Ethnicity

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a people of a common language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, religion, history, or social treatment. The term ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism.

A dominant minority, also called elite dominance, is a minority group that has overwhelming political, economic, or cultural dominance in a country, despite representing a small fraction of the overall population (a demographic minority). The term is most commonly used to refer to an ethnic group that is defined along racial, national, religious, cultural or tribal lines and that holds a disproportionate amount of power and wealth compared to the rest of the population.

In religious studies, an ethnic religion or ethnoreligion is a religion or belief associated with notions of heredity and a particular ethnicity. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from universal religions, such as Christianity or Islam, which are not limited in ethnic, national or racial scope.

A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory or society. Some nations are constructed around ethnicity (see ethnic nationalism) while others are bound by political constitutions (see civic nationalism).

Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.

Ethnology (from the Ancient Greek: ἔθνος, ethnos meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different scenarios peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology).

Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of using the standards of the particular culture involved. Since this judgment is often negative, some people also use the term to refer to the belief that one's culture is superior to, or more correct or normal than, all others—especially regarding the distinctions that define each ethnicity's cultural identity, such as language, behavior, customs, and religion. In common usage, it can also simply mean any culturally biased judgment. For example, ethnocentrism can be seen in the common portrayals of the Global South and the Global North.

An ethnolinguistic group (or ethno-linguistic group) is a group that is unified by both a common ethnicity and language. Most ethnic groups share a first language. However, "ethnolinguistic" is often used to emphasise that language is a major basis for the ethnic group, especially in regard to its neighbours.

In sociology, an ethnic enclave is a geographic area with high ethnic concentration, characteristic cultural identity, and economic activity. The term is usually used to refer to either a residential area or a workspace with a high concentration of ethnic firms. Their success and growth depends on self-sufficiency, and is coupled with economic prosperity.

An endonym (also known as autonym) is a common, native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate themselves, their place of origin, or their language.