themes in the cultural geography of european ethnic groups in the united states

American Geographical Society

Themes in the Cultural Geography of European Ethnic Groups in the United StatesAuthor(s): Karl B. RaitzSource: Geographical Review, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jan., 1979), pp. 79-94Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/214238 .

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THEMES IN THE CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPEAN ETHNIC GROUPS IN THE UNITED STATES*

KARL B. RAITZ

BEGINNING with the detailed and beautifully illustrated ethnographic studies that

appeared in many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century geographical books and journals, through contemporary studies that describe the mosaic of culture groups, the

concept of ethnicity as a cause or correlate of human behavior patterns has been a continuing theme in American geography.1 Questions that geographers ask about ethnic groups change through the years and parallel the evolution of ethnic studies in the other social sciences. The

changing focus of ethnic studies may be attributed in part to the changing nature and

significance of ethnicity as an influence on human events and in part to a lack in the social sciences of a sufficiently broad paradigm of functioning pluralistic societies. If the social sciences have not yet evolved an appropriate paradigm for ethnic research, it is not from a lack of interest or effort, but rather it is because the subject is broad and multidimensional. This

paper will review the evolution of several major research themes that form the core of the historical and cultural geography literature on ethnic groups. I will restrict this discussion to themes and examples that apply to European ethnic groups in the American context. This limitation seems appropriate not only because the large volume of literature requires selectivity, but also because studies of these groups begin in the I88o's and span almost a century, and because the literature covers a broad range of topics.

PROBLEMS IN DEFINING ETHNICITY

Few geographers have concerned themselves explicitly with the problem of defining ethnicity. A comparable situation exists in sociology and anthropology. In sixty-five studies dealing with various aspects of ethnicity, Wsevolod Isajiw found only thirteen that included some form of definition of ethnicity and the remaining fifty-two used no explicit definition at all.2

Ethnicity involves many aspects of human behavior. Intuitively we know that ethnics are custodians of distinct cultural traditions and that the organization of social interaction is often based on ethnicity. Ethnicity may be a basis for friendship and may sometimes be the key to business or political success. In periods of conflict or hardship that accompany immigration or radical political change, the ethnic finds his peers to be a source of stability and reassurance. Ethnicity may also reinforce distrust, suspicion, and exclusiveness, and it may serve as the ideal focus for intergroup friction.3 Whether ethnicity brings any positive contribution to the wider society or culture is a difficult question about a controversial subject, albeit now no less controversial than sixty or a hundred years ago. A satisfactory definition of ethnic groups remains somewhat enigmatic. Attempts to isolate and explain their geographical import is difficult. On the one hand, "ethnic" may mean an objective condition, an immigrant, or the speaker of a foreign tongue, or the word may be subjective or experiential when it is used to

*I wish to thank Terry G. Jordan, Bryan Thompson, and Carol Agocs for their comments and criticisms on an earlier draft of this paper. 1

Examples of the literature include Friedrich Ratzel: The History of Mankind (2 vols.; Macmillan, New York, 1897), Vol. II; Diamond Jenness: The Eskimos of Northern Alaska: A Study in the Effect of Civilization, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 5, 1918, pp. 89-101; B. C. Wallis: Central Hungary: Magyars and Germans, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 6, 1918, pp. 421-435.

2 Wsevolod Isajiw: Definitions of Ethnicity, Ethnicity, Vol. 1, 1974, p. I I . 3 Andrew M. Greeley: Why Can't They Be Like Us? (Institute of Human Relations Press, New York,

1969), p. 30.

* DR. RAITZ is an associate professor of geography at the University of Kentucky, Lexing- ton, Kentucky 40506.



THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

describe the behavior of someone whose social contacts are Greek-American, who enjoys Greek cooking, and who votes for Greek-American politicians even though he does not speak the

language and is not a recent immigrant. "Ethnic" does not describe differences among peoples living within their own national

boundaries. It would be improper to use the word to identify Swedes or Frenchmen living in their own countries. Therefore, ethnicity is the result of social interaction between people of different culture groups and the realization by both the host population and the minority group that there is a difference between the two groups in culture and behavior.4

The word "ethnic" is akin to the word "region" in that several scales of study may be

applied, but care is required to understand how the nature of the group may change as the scale is manipulated. Applied in a macroscale study of cultural groups, ethnicity may be a useful

concept to categorize a wide range of group differences. But a different sense of scale is required if the aim is to measure the importance of minorities within racial or national groups. The

presence of minorities within objectively defined groups poses a problem as to the kinds of

questions that may be answered because gross census-type data rarely recognize the existence of subgroups.

In the social sciences, ethnicity has traditionally been viewed as an objective status cate-

gorized by nationality, religion, race, minority status, culture, or some combination of these attributes. Definitions of ethnicity that are based on objective attributes often stress a kinship with ancestors who shared a common culture and are viewed as an ascribed attribute, such as

age or sex, that defines status or role in certain situations. Such an approach to the study of ethnic groups predominates in several social sciences.5 Other definitions recognize that ethnic-

ity may exhibit both objective attributes and experiential dimensions.6

ETHNICITY IN GEOGRAPHY

The first studies to appear in the American geographical literature considered the problem of the development of distinct culture groups in the objective sense. These were essays in human ecology or ethnography, often written about exotic peoples in distant places. Human

ecology studies sought to understand the relationships between man and environment on the one hand and on the other social and cultural institutions created by man to maintain balance and harmony with nature.7 Groups delimited by national origin or race were assumed to have

developed their cultural and social forms in relative isolation as a response to such ecological influences as density, mobility, political attitudes, resources, and environmental conditions.

Through a series of adaptive inventions and selective borrowing, separate culture groups developed. A basic assumption of the human ecology studies was that environmental conditions fostered cultural diversity, which was then maintained by environmental isolation.8

After World War I, stimulated perhaps by the League of Nations' interest in the welfare of

minority groups and political realignments in several European countries, a number of ethno-

graphic studies appeared that reviewed the internal conflicts brought about by the presence of

4Abner Cohen, edit.: Urban Ethnicity (Tavistock Publications, London, 1974), p. xi. 5 Milton M. Gordon: Assimilation in American Life (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1964), p. 27. 6 For examples of definitions of this type see H. S. Morris: Ethnic Groups, in International Encyclopedia

of the Social Sciences (edited by David L. Sills; 17 vols.; Macmillan Co., and The Free Press, New York, 1968), Vol. 5, p. 167; George A. and Achilles G. Theodorson: A Modern Dictionary of Sociology (Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, 1969), p. 135. 7 R. D. McKenzie: Human Ecology, in Encyclopdia of the Social Sciences (edited by Edwin R. A.

Seligman; 15 vols.; Macmillan Co., New York, 1930), Vol. 5, pp. 314-315. For an example of the early ethnographies, see Milivoy S. Stanoyevich: The Ethnography of the Yugo-Slavs, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 7, 1919, pp. 91-97. A certain amount of caution is advised in the use of the term "human ecology" because it has been used to describe a variety of human studies. The varied meaning is outlined in Marston Bates: Human Ecology, in Anthropology Today: Selections (edited by Sol Tax; Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962), pp. 222-223.

8 Fredrik Barth, edit.: Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Differences (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, 1969), p. 9.

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THEMES IN CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPEAN ETHNIC GROUPS

diverse ethnic groups in a single political unit. Studies by Erland Nordenskiold and Olinto Marinelli were especially interesting for their insight into the problems created by the presence of an ethnic minority within a host culture and for their use of color maps to locate areas of "domination".9

One of the earliest papers to appear in an American geographical journal on ethnic groups in the United States was by Eugene Van Cleef on Finnish settlement in the Lake Superior region. The study developed the theme of comparative geographical environments as a ratio- nale for settlement location. Van Cleef argued that environments similar to those found in Finland attracted Finnish immigrants into the shield lands of northern Minnesota and upper Michigan. Because of their familiarity with marsh meadows, stony fields, and a short growing season, the Finns seemed ideally suited to re-create their culture in these northlands, and Van Cleef concluded that "in light of geographic conditions," Finnish immigrants should be recruited to settle the pine and birch forests of northern Minnesota.'? If the similarity of environments between the old country and North America suggested a reasonable explanation for the location of some immigrant settlements, it was noticeably unsatisfactory for others."

THE PROBLEM OF "AMERICANIZATION"

Many immigrant groups made sustained efforts to preserve some degree of identity by use of their native language and by retention of other customs. Residence sites were often chosen because a location in an urban industrial ghetto, a rural area, or a small village would assure them of being among friends or relatives from home who shared their culture. The Bureau of the Census, cognizant of the growing numbers of foreigners in the country, began recording foreign-born population by county in I86o and published data on individual nationalities by county for the first time in I870.

As the immigrant population increased during the four decades preceding World War I, there was growing concern among old-stock or native-born citizens that large numbers of immigrants seemed uninterested in assimilation into American culture but preferred to cling to old folkways. But most immigrants would not have agreed with that assessment. They were aliens, cut off from friends and from homeland. Those who did not wish to return home after a few years of work in America wanted to establish some identification with their newly adopted land. In short, most immigrants wanted to acculturate, to learn new occupational skills, and to earn a living. The best way to become an American, it was thought, was to first become what we now term an ethnic.12 To the immigrant, the status as a hyphenated American, that is German-American or Italian-American, was a symbol of acculturation and was preferable to being labeled a German or an Italian.'3

Until World War I old-stock Americans assumed that the social and cultural environment in the United States would quickly transform immigrants into an integral part of the American community." But during the war some immigrants voiced their sympathy for their kin in

9 Erland Nordenskiold: Finland: The Land and the People, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 7, I919, pp. 361-376; and Olinto Marinelli: The Regions of Mixed Populations in Northern Italy, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 7, i919, pp. 129- 148. Nordenskiold observed that although the country was predominantly Finnish speaking, the Finns seem to have had a low resistence to Swedish "domination" with the result that Finland was "permeated with Swedish culture."

10 Eugene Van Cleef: The Finn in America, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 6, 1918, pp. 185-214. " H. F. Raup: The Italian-Swiss Dairymen of San Luis Obispo County, California, Yearbook Assn. of Pacific Coast Geogrs., Vol. 1, 1935, pp. 3-8.

12 Andrew M. Greeley: Ethnicity in the United States (Rand McNally Publishing Co., Chicago, 1976), p. 296.

13 Robert E. Park: Cultural Aspects of Immigration. Immigrant Heritages, Proc. Nat. Conference of Social Work, Vol. 68, 1921, pp. 494-495.

"4 Read Lewis: Americanization, in Encyclopedia [see footnote 7 above], Vol. 2, 1930, pp. 33-35; and Emory S. Bogardus: Immigration and Race Attitudes (D. C. Heath and Co., New York, 1928).




Europe, and that indiscretion aroused widespread efforts to "Americanize" all foreign-born. Many different approaches to enforce acculturation were used. The common method used in business and industry was to teach the immigrants English.'6 Political coercion and suppres- sion of immigrant newspapers and fraternal organizations were also practiced, but the repul- siveness of those efforts generally discredited the Americanization process.l6

It seems incongruous that the old-stock Americans who objected most to the immigration of foreigners, considered inferior and unassimilatable, had themselves descended from immigrants of an earlier day. Rationalization for attitudes concerning the foreign-born was based on the thesis of Teutonic superiority and the misapplication of Charles Darwin's concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest.'7 Even scholars attributed the achievement of democracy in the United States to the initiative, vigor, discipline, and political acumen inherent in the Teutonic stock of the earliest settlers. Non-Teutonic immigrants were seen as a threat to democratic stability. They had to be kept out of the country and those who were already here should be forced to adopt American culture. The English, it was written, were bred from the purest strains of German and Scandinavian blood and were therefore model Teutons. Thus, English stock and English culture became the ideal to be emulated by all immigrants.18

Darwin's "Origin of Species" was used by historians and geographers to interpret American

development as the response by superior stock to the selecting forces of hardship and hazard in a new land.'9 The rigors of an ocean voyage and the obstacles of the forest and prairie frontiers were interpreted as selective factors that created a superior "racial" type. Later immigrants, who settled in the east and did not come west to grapple with the difficulties of the frontier, were judged inferior because they had not submitted to the selection process. Among geographers, Ellen Semple was a leading and articulate proponent of this thesis.20

Between I9I0 and I9I9 there was considerable scholarly concern that the high genetic quality and the sophisticated culture of the American people would be diminished in the

presence of growing numbers of nonproductive and nonassimilating foreign-born. Anthropolo- gist Clark Wissler commented that immigrant cultural perseverance was "a menace to our culture and national existence "21 Ellsworth Huntington was deeply concerned about the

degeneration of the nation's biological stock by uncontrolled admission of immigrants. He wrote extensively on eugenics and the immigrant problem and testified before congressional immigration committees and corresponded with congressmen on such topics as control of unrestricted immigration of Puerto Ricans.22

After I924, when Congress severely limited further immigration from Europe and all but excluded Orientals, scholarly interest in ethnic groups turned to monitoring their acculturation into the mainstream of society. The ideal United States was conceived by some to be a great melting pot of races and cultures. The concept of acculturation, wherein the culture of the ethnic population was thought to be gradually replaced by a new culture borrowed from the

"SJohanthan Schwartz: Henry Ford's Melting Pot, in Ethnic Groups in the City (edited by Otto Feinstein; Heath Lexington Books, Lexington, Mass., 1971), pp. 191-198; and Emory S. Bogardus: Essentials of Americanization (Univ. Southern California Press, Los Angeles, 1923), pp. 342-367.

16 Lewis, op. cit. [see footnote 14 above]. 17 E. N. Saveth: American Historians and European Immigrants (Columbia Univ. Press, New York,

1948), p. 42; Madison Grant: The Passing of the Great Race, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 2, 1916, pp. 354-360. 18 Saveth, op. cit. [see footnote 17 above], p. 92; A. P. Brigham: Geographic Influences in American

History (Ginn and Co., Boston, 1903), p. 326; and H. J. Fleure: The Racial History of the British People, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 5, 1918, pp. 216-231.

19 Saveth, op. cit. [see footnote 17 above], p. 91. 20 Ellen Churchill Semple: American History and Its Geographic Conditions (Houghton, Mifflin and

Company, Boston, 1903), pp. 310 and 334. 21 Clark Wissler: Opportunities for Coordination in Anthropological and Psychological Research, Amer.

Anthropol., Vol. 22, 1920, p. 1O. 22 Geoffrey J. Martin: Ellsworth Huntington: His Life and Thought (Archon Books, Hamden, Conn.,

1973), pp. 176-177; and Ellsworth Huntington: Geography and Natural Selection, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 14, 1924, pp. I-16.

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host population, was an old one. But the popular term for this complex cultural adaptation process, "melting pot," apparently was not in use until it was coined by the Jewish immigrant playwright, Israel Zangwill. The term first appeared in the title of a popular drama, "The Melting Pot," written and performed in I908. Zangwill conceived of the American nation as a vast crucible that would fuse all Europeans, Asians, and Africans into a single homogeneous society.23

Zangwill's idealized melting pot was one in which all individuals of all cultures including the host society, would undergo acculturative change so that a true blending of cultures would occur. But with the exception of the Hispanic Southwest where Anglos have borrowed extensively from the Spanish-Americans, few significant traits have been borrowed from immigrant groups.24 The melting-pot schema of the United States has been more a romantic vision than a reality.26 Instead, old-stock Americans have consistently supported the acculturative process. Milton Gordon terms it "Anglo-Conformity." The central assumption of Anglo-Conformity is that Americans wish to maintain English institutions modified in the American context as a basis for American culture. The concern that all foreign-born subject themselves to the acculturative processes implicit in Anglo-Conformity was most fully expressed by those who actively participated in the Americanization movement.26

Those immigrants who did not readily acculturate became subject matter for the more liberal minded geographers of the 1920's and 1930's. J. Russell Smith, in his book "North America" for example, observed that because of the large number of immigrants living in the country's largest city, "the population of New York City [was] richer in its variety than any other similar group in the world."27 Smith's observations on the contribution of European immigrants to agricultural production or to the appearance of the material landscape are sprinkled throughout the volume. His comments reflected a sympathetic mind that saw the potential contribution of ethnic groups to American culture, while the more virulent scholars of the period demanded a stop to immigration so that American "type" could be kept from defilement. Although Smith agreed with a basic premise of the eugenic movement-that cultural background, race (implied by his use of the terms "blood" or "stock"), and economic success were closely interrelated-he applied the premise in a different way. Smith took the position that certain ethnic groups enjoyed an economically secure life and respect from their peers because of special abilities and cultural background. An example was farmers of German ancestry who lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.28

In the 1930's and 1940's the thesis of ethnic superiority-the idea that some ethnic groups were superior to others or to old-stock Americans in certain manual or intellectual skills-was either a reaction to the excesses of the Americanization period or the result of impressions gained in firsthand observations of ethnics as farmers or entrepreneurs. Geographers who spent a good deal of time in the field noted what to them were obvious differences in how well certain ethnic farmers fared on land that other groups found little success in tilling.29 The achievements

23 Israel Zangwill: The Melting Pot (Macmillan, New York, 19o09). 24 Richard Nostrand: The Hispanic-American Borderland: Delimitation of an American Culture Re-

gion, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 60, 1970, pp. 638-661. 26 Greeley, Ethnicity [see footnote 12 above], pp. 304-305. 26 For a full discussion of the development of Anglo-Conformity as a philosophy of acculturation and

assimilation, see Gordon, op. cit. [see footnote 5 above], pp. 88-i 14. 27J. Russell Smith: North America (Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1925), p. 129. 28 Ibid., p. i88. 29 Especially important here are studies by Walter Kollmorgen who was the first geographer to

approach the study of cultural imprint on agricultural activity in a scientific way. In his study of Franklin County, Tennessee, Kollmorgen compared manuscript census data for three native-born white control groups with data for the German-Swiss to gauge differences in land use and productivity. See Walter Kollmorgen: The German-Swiss in Franklin County, Tennessee: A Study of the Significance of Cultural Considerations in Farming Enterprises, Report LE-7 (Bur. Agricultural Economics, Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., 1940); idem, The German Settlement in Cullman County, Alabama: An Agricultural Island in the Cotton Belt, General Publication No. G3i (Bur. Agricultural Economics, Dept. of Agriculture,

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of the successful groups, especially German-speaking sectarians such as the Amish, were attributed to the strength of character, resolve, and long experience forged in Europe and

perpetuated in the United States. The thesis was a reversal of the Darwinian concept of selection that had been used in arguments by eugenicists.30

The thesis of the ethnic superiority of the German farmer was rexamined in depth in the I960's. James Lemon and Terry Jordan analyzed the farming practices of German farmers in

Pennsylvania and Texas. Lemon used church founding dates to construct a map of ethnic distribution in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. County tax lists were used to determine crop acreages, and contemporary traveler's reports provided evidence to substantiate cultural practices. He found little difference between the Germans and their English and Scotch-Irish

neighbors in terms of agricultural techniques, crops, or responses to innovations.31 Jordan concluded that the German farmers in Texas were more likely to practice intensive agriculture than their American neighbors. From primary historical materials and manuscript censuses

Jordan found that the Germans were primarily landowners, not renters, and that they invested more labor and capital in the land. He stressed ethnic variation in the contention that no reason existed to suppose that high levels of intensity, productivity, or landownership were a desire or a goal of the old-stock American farmers, and that a comparison of the two groups was inappropriate.32

The entire question of differentials in skills among ethnic groups remains unresolved. Nor is it an inconsequential matter because the application of uncommon skills bears directly on the introduction and diffusion of innovative cultural practices, on the selection of settlement sites, and on the use or abuse of land. Although it is unreasonable to assume that long-standing stereotypes of skill superiority were based on objective analysis, it is likewise unproductive to assume that no differences in skills existed between ethnic groups or to ignore differences as unimportant.33

ACCULTURATION AND ASSIMILATION

There is a vast difference between the processes of acculturation and assimilation as these terms have been traditionally defined in anthropology and sociology. Acculturation, according to Adamson Hoebel's definition, is "the process of interaction between two societies in which the culture of the society in the subordinate position is drastically modified to conform to the culture of the dominant society."34 The word "acculturation" implies an ongoing process of

Washington, D. C., 1941); and idem, Culture of a Contemporary Rural Community: The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Rural Life Studies No. 4 (Bur. Agricultural Economics, Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., 1942). 30 Richard H. Shryock: British Versus German Traditions in Colonial Agriculture, Miss. Val. Hist. Rev., Vol. 26, 1939-1940, p. 39-54; Karl J. Pelzer: Pennsylvania Germans, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 30, 1940, pp. 68o-681; and Arthur B. Cozzens: Conservation in German Settlements of the Missouri Ozarks, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 33, 1943, pp. 286-298. 31

James T. Lemon: The Agricultural Practices of National Groups in Eighteenth-Century Southeastern Pennsylvania, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 56, 1966, pp. 467-496.

32 Terry G. Jordon: German Seed in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth-Century Texas (Univ. Texas Press, Austin, 1966), p. 193. For a review of the thesis of ethnic superiority in agriculture, see Howard F. Gregor: Geography of Agriculture: Themes in Research (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1970), pp. 72-76.

`3 Theodore Saloutos: The Immigrant Contribution to American Agriculture, Agric. Hist., Vol. 5o, 1976, pp. 49-53. Saloutos accepted as evidence of German superiority in farming in Pennsylvania a number of secondary sources, including historical sketches and reports written in the first two decades of the twentieth century. A productive way to analyze the present importance of ethnicity to agriculture would be to use questionnaires to evaluate value systems that are ordinarily less subject to change than technology or economic status. See Robert L. Skrabanek: The Influence of Cultural Backgrounds on Farming Practices in a Czech-American Rural Community, Southwest Soc. Sci. Quarterly, Vol. 31, 1951, pp. 258-262.

34 E. Adamson Hoebel: Anthropology: The Study of Man, (3rd edit.; McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, I966), p. 559; and R. H. C. Teske, Jr. and B. H. Nelson: Acculturation and Assimilation: A Clarification, Amer. Ethnol., Vol. i, 1974, pp. 351-367.

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interaction. The process is one of adjustment wherein an ethnic group moves from physical or social isolation, or both, to gradual imitation of the host culture through the diffusion of ideas, values, and artifacts. To grasp fully the concept of assimilation one must distinguish the differences between cultural and social systems. According to Alfred Kroeber and Talcot Parsons, culture is language, religion, law, symbols, beliefs, and values, whereas a social system is the interrelations and associations among individuals and groups as in church, family, club, or informal group membership. Although the relationships between elements in dne system are independent of those in the other, there is important interaction between them. Assimilation then involves a full evolution of both the cultural and social systems to conform with the host and dominant society, a complex and multifaceted process.36

The terms "acculturation" and "assimilation" are used here in the same context as defined by Milton Gordon.36 The process of assimilation has a number of stages. Acculturation, or "cultural assimilation" as he has termed it, is the first or initial stage of assimilation where immigrants accommodate to the basic values and behavior patterns of the host society to the point where they can function within it. The process that takes the ethnic to the next level of incorporation into the host population is what Gordon terms "structural assimilation" in which newcomers are accepted into the host's primary social groups and are then identified as members of the host population. If this occurs, several remaining stages of assimilation that involve intermarriage and membership in civic groups will follow.37

The fact that ethnic groups exist suggests that they are not full participants in a host society. During the last half-century geographers have expended much scholarly effort to determine the role played by geographic factors in the acculturation or assimilation of ethnic groups into the mainstream of society. Ellen Semple, for example, thought that the most important factor in the assimilation of immigrants was America's large expanses of open land and that "our vast territory has enabled us to take in and assimilate" large numbers of people.38 Although one is tempted to read Miss Semple's words so as to imply that the physical environment is the sole ingredient in the assimilation process, she used the word "environment" more in the tradition of the human ecologists, a generic term that includes societal, cultural, and physical elements. Her salient observation that distance between units of an ethnic group increased the rate of assimilation remains a valid question, the implications of which have been discussed in some recent studies.

In a study of Dutch residential structure in Kalamazoo, Michigan, John Jakle and James Wheeler concluded from numerous case studies of American ethnic groups that while acculturation proceeds apace for some groups, the process might be accelerated if the barriers of social distance can be removed.39 The opportunity for adoption of traits from the dominant host society seemed to be increased by a decline in ethnic residential propinquity. Jakle and Wheeler used surnames in city directories as the best available means of identification to map Dutch-American residents for four time periods. Noting the changing residential densities shown by the maps and other subjective evidence of acculturation, they concluded that the cultural interaction required to maintain ethnic identity within a Dutch neighborhood declined with distance from the core to the edge where interaction between ethnics decreased and interaction between ethnics and members of the host society increased. Jakle and Wheeler

35 A. L. Kroeber and Talcott Parsons: The Concepts of Culture and the Social System, Amer. So)ciol. Rev., Vol. 23, 1958, pp. 582-583.

36 Gordon, op. cit. [see footnote 5 above], p. 71. 37 Ibid. 38 Semple, op. cit. [see footnote 20 above], p. 312. Semple's ideas should be compared with those of

Frederick Jackson Turner, who stated that on the frontier the "composite nationality for the American people" was formed. See Frederick J. Turner: The Frontier in American History (Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1921), pp. 22-23.

39John A. Jakle and James 0. Wheeler: The Changing Residential Structure of the Dutch Population in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 59, 1969, p. 442. See their related paper, John A. Jakle and James 0. Wheeler: The Dutch in Kalamazoo, Michigan, A Study of Spatial Barriers to Acculturation, Tijdschr. voor Econ. en Soc. Geogr., Vol. 6o, 1969, pp. 249-254.

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argued that the edge of the ethnic community, even where the edge represented only a social and not a morphological boundary, was a barrier to interaction between the ethnic community and the outside world.4? It appears to follow that as accessibility improves or as ethnic residences are dispersed through the city the process of acculturation would accelerate.

Numerous other factors have affected the acculturation of European immigrants. In some cases changes of attitudes and values began before immigration to the New World. Jordan found that assimilation of German farmers was facilitated by at least three processes. First, initial contacts were made through emigrant guidebooks obtained in Germany. Often these books were closely followed for the first year or more in Texas. Second, many Germans served as laborers or apprentices for established Germans who had arrived earlier and had been partially assimilated. Third, many immigrants joined agricultural societies where problems of

dealing with the land and their Texas neighbors were discussed.4' Jordan's research showed that full assimilation was incomplete and that German-American farmers in Texas retained a measure of distinctiveness for decades after their arrival.

If the differences between two minority groups are based on race or class distinctions and they have long resisted acculturation, interaction and gradual cultural adjustment may take place when a third group, representing a neutral position, becomes socially active in the area. John Western has studied this process in southern Louisiana.42 Two resistant groups, Cajuns and blacks, were very slow to acculturate until an aggressive third group, termed "mainstream Americans" by Western, arrived to seek jobs in the oil fields. The Cajun group was largely absorbed into the American population, and the blacks were in the very early stages of acculturation. The American group did not restrict its communication or social contacts with the Cajuns or the blacks to the same degree that the Cajuns and blacks had restricted interchange with each other. The American group's higher level of interaction thereby facilitated their role as catalyst in the acculturation of the Cajuns and blacks. Communication thus is not only the basis for sustaining ethnic identity but also is a key element in the acculturation process.43

The city was thought to be the place where immigrant ethnic groups would assimilate most rapidly. Large numbers of immigrants, especially those who arrived from eastern and southern Europe after 188o, settled in the commercial and industrial cores of many northeastern cities in search of the low-paying, unskilled jobs available there. The assimilation process was evident in the succession of groups that occupied the low-rent tenement districts in the central cities. The first immigrants, tied to the area by their jobs but reluctant to be separated from friends, would remain for a generation. The second generation would begin to move put of the old neighborhoods, and subsequent generations would disperse throughout the city and suburbs.44

Rhoads Murphey used the phrase "sequent occupance" to describe this process in a Boston area occupied in turn by Irish and later immigrant groups including Central European Jews, Italians, Syrians, and Chinese. The degree of assimilation was implicit in the rate at which each group moved. The Chinese, the last group to enter Murphey's study area, did not readily assimilate and then move, in part because a large portion of the adult males did not go

40Jakle and Wheeler, Dutch in Kalamazoo, [see footnote 39 above], p. 253. Robert Park argued that modern communication devices have dissolved distance and broken down the isolation that once separated people. Therefore residential dispersal would not necessarily portend rapid acculturation. See Robert Park: Human Communities, (The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., 1952), p. 174; William M. Dobriner: Class in Suburbia (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1963), pp. 65-67 and i 18); and Stanley Lieberson: Suburbs and Ethnic Residential Patterns, Amer. Journ. Sociol., Vol. 67, 1962, pp. 673-681.

4"Jordon, op. cit., [see footnote 32 above], pp. 201-202. 42John Western: Social Groups and Activity Patterns in Houma, Louisiana, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 63, 1973,

pp. 301-321. But compare Western's discussion with that of Minnie Kelley who found that the "American element" and the Acadians did not interact (Acadian South Louisiana, Jour. Geogr., Vol. 33, 1934, pp. 81- 90).

43 Tamotsu Shibutani and Kian Kwan: Ethnic Stratification (Macmillan Co., London, 1965), pp. 216 and 565.

44 The term "succession" as used here was first elaborated in sociology by Robert Park: Succession, an Ecological Concept, Amer. Sociol. Rev., Vol. 1, 1936, pp. 171-179.

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through the public school system to learn American ways and language and also because prejudice made it difficult to find jobs and accommodations in many sections of the city.45

David Ward decided that the process of immigrant invasion and succession in central-city immigrant neighborhoods was affected not only by assimilation and displacement of one group by another but also by the size and economic status of the group. In Boston, the small and poor immigrant groups which tended to occupy cheap tenements adjacent to the expanding business and warehousing districts were displaced either by a new group or by urban expansion. Larger groups, which lived in well-established tenement districts, resisted displacement because the buildings that they occupied were valuable to their owners as residential rental property.46

As assimilation to a host population proceeds, the ethnic group makes numerous adjustments in social interaction. New patterns of social behavior are often associated with major changes in spatial behavior, such as a change in residence, church membership, and visiting or shopping preferences. Between 1910 and 1960 the concentrated immigrant ghettos in many American cities dispersed considerably, and by 1960 many European ethnic groups had become residentially assimilated.47 John Jakle, Stanley Brunn, and Curtis Roseman argued that a shift from an immigrant neighborhood to a suburban residential area increased the likelihood of contact with the host population and thereby hastened the assimilation process. All other types of informal and formal social contacts, which they termed activity space behavior and which played an important role in communication with the host population, are also altered, because acculturation in urban areas is accomplished in the context of spatial adjustments to residence, place of work, and other activity space.48

The popular image of a suburb is that it is the most ethnically homogenous part of the American city. Although Jakle, Brunn, and Roseman pointed out that the movement of ethnic groups to the suburbs is not necessarily accompanied by assimilation, many people assume that suburbia is a great social melting pot. Michael Paranti, summarizing from numerous studies in sociology and political science, held that this is not the case, because ethnic social structure can be maintained without the convenience of geographical propinquity. The neighborhood shops, bars, or fraternal clubrooms that reinforced ethnic identities in the old inner- city immigrant communities need not be replicated in the suburbs. The facilities are replaced by extended family ties and by church, education, social, and charity organizations. Distances are easily overcome by the ubiquitous telephone and the automobile.49

CULTURAL TRANSFER: A PRODUCT OF MIGRATION

The literature on the European migration to America is voluminous, and portions have been summarized or reviewed by geographers, historians, and sociologists.50 Rather than provide a duplicate discussion of that material here, I will discuss one of the most important products of migration-the transfer of cultural traits from Europe to the New World.

The transfer of cultural elements from the Old World and their subsequent patterns has been a major theme in geographical studies. Many immigrant groups attempted to establish a

46 Rhoads Murphey: Boston's Chinatown, Econ. Geogr., Vol. 28, 1952, pp. 244-255. Note again the use of the term "assimilation" here is what Milton Gordon would have termed cultural or behavioral assimilation (Gordon, op. cit. [see footnote 5 above], p. 71).

46 David Ward: The Emergence of Central Immigrant Ghettoes in American Cities: 1840-1920, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 58, 1968, pp. 343-359.

47John A. Jakle, Stanley S. Brunn, and Curtis C. Roseman: Human Spatial Behavior: A Social Geography (Duxbury Press, North Scituate, Mass., 1976), pp. 159-162.

48Ibid., p. 162. 49 Michael Parenti: Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification, in The Ethnic Factor in

American Politics (edited by Brett W. Hawkins and Robert A. Lorinskas; Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., Columbus, Ohio, 1970), pp. 69-70. so Wilbur Zelinsky: The Cultural Geography of the United States (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, 1973), pp. 20-28; Conrad Taeuber and Irene B. Taeuber: The Immigrants in the Changing Population of the United States (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1958), pp. 48-70; and Maldwyn A. Jones: American Immigration (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960).

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way of life similar to that of their homeland, but with the exception of a few sectarian groups, such as the Hasidic Jews, the Amish, or the Hutterites, most failed. A number of ethnic groups transferred individual elements of their culture to the New World. In many settlements material artifacts or social institutions have been preserved through several generations, and across the country are large areas that still bear the hallmarks of the original settlers- traditions, beliefs, prejudices, and habits of life and work. Two basic issues are central to cultural transfer studies: what factors determine the groups which transfer cultural traits to a new location with minimal modification, and why some culture traits are transferred virtually intact and endure for long periods, whereas other traits are modified or are not transferred.

Few studies of culture transfer have controlled the numerous variables involved. Only infrequently did New World environmental conditions match those of the home country sufficiently to abet the adaptation of a full array of transferred crops, livestock, and husbandry techniques. Consequently, the total transferal of cultural elements was not possible from one settlement to another or from one region to another. On the other hand, selected cultural elements that were successful after introduction not only were utilized by the groups which brought them but also were adopted by other immigrants and in some instances by old-stock Americans.61

Many Old World traits were not suited to the American environment. In Texas, for example, Terry Jordan concluded that German immigrants were unable to introduce viticul- ture or many midlatitude fruit trees, and that they stopped housing livestock in winter because of the relatively mild weather. The American economic and cultural milieu also affected the survival of imported traits. When German immigrants moved into an established market economy in Texas, they chose to participate competitively rather than to remain isolated.52 For a number of sectarian immigrant groups, however, isolation from the host culture or other immigrant groups was critical, and its loss often led to rapid abandonment of Old World traits. For example, Darrell Davis showed that the residents of the Amana Colony in east Iowa were unable to maintain their communistic organization after they were surrounded by small farms and towns.63 In general, practices and customs used for livelihood were retained or discarded in terms of their economic viability, and appropriate American techniques were adopted.

Many cultural elements are not as pragmatic in nature as farming techniques or other occupational traits and have little direct relation to economic success. Retention of traits such as religion, dress, food preferences, iconography, or architectural preferences seemed to depend more on sentiment than on practical or economic motivations. European construction methods and wine and cheese making were retained by Germans in Texas for such reasons.54 Many material culture traits once transferred were modified in form or function to accommodate new environmental exigencies or to conform to those that had proven useful to earlier immigrants or the old-stock American population. Those material items that were transferred often remain visible for years and, whether relict or in daily use, can be used to identify the type and extent of ethnic settlement. Examples include house types, color preferences, tools, field patterns and land use, and specialized buildings such as the sauna in Finnish settlements in Minnesota and Michigan.65

51 Carl 0. Sauer: The Settlement of the Humid East, in Climate and Man, i94i rearbook of Agriculture (U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., 1941), pp. 157-166; Hildegard Binder Johnson: The Location of German Immigrants in the Middle West, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 41, 1951, pp. 3-4; Walter M. Kollmorgen: Immigrant Settlements in Southern Agriculture: A Commentary on the Signifi- cance of Cultural Islands in Agricultural History, Agric. Hist., Vol. 19, 1945, p. 77.

52Jordan, op. cit. [see footnote 32 above], pp. 196-197. 53 Darrell H. Davis: Amana: A Study of Occupance, Econ. Geogr., Vol. 12, 1936, pp. 217-230. '4Jordan, op. cit., [see footnote 32 above], p. 198. 55 For a discussion of Finnish cultural traits in the landscape, see Cotton Mather and Matti Kaups: The

Finnish Sauna: A Cultural Index to Settlement, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 53, 1963, pp. 494-504. For a sampling of other evaluations of transferred cultural traits as distinct landscape features in ethnic settlements, see John A. Hostetler and Gertrude Enders Huntington: The Hutterites in North America (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. 1967); Donald Keith Fellows: A Mosaic of America's Ethnic

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Another dimension of cultural transfer is the identification and measurement of transferred mental attributes-attitudes, values, beliefs, and perceptions. Numerous studies suggest that broad transfers of Old World attitudes and values have occurred, the "work ethic" for example, that may profoundly affect ethnic spatial behavior. Many unskilled immigrants found work only as laborers, and they gained a reputation as poorly paid but willing workers. Norwegian families in southern Wisconsin, for example, worked long hours as day laborers or as tenants on the farms of old-stock Americans. In a few years some newcomers saved enough money to buy land of their own.56 Although it is tempting to attribute such accomplishment to a work ethic, the values that lie behind the attitude of immigrants toward work were complex and were characteristic of a broad range of groups, but especially of peasants and farmers.

In a classic study of ethnicity, William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki found that in Poland the peasant considered hired work only as a last resort.57 He viewed such employment not as a basis for organizing his life but as a provisional state, a way to buy property that was for him the basis of social organization. For the urban workingman, on the other hand, a job was an end in itself or a means of getting a still better job. When the Polish peasant migrated to the United States, his attitude toward work remained intact. He was often forced to accept a job to survive, and in many cases he had to work for someone else for a much longer period than he desired. When he was employed, the peasant reduced his material needs to a minimum and saved money until he could purchase his own land. Louis Kostanick and Merle Prunty found that Poles in Massachusetts who migrated about 1900 to tobacco farms along the Connecticut River had displaced the Yankee farmers on the fertile alluvial lands by 1940. Those Poles were peasant stock from Galicia. They were willing to commit their entire families to the long hours of drudgery so that within one generation their work and profits allowed them to buy out the Yankee farmers who retreated to the nearby hills to establish dairy farms.68 The desire for land and the willingness to endure years of hardship probably had a wide influence among other immigrant groups in the succession of landownership in the areas where they settled.59

Some European peasants did not have the same desire for landownership as did the Poles. The Irish, who had been farmers in Ireland, chose to be city dwellers and factory laborers in the United States. Perhaps only 10 percent of the Irish immigrants who arrived in America before 1845 became farmers. The Roman Catholic Church deemed the preference for urban life as improper and of sufficient importance to encourage the Irish to settle on farms in the Midwest, but the effort had little success.6? Farming had been a bitter experience in Ireland, and the memory of domineering landlords or potato-crop failures might be one reason why farming was avoided in America. In Ireland farming had been small-scale, and closely set farmsteads provided the gregarious Irish with the basis for a strong sense of community, a kind of social organization that could not be transferred to the dispersed farms of the midwestern states.61 In many eastern cities, the Irish became involved in politics soon after immigration, and today they are among the most aggressive and active ethnic participants in the political process.62

The possibility of improved economic opportunity was an important attraction for some immigrants, but for others the decision to migrate was based on social or political idealism. The

Minorities (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1972), pp. 122-i63; and Amos Long, Jr.: The Pennsylvania German Family Farm (Pennsylvania German Society, Breinigsville, Pa., 1972), Vol. 6.

56 Benjamin H. Hibbard: The History of Agriculture in Dane County, Wisconsin, Economics and Political Science Series i, Bull. No. ioi, (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 1901), p. 172.

67 William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki: The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (2nd edit.; 2

vols.; Dover Publications, New York, 1958), Vol. i, pp. 508-509. 68 Louis Kostanick and Merle Prunty, Jr.: Soils and Farm Economy about Mount Warner, Massachu-

setts, Econ. Geogr., Vol. I8, 1942, p. i86. 59 Ingolf Vogeler: Ethnicity, Religion, and Farm Land Transfers, Ecumene, Vol. 7, 1975, pp. 6-13. 60 Dorothy A. Dondore: The Prairie and the Making of Middle America: Four Centuries of Description

(The Torch Press, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1926), p. 428. 61 Carl F. Wittke: We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (revised edit.; Press of Case

Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, i967), pp. 145-147. 62 Greeley, Why Can't They Be Like Us? [see footnote 3 above], pp. 97, 102-103, and 115-117.

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"Forty-eighters" from Germany, for example, came to escape religious intolerance, militarism, and other social injustices. Teachers, physicians, lawyers, editors, and other intellectuals who fled Germany between 1846 and 1856 spoke and wrote of German oppression and of their longing to be "free men on free soil," in a place where they could make their living from the land.63 But the desire was based more on romantic illusion about rural life than on pragmatic desires. When the exiles were given the chance to become farmers and till their own land in America, their true values surfaced. Most Forty-eighters settled in the cities. Those who bought land became gentleman farmers and were often termed "Latin farmers" because of their classical education. The land had already been cleared and broken by others, and laborers were hired to do the farm work.

Old World values were at times manifest as an extreme form of chain migration as it was for

many Scandinavians who moved from their "bygds" in Norway and Sweden to a single community in America. In Scandinavia, many villages were isolated by natural barriers such as forests, mountains, or fjords. Intercourse with the outside world was limited. Groups in the same fjord or valley formed cohesive social units, and over centuries of near isolation closeknit communities developed that were easily distinguished from one another by differences in dialect, dress, art, or folkways. When Scandinavians from such communities migrated to the United States, they were not content merely to settle near fellow countrymen. Immigrants from the same valley, fjord, or parish often relocated as a unit. Alternatively they formed societies called "bygdelag" that allowed widely scattered members of a bygd to remain in close contact. The bygds and bygdelags not only fostered kinship and cooperation among the immigrants but also were a vital force in retaining and even enriching their cultural heritage.64 Few immigrant groups transferred their culture to the United States without some significant initial change as various elements either were adjusted to new conditions or were dropped in favor of more appropriate American practices. But the process and rate of selective acculturation or the role played by spatial variation in the environment as a factor in acculturation needs to be more fully investigated, especially at the microscale.

ETHNICITY AND RELIGION

William Petersen has observed that "every society has its sacred subjects, protected from empirical research and analysis by a high wall of magical taboos."65 Religion has this status in the United States. More than 250 organized religious groups, many of immigrant origin, practice in the country. Many of these groups are beyond intensive study because the most elementary data on them are either faulty or absent. Ironically, the government that has stopped trying to obtain information from church groups established long ago policies that would reduce its ability to assemble religious data by conceding that religious faith was of no social consequence. This policy is illustrated, as Petersen points out, by the fact that immi-

grants were urged to acculturate in every other way but were guaranteed the right to religious freedom by the Constitution.

Contemporary national statistics on religion are available in the rearbook of the National Council of Churches and one or two other sources, but the data lack any common base line of

membership definition and are severely compromised by inflated membership totals reported by some denominations or by no reporting at all by others. Despite these limitations, geographers and a few linguists and sociologists who have adopted a geographical approach have conducted a number of studies that lend considerable insight into the relationship between

3 Hildegard Binder Johnson: Adjustment to the United States, in The Forty-Eighters (edited by Adolf E. Zucker; Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1950), pp. 43-78, reference on p. 47.

64 Odd Sverre Lovoll: The Bygdelag Movement, Norwegian-American Studies, Vol. 25, 1972, pp. 3-26; and John G. Rice: The Role of Culture and Community in Frontier Prairie Farming, J7ourn. Hist. Geogr., Vol. 3, 1977, PP. 155-I75.

66 William Petersen: Religious Statistics in the United States, J7ourn. Sci. Study of Religion, Vol. I, 1962, pp. 165-178, reference on p. 165.

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ethnicity and religion. Attempting to explain the general religious distributional patterns in the United States, Zelinsky used data on 251 religious groups compiled by the National Council of Churches to map Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant sects of European origin. He found that Germans, Dutch, Swiss, and Scandinavians retained a strong identification with their ethnic religions, and consequently the location and relatively close grouping of these denominations, especially in comparison with American and British colonial churches, was a direct result of the migration routes and destination choices of these groups.66

The tendency toward intensive religious groupings, such as Roman Catholics in New England and western Pennsylvania or Lutherans in Wisconsin and Minnesota, changed somewhat in the settlement of the Great Plains and the Pacific Northwest Territory. The Plains were occupied in a piecemeal fashion until the railroad builders recruited settlers with promises of cheap land. Those efforts were supplemented by church leaders, especially Roman Catho- lics, who initiated group settlement plans.67 The effect of those techniques on the distribution of ethnic religious groups is apparent in the checkerboard of settlements along major railroads in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and even the Missouri Ozarks.68

Regional groupings of immigrant churches were also affected by the competitive system of denominationalism in the United States, a condition that rarely occurred in most European countries where state churches prevailed. According to Judith Meyer, once a church group was established it could expand by one of two processes: first, by giving thorough indoctrination to everyone in a small geographical area and gradually extending to neighboring communities through the establishment of home missions, or second, by allowing clergy to move about to contact and serve as many people as possible.69 The diffusion of mission churches was a slow and halting process that produced a restricted distribution. On the other hand, churches that supported a circuit-riding and actively proselytizing clergy, such as the Methodists, spread rapidly over broad areas. Because many immigrant churches were slow to organize and to recruit, membership was usually unstable during the first years of settlement. Church leaders relied on the appeal of maintaining old-country cultural distinctions and on the use of the mother tongue in services to attract and retain members rather than a unique theological or liturgical belief.70 Thus large numbers of ethnic church parishes were organized by immigrants who wished to preserve their traditions and language. The ethnic parish often successfully attracted local residents as well as worshippers from distant places. This type of parish organization contrasted with the prevalent territorial organization that drew its membership from a defined area regardless of the ethnic origin or composition of its constituents.71

In numerous cases, immigrant groups further reinforced the ethnic character of their parishes by territorial organization based on ethnic identity, such as for Germans the Evangeli- cal Lutheran Synods of Missouri, Ohio, and other states, for the Swedes the Augustana Lutheran Church, for the Finns the Suomi Synod, and for the Danes the American Evangelical Church.72 Among these and other groups, religion remains strongly identified with ethnic origin. Where the synod organizations include large areas, Zelinsky contended that the

66 Wilbur Zelinsky: An Approach to the Religious Geography of the United States: Patterns of Church Membership in 1952, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 51, 1961, pp. 139-193. See also the maps of Liberal Protestantism, Religious Diversity, and Church Membership, compiled from 1971 National Council of Churches data in James R. Shortridge: Patterns of Religion in the United States, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 66, 1976, pp. 420-434.

67James P. Shannon: Catholic Colonization on the Western Frontier (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn. 1957), pp. 14-15.

68 Russel L. Gerlach: Immigrants in the Ozarks (Univ. of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1976), pp. 43-52. 69Judith W. Meyer: Ethnicity, Theology, and Immigrant Church Expansion. Geogr. Rev., Vol. 65, 1975,

p. 190. 70 Ibid., p. 181i. 71John E. Hofman: Mother Tongue Retentiveness in Ethnic Parishes, in Language Loyalty in the

United States (edited by Joshua A. Fishman, Vladimir C. Nahirny, John E. Hofman, and Robert G. Hayden; Mouton and Co., The Hague, 1966), p. 126.

72 Edwin Scott Gaustad: Historical Atlas of Religion in America (Harper and Row, New York, 1962), p. 73.

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distribution at the congregation level continued to be more localized than most British colonial churches such as the Presbyterians or the native American churches such as the Adventists.73

David Sopher has observed that when religion incorporates the corpus of a group's value system, the ideology is often reflected in the cultural landscape.74 Settlement by members of the Dutch Reformed Church in southwestern Michigan is an example of this process. Land development and resource use were guided by decisions that were based on religious priorities. The nuclear communities were centered on churches. Property parcels were small so that church members maintained propinquity; retail and commercial services were relegated to the periphery of the town.76 It is difficult to synthesize the essential elements in the transposition of ideology to landscape features, because even in the same group the effect of religious principle is not always consistent. In eastern Iowa, for example, Arnold Mulder observed that the Dutch were much more secular than they were in the Michigan colonies and that they did not duplicate the community organization found among the Dutch in Michigan. The colonists in Iowa maintained a purposeful independence from the church.76

Because many ethnic church parishes were organized by or on behalf of new immigrants who wished to preserve some aspects of their ethnicity, the church became a bulwark against assimilation. Inroads into the ethnic solidarity of a parish began when membership became heterogeneous by acceptance of nonethnics as members, by interethnic marriages, or by generational turnover.77 As the level of heterogeneity increased, new members increased pressure to discontinue ethnic rituals and the use of the mother tongue in services. The result was a general reduction of cultural reinforcement that a church was able to provide for its individual members. Instead, as membership became more diverse and the ethnic character of the church waned, the parish eventually became a neutral element in the maintenance of ethnicity. When this process is aggregated, is considered for a group of churches at the synod or regional level, and is measured by a discrete factor such as retention of the mother tongue in church services, a pattern of in-gathering, as John Hofman termed it, toward an ethnic settlement core develops. In German-speaking and Norwegian-speaking Lutheran synods, Einar Haugen has traced the retreat of mother-tongue use in the church and concluded that linguistic retentiveness and resistance to assimilative pressures are strongest in a homogeneous ethnic core settlement.78 The core, in this case, is generally the area that was an early settlement and a focal point for continued immigration or through-migration, but it was not necessarily the area of greatest density of members.

INTERACTION AND ETHNIC IDENTITY

Geographers are interested in determination of the role of spatial factors, such as distance, isolation, environment, or landscape in the cultural sense, as influences in stability or change of ethnic identity. Certain key culture elements, such as religion, language, or a religious based philosophy of life, give long-term stability to the identity of some ethnic groups, especially sectarian religious groups. The Amish, for example, maintain the practice of nonconformity to the host population and separation from the "world." This posture toward the host population is recognized as an unusually resistant bulwark against image change and acculturation. The

73 Zelinsky, Religious Geography [see footnote 66 above], p. 159. The competition among various denominations produced an uneven membership pattern in many areas that would caution against making any unstudied assumptions about the stabilizing role of the church as a focal point for ethnic identity. See Olf Beijbom: Swedes in Chicago: A Demographic and Social Study of the 1846-X880 Immigration (Studia Historica Upsaliensia, Vajo, Sweden, 1971), pp. 228-246.

74 David E. Sopher: Geography of Religions (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), p. 45. 75 Elaine M. Bjorklund: Ideology and Culture Exemplified in Southwestern Michigan, Annals Assn. of

Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 54, 1964, pp. 227-241. 76 Arnold Mulder: Americans from Holland (J. P. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1947), p. 149. 77 Ibid., p. 126. 78 Ibid., p. 148; and Einar Haugen: The Struggle over Norwegian, Norwegian-American Studies, Vol. 17,

1952, pp. 1-35, reference on pp. 5-6.

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Amish believe that nonconformity to the outside world is a prerequisite to Christian unity and harmony. Departures from required practices are expressions of pride, and pride is proscribed by the Bible.79

The Amish believe that their nonconforming ways are best preserved in rural areas. The desire of the Amish to remain both socially and physically isolated from the outside world is thought to have resulted in the formation of very compact settlements in which sectarian farmers tend to displace all nonsectarians. Isolation is apparently so desirable that the Amish are willing to pay a neighboring nonsectarian farmer more than true market value for his land so that neighborhood homogeneity can be maintained. Kollmorgen thought that the process of displacement and the resulting high value of land were caused by a centripetal pressure on the land by old-order sectarians.80 Land geographically central to the group was sought because the level of isolation was greater there; the principles of nonconformity were more easily practiced, and separation from the temptations of the outside world were avoided. James Landing contends, however, that the desire for social isolation did not necessarily produce physical isolation and that the geographical center of the community was not the most desirable because it was the social core of the sectarian world or because it was far from the influence of the outside world. This view does not recognize, Landing argues, that some sectarian families seek release from the stifling conservatism and isolation of the homogeneous settlement and move out. The concept of centripetal movement does not account for the fact that two of the most conservative Amish groups in North America live on the periphery of their respective settlements. The concept further implies that the smaller the settlement in physical size, the less chance it has to protect its identity from the acculturative influences of the surrounding society, a condition that does not appear to be true.

As an alternative, Landing proposed that sectarian settlement be viewed as having at least three cultural zones, each characterized by the social goals of its residents and by the response of the residents to change. A Zone of Innovation, where new ideas are readily accepted, and a Zone of Tradition, where customs are steadfastly maintained, stand in opposition to one another and are buffered by an interceding Zone of Acceptance where innovations are more carefully assessed in light of traditional beliefs before they are accepted.81

Other factors may act in concert to reinforce ethnic identity. The nuclear family and kin are the most important entity for the preservation and transmission of ethnic identity.82 Residential propinquity in ethnic settlements usually is greater among kin than non-kin. The high level of interaction that results from propinquity tends to perpetuate ethnic identity. Some cultural traits, as diverse as food preferences and religion, have a multifaceted effect on identity. In many ethnic communities the celebration of a religious festival or the preparation of a traditional meal maintains nostalgic ties with the old country for first generation immigrants and introduces succeeding generations to an important element of their heritage.83 The churches, fraternal clubs, shops, and stores that serve an ethnic community became part of the visual cultural landscape and continually remind residents of their identity.84 Through time an entire neighborhood landscape may become a major aspect of ethnic identity whether or not

79 Arnold Dashefsky: Ethnic Identity in Society (Rand McNally Publishing Co., Chicago, I976), pp. 3-- 10.

80 Walter M. Kollmorgen: The Agricultural Stability of the Old Order Amish and Old Order Men- nonites of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Amer. Journ. Sociol., Vol. 49, 1943, pp. 235 and 239.

8"James E. Landing: Geographic Models of Old Order Amish Settlements, ProfJ Geogr., Vol. 21, 1969, pp 238-243.

81 Paul Y. Villeneuve: Propinquity and Social Mobility Within Surname Groups in a French-Canadian Colony, Proc., Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 4, 1972, p. ioo. See also Ruby Jo Reeves-Kennedy: Premarital Residential Propinquity and Ethnic Endogamy, Amer. J7ourn. Sociol., Vol. 48, 1943, pp. 580-584.

83 Dietary preferences are often maintained in minority communities, even though the desired foods may be difficult to obtain. See Keith Harries: Ethnic Variations in Los Angeles Business Patterns, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 61, 1971, p. 737.

84 K. F. Grant: Food Habits and Food Shopping Patterns of Greek Immigrants in Vancouver, in Peoples of the Living Land: Geography of Cultural Diversity in British Columbia, B. C. Geographical Se7ies OV. 15 (edited by Julian V. Minghi; Dept. of Geography, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1972), p. 125.

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obvious ethnic-related elements are present. Daniel Doeppers concluded that the residents of an older section in Denver continued to see their part of the neighborhood as distinctive and took pride in its care and appearance, although it was altered in size and appearance by freeway construction, by the encroachment of new ethnic groups, and by a decline in the number of businesses, clubs, and churches. He implied that as long as the old neighborhood remained, its self-identity was stable.85

PERSPECTIVE

The major difficulties for future geographical ethnic studies are a deficiency of concise

objectives and the large gaps for which only subjective and impressionistic evidence has been

gathered. Historically, the questions posed in ethnic studies have not been guided by a well- reasoned philosophy of inquiry but have evolved through a series of short-lived themes often based, in part, on concepts inexpertly adapted from sociology or anthropology. What is

required is a long-term commitment to ethnic studies that will incorporate a multidisciplinary literature as well as an in-depth understanding of a group, including knowledge of their

language. Increasingly geographers are becoming aware of the restrictions that come from dependence

on prepublished data sources and from a limitation of the scale of study to county or larger units in rural areas or census tracts in cities. A more flexible and perhaps more realistic

conceptualization recognizes both the objective attributes and the behavioral dimension of

ethnicity. Potential subjects include "new ethnics" and third- and fourth-generation descen- dants of European immigrants. An understanding of ethnic groups as products of distinctive behavior and ascribed identity is required if geographers are to contribute meaningfully to a better understanding of the effects of spatial factors on ethnic identity and of the relationship between ethnic identity and perception. If geographers are to bring fresh answers to the

questions of ethnic economic success, acculturation and assimilation, settlement location and

stability, and cultural transfer, there must be more studies at the local or microscale. Micro- level studies are required not only to increase our knowledge of ethnic behavior but also to examine more carefully the significance of intragroup differences as they pertain to the contributions of ethnic groups to American cultural patterns.

85 Daniel F. Doeppers: The Globeville Neighborhood in Denver, Geogr. Rev., Vol. 57, 1967, pp. 506-522.

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themes in the cultural geography of european ethnic groups in the united states

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