MORAL LIFE ON THE CULTURAL FRONTIER: EVIDENCE FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF IMMIGRANTS IN MODERN AMERICA.

This paper reports findings from an ongoing ethnographic investigation into patterns of conflict and social control involving a number of immigrants in northern New Jersey. It is an effort to advance the understanding of more general issues like the relationship between social control and culture and the effect of that relationship on communities. The paper reports findings from an ethnographic investigation into how immigrants to the contemporary United States manage grievances against people culturally different from themselves, including individuals from the majority population, other immigrants and members of American-born minority groups. Two principal patterns emerge, first that a high degree of harmony can and does exist between immigrants and other people, but that it is a harmony based largely on mutual avoidance and self-segregation rather than intercultural solidarity and support, and second, that immigrants react differently to offenders from the majority population than to those who, like themselves, come from culturally unconventional backgrounds. The reasons for these patterns are explored, and implications for the moral order of diverse communities are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]