Ethnology in the context of "European ethnic groups"

A cultural artifact, or cultural artefact (see American and British English spelling differences), is a term used in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, ethnology and sociology for anything created by humans which gives information about the culture of its creator and users. Artifact is the spelling in North American English; artefact is usually preferred elsewhere.

Cultural artifact is a more generic term and should be considered with two words of similar, but narrower, nuance: it can include objects recovered from archaeological sites, i.e. archaeological artifacts, but can also include objects of modern or early-modern society, or social artifacts. For example, in an anthropological context, a 17th-century lathe, a piece of faience, or a television each provides a wealth of information about the time in which they were manufactured and used.

Culturology or the science of culture is a branch of the social sciences concerned with the scientific understanding, description, analysis, and prediction of cultures as a whole. While ethnology and anthropology studied different cultural practices, such studies included diverse aspects: sociological, psychological, etc., and the need was recognized for a discipline focused exclusively on cultural aspects.

Hawaii (/hə.ˈwaɪ.i/ hə-WY-ee; Hawaiian: Hawaiʻi [hə.ˈvɐj.ʔi, hə.ˈwɐj.ʔi]) is an island state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only state not on the North American mainland, the only state that is an archipelago, the only state in the tropics, and one of the two U.S. states, along with Texas, that were internationally recognized sovereign countries before becoming U.S. states.

Hawaii consists of 137 volcanic islands that make up almost the entire Hawaiian archipelago (the exception is Midway Atoll). Spanning 1,500 miles (2,400 km), the state is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. Hawaii's ocean coastline is consequently the fourth-longest in the U.S., at about 750 miles (1,210 km). The eight main islands, from northwest to southeast, are Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and Hawaiʻi, after which the state is named; the last is often called the "Big Island" or "Hawaiʻi Island" to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands make up most of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the largest protected area in the U.S. and the fourth-largest in the world.

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behavior. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk therapy method for treating mental disorders. Established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, it takes into account Darwin's theory of evolution, neurology findings, ethnology reports, and, in some respects, the clinical research of his mentor Josef Breuer. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified its four cornerstones: "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex."

Freud's earlier colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Jung soon developed their own methods (individual and analytical psychology); he criticized these concepts, stating that they were not forms of psychoanalysis. After the author's death, neo-Freudian thinkers like Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan created some subfields. Jacques Lacan, whose work is often referred to as Return to Freud, described his metapsychology as a technical elaboration of the three-instance model of the psyche and examined the language-like structure of the unconscious.

Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept first described by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the same book that coined the term genocide. The destruction of culture was a central component in Lemkin's formulation of genocide. The precise definition of cultural genocide remains contested, and the United Nations does not include it in the definition of genocide used in the 1948 Genocide Convention. The Armenian genocide Museum defines culturicide as "acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction", which appears to be essentially the same as ethnocide. Some ethnologists, such as Robert Jaulin, use the term ethnocide as a substitute for cultural genocide, although this usage has been criticized as risking the confusion between ethnicity and culture. Cultural genocide and ethnocide have in the past been used in distinct contexts. Cultural genocide without ethnocide is conceivable when a distinct ethnic identity is kept, but distinct cultural elements are eliminated.

Culturicide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures. The issue is addressed in multiple international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, which define war crimes associated with the destruction of culture. Cultural genocide may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate. Among many other potential reasons, cultural genocide may be committed for religious motives (e.g., iconoclasm which is based on aniconism); as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in an attempt to remove the evidence of a people from a specific locale or history; as part of an effort to implement a Year zero, in which the past and its associated culture is deleted and history is "reset". The drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention initially considered using the term, but later dropped it from inclusion. The term "cultural genocide" has been considered in various draft United Nations declarations, but it is not used by the UN Genocide Convention.

Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites (Ammonites, Edomites, Israelites, Moabites, Phoenicians, and Philistines) and Habesha peoples. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics. First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (שֵׁם), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites.

In archaeology, the term is sometimes used informally as "a kind of shorthand" for ancient Semitic-speaking peoples. Identification of pro-Caucasian racism has either partially or completely devalued the use of the term as a racial category, with the caveat that an inverse assessment would still be considered scientifically obsolete.

Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common ancestry, language, faith, historical continuity, etc. There are no universally accepted and precise definitions of the terms "ethnic group" and "nationality", but in the context of European ethnography in particular, the terms ethnic group, people, nationality and ethno-linguistic group are used as mostly synonymous. Preference may vary in usage with respect to the situation specific to the individual countries of Europe, and the context in which they may be classified by those terms.

The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million Europeans in 2002. The Russians are the most populous among Europeans, with a population of roughly 120 million.

Since early modern times, a number of biblical ethnonyms from the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 have been used as a basis for classifying human racial (cosmetic phenotypical) categories and national (ethnolinguistic cultural) identities. The connection between Genesis 10 and contemporary ethnic groups began during classical antiquity, when authors such as Josephus, Hippolytus and Jerome analyzed the biblical list.

The early modern equation of the biblical Semites, Hamites and Japhetites with racial categories was coined at the Göttingen school of history in the late 18th century – in parallel with other, more secular terminologies for race, such as Blumenbach's fivefold color scheme.