Dissertation Research: Cuisine as an Agent of Acculturation: Mexican American Cultural and Culinary Incorporation and Acceptance

格鲁吉亚大学博士生保罗·斯坎伦在布伦特柏林博士的监督下，将研究移民群体融入东道国社会时食物和文化如何相互作用。他的研究重点将是墨西哥菜在美国。研究人员将询问墨西哥饮食习惯是否以及如何在墨西哥裔美国人的文化融合和接受中发挥作用。这项研究将在两个大都市地区进行，这两个大都市地区的移民生态和历史受到限制：格鲁吉亚的亚特兰大和得克萨斯州的休斯顿，他将把重点放在餐馆的顾客和老板身上。 使用民族志，认知和档案研究方法相结合，研究人员将确定如何跨种族，地方和社会文化线墨西哥美国菜的看法和意义不同，以及它们如何影响跨文化的接受和美国人和墨西哥移民的结合。作为研究的一部分，他将采用初步的民族志分析来创建两个新的量表，一个用来衡量盎格鲁人和非洲裔美国人对墨西哥人和墨西哥裔美国人的接受程度，另一个用来衡量饮食文化的适应程度。研究的意义是多方面的。新的分析尺度将有助于其他研究人员，并有助于未来的比较社会科学研究。这项研究还将有助于更好地了解地方一级的种族间互动，这些互动在美国各地区如何变化，以及这些互动如何随着时间的推移而变化。

University of Georgia doctoral student Paul Scanlon, under the supervision of Dr. Brent Berlin, will undertake research on how food and culture interact as migrant groups are incorporated into host societies. The focus of his resarch will be Mexican cuisine in the United States. The researcher will ask whether and how Mexican dietary practices play a role in Mexican American cultural incorporation and acceptance. The research will be conducted in two metropolitan areas with constrasting migration ecologies and histories: Atlanta, Georgia, and Houston, Texas, where he will focus on restaurant patrons and owners. Using a combination of ethnographic, cognitive, and archival research methods, the researcher will determine how the perceptions and meanings of Mexican American cuisine differ across ethnic, local, and sociocultural lines, and how they affect the cross-cultural acceptance and incorporation of Americans and Mexican immigrants. As part of the research, he will employ a preliminary ethnographic analysis to create two new scales, one to measure Anglo and African American acceptance of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and another to measure cuisine acculturation. The research's significance is multifaceted. The new analytical scales will be useful to other researchers and can contribute to future comparative social scientific research. The research also will aid better understanding of inter-ethnic interactions at the local level, how these vary regionally in the United States, and how these change over time.