Transculturation

A concept that holds that the cultural identity of subjugated peoples during the era of imperialism was transformed, with the indigenous culture absorbing and modifying characteristics of the imposed European identity. In other words, colonized peoples or minorities construct cultural histories for themselves that at least partially incorporate the perspectives and logic of the dominant culture, resulting in a self-representation that is partially rooted in cultural constructs imposed from above. The term was first used in the 1940s and 1950s by Latin American intellectuals like the Cuban ethnographer Fernando Ortiz and the Uruguayan writer Angel Rama, who focused on the role indigenous culture played in shaping the character of national identity. 

A common manifestation of transculturation is religious syncretism, with the resultant faith sometimes gaining recognition as a new religious movement, as in the case of voodoo, Santeria, or the so-called “cargo cults” of the South Pacific. Transculturation is related to the process of modernization, but where the latter term implies an abandonment of cultural values and practices in favor of uniform, contemporary standards, transculturation suggests an adaptation based on the interaction and interpretation of social and historical evaluations from all the included cultural influences. The process of crafting a national identity in a multinational state that may eventually lead to the evolution of a nation-state, may be seen as a variation of transculturation. Such identity to be successfully constructed involves the adaptation and reconstruction at some level of values and mores of all member groups, who must by default constitute and recognize its legitimacy.

Some post-modern scholars of literature, such as Mary L. Pratt, have argued that transculturation is in reality a form of resistance to the ethnocentrism of the colonizing power, and that the process is most pronounced in so-called “contact zones.” Such zones are fundamentally a geographic construct, because they represent the space in which the process of transculturation transpires, and in which elements of a cultural hybridization are incubated and ultimately expressed. In purely geographical terms, such spaces represent the reduction of distance in a core and periphery relationship linked to cultural diffusion. In a post-colonial context, globalization may be viewed as an expression of transculturation. This situation is more complex than the colonial example, in that globalization does not transpire via exclusive binary relationships, nor is there a single “hegemonic” culture, to borrow Pratt’s term, that dominates, although some commentators would contend thatWestern culture itself serves as the hegemonic element in globalization.