Ethnic categorization practices and boundary (re)making in a multiethnic borderland of Ukraine

Multiethnic borderlands, like Transcarpathia in Western Ukraine, are characterized by ethnic-linguistic-confessional complexity where ethnic boundary-making and ethnic categorization are constructed and rooted in politics. The present study aims to analyze how the mechanisms of ethnic categorization and boundary-making play out on a local level. Based on data analysis and fieldwork conducted in Hudya/Gődényháza in Transcarpathia, a village with ethnically, linguistically, and denominationally diverse population, we describe how “ethnicity” is getting blurred and reconstructed in the narrative strategies of residents. We examine the characteristics of the various classification systems (external classification, self-reporting) and their relation to each other. It is found that the ethnic, linguistic, and denominational affiliations in the village (and its wider region) are often divergent, which is reflected in the significant discrepancy between the data gathered in various ethnic classification systems. We argue that denomination is the prime factor of both self-identification and external classification, obscuring the boundaries between religious and standard ethnic terms. We further point to the formation of new boundaries between autochthonous and allochthonous populations. Although this cleavage emerged a few decades ago and has been transgressed by dozens of marriages among autochthonous and newcomers, it can easily get ethnicized, thus it adds an extra layer to the existing distinctions.

Artificial Intelligence from Colonial India: Race, Statistics, and Facial Recognition in the Global South

This article examines the history of a similarity measure—the Mahalanobis Distance Function—and its movement from colonial India into contemporary artificial intelligence technologies, including facial recognition, and its reapplication into postcolonial India. The article identifies how the creation of the Distance Function was connected to the colonial “problem” of caste and ethnic classification for British bureaucracy in 1920-1930s India. This article demonstrates that the Distance Function is a statistical method, originating to make anthropometric caste distinctions in India, that became both a technical standard and a mobile racialized technique, utilized in machine learning applications. The creation of the Distance Function as a measure of “similitude” at a particular period of colonial state-making helped to model wider categories of classification which have proliferated in facial recognition technology. Overall, we highlight how a measurement function that operates in recognition technologies today can be traced across time and space to other racialized contexts.

Cast aside

Trisomy 21 originated with Homo sapiens, or even before, as it exists in other primates. However, in antiquity, Down’s syndrome was rare: mothers were younger, and children failed to reach adulthood. For centuries, trisomy 21 and hypothyreosis were confused. Scientific reports originated from asylums for the mentally retarded. In 1866, John Langdon Down at Earlswood published a description of symptoms in his ‘Ethnic classification of idiots’ and coined the term ‘Mongolian’. Jerôme Lejeune identified an additional chromosome 21 causing the disorder. Maternal age rose markedly for various reasons, as did the prevalence of trisomy 21. From 1968, high-risk pregnancies were screened and interrupted because of Down’s syndrome. Non-invasive techniques now enable all pregnancies to be screened to detect chromosomal anomalies early and precisely. The topic is hotly debated and consensus unlikely. Legislation will not halt scientific progress, but it should ensure that in the same society contradictory attitudes can be held and mutually respected: the right to accept a disabled infant and the right not to accept it.

Measuring the changing pattern of ethnic segregation in England and Wales with Consumer Registers

Analysis of changing patterns of ethnic residential segregation is usually framed by the coarse categorisations of ethnicity used in censuses and other large-scale public sector surveys and by the infrequent time intervals at which such surveys are conducted. In this paper, we use names-based classification of Consumer Registers to investigate changing degrees of segregation in England and Wales over the period 1997–2016 at annual resolution. We find that names-based ethnic classification of the individuals that make up Consumer Registers provides reliable estimates of the residential patterning of different ethnic groups and the degree to which they are segregated. Building upon this finding, we explore more detailed segregation patterns and trends of finer groups at annual resolutions and discover some unexpected trends that have hitherto remained unrecorded by Census-based studies. We conclude that appropriately processed Consumer Registers hold considerable potential to contribute to various domains of urban geography and policy.

Intercultural parallax: Comparative modeling, ethnic taxonomy, and the dynamic object

Comparative modeling is necessary for semiotic inquiry. To better theorize such pursuits, a reflexive turn is in order: comparative modeling needs comparative modeling. In search of experientially grounded analogies better suited for understanding, validating, scrutinizing, and accounting for the situation of the semiotic inquirer, this paper applies insights from Peircean process semiotics and Göran Sonesson’s extended theory of cultural semiotics toward two ends: one theoretical, the other applied. First, I undertake a critical review of recent scholarly and creative works that attempt to adapt concepts of “parallax” as a source domain for comparative modeling activities. I do this in order to continue laying groundwork for a more complex, systematic theory of reflexive semiotic modeling in human inquiry, building on my earlier work. Second, I explore a specific case study of comparative intercultural modeling: namely, nationalist ethnic classification strategies in China and Vietnam. While many researchers have considered the onomastic and geopolitical dimensions of state-sanctioned ethnic categorization programs in these two countries, little has been done to unpack the powerful visual and narratological strategies employed by both; and little has been done to compare the intercultural categories these strategies serve to legitimize. The Vietnamese classification program is clearly modeled on its Chinese counterpart historically, but important categorical mismatches emerge between the two that indicate the presence of hidden diversity. Comparing the two systems also leads to a number of discoveries with implications for further developing the theory of cultural semiotics. Ultimately, the function or purpose of parallax modeling is shown to both comprehend and point beyond nascent intercultural and intracultural models toward more complex blends, by holding all such relations in a comparative frame, not as irreconcilable positions but as a more developed composite sign indicating the presence of yet more deeply buried dynamic objects to be searched out through further collateral experience.

Ethnicity on the move: Understanding the ethnic identity construction of Zhuang university students experiencing educational mobility in China

This qualitative study investigates a cohort of Zhuang university students’ perceptions of their ethnicity, and the way they construct and negotiate their ethnic identity as they migrate from an inland, ethnic, autonomous province to study in an eastern, coastal municipality. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that the construction of ethnic Zhuang identity is influenced by the interplay between institutional power, sociocultural environment and individual agency. Specifically, participants show three divergent patterns of ethnic identification, namely: receivers, who readily accept their official ethnic classification but have limited ethnic awareness; constructors, who have strong ethnic awareness and strive for ethnic language transmission and heritage culture protection; and utilizers, who are keen on the instrumental values brought by their ethnicity. It is further found that the Zhuang language does not facilitate or strengthen ethnic Zhuang identification due to differences among language varieties.