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8 Toward a Reconciliation of "Assimilation" and "Pluralism": The Interplay of Acculturation and Ethnic Retention Herbert]. Gans FOR MUCH OF THE LAST HALF of the twentieth century ' sociologists of ethnicity have been classified into two positions that are usually described as assimilationist or pluralist.I The positions have long been widely used, but even so, they suffer from at least three conceptual and other shortcomings. First, the empirical researchers placed in one or the other position are frequently conflated with the normative thinkers so that the former are then wrongly characterized as favoring that position. Sometimes empirical researchers are even being accused of hiding their norms behind empirical language. (A possible solution, for which it is probably too late, would be to use different concepts for empirical and normative purposes.) In any case, my purpose in writing this essay is strictly empirical. Second, even among empirical researchers, the discussion about whether the descendants of the now "old" European immigration and the members of today's "new" mainly non-European one are assimilating socially, economically, and culturally or whether they are retaining significant ties to their ethnic heritage has become polar. As a result, what is in reality a range of adaptations is sometimes being turned into a dichotomy, and a moral one, with the alleged assimilationists, and particularly "straight-line theory," becoming the villains in a social scientific morality play. Third, the labels attached to each position are adding to the polarization, for they are misleading. The so-called assimilationists have actually been emphasizing acculturation (becoming American culturally but not necessarily socially), while pluralism has taken on such a multiplicity of meanings that it is no longer useful as an empirical concept . Consequently, I will call the latter, that is, those who seek to avoid acculturation and to retain ethnic ties, ethnic retentionists, and shall hereafter write about acculturationists and retentionists . When positions are polarized and start hardening into theoretical ones inured to further data, empirical research-and straight thinking with it-suffer.2 Before the study of the new immigration is distorted in this fashion, the either-or polarization should be put to rest as soon as possible. Fortunately, the polarization is almost entirely unnecessary, and this chapter suggests a reconciliation between the two positions.3 It does so by using two arguments. One argument is that if acculturation is distinguished from assimilation, it is clear that acculturation begins in the immigrant generation, although researchers may qualify it as "partial" or "additive" (Gibson 1989). It is not accompanied by assimilation, however. Even the third generation, which may have become almost entirely acculturated, still retains a significant number of ethnic social ties, particularly familial ones, and cannot be said to have assimilated . However, this is not at odds with ethnic retention theory, for most of its advocates are concerned mainly with the retention of ethnic social ties and place less emphasis on cultural retention. The other argument suggests that whatever empirical differences remain between the two empirical positions may be a result of differences both in the research and in the researchers, particularly those collecting their own survey, interview, or ethnographic data. The original students of the European immigration who developed the acculturationist position probably obtained much of their data from second-generation adults, while the data about the new immigration is coming mainly from first-generation adults. Although studies of the second generation are becoming increasingly popular already, these are so far conducted mainly among schoolchildren and teenagers who still live with their parents and are under more retentionist pressures from their parents than they will be later. Furthermore, the major researchers and theor- 162 The Handbook ofInternational Migration ists of the European immigration were, as Robert K. Merton (1973) put it, outsiders who were neither members of nor had any great personal interest in the groups they studied. Many of their contemporaty successors, however, are insiders who often come from the ethnic groups they are studying and may be personally concerned with the survival of these groups. Thus, as a result of who was studied and of the perspectives of the two cohorts of researchers, an overly acculturationist theory of the old immigration has arisen, as well as an overly retentionist theory of the new immigration. Like Merton, I use insiders and outsiders as empirical concepts, and the obseIVations in this chapter are not intended as criticism of either. The research of both is needed for the full understanding of any set of immigrants or other group. ACCULTURATION...

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