Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 106

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. a.s.similation and Amalgamation

The literature upon a.s.similation falls naturally under three main heads: (1) a.s.similation and amalgamation; (2) the conflict and fusion of cultures; and (3) immigration and Americanization.

Literature on a.s.similation is very largely a by-product of the controversy in regard to the relative superiority and inferiority of races. This controversy owes its existence, in the present century, to the publication in 1854 of Gobineau's _The Inequality of Human Races_.

This treatise appeared at a time when the dominant peoples of Europe were engaged in extending their benevolent protection over all the "unprotected" lesser breeds, and this book offered a justification, on biological grounds, of the domination of the "inferior" by the "superior" races.

Gobineau's theory, and that of the schools which have perpetuated and elaborated his doctrines, defined culture as an essentially racial trait. Other races might accommodate themselves to, but could not originate nor maintain a superior culture. This is the aristocratic theory of the inequalities of races and, as might be expected, was received with enthusiasm by the chauvinists of the "strong" nations.

The opposing school is disposed to treat the existing civilizations as largely the result of historical accident. The superior peoples are those who have had access to the acc.u.mulated cultural materials of the peoples that preceded them. Modern Europe owes its civilization to the fact that it went to school to the ancients. The inferior peoples are those who did not have this advantage.

Ratzel was one of the first to venture the theory that the natural and the cultural peoples were fundamentally alike and that the existing differences, great as they are, were due to geographical and cultural isolation of the less advanced races. Boas' _Mind of Primitive Man_ is the most systematic and critical statement of that view of the matter.

The discussion which these rival theories provoked has led students to closer studies of the effects of racial contacts and to a more penetrating a.n.a.lysis of the cultural process.

The contacts of races have invariably led to racial intermixture, and the mixed breed, as in the case of the mulatto, the result of the white-Negro cross, has tended to create a distinct cultural as well as a racial type. E. B. Reuter's volume on _The Mulatto_ is the first serious attempt to study the mixed blood as a cultural type and define his role in the conflict of races and cultures.

Historical cases of the a.s.similation of one group by another are frequent. Kaindl's investigations of the German settlements in the Carpathian lands are particularly instructive. The story of the manner in which the early German settlers in Cracow, Galicia, were Polonized mainly under the influence of the Polish n.o.bility, is all the more interesting when it is contrasted with the German colonists in the Siebenburgen, which have remained strongholds of the German language and culture in the midst of a population of Roumanian peasants for nearly eight hundred years. Still more interesting are the recent attempts of the Prussians to Germanize the former province of Posen, now reunited to Poland. Prussia's policy of colonization of German peasants in Posen failed for several reasons, but it failed finally because the German peasant, finding himself isolated in the midst of a Polish community, either gave up the land the government had acquired for him and returned to his native German province, or identified himself with the Polish community and was thus lost to the cause of German nationalism. The whole interesting history of that episode is related in Bernard's _Die Polenfrage_, which is at the same time an account of the organization of an autonomous Polish community within the limits of a German state.

The compet.i.tion and survival of languages affords interesting material for the study of cultural contacts and the conditions that determine a.s.similation. Investigations of the racial origins of European peoples have discovered a great number of curious cultural anomalies. There are peoples like the Spreewalder who inhabit a little cultural island of about 240 miles square in the Province of Brandenburg, Prussia.

Surviving remnants of a Slavic people, they still preserve their language and their tribal costumes, and, although but thirty thousand in number and surrounded by Germans, maintain a lively literary movement all their own. On the other hand, the most vigorous and powerful of the Germanic nationalities, the Prussian, bears the name of a conquered Slavic people whose language, "Old Prussian," not spoken since the seventeenth century, is preserved only in a few printed books, including a catechism and German-Prussian vocabulary, which the German philologists have rescued from oblivion.

2. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures

The contacts and transmission of cultures have been investigated in different regions of social life under different t.i.tles. The ethnologists have investigated the process among primitive peoples under the t.i.tle acculturation. Among historical peoples, on the other hand, acculturation has been called a.s.similation. The aim of missions has been, on the whole, to bring the world under the domination of a single moral order; but in seeking to accomplish this task they have contributed greatly to the fusion and cross-fertilization of racial and national cultures.

The problem of origin is the first and often the most perplexing problem which the study of primitive cultures presents.[248] Was a given cultural trait, i.e., a weapon, a tool, or a myth, borrowed or invented?

For example, there are several independent centers of origin and propagation of the bow and arrow. Writing approached or reached perfection in at least five different, widely separated regions. Other problems of acculturation which have been studied include the following: the degree and order of transmissibility of different cultural traits; the persistence or the immunity against change of different traits; the modification of cultural traits in the process of transmission; the character of social contacts between cultural groups; the distance that divides cultural levels; and the role of prestige in stimulating imitation and copying.

The development of a world-commerce, the era of European colonization and imperial expansion in America, Asia, and Africa and Australia, the forward drive of occidental science and the Western system of large-scale compet.i.tive industry have created racial contacts, cultural changes, conflicts, and fusions of unprecedented and unforeseen extent, intensity, and immediateness. The crash of a fallen social order in Russia reverberates throughout the world; reports of the capitalization of new enterprises indicate that India is copying the economic organization of Europe; the feminist movement has invaded j.a.pan; representatives of close to fifty nations of the earth meet in conclave in the a.s.sembly of the League of Nations.

So complete has been in recent years the interpenetration of peoples and cultures that nations are now seeking to preserve their existence not alone from a.s.sault from without by force of arms, but they are equally concerned to protect themselves from the more insidious attacks of propaganda from within. Under these circ.u.mstances the ancient liberties of speech and press are being scrutinized and questioned. Particularly is this true when this freedom of speech and press is exercised by alien peoples, who criticize our inst.i.tutions in a foreign tongue and claim the right to reform native inst.i.tutions before they have become citizens and even before they are able to use the native language.

3. Immigration and Americanization

The presence of large groups of foreign-born in the United States was first conceived of as a problem of immigration. From the period of the large Irish immigration to this country in the decades following 1820 each new immigrant group called forth a popular literature of protest against the evils its presence threatened. After 1890 the increasing volume of immigration and the change in the source of the immigrants from northwestern Europe to southeastern Europe intensified the general concern. In 1907 the Congress of the United States created the Immigration Commission to make "full inquiry, examination, and investigation into the subject of immigration." The plan and scope of the work as outlined by the Commission "included a study of the sources of recent immigration in Europe, the general character of incoming immigrants, the methods employed here and abroad to prevent the immigration of persons cla.s.sed as undesirable in the United States immigration law, and finally a thorough investigation into the general status of the more recent immigrants as residents of the United States, and the effect of such immigration upon the inst.i.tutions, industries, and people of this country." In 1910 the Commission made a report of its investigations and findings together with its conclusions and recommendations which were published in forty-one volumes.

The European War focused the attention of the country upon the problem of Americanization. The public mind became conscious of the fact that "the stranger within our gates," whether naturalized or unnaturalized, tended to maintain his loyalty to the land of his origin, even when it seemed to conflict with loyalty to the country of his sojourn or his adoption. A large number of superficial investigations called "surveys"

were made of immigrant colonies in the larger cities of the country.

Americanization work of many varieties developed apace. A vast literature sprang up to meet the public demand for information and instruction on this topic. In view of this situation the Carnegie Corporation of New York City undertook in 1918 a "Study of the Methods of Americanization or Fusion of Native and Foreign Born." The point of view from which the study was made may be inferred from the following statement by its director, Allen T. Burns:

Americanization is the uniting of new with native born Americans in fuller common understanding and appreciation to secure by means of self-government the highest welfare of all.

Such Americanization should produce no unchangeable political, domestic, and economic regime delivered once for all to the fathers, but a growing and broadening national life, inclusive of the best wherever found. With all our rich heritages, Americanism will develop through a mutual giving and taking of contributions from both newer and older Americans in the interest of the common weal. This study will follow such an understanding of Americanization.

The study, as originally planned, was divided into ten divisions, as follows: the schooling of the immigrant, the press and the theater, adjustment of homes and family life, legal protection and correction, health standards and care, naturalization and political life, industrial and economic amalgamation, treatment of immigrant heritages, neighborhood agencies, and rural developments. The findings of these different parts of the study are presented in separate volumes.

This is the most recent important survey-investigation of the immigrant, although there are many less imposing but significant studies in this field. Among these are the interesting a.n.a.lyses of the a.s.similation process in Julius Drachsler's _Democracy and a.s.similation_ and in A. M.

Dushkin's study of _Jewish Education in New York City_.

The natural history of a.s.similation may be best studied in personal narratives and doc.u.ments, such as letters and autobiographies, or in monographs upon urban and rural immigrant communities. In recent years a series of personal narrative and autobiographical sketches have revealed the intimate personal aspects of the a.s.similation process. The expectancy and disillusionment of the first experiences, the consequent nostalgia and homesickness, gradual accommodation to the new situation, the first partic.i.p.ations in American life, the fixation of wishes in the opportunities of the American social environment, the ultimate identification of the person with the memories, sentiments, and future of his adopted country--all these steps in a.s.similation are portrayed in such interesting books as _The Far Journey_ by Abraham Rihbany, _The Promised Land_ by Mary Antin, _Out of the Shadow_ by Rose Cohen, _An American in the Making_ by M. E. Ravage, _My Mother and I_ by E. C.

Stern.

The most reflective use of personal doc.u.ments for the study of the problems of the immigrant has been made by Thomas and Znaniecki in _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America_. In these studies letters and life-histories have been, for the first time, methodically employed to exhibit the processes of adjustment in the transition from a European peasant village to the immigrant colony of an American industrial community.

The work of Thomas and Znaniecki is in a real sense a study of the Polish community in Europe and America. Less ambitious studies have been made of individual immigrant communities. Several religious communities composed of isolated and una.s.similated groups, such as the German Mennonites, have been intensively studied.

Materials valuable for the study of certain immigrant communities, a.s.sembled for quite other purposes, are contained in the almanacs, yearbooks, and local histories of the various immigrant communities. The most interesting of these are the _Jewish Communal Register_ of New York and the studies made by the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America under the direction of O. M. Norlie.[249]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. a.s.sIMILATION AND AMALGAMATION

A. _The Psychology and Sociology of a.s.similation_

(1) Wundt, Wilhelm. "Bermerkungen zur a.s.sociationslehre,"

_Philosophische Studien_, VII (1892), 329-61. ["Complication und a.s.similation," pp. 334-53.]

(2) ----. _Grundzuge der physiologischen Psychologie._ "a.s.similationen,"

III, 528-35. 5th ed. Leipzig, 1903.

(3) Ward, James. "a.s.sociation and a.s.similation," _Mind_, N.S., II (1893), 347-62; III (1894), 509-32.

(4) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._ Methods and processes. "a.s.similation, Recognition," pp. 308-19. New York, 1895.

(5) Novicow, J. _Les Luttes entre societes humaines et leur phases successives._ Book II, chap. vii, "La Denationalisation," pp. 125-53.

Paris, 1893. [Definition of denationalization.]

(6) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. _Die sociologische Erkenntnis_, pp. 41-42.

Leipzig, 1898.

(7) Park, Robert E. "Racial a.s.similation in Secondary Groups with Particular Reference to the Negro," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX (1913-14), 606-23.

(8) Simons, Sarah E. "Social a.s.similation," _American Journal of Sociology_, VI (1900-1901), 790-822; VII (1901-2), 53-79, 234-48, 386-404, 539-56. [Bibliography.]

(9) Jenks, Albert E. "a.s.similation in the Philippines as Interpreted in Terms of a.s.similation in America," _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 140-58.

(10) McKenzie, F. A. "The a.s.similation of the American Indian,"

_Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 37-48.

[Bibliography.]