The salad bowl concept suggests that the integration of the many different cultures of United States residents combine like a salad, as opposed to the more prolific notion of a cultural melting pot. In Canada this concept is more commonly known as the cultural mosaic. In the salad bowl model, various American cultures are juxtaposed — like salad ingredients — but do not merge together into a single homogeneous culture. Each culture keeps its own distinct qualities. This idea proposes a society of many individual, "pure" cultures, and the term has become more politically correct than melting pot, since the latter suggests that ethnic groups may be unable to preserve their cultures. The salad bowl has been accused of being a communitarianist model, while supporters of it speak of multiculturalism.

References

Several independent sources deal with the salad bowl model, for instance:

• [100241]
• [100242]
• [100243]
• [100244]
• [100245]

See also

• Elite theory
• New institutionalism
• Marxism
• Legitimation Crisis
• Agonism
• Pluralism