Introduction to the Science of Sociology

by Robert Ezra Park; E. W. Burgess

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Forms of Accommodation

The literature upon accommodation will be surveyed under four heads; (a) forms of accommodation; (b) subordination and superordination; (c) accommodation groups; and (d) social organization.

The term accommodation, as has been noted, developed as a differentiation within the field of the biological concept of adaptation. Ward's dictum that "the environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment"[238] contained the distinction. Thomas similarly distinguished between the animal with its method of adaptation and man with his method of control. Bristol in his work on Social Adaptation is concerned, as the subtitle of the volume indicates, "with the development of the doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress." Of the several types of adaptation that he proposes, however, all but the first represent accommodations. Baldwin, though not the first to make the distinction, was the first student to use the separate term accommodation. "By accommodation old habits are broken up, and new co-ordinations are made which are more complex."[239]

Baldwin suggested a division of accommodation into the three fields: acclimatization, naturalization, and equilibrium. The term equilibrium accurately describes the type of organization established by competition between the different biological species and the environment, but not the more permanent organizations of individuals and groups which we find in human society. In human society equilibrium means organization. The research upon acclimatization is considerable, although there is far from unanimity of opinion in regard to its findings.

Closely related to acclimatization but in the field of social naturalization are the accommodations that take place in colonization and immigration. In colonization the adjustment is not only to climatic conditions but to the means of livelihood and habits of life required by the new situation. Historic colonial settlements have most infrequently been made in inhospitable areas, and that involved accommodations to primitive peoples of different and generally lower cultural level than the settlers. Professor Keller's work on Colonization surveys the differences in types of colonial ventures and describes the adjustments involved. It includes also a valuable bibliography of the literature of the subject.

In immigration the accommodation to the economic situation and to the folkways and mores of the native society are more important than in colonization. The voluminous literature upon immigration deals but slightly with the interesting accommodations of the newcomer to his new environment. One of the important factors in the process, as emphasized in the recent "Americanization Study" of the Carnegie Corporation, is the immigrant community which serves as a mediating agency between the familiar and the strange. The greater readiness of accommodation of recent immigrants as compared with that of an earlier period has been explained in terms of facilities of transportation, communication, and even more in the mobility of employment in large-scale modern industry with its minute subdivision of labor and its slight demand for skill and training on the part of the employees.

The more subtle forms of accommodation to new social situations have not been subjected to analysis, although there is a small but important number of studies upon homesickness. In fiction, to be sure, the difficulties of the tenderfoot in the frontier community, or the awkward rural lad in an urban environment and the nouveau riche in their successful entrée among the social élite are often accuately and sympathetically described. The recent immigrant autobiographies contain materials which throw much new light on the situation of the immigrant in process of accommodation to the American environment.

The whole process of social organization is involved in the processes by which persons find their places in groups and groups are articulated into the life of the larger and more inclusive societies. The literature on the taming of animals, the education of juveniles and adults, and on social control belongs in this field. The writings on diplomacy, on statescraft, and upon adjudication of disputes are also to be considered here. The problem of the person whether in the narrow field of social work or the broader fields of human relations is fundamentally a problem of the adjustment of the person to his social milieu, to his family, to his primary social groups, to industry, and to cultural, civic, and religious institutions. The problems of community organization are for the most part problems of accommodation, of articulation of groups within the community and of the adjustment of the local Community to the life of the wider community of which it is a part.

Adjustments of personal and social relations in the past have been made unreflectively and with a minimum of personal and social consciousness. The extant literature reveals rather an insistent demand for these accommodations than any systematic study of the processes by which the accommodations take place. Simmel's observation upon subordination and superordination is almost the only attempt that has been made to deal with the subject from the point of view of sociology.