What dose it mean to be assimilated and how does it effect you?
Assimilation, as defined by the social sciences, is the process of integration where immigrants are flushed into larger communities. In doing this, it creates for an instant loss of the characters of that immigrant which makes him different. When a immigrants comes to a new, the native people deem it nesisary to change the immigrant into what their culture has created to be normal. Looking at it from the host point of view, they are only doing this to keep order in their country. Also they do this inorder to help the imegrants get along in thier world. Mainly in doing this, It guides and helps the immegrent become one with socicety and allwos for an easyer life. If you look at it in the eyes of the immegrent, why should they change and what is the bid deal about living a life thats is not what they know. Over time these immigrants will no longer look or seem to be immigrants because they will now be seen to be as similar to every one else. A region where assimilation is occurring is at most times referred to as a melting pot. Assimilation may be voluntary. This is usually the case with most incoming immigrants. It may also be forced upon a group. This is usually the case with the receiving host country. Immigration may be used in other ways where immigrants have a greater interest to the political and economical leaders more than they would to the interest of the weak. National groups are strongly urged to assimilate however there is often much resistance in spite of the use of governmental force. Assimilation can have negative implications for national minorities. After assimilation, the distinctive features of the original culture will be minimized and may even disappear altogether. This is especially true in situations where the institutions of the dominant culture initiate programs to assimilate or integrate minority culture. One may think that "is it even possible for an individual to assimilate at all?" Ethnic minority individuaals who have regular association with non-ethnic minority people are often successful at assimilating. It has beeen argued that occurrences of assimilation are really only occurrences of compatibility of cultures. Is it hard to distinguish between situations where a given ethnic group has assimilated and situations where said group has merely become a contributing sector of society? Most scholars of immigration, say that immigrants often fit into host societies through adaptation, more selectively than assimilation. These immegrents keep their ethnic characteristics and culture depending on how the culture meets their needs in the host society. Assimilation commonly includes the conversion of religious members of a minority group, especially Judaism. Before the mid-19th century, most Jews were forced to live in small towns and limited to thir education. The only way Jews could get ahead in the host culture was to forget their identification with co-religionists and become assimilated Jews. In the the 20th century, rapid assimilation in the form of Jewish-Christian intermarriage whithered the ranks of Orthodox Judaism pretty bad. Jewish law dose not recognize children of non-Jewish mothers as Jewish, and further, the children of intermarriage may not be raised with a strong Jewish identity and tend to intermarry themselves. Update of March 22, 2007 12:22 AM
http://health.enotes.com/public-health-encyclopedia/assimilation
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4 comments:
Why Do we Assimilate? is it even nesessary?
in my opinion, we assimilate to not stand out. when the huge immigration movement hit, im sure a plethora of individuals felt isolated from the american culture, because it was probably very different from what they were used to. so, they wanted to be more american, and sacrificed a lot of customs in order to fit the mold. as we see in this story, assimilation is wanted, but tzuref wants to fight it. he wants to preserve the values that he has held near and dear to him, and these woodenton jews see things very differently. they dont want to cause rifts in society by practicing their religion intensely.
I do not think that assimilation is necessary. Culture is something that is very important, and is needed to learn about others. Once everyone fits the same mold, mankind is not as intersting. If your social wellbeing is at stake by not confroming (which it shouldnt be), then i guess you might want to take a look at assimilation, but i really dont think its necessary.
Assimilation is simply a defence mechanism. We for some reason feel the need to fear individualism within our soceity. I know that this is a current event that just happaned and has alot of sorrow behind it, but we must talk about this weeks shooting when we discuss this topic of assimilation and individuality. Soon after the shootings took place, people came out stating that the shooter was abnormal and did not behave as most others do in college. These individuals are helping to perpetuate the cycle of fear with individuals who act differently. This individual was obviously mentally unstable and of course would act differently. And this shooting was a terrible tradgedy within out country. However we cannot be afraid to act outside of the social norms, or even to criticize others that do act outside of the social norm. Not every individual who does not conform or assimilate is going to take innocent lives. It is only in extreme cases that this happans and it is almost impossible to forsee this type of tradgedy. In my girlfriends college psychology class the professor urged the students to look at their fellow students and report any unusual behavior. I felt that this was an unnecesary comment. This is only instilling a sense of fear to being an individual and putting a stronger emphasis on assimilation. This weeks incident and the loss of life will not be forgotten soon, but i feel that this type of pressure to assimilate and to scrutinize individuals for fear of this happaning again is unwarranted and goes against the idea of individualism. Just because a person might not be the social norm does not make them inherently evil does it?
This is very interesting. But to keep things clear, it is important to distinguish cultural assimilation, which typically refers to immigrant experience and the pressure immigrants face to conform to American values and cultural practices (which often has a specifically nationalist, sometimes racist charge), from social conformity, which is defined by the group in question, and to which Darren's example speaks. Of course Cho, the perpetrator of the violence in VA was himself an immigrant, so while it is difficult to say, this may be a case where conformity and assimilation overlap.
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