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Ethnic Minority Mobilization: Intersections of Distribution and Recognition
Ethnic Minority Mobilization: Intersections of Distribution and Recognition
Sunday, 10 July 2016: 12:30-14:00
Location: Hörsaal 5A G (Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG))
RC25 Language and Society (host committee) Language: Spanish and English
The aim of this session is to explore the extent to which ethnic minority movements can influence macrosocial political agendas around two major issues related to social justice and stratification: distribution (material demands) and representation (symbolic demands regarding identity and new interpretative schemes) (Frazer, 2003). Ethnic identity, according to the interactionist and instrumentalist approach of Frederik Barth (1969), is a form of social organization, produced in the process of ascription and self-ascription, defined by the ethnic boundary, not cultural enclosure.
Following this theoretical tradition, we would like to invite papers analyzing the way minority movements have influenced wealth distribution, introducing demands concerning who gets what (material demands: access to land or water, social benefits, defending communal land, community properties, etc.) and who gets to interpret what people need. Accepting identity as dynamic and relational, we need to consider the process of interaction of ethnic movements with macrosocial political agendas (local, regional, national levels), as well as with the supranational (e.g. EU) level, and the influence of such interaction on distribution and respresentation.
The session welcomes papers studying the dynamics and effects of ethnic interaction through language and discourse, related to some or other of the following problems:
- cultural struggles around who defines who belongs to ethnic minorities;
- interlinking cultural identity with material and political demands in the process of ethnic political mobilization;
- the impact of recognition struggles on the distribution of wealth among ethnic minorities and different conceptions of property and material distribution;
- existing contradictions between recognition and distribution demands.
Session Organizers: