Acculturation

Acculturation as a concept had its origins in anthropology and sociology in the late 1800s and early 1900s but has more recently been applied in psychology. In his discussion of the history of acculturation, Sam (2006) identified the geologist/anthropologist John Wesley Powell as the first person to have used the term “acculturation” when he applied it to psychological changes resulting from cross-cultural imitation.

For the most part, anthropologists’ use of acculturation in the late 1800s was primarily concerned with how cross-cultural contact with an “enlightened” group of people helped “primitive” societies become more “civilized,” with anthropologist W. J. McGee (1898) defining acculturation as the process of exchange and mutual “improvement” by which societies advanced from savagery to barbarism, to civilization, through to enlightenment (Sam 2006: 12-13). At the same time, sociologists have acknowledged the process of “reciprocal accommodation” between cultural groups, despite...