Acculturation
History and Definition
Probably one of the first academic accounts of the process of acculturation appears in Plato's Laws, written in the 4th century B.C.E. In Laws Plato argued that humans have two tendencies – to travel and to imitate strangers. Both activities introduce new cultural practices. Being a Greek, Plato argued that this should be minimized to the degree possible, for the sake of preserving a superior, Greek culture. For the same purpose, i.e. stabilization of own cultural practices and reduction of acculturative changes, were written some famous early codes of law, for example, the Old Testament Laws of Moses, or the Babylonian Law of Hammurabi.
J.W. Powell is credited with coining the word "acculturation", first using it in an 1880 report by the US Bureau of American Ethnography. In 1883, Powell defined "acculturation" as the psychological changes induced by cross-cultural imitation. Generally speaking acculturation is the exchange of cultural features, which is a result of a continuous firsthand contact between different cultural groups. Either one or both groups and their original cultural patterns may change a bit, but the groups overall remain distinct.
In the traditional definition of the term, acculturation is the process of obtainment of a foreign culture by an individual or a group of people who were born in a different cultural sphere. The new applications of the term relate to the modern multicultural societies, where a child of an immigrant family might be encouraged to acculturate both the dominant as well as the ancestral culture, either of which may be considered "foreign", but in fact, they are both integral parts of the child's development. According to the new definitions of the term, acculturation process can be either on a group or an individual level.
The term however needs to be differentiated from the term enculturation, which is applied when infants or very young children are born in a new culture, and simply learn that culture as their own. Enculturation thus can also be called socialization.
Group-Level Acculturation
On the group level, acculturation process can be seen as a massive intake of another culture's traits and incorporating them as part the own culture. This kind of process usually happens when foreign culture is perceived as more advanced, either technologically or in any other sense, then the culture of the origin. For example, the Chinese written language Hanzi was taken, with various degrees of modification, by places that previously had no written records – in Japan as Kanji, in Korea as Hanja, and in Vietnam as Chu Nom. In addition, Chinese vocabulary had also been taken and adopted, for example, in the CJKV language family of computer science.
In situations of continuous contact, cultures exchange and blended foods, recipes, music, dances, clothing, tools, and technologies. The result of a group-level cultural interaction can be seen in the example of “pidgin” language. “Pidgin” is a mixed language that has developed to help communication between members of different cultures in contact. This usually occurs in situations of trade or colonialism. Pidgin English, for example, is a simplified form of English. It blends English grammar with that of a native language. This was first used in Chinese ports and similar pidgins have developed in Papua New Guinea and West Africa.
However, sometimes the acculturation has irreversible impact of damaging the recipient culture, as in the cases of many indigenous peoples, such as First Nations of Canada, Native Americans in the United States of the United States, Taiwanese aborigines, and Australian Aborigines, who have mostly lost their traditional culture (most evidently language) and replaced by that of the dominant new culture. Such later detrimental case is related to assimilation, which results in a loss of all or many characteristics of the culture of origin. A region where assimilation is occurring is sometimes referred to as a melting pot.
Individual-Level Acculturation (Transculturation)
Transculturation, or an individual-level acculturation, is happening on a smaller scale, with a less visible impact. This most often occurs to first-generation immigrants, for whom transculturation is most difficult, due to the lack of precedents in the family. The speed of transculturation varies, depending on the recipient's interest and motivation. Inevitably, with each generation, the dominant culture becomes more and more the dominantly acculturated one for the immigrants' descendants.
Another common, but less lasting effect of individual-level acculturation occurs when a traveler spends some time in a foreign place, away from the own culture. For example, s/he may pick up some regional vocabulary (especially if the languages are in the same family of languages), or may habituate to some local traditions.
Acculturative Stress
After moving to the new culture individuals meet many challenges – new language, different customs and laws, distinct norms of social behavior, etc. Facing various challenges and adopting to those challenges often bring certain dose of stress, known as acculturative stress. The research has shown that the acculturative stress is an important factor in mental health of immigrants, as it increases the risk for various psychological problems. Various variables are found to be associated with the degree of acculturative stress. The more the differences between the two cultures, the higher the stress. Also, the degree of receptiveness of the host society, and the nature of the migration are seen to mediate the acculturative stress.
Measuring acculturation
Different test and measures are developed to measure the level of acculturation. One of the most famous in U.S. for Mexican-American populations was developed by Hazuda et al. (1988). The scale is based on a multi-dimensional model that views acculturation as a process that involves language, beliefs, values, and structural assimilation (involvement of the minority group into the social structure of the dominant culture). This theoretical model hypothesizes that the more one uses official language of the dominant culture, the more one participates in the same beliefs and values as the dominant majority, and the more one is involved with different social structures of that culture, the more one is acculturated. Some of the other scales for acculturation are Cuellar, Harris, and Jasso (1980) and Szapocznik, Scopetta, Aranalde, and Kurtines (1978), which also measure acculturation in Latino population in the U.S. One of the most used scales for African-Americans is the one of Snowden and Hines (1999).
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Cuellar, I., Harris, L. C., & Jasso, R. (1980). An acculturation scale for Mexican American normal and clinical populations. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 2, 199-217.
Hazuda, H.P., Stern, M.P., & Haffner, S.M. (1988). Acculturation and assimilation among Mexican Americans: Scales and population-based data. Social Science Quarterly, 69, 687-706
Kottak, C.P. (2005) Windows on Humanity: A Concise Introduction to General Anthropology with PowerWeb, (p. 209 - 423). McGraw Hill, New York. ISBN 0072989424
Powell, J. W. (1880). Introduction to the study of Indian languages (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.
Powell, J. W. (1883). Human evolution: Annual address of the President, J. W. Powell, Delivered November 6, 1883. Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washington, 2, 176-208
Snowden, L. R., & Hines, A. M. (1999). A scale to assess African American acculturation. Journal of Black Psychology, 25, 36-47.
Szapocznik, J., Scopetta, M. A., Aranalde, M. A., & Kurtines, W. (1978). Cuban value structure: Clinical implications. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46(5), 961-970.
External links
- Aacculturation Part I Palomar Community College
- Acculturation Part II Palomar Community College
- Catalog of acculturation theories
- From Paris to Cairo: Resistance of the Unacculturated
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