G. Bentley's Approach to Ethnic Identity

A detailed Summary of G. Bentley's Approach to Ethnic Identity

G. Carter Bentley's practice theory is a popular approach in understanding how ethnicity is constructed and ethnic identity is maintained. Here we shift from boundaries to focus on people's patterns of experiences, both objective and subjective. Bentley draws on Bordieu's concepts of "habitus" and "practice". Bordieu argues that the objective conditions, mediated by systems of symbolic representations, generate in different persons dispositions to act in different ways (Bentley 1987: 28) Habitus compromises "...a set of generative schemes that produce practices and representations that are regular without reference to overt rules and that are goal directed without requiring conscious selection of goals or mastery of methods achieving them." (as quoted in Bentley, Ibid.,). Hence habits become a mechanic way of being, acting and thinking, developed through 1) social practices, 2) shared experiences, 3) experimentation and 4) comprehension of those relationships or difference at both the conscious and unconscious levels. There is constant interplay between these levels (collectively and individually).

Practice is a concept linked to the Marxist tradition of emphasizing power relations. This is connected to ethnic identity in that

The theory of practice also reveals an apparent paradox of simultaneous emotional dependence on an situational manipulation of ethnic identity. This paradox is due to the lack of an exact correlation between the social context and a perception of difference (Bentley 1987: 35). For example, since ethnic identity derives from situationally shared elements of multidimensional habitus, it is possible for an individual to "...possess several different situationally relevant but nonetheless emotionally authentic identities and to symbolize all of them in terms of descent" (Bentley 1987: 35). Yet while shared descent is symbolically constructed, conceptions of ethnic identity are not chosen arbitrarily: "Ethnic identities are anchored internally in experience as well as externally in the cognitive distinctions in terms of which experience is ordered" (Bentley 1987: 36). Soraya's story supports this position. She shared different aspects of her life with different categories of people. She has chosen to live among the Muranao and enjoys close relations with some members of her family, while at the same time feeling alienated from the very community she chose to live in.

Bentley demonstrates the relationship between patterns of practice and sensations of ethnic affinity by the example of a Marano woman who has struggled with a sense of ambivalent ethnicity: "...a feeling that she is neither here nor there but instead limited in a system [Philippine social context] of categorical identities" (Bentley 1987: 29). Soraya's exper

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Category: People