Talk:Multiethnic society

Misleading
This page is rather misleading. Aren't all modern nations multiethnic, especially those of Europe? It is clear that France, Spain, Britain, or Germany are essentially monocultural, but they clearly are not monoethnic at all and are today moving towards a greater recognition of their national minorities (Wales, Scotland, Catalonia, Brittany, Basques Country etc.)

This page seems to presuppose that because European countries do not attract as many new immigrants as the USA or Canada, they are not open to foreign influences. In reality, living in modern Europe is the best thing that a human can possibly do to experience multiple cultures.

If Nation-States were, in the past, under certain regimes, defined in ethic terms, this doesn't mean that it expressed the reality of the time, and certainly not that of today.

Besides, when nationality is dissociated from ethnic origin through equal citizenship for all, which is the case for most modern nations of Europe and America, it inevitably gives birth to multiethnic societies.

The only thing that ancient China, Yugoslavia, the Roman Empire, and the Soviet Union have in common is imperialism, which is the imposition of a dominant nation's policies on that of neighboring, annexed or conquered peoples. These cannot be seriously considered valid multiethnic societies, for they were constructed at the expense of the weaker nations.

Every nation can be, and often is, a multiethnic society. I fail to see how that can be debated. As for a multinational ensemble, I think only modern Europe fits the definition and let's hope that, one day, all the Earth will be politically and economically integrated in a similar fashion. -- Mathieugp


 * Mathieu, I see what you mean, but I think the polyethnic state is one that actively recognizes or accomodates other ethnicities, hence the line integrate different ethnic groups irrespective of differences in culture, race, and history under a common social identity larger. For example, gypsies fall outside this definition in many countries.  Also, the Catalans, and Basque aren't ethnicities but national minorities.  Malandi 18:26, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * That was precisely my point. integrate different ethnic groups irrespective of differences in culture, race, and history under a common social identity larger is a very good definition of a modern nation-state. The integration of differences can only be made through a common point of reference, which a common language provides. Most of the time, this common language is the language of the ethnic majority (or else dominant minority) of a given state.


 * The opposition made, in the very first sentence, between "Multiethnic societies, in contrast to nationalistic societies" is overly partisan in addition to being a false dichotomy. Among States where the majority has defined citizenship in mostly territorial terms, you see various levels of "openess" when it comes to officially recognizing group rights to ethnic minorities. In the "spectrum of openess", there is no such thing as "Multiethnic" societies on one end and "nationalistic" societies on the other. The vocabulary is biased and let people think that nationalism necessarily implies shutting the door to "others" which is not true. -- Mathieugp 18:21, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

You know, I think I agree with the top comment. Nearly very society is multiethnic. Things like "nationalism" and "mutliculturalism" are strategies -- my two examples are, of course, not mutually exclusive -- for managing the relations between ethnicities. While I suppose it is possible to make a good contribution to knowledge through an article talking about the characteristics of multiethnic societies, I must say that in my opinion this is an excessively difficult article to do well, because it cuts across comparative sociology in a way that is not done often in established literature.AnotherBDA 03:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, see: French_headscarf_law. That kind of thing can only happen in a multi-ethnic society (it's a collision between different ethnic points of view). I daren't comment on spain so I've left that in, but it seems fairly unlikely that spain is any different. They get a lot of (illegal) immigration from Morocco across the straits of gibraltar. Apparently europe has become an immigration zone, and this is causing rather large changes throughout the region. I'd think at least all EU members would be multi-ethnic societies by now. I guess that the existence of airplanes and automobiles since the last century has changed the landscape, and very few pure single-ethnic societies still remain at all. 131.174.88.151 09:12, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Croatia?
Croatia is listed under "..that no longer exist". However Croatia oh-very-much still exist, it just stopped being a multiethnic society (and became a monoethnic). So...? --PaxEquilibrium 00:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Major revisions or complete rewrite?
Looking quickly at this page and the comments above, I'm tempted to suggest that the article could use a thorough revision or rewrite. "Multiethnic" is not well defined, "multiethnic society" could describe as others have mentioned, just about every society to one degree or another. There are assumptions built in to some discussions such as the role of language, violence in the encounter of different ethnicities, etc. A rewrite would have to better account for the realities and shed some of the assumptions (i.e., more of an NPV). It also could discuss a wider range of "multiethnic societies" such as many long existing ones in Africa and Asia. This is a quick evaluation only - maybe there should be an "expert attention" banner on the article page. --A12n 13:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Current multi-ethnic societies
Umm, is one "Current multi-ethnic societies" list more current than the other? -- Sy / (talk) 19:59, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The lack of scientific methodology
Of course, it does seem that there is a difference between multi-ethnic societies and multi-racial societies. There should be two separate wiki articles on these two concepts.

I remember reading something about "genetic similarity and ethnic nationalism". I thought most of this paper was quite irrelevant until I read a section which outlined how even rats and mice will not cannibalise one another (under finite food conditions) when they can sense (via smell) that they are related by blood to the other competitor rat. Thus, humans are not dissimilar to their mammal counterparts in many of the behaviours that they exhibit.

This may seem like a ludicrous point in relation to the multiethnic society point, but it is not, even slight differences in smell would imply that one is not related by blood to another (humans having the ability to sense racial AND ethnic differences via the use of smell).

Of course, individual politics is a different matter that depends upon the circumstances and political histories of nations. But then I digress.

Ethnic and Racial Morality
It seems to me that kin-selection and in-group preferences in evolutionary psychology are valid articles that those interested in this subject matter could contribute to - any comments here?

Failure
It would be interesting to have a look at genocide studies and statistics that are associated with multiethnic societies. I have a firm belief that most historical (and even present) multi-ethnic societies are inherently democidally inclined - that is, it is possible to infer (from indirect sources, such as the number of missing names from phone books), how many people have been killed by the mechanisms of the state. In these regards, multi-ethnic societies are intrinsically more democidally inclined than mono-ethnic ones due to the reliance upon power to preserve the status quo of the dominant ethnic group. This could be mathematically formalised via the use of population sampling statistics (and has been done, in regards to, say, Stalin's Purges, where loss estimates are derived from phone book records).

U.N.
I put a "neutrality disputed" tag after "The ultimate step in multiethnic integration is the U.N., whose goal is to ensure the peaceful coexistence of as many different countries or ethnic groups as possible". Both claims (that the U.N. is the ultimate step and that its true goal is as stated) are very much debatable.
 * And unsourced.Hobson (talk) 02:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

All cities
Is there really not one city in the world which is not multi-ethnic? Is every single Japanese city multi-ethnic, for example? Hobson 01:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Current multi-ethnic societies
2 Current multi-ethnic societies

3 Historic multi-ethnic societies

4 Current multi-ethnic societies

What the difference between 2nd and 4th? --Skabbit 14:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Was about to ask the same question, why is there 2 sections for the same thing.  T Rex  | talk  19:49, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Why Poland?
Poland seems to stick out among the examples. I feel that some explanation should be given for why it is included. There's been a lot of back-and-forth mud slinging between Russia and Poland recently, and I'm worried that the mention of Poland as a "monoethnic" society is yet one more sling in this controversy. Is there any reason to say that Poland is more "monoethnic" or less "multiethnic" than the other eastern block states? Why is it specifically given as an example? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.118.84.141 (talk) 03:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Because it's monoethnic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.32.61.96 (talk • contribs) 17:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite
Given the above complaints, and the fact that the article had remained completely unsourced since it was established in August 2003, I've taken the liberty of returning it to a stub article with some basic, referenced, material. Please feel free to help expand it further, using sources as necessary. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)