Difference between acculturation and transculturation

The difference between acculturation and transculturation is that acculturation is the process of assimilation of a new culture through cultural contact, while transculturation expands this process, incorporating the loss of elements and the creation of a new identity cultural.

What is acculturation?

In the social sciences, acculturation indicates the process of assimilation of cultural practices or traits after cultural contact occurs.

In cultural anthropology, the term acculturation refers to cultural contact and the acquisition of a new culture. The word acculturation derives from the English term acculturation that identifies a native culture and a host culture, the processes and effects of said encounter.

When acculturation occurs, there is an exchange of cultural practices. By involving at least two cultures, this process can be characterized as asymmetric. This means that one of the cultures involved may have a greater weight in it and be less influenced by the other less dominant cultures.

In any case, thanks to the assimilation of elements from one culture to another, acculturation also implies that the culture that adopts these elements ends up sharing certain similarities with the culture of which these elements come from.

What is transculturation?

The transculturation is a more recent term that gives greater depth to the processes of cultural assimilation, through the notion of enrichment and loss of elements of the cultures involved for creating a new one.

The term transculturation was first coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) in an effort to define the English term more comprehensively. acculturation in Spanish.

In this sense, Ortiz defines transculturation as the processes of formation and consolidation of a new culture from the union of two others.

Fernando Ortiz incorporates with transculturation the notions of both enrichment and loss of one's own culture for the creation of a new cultural identity. Furthermore, he distinguishes three stages in transculturation:

1. Acculturation: acquisition of elements of the new host culture such as, for example, the incorporation of foreign customs such as clothing in indigenous peoples,
2. Deculturation: uprooting or loss of elements of native or ancient culture, such as loss of mother tongue, and
3. Neoculturation: emergence of a new culture and cultural identity, such as the creation of Creole food.

Bachelor of Philosophy (2009) from the National University of Costa Rica; Master's in History, International Relations and Cooperation (2013), in Translation and Language Services (2015) and in Multimedia (2017) from the University of Porto.