Mediterranean Hospitality the Purpose of Essay

But although one's group identity is often discussed as if it were a fixed and unchanging notion, in fact identities such as 'Native American (Indian)' and 'Asian' and 'Latino' are not pre-existing categories, but categories created by community needs and society. All of these various identities include a variety of individuals who, when they or their ancestors were members of different nations, often engaged in frequent warfare, and defined themselves against one another.

For example, as the Chinese often fought vs. The Japanese, the Iroquois tribes often fought vs. The Pequot tribes in the Americas, and Latin America has posted a host of external conflicts between nations and internal class and ethnic conflicts (between European and Indian groups). Yet common construction of Asian-ness, Latin-ness, and 'otherness' in the case of Native peoples in North America, created, through a commonality of oppression, if not a perfectly seamless identity for these groups, than a kind of pan-ethnic identity or new historical link of an evolving, and now commonly shared history in America.

Eileen M. Otis specifically discusses Asian-American identities, but her analysis would be applicable to all identities. Otis discusses within a specific location in the United States what she calls Asian pan-ethnic community agency and identity. By banding together as one, Asians have formed a common pan-ethnic Asian identity, although still, within various organizations, pre-existing ethnic tensions, and different community assumptions about gender, and class relations from history still subvert as facilitate interethnic and interracial alliances.

Works Cited

Otis, Eileen. "The Reach and Limits of Asian Pan-ethnic Identity: The Dynamics of Gender, Race, and Class in a Community-Based Organization." Qualitative Sociology. 24 (3): 349-379. Fall 2001. Retrieved 25 Feb 2005 at http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0162-0436/contents