The present article intends to examine how ethnic minority group members account for their
ethnic identity as part of a series of interviews with young Mapuches on what it means to be
Mapuche in contemporary Chilean society. The focus is on the actual accomplishment and display
of ethnic self-definition and group identification. We draw on insights from discursive psychology to
explore some features of common-sense practical reasoning that ethnic minority group members
use to negotiate, self-ascribe or resist a particular sense of identity, and to produce observable and
reportable identities. We have a particular interest in illustrating how ethnic self-definition can be
seen as the contingent outcome of a practical and interpretive issue for members of society, with a
special focus on how ethnic minority identity is constructed through the flexible use of group-defining
attributes and characteristics, categories and common-sense categorial knowledge. We suggest that
understanding the complex significance and meaning of ethnic self-definition for minority group
members is dependent on engaging closely with its occasioned context of production and treating
social identities as a feature of how people describe themselves. It is argued that this view of ethnic
minority self-definition as a practical and interpretive issue and as a discursive product in action can
provide a further contribution to literature of both discursive and intercultural studies of ethnic
identification of minority groups, intercultural and interethnic relations.
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Citation
MERINO, M., TILEAGA, C., 2011. The construction of ethnic minority identity: a discursive psychological approach to ethnic self-definition in action. Discourse and Society, 22 (1), pp. 86 - 101.