Ethnic Groups Concept
Preferred labels
- Ethnic Groups
- Ethnische Gruppen
Alternative labels
- Races
- Völker
- Groupe ethnique
Assigned collections
Broader terms
Narrower terms
- American Indians
- Americans
- Arabs
- Ashanti
- Asian barbarians
- Asians
- Assyrians
- Austrians
- Aztecs
- Babylonians
- Barbarians
- Bedouin
- Beneventans
- Britons (Celts)
- Canadians
- Caribs
- Carthaginians
- Celts
- Chaldeans
- Chinese
- Cimbrians
- Dorians
- Egyptians
- English
- Etruscans
- Europeans
- Finns
- Florentines
- Franks
- French
- Gauls
- Germanic tribes
- Germans
- Goths
- Greeks
- Gyana-Ladies
- Heruli
- Hindus
- Huns
- Iberians
- Illyrians
- Inca
- Indians
- Inhabitants of Chios?
- Inhabitants of New Holland
- Inhabitants of Tyre?
- Inuit
- Israelites
- Italians
- Italic peoples
- Japanese
- Japydes
- Jews
- Judeans
- Kalmyks
- Kurds
- Lombards
- Lucchese
- Lycians
- Lyonese
- Macedonians
- Medes
- Mexicans
- Milesians (Irish)
- Minyans
- Mohammedans
- Mongols
- Moors
- Neapolitans
- Negroes
- Normans
- North Americans
- North Europeans
- Onalaskans?
- Orientals
- Parthians
- Pelasgians
- Peoples of the East
- Persians
- Peruvians
- Phoenicians
- Phrygians
- Pisans
- Rajputs
- Roma
- Romans
- Russians
- Saracens
- Saxons
- Scandinavians
- Scythians
- Sidonians
- Skrælings
- Slavs
- South Sea Islanders
- Swiss
- Sybarites
- Sámi people
- Tiroleans
- Toltec
- Tonga
- Troglodytes
- Tungus
- Turks
- Wild people
Definition
Semper's use of various terms describing subdivisions of humanity is most closely aligned with the German word "Volk" in its 19th-century sense. As such, the categories that Semper applies when speaking about different societies are, in today's terms, a mixture of linguistic, ethnic, religious, and cultural terms together with designations that in the 19th century were believed to possess some kind of identifiable reality when describing groups of persons, but which are no longer understood in these terms today. These designations are often pejorative. One example of this is "Wilden" - the "wild people" - a term used to describe groups of persons living in a perceived primitive state. The understanding of "Wilden" as a clearly identifiable and bounded group rested on a set of pejorative assumptions about people whose material culture was interpreted as limited by Europeans, and whose lifestyle was judged by them to be close to nature, i.e. who were seen to be living like animals. At the same time, the tendency to equate linguistic and to some extent religious identities with ethnic ones, characteristic of 19th-century European thought, means that "Cimbrians" appear in Semper's writings as a "Volk", whereas today we would use the term "Cimbrian speakers".
Notations
Concept mappings
Close Matches
Exact Matches
Related Matches
Broader Matches
Narrower Matches
Change notes
- dct:creator
- Elena Chestnova
- dct:modified
- 2021-04-23T09:17:04+00:00
initial version
- dct:created
- 2021-04-16T10:05:03+00:00
- dct:creator
- Elena Chestnova
- dct:creator
- Elena Chestnova
- dct:modified
- 2021-04-22T13:54:17+00:00
- dct:modified
- 2021-04-22T14:10:26+00:00
- dct:creator
- Elena Chestnova
- dct:modified
- 2021-04-23T09:19:22+00:00
- dct:creator
- Elena Chestnova
- dct:creator
- Elena Chestnova
- dct:modified
- 2021-05-20T12:44:03+00:00
- dct:modified
- 2021-05-20T12:54:03+00:00
- dct:creator
- Elena Chestnova
Editorial note
The way I have now labelled this is aligned with other SKOS thesauri that deal with similar concepts: https://lod.data-archive.ac.uk/v2-skoshasset/en-GB/4c148b10-da8b-4b9b-ab4d-11edede7d27d http://skos.um.es/unescothes/C01426 https://ukat.aim25.com/thesaurus/f4/mt430/1386/ The UK archival thesaurus makes reference to the UNESCO SKOS Thesaurus. Does that mean that it might be sensible for us to align with this too? The difference in our case is that what we are describing here are not our understanding of ethnic groups today, but Semper's one from the 1850s. I have nested this under "Social groups" following the example of the UK Data Archive. Not sure in how far this makes sense in our case. It is a provisional solution.