Assamilation or intergrate differing ethnic or cultural groups

The term of assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New customs and attitudes are acquired through contact and communication. The transfer of customs is not simply one-way process. Each group of immigrants contributes some of its own cultural traits to it new society. Assimilation usually involves a gradual change and takes place in varying degree, full assimilation occurs when new member of a society become in distinguishable from older members.  Assimilation is the process by which individuals or group are absorbed into and adopt the dominant culture and society of another group.

Policy of cultural assimilation

Forms:

The process of assimilation takes places mainly at three levels: 1. Individual, 2. Group and 3. Culture.

Individual Level

A socialised individual when enters or joins a new group having different cultural patterns, he or she has to adopt new patterns of values, habits, customs and beliefs of the other group in order to be fully accepted by the new group. The tendency is to conform to other’s behaviour pattern and differences in time might largely disappear.

Group Level:

When tow groups with dissimilar patterns of behaviour come in close contact, they inevitably affect with each other. In this process, it is generally seen that the weaker group would do more of the borrowing from and would give very little to the stronger group. For instance, when we came in contact with Britishers, being a weaker group, we have adopted a many cultural elements of the Britishers but they have adopted many cultural elements from Asian Society. The adoption of elements of dominant cultures paves the way for total absorption, if not checked, of the new cultural group with the dominant culture.

Culture Level:

When two cultures merge to produce a third culture which, while somewhat distinct, has features of both merging cultures. In western countries chiefly but also in developing  countries to some extent, rural and urban cultures which were radically different are, with rapidly increasing communication, merging as differences continue to disappear although they still exit.

Types:

Two types of assimilation have been identified: Cultural assimilation and structural assimilation.

Multicultural where bring all together to become a new Nationalities. e.g X+Y=Z

Cultural Assimilation;

Assimilation is two-way process: persons (such as immigrants) must want to be assimilated and the host society must be willing to have them assimilate. The immigrant must undergo cultural assimilation, learning the day-to-day norms of the dominant culture pertaining to dress, language, food, recreation, games and sports. This process also involves internalising the more critical aspects of culture such as values, ideas, beliefs and attitudes.

Structural assimilation:

It involves developing patterns of intimate contact between the “guest” and “ host” groups in clubs, organisations, and institutions of the host society. Cultural assimilation generally precedes structural assimilation, although the two sometimes happen simultaneously.

Assimilation is the process by which continuous contact between two or more distinct societies causes cultural change. This can happen in one of two ways. The beliefs and customs of the groups may merge almost equally and result in a single culture. More often, however, one society completely absorbs the cultural patterns of another through a process of selection and modification. This change often occurs because of political or military domination. It may cause considerable psychological disturbance and social unrest.

Assimilation occurs when two groups of people with unique cultural attributed of how they see the world and their language by to live in close proximity to each other and the smaller, or weakest adopt themselves, by inter marriage or language learning skills into the larger group of humanity. By seeking to copy larger role models they move away from their own identity as a group and the cultural traits weaken and ever time disappear. For this integration to be successful the same values need to be embraced by both groups, the role model helping with the education and disclosure of knowledge so that their attributes and views can be learned.

Assimilation can be of several kinds. As it always involves a transfer of features between two neighbouring segments we can conventionally mark the two successive sound by X and Y. Taking into account the direction of the process, we can then talk about Progressive Assimilation if the latter works forwards (conventionally from left to right, that is from X to Y) or, in other words, if the feature passes from a sound to the following one. If we have the opposite case, as in our example before, backwards, from right to left, from Y to X- we have regressive assimilation. Very often there is a mutual influence between the two sound and then we speak about reciprocal assimilation. In this latter case the two sounds can fuse completely and give birth to a different sound; this type of assimilation is called coalescence. The various possibilities are illustrated below. The direction of the arrow indicates the direction of the feature movement.

X =>  Y Progressive Assimilation ( X “ Lends” a feature to Y)

X <=  Y Regressive assimilation ( X “borrows” a feature from Y)

Y <=> X Reciprocal Assimilation

X + Y = Z Coalescence ( X and Y merge into a different sound Z)   

In a nutshell, It maybe said that assimilation is a process of fusion or blending, whereby cultural differences tend disappear and individuals and group once dissimilar become similar. It results in the modification of attitudes, values, patterns of thinking and ultimately behaviour. Husbands and Wives, starting marriage with dissimilar backgrounds, often develop a surprising unity of interest and purpose. In the long run they become more or less similar in their attitude toward life and family.