups
the process by which a minority group is absorbed into the mainstream culture; there are 2 types
the minority adopts the patterns of the dominant group in
its own way and at its own speed
the dominant group refuses to allow the minority to speak its native language, to practice its religion, or to follow its other customs
also called, "pluralism"; permits or even encourages racial-ethnic variation
immigrants from Europe whose language and other customs differed from theirs
the emphasis on common elements that run through their cultures is an attempt to develop an identity that goes beyond the tribe