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Acculturation

Acculturation remains a significant issue in a diverse society. It refers to the process of cultural exchanges as a result of continuous firsthand contact among cultural groups. The primary focus lies in the change occurring among minority group members, particularly immigrants, after adopting the cultural features of the majority group. Change may occur in beliefs, values, behavioral practices, languages, or all of these.

Perspectives

Historically, acculturation is conceptualized with a one-dimensional approach. That is to say, individuals must lose cultural traits of their own group to gain characteristics from other groups for adaptation. This approach fits into the larger picture of the straight line model of assimilation. This model maps the process of assimilation in a linear fashion wherein immigrants relinquish their own ethnic culture before taking on (presumably) more beneficial host cultural behaviors. In a series of stages, immigrants first predominantly retain their own ethnic cultures, and as contacts with host society increase, they enter a stage where aspects of the two cultures combine. Finally, the host culture overwhelms the ethnic culture, and immigrants come to full adoption of the host culture.

The unidimensional perspective on acculturation makes an important assumption that ethnic culture and host culture are mutually exclusive. However, contemporary theorists on acculturation challenge this assumption. Instead, these theorists view acculturation as multifaceted, such that ethnic culture and host culture exist on different dimensions. This perspective believes immigrants have the ability to retain some of their ethnic practices and, at the same time, adopt other aspects of the host society's culture.

Acculturation and Assimilation

Many observers often equated acculturation with assimilation in public discourse and in earlier assimilation theory until 1964, when Milton Gordon eliminated this confusion and provided a systematic dissection of the assimilation concept. In his conceptual scheme, acculturation is only one aspect of assimilation, sometimes called cultural assimilation, and it is the first step toward full assimilation. In his formulation, Gordon made a critical distinction between acculturation and what he called “structural assimilation,” by which he meant the entry of members of a minority group into primary-group relationships with the majority group. The primary group relationship refers to institutions or associations such as social clubs and cliques. Because discrimination and avoidance responses often lead to exclusion of immigrants and even the second generation, structural assimilation is slower than acculturation. Whereas acculturation is an inevitable outcome resulting from continuous contact between ethnic and majority groups, structural assimilation is not, because it requires new members to move out of their own groups or associations into the equivalent associations of the host society, which may not necessarily happen. Gordon and other assimilation theorists view acculturation as one-directional, meaning that members of an ethnic group adopt the culture of the majority group. This largely fits the reality of the old era of immigration where Anglo-American culture clearly constituted the societal mainstream. Now, as U.S. society becomes more diverse and the demographic proportion of the earlier majority group shrinks, the boundaries of group cultural differences often get blurred. For example, children of immigrant families typically acculturate to the dominant culture and the immigrant culture; therefore, both cultures become important elements of the children's development.

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