• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.685-698
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• 1996

Southern Louisiana has one of the largest Vitnamese refrgee neighborhoods after the mid-1970s. It is impressive that one of their adaptive strategies comes from their religious lives which are centered on either Catholicism or Buddhism. The Buddhism community, especially, exhibits an exotic symbolic system of value and attitude, and thus contributes to cultural diversity in the adopted country. The landscape of the Buddhist temple is a visible symbol to them that the host socirty accepts their maintenance of their own cultural identity and that they are also an integral part of American society. Their making-place and being-in-place procedures, although their culture is being transformed in the original shape, put an emphasis on interaction with the host xociety. These procedures have been facilitated by consolidating their identity as a minority group as well as by interacting with the host society. The on-going influx of foreign immigrant groups seems not to drive them to assimilate into the melting-pot society, but to contribute to contribute to the increase in the cultural diversity of the United States.