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| Format | Dissertation |
|---|---|
| Creator | Coggeshall, John Michael |
| Title | Ethnic Persistence with Modification: The German-Americans of Southwestern Illinois |
| Dissertation Note (type -- academic institution) | Dissertation -- Southern Illinois University at Carbondale |
| Date | 1984 |
| Extent of Work | 431 pp. |
| Abstract | The research investigates the ethnic persistence despite socio-cultural modification of the German-Americans of southwestern Illinois. The study presents a novel approach to ethnic identity, one which suggests that ethnic groups may persist without always consciously manipulating their identity. This is accomplished by mutual recognition by individuals of cognitive models of ethnic identity. Through social interaction between groups, real and stereotypical ethnic differences are perceived as definitive of group identity, and these characteristics form the cognitive models. Socio-historical and cultural modifications to these criteria occur, but as long as interacting groups continue to perceive certain cultural differences as ethnically distinctive, then groups persist. This process explains the continuity of the German-American ethnic group. Diachronic social interaction between groups has formed emic and etic cognitive models of "German" ethnic identity. The models persist despite modification, and thus the groups based on those models persist as well. |
| Notes | UMI, printed in 1988. Book, in MadCat. |
| Call Number | MKI F547 S2 C63 1984a; shelved with MKI dissertations |
| MKI Terms | Ethnic identity/ German Americans -- Illinois/ Stereotypes/ Assimilation/ Cultural differences |