IMMIGRATION AND ACCULTURATION

In: Commentary, Band 22, Heft 5, S. 463-470

Abstract

A review & critique of Wilfred D. Borrie's Italians and Germans in Australia: A Study of Assimilation & S. N. Eisenstandt's The Absorption of Immigrants: A Comparative Study Based Mainly on the Jewish Community in Palestine and the State of Israel. Borrie still uses the econ market as his principal analytic model: in his view people migrate mainly for econ motives & the reaction in the host country is based mainly on the effects of their econ behavior. This theory is quite inadequate, if not in dealing with 19th cent immigration, then certainly in dealing with that of the post-1914 world. The Linton model (of universals, specialities & alternatives as the soc roles in any culture) employed by Eisenstandt is superior to Borrie's econ determinism. Nevertheless, Borrie's book is the better because of his greater experience, the greater simplicity of his topic, & his greater objectivity. The main question in Israel is: which subculture will be established as the norm for the country. To treat the present struggles between subcultures as a process of adaptation to one of them (the Hebrew Zionist) as if it were an already existent norm is to distort the picture. Eisenstadt's study does not fail in spite of its better theoretical structure; it fails in part because it lacks any theory at all suitable to the kind of complex problem he has to cope with. J. A. Fishman.