Anthropology
Open Access

The Various Strategies Involved in Acculturation

^*Correspondence: Neeharika Singh, Department of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, United Kingdom, Email:

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Description

Acculturation refers to the cultural and psychological changes that result from contact with other cultures. This process can be direct, indirect, voluntary, or involuntary. The fluidity of the acculturation process depends on people's resocialization because people sometimes find it easy to learn new norms, values, attitudes, and behavior patterns. In such cases, successful adaptation leads to a smooth acculturation process towards the responsible group. In contrast, individuals also have d ifficulty in adopting new cultural traits, leading to conflict. This situation occurs mainly when acculturation is involuntary and painful, as it leads to experiences of stress and other behavioral difficulties.

Strategies

There are four outcomes of acculturation: Assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization. Assimilation is a two-way process, and the minority culture is changed as well as the majority culture. Acculturation occurs when minority culture changes but is still able to retain unique cultural traits of language, food, and customs. An example of assimilation is the change in dress and behavior an immigrant may experience when living in a new country. Separation is defined as maintaining one's cultural identity and having little interest in building positive relationships with other cultures and in adopting customs or accepting the values of the host society. They value their cultural heritage and don't want to learn about the new culture, which is in the lower left quadrant of the chart. These people adopt a separation strategy for acculturation. Integration occurs when individuals are able to adopt the cultural norms of the dominant or host culture while retaining their culture of origin. Integration leads to biculturalism and is often synonymous with it. Marginalization happens when individuals reject both their culture of origin and the main host culture. Acculturationrelated marginalization is defined as the rejection of one's own culture of origin and the dominant host culture. These types of factors partially explain why general statements about acculturation approaches are insufficient to predict successful adaptation. As examination in this area expands, one study has identified marginalization as a maladaptive acculturation strategy. Several theorists have found that the fourfold models of acculturation are too simple to have predictive validity. Some common criticisms of such models include the fact that individuals often do not fall neatly into one of the four categories and that there is very little evidence for the practical existence of the strategy of marginalization and acculturation.

Conclusion

Furthermore, the bidirectionality of acculturation means that whenever two groups engage in a cultural exchange, there are 16 permutations of possible acculturation strategies (e.g. an integrationist individual within an assimilationist host culture). Another criticism of the acculturation quadruple, according to this study, is that people are less likely to cultivate a sense of self, but do not assimilate other cultures or perpetuate inherited cultures. The interactive acculturation model presents a proposed alternative to the typological approach by attempting to explain the acculturation process within a state policy framework and the dynamic interplay of host community and immigrant acculturation orientations. Acculturation is very significant for policy makers as well as for different organizations functioning with migrant and immigrant families in helping them change to a new life in the immigrant-accepting countries