ABSTRACT
There is considerable confusion in popular, political and administrative discourse around the use of the terms race and ethnic group, with the two often being used interchangeably (Bradby 1995; Fenton 1999). Things are no better in social research, where there are different usages expressing varying theoretical, epistemological, political and legal standpoints (Malik 1996). A key analytic distinction is usually drawn between the idea of ‘race’ as signifying the division of humankind into discrete groups, marked by immutable biological characteristics and the term ‘ethnic’, which is used to denote differences associated with culture, learning and socialisation.
