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The spread throughout the world of European dominance has brought European blood and European culture into contact with other peoples. Although improved means of transportation and communication may foreshadow the disruption of boundaries, the world today is still organized on the basis of nationalities and races, real or fictitious. The contacts between races and between nationalities have resulted in individuals who are not completely identified with one of the two or more neighboring groups or cultures, but who are on the margin between them. This is the concept of the 'marginal man' formulated by Robert Park and studied in the present volume.
The book first surveys seven examples of racial hybrids—the Mulattoes of the United States, who can not satisfactorily identify with the blacks or the whites, the Anglo-Indians of India, the Cape Colored of South Africa, the Colored People of Jamaica, the Indo-Europeans of Java, the Part Hawaiians, and the Métis of Brazil. The cultural hybrids are then considered. Eight examples are given including Denationalized Europeans, Jews, First and Second Generation Immigrants, American Negroes, Europeanized Africans and Western Orientals. Autobiographies and case histories provide a basis for abstracting the life cycle and personality trends of these individuals in all parts of the world—their shocks at first discovering that they are different from others and in first encountering prejudice, their period of conflict, their efforts to escape the discriminations and antagonisms against them as members of the minority or subject group, and their efforts to share the advantages of membership in the group which is in power. Stonequist finds that the 'duality of cultures produces a duality of personality—a divided self. It is the fact of cultural duality which is the determining influence in the life of the marginal man.' Some relinquish attempts to identify with the dominant group and may become leaders of their own group, and