Orientalizing the Pacific Rim: - History, Department of

Thomas and the other Chicago sociologists’ emphasis on conflict as a force for
positive change marked their largest difference from the missionaries who were their
allies during the Survey of Race Relations. The missionaries believed in lessening
conflict and bringing harmony to social relations; the sociologists thought such a goal
might actually be undesirable. In many ways, W.I. Thomas, Robert Park, and Roderick
McKenzie’s conception of the Occidental West was a development of Frederick Jackson
Turner’s American West, a place of mobility and freedom, of overcoming and
conquering distance. 51 But unlike those who viewed Turner’s West as a ‘frontier’
moving across the wilderness and producing ‘American’ traits of individuality, selfreliance
and democracy, McKenzie emphasized the frontier as the zone where people
came into contact. It was Turner's conception of the 'frontier' as the meeting place
between savagery and civilization which McKenzie and Thomas echoed in their portray
of the Pacific Rim as the frontier zone of contact between a stagnant Orient and a
modern, mobile Occident.
Assimilation as the Overcoming of Distance
The missionaries involved in the Survey of Race Relations had placed great
symbolism in the wearing of American versus traditional-style clothing. Stylish use of
51 Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” a
paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, on July
12, 1893, reprinted in Turner’s The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry
Holt, 1920). Though Turner’s conception of the ‘frontier’ had a large influence upon
Chicago sociology, and Park repeatedly referred to ‘racial frontiers’ in discussing the
American West, the sociologists’ use of the term emphasized the aspect of the frontier
as a zone of contact and transition.
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