Melting Pot

This paper touches upon one of the key realia in ICC namely food domain culture-bound concepts. It also casts light on various interpretations by both Western and Russian scholars and is strongly based on individual empirical study. Food domain realia are viewed in American, English and Armenian societies with an attempt to facilitate intercultural communication. The study was carried out from bottom to top; that is from word to text level.

During Israel’s first decades, conflict between immigrants from Islamic countries and the Israeli establishment focused on questions regarding equality. The immigrants protested against discrimination in the labor market, against poor housing conditions, and against police brutality. The question of Mizrahi culture and identity was barely mentioned. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the ethnic discourse in Israel shifted from economic issues to cultural issues. Different groups challenged the school curriculum, asking for more attention to the history and literature of Jews from Islamic countries. Mizrahi music started to develop on the fringe of the Israeli musical scene and moved slowly into the mainstream. Political parties (Tami and Shas) identified with Mizrahi identity and emphasizing it, started to appear and to achieve success. This article provides examples of the expression of identity and culture in different fields and analyzes the causes of this change.

North-east India, being the homeland of a large number of ethnic communities, varieties of languages and literature necessitates translation in order to be expressed and appreciated well by their neighbours and outsiders. Not only in the field of literature but in the field of art and culture, music and dance etc, has translation played a vital role in bridging the gap among different groups. Therefore, prospects of Comparative Literature are in high esteem in the perspectives of literature from north-east India. While accepting and appreciating the concept of translation and prospect of Comparative literature in the context of north-east India, this paper is an attempt to look into two issues related to these concepts – i) Translation of literature from north-east India into English and/or other Indian/north-east Indian languages and ii) Re-examine/problematize the concept of ‘national integration’. My argument is to propose an alternative to translation of north-east Indian literature into English. The concept of ‘national integration’ is a complex issue which needs to be addressed differently. I would suggest that instead of the American idea of ‘melting pot’ and national integration at the cost of curtailing the differences, we should try to develop a sense of respect for differences.

Czech immigrants had to overcome the whole gamut of hardships and obstacles, when they first settled in America. High degree of adaptability is part of their character, so that they were able to cope with such challenges. There was one area, however, where they encountered real difficulties, i.e., the area of communication, particularly when they ended up in an area where all their neighbors were also foreigners of different nationalities. This is the reason why during the mass migration to America the immigrants of different ethnicities had the tendency to settle in places where their native countrymen immigrated earlier. This was also true about the Czechs. Most immigrants did not know English well, if at all, and as a consequence, they preferred to be with their own stock to be able to communicate. This way they could also learn quickly about their countrymen's experiences in how to deal with various hardships common to early settlers, and also get contacts to help them find employment. Settlement Establishing Communities-Next step in the process was establishing ethnic communities. This was only a natural and logical development. The early settlers would bring in other members of their families, as well as friends from their native villages. There were actually cases that an entire village would move to America and its inhabitants settling in one place.

ABSTRACT:During Israel’s first decades, conflict between immigrants from Islamic countries and the Israeli establishment focused on questions regarding equality. The immigrants protested against discrimination in the labor market, against poor housing conditions, and against police brutality. The question of Mizrahi culture and identity was barely mentioned. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the ethnic discourse in Israel shifted from economic issues to cultural issues. Different groups challenged the school curriculum, asking for more attention to the history and literature of Jews from Islamic countries. Mizrahi music started to develop on the fringe of the Israeli musical scene and moved slowly into the mainstream. Political parties (Tami and Shas) identified with Mizrahi identity and emphasizing it, started to appear and to achieve success. This article provides examples of the expression of identity and culture in different fields and analyzes the causes of this change.

The importance of race as social category in the United States is evident in how the federal government over time has defined the racial categories on the census forms starting with the first census in 1790. Minority groups have always contested these official categorizations (Miller, 2007; Simon & Piche, 2012) because these categorizations are at variance with how these groups define themselves. These categorizations are even more problematic because there is usually no single racial definition within the various racial groups in the United States. Moreover, these racial definitions are influenced by the history of white racial privilege and discrimination against non-whites. Race has been a major feature of American society (Philogene, 2004a; Zinn, 2005). Therefore, studying the evolving categorizations of race on the census forms in the United States is a study of the history of the cultural representations of race which is the objective of this chapter.
The evolution and expansion of racial categories suggest that race as a social category is not fixed. The Jews and the Irish from Europe for example, were not considered white when the first major waves of Jewish and Irish immigrants came to the United States despite their White physicality. They were subsequently accepted as whites in the society (Brodkin, 1998; Ignatiev, 2008). The censuses of the United States since 1790 provide historical and contemporary evidence that race is a floating signifier (Hall, 1997b). This chapter explicates the content of these dynamic racial representations. The chapter starts with a discussion of how race has been represented in the United States followed by a discussion of social representation theory (SRT) which frames the study. Next, the method is outlined and the findings presented and discussed using SRT.

This essay addresses the question of what it means to be an American today. In the first half, I respond to Samuel P. Huntington's claim that America's national identity is fundamentally Anglo-Protestant by rehearsing Jacques Derrida's argument that the founding of a nation whose self-understanding is based on the idea of a social contract, such as the United States, implies an "originating violence" governed by extralegal considerations. In the second half, I discuss the "melting pot" and "salad bowl" concepts of American identity and show how deconstruction does not force us to choose between them. However, I suggest that the dynamic nature of the melting pot is more consonant with the deconstructionist idea of the American people "to come" presented in the first half.

Rad započinje pojmovnim određenjem termina multikulturalizam i interkulturalizam osvrćući se na leksičke, filozofske te teorijske razlike između spomenutih pojmova. Umjesto da se pruži definitivno određenje navedenih pojmova, ukazuje se na njihovu dubinu i širinu, te se umjesto određenja prikazuju različiti oblici i pristupi multikulturalizmu. Ovaj dio rada se zaključuje opisom socioloških perspektiva koje usmjeravaju različite diskurse o multikultura-lizmu. U središnjem dijelu rada se prikazuje povijesni razvoj ideje multikulturalizma u Kanadi i SAD-u. Naglasak je stavljen na analizu društveno-političkih razlika između navedenih država koje su rezultirale koncipiranjem dvaju različitih pristupa multikulturalizmu: meltingpot u SAD-u te kulturni mozaik u Kanadi. Analizom politika multikulturalnog obrazovanja u SAD-u i Kanadi došli smo do nekoliko zaključaka. Multikulturalno obrazovanje ne predstavlja jedinstvenu teoriju već teorijsko-metodološki eklekticizam po pitanju ciljeva i metoda. Na deklarativnoj razini ciljevi multikulturnog obrazovanja su osnaživanje marginaliziranih pojedinaca i zajednica, jednake šanse za sve te stvaranje egalitarnog društva, no praksa multikulturalnog obrazovanja od 1960-ih godina do danas nije uspjela u značajnijoj mjeri realizirati navedene ciljeve. U zaključnom djelu rada se ukazuje na raskorak između politike i politika (Žiljak 2009) multikulturnog obrazovanja, te potrebu snažnijeg djelovanja na području prakse u obje analizirane države.
Ključne riječi: interkulturalizam, multikulturalizam, odgoj i obrazovanje, različiti pristupi i metode multikulturalnog obrazovanja, Sjedinjene Američke Države i Kanada.

"As a Cold War novel, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 presents several symbols which can be seen as a critic to the American society, such as persecutions, anti-system behaviors and the fire. But what about the media’s effect on society?
This essay intends to explore the role that the media occupies in the novel and in the movie, deconstructing the subjects’ frameworked way of life and thus revealing a collective alienation in which the media was an essential vehicle for teaching and learning. We could view from fascinating images showing up on colored televisions, to radios constantly broadcasting news, music and advertisements, all in order to captivate the people’s attention. Though, as a utopic community, all emissions were selected and edited by a superior entity, until they were viable to be broadcasted. However, what can be considered news in such community reports?
All this will be explored a thin line where utopia and dystopia are in confront and can hardly be distinguished, where media is the main element to trace the entire destiny of the plot, being able to select one common, ordained future, meaning that all people would have the same destiny and almost the exact same history, bearing in mind the concepts of melting pot and salad bowl. This way, the media are a system of unity, as well as a system to alienate people, until it became a blurred, fuzzy vision where all lives were decided a priori."

Humanity is a story of migrations and mobility and of bifurcation and merging of identities and ethnicities. ‘Identity’ is one which emerges in the process of one’s existence and is dynamic as it could undergo change, in the process of its progressive formation. It is mostly at the individual capacity while at a higher level, it could be extended to group and socio-political entities. On the other hand, ‘ethnicity’ refers to the core element, the originality or the indigeneity that is distinct and identifiable among the members of a collective formation, as a result of or by virtue of one’s biological and cultural affiliation to that group as against other groups, and is generally considered to be relatively constant, though in the long run might undergo progressive changes. ‘State’ is a political entity with modern authoritative structure, that might encompass and co-terminate along with a single ethnic group or it could encompass several ethnic formations, with overlapping and criss-crossing identities. The scope of the individual identity is unlimited without boundary while ethnicity tends to exhibit clear-cut boundaries, the crossing of which might become problematic for the individuals. However, in the current global scenario, such fixations are no more bound to have its rigidity with the same intensity as it had been in the past as the mobility beyond the rigid social and geographical boundaries have become very common. In this context, the present attempt would be to contribute to the anthropological discourse in comprehending the conceptual dynamics and the concrete manifestations of such phenomenon in the current global scenario so that to meet the emerging challenges for a peaceful human existence.