Cultural Accommodation Research Articles

Intermarriage and Cultural Change: A Study of Philippine-American Marriages

T HIS article is based upon a study of the modification of pattems occurring as a result of the marriage of Filipino women and American army personnel stationed in the Philippines. It is not directly concerned with the happiness of the marital partners nor does it attempt to estimate the success of marriages of this kind. Thus it is one of the few studies which consider the marital partners primarily in the role of culture bearers and endeavors to appraise the impact of contact in the family setting. Although intermarriage is obviously a situation which leads to conflict as well as diffusion and modification, most studies of intermarriage consider the cultural elements only indirectly and focus attention on the problem of individual adjustment. One study somewhat similar to the present one was made in the Canal Zone by Biesanz and Smith.' Another study which focused on changes in the role of the wife dealt with marriages in northern California between Poma Indian females and Filipino males.2 These two studies are the only ones of this type which could be located in the literature. In common with the Philippine study they focus on cultural change and they consider marriages in which one of the mates came from a cultural background reflecting the influence of a Spanish colonial culture. The specific settings, however, are quite different, and a comparison of these studies should throw some light on the influence of intermarriage on cultural accommodation. The Philippine study was focused on the vicinity of an American military installation which is economically important to the surrounding area but not completely dominant. The base is a nearly self-contained military unit, and, except for local employees and taverns catering to military trade, there is little direct contact between American personnel and the surrounding Philippine population. This study is based on an interview sample of the husbands of twenty families; this included all of the mixed families in the vicinity of the installation who had been married for two years or more. All of the families lived either on the base or close by, and in all cases the husband was a Caucasian American employed by the United States armed forces in either a civilian or a military capacity. The interviews were conducted by a graduate student in sociology at the University of the Philippines who was a military physician at the time and utilized his military contacts to obtain the interviews, which were held in his office. The interviews might be described as modified-directive since, although they covered a definite schedule, the respondent was encouraged to describe the family relationships in a narrative style using his own nomenclature.

Ceylon as a Demographic Laboratory: Preface to Analysis

The movements of people the contact and accommodation of cultures and the interpenetration of Western and Eastern economies within an evolving political setting have made demographic laboratories of many of the islands that lie off the coasts of Asia. In these microcosms the processes of population change can be portrayed with a clarity seldom possible in the vast areas of the mainland. Moreover the numerous historical experiments in the semi-isolated island fringes permit the segregation of the essential from the coincidental in the man-resources-culture relationship and so provide the basis for movement toward demographic generalization rather than demographic history. The status and prospects of such highly divergent cultures as those of the Philippines Formosa and Java have been summarized in previous issues of the Index. This note extends that series within the orbit of the diffusing culture of India through a preliminary resume of the demography of Ceylon. Ceylon is a small island only 25 thousand square miles in all but it is strategically located off Indias southeastern tip about halfway between Arabia and China on the historic route from Europe to the Far East. The luxuriant vegetation the spectacular beauty of the setting the ancient Buddhist rites and the esoteric life of the Veddas have been extolled in the literature of many lands. Less widely known but equally fascinating are the seven million Ceylonese whose lives are reflected in the manifold statistics that lie unused in volumes collecting dust in the libraries and government offices of the world. (excerpt)

Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups With Particular Reference to the Negro

1 The race problem has someti:mes been described as a problem in assimilation. It is not always clear, however, what assimilation means. Historically the word has had two distinct significations. According to earlier usage it meant "to compare" or "to make like." According to later usage it signifies "to take up and incorporate." There is a process that goes on in society by which individuals spontaneously acquire one another's language, characteristic attitudes, habits, and modes of behavior. There is also a process by which individuals and groups of individuals are taken over and incorporated into larger groups. Both processes have been concerned in the formation of modern nationalities. The modern Italian, Frenchman, and German is a composite of the broken fragments of several different racial groups. Interbreeding has broken up the ancient stocks, and interaction and imitation have created new national types which exhibit definite uniformities in language, manners, and formal behavior. It has sometimes been assumed that the creation of a national type is the specific function of assimilation and that national solidarity is based upon national homogeneity and "like-mindedness." The extent and importance of the kind of homogeneity that individuals of the same nationality exhibit have been greatly exaggerated. Neither interbreeding nor interaction has created, in what the French term "nationals," a more than superficial likeness or like-mindedness. Racial differences have, to be sure, disappeared or been obscured, but individual differences remain. Individual differences, again, have been intensified by education,