Want to make interactive content? It’s easy in Genially!

Over 30 million people build interactive content in Genially.

Check out what others have designed:

OSCAR WILDE

Horizontal infographics

TEN WAYS TO SAVE WATER

Horizontal infographics

NORMANDY 1944

Horizontal infographics

BEYONCÉ

Horizontal infographics

ONE MINUTE ON THE INTERNET

Horizontal infographics

SITTING BULL

Horizontal infographics

Transcript

Global diversity

Concepts to navigate a culturally diverse and interconnected world

Diaspora

Diaspora is a term used to refer to groups of people who live in countries different from the ones where they (or their relatives) were born, and who retain some connection to their countries and/or communities of origin. This connection is often expressed, among other ways, through the maintenance of particular cultural practices (sometimes continued through different generations), and the cultivation of community ties around a sense of shared cultural identity.

Transnationalism

Multicultural

Multiculturalism

Assimilationism

Acculturation

Nationalism

Ethnicity

Minority

Subaltern

Ethnocentrism

Xenophobia

Diaspora is a term used to refer to groups of people who live in countries different from the ones where they (or their relatives) were born, and who retain some connection to their countries and/or communities of origin. This connection is often expressed, among other ways, through the maintenance of particular cultural practices (sometimes continued through different generations), and the cultivation of community ties around a sense of shared cultural identity.

Transnationalism 'points out the existence of a continuum of stable personal relationships formed between migrants across borders that affects simultaneously a wide range of phenomena in more than one single country – that is, multiple identities, the emergence of ethnic enclaves, social and economic remittances, dual citizenship, and dispersed religious communities, among others.' (Molina and Rodriguez-Garcia 2018: 1)

Multicultural or multiculturality refers to 'the existence of various cultures in a society' (Molina and Rodriguez-Garcia 2018: 4).

Multiculturalism refers to ‘one of the ways of managing diversity and the inclusion of immigrants and cultural and ethnic minorities in mainstream society’ (Molina and Rodriguez-Garcia 2018: 1). Multiculturalism describes ‘a philosophy or social thinking in reaction to cultural uniformity or assimilation. It involves a model of public policy in which the state plays an active role in the defence of minority rights and cultural diversity' (Molina and Rodriguez-Garcia 2018: 4).

Assimilationism refers to another approach to the management of cultural and ethnic diversity. Opposing multiculturalism, supporters of assimilationism seek instead to downplay this pluralism, and emphasise the need for people of diverse origins and ethnic backgrounds to fully adopt the rules, practices and values deemed (often by the state) to be representative of a society's mainstream culture. Multiculturalism and assimilationism are two of the most common approaches to the management of cultural diversity in contemporary nation-states.

According to an early anthropological definition, acculturation 'comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups' (Redfield et al 1936: 149). While the concept of acculturation was used extensively by anthropologists in the mid-twentieth century, it gradually became less prominent in the discipline and was taken up instead by sociologists and psychologists, who 'approached the study of acculturation from their own epistemological and methodological perspectives and only marginally recognised the contributions of anthropology' (Guarnaccia and Hausmann-Stabile 2016: 2). In the 1990s, anthropologists studying processes of globalisation and transnationalism used instead concepts like 'hybridity, bricolage and creolisation' to study 'how cultures combine into new cultural formations' (2016: 2). Nevertheless, the concept remains relevant in academic and public debates about immigration, resettlement, integration and marginalisation.

In a broad sense, nationalism can be defined as 'a sense of membership in a sociopolitical community belonging to a national territory and sovereign state' (Riggan 2018: 1). However, anthropological research has drawn attention the social complexity and diversity of nationalist expressions, demonstrating the need for empirical research and more nuanced definitions of nationalism. For instance, anthropologists have established that ‘nationalism does not always affix itself to a state and emerges from multifaceted processes of identity formation' and that nationalism 'can produce, or be produced by, multiple, often competing, sociopolitical communities' (Riggan 2018: 1). Studies of nationalism have also been importantly shaped by Benedict Anderson's work (1991), particularly by his 'assertion that nations are imagined communities' and that 'nationalism is the expression of imagined belonging' (Riggan 2018: 1).

Ethnicity, or ethnic identity, refers to 'the awareness of belonging to a group with particular characteristics (e.g. territorial, cultural, religious, linguistic, customary) and the consciousness of us in relationship to them' (Molina and Rodriguez-Garcia 2018: 1). As scholars point out, 'ethnicity is a socially constructed and relational social fact – that is, it is produced and reproduced in social interaction between the in-group or self-adscription (the identity that is claimed by the people themselves) and the outgroup adscription (the identity that is attributed to them by others)’ (Molina and Rodriguez-Garcia 2018: 1)

The concept of minority is often used to refer to certain groups of people whose members share particular characteristics, practices or affiliations – for instance, religion, ethnicity, race, country of origin, ability, gender identity – and who are less numerous and/or less powerful than members of a dominant majority. So, while the term 'minority' hints at the question of numbers, it's important to note that its current use in the social sciences emphasises the differential power relations between groups within societies. For instance, anthropologist Gunther Dietz points out how, in an intercultural perspective, 'minority and majority are not distinguished (...) in demographic, numerical terms but in terms of power – the power to define who belongs to a majority and who is stigmatised as a minority' (2018: 2). An intersectional lens is also vital to consider how a person’s identity, social relations, and experiences of oppression and discrimination may be shaped by their membership to multiple minority groups, or their combined membership of minority and majority groups in different contexts.

A key concept in postcolonial studies and critical theory, the term 'subaltern' has been used to refer to the condition of certain populations whose social status is defined as inferior in relation to particular dominant 'elites', especially in situations where this power asymmetry is part of a colonial relationship. Highlighting the discrimination, dispossession and exclusion of certain groups from dominant hierarchies of power, the concept was initially coined by the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, was developed by the Subaltern Studies Group of historians in the 1980s in India, and has importantly shaped critical thinking on identity, power, imperialism and colonialism across disciplines. The term has informed the work of feminist scholars like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak – who highlighted how subaltern voices have been silenced in processes of representation and knowledge production about themselves by dominant elites (Spivak 1988) – and postcolonial critics like Homi K. Bhabha – who emphasised how 'oppressed minority groups' were both vital for the self-definition of majority groups, and 'were also in a position to subvert the authority of those who had hegemonic power' (1996: 191).

Ethnocentrism, which derives from 'the Greek words ethnos (people or nation) and kendron (centre), is the human proclivity to protect and to ennoble one's own nation, ingroup, or "culture". The sense of belonging through a shared ancestral, historical, or cultural heritage may inspire ethnocentrism among those who claim the same country of birth and who subscribe to a national identity or nationality' (Kozaitis 2018b: 1).

Xenophobia, or hyper-ethnocentrism, refers to 'the irrational fear of cultures and ethnicities other than one's own and hatred of people, things, and ideas deemed by an ethnocentric person as "foreign" and potentially "dangerous"' (Kozaitis 2018b: 2). Moreover, Kozaitis points out, 'absolute ethnocentrism legitimates one's natal culture while it discourages integration and assimilation into other groups' (2018b: 2). Kozaitis describes the dangers of this orientation, which often leads to the dissemination of misinformation and extreme inter-group violence: 'Such uncritical loyalty to one's group often breeds scientifically unfounded claims of inherent ingroup superiority and violence against other nationalities and ethnicities deemed to be innately inferior. Irrational prejudice, be it on cultural, racial, ethnic, linguistic, national or religious grounds, encourages intergroup conflict and hostility toward other groups. A history of genocides is testament to extreme ethnocentrism' (2018b: 2-3).