The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (95 page)

about the new immigration and its manifold impacts on American society. Less

noticed has been the fact that a new second generation of Americans raised in

immigrant families has been coming of age ± transforming their adoptive society

even as they themselves are becoming transformed into the newest Americans.

Over time, its members will decisively shape the character of their ethnic com-

munities and their success or failure (Gans, 1992; Portes, 1996; Portes and

Rumbaut, 1996, 2000; Zhou, 1997; Rumbaut, 1998). Hence, the long-term

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RubeÂn G. Rumbaut

effects of contemporary immigration will hinge more on the trajectories of these youths than on the fate of their parents. These children of today's immigrants ± a post-immigrant generation oriented not to their parents' immigrant pasts but to

their own American futures ± are here to stay, and they represent the most

consequential and lasting legacy of the new mass immigration to the United

States.

What will the long-term national consequences will be? Will the new ethnic

mosaic reinvigorate the nation or spell a quantum leap in its social problems?

Will the newcomers move into the mainstream of American life or will they be

marginalized into an expanded multiethnic underclass? Will their social mobility be enabled by the structure of opportunities or blocked by racial discrimination and a changed economy? Will their offspring's search for identity fade with time, acceptance, and intermarriage into thè`twilight of ethnicity'' or will a hostile reception and a color line lead instead with heightened salience into thè`high

noon'' of ethnicity? Different groups' frames of remembrance and retellings of

their past ± their definitions of the situation ± tell much about who has been

included and excluded in the national narrative, and hence about the society's

contexts of reception and terms of belonging (Aleinikoff and Rumbaut, 1998).

As these newest members ``become American,'' in their own plural ways, what

kinds of narratives will they tell, and on what terms of belonging? Will their

children and grandchildren ``repeat'' the history and experience of previous

waves of European immigrants? If we can learn something from that checkered

past, it may be to harbor few illusions about the value of gazing into crystal

balls. When those now-legendary millions of young European strangers were

disembarking at Ellis Island early in the twentieth century, who could have

imagined what the world would be like for their children in the 1930s, or their

grandchildren in the 1960s? And today, who can foresee what world will await

the children of millions of Latin American and Caribbean and Asian and

African strangers in the 2020s, or their grandchildren in the 2050s? In a world

changing faster than we seem to learn about it, it may be a fool's errand to

extrapolate naively and myopically from the present in order to divine the

distant future.

Still, in the context of today's debates about the one and the many, about

multiculturalism and thè`disuniting of America,'' about the contested meaning

of race, the rise of ethnic consciousness, and the politics of identity, it might help to gain some distance from the objects of contention and listen for a moment to a different voice, less ethnocentric, more cosmopolitan. In The Buried Mirror

(1992), his quincentennial reflections on Spain and the New World, the Mexican

writer Carlos Fuentes, himself a progeny of that original encounter between the

Old World and the New, put the matter this way:

History begs the question, How to live with the Other? How to understand that I

am what I am only because another person sees me and completes me? This

question, which arises every time that white and black, East and West, predecessor and immigrant, meet in our times . . . became the central question of conquest and colonization in the Americas. (Fuentes, 1992, p. 89)

Immigration and Ethnicity

405

Writing before the passage of Propositions 187, 209, and 227, Fuentes sees

``the universal question of the coming century'' posed most forcefully in Cali-

fornia, especially in Los Angeles, the world's premier immigrant metropolis and

a gateway to both Asia and Latin America. ``How do we deal with the Other?''

He seeks his answer in his hybrid origins: ``We [Hispanics] are Indian, Black,

European, but above all mixed, mestizo. We are Iberian and Greek, Roman and

Jewish, Arab, Gothic and Gypsy.'' Indeed, after nearly 800 years of Arab rule in Spain, lasting until the triumph of the reconquista with the fall of the last

Moorish kingdom in 1492, the Arab cultural influence was pervasive, so that

today fully a quarter of all Spanish words are of Arab origin. For Fuentes the

answer lies in forging

centers of incorporation, not of exclusion. When we exclude, we betray ourselves.

When we include, we find ourselves. . . . People and their cultures perish in isolation, but they are born or reborn in contact with other men and women, with men

and women of another culture, another creed, another race. If we do not recognize our humanity in others, we shall not recognize it in ourselves. Often we have failed to meet this challenge. But we have finally seen ourselves whole in the unburied mirror of identity, only when accompanied ± ourselves with others. (Fuentes, 1992, pp. 348, 353)

As long as ethnoracial and economic inequalities remain deeply entrenched in

American institutions, such à`post-ethnic'' cosmopolitan vision will fail to be

fulfilled. But the United States today is in the midst of a profound transforma-

tion, and inexorable processes of globalization, especially international migra-

tions from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, will diversify further still the

polyethnic composition of its constituent populations ± and make more exigent

the challenge of their incorporation. At such times, and in a field as dynamic and controversial as this one, when issues of immigration, race, and ethnicity command national policy attention and have become the stuff of acrimonious public

debates ± from assimilation to affirmative action to bilingual education to multiculturalism to border control to citizenship ± there is an urgent need for an

inclusive sociological vision with wide-angle lenses that can grasp the complex-

ity of the ever-changing present within its larger historical context.

American pluralism is Janus-faced ± looking behind to vastly different and

even antithetical pasts, looking ahead to scarcely predictable if polyethnic

futures ± mixing a plurality of interests, origins, and outlooks capable of interpreting the nation's ``foundational fictions'' and the ethno-national experience from very different vantage points. It is bound to remain thus unless and until

this ``permanently unfinished'' country manages to reconcile the erstwhile irre-

concilable dualities of its history: a country stamped at once with all of its

alluring, perennial promise as a land of opportunity and fresh starts for the

ambitious stranger and the tempest-tost, and with all of its enduring, bitter

legacy of racial exclusion and color lines, of blocked opportunities and deferred dreams. Still, the challenge of (and to) American pluralism is not a peremptory

challenge, imperious and impervious to debate; rather, it is played out in the

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RubeÂn G. Rumbaut

context of a civic culture that offers room for open discussion and question.

What is past is prologue, yes; but it need not be the epilogue too. An inclusive, not intolerant, American pluralism need not produce bitter legacies, but better

ones, while teaching us at once some poignant lessons of empirical sociology and universal history.

28

Social Psychology

Lynn Smith-Lovin

Social psychology in sociology has three distinct intellectual faces: the study of group processes, the study of symbolic interaction, and the study of social

structure and personality. These intellectual traditions have different questions and methods, but share a strong focus on the relational character of human

activity. The group processes tradition uses experimental methods to look at

how patterns of relationships determine individual outcomes. It also looks

at how relational structures evolve, through coalition formation, the dissolution of ties, or the creation of hierarchy. The symbolic interactionists often use

qualitative data to study how meanings are developed through social interaction, and how interpretation of situations using those meanings generates lines of

action. They focus on how the social relationships in which we are embedded

become incorporated into an organized sense of self, which then serves to

motivate future actions. The social structure and personality tradition often

uses symbolic interactionist logic to study the impact of institutional positions on individual outcomes like well-being, attitudes, values, or behavior patterns.

These researchers typically use survey methods, since people can reliably report their location in institutional structures (for example, martial status, employment status, education) and the outcomes of interest are measured at the indi-

vidual level.

A comprehensive book-length summary of the findings in the three faces of

sociological social psychology is offered in a volume sponsored by the American

Sociological Association Section on Social Psychology (Cook et al., 1995).

Rather than duplicating that encyclopedic review, this chapter concentrates on

developments in two areas where major advances have come in the past decade,

and where current controversies still brew. The two areas are the analysis of

instrumental action in social structures and the analysis of affective, emotional processes that interaction in these structures evokes. The first is centered in the 408

Lynn Smith-Lovin

group process tradition; the second encompasses work in both the symbolic

interactionist and the social structure and personality areas. In recent years,

several scholars have begun to look at how the instrumental and affective

processes are interrelated. The chapter ends by reviewing this convergence, as

well as highlighting some new areas for development.

Rational

Rational Action within Social Structures

Structures

The intuitive idea that actors attempt to maximize outcomes that they value led

to the development of several closely related theories of social exchange in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Thibaut and Kelley, 1959; Homans, 1961; Blau,

1964). While these early theories sparked considerable controversy (some scho-

lars charged they were tautological or reductionist), the early exchange perspectives led directly to some of the most productive theoretical research programs in sociological social psychology. The most direct descendants are the modern

theories of social exchange (see review in chapter 8 of Cook et al., 1995).

Social Exchange Theory

Most modern social exchange theories draw heavily on the work of Emerson

(1972), who answered many of the controversies surrounding the original

exchange theories by focusing on (a) the power±dependence relationship and

(b) the exchange network. Emerson defined the power of an actor A over actor B

as equal to the dependence of actor B on actor A for valued resources. Thus,

power was a property of a relationship, not a characteristic of an individual.

Focusing on the relationship allowed sociologists to predict how power would

vary in enduring, stable configurations of relationships. Indeed, a great deal of work in the past two decades has focused on how the structure of a network

affects the relative dependence of actors, and thus their relative power.

Researchers usually study social exchange in laboratory settings using money

as the valued good that is exchanged. Money is convenient because it is widely

valued, satiation occurs relatively slowly, and it is easily quantified. The theory, however, applies to all types of valued things that people can want from other

people: positive evaluation, desirable behaviors, goods, or services. In the lab, people (often strangers who are isolated from one another) have the opportunity

to exchange with one or more potential partners. The most common type of

network studied is a negatively connected network ± one in which exchange with

one partner makes exchange with another less likely (often impossible) during a

given time period. For example, both car sales and marriage occur in negatively

connected networks. Buying a car from one person decreases to almost zero the

chance that you will buy a car from another in a short time frame. Marrying one

person eliminates the possibility of marrying another (until a divorce has

occurred).

Two major types of exchange dominate the literature: negotiated and recipro-

cal. In negotiated networks, people make offers to one another until a deal is

Social Psychology

409

struck or until the round ends without an agreement. The important feature here

is that each actor knows what he or she will receive for the value he or she offers.

Actors receive rewards for the joint behavior of reaching an agreement, and that agreement is strictly binding. In reciprocal exchange, on the other hand, the

terms of exchange are not negotiated. Actors individually choose behaviors that

have consequences for their interaction partners, without knowing what those

people will choose to do to them. This situation more closely represents many