ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the aspects of communal life, concentrating on the structural relations of Armenian-Americans as they come together to form a "community" in the United States and on how that community evolves and changes with the passing of generations. In the early 1960s, analysts observed that white immigrant groups like the Armenians had adapted remarkably well to American life by altering certain aspects of their imported culture and borrowing other traits from their surrounding environment. Armenians are very small in size relative to other ethnic groups in the United States, in a few metropolitan areas their numbers have become sufficient to warrant the formation of a large array of communal structures. Thus, a critical mass of Armenian-Americans in a given region is a necessary precondition for a community to exist and flourish. Distinctions by towns and regions in Turkey are at present meaningless to most Armenian-Americans, except as historical references to the birthplace of their ancestors.
