Description:
Throughout the world, certain ethnic groups have made a living through trade and have found a place for themselves in their societies' middle strata. At times, these 'middlemen minorities' have aroused the envy of their neighbors and been subjected to a variety of persecutions. In this book, Walter P. Zenner examines explanations for this phenomenon and analyzes such groups as the Jews, the Chinese, the Scots, and the South Asians abroad.
Brief description: Walter P. Zenner is Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the author of Persistence and Flexibility: Anthropological Perspectives on the American Jewish Experience, also published by SUNY Press
Review Quotes:
"What impresses me most about this book is that it is looking at a topic which is very fresh. If you look at the literature, there is considerable mention of the 'minorities in the middle, ' but never any real grounding of the analyses in any kind of empirical data. What you have in this piece is that missing link; not only theorizing, but giving specific cases.
"The notion is that there are ethnic, racial groups who have somehow 'made it' in American society. While that is true, what we find in this book is the wonderful story of the ups and downs of the middlemen minorities. It is not, then, a lineal process, but one that moves back and forth, and I am not at all certain if those groups are all 'successful.' I think that is one wonderful contribution; it sets the stage for a rethinking of the question of how Jews or other groups have been able to do so well, and in the Jewish case, to monopolize certain sectors or industries in the American economy. Zenner shows the process of how this has occurred, but also how they were unsuccessful in other attempts, thus exploring the mystique of Jewish success in business." -- Felix Padilla, DePaul University