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Melting Pot Theory In Anthropology

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Assimilation in anthropology and sociology is when a minority group that share the same culture is absorbed into a group with the dominant culture. In here the minority group loses important aspects of their culture such as, their traditions, religion or language. In other words, they lose their identity/culture so as to replace their original culture and acquire the identity/culture of the dominant group, which has the dominant culture. This is a process that can be either be quick or a gradual or either forced or spontaneous. Therefore, assimilation is the extreme form of acculturation because acculturation means that even though the minority group is absorbed by the dominant culture the group doesn’t lose their culture like it would happen …show more content…

Conduct research into the Melting Pot theory versus the Salad Bowl theory of assimilation. Make sure you know and understand the difference.

• Melting Pot theory:
The melting pot is a theory that refers to the assimilation of different cultures, regions, traditions, ethnic origins etc. into the dominant culture which often refers to the American Culture. Therefore, it means that people from different backgrounds melt together into a big cultural pot in order to be part of one unique and larger culture. Therefore, the melting pot says that every immigrant that comes to live in another country becomes part of that country’s culture. This can be symbolized as A+B+C= D

• Salad Bowl theory:

The salad bowl theory is when immigrants keep the aspects of their own cultures. In other words they do not lose their culture, they retain it and live in harmony with the culture of the country they immigrated. However, even though this happens, the immigrants have gratitude and national identification with the country they immigrated. Therefore, the salad bowl theory is a perfect metaphor for this situation because a salad (country) has different ingredients (immigrants), which makes it delicious and we are still able to differentiate each ingredient of the salad. In other words, is a cultural pluralism and it can be symbolized as A+B+C=

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