Peter Marin's essay discusses the profound influence of the immigrant experience on American culture, emphasizing themes of displacement and identity. He reflects on the tensions between the traditions of immigrants and the pull of American life, illustrating how both generations of immigrant families often find themselves in a cultural crisis. The piece explores the complexities of freedom and nostalgia in America, suggesting that a sense of home is continually sought yet remains elusive for many, mirroring the immigrant's journey through time and space.

1. From Peter Marin’s
“Towards Something American”
It is a commonplace, I know, to say we are a
"nation of immigrants." But that means far
more than that we are all descended from foreigners.
It also means that the very tenor and
nature of American life — its underlying resonance,
its deep currents — have been defined in
large part by the immigrant experience and, in
particular, by the immigrant's experience of dis-
placement and loss. You can find writ small, in
individual immigrant lives, the same tensions,
ambiguities of desire, contradictions, and
struggles that are writ large across almost all of
American life and in most American lives.
I am thinking, specifically, about what hap-
pens to the traditions and values that previously
gave order and meaning to immigrants' lives —
the crisis that occurs in terms of culture. It is
that crisis, I think, that is in an important sense
our own, enveloping and involving all Americans— even those
of
us whose ancestors arrived here long ago.
Culture, after all, is more than the way immi-
grants (or, for that matter, the rest of us) do
things, dress, or eat. It is also more than art,
ritual, or language. It is, beyond all that, the
internalized and overarching beliefs and systems of
meaning that create community, dignify individual
lives, and make action significant. It pro-

2. vides a way not only of organizing the world but
also of realizing the full dimensions and dignity
of one's own existence and the moral relation it
bears to the full scheme of earthly and unearthly
things.
And it is all of that which is called into ques-
tion and threatened when immigrants leave one
place for another. To put it as simply as I can:
immigrants find themselves dislocated not only
in terms of space but also in terms of meaning,
time, and value, caught between a past no longer
fully accessible and a future not yet of use.
Inevitably, a sort of inner oscillation is set up, a
tension between the old world and the new.
The subsequent drama is in some ways more
profound, more decisive than the material
struggle to survive. It involves the immigrant
soul, if by soul one simply means the deepest
part of the self, the source of human connected-
ness and joy. The great tidal pulls of past and
future, of one world and another, create a third
and inner world, the condition of exile — one in
which the sense of separateness and loss, of
in-betweenness, of suspension and even orphan-
hood, become more of a home for the immi-
grant, more of a homeland, than either the
nation left behind or America newly entered.
Perhaps it is easiest to understand all this by
looking at the schisms that appear within immi-
grant and refugee families, the gaps that open up
between generations. The parents are for the
most part pulled backward toward the values of

3. the past, often struggling to create, in the new
world, simulacra of the cultures they left be-
hind. But the children are pulled forward into
the vortex of American life with its promise of
new sensations, pleasures, experiences, risks,
and material goods — most of which have more
to do with fashion than with values, and few of
which, in the end, can touch the soul, deepen
the self, or lead someone to wisdom.
You will note that I said American "life"
rather than American "culture." I want to make
that distinction clear. For I am not absolutely
sure that there really is an American culture —
not, at least, in the ordinary sense of the word
or in the torn of anything that might replace in
the heart or moral imagination what immigrant
parents left behind. What we like to think of as
the "melting pot" often seems more like a super-
heated furnace that must be fed continuously
with imported values and lives, whose destruction
creates the energy and heat of American
life. And as interesting as that life is, and as
liberating or addictive as it can become, in terms
of values, America remains even now much
what it was when the first Europeans arrived: a
raw open space, a wilderness, though today it is
a moral and spiritual wilderness rather than a
geographical one.
1 do not say that mournfully or deploringly. A
wilderness, after all, is not empty. It has its own
wonders and virtues. It is simply wild, untamed,
essentially unknowable and directionless: open
to all possibilities and also full of dangers. If you
think about it, what one is really talking about

4. here is freedom: the forms it takes in America,
and what it costs as well as confers upon us. The
ideas of wilderness and freedom have always
been intertwined in America. It was the moral
neutrality of the wilderness, the absence of pre-
existing institutions, of culture, if you will,
which conferred upon the settlers the freedom
they sought. Even while still on their ships, the
Puritans claimed to be in "a state of nature" and
therefore free of all sovereignty save their own.
And now, 300 years later, freedom in America
still means essentially being left alone: the chance
to pursue, undeterred by others, the dictates (or
absence) of appetite, will, faith, or conscience.
But that same idea of freedom, which is the
real hallmark of American life and perhaps its
greatest attraction, also causes immense difficulties
for us. For one thing, it intensifies the frag-
mentary nature of our society, undermining for
many Americans the sense of safety or order to
be found in more coherent cultures. For an-
other, it makes inevitable social complexity,
competition between values, and rapidity of
change, which often make the world seem
threatening or out of control, inimical to any
system of value.
Hence the nostalgia of so many Americans
for the past, a nostalgia which exists side by side
with perpetual change and amounts, in moral
terms, to a longing for "the old country." The
fact is that the values and traditions fed to the
furnace of American life never disappear al-
together — at least not quite. There remains
always, in every ethnic tradition, in the

5. generational legacy of every individual family, a
certain residue, a kind of ash, what 1 would call
"ghost-values": the tag ends and shreds and echoes
of the past calling to us generations after
their real force has been spent, tantalizing us
with idealized visions of a stability or order or
certainty of meaning that we seem never to
have known, and that we imagine can somehow
be restored.
You can detect the pull of these ghost-values
in our political debates about public issues such
as abortion, pornography, and "law and order,"
and in the vast swings in American mores be-
tween the adventurous and the conservative.
But equally significant and far more interesting
are the ways in which these schizoid tendencies
are at work in so many of us as individuals — as if
we ourselves were (and indeed we are) miniaturized Americas…
…The end result, of course, is that we end up
much the way our immigrant ancestors did:
without a world in which we feel at home. The
present itself seems continually to escape us.
The good and the true always lie behind us or
ahead. Always in transit, usually distracted, we
are rarely satisfied or sustained by the world as it
is, things as they are, or the facticity of the
given, to use a fancy but accurate phrase. We tend
to lack the deep joy or the gravid resignation
engendered in other cultures by a sense of ease in
time: the long shadow cast by lives lived for
generations in a loved mode or place. "Home" is for
us, as it is for all immigrants, something to be
regained, created, discovered, or mourned —

6. not where we are in time or space, but where we
dream of being.
Social Change
Overview
In this milestone, you will reflect upon aspects of your identity
using Susan Fiske’s 5 Core Social Motives to prepare you for
Project One. You may want to revisit
A Review of Susan Fiske 5 Core Social Motives PDF.
Prompt
For this assignment, you will apply each of the five core social
motives to reflect on your social change identity. Address the
following in 3 to 5 sentences for each criterion:
· Describe how the motive of
belonging contributes to your social change identity.
· Describe how the motive of
understanding contributes to your social change
identity.
· Describe how the motive of
controlling contributes to your social change identity.
· Describe how the motive of
enhancing self contributes to your social change
identity.
· Describe how the motive of
trusting contributes to your social change identity.
· Describe how your knowledge of the five core social motives
can help you to counter the

7. effects of social changes.
All sources and ideas requiring attribution must be cited
according to APA style.
Background of Susan Fiske’s 5 Core Social Motives
We all have different things that motivate us that develop as an
outcome of our daily interactions with others (American
Psychological Association, 2020a). Susan T. Fiske, a professor
of psychology at Princeton University, pioneered a popular
theory of social psychology, the 5 Core Social Motives theory.
This theory posits that patterns of social behaviors reveal a set
of recurring themes (Fiske, 2010). The five themes are
“belonging, understanding, controlling, enhancing self, and
trusting others (also known as a BUC(k)ET of motives)”
(Stevens & Fiske 1995, p. 189). The theory is based on the
notion that we all apply a BUC(k)ET of motives in order to
“enhance social survival” (Stevens & Fiske 1995, p. 189). Also,
we can observe how each core motive applies to a person, a
couple of people, or a group of people (Fiske, 2001). In other
words, this theory speaks to how and why we want to fit in with
other individuals and within groups. Below is an in-depth
account of each of Susan Fiske’s five core social motives.
The 5 Core Social Motives
Belonging
Belonging is defined as being recognized and accepted by a
person, group, and/or society (American Psychological
Association, 2020b). The motive of belonging is a person’s
intent to interact and work with other people; it also relates to
the Maslowian belonging need to fit in (Fiske, 2001). Our need
to be recognized as a group member is deeply embedded as a
core personality need, which then extends into our social
identity (Fiske, 2010). Socially, for example, we want people to
recognize all of our different social identity aspects as
important to society; we want a small community of people to

8. accept us no matter how our prevailing beliefs, norms, or
culture are perceived by others in society. In addition, feeling
that we belong positively correlates with better health (Fiske,
2010). Belonging serves as a foundation that “underlies the
remaining motives” (Fiske, 2010, p. 534), which are explained
below.
Understanding
Understanding is the practice of acquiring insight about
yourself or others and comprehending the significance of it
(American Psychological Association, 2020c). The desire to be
understood underlies a person’s motive to share social
narratives about themselves, other people, and things in their
environments (Fiske, 2001). We want people to ask questions
about our personal identity so that they may understand us—but
not have them be fearful or denigrate our beliefs, norms, or
culture in order to gain knowledge about us as an individual
(Fiske, 2010, p. 536). Socially, we also want others to sincerely
understand aspects of ourselves associated with our social
identity. Understanding allows us to share interactions in a
coherent, socially acceptable manner that facilitates growth in
the knowledge of ourselves and others (Fiske, 2010).
Controlling
Controlling is defined as a person’s motive to perform
efficiently in order to predict the outcome of actions performed
by ourselves and others (Fiske, 2001). In controlling, we weigh
the potential pros and cons in our interactions with other
people, and try to take full advantage to increase the desirable
outcomes of those interactions in our favor (Fiske, 2010, p.
537). Personally, people want to be able to control the outcome
of their relationships with other people as it pertains to our
personal identity. For instance, someone may be motivated to
marry a wealthy person in order to control outcomes that with
others (e.g., men are smarter than women). “People do not want
to be stereotyped because it limits their freedom and constrains
their outcomes, even their lives” (Fiske, 1993, p. 621).
Stereotypes wield some control over social interactions; most of

9. us want to mitigate the control of stereotypical thinking and its
effect on our lives (Fiske, 1993). Overall, we want to increase
the positive aspects of ourselves and our place in society, and
decrease the negative aspects. Controlling helps us do that.
Enhancing Self
Self-enhancement can be defined as the motivation to bring the
view of ourselves in alignment with our desired state, idyllic
self, or ambitions in terms of our self-views (Giacomin &
Jordan, 2017). Self-enhancing includes working on oneself
(Fiske, 2001). Personally, for example, the motive of enhancing
self is primarily focused on “self-interest” (Fiske, 2010, p.
539). Socially, for example, “it takes varied forms, from
inflated self-esteem to self-sympathy to self-improvement, the
self’s special place guides people’s social responses” (Fiske,
2010, p. 539). Ultimately, enhancing self or self-improvement
has an effect on others around us, but it starts with a desire to
be better for ourselves, and then spreads out to others with
whom we interact.
Trusting
Trust is defined as the sentiment that something or someone is
respectable, dependable, and efficient in meeting future
expectations based on a record of prior behavior (Lasky, 2020).
Trusting relates to a person’s motive to see others positively,
especially in that person’s group (Fiske, 2001). Personally, for
example, trusting your own in-group is rooted in attachment
theory, which provides an explanation as to the level of trust a
person shows others (Fiske, 2010). Socially, for example, when
a person’s allegiance and feelings for a particular in-group are
closely aligned with the person’s allegiance and feelings about
themselves, there is trust (Fiske, 2010). Our attachment to
specific people changes during our lifetime, but the intimacy
that trust provides is one of the main reasons we continue to
create bonds with other people. Simply, we are motivated to
feel safe but also vulnerable in disclosing personal aspects
about ourselves, especially when self-disclosure is reciprocated;
this can strengthen social bonds and our trust in others.

10. Motives and Social Change Identity
As an agent of social change, you must have an awareness of
the personal and social motives that drive your behavior; this is
essential to your ability to effect change in your life and the
world around you. From leading advocacy campaigns to
engaging in interactive dialogues on social media, the personal
and social factors that guide your attitudes, beliefs, and actions
significantly influence your ability to embrace individual
differences, commit to social causes, engage in meaningful
collaboration, and lead with empathy and compassion. By
reflecting on how your personality traits and lived experiences
compel you to belong, understand, control, self-enhance, and
trust, you can answer the question: How do these motives
contribute to my social change identity?