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Chapter one Acculturation and Assimilation Present sociological knowledge on the phenomena and the implied processes undergone by ethnic groups in American communities has received a momentum through intensive accomplished research. The onset of scientific production along these lines was marked by the appearance of such classical works as W. I. Thomas and F. Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant in Europe and in America1 and R. E. Park and H.A. Miller’s Old World Traits Transplanted,2 among others. More recently the application of modern anthropological methods and techniques as used by W. L. Warner and his associates in the study of ethnic groups in a New England industrial community have propounded new and useful knowledge on the dynamics of the social transferences that operate to condition ethnic groups to American life.3 The concepts of acculturation and assimilation are at present sharp enough to be of methodological precision in the analysis of certain situational observations of social life. A Sub-Committee for the Study of Acculturation of the Social Science Research Council provided a basic outline for future research on the problems of acculturation by defining both the contextual and the limiting factors of the process involved. Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first hand contacts, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups.4 The said sub-committee distinguished “culture change,” of which acculturation is but one aspect, and “assimilation,” which may be an aspect of acculturation, as well as “diffusion,” which as a process does not necessarily imply contacts between the members of the societies involved in the modification of their original cultures.5 The process of adapting the established ways of social life of a community or of individuals to other types and kinds of social life is a gradual process. The very nature of culture claims for such a gradation. The culture of a people or the standardized social behavior of the members of a given society tends to be consistent with each of its aspects, the ideal possibility being that of total integration. The tendency towards maintaining an equilibrium among the adapted new ways of behavior and the use of new tools in a culture imply by themselves the existence of a total system composed of parts. The conception of a systematic entity implies that a change of any of the parts of the total whole will produce a change in the total whole itself. Because a culture has a time persistence and changes within that context, and its implicit function is to provide man with suitable adaptations to social life, it is “regenerative,” to use Redfield’s term. The regeneration or modification of a culture through direct human contact between two different societies implies, therefore, that either or both of the cultures of the societies are to be modified in a direction suitable for both or either of the groups in order to avoid the destruction of both through the destruction of the standardized ways of doing things prevailing in both societies. The implication that culture is selective6 —that is, that matters of choice operate in the process of acculturation—is self-evident. The phenomenon of cultural selection, nevertheless, does not necessarily mean that conflict is avoided. What seems to happen is that the choice of a different aspect of culture tends towards a greater integration, and that if the result is conflict, the peoples involved in such a situation either compromise in some way so as to articulate the adopted way to their own, or substitute the old with the new completely, or resist the acquisition of the new element by stressing their own element and reacting against the conflictual element. Conflict is at least symptomatic of integration and ultimately a form of integration.7 The end products of acculturation, therefore, may take the forms of acceptance , some compromise in adaptation, or reaction.8 Acceptance ultimately may be equated with assimilation.9 Srole10 described assimilation as a phenomenon to be distinguished from acculturation in a contentual level. His dichotomy is of undoubted methodological value. Acculturation may be described as the transformation in the culture of one group or society in the direction of conformity with the culture of another group or society with which the first group is in contact. Social assimilation, on the other hand, has reference to the absorption or incorporation into a society’s social organization of an intrusive or neighboring, and originally differentiated...

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