6.6 Race and Ethnicity

Race — the debunking (state it as settled science): the biological concept fails — human variation is clinal (gradual, not discrete); there is more genetic variation within than between continental populations; the UNESCO statements' verdict: race is a social construct with real social force — racism is the object to study, not "race." Anthropology's history here is both guilty (craniometry's era — Unit 2.1's ladder) and heroic (Boas's demolition, Boas's students' work on race prejudice — The Races of Mankind). Ethnicity — the modern concept:Fredrik Barth's boundary theory (Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, 1969): ethnicity is not the cultural "stuff" a group holds but the boundary it maintains — self-ascription and ascription by others, activated in interaction; groups persist across cultural change by boundary-maintenance (the founding move of ethnicity studies). Nepal's ethnicity laboratory (the unit's Nepal core): the janajati (Adivasi Janajati) category's making — the state's lists (59 recognised indigenous nationalities; the National Foundation for Adivasi Janajati's establishment statute, 2002 — cite without sections), NEFIN as the umbrella politics; ethnic boundary-maintenance in practice (language schools, festival revival, cremation vs burial politics); the census's category-history (from the state's one-people push to the 2021 count's 142+ caste/ethnic self-identifications — the recognition machine's own history); and the debate ethnicisation provokes: identity's dignity vs the new hierarchies identity-making can build (Unit 8.2's movement ledger).