The notion of ethnicity as it is currently used is theoretically
ambivalent, confusing, indeed self-contradictory, according to Rey Chow.
To radically reconceptualize the ways ethnicity functions in capitalist
society, Chow proposes that it be analyzed in conjunction with Max
Weber's famous theory about the protestant work ethic, especially in
terms of the economic and psychological, as well as the
religious-spiritual, ramifications of the word "protest." In her reading
of the politics of ethnicity, she examines a diverse set of texts, works
of Foucault, Weber, Derrida, Balibar, Brontë, Asian-American authors
Hongo and Yau; films of Hitchcock, Duras, and Resnais; and the drawings
of Hong Kong cartoonist Larry Feign.