Sociology Department Colloquium: Cristina Mora

Please join us for a colloquium being given by G. Cristina Mora, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Boundary Articulation and Emergent Identities: Asian and Hispanic Panethnicity in Comparison 1970-1980

This project provides the first systematic comparison of the Asian and Hispanic panethnic movements of the 1970s to reveal how group leaders develop boundary claims  about emergent collective identities.  We find that despite referring to communities with different histories, stakeholders used similar practices to articulate and define Asian and Hispanic identities respectively. Specifically, leaders used broad descriptors to define the group, depicted core subgroups as prototypes for the panethnic category, and used comparisons with other racial minorities to situate the meaning of Asian and Hispanic communities. We argue that the practices complement each other and form a cultural repertoire that stakeholders draw on to articulate emergent group boundaries. The frameworks’ generalizability beyond the U.S. case is discussed.