Minority Groups--A Revision of Concepts
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5633004 |
|---|---|
| Authors | E K Francis (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1951 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 219 |
| Publication date | 1951-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/586722 |
| OpenAlex | W2330622578 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
tTAHE PROBLEM of what should be understood by a nation, a people, | a race, a nationality, an ethnic group, a minority group, and so on, s has been a vexing one ever since these terms have come into use. There is a long and frustrating road from Renan's question Q?w'esE-ce-qu'?wne nation ? 2 1 to the puzzling assertion of two recent authors that the mere fact of being generally hated because of religious, racial or nationality background is what defines a minority group.2 The general confusion in our terminology seems to indicate that the concepts through which we are trying to understand this complex of socio-cultural phenomena, are by and large the idols of the market place whose meaning is constantly changing with the ever shifting political moods and aspirations of the day. Even some of the most satisfactory deEnitions which we know suffer from two principal defects. First, they assume that the population of the world is more or less neatly compartmentalized in so many nations (sometimes also called societies after the fashion of Herbert Spencer) and that ^ithin these larger societies there may exist in simple juxtaposition similarly distinct sub-groups (often called minorities). R. M. MacIver, for instance, defines a nation as a community so coherent by sentiment that it possesses, or at least strives to possess, political autonomy .3 This definition seems to reflect quite well what most of us would consider a nation. Yet, as Hans Kohn has shown rather convincingly,4 many civilized societies of the past and present bear little or no resemblance to a nation as we understand the term. On the other hand, we would certainly hesitate to call the French Canadians a nation although they do possess a great measure of political autonomy in the Pronince of Quebec. The second mistake is to be found in the exclusive attention given to various external characteristics by which particularly the sub-groups mentioned before can supposedly be distinguished from each other and, above all
Epistemology · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Gender Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,07 |
| Citation span | 1954 - 2023 (70) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |