Of Americans Abroad:
BENNETT, JOHN W.
Of Americans Abroad The Overseas Americans. By Harlan Cleveland, Gerard J. Magnone, John Clarke Adams. McGraw-Hill. 305 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by John W Bennett Co-author, "In Search of...
...On the very last page the authors do hint at some of the larger meanings: ". if we have so multiplied the instruments through which we deal with other countries that they really do not know who speaks officially for the United States anyway...
...The book is a kind of supermarket on the subject of Americans abroad: Packages of information upon every conceivable subject from the state of language-study programs in U.S...
...colleges to current developments in the Christian mission movement are offered to the reader, mostly in the form of breathless chapters averaging about eight pages in length...
...But this is not a "bad" book...
...For example, it seems reasonably clear from the presentation that a plurality or even a majority of American families overseas are miserable a good deal of the time, irrevocably separated from the local inhabitants, and lacking strong desires to change the situation...
...Is it possible that the criteria for "successful performance" simply do not correlate in reality, even though they correlated on the basis of someone's ratings...
...it is, on the whole, a useful, compact and harmless collection of observations and information...
...Individual performance can be much improved, but the collective performance of the overseas Americans is unlikely to be better than Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue permit...
...Belief in Mission...
...not the institutional systems and policies in which they operate...
...The closest we get to a formal analysis of the survey material is in Part III, "The Elements of Successful Performance...
...And the bulk of the information has nothing to do with the attitude survey, but rather concerns documentary studies on a large number of topics concerning business operations, missions, training programs, wives and education...
...Reviewed by John W Bennett Co-author, "In Search of Identity" "Social Life: Structure and Function" This easily read book is not a penetrating study of the historical and political meaning of the fact that in 1959, 1,590,000 Americans were living overseas...
...Cultural Empathy...
...The authors might say that their objective was to treat of the overseas Americans...
...But the, authors do not shirk the fact that foreign operations involve manipulation —"A Sense for Politics...
...The authors do not seem to hold out much hope for the Average Overseas American...
...Each of these "elements" is treated in a chapter or two, all of them witheringly brief, and often incisive and tantalizing...
...in fact, the authors comment at one point on the tireless patience displayed by Americans when submitting to research examinations...
...The package technique is based upon the book's literary style: that palatable brand of American English perfected by the middle-brow magazines, in which responsible information is presented by the dramatic anecdotal method, and viewpoint is usually obscured by a tone of tolerant detachment...
...Americans are beginning to pick them up...
...The Carnegie funds were used for various conference and documentary researches, but, above all, for a world-wide attitude survey conducted by the ubiquitous Louis Harris Associates of New York...
...These were obtained by correlating interviewer's ratings of performance with those made by the respondent's immediate supervisor (apparently nobody objected...
...And they endure this misery mainly because the pay is better, the job ranks higher than anything available at home, and the servants are, after all, nice to have...
...they sense that he is only transplanted, not abroad, and that he cannot be compared with the extreme opposite case of the Jesuit mission priest who may spend 10 years just learning the language and culture as part of a lifetime commitment to a foreign land...
...In the preface we are informed that the book is a report of the "Carnegie Project" of the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship of Syracuse University...
...The terms "cold war," "Communism" and "ideology" do not appear in the index, and I could not find a single discussion of the significance of foreign travel and residence in American history and in the history of other nations...
...And people with such attitudes would appear to be the major audience to which the book is addressed...
...There are five: Technical Skill...
...But they do not always hang together, and contradictions creep in...
...But later, in a chapter on recruitment, another desirable behavior pattern, part of "Organization Ability," or as it is called here, the "institution-building" approach, is exemplified by an account of an ex-magazine salesman, constantly pushing, constantly resourceful...
...Often this "sense for politics" involves shifts in identification or identity: The anecdote about a labor attaché at the American Embassy in Japan who showed his union dues book to Japanese unionists instead of his Government credentials is a revealing one, and there are several other incidental observations which show us that many Americans overseas are really quite good at the game of international identity cards...
...Organization Ability...
...A Sense for Politics...
...A number of competent young men were sent to several foreign countries to interview a total of 244 carefully selected resident Americans...
...These manipulations have been the stock in trade of the experienced imperial nations for many generations...
...The authors speak up for improved training programs for Americans about to go overseas, but wisely insist that these be adjusted to the type of work and the needed participation in the foreign society...
...However, although these tantalizing themes may derive from the materials reported, they certainly are not analyzed in detail...
...Often the most important items have to be put together by the reader, but the information is there...
...This build-up on the project leads the reader to expect some tabulation of attitudes, but there is none...
...In fact, the information is so thoroughly digested that the framework of the study almost disappears as soon as Chapter I gets under way...
...This type of behavior might be culturally empathic somewhere, but not everywhere...
...For example, much emphasis is placed on cultural empathy as a desirable attitude for "success" (learning to do things the native way or at least understanding them and doing one's best...
...Above all, the book has no consistent ideological position—unless the position that America is worth saving and should be better represented overseas is one...
...Background interviews were held with big shots and little: Jawaharlal Nehru seems to have cooperated, and is quoted as remarking that Americans overseas are friendly, but not "receptive" to local ideas...
...the authors might well consider their own excellent recommendations in the chapter on foreign area training in American universities to the effect that training in history and politics is an absolute requirement for overseas work...
...There is a certain refreshing realism in the discussions of the needed skills for overseas work—although as already noted, the conflicts and contradictions (and the ethical questions) are skipped over...
...The book does not deal with the complex and contradictory texture of overseas undertakings, either historically or as of right now...
...Like so many research projects of this type, the topic is torn out of all context of historical relevance and meaning...
...It is, at that: a bland "administrative" type of nationalism...
...However, these policies and enterprises create stresses in the adjustments and goals of the "personnel," and one would have wished this most obvious and enduring fact of all facts about Americans abroad to have received some attention...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 2
