Minority whose main occupations link producers and consumers
A middleman minority is a minority population whose main occupations link producers and consumers: traders, money-lenders, etc. A middleman minority, while possibly suffering discrimination and bullying, does not hold an "extreme subordinate" status in society.[1] The "middleman minority" concept was developed by sociologists
Hubert Blalock and
Edna Bonacich starting in the 1960s but is also used by political scientists and economists. This idea was further developed by American economist
Thomas Sowell.[2]
Overview
There are numerous examples of such groups gaining eventual prosperity in their adopted country despite discrimination. Often, they will take on roles between producer and consumer, such as trading and moneylending. Famous examples such as
Jews throughout Europe even at times when discrimination against them was high,
Chinese throughout
Southeast Asia and
North America,
Muslims and
Parsis in
India,
Igbos in
Nigeria,
Indians in
East Africa,
Lebanese in
West Africa, and many others.[3]
Middleman minorities usually provide an economic benefit to communities and nations and often start new industries. However, their economic aptitude, financial success and clannishness, combined with social prejudices by other groups against businesses and moneylending, can cause resentment among the native population of a country. Middleman minorities can be victims of racist violence,
terrorists, bullying, genocide, racialist policy, or other forms of repression. Other ethnic groups often accuse them of plotting conspiracies against their nation or of stealing wealth from the native population.[3]
The majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries
Middle Eastern immigrants to Brazil (Lebanese, Syrians, etc., collectively called "arabes" or "turcos", the latter term because they came from the
Ottoman Empire) were peddlers, merchants and other types of non-"producers".[9]
Yuri Slezkine's book The Jewish Century (2004) discussed the concept of "Mercurian" people "specializ[ing] exclusively in providing services to the surrounding food-producing societies," which are characterized as "Apollonians"
^Douglas, Karen Manges; Saenz, Rogelio.
"Middleman Minorities"(PDF). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (2nd ed.).
Archived(PDF) from the original on 2010-06-22.
^Freitag, Ulrike (1999). "Hadhramaut: A Religious Centre for the Indian Ocean in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries?". Studia Islamica (89): 165–183.
doi:
10.2307/1596090.
JSTOR1596090.
^Manger, Leif (2010). The Hadrami diaspora: Community-building on the Indian Ocean rim. Berghahn Books.
ISBN9781845459789.
OCLC732958389.
^Suny, Ronald Grigor. "
Eastern Armenians Under Tsarist Rule" in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, p. 125.
Silverman, Robert Mark. 2000. Doing Business in Minority Markets: Black and Korean Entrepreneurs in Chicago’s Ethnic Beauty Aids Industry. New York: Garland Publishing.