Primer: Culture and Ethnicity in Tahuum Itaqiin

Three-sentence summary:

The terms "culture," "ethnicity," and sometimes "race" are often wrongly conflated with each other. According to rigorous and useful definitions, a culture is a particular group's way of life, and an ethnicity is an identity group based on a shared culture. People's appearances (phenotypes) often correlate with, but are not intrinsically connected to, their group memberships; in Tahuum Itaqiin, any phenotypal descriptions of ethnic groups are based on broad yet non-universal patterns or outsiders' perceptions of those groups.

Introduction

The uses of the terms "culture" and "ethnicity" on World Anvil and elsewhere are understandably confusing. Not only is culture itself a fuzzy concept, but in public discourse, ethnicity is often conflated with race and other supposedly biological concepts. Since different ethnic groups are frequently mentioning in articles about Tahuum Itaqiin (not to mention inter-ethnic conflict is an important subtopic for the July 2023 summer camp), I thought I'd establish more rigorous definitions of these concepts using what we know from the social sciences.

Culture

Though others have written about the concept and definition of culture in far greater detail elsewhere, here's a brief explanation: Rather than referring narrowly to the fine arts and music, culture, as it's defined by anthropologists, is the way of life of a particular group of people, often within a particular time range. "Way of life" here is quite broad, including people's worldviews (broad understandings of how the world works), social and moral values, aesthetic values (how they define art and beauty), language(s), manners and social norms, and many aspects of their lifestyles. Culture might broadly be divided into material culture (which I discussed in my 2023 summer camp pledge) and immaterial culture, which includes worldviews, values, shared symbolism, and the like.
As an added note, while cultures are often associated with particular geographic regions and ethnicities (more on this in a minute), any group of people can have a culture or subculture, including age cohorts, organizations such as businesses and sororities/fraternities, and hobby/interest groups.
While a given culture is frequently associated with a particular ethnic group, and sometimes this is even an accurate association, culture is better understood as being acquired through social learning (the behaviors, values, etc. we learn through authority figures and peers) and can be accepted or rejected. International adoptees and immigrants of all sorts demonstrate this quite effectively: A baby or toddler who is raised in a cultural context different from their biological parents will mainly behave like other members of their new culture and not like their parents. Likewise, a person who is raised in two different cultural contexts tends to internalize both cultures.
Given that culture is acquired through social learning, not only can individuals be assimilated or integrated into a culture, but a culture or its features can be transmitted from one place to another. We see this throughout human history in the propagation of words and languages, recipes, aesthetics and trends, and plenty else from their places of origin. Cultural globalization, a concept many of us are at least vaguely familiar with, is simply the rapid, robust transmission and blending of cultural features that results from the connectedness (thanks to advances in transportation and communication, and unfortunately colonialism and imperialism) of the modern world.

Ethnicity

There's perhaps even more confusion around the concept of ethnicity than the concept of culture. I mainly blame this for the way in which ethnicity has been conflated with "race" in the real world, not to mention the most popular TTRPG of the past few decades included a warped concept of "race" and absolutely no concept of ethnicity in its Player's Handbook.
A more rigorous definition of ethnicity is that an ethnicity is an identity group based on a shared culture. How these groups are formed in reality is a complex question, but it has much to do with geography: Not only does the ability to travel and visit other people enable interactions which sometimes lead to cultural exchange, but geography and the environment themselves shape people's ways of living (their cultures) as they try to adapt to the places they live in.
One of the most important points here is that ethnicity is not causally tied to phenotypes (physical features), yet ethnicities and sets of phenotypes are frequently associated with each other. Since cultural features (habits, languages, etc.) spread from person to person, it has been the case for most of human history that people with shared cultures have usually lived in proximity to each other. (Globalization has resulted in a large number of recent exceptions to this.) Furthermore, since both spatial proximity and shared cultural features (especially languages, manners, and beauty standards) accommodate the process of finding a mate, it's reasonably likely that members of a discrete group will share a number of phenotypes as well.
People also tend to assume a direct relationship between ethnicity and phenotype due to cultural narratives. While many ethnic groups have developed origin stories that are supposedly based in biology (e.g. "our god shaped our people out of clay" or "we are all descendants of the same great conqueror"), examining the histories of ethnic groups readily demonstrates that these narratives are developed for political purposes: To create a sense of unity and/or to justify the defense of a group and its interests against outsiders. (In all fairness, it is highly likely that evolutionary natural selection has primed human beings for group association, as defending group interests has proven to be a better strategy for survival/gene propagation than living as a lone wolf or cheating and betraying one's group members.)
It's worth understanding that the supposedly biological concept of "race" was developed mainly Western scientists in the 19th century to rationalize the preferential treatment of some groups over others. Furthermore, while immigration initially results in people of different ethnic groups co-existing in the same place, it's frequently (though not universally) the case that the descendants of these immigrants will be integrated into local ethnic groups. The Han people of China were once confined to eastern China's major river basins, but people on the borderlands of subsequent Chinese dynasties were assimilated into Han culture overtime; the generally Greek-speaking people of the Eastern Roman Empire still regarded themselves as Romans for centuries after Rome fell and Latin fell out of favor; settled white populations in the U.S. hesitated to categorize immigrants from both Ireland and southern Europe as "white" for decades until they collectively changed their minds.

Worldbuilding in Tahuum Itaqiin

All these principles are no less true in Tahuum Itaqiin. The roughly Eurasia-sized supercontinent and its surrounding islands host a vast range of environments and ecosystems, and both human genetic features and cultural features have developed in response to disparate circumstances. Just as some groups need larger amounts of melanin to protect themselves against harsh sunlight or eyelids that can shield their eyes against wind-blown sands—and others don't live in such places—cultural features such as clothing, recipes and cooking methods, and housing construction have all been adapted to these different environments.
The cultural landscape of Tahuum Itaqiin has been been reshaped numerous times by large-scale conflicts as well as long-distance trade and other peaceful contacts. The Haifatnehti people are as good an example as any: They were once divided into innumerable tribes, speaking a wide range of dialects and worshipping at least as many different gods, but the invading Northern Crusaders displaced them or suppressed their beliefs. The reconquest of the Haifatneh Basin that followed involved coalitions of Haifah tribes cooperating with each other, sometimes for years at a time, and even becoming each other's new neighbors in their reconquered lands. Further, the suppression of their traditional religions, combined with their lack of trust in the so-called One Light after the fall of the Reborn Theocracy, led to secularism becoming widespread among them; others mainly venerated their parents and ancestors who participated in the Internecine War rather than choosing to put their trust in conventional gods again. The ultimate result of the Internecine War and its aftermath was the consolidation of a unified Haifatnehti ethnic identity even though considerable cultural variation from one locale to another remains.
Ethnic and cultural differences underlie the dynamism of worldbuilding in Tahuum Itaqiin. Not only are the setting's "conventional" cultural features (religion, cuisines, etc.) and practices of spellcraft alike shaped by disparate groups' environments, but imperial conquest and colonial settlement and subjugation both exacerbate intergroup conflict. For instance, while the ancestors of the Haifatnehti people fought fiercely to preserve or regain their preferred ways of life, descendants in Andaen and other powerful city-states now vie for influence or direct control over marginal groups of people and their lands—including the Takheti people, who once fought to resist the Northern Theocracy much as the Haifatnehti people did.
It should be emphasized that while Tahuum Itaqiin is diverse, but not arbitrarily so: Its diversity is the product of its many geographic and ecological environments as well as the material and historical circumstances that shaped its many groups of people. (From a meta standpoint, Tahuum Itaqiin's cultural and ethnic diversity is the result of its creator's years' worth of effort reading about Earth's immense cultural variety, considering how speculative elements including magic might shape cultures in this setting, and applying all of this to crafting cultures and subcultures that properly fit their respective settings. It is hoped that all of this effort will pay off, though the effort in itself is also enjoyable.)
_{Please feel free to use this article for reference in your own worldbuilding if you find it helpful. You are also welcome to use this article's contents in your own WA articles with proper attribution.}

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Further Reading:

• The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Ethnicity
• National Geographic: Race and ethnicity facts and information
• Discovering Cultural Anthropology, Chapter 10: Race and Ethnicity.
• Marilynn B. Brewer. "The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1991.
• Azar Gat, with Alexander Yakobson. Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Ethnicity and Nationalism.
• Writing with Color: A blog on worldbuilding with diversity that respects the cultures and ethnic groups from whom the builder draws inspiration.
• Jennifer R. Povey. "The Tiffany Problem: When History Makes No Sense." On how to go about realistic, historically inspired worldbuilding when audiences have a stereotyped or less nuanced understanding of the real world and history.