Chicano ethnicity /

Keefe and Padilla conducted a large-scale investigation over a three-year period, involving some 600 respondents interviewed by bilingual researchers in the California communities of Oxnard, Santa Paula, and Santa Barbara. The authors sought to demonstrate the validity or nonvalidity of various models of Mexican-origin behavior and attitudes. Devising a workable sampling technique to gather the requisite data, anthropologist Keefe (Appalachian State University) and psychologist Padilla (UCLA) analyzed Chicano ethnicity and its changes over three generations: the native Mexican resident in the US; the second-generation offspring of Mexican-born parents; and the third generation, who were presumably completely ``Americanized.'' Neither the model of acculturation-assimilation nor the construct of internal colonization was found to be compatible with the authors' findings. Instead, they pose a neopluralistic explanation of change, in which various features from different models are present and in a state of interaction. Heterogeneity rather than homogeneity characterizes Mexican-American behavior and attitudes on the individual and community levels. Keefe and Padilla's work features sound research and elicits realistic conclusions. This reviewer knows of no comparable studies. Upper-division undergraduates and above.-N. Lederer, Thomas A. Edison State College