TOWARD THE STUDY OF COMMUNITIES OF AMERICANS OVERSEAS

Abstract

Increased United States involvement in world affairs has been accompanied by an increase in the number of Americans living abroad in numerous American enclaves. Most of the commentary on such 'overseas American communities' is impressionistic, superficial, and stereotyped, and tends to foster the notion that Americans are peculiarly ethnocentric. Such an assumption ignores the fact that whenever a fairly large number of persons from one country reside abroad, they tend to cluster into enclaves that provide havens from 'culture shock.' It is suggested that systematic, objective, and empirical descriptions of such communities could make a valuable contribution to the study of migration, acculturation, and communities in general. To that end, a frame of reference derived from past studies is proposed, both as a generic concept and a sub-cultural category. Data would be generated that would permit an analysis of the relationship between community characteristics and cross-cultural interaction and attitudes.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1970
Accession Number
AD0708779

Entities

People

  • Harley M. Upchurch

Organizations

  • Human Resources Research Organization

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundaries
  • Communities
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Governments
  • Human Resources
  • Immigrants
  • Latin America
  • Personnel Management
  • Psychology
  • Second World War
  • Social Sciences
  • Societies
  • Sociology
  • Students
  • United Nations
  • United States
  • Universities

Readers

  • Organizational Psychology.
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Theoretical Analysis.