What is Assimilation, Acculturation and Enculturation?

Table of Contents

Assimilation/Cultural Assimilation:

Simply understanding, assimilation or cultural assimilation is the process in which different cultural groups become alike/similar to each other.
Cultural assimilation is a process in which a minority group/person becomes a part of a dominant group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group.
In this case, the ethnic heritage of the minority group is absorbed into the culture of the dominant group, sometimes to such a level that the assimilating group becomes socially inexistent.
Assimilation is most repeatedly deliberated in terms of marginal immigrant groups coming to accept the beliefs of the majority and therefore becoming like them in terms of morals, philosophy, manners, and practices.
This course can be involuntary or impulsive and can be fast or steady.
Basically, assimilation results into complete abandonment of the original culture and adoption of the new culture.
Assimilation is the eventual outcome of acculturation process.

Acculturation is a process in which a person or group of certain culture adopt the values, norms and practices of another group, while still retaining their own culture.
Acculturation is the process in which the people of one culture adopts the culture of the other that is not originally their own.
Acculturation is the course in which the individuals of one culture accepts the culture of the additional, which is not formally their own.
Here, the adoption of culture by a person/group might reach to a greater or lesser extent, depending on level of contact and mutual sharing platforms.
Acculturation leads to alteration of culture or certain fusion.
People who spend much of the time in the foreign are likely to adopt the foreign culture and hence are the examples of the acculturation.
Acculturation is often seen in language, style of clothing, food habits, etc.
Acculturation generally does not affect/threaten the identity or recognition of the people/culture.

Enculturation is the process by which an individual learns about his/her own culture.
Enculturation is simply a process where a child learns about the own culture and adopts into it.
Enculturation is the process in which an individual learns about the norms and values of a surrounding culture. He/she then acquires the necessary and appropriate norms and values.
Enculturation is the major adaptation progression to a specific culture.
Enculturation clarifies an individual of his/her locus, parts, potentials and activities of the specific culture in which he/she survives.

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Recurrent close social interactions and communication are a pre-requisite for the beginning of the assimilative progression.
Intimacy melts the barriers of ultra-individualism that divides man from man.

Culturally homogenous groups certainly adopt the morals and aims of one another.
Mutual resemblance generates communal kinships that bring two personalities or groups closer to each other.

Equal economic opportunities are essential to seal the breach of inequality in wealth.
It indicates that any rise in the accessibility of chances or equality in their distribution would build conditions encouraging to the development of the assimilative process.

Several associations, clubs, and extra places of communal assemblies help in the assimilative process.
When people reside in a similar locality, come across and come together, there is every opportunity of the start of the course of assimilation.

Amalgamation, although a biological course of hybridizing, helps in cultural assimilation.
Through intermarriages, associates of diverse racial bonds converge and adopt the cultural characters of the added group.

a) Assimilation is not merely limited to a single field

The term assimilation is usually applied to describe the union of two different cultural groups.
However, this process is by no means inadequate to any solo field.
For instance, children are progressively assimilated into grown-up culture. Husband and wife who start their matrimonial life with their unlike family upbringings usually develop a startling union of individuals of a specific religious background is transformed into some other religious party or group.
As a group process, assimilation embraces life in common.

b) Assimilation is a gentle and steady process

Assimilation cannot occur abruptly.
It takes time.
Union of personalities and groups generally time-consuming. It happens only when there is moderately continuous and uninterrupted contact.
The rapidity of the process of assimilation relies on the nature of acquaintances.
If the contacts are primary, assimilation happens certainly and quickly.
In contrast, if the contacts are secondary and insincere, assimilation takes place sluggishly.

c) Assimilation is an unconscious process

In this process of assimilation, the individual or group is ordinarily not alert of what is happening.
Typically, in unconscious mode personalities and groups abandon their original traditional inheritance and substitute it with the new one.

d) Assimilation is a two-way process

Assimilation includes the code of giving and taking.
Another process called ‘acculturation’ usually leads it. Acculturation is an initial and essential step to assimilation. It takes place when one cultural group that is in connection with added derives from its certain cultural fundamentals and includes them into its own values.
Contact between two groups influences both.
Generally, the traditionally ‘weaker’ group borrows a maximum of the behaviors from the traditionally ‘stronger’ group.
Examples: The American Indians embraced cultural components of the Whites with whom they came into interaction.
Examples: The Whites also borrowed some of the traditional traits (for instance, food items) from the native Indians. Likewise, immigrants to America adopted American values and means and consecutively, the Native Americans borrowed many of the cultural traits that the immigrants had carried along with them.