Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-m9pkr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T22:17:54.216Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnic Stratification and Social Unrest in Contemporary Eastern Europe and America1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Robert F. Hill  and
Howard F. Stein
Robert F. Hill
Affiliation:
Department of Human Ecology, Medical Center, The University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73190
Howard F. Stein
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Community Mental Health Center, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee 37208
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The crucial question in the analysis of social unrest is why it occurs at a particular moment in history. Whether one refers to the new militant movements in the United States (“Black Power,” “Red Power,” “Ethnic Power”), Ukrainian nationalism in the Soviet Ukraine, Great Russian revitalization, or the recent World Slovak Congress held in New York; it is clear that traditional systems of social stratification in the United States and Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe are now being severely strained. As Shibutani and Kwan have emphasized, in stable stratified societies the inequality of prerogatives goes unquestioned, even by the subjugated who willingly support it. Only in periods of instability is the differential access to opportunity questioned. And dissatisfaction arises only when alternatives to the status quo are perceived. This insight is the core of the “theory of relative deprivation.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Fall 1972 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe, 1972 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. This paper was stimulated and supported by the Maurice Falk Medical Fund under which we have conducted research as Maurice Falk Fellows in Racism, Ethnicity, and Mental Health. We wish specifically to acknowledge the invitation of James F. Clarke to participate in the Annual Meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies at which this paper was originally presented, and those many Slavic-Americans who gave countless hours of their time to explain to us what was already obvious to them.Google Scholar

3. Geyer, Georgie A., “A New Quest for the Old Russia,” Saturday Review, (December 25, 1971): 14–17.Google Scholar

4. Shibutani, Tamotsu and Kwan, Kian M., Ethnic Stratification: A Comparative Approach (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

5. Isaacs, Harold, “The House of Mumbi,” The Washington Monthly, 3, No. 10 (1971): 38–47.Google Scholar

6. Isaacs, Harold, American Jews in Israel (New York: 1967); India's Ex-untouchables (New York, 1965); New World of Negro-Americans (New York, 1963); Two-thirds of the World: Problems of A New Approach to the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Washington, D. C., 1950); Emergent Americans: A Report on Crossroads Africa (New York, 1961).Google Scholar

7. Isaacs, , op. cit., p. 44.Google Scholar

8. Ibid.Google Scholar

9. Wallerstein, Cf. I., “Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa,” in Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict, P. von den Breghe, ed. (San Francisco, 1965); Kelman, Herbert C., “Patterns of Personal Involvement in the National System: A Social Psychological Analysis of Political Legitimacy,” in International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory, Revised Edition, James N. Rosenau, ed. (Illinois, 1969); Otto Klineberg and Marisa Zavalloni, Nationalism and Tribalism Among Af rican Students: A Study of Social Identity (The Hague, 1969).Google Scholar

10. Gordon's impact on the field of ethnic studies is highlighted by his editorship of a DAEDALUS issue, entitled “Ethnic Groups in American Life,” and by his general editorship of the recent “Ethnic Groups in American Life Series” being published by Prentice-Hall. Gordon, Milton, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York, 1964) and “Ethnic Groups in American Life,” DAEDALUS (Spring: 1961); Goldstein, Sidney and Goldscheider, Calvin, Jewish Americans: Three Generations in a Jewish Community (New Jersey, 1968); Kitano, Harry H. L., Japanese Americans: The Emergence of a Subculture (New Jersey, 1969); Pinkney, Alphonso, Black Americans (New Jersey, 1969); Moore, Joan W., Mexican Americans (New Jersey, 1970); Fitzpatrick, Joseph P., Puerto-Rican Americans: The Meaning of Migration to the Mainland (New Jersey, 1971); Wax, Marray, Indian Americans: Unity and Diversity (New Jersey, 1971).Google Scholar

11. Handlin, Oscar in New York Times (June 1: 1969).Google Scholar

12. Sung, B. L., The Story of the Chinese in America (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

13. Bogardus, E. S., “Measuring Changes in Ethnic Reactions,” American Sociological Review, No. 16 (1951): 48–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Rose, Peter I, They and We: Racial and Ethnic Relations in the U. S. (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

15. Rose, Peter I., Nation of Nations: The Ethnic Experience and the Racial Crisis (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

16. Campbell, Cf. Donald T., “Stereotypes and the Perception of Group Differences,” The American Psychologist, No. 221 (1967): 817–829; and LeVine, Robert A., “Socialization, Social Structure and Intersocietal Images,” in International Behavior and Social-Psychological Analysis, Herbert C. Kelman, ed., (New York, 1965): 45–69.Google Scholar

17. Barth, Fredrik, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston, 1969).Google Scholar

18. Suttles, Gerald, The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago, 1968).Google Scholar

19. Hannerz, Ulf, Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

20. Giddings, Franklin H., Studies in the Theory of Human Society (New York, 1922); Francis, E. K., “The Nature of the Ethnic Group,” American Journal of Sociology, No. 52 (1947):293–308.Google Scholar

21. Rudolph Lowenstein, Lottie M. Newman, Max Schur, and Albert Solnit, eds., “The Ontogeny of Ritualization in Man,” in Psychoanalysis: A General Psychology (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

22. Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor in Society (Illinois, 1947).Google Scholar

23. Schermerhorn, R. A., Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

24. von Mering, Otto, “Rethinking Ethnic Identity: The Group and the Person,” in Evolving Patterns of Ethnicity in American Life, Paul Peachy and Rita Mudd, eds., (Washington, D. C.: 1971): 30–47.Google Scholar

25. Thomas, W. I. and Znaniecki, Florian, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (New York, 1927) and Thomas, John L., “Marriage Prediction in the Polish Peasant,” American Journal of Sociology, 55 (1950): 572–578. Thomas and Znaniecki had talked only to those families who had come to the attention of welfare agencies. Moreover, the picture of the idyllic peasant village described by these researchers is also subject to question since most later peasant studies stressed the opposite: conflict, factionalism, amoral familism, and a general absence of organization beyond the small family unit. (Banfield, E. C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Illinois, 1958); Foster, George M., “Interpersonal Relations in Peasant Society,” Human Organization, No. 19 (1960): 174–184; Goldschmidt, Walter, “The Structure of the Peasant Family,” American Anthropologist, No. 73(1971): 1058–1076; Lewis, Oscar, Life in a Mexican Village (Illinois, 1951).) For at least a generation preceding the Polish migration to America, Eastern Europe was in a state of constant turmoil and socio-economic change. (Greene, Victor R., “Pre-World War I Polish Emigration to the United States: Motives and Statistics,” The Polish Review, 6, No. 3(1961): 45–68.Google Scholar

26. Lazerwitz, Bernard, “The Three-Generation Hypothesis,” American Journal of Sociology, 69, (1964): 529–538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Kiriazis, James W., “A Study of Change in Two Rhodian Immigrant Communities,” University of Pittsburgh, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (1967).Google Scholar

28. Jurczak, Chester A., “Ethnicity, Status and Generational Positioning,” University of Pittsburgh, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (1964).Google Scholar

29. Simirenko, Alex, Pilgrims, Colonists and Frontiersmen: An Ethnic Community in Transition (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

30. Fishman, Joshua, “Childhood Indoctrination for Minority Group Membership,” Daedalus, No. 90 (1961): 329–349.Google Scholar

31. Leach, Edmund, Political Systems of Highland Burma (Boston, 1964).Google Scholar

32. Anderson, Robert T., Traditional Europe: A Study in Anthropology and History (California, 1971).Google Scholar

33. As noted by Martindale, “Cooley's famous ‘looking-glass self’ was his particular form of what James had described as the social self … The general argument, of course, is that the social self arises reflectively in terms of the reaction to the opinions of others on the self.” Cooley, Charles H., Human Nature and the Social Order, (New York, 1902); Martindale, Don, The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory (Boston, 1960).Google Scholar

34. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

35. Honigmann, John J., Personality in Culture (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

36. Erikson, Erik, Identity, Youth and Crisis (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

37. Spiro, Melford E., “The Acculturation of American Ethnic Groups,” American Anthropologist, No. 57 (1955):1240–1252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. See Fishman, , Daedalus.Google Scholar

39. Burridge, K.O.L., Mammu: A Melanesian Millennium (London, 1960).Google Scholar

40. See Isaacs, , “The House of Mumbi.”Google Scholar

41. Erikson, Erik, Insight and Responsibility (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

42. Sapir, Edward, “Culture, Genuine and Spurious,” American Journal of Sociology, No. 29 (1924): 401–429.Google Scholar

43. Gordon, See, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

44. Greeley, Andrew M., “Intellectuals as an ‘Ethnic Group’,” New York Times Magazine (July 12: 1970).Google Scholar

45. See Erikson, , Identity, Youth and Crisis, pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., p. 299.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 303.Google Scholar

48. Ibid. Google Scholar

49. Ibid. Google Scholar

50. Ibid., p. 300.Google Scholar

51. Spicer, Edward, ed., Perspectives in American Indian Culture Change (Chicago, 1961).Google Scholar

52. Spicer, Edward, “Persistent Cultural Systems,” Science, No. 174 (1971): 795–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Ibid. Google Scholar

54. See Leach, , Political Systems of Highland Burma, p. 17.Google Scholar

55. See Shibutani, and Kwan, , Ethnic Stratification: A Comparative Approach, p. 208.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., p. 223. It may be further noted that Theodor Herzl, one of the leaders of modern Zionism once referred to the Jewish situation in the language of the oppositional process, “We are one people–our enemies have made us one without our consent, as repeatedly happens in history. Distress binds us together, and thus united, we suddenly discover our strength.” Theodor Herzl, “The Jewish State,” American Zionist Emergency Council (New York, 1946). (Original: 1896, Der Judenstaat. Vienna).Google Scholar

57. Czigany, Lorant G., “The Concept of Hungarianness and Its Implications in the Intellectual Life of 19th Century Hungary,” Annual Meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Dallas (March 15-18, 1972).Google Scholar

58. Fishman, Joshua A. and Nahirny, Vladimir C., “Ukrainian Language Maintenance Efforts in the U. S.,” Language: Loyalty in the United States (The Hague, 1966): 343–352.Google Scholar

59. Apter, David, “Political Religion in the New Nations,” in Old Societies and New States, Clifford Geertz, ed., (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

60. Longworth, Philip, The Cossacks (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

61. Erikson, Erik, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

62. Novak, Michael, “White Ethnic: The Anger of a Man Disinherited by the Authorized American Fantasy,” Harpers (September: 1971):44–51.Google Scholar