Enculturation

How was your enculturation?

Have you ever heard a question like the above title? I was ‘lucky’ to learn about acculturation in the hardest way, not knowing how to answer to the question.
Let me explain my dilemma, and why I was so confused. I had just moved to a foreign country and the person asked me, in my opinion, a totally inappropriate question. Was he joking with me, trying to make fool of me? If he was serious, it’s not fair to ask such a tricky question a person who is a newcomer. I left that person with my answer, “Thank you very much for asking me, I am still in the process of acculturation!”
For some of you who don’t know meaning of the word ‘acculturation’, I’ll explain. Acculturation, an anthropological term, is the process of adaptation to a new culture and learning of appropriate behavior for the host culture when one enters it. Any newcomer to the foreign country needs to learn the standards, way of life, norms and values of the people and country, so that the individual can become an accepted member of the society. Any newcomer goes through the process of learning what is permissible within that society. We can call acculturation a process of the adaptation to the new culture, a kind of socialization with unfamiliar surroundings. In another way, we can explain acculturation as a gradual acceptance during the process of assimilation.
Referring to the person who asked me about my process of acculturation, I still don’t know what his intention was exactly. Now, if you are confused, I should say that the term acculturation was first used to refer to the adaptation of people from tribal culture to Western culture. Asking someone about their acculturation sounds pretty offensive, doesn’t it?
Culture influences everything a person does, whether they are aware of it or not. We learn acculturation through speech, words, events, and gestures, and watching others around us. Our whole life we were molded into a person who needs to be an acceptable member of the society, consciously or unconsciously.
You want to know what had happened after the person posed that question to me? He came to me saying, “Actually, I wanted to ask you about your process of enculturation, not about your acculturation. Don’t take this question too seriously.”
Here we go, again! Now is my turn, Mr. Inappropriate, “If you are asking me about my process of enculturation, you are asking me about the process of learning the appropriate behavior of my own culture. Enculturation is about my own environment, from the time of my birth to this very moment, including my culture, parents, friends and education. It is about literally every person, place or thing I have encountered so far!
“Enculturation programming enables us to fit in within our community and the type of life we will have. As you are asking me this question, maybe you want to know about influences in my life, or the way my mind is programmed. To be more suspicious, I could say you know that the programming could be ‘wrong’, causing prejudices, dislikes and ‘certain’ beliefs and attachments. You also know that a degree of programming is necessary to keep us sane, safe and healthy.”
I’ll tell you something, Mr. Inappropriate,” As parents we teach our children the process of enculturation by teaching them to be polite, to say ‘thank you’, and ‘please’, and not to ask ‘inappropriate questions’. Yes, Mr. Inappropriate, “Enculturation is the learning of the appropriate behavior, and you could call it the ‘socialization of the children’, if you like and obviously some people have missed out this kind of learning.”
I knew that enculturation is life-long process beginning at birth and ending at death, and I just wanted to say, “You still have a time to learn it, Mr. Inappropriate,” but I didn’t. I told myself that this was a good lesson, and I should calm down!
A person grows into a culture and acquires competence in that culture. In this way an individual learns the traditional content of a culture and assimilates values.
“You sound very angry, my friend” said Mr. Inappropriate. “You don’t need to be so upset, you just have passed my test, and I would like to congratulate you. Today, in this room, I asked ten people the same two questions as I asked you. Only four people, including you, knew the right meaning of these words.”
“Oh, now I know what you mean, Mr. …..thank you for letting me know. I am sorry; I lost my temper for no reason at all. I still have time to improve it.” By the way, how was your enculturation?”
Jahiel Yasha Kamhijasakamhi@hotmail.com
Jahiel- Yasha- Kamhi holds a degree in Medical Biochemistry and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry.

Do you know that even our food can be encultured?


A problematic issue has to do with the indirect role of culture in how people come to like or dislike certain foods, here, culture-wide messages are not strong, since these are the very items for which variation is tolerated within cultures. The challenge is to distinguish between those events( social or otherwise) that include acceptance with out sensory- effective components, from those that actually change liking and disliking.

The psychology of effective change is in its infancy, and we know little about these processes. The critical issue in this type of learning is the association of malaise(usually with a nausea component) with ingestion of a food (Pelchat& Rozin,1982).Nausea seems to serve as a" magic bullet" to create distastes. A hedonic shift in the direction of the USs. In the food domain ,tow types of non-social USs have been invoked, one is rapid satiety(Booth, Mather& Zellner,1982) and the other is already positive foods( Zellner,1983) have shown that pairing of a sweet taste with a relatively neutral and un familiar herbal tea flavors led to increased liking for such pairings probably occur often in the real world, as when a coffee is drunk initially with added sugar, but later comes to be liked on its own, without sugar,ofcourse, and here is where the indirect social effects come in such pairings are often culturally programmed.
Dunker (1938) showed that children food preferences would move in the direction of a model preference, after the target child observed the model making a food choice . This effect is depended on the relation of model to target; a friend or another child viewed as powerful were effective, while adult stranger is not. Similarly pre school children's food preferences were influenced in the direction of those of fictional "hero" in a story read to them.

another explanation on 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.[1] As part of this process, the influences which limit, direct, or shape the individual (whether deliberately or not) include parents, other adults, and peers.[1] If successful, enculturation results in competence in the language, values and rituals of the culture.[1]

The process of enculturation is related to socialization. In some academic fields, socialization refers to the deliberate shaping of the individual, in others, the word may be used to cover both deliberate and informal enculturation.[1]

Conrad Phillip Kottak (in Window on Humanity ) writes:

Enculturation is the process where the culture that is currently established teaches an individual the accepted norms and values of the culture or society in which the individual lives. The individual can become an accepted member and fulfill the needed functions and roles of the group. Most importantly the individual knows and establishes a context of boundaries and accepted behavior that dictates what is acceptable and not acceptable within the framework of that society. It teaches the individual their role within society as well as what is accepted behavior within that society and lifestyle"

Enculturation can be conscious or unconscious, therefore can support both the Marxist and the hegemonic arguments. There are three ways a person learns a culture. Direct teaching of a culture is done, this is what happens when you don't pay attention, mostly by the parents , when a person is told to do something because it is right and to not do something because it is bad. For example, when children ask for something, they are constantly asked "What do you say?" and the child is expected to remember to say "please." The second conscious way a person learns a culture is to watch others around them and to emulate their behavior. An example would be using different slang with different cliques in school. Enculturation also happens unconsciously, through events and behaviors that prevail in their culture. All three kinds of culturation happen simultaneously and all the time.

Enculturation helps mold a person into an acceptable member of society. Culture influences everything that a person does, whether they are aware of it or not. Enculturation is a lifelong process that helps unify people. Even as a culture changes, core beliefs, values, worldviews, and child-rearing practices stay the same. How many times has a parent said "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" when their child wanted to fit in with the crowd? Both are playing roles in the enculturation. The child wants to be included in the subculture of their peers, and the parent wants to instill individualism in the child, through direct teaching. Not only does one become encultured, but also makes someone else encultured. (from wikipedia)

Enculturation ( Hanan )

Enculturation ( Hanan )

Since culture appropriately is being learned naturally. Children especially new born babies are consider barbarian creatures. However, they are new to this world with no language, culture or identity yet. As long as they grow up to maintain the society communication, they will grasp their culture consciously or unconsciously and can express them selves to the world easily. Thus, enculturation is the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that enable them to become functioning members of their societies.

For example: the child of five year in Japan differs from the one who's in another country. The first can for example understand his mother gestures and may reply back. But in condition of switching the two kids there won't be communication signs. Enculturation is learned informally in society, home with family or formally like at school.

As we can see without culture there is no language which leads to what we call no communication at the end. Enculturation apparently affects the human all over the world. We need it to deal with so many things to maintain a living.

For example: at business while dealing with foreigners, with a huge number of different students if you were a teacher or even while traveling. Wherever we go there must be a special way of dealing together.
The boy for example will learn when to be violent ( a wrestling competitor ) and when not to be ( the little girl down the street ). He will become aware of the right of others to keep and respect it.

In order to succeed the process of enculturation it's important to wide open the doors of communication. Search and find out what other culture do in order to understand each other perfectly.