Discrimination and Reaction: The Practical Constitution of Social Exclusion

Abstract

This article explores and extends Blumer's work on race prejudice and discrimination by using empirical data from an ethnographic study of minority communities in Greece. Blumer explains prejudice as the result of an interactional process through which one group defines itself as superior or dominant in relation to the other. His work on race prejudice has often been misinterpreted as emphasizing the individual's subjective imaginary of the “other.” Here I illustrate the importance of the intersubjective processes involved in defining a particular social situation as discriminatory. A central point of the article is to elaborate on his analysis by looking at the experience of prejudice and discrimination from the receiving end, through the participants' interpretation of their social interactions with the dominant group. Therefore I focus on how members of the subordinate group interact with the process that Blumer identifies.