Reconceptualization of Acculturation from the Non-Essentialist Cultural View

Xu, Hang (Frank)

Abstract

In this paper, I start with the three building blocks concluded from the diverse acculturation definitions across disciplines and then discuss the main focuses in acculturation studies. Through the review, I realise that a critical thinking of acculturation comes with a relatively comprehensive understanding on the notion of culture. Then I move on to discuss the notion of culture from two perspectives, namely essentialists and nonessentialists cultural views. After rethinking the building blocks in acculturation from both sides as well as considering the postmodernism tendency, I decide to adopt the non-essentialist cultural view to reconceptualise acculturation. Based on that, I argue that every individual could acculturate to an emergent culture in a cohesive grouping and then contextualise acculturation in a particular cultural arena-university students’ group work with an outcome of a framework to visualise the synchronous process of culture formation and personal acculturation.

Citation

Xu, H. (. (2015). Reconceptualization of Acculturation from the Non-Essentialist Cultural View

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (Published)
• Conference Name: SIETAR Europa Congress 2015
• Start Date: May 21, 2015
• End Date: May 23, 2015
• Publication Date: 2015
• Deposit Date: Nov 2, 2015
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 152-160
• ISBN: 978-0-9685293-7-9
• Keywords: Acculturation; culture; essentialist; non-essentialist
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/9253
• Publisher URL: http://www.sietareu.org/images/stories/congress2015/Congress_Academic_Publication_2015.pdf#page=152