Acculturation is called the assimilation of cultural elements of one society by another community, as is currently the case with Halloween in many Latin American countries.
Acculturation is the name given to a process that involves the reception and assimilation of cultural elements of one human group by another .
In this way, a people acquires a traditional philosophy different from its own or incorporates certain aspects of the discovered culture, usually to the detriment of the cultural bases themselves. Colonization is usually the most common external cause of acculturation.
Examples of acculturation
In this sense, and based on this premise, we can highlight as an example the historical moment of the "discovery" of America by Christopher Columbus . And this action gave rise to the indigenous people of the aforementioned "discovered" areas feeling the obligation and need to carry out an acculturation process. Thus, among other things, they had to assimilate the Christian religious beliefs of Spain .
A nation that centuries ago found itself in the position of the aforementioned Americans and that, when the arrival of the Roman Empire to the Iberian Peninsula occurred, its citizens had no choice but to adopt certain traditions, forms of functioning of society or beliefs that belonged to it.
But cases similar to these that have occurred throughout human history are many and varied. Among them, it can also be highlighted that the African aborigines during the 19th century were subjected to a process of acculturation, both in terms of religious values and customs or language, due to the various colonizing movements to which they were subjected.
The colonization process caused the acculturation of many indigenous peoples of America.
Features of this process
Acculturation processes have different degrees of survival, domination, resistance, destruction, modification and adaptation of native cultures once intercultural rapprochement has occurred. This procedure contemplates the internalization, assessment and identification of cultural values .
Acculturation can be carried out by the influence of a systematic, consistent ideological current that is maintained over time , although in simpler cases culture ends up being imposed due to the weight that the majority has with respect to another cultural philosophy.
Acculturation, transculturation, enculturation and other related concepts
There are specialists who differentiate between the acculturation of an individual (called transculturation ) and that of a human group. The concept has also generated debate in today's multicultural communities, in which descendants of immigrants are encouraged to adopt a dominant culture although they are also called to learn about the family culture.
Other notions related to acculturation are syncretism (a philosophical system made up of elements that are born from the union and conciliation of different doctrines), enculturation (the process by which an established culture is taught to a person with the repetition of its norms. and accepted values) and intercultural communication (analyzed by different disciplines, such as anthropology , psychology and social communication sciences ).
In this sense, and before finalizing the definition of the concept at hand, it must be emphasized that it was precisely within the aforementioned anthropology that the word acculturation first appeared. More specifically, it did so in 1880 at the hands of important figures in this area such as Boas , Margaret Mead or McGee .