Social Adjustment among Wisconsin Norwegians

Abstract

FROM the point of view that culture, in the broadest sense of the word, is the total adjustment of human society to its physical and social environment, it is evident that no specific form of culture can be transplanted from one environment to the other without a more or less radical change. Unless the two environments are exactly alike in every respect-and no two environments will be found to be exactly alike-the migrating group will have to re-adjust to the new environment, i.e., it will have to discard certain value attitudes and patterns of behavior and replace them by others that better answer the new situation. Especially, in a complex cultural situation like that of the United States, where several groups of different racial and cultural backgrounds are thrown together in one geographical area, participating in the same political and economic system, we would have to expect rather drastic cultural changes to be involved in the process of adjustment between all these different groups. Besides, when the European immigrants of the i9th century came to this country they found an already established society, with its own form of culture, with its own values, norms, and patterns of behavior that, in some respects, were vastly different from their own. And they were immediately put under a heavy social and cultural pressure to conform to the new culture, a pressure that seems to have increased as the new society was more firmly established with always more comprehensive and efficient institutions. As a matter of well known fact, great efforts have been made in order to bring about this cultural conformity of the American people-through organized propaganda, Americanization programs, and, especially, through indoctrination in the compulsory school. The ideological rationalization of this activity is the well-known concept of the United States as a cultural melting pot that should produce an amalgamation of all the divergent culture forms that have been brought over to this country from all parts of the world. Along with this organized and officially sanctioned pressure on every alien culture group, the immigrants of the i9th century were also put under a social pressure from the Old American groups, who seem generally to have assumed an exclusive and superordinate status in relation to the more recent immigrants and their descendants. This unofficial pressure, based on economic standing and a long family history in the country, was mainly exercised through the formation of exclusive associations and a formal, rather refined, social life where more recent immigrants and their descendants were not accepted on a basis of equality. Finally, as time went on, the immigrants were also exposed to the pressure of a certain part of their own kinsfolk and former associates, namely those individuals, groups, and factions who submitted to the American way of life and became more American than the Americans-even in that respect that they refused to accept for full association those groups and individuals who stayed loyal to their original culture groups. In fact, the melting pot was rather conceived of as a smelting furnace that was supposed to burn out the alien culture elements like slag from the pure metal of American culture. And yet, ethnic groups still exist in this country, easily discernible by various traits characteristic of each particular group and, above all, by a special loyalty that keeps them together as groups and isolates them more or less from other groups. Evidently, as *Manuscript received August 2, 1949.