Acculturation: “Embracing a new culture through adaptation.”

Acculturation is the exchange of cultural features that results when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first hand contact; the original cultural patterns of either or both groups may be altered, but the groups remain distinct. (Kottak 2007)

Despite definitions and evidence that acculturation entails two-way processes of change, research and theory have continued with a focus on the adjustments and changes experienced by minorities in response to their contact with the dominant majority.
Portrait of Native Americans from the Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Comanche, Iroquois, and Muscogee tribes in European attire. Photos dates from 1868 to 1924.

Thus, acculturation can be conceived to be the processes of cultural learning imposed upon minorities by the fact of being minorities. If enculturation is first-culture learning, then acculturation is second-culture learning. This has often been conceived to be a unidimensional, zero-sum cultural conflict in which the minority’s culture is displaced by the dominant group’s culture in a process of assimilation.

The traditional definition sometimes differentiates between acculturation by an individual (transculturation) and that by a group, usually very large (acculturation).

Additionally, “acculturation” has been used by Matusevich as a term describing the paradigm shift public schools must undergo in order to successfully integrate emerging technologies in a meaningful way into classrooms (Matusevich, 1995). The old and the new additional definitions have a boundary that blurs in 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.

Beginning perhaps with Child (1943) and Lewin (1948), acculturation began to be conceived as the strategic reaction of the minority to continuous contact with the dominant group. See Rudmin’s 2003 tabulation of acculturation theories. Thus, there are several options the minority can choose, each with different motivations and different consequences. These options include assimilation to the majority culture, a defensive assertion of the minority culture, a bicultural blending of the two cultures, a bicultural alternation between cultures depending on contexts, or a diminishment of both cultures. Following Berry’s (1980; 2003) terminology, four major options or strategies are now commonly called assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization.

Acculturative stress refers to the psychological, somatic, and social difficulties that may accompany acculturation processes.This was first noted by Redfield, Linton and Herskovits (1936, p. 152), calling it “psychic conflict” that may arise from conflicting cultural norms. Born (1970) and Berry (1980) have theorized that acculturative stress is a fundamental psychological force in acculturative processes. Ausbel (1960) first measured “acculturative stress”, and many have since claimed that it is a significant problem for many minority people (e.g., Berry, Kim, Minde & Mok, 1983 ; Burnam, Hough, Karno, Escobar & Telles, 1987; Hovey, 2000). However, many studies have found no evidence that acculturation is distressful (e.g., Inkeles, 1969 ; Rudmin, 2006 ). In fact, in a study of 55 samples in 13 nations, Sam, Vedder, Ward and Horenczyk (2006, pp. 127–130) found that immigrant adolescents had better mental health than their non-immigrant classmates.

 

Group foreign-origin acculturation

Massive intake of another culture’s traits is the most classical and narrow definition of “acculturation”. Such acculturation may be adequately adapted into another’s, modernizing and advancing it through the inflow of technology or the enrichment of literature. For example,

Hanzi, the written language of Chinese language, has been adapted and modified by other Asian cultures, including: Japan (as Kanji), Korea (as Hanja), and Vietnam (as Chữ-nôm). Traditional Chinese characters and meanings can be seen in many examples of the vernacular dialects of these countries, and most of them still use (Hanzi) for formal and official correspondence

But 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 of the US, Taiwanese aborigines, and Australian Aborigines — have mostly lost their traditional culture (most evidently language) and replaced by that of the dominant new culture.

The term has most often described as Westernization, Natives having adopted Western cultures.

The founders of Liberia were the descendants, just a few generations removed, of African ancestors who had a completely African culture; yet they have fully taken up the white-dominated cultural values of the early 19th Century United States (specifically, of the then dominant Whig Party), to the extent that their settlement in Africa and rule over the native population there were clearly in the manner of foreign colonizers rather than of “Africans returning home”.

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 is a simplified form of English mixed with some of the other language of the other culture. It blends English grammar with that of a native language. This was first used in Chinese ports and similar have developed in Papua New Guinea and West Africa.

In situations of continuous contact, cultures have exchanged and blended foods, recipes, music, dances, clothing, tools, and technologies.

 

Transculturation

Transculturation, or individual foreign-origin acculturation, is on a smaller scale with 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 the presence of a motivation.

Another common, but less lasting, acculturation effects occur after a traveler spent a while in a foreign place. The traveler may pick up some regional vocabulary, especially if the languages are in the same family.

 

Native-origin acculturation

A child may learn one or more traditions (multicultural family of immigrants) from birth, usually from the family (blood or adopted), particularly the parents.

Inevitably, with each generation, the dominant culture becomes more and more the dominantly accultured one for the immigrants’ descendants. A good example of native origin acculturation would be the Inuit, these people started to share their traditions when the Canadian Government went to the Arctic.

 

History of acculturation

Early written codes of law, for example the Old Testament law of Moses, or the Babylonian law of Hammurabi, acted to stabilize cultural practices and reduce acculturative changes. Lao Tsu proposed to keep the kingdom small and the population limited, avoid exchanges with even very close neighbors in the 6th century BC. Probably the first western academic account of acculturation appears in Plato’s, Laws written in the 4th century BC, in which he argued that humans have a tendency to imitate strangers and a tendency to like to travel, both of which introduce new cultural practices. Plato argued that this should be minimized to the degree possible.

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” to be the psychological changes induced by cross-cultural imitation. The first psychological study of acculturation was probably Thomas and Znaniecki’s 1918 study of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America.

Since then scholars in different disciplines have developed more than 100 different theories of acculturation. Paul Campisi, in 1947, was the first to make a “A Scale for the Measurement of Acculturation”.

Histories of acculturation theory have been written (in chronological order) by Sarah Simons (1901), Isaac Berkson (1920), W. D. Borrie (1959), Guido Baglioni (1964), Harold Abramson (1980), and Floyd Rudmin (2003a; b; 2006).

 

Cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or behavior. These elements are typically imported into the existing culture, and may have wildly different meanings or lack the subtleties of their original cultural context. Because of this, cultural appropriation is sometimes viewed negatively, and has been called “cultural theft.”

 

Cultural imperialism

Cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting the culture or language of one nation in another. It is usually the case that the former is a large, economically or militarily powerful nation and the latter is a smaller, less affluent one. Cultural imperialism can take the form of an active, formal policy or a general attitude.

 

Interactive acculturation

Interactive acculturation is an amalgam of theories that attempt to explain the acculturation process within a framework of state policies and the dynamic interplay of host community and immigrant acculturation orientations. In the late 1990s a team composed of Richard Y. Bourhis, Lena Celine Moise, Stephane Perreault, and Sacha Senecal first postulated a theory in a journal of psychology article entitled “Towards an Interactive Acculturation Model: A Social Psychological Approach”. The premise of the model expounds on some of the earlier work by academics like Young, Padilla and Graves but emphasizes a new angle of interest: the structural host nation policies and subsequent socio-psychological effect as well as the dynamics between immigrant populations and the host culture they move into.