Acculturation In Sociology

Acculturation In Sociology.It is a fact that we all have aspects of our life that are anchored in the culture that we share, in parts, with the social environment in which we develop. Culture is part of who we are and responsible for how we see and understand the world in which we exist, so that it interferes with how we present ourselves to other individuals and how we assimilate the image of the other members of our society. This culture that we create is manifested in our appearance, in the way we dress and even in our daily meals, in the cuisine we adopt as usual. But this very broad aspect of our lives is not static or immutable, quite the contrary. Our culture is in a constant process of modeling. By adopting different customs, values ​​or even symbols, we modify, for example, culturally constructed habits,

This “modeling” process that our culture goes through is the result of the phenomenon of acculturation . Acculturation is the name given to the exchange process between different cultures based on their coexistence, so that the culture of one suffers or influences the cultural construction of the other.

This process, however, should not be confused with other phenomena of interaction between different cultures, such as cultural assimilation, a process in which a cultural group assimilates or adopts the customs and habits of another culture to the detriment of its own. In the process, a group’s “original” culture is gradually replaced and lost over time. Although it can be a catalyst for this assimilation, not every adoption of different cultural traits results in the substitution or abandonment of another cultural aspect.

As we have already seen, culture is not immutable, but the process of acculturation is not equivalent to cultural change, insofar as the adoption of certain cultural characteristics, such as changing or adopting a different way of dressing, does not necessarily imply the abandonment or change of another cultural aspect. As an example, take the case of oriental cuisine, which is widely appreciated around the world, becoming consumed by several individuals from different cultures without, however, changing their habits or the way they think about one or another aspect of their world.

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Is acculturation equivalent to the destruction of another culture?

In fact, the process of acculturation is seen by many as responsible for the destruction or wear and tear of cultures seen as “original”. Like the initial idea of ​​Franz Boas (1858-1942), one of the most important authors in the field of cultural studies, who guided the phenomenon of acculturation through the process of changing the original culture. However, authors such as the Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre, worked with the idea that the process of acculturation is not one-sided, so that the two cultural structures that are involved in the process are subject to absorb one or another aspect of culture differently. mutual understanding, even though it is not a symmetric process.

One of the greatest concerns of Brazilian anthropology is precisely the possibility of the destruction of indigenous cultures that still resist, to some extent, in the country. The process of acculturation, which in many ways culminated in cultural change and the assimilation of these indigenous cultures, in certain aspects can be seen in the change in the way they dress, in the construction of their homes or in the gradual abandonment of their languages. But our urbanized society, on the other hand, adopted words from the indigenous languages ​​that we now use commonly, still maintains culinary customs such as the preparation of dishes like tapioca and manioc, popular knowledge about natural medicine, such as the use of medicinal plants (Copaíba and guarana are some examples).

For this reason, the total destruction of a group’s culture would only occur in extreme situations, such as the establishment of a regime that prioritizes the cultural genocide of a specific ethnic group, and over an enormous period of time. In its “natural” process, acculturation occurs in terms of the group in question, according to their needs. Also taking into account that the process of acculturation occurs in a mutual way, where the two parties adopt cultural characteristics of each other, so that there will always be traces of another culture in societies where diversity and contact between groups of different cultures are present .

 

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