Minority Groups--A Revision of Concepts.

This article offers recommendations for the study of minority groups. Relatively little is gained by their classification according to external characteristics into ethnic, culture, language, racial, religious, etc., groups. A better understanding of individual social systems and sub-systems of this type can probably be reached by classifying them according to true sociological categories such as relative closure. In this respect it should be found that one and the same group will at different stages of its development conform with different sociological types. Furthermore, in some cases religious, ethnic or racial groups can be legitimately grouped together, while in others the fact that several minorities are being classified as, let us say, ethnic groups does not indicate that they belong to the same sociological category. The possibility should be kept in mind that at times populations which are conventionally considered as social groups of the type discussed in this paper do not at sill represent real functioning social systems, but that reference is actually being made to status categories within a given social system. It is not permissible to treat groups of immigrants as if they were simply fractions of the peoples from which they are derived since they may be, and often are, the result of secondary group formations due to conditions prevailing in the new social environment rather than in the old country.