Trends in the Race and Ethnicity of Eminent Americans

During the last several decades, the ethnic and racial composition of the American elite has changed to include some ethnic minorities and women. This study examines changes in the composition of one segment of the American elite: those who have obtained eminence in their occupations. Lieberson and Carter's study of the ethnic composition of eminent Americans, using Who's Who in America, is replicated with data from the 1990s (Lieberson and Carter, 1979, American Sociological Review 44:347–366). In addition, comparisons between blacks listed in Who's Who in America and blacks listed only in Who's Who among Black Americans are made. During the 20 years since Lieberson and Carter's study, Jews have made remarkable gains in eminent membership, while the rate of black representation has increased only moderately. Women are a small percentage of the eminent regardless of ethnicity, although black women are better represented than their counterparts in white ethnic groups.     

‘Public toilets for a diverse neighborhood’: Spatial purification practices in community development discourse

This paper explores the dialectic of place and community identity in Mount Pleasant, a multi–ethnic and multi–class U.S. neighborhood where definitions of place are hotly contested among its residents. In a grant proposal for public toilets, Mount Pleasant writers use linguistic strategies such as presupposition, deixis, and contrast, coupled with discursive themes of filth and geography, to construct a core of the Mount Pleasant community. The writers place themselves and people who share their values in that core, and immigrants at the margins. These strategies serve as a discursive type of spatial purification practice (cf. Sibley 1988) through which the grantwriters set up a moral and spatial order where they and other core community members are deemed to use space ‘appropriately’, and thus inhabit positive moral positions, while immigrant community members’ imputed ‘inappropriate’ use of space is used to construct negative moral positions for them.     

Collective and Elective Ethnicity: Caste Among Urban Muslims in India

This article explores how the significance of ethnic identity can vary within a stable population, using caste among Muslims in Hyderabad, India as a case study. While some Hyderabadi Muslims are still embedded in ethnic networks, most now experience ethnicity as elective and do not rely on a corporate caste group for their social connections. This reflects a decline in the value of caste identities, which no longer provide economic or political resources. Increasingly, Muslims seek status through education, profession, or income. Thus, most Muslims in Hyderabad experience caste membership, identity, and networks in a weakened or attenuated way.     

Ethnicity, migration and health: A population-based study of 338 refugees from Latin America, 396 nonrefugee immigrants from Finland and 161 from southern Europe and 996 age-, sex- and education-matched controls from Sweden

This article shows the influence of being a refugee from Latin America or a nonrefugee immigrant from southern Europe or Finland on self-reported illness, controlling for social factors and lifestyle. The study population consisted of 338 Latin American refugees, a random sample of 396 Finnish and 161 southern European immigrants and 996 age-, sex- and education-matched Swedish controls. The data were analysed unmatched with logistic regression (multivariate analysis) in main effect models. The strongest independent risk indicator for long-term illness was being a Latin American refugee (estimated odds ratio (OR)=2.96, 95% confidence interval (CI)=2.19–3.82). There was a significant association between being a Latin American refugee and period prevalence, ill health and unsatisfied need for care. Being a southern European or Finnish immigrant was a risk indicator of ill health but was not associated with the other dependent factors. Not feeling secure in daily life was a strong risk indicator for long-term illness and ill health (estimated OR=1.89, 95% CI=1.26–2.76 and OR=3.04, 95% CI= 1.97–4.48) respectively). Being a Latin American refugee was equal in importance to traditional risk factors such as overweight and not taking regular exercise for long-term illness and ill health.     

新疆与中亚跨国民族问题对我国安全的影响

近年来,随着中亚国家的独立,以及由此而引发的各民族政治、经济生活地位的起伏和民族关系的变化,使新疆与中亚跨国民族问题表现得异常突出,其表现形式主要有三:一是民族意识增长;二是以哈萨克族为主的跨国民族向境外移民问题;三是民族分立主义倾向.它对我国的军事安全、政治安全和文化安全构成了程度不同的威胁.     

Korean ethnic education in Japanese public schools

Korean ethnic education in Japanese public schools has played an important role in the persistence of Korean ethnicity in Japan. In Osaka Prefecture, it began as an educational movement at the end of the 1960s. Japanese and Korean activists who led the movement had different political commitments and developed two approaches. Those interested in Korean homeland politics stressed the importance of teaching the ethnic culture of the homeland and tried to develop an ethno-national identity among Korean children. Those involved in civil rights politics in the context of Japan focused on the problem of ethnic discrimination and facilitated the formation of a political subjectivity among Korean children. The old practice of Korean ethnic education is a form of multicultural education and provides many useful ideas for today's multiculturalist teachers in Japan, who are dealing with children of newcomer foreigners.     

Assimilation as multiracialism: The case of Singapore's Malays

The myths of meritocracy and multiracialism ‘explain’ between them both the ‘fairness’ of the Singapore system and the subordinate role of the non-Chinese minority races. They also purport to assure the minorities that they enjoy full status as members of the nation-building project and that their cultural and religious mores are embraced and protected within its framework. Using the Malay minority as its case study, and arguing from archival, oral, official government and secondary sources, this paper argues that the Singapore systems of meritocracy and multiracialism have not been concerned primarily with intercommunal tolerance since the 1970s, but are now programmes of assimilation of the racial minorities into a Chinese-dominated society.     

Gender,lineage, and fertility‐related outcomes in Ghana

A growing literature examines the empirical relationship between the joint reproductive preferences of marital partners and reproductive outcomes in Africa. Less explored is how spousal power in decision making may be influenced by lineage type. Using pooled data from Ghana, we investigate how lineage affects gendered reproductive decision outcomes and find some evidence that matrilineal women are more able than nonmatrilineal women to translate their reproductive preferences into action consistent with their goals.     

Young helpline callers and difference: exploring gender, ethnicity and sexuality in helpline access and provision

This article, which has its origin in a feasibility study carried out for three youth telephone helplines, focuses on gender, difference and helpline access by young people. During the research process the writers noted that for the three commissioning helplines, as is the case with the majority of other telephone helplines, approximately two‐thirds of callers are female. A helpline for young Muslims where the gender access ratio was 50/50 stood out as being different in this respect. Until recently, literature on gender and help‐seeking has tended towards making a blanket identification of males as experiencing difficulties in negotiating pathways to help. Although this difficulty of males is evident in relation to both help‐seeking and access to helplines, our study suggests that, at least in relation to helpline usage, when we take culture, ethnicity and sexuality into account, the help‐seeking situation may be more nuanced. This has implications in terms of enabling a cross‐section of young people to access helplines as well as with regard to helpline service development.     

How to do or not do things with words: The case of Koreans in Japan

In this article, I explore the ways in which ethnic identity is expressed by following the formulaic socio-linguistic norm, the very method of which defies the authenticity of identity itself, thereby asserting the identity's multi-facetedness as sustained in performative linguistic practice. I look at multi-sited socio-linguistic interactions among Koreans in Japan, who claim their primary identity to be that of North Korea's overseas citizens even though none of them have North Korean passport or nationality. Their identity, in other words, is based on ideological commitment, which is in reality supported by their ongoing linguistic practice. A close look at their socio-linguistic life reveals their ethnicity's dual or multiple ontology, which challenges among other things the currently dominant assertion of Japanese self in the western academic discourse.