• Ethnic boundary practices
• Ethnic boundaries as structures
• Assignment 1

social boundaries (Tilly, Wimmer)

1. categories for people and category rules

• “labels” and “definitions” (Chandra)

2. real-world practices that use those categories

• what we “do” with those labels
  • in thought and speech;
  • in action/in shaping our material world

institutional use: the use of ethnic/racial categories by formal institutions to label people (not necessarily in a discriminatory manner)

• examples: census forms, school forms, voting rules, government social service records

institutional separation: the presence of distinct formal institutions for people labelled as members of different ethnic/racial categories (not necessarily unequal)

• examples: churches/houses of worship, stores, schools, private associations, voting constituencies, governments, political parties, newspapers