4 Enculturation, Acculturation and Transculturation

Dr. Meenal Dhall

Contents

1. Enculturation

2. Acculturation

3. Tranculturation

3.1 In history

3.2 Acculturation in immigrants

3.3 Languages

3.4 Cuisine

3.5 Acculturative Stress

Learning Objectives

To develop an understanding about the concept of

• Enculturation
• Acculturation
• Transculturation
• Different factors influencing transculturation

1. ENCULTURATION

E.Adamson Hoebel says enculturation is “both a conscious and an unconscious conditioning process where a man, as child and adult, achieves competence in his culture, internalizes his culture and becomes thoroughly enculturated.”

Anthropologist Margaret Mead clearly defined enculturation in 1963 as ―a process distinct from socialization in that enculturation refers to the actual process of cultural learning with a specific culture‖

One internalizes the dreams and expectations, the rules and requirements not just for the larger society seen as a whole, but also for every specific demand within the whole. Society does whatever is necessary to aid any one of its members in learning proper and appropriate behavior for any given social setting and in meeting the demands of any challenge. Enculturation begins before birth and continues until death. Thus, one learns respect for the symbols of the nation through reciting a pledge of allegiance and singing the national anthem in school. He learns with whom he may be physically violent (a wrestling competitor) and with whom he cannot (the little girl down the street). He becomes aware of his rights and obligations and privileges as well as the rights of others.

Sociologist Talcott Parsons spoke of the birth of new generations of children as a recurrent barbarian invasion. One reason he said that was because human infants do not possess culture at birth. They have no conception of the world, no language, or a morality. It is in this sense that Parsons uses the word “barbarian” in reference to infants. They are uncultured, unsocialized persons. All an infant needs to live and cope within the cultural context awaiting him is acquired through the process termed enculturation by the anthropologist and socialization by the sociologist.

We may define enculturation as the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that enable them to become functioning members of their societies.

Awaiting the infant is a society possessing a culture, an ordered way of life. The child possesses certain possibilities for processing information and developing desires making it possible for that ordered way of life to influence him. These enduring competencies and standards of judgment, along with attitudes and motives, form the personality. The personality, in turn, influences the culture.

Various anthropologists have tended to regard enculturation as consisting of such processes as socialization, the acquiring of culture, and cultural internalization, excluding an innovative process of enculturation.

Enculturation is the process whereby an established culture influences and teaches an individual, group, or organization to the extent that the target adopts the particular culture’s values, norms, and

behaviors and the target finds an accepted role within the established culture. The concept is distinct from acculturation, cultural adjustment, and cultural adaptation. The individual process of enculturation also applies to enculturation within organizations. An awareness of the processes of enculturation is important in effective intercultural training. The process of enculturation is not entirely passive or unconscious, as the cultural transmission (or transmutation) involves processes of teaching and learning that are reflective, deliberate, incidental, and functional.

The term enculturation was first coined by cultural anthropologist Melville Herskovits in 1948. Herskovits’ definition of enculturation includes a process of novel change and inquiry. Two phases of enculturation, according to Herskovits, can be distinguished:

1. The “unconscious” stage of early years in human growth, where the individual “unconsciously” internalizes his culture;
2. The “conscious” stage of later years, which involves innovations initiated by individuals.

It is proposed that enculturation be defined as a construct, and a process in a behavioral sense, that delineates transmission and transmutation of culture throughout human growth. Cultural transmission is a process of acquiring the existing culture; cultural transmutation, on the other hand, is a process of psychosocial mutation. Enculturation, thus, involves innovation and inquiry which is a particular type of epistemological sensivity to culture.

―It is a bipolar process‖. – Nobuo Shimahara, Enculturation – A reconsideration Conrad  Phillip   Kottak, an American anthropologist, wrote a textbook called ‘Window on Humanity:

A  Concise Introduction to  Anthropology’,  in which he has  written:

Enculturation is the process where the culture that is currently established teaches an individual the accepted norms and values of the culture or society where the individual lives. The individual can become an accepted member and fulfil the needed functions and roles of the group. Most importantly the individual knows and establishes a context of boundaries and accepted behaviour that dictates what is acceptable and not acceptable within the framework of that society. It teaches the individual their role within society as well as what is accepted behavior within that society and lifestyle. Enculturation does not always come from deliberate learning, but also by seeing and observing. As we observe our elders doing a particular thing, we do it too, sometimes without even thinking why we do a particular thing that way. There may be a reason behind it, but as we learn, we don’t necessarily reason our elders, but just do things how they ask us to do them. This comes from having a sense of trust and respect for them that they definitely know more than us.

2. ACCULTURATION

Early Definitions One of the earliest and most useful definitions of acculturation emphasized direct contact across ethnic groups and the fact that both groups would undergo changes: Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups.

A subsequent definition proposed the idea that there could be multiple causes for acculturation and that its effects could be not only varied but also observed and measured over varying amounts of time: [Acculturation is] culture change that is initiated by the conjunction of two or more autonomous cultural systems.

Acculturative change may be the consequence of direct cultural transmission; it may be derived from non-cultural causes, such as ecological or demographic modification induced by an impinging culture; it may be delayed, as with internal adjustments following upon the acceptance of alien traits or patterns; or it may be a reactive adaptation of transitional modes of life.

Acculturation is a dynamic and multidimensional process of adaptation that occurs when distinct cultures come into sustained contact. It involves different degrees and instances of culture learning and maintenance that are contingent upon individual, group, and environmental factors. Acculturation is dynamic because it is a continuous and fluctuating process and it is multidimensional because it transpires across numerous indices of psychosocial functioning and can result in multiple adaptation outcomes.

Acculturation refers to the modification of the culture of a group or individuals due to its interaction with another culture. Acculturation refers to the process where members of one cultural group adopt beliefs and behavioral patterns of another cultural group.

Acculturation refers to the changes that occur when different cultural groups come into the intensive contact. But more often than not, the term acculturation can be seen as an extensive cultural borrowing in the context of superordinate-suordinate or less powerful societies. The borrowing may sometimes be a two way process, but generally it is the subordinate or less powerful society that that borrows the most.

External pressure for culture change can take various forms. In its most direct form—conquest or colonization – the dominant group uses force or the threat of force to bring about the culture change in the other group. For example,

1. In the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the conquerors forced mant native groups to accept Catholicism. Although such direct force is not always exerted in conquest situations, dominated people often have little choice but to change.
2. Indirectly forced change abounds in the history of Native Americans in the United States. Although the federal government made few direct attempts to force people to adopt American culture, it did drive many native groups from their lands, thereby obliging them to give up many aspects if their traditional ways of life. In order to survive, they had no choice but to adopt many of the dominant society’s traits. When Native American children were required to go to schools, which taught the dominant society’s values, the process was accelerated.

A subordinated society may acculturate to a dominant society even in the absence of direct or indirect force. The dominated people may elect to adopt cultural elements from the dominant society in order to survive in their changed world. Or, perceiving that members of the dominated people may identify with the dominant culture in the hope that by doing so they will be able to share some of its benefits. for example, in Arctic areas many Inuit and Lapp groups seemed eager to replace dog sleds with snowmobiles without any coercion.

But many millions of people never had a chance to acculturate after contact after contact with Europeans. They simply died, sometimes directly at the hands of the conquerors, but probably more often as a result of the new diseases the Europeans inadvertently brought with them. Depopulation because of measles, smallpox, and tuberculosis was particularly common in North and South America and on the islands of the Pacific. Those areas had previously been isolated from the contact with Europeans and from the diseases of that continuous landmass we call the Old World—EUROPE, ASIA and AFRICA.

The story of Ishi, the last surviving member of the group of native Americans in California called the Yahi, is moving testimonial to the frequently tragic effect of the contact with Europeans. In the space of 22 year the Yahi population was reduced from the several hundred to the near zero. The historical  record on this episode of depopulation suggests that the Europeans Americans murdered 30 to 50 yahi for every Europeans American murdered.

Nowadays , many powerful nations—and not just western ones –may seem to be acting in more humanitarian ways to improve the life of previously subjugated as well as.

3. TRANCULTURATION

Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1947 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures. He proposed the term in contrast to the word ―acculturation,‖ which describes the process of transition from one culture to another on the part of an individual or a group.

Transculturation: a process of cultural transformation marked by the influx of new culture elements and the loss or alteration of existing ones.

Transculturation is what Mieke Bal calls a traveling concept. She argues that ―interdisciplinary in the humanities, necessary, exciting, serious, must seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than methods … to look at the practice of cultural analysis.‖ Bal suggests that a focus on concepts can better illuminate the object than a focus on methodologies. She advocates a return to a close-reading approach, using concepts not so much as firmly established univocal terms but as dynamic in themselves. While groping to define, provisionally and partly, what a particular concept may mean, we gain insight into what it can do. It is in the groping that the valuable work lies. The groping is a collective endeavor.

Transculturation, on the other hand, refers to the encounter between or among cultures in which each one acquires or adapts elements of the other(s) or in which new cultural elements are created. Ortiz found this a more appropriate (and less ethnocentric) term to describe the processes of cultural change at work in the creation of Cuban culture. In the encounter between races, he described five phases of transculturation, from enslavement to compromise to adjustment to self assertion to integration. More generally, the word transculturation can simply describe changes brought about in one culture by the introduction of elements from another.

He stressed the loss or displacement of a society’s culture in this process, together with the fusion of the indigenous and the foreign to create a new, original cultural product. Ortiz defined the concept in opposition to the term ―acculturation,‖ used by American anthropologists in 1936. The term transculturation better expresses the different phases in the transitive process from one culture to another, because this process does not only imply the acquisition of culture, as connoted by the Anglo-American term acculturation, but it also necessarily involves the loss or uprooting of one’s preceding  culture, what one could call a partial disculturation. Moreover, it signifies the subsequent creation of new cultural phenomena that one could call neoculturation. For Ortiz, transculturation was the creative potential of cultural encounters that embraced loss and recovery in new forms of cultural expression. One of the interesting features of Ortiz’s paradigm was that it was not merely an uneasy fusion of two simultaneously held belief systems, but instead accounted for the historic specificity and artistic originality of new cultural phenomena, going beyond the syncretic model of two cultural systems co-existing to embrace instead those elements retained and lost by the two systems in the creation of a third. For Ortiz, acculturation was a mechanistic process, and it denied that culture was ―a dynamic, creative social fact.‖

Transculturation, on the other hand, privileged ―the dialectical process itself,‖ rather than ―the resulting syncretisms.‖Ortiz’s term emphasizes the local, not the universal, in ―a new form of cultural dynamics that understands cultural Julie F. Codell 5 productivity not in binary terms but as a fluid complex operation among differing and contesting cultural sites.‖ Furthermore, this dynamic possesses ―a powerful political potential that undermines hegemonic and homogenising claims the aim of which is the ultimate elimination of cultural difference.‖ Transculturation was tied to the quotidian, ordinary things and practices. Peruvian ethnographer and novelist Jose Maria Arguedas further stressed the survival of an indigenous culture, not unaffected by contact with the West, but producing a Peruvian culture neither ―pure‖ Indian nor ―pure‖ Spanish, but distinct from both. Mary Louise Pratt focuses on reception, where transcultural works become legible, or readable, to a public. This readability springs from contact zones, where cultures ―meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination—like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths.‖Such legibility relies on signifying practices that ―encode and legitimate the aspirations‖ of these transculturally melded cultures. In the contact zone, ―subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture‖ to produce transcultural works in which colonized people write back to their colonizers and speak themselves, albeit on the colonizer’s terms. For Pratt, as for Ortiz, transculturation occurs when subjugated peoples determine what they absorb and how they use it: identifying with the ideas, interests, histories and attitudes of others; comparing elite and vernacular cultural forms; engaging with suppressed aspects of multiple histories and rhetorics of authenticity; communicating across difference and hierarchy; and mediating among cultures. Patricia Archibald shares Pratt’s view of a subordinate culture’s appropriation and reinvention of itself in its own terms and through its own agency, giving the term a utopian inflection. Archibald compares transculturation to Wittgenstein’s notion of language games, ―where linguistic context and use replace linguistic origins,‖ so that use has a ―provisional, but a fully deracinated or deessentialized relationship to origin … the way that people select, mix, and transform culture in the era of transnationalism.‖ Archibald seeks to obliterate the authority of cultural origin and focus on the provisional nature of transculturation, as does Felipe Hernández in applying the term to Latin American architecture. For him, the term functions in ―a multi-directional and endless interactive process between various cultural systems … in opposition to unidirectional and hierarchical structures determined by the principle of origin.‖ Abril Trigo, examining the word’s changing uses among Latin American theorists, notes that transculturation’s popularity relies on the transience and perishability of its richly allusive meanings that may even anticipate postmodernism. For Trigo the term implies the contingency of identity ―negotiated on a daily basis‖ that permits the global revision of cultural structures. Trigo argues that transculturation is compelling because it does not imply a synthesis or syncretic resolution to cultural inter weavings, but rather emphasizes conflicts and alterities without the hierarchies associated with hybridity.33 Reassessing Latin American scholars’ comments on transculturation, Mark Millington argues that in hybridity, elements were ―still identifiable as such,‖ while in transculturation ―they blended or fused into a completely new identity.‖ Although transculturation can, 1770–1930 be ―a survival technique‖ that localizes and partially mitigates dominance by others, it can also ―open up new spaces and possibilities, including elements of critique and self-determination … via a conscious attempt to create a variant cultural logic or autonomy.‖

Transculturation has migrated into literature, film (especially ethnographic documentary), communication, justice studies and across many ethnic and gender/transgender studies disciplines. Each use modifies the term as it also helps stabilize a set of ideas associated with transculturation across disciplines.

In communication studies, transculturation has a utopian flavor as a term able ―to free us from the conventions and obsessions of culture itself,‖ because every culture ―requires interaction and dialogue with other cultures.‖ Thus, transculturation, like Bakhtin’s heteroglossic language, exists within all cultures ―like a multidimensional space‖ and over time. But this utopian view in which individuals share and enrich each other through difference assumes equity among all mutually influential cultures, hardly the equilibrium that existed under colonialism or domination.

David MacDougall explores several meanings of transculturation in ethnographic and documentary films, from ―crossing cultural boundaries‖ with ―an awareness and mediation of the unfamiliar‖ to more assertively ―denying such boundaries,‖ while recognizing the fragility of cultural differences. He argues that when we see ethnographic photographs, we see transculturally, seeing differences, not similarities. MacDougall deploys Clifford Geertz’s notion of culture as ―an historically transmitted … system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men [sic] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.‖ In the nineteenth century this often took visual forms that emphasized culture as ―appearance: race, dress, personal adornment, ceremonial forms, architecture, technology and material goods.‖MacDougall views transcultural processes as injecting ambiguity into images and into a discipline’s underlying presumptions, since images range widely in their many possible meanings across different contexts.

These authors share a view of transculturation as mutual and reciprocal exchanges across borders that are permeable and liminal, not restrictive, spaces. They emphasize the processes of production and consumption/reception as an ―antagonic plurality, the tense coexistence of diverse cultures … in their segmented participation in dissimilar systems of production.‖ These processes generate ambiguity through the uneven reception of heterogeneous art works that then (re)produce discontinuities and create new cultural heterogeneities within modernity.

The process may not necessarily be an act of compulsion, where immigrants must conform to the cultural practices of the new nation; however, it could be both preserving the indigenous culture and accepting the foreign culture simultaneously. At an individual level or in a group, people living in the same geographical area learn to absorb the beliefs, value systems, and lifestyle of the other culture. Acculturation is generally observed to occur in cases of direct or firsthand contact between two cultures. It is a two-way process; both groups can get influenced. It does not necessarily mean a drastic transformation in values, though values may gradually undergo a change. Children born in a foreign country, with a culture different to their native culture, tend to acquire the traits of the foreign culture from infancy.

3.1. In History

Acculturation can be seen as a gradual process of transformation that was initiated in the native Cherokee way of life. At the end of 18th century, accepting the proposal given by President George Washington, Cherokees changed themselves from the traditional hunting and gathering community to a cotton-growing community. They started imitating the whites in their dressing styles. They wanted to build homes similar to the whites and live a life like them. Missionaries helped the natives to acquire Christian beliefs and faith. Schools were started, and Cherokees were eager to learn. The Cherokee syllabary (of 86 characters) was compiled in 1821 by the Sequoyah. With the help of this, the New Testament was translated later by Elias Boudinot. Further, the Cherokee nation adopted its Constitution in 1827.

3.2. Acculturation in Immigrants

A huge number of Hispanics reside in the United States. The grandparents of the young Americans born in Hispanic families would have refused to acculturate, but it is not the case with their grandchildren. Changing attitudes towards getting good education or opportunities for higher studies, dreaming of a big career, earning a good salary, unlike the traditional attitude of working hard for a low pay, or ignoring education for a quick job, or a generally satisfied with what-I-have attitude is nothing but a transformation due to the exchange of cultural aspects.

3.3. Languages

English becoming the lingua franca of the world highlights acculturation. Hanzi, or the logographic characters of the written Chinese language, were adopted by Japan as kanji, Korea as hanja, and by Vietnam. A European working in China may, after a considerable period of stay, learn to converse in Chinese and also encourage his/her colleagues to learn German or French for instance. Another instance is that of the various versions of Pidgin English (a mix of English and the local language). This developed primarily for the purpose of easy communication between traders belonging to different cultures. The use of terms, words, or phrases borrowed from other languages also indicates that two or more cultures can be intertwined or linked as a necessity.

3.4. Cuisine

Urban areas or metropolitan cities in every country experience uniformity among its dwellers, despite their diverse ethnic origins. Acculturation progresses gradually in terms of exchange of food items. Restaurants in cities serve different types of cuisine like Chinese, Mexican, Italian, East Asian, Indian, etc. This develops among people a taste for new delicacies. Peanut butter sandwich has become habitual for nearly all Americans, irrespective of their ethnicity or native cuisine. Similarly, for a young teenager of Mexican origin both a traditional recipe (like Gandule rice) and a hamburger could be favorites. Also, people from cultural groups that are strictly vegetarian may try non-vegetarian foods after socializing with a different cultural group.

Acculturation in India being the largest democracy of today’s world, it may surprise many, what makes a developing country like India sustain such a diverse population through a democracy. Acculturation could be the possible answer. India speaks hundreds of languages, and not just dialects. States in India are divided on linguistic basis. Every state has a different cuisine, dressing style, language (many have different scripts), housing patterns, traditions and festivals. Indian culture largely is a mix of various cultural influences like, the British, Arabic, Islamic, Portuguese, and others. Acculturation here is reflected from the concept of Indian nationalism that exists and keeps such a group with diverse backgrounds bonded as a nation.

Dressing patterns undergo a change rapidly; especially among the younger generations. Acculturating to a fashionable dressing style or as a norm of a foreign land could be an example. Music is another important factor exhibiting acculturation. Music composers, singers or rock bands mix up sounds and rhythms from different places to compose a fusion. There can be several other facets of life that can be viewed as examples of acculturation across countries.

It could be a forced process, like in case of refugees or the ancient slave trade. Cultural exchange programs held across different nations or even tourists adapting to a different lifestyle for fun can come under the umbrella of acculturation.

3.5. Acculturative Stress

It refers to the reaction to the process of inter cultural contact or cultural adaptation. It is the stress felt by individuals while adapting to a foreign cuisine, language, behavioral patterns, beliefs, etc. Adaptation to the surrounding environment comes naturally to humans. Getting along with a new social environment is also something that has been happening throughout human history of exploration, invasion, migration, trade, colonialism and the more recent globalization. Acculturation is thus, a similar sociological term that explains the process of people from different cultural backgrounds residing and settling together as one community.