acculturation

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 town he acquires a traditional philosophy different from his own or incorporates certain aspects of the discovered culture, usually to the detriment of his own cultural foundations. Colonization is often the most common external cause of acculturation.

In this sense, and starting from this premise, we can highlight as an example the historical moment of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. And it is that this action gave rise to the indigenous people of the aforementioned discovered areas being obliged and in need of carrying out a process of acculturation. Thus, among other things, they had to assimilate the Christian religious beliefs of Spain.

A nation is that centuries ago found itself in the position of the aforementioned Americans and that is that, when the arrival of the Roman Empire to the Iberian Peninsula said land, its citizens had no choice but to make certain traditions, forms of functioning of the society or beliefs that belonged to it.

But the cases similar to these that have occurred throughout the history of mankind 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 acculturation processes have different degrees of survival, domination, resistance, destruction, modification and adaptation of native cultures once the intercultural approach has been produced. This procedure contemplates internalization, valuation 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 imposing itself due to the weight that the majority has with respect to another cultural philosophy.

There are specialists who differentiate between the acculturation of an individual (known as transculturation) and of a human group. The concept has also generated debate in today's multicultural communities, in which the descendants of immigrants are encouraged to adopt a dominant culture although they are also called upon to learn about the family culture.

Other notions related to acculturation are the syncretism (a philosophical system made up of elements that are born from the union and conciliation of different doctrines), the enculturation (the process by which an established culture is taught to a person with the repetition of their accepted norms and values) and the intercultural communication (analyzed by different disciplines, such as anthropology, the psychology and the social communication sciences).

In this sense, and before finalizing the definition of the concept that concerns us, it must be emphasized that precisely within the aforementioned Anthropology it was where the word acculturation first appeared. More specifically, he did it in the year 1880 by the hand of important figures in this area such as Boas, Margaret Mead or McGee.