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The article presents the author's work on documentation of certain traits of the rural Latin American culture. This documentation is necessarily preliminary. For the reason that modern Latin American communities have not been subject to anthropological study on a large scale and the number of sources is therefore limited. Also, this article is intended more as a demonstration of a type of work which may be carried on intensively for the purpose of analyzing the content and organization of what is postulated as a new and emergent culture throughout Latin America. This study will be limited to the rural phase of culture. And, it is stressed that this paper represents a tentative study that cannot in any way be considered complete. The Latin American community is almost invariably situated about a central plaza. Facing this plaza are the church, the government buildings, and the homes of the more prominent members of the community. The basic land unit in rural communities is a small plot usually having irregular boundaries. These are generally individually owned and also are worked by their owners. The existence of ceremonial kinship is common to most all groups. In some areas it is more highly developed than in others. As far as the religious organizations are concerned, each community has its own group of images representing various saints. Each saint has special powers that cover some particular field of needs. Furthermore, this study is pushed further many elements of acculturation process, culture development, and the psychology of culture.

This paper examines specific cultural and social features that Samoan and American Indian migrants bring to a West Coast metropolitan area. A survey of motivations for relocation, history, demography, and social and cultural characteristics of the two groups is presented. The interrelationship of these features is considered, as welt as the ways in which they interact with the realities and demands of the receiving environment. The paper suggests that the comparison of similar as well as differing characteristics that immigrant groups bring to their urbanization experience offers an opportunity to examine the ways that specific cultural features contribute to differential adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of modal personalities on the national level has been abandoning its belletristic and speculative ways. It has tinted more and more to the use of empirical techniques of research. In this paper, a comparative content analysis is used to recognize cultural values in a systematic way-which, in turn, may give us valid clues about national character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on modern Latin American culture. In the Northward of the boundary of Mexico lies the great area of Anglo-American culture, whereas Middle and South America comprise the region of Latin American culture. It is believed that North Americans have some familiarity with their own culture, even though they may not understand fully its basic patterns and premises. And on the basis of their own mode of life they are often wont to make snap judgments concerning the fundamental configurations of the patterns of living south of the border. It seems that both North America and Latin America share a sufficient number of certain patterns to enable them to be included within the area and broad general pattern of that culture known as Western Civilization. When that is said, however, it would appear that they represent varieties, and rather divergent ones at that, of this general organization of life. The Latin American cultures seem to have a common general framework and a common tone which enables them to be seen collectively as a cultural design distinctive from that of other varieties of Western Civilization. Although the Portuguese colonization of Brazil followed lines somewhat different from the Spanish colonization and involved some distinct cultural values it can be postulated that Brazilian culture of the present day conforms more closely to the general Latin American type than to any other.

The article presents an evaluation of current approaches to personality differences in folk and urban societies. It focuses upon one area within the total culture-personality field; namely, upon the problem of typical differences in personality. The conception of folk homogeneity and integration has been imported, explicitly or implicitly, into the study of folk-urban personality differences; and, further, that the insistence upon such typical folk-urban personality differences is rooted in methodological inadequacies which require express formulation and documentation. The heterogeneous, complex, unintegrated urban society is conducive to the development of highly variegated and relatively unintegrated personality types; while the homogeneous, integrated folk society is characterized by relative uniformity and stability. The conclusions regarding folk-urban differences have been by-products of the researches of anthropologists, sociologists, or psychiatrists, working in the traditional isolation of these separate disciplines.

Evidence on the reflection of social structure, cultural values, and contemporary events in the content of visual art is surveys, and a theoretical interpretation of the social functions of art content is offered. It is concluded that art content reflects not social reality itself, but diverse modes of emotional involvement with social reality. The primary soda! function of art content may be the enhancement of a sense of affective relatedness to impersonal cultural norms and social institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]