Supraethnicity (from
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
prefix / "above" and
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
word / "ethnos = people") is a scholarly
neologism
In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...
, used mainly in
social sciences
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...
as a formal designation for a particular
structural
A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...
category that lies "above" the basic level of
ethnicity
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...
. It is often paired with ''subethnicity'', a similar technical term with the exact opposite meaning, also designating a particular structural category, but that which lies "under" the level of ethnicity. Both terms are used in
ethnic studies
Ethnic studies, in the United States, is the interdisciplinary study of difference—chiefly race, ethnicity, and nation, but also sexuality, gender, and other such markings—and power, as expressed by the state, by civil society, and by indivi ...
in order to describe structural and functional relations between basic (common) form of
ethnic identity
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, rel ...
and various related phenomena that are classified as belonging to "higher" (supraethnic) or "lower" (subethnic) levels. Formally, both categories (supraethnic and subethnic) are designating levels, not the contents. For example, there are several distinctive phenomena that are manifested on the supraethnic level, like:
metaethnicity
Meta-ethnicity is a level of commonality that is wider (" meta-") and more general (i.e., might differ on specifics) than ethnicity, but does not necessarily correspond to (and may actually transcend) nation or nationality. It is a relatively rece ...
, multiethnicity (pluriethnicity),
panethnicity
Panethnicity is a political neologism used to group various ethnic groups together based on their related cultural origins; geographic, linguistic, religious, or "racial" (i.e. phenotypic) similarities are often used alone or in combination to ...
,
polyethnicity
Polyethnicity, also known as pluri-ethnicity or multi-ethnicity, refers to specific cultural phenomena that are characterized by social proximity and mutual interaction of people from different ethnic backgrounds, within a country or other specif ...
, or transethnicity, each of them having their own distinctive contents, but all of them sharing the same structural "supraethnic" level. There have been attempts to define some common, not only structural but also functional properties of supraethnicity, but such attempts were challenged by the present state of terminological diversity and inconsistency within the
ethnic studies
Ethnic studies, in the United States, is the interdisciplinary study of difference—chiefly race, ethnicity, and nation, but also sexuality, gender, and other such markings—and power, as expressed by the state, by civil society, and by indivi ...
.
See also
References
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{{Ethnicity
Ethnicity