VIRTUAL ETHNICITY: The new digitization of place, body, language, and memory

Ethnicity represents a challenging category of selfhood, even for societies sharing a material lived reality. In cyberspace, ethnicity becomes even more confusing. If ethnic affiliation truly depends upon material phenomena such as body or place, what scope, if any, is there for construction of “real ethnicity” in the deterritorialized disembodied virtual spaces of the Internet? In this paper, I present arguments for the recognition of virtual identities as “real,” and I also argue that the material world is, in itself, interwoven with elements of virtuality. I go on to consider the ways in which new virtual communities may attempt establish virtual ethnic identities in cyberspace. Ethnicity and Selfhood in Modern Society Ethnicity in the Global Village “Real Ethnicity” Virtuality, Immateriality, and Ethnicity The Reality of the Virtual The Virtuality of the Real Virtuality, Actuality, and Language Virtual Ethnicity and Textual Speech Acts Conclusion References Author’s Biographical Sketch Citing This Source in APA Style Ethnicity and Selfhood in Modern Society ethnicity: A highly elastic concept applied to groups who say they share or are perceived to share some combination of cultural, historical, racial, religious, or linguistic features. Ethnicity also often implies shared ancestral origins; thus there is thematic overlap with the older concept of peoples and some modern