Module 2
ENCULTURATION AND ACCULTURATION
INTRODUCTION
In order for us to have clearer views of culture, two important terms are to be considered,
these are enculturation and acculturation. Practicing our own culture (enculturation) and
understanding how we learn to adopt other world’s culture (acculturation) are must in order for
us to see how these help in the transmission of culture from generation to generation and how
these new cultures are integrated in our own culture.
OBJECTIVES
At the end of this module, you will be able to:
1 differentiate enculturation and acculturation
2. define and discuss the differences of the enculturation and acculturation processes
3. explain the relationship between enculturation and acculturation
4. discuss the sociological definition of education..
Enculturation
Sociologist Talcott Parsons of new generations of children as a recurrent barbarian
invasion. One reason he said that was because human infants do not possess culture at birth.
They have no conception of the world, no language, nor morality. It is in this sense that
Parsons uses the word “barbarian” in reference to infants. They are uncultured, unsocial zed
persons. All an infant needs to live and to cope within the cultural context awaiting him is
acquired through the process called “enculturation” by the anthropologists and socialization by
the sociologist.
We may define enculturation as the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge,
skills, attitudes, and values that enable them to become functioning members of their societies.
Awaiting the infant is the society possessing a culture, an ordered way of life. The child
possesses certain possibilities for processing information and developing desires making it
possible for that ordered way of life to influence him. These enduring competencies and
standards of judgment, along with attitudes and motives, form the personality. The personality
in turn, influences the culture.
Enculturation says E. Adamson Hoebel, is “both a conscious and unconscious conditioning
process whereby man, as child and adult, achieves competence in his culture, internalizes his
culture and becomes thoroughly enculturated.” One internalizes the dreams and expectations,
the rules and requirements not just for the larger society seen as a whole, but also for every
specific demand within the whole. Society does whatever is necessary to aid any one of its
members in learning proper and appropriate behavior for any given social setting and in
meeting the demands of every challenge. Enculturation begins before birth and continues until
death. Thus, one learns to respect the symbols of the nation through reciting a pledge of
allegiance and singing the national anthem in school.
Spindler (1974) defined enculturation as:
1.
The weaning out of an individual from the emotional attachment to adults,
particularly to a mother.
2.
It is also the transmission of cultural traditions from one generation to the next.
3.
It is also the initiation of a new member into the group ensuring generational
continuity.
Three Types of Enculturation According to Mead (1972).
1. Postfigurative Enculturation. Children learn primarily from their forebears (parents,
elders, ancestors), cultural traditions are transmitted unilaterally-and with recognized
authority-from elders to the younger members of the society.
2. Configurative Enculturation. In this type, children and adults learn from their
respective peers. This is characterized by the influence of a clique or a predominant
group on learner’s behavior. This type of culture transmission is usually associated
with fraternity/sorority initiation rituals and other symbolic activities which neophytes
are made to undertake for group membership.
3. Prefigurative Enculturation- The adults learn from their children whom they now
consider the symbol of future life. This pertains particularly to technologically
advanced societies where the adults, if they are to keep abreast of the “culture of the
times”, rely on the young to teach them the new knowledge.
SOME ISSUES IN ENCULTURATION
The following are considered issues that usually accompany the process of enculturation.
Ethnocentrism. Herkovits (in Spindler, 1974) suggests that the very fact that a society goes
through the intricate process of transmitting its culture to be the prescribed or preferred way of
life for its members, and that is more appropriate for the people. This indicates the operation
of ethnocentrism, which Reynolds and Reynolds (1984) define as an “attitude that one’s own
culture is inherently and obviously superior, more desirable, and more natural than any other”
The same authors state that “all cultures teach an ethnocentric point of view toward other
cultures. This is perhaps a “natural” disposition of a people whose survival instinct as a
cultural identity is strong. Ethnocentrism in this case, therefore, is a strategy for selfpreservation. However, ethnocentrism becomes a destructive disposition when one culture
claims superiority and power over another. The dominant culture imposes itself and denies the
other culture the opportunity to perpetuate itself and to exist freely. This leads us to our
discussion of cultural deprivation.
Cultural Deprivation. Can an individual or a group ever considered “culturally deprived”?
And from whose vantage point? Spindler (1974) holds that each way of life is distinctive in its
outlook and content, and kind of adult personalities favored, and the way children are raised.
Therefore, each culture is itself a complete system, existing to serve the society’s purpose, and
is not to be gauged against another. Unfortunately, in many instances in schools, children from
minority cultures are labeled as “culturally deprived” individuals, especially if they do not
perform according criteria prescribed by the prevailing group. This labeling, apart from being a
reflection of ethnocentrism, implies that certain cultures are “more endowed” (usually
expressed in terms of material benefits) and therefore, individual from other cultures are, in
relation to them, deficient and deprived. Keddie (1973) points out that children cannot be
culturally deprived because they are experienced participants in a way of life, and that their
way of life is unique to them is by itself valid.
Social Deviants. What happens when a member deviates from the prescribed ways of society,
i.e., does not live according to what the group expects of its members? Margaret Mead (1977)
studied the personality development of adolescents in Samoa, a Polynesian island northeast of
Fiji. Mead used the word “deviant” to refer to an individual who is a “cultural misfit”, one who
does not exhibit the desired social characteristics of the group. She describes particularly the
behavior of Samoan girls whose temperament, combined with their life situation and
experiences, had made them deviants from the expected samoan personality.
Individual temperament, which Mead cites as a clue to social deviance, is not accounted for the
transmission of culture. All members of the society, classified according to categories (malefemale, old-young; married-single; etc, are expected to exhibit the traits and behavior
considered appropriate to the category.
Mead’s insight on the matter of deviance (which she expounds on in the aptly titled “The
Deviant”, a chapter in her book Coming of Ager in Samoa), is that each culture stylizes or
patterns the expected behavior of social categories within the society, for instance, males
versus females. Deviants, therefore, are simply those members who do not fall clearly within
the expected “profile” of their social category as defined and prescribed by the culture.
ACCULTURATION
Whereas enculturation is the learning of the appropriate behavior of one’s own culture,
acculturation is the learning of appropriate behavior of one’s host culture. One enters a new
culture, in effect as a child is enculturated into the new society through the process of
adaptation to the society. To the degree, he does not permit the structures and relationships of
his former society to unnecessarily restrict his adaptation; he can become effectively
acculturated into the new. Effective acculturation allows him to maintain his principles, and
thus his self respect, and yet cope with all the challenges and opportunities of the new culture.
However, he may never become fully recognized as a member of the new for a variety of
reasons. Anthropologist William Reyburn finally realized that he was known as an outsider
simply because of the way he bent over to “haunch” with the Indian men to whom he
ministered. But his fluency in the language and his lifestyle permitted his acceptance into the
new society with a minimum of strain. It is wise at this point to distinguish between what is
known as culture shock, the negative emotional response to the mismatching of cues from the
new culture with cues from the old, and culture stress, the realization that one will never fully
assimilate within the new and develop the ability to cope with the various demands of the new.
Having passed through it, they imagine that they will have no further problems S in that area.
It leaves no emotional disability, but one simply has the sense of incompleteness within the
context of the new.
Assimilation and acculturation differ in degree of adaptation to the new. With the context of
acculturation, a person adapts to the degree of his effectiveness within the context of the new.
He assumes he will leave again and return to the society of his birth. He is fully accepted and
respected member of the new yet in essence has a dual identity. Assimilation is the more
extreme process. It comes from the realization that one will never return to the society of
origin. So one takes on the entire lifeway of the new. The process is more thorough, all
encompassing, and likely lengthier.
Ricardo Garcia defined acculturation as “the learning of a new or different culture?” Example,
the stereo typed character traits of the Tagalogs and Ilokanos . In this case, upon exposure to
the Ilokano character trait, the Tagala imitated the Ilokano by shopping less than her usual bulk
of goods. Although, the Tagala also learned from the Tagala, her influence over the Tagala is
greater.
An educator, Hilda Hernandez(1989), describes acculturation in general terms. She writes that
acculturation occurs when intercultural contact between two cultural groups influences the
cultural patterns of one or both groups”. A classic example is the incorporation of some
Chinese words into the Filipino language as a result of the Filipino’s socio-economic and
political relations with Chinese.
Anthropologists like Carol Ember and Melvin Ember (1988)use the term acculturation to
describe “a situation in which the societies in contact is much more powerful than the others”.
Generally, in superordinate-subordinate relations between two societies, subjugation of
women, and fear of government authority. The dominated society usually adopts the imposed
culture for survival.