More on culture and assimilation

Last updated on: September 11, 2015 at 10:40 am by Jane the Actuary

More on culture and assimilation 2015-09-11T10:40:52-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Culture: more than just lederhosen & dirndls (from pixabay.com; public domain)

If I have to read, in a comment or out there in the wide world of the blogosphere, “the Irish were discriminated against, but no one thinks twice about being Irish in America any longer, so that proves that every immigrant group will always and invariably assimilate,” one more time . . .

One topic I would like to read more about is, in fact, how the Irish arrival impacted the country they arrived in. They were, after all, unlike prior immigrants, coming here in order to escape famine back home, with nothing to their name but the clothes on their backs, and they stayed put in port cities because, again unlike prior immigrants, they had no start-up funds with which to make it further into the country. And in those cities, they lived in tenements, worked wherever they could, drank in taverns (Prohibition responded to a legitimate worry that Americans were becoming drunkards) and developed the Machine, which ran the city with heavy amounts of corruption.

(In contrast, as examples, my Danish great-grandfather and great-grandmother travelled to the lumber camps of Michigan, he as a lumberjack and she as a cook, and met there. My Greek ancestors travelled to St. Louis where they ran small businesses. My German ancestors travelled directly West to homestead. My own Irish ancestors came to the U.S. by way of Quebec, and by the time Richard Stapleton came to Tennessee in the 1880s he seemed to have already attained a degree of prosperity.)

We all simply point to nativists and “no Irish need apply” as xenophobia — but I would suspect that there was more to it than that, and a massive influx of extremely poor people surely impacted those who were there before. And culturally, the numbers were so high I find it unlikely they didn’t change the culture they found.

The trouble is, though, we in America struggle with the idea of culture. What does it mean, other than an ethnic holiday or two? Certainly, the arrival of groups from all over Europe, as well as Africa, now Latin America, with a small number from Asia as well, means that we’re a different place than if it had just been the Puritans and their descendants. But how? Certainly I’ve read multiple times that, in the business world, we take the approach of legal contracts pinning down every contingency, where other countries emphasize relationships between business partners (See Carly Fiorina’s anecdote here) which makes sense if there’s not a core sense of “commonality” binding us together. Perhaps that’s also why we’re (in)famous for our incessant lawsuits.

With respect to Islam itself, Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book Heretic, paints a picture of what are as much cultural as religious beliefs, in her list of Islamic tenets which she believes have to be jettisoned by Muslims themselves in order to modernize and live in harmony with the rest of the world and find a prosperity not funded by oil wealth:

Muhammad’s semi-divine and infallible status along with the literalist reading of the Qur’an, particularly those parts that were revealed in Medina;

The investment in life after death instead of life before death;

Sharia, the body of legislation derived from the Qur’an, the hadith, and the rest of Islamic jurisprudence;

The practice of empowering individuals to enforce Islamic law by commanding right and forbidding wrong;

The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war

(paraphrased from my summary of her book in May, which then further unpacks what she means in this list).

At the same time, one of the reformist Muslims that she points to, Zuhdi Jasser, is the son of Syrian immigrant parents, and, as he relates in his book, A Battle for the Soul of Islam, his parents taught him a moderate version of their faith, in which the Qur’an was, while “technically” treated as literally true, understood based on alternate meanings of words which create a version of Islam that ends up being must more “Western,” in such topics as treatment of women, attitudes towards other religions, etc. Was the Jasser family a bit of an odd duck, or was the Syrian culture, in the 60s say, more open than now, or are there in fact still moderate Syrians (and, if so, why can’t our government seem to find them for purposes of funding them in the fight against ISIS)? Dunno. If it’s the second of these answers, that the culture has changed/regressed over time, can it change as quickly in the other direction?

But — returning to the bigger question of culture and stepping away from the situation of Syrians/Muslims in Germany– I pulled out a book that my husband and I were given as a part of our cultural training before leaving on our expat assignment to Germany back in ’05: Riding the Waves of Culture by Fons Trompenars and Charles Hampden-Turner. This focuses on culture as it impacts global business, but it begins with a list of “seven fundamental dimensions of culture” (p. 8, 1997 edition).

With respect to relationships with people:

Universalism versus particularism, where universalism is a consistent abstract societal code, and particularism says that “friendship has special obligations and hence may come first.”

Individualism versus communitarianism: are people individuals first, or members of a group, and which is more important, the individual or the group?

Neutral versus emotional: is it acceptable to be emotional in a professional/business or similar settings?

Specific versus diffuse. this references the cultural practice of building “diffuse” personal relationships with business contacts, vs. working with them only on the specific business issue at hand. It’s why, whenever I have an e-mail exchange with someone from Asia or, in some cases, Europe, their e-mails generally start with an expression of “I hope you are well” rather than plunging into the matter at hand.

Achievement versus ascription. judging a person on the basis of their accomplishments, vs. birth/kinship/gender/age as well as connections and whether you’ve attended a prestigious school.

Other attitudes:

Attitudes to time. Do you focus on the past, present, or future? In a business context, certain cultures will value long-established firms, relative to upstarts, more than others.

Attitudes to the environment. “Some cultures see the major focus affecting their lives and the origins of vice and virtue as residing within the person. Hence, motivations and values are derived from within. Other cultures see the world as more powerful than individuals. They see nature as something to be feared or emulated.”

What would you add to the list? I’d say a big piece that’s missing is an approach as to how much you can change your fate, vs. being resigned to it, unless that’s meant to be covered by this last category. I’d also have to reread the book to know if the notion of “honor” and being personally dishonored, or being dishonored by the actions of others, are encompassed by one of these dimensions.

So — what is the “American culture”? Does it, has it, changed over time? To what extent is it formed by this chaotic process of new arrivals, and will it be further changed by the new arrivals from the South? Or is there no single “American culture”, but a perpetual jostling of cultures?

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