glossary: race & ethnicity.

Postcolonialism (postcolonial theory, post-colonial theory) - is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theories found among the texts and sub-texts of philosophy, film, political science and literature. These theories are reactions to the cultural legacy of colonialism. Can also be seen as a search for liberation for the peoples of colonized areas.
‘post-colonialism theory borrows from the psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theory to explain the sense of these people being something than other what the culture deems as normal, powerful or the standard’ (Lewis 2002: 339)Colonial discourse - A system of control over what can be shown, revealed and portrayed in terms of a colony or empire.Quote - ‘Colonial discourse theory is identified as a subset of postcolonialism, while in other cases they are separate but mutually dependent on each other to mobilize postcolonial politics… This second sense sees postcolonialism as a form of consciousness articulated by the colonized, the exiled, and the displaced as a counter discourse against that created through empire. Colonial discourse is (through Michel Foucault's understanding of "discourse") a linguistic regime that enforces, conditions, and regulates what can be said with respect to empire. For example, "scientific" disciplines like 19th century anthropology was an instance of colonial discourse because it sought to represent the "native" as barbaric, primitive, and uncivilized, consequently justifying the legitimacy of colonialism’ (http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/theorists_note.html)((Leong Yew))Ethnicity - refers to social groups with a shared history, sense of identity, geography and cultural roots which may occur despite racial differenceRace - notion of racial classifications based on geneticsSameness - Within identity, it’s what makes it recognizable and makes it easy to identify a set of characteristics or qualities that distinguish it from another. Difference - difference is used within identity to establish what it is not, also to use as comparison and also to categorise different characteristics or qualities to differentiate it from another.Symbolic marking - how we live out symbolic marking, we organise Social marking – how we live out symbolic marking, how we organise society ie class.Material conditions
Mediated culture – your own indentity ie. chosing your own religion, politics and music. (how you form your ethnicity)
Situated culture – culture your born into, grown up into, ie geography, what school you went to. – what you get from your parents.
Identity and difference – we define ourselfs with who we are not (the other)
Essentialism - suggests a fixed and fundamental identity, looks to support fixed notions of identity. Ie I’m welsh.
‘Essentialism, in its most stripped down meaning refers to the belief that people and/or phenomenon have an underlying and unchanging 'essence'. I like to work with a definition that refers to any statement that seeks to close off the possibility of changeable human behaviour.’ (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/twine/ecofem/essentialism.html)Non-essentialism - acknowledges differences and sameness, also acknowledges that identities change.‘non-essentialism is the belief that, any given entity or subject, can not be propositionally defined in terms of specified values or characteristics which that entity must have in order to be defined as that entity.’(http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Non-essentialism)
Primary identity – the way you were born, which can’t be changed.
Embodiment - the experience of having and using a body.
‘the body emerges as a principle focus and theme for contemporary cultural analysis. The body has been theorized in various ways throughout the period of modernity: for or example, privileges the mind over the body; Marx theorizes the body as an economic condition; humanism presents the body in terms of hapiness and economic utility; science conceives of the body as a biological system; Michl Foucault presents the body in terms of ‘discourse’ - as a set of inscribed and negotiable meanings.’ (lewis 2002: 294)Whiteness - is the representation of people identified as white and the social status and conventions of whiteness as an ideology within social status. Whiteness is an ideological fiction, political fiction and a legal fiction.
‘post-colonized people’s of colour are defined as ‘the other’ or as ‘different’ in relation to the normative condition of ‘whiteness,’ especially male whiteness. (Lewis 2002; 340)
Pluralism – opposite to hegemony, everybodies ideologies not just the dominant.
‘Hegemony - is the dominance of a group over another, eg politics. Dominant Ideology - is the values and common beliefs shared by most people in society, what the majority think, it reflects the interests of the dominant class in society.
‘Different social interests or forces might conduct an ideological struggle to disarticulate a signifier from one prefferd or dominant meaning system and rearticulate it with in another, different chain of connotations’ (Hallin Barratt, 1995: 360)
The other – what is described as the other from the hegemonic/dominant.
Ethnography – is a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies.
Ethnographic film -
Ethnographic presence – representing what is happening, ie looking into a camera suggests its happening now, unseen presence of the ethnographer.
Ehtnographic memory – enscription of peoples/cultures on how it used to be, something in the past being represented using past to look like presence.
Ethnographic taxidermy
Ethnographic intantiasation
Infantilisation – treated like an infant.
Reductionalism – reducing somebody to their lowest value.
Representation - the idea that media re –presents the world and by doing so constructs meanings about it.
“Systems of representation construct places from which individuals can position themselves and from which they can speak.”
Textual Analysis - Processes of accessing meaning
Modes of Cultural Production - Media = ‘sign systems ’or’ meaning systems contribute to culture and ideology
Binarism- means composed of two parts or two pieces
Ideology- set of beliefs , aims and ideas, especially in politics.
Residual ideology –
Emerging ideology
Post modernism- after the modernist movement
Fanonism
Authenticity - the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.
Transcoding- is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another
Racial stereotypes – stereotyped by the colour of ones skin.
Stereotypes and Social types - a generalized perception of first impressions: behaviors presumed by a group of people judging with the eyes/criticizing ones outer appearance (or a population in general) to be associated with another specific group.
Exoticism - exoticism in the decorative arts and interior decoration was associated with fantasies of opulence.
Hybridity - A hybrid is something that is mixed, and hybridity is simply mixture
Diaspora - refers any population sharing common ethnic identity who were either forced to leave or voluntarily left their setteld territory, and became residents in areas often far removed from the former
Globalisation- blending or homogenization by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together.
Mimicry-
Intertextuality - the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another.
Icon - There is a close physical similarity between the sign and real life.
Index - Evidence of or a symptom of a sign.
Symbol - Used in relation to visual signs and are linked by conventions.
Associational juxtaposition – context due to binary, two things joined together to bring meaning, for example a shot of a person praying with his back to the camera and then a shot of a knife = the person is going to get knifed.