Premium
ethnicity and commerce
Author(s) -
FOSTER BRIAN L.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1974.1.3.02a00030
Subject(s) - ethnic group , face (sociological concept) , function (biology) , scale (ratio) , sociology , social psychology , psychology , anthropology , social science , geography , cartography , evolutionary biology , biology
The widely observed pursuit of commerce by ethnic minorities is usually explained historically or in terms of the content of the traders' culture. An examination of Mon traders in Thailand suggests that the ethnic difference itself is important in (1) freeing traders from constraints of the host society and (2) reducing stress inherent in face‐to‐face commercial transactions. These observations are subsumed into a concluding hypothesis relating ethnic differences to certain ritual activities, other kinds of social categorizations, and phenomena related to scale, all of which function in similar ways.