Tradition, enculturation,
socialization, cultural policy,
acculturation
IGCSE Global Perspectives
Tradition
• A tradition is a practice, custom, or story
that is memorized and passed down from
generation to generation, originally without
the need for a writing system.
• Tools to aid this process include poetic
devices such as rhyme and alliteration.
• The stories thus preserved are also
referred to as tradition, or as part of an
oral tradition.
Enculturation
• Enculturation is the process by which a
person learns the requirements of the
culture by which he or she is surrounded,
and acquires values and behaviours that
are appropriate or necessary in that
culture.
• If successful, enculturation results in
competence in the language, values and
rituals of the culture.
Socialization
• The process whereby people learn the attitudes,
values, and actions appropriate for individuals
as members of a particular culture.
• It may provide the individual with the skills and
habits necessary for participating within their
own society; a society itself is formed through a
plurality of shared norms, customs, values,
traditions, social roles, symbols and languages.
• Socialization is thus ‘the means by which social
and cultural continuity are attained’.
Types of socialization
• Primary socialization
• Secondary socialization
• Developmental socialization
• Anticipatory socialization
• Resocialization
Agents of Socialization
•
•
•
•
•
•
Agents of socialization are the people and
groups that influence our self-concept, emotions,
attitudes, and behavior.
The Family
Education
Religion
Peer groups
The Mass Media
Other Agents: Work Place, Public institutions
Cultural Policy
• Cultural policy is concerned with the regulation and
management of culture and in particular with the
administration of those institutions that produce and
govern the form and content of cultural products.
• However, questions of policy formation and enactment
are connected to wider issues of cultural politics.
• That is, cultural policy is not only a technical problem of
administration, but also one of cultural values and social
power set in the overall context of the production and
circulation of symbolic meanings.
Acculturation
• The term ‘acculturation’ indicates the processes of
transformation and adaptation which take place within
cultures when two or more groups - each of which has
specific cultural and behavioural models - enter into
relations with one another.
• The phenomenon of acculturation refers to both the
acquisition of a new culture - ‘other’ than the culture of
origin - by an individual, e.g. a migrant, and, more
generally, to the acquisition by a social group of the
cultural traits of another society.
• Thus, the term refers not only to the ‘process of cultural
change’, but also to the resulting condition.
• ‘Reciprocal acculturation’ refers to processes of
bi-directional cultural transfer. ‘Reciprocal
acculturation’ can be considered ‘transformation
through a network’ as it takes place in a complex
scenario of reciprocity in which a culture can
only export its cultural models on a continuous
basis if it is also open to return stimuli which
modify its models.
• ‘Asymmetric acculturation’ refers to a particular
intercultural relationship established between a
‘superior’ and an ‘inferior’ culture when the latter
has no choice but to accept the traits of the
dominant culture.