Transculturation is a phenomenon that occurs when a social group receives and adopts cultural forms that come from another group. The community, therefore, ends up replacing, to a greater or lesser extent, its own cultural practices.
The concept was developed in the field of anthropology. Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz Fernández (1881 – 1969) is credited with coining the notion in the context of his studies on cultural contact between different groups. In addition to all this, it should be noted that this phenomenon of transculturation can be divided into different types. Thus, there is colonization, immigration, rebirth or reception from a distance.
Any of these modalities makes palpable this adoption of cultural forms in different areas of society. Thus, these changes are usually more perceptible in a more palpable way in language, in the way of dressing, in cultural matters or even at a professional level. A clear example of transculturation can be seen in America from the discovery that Christopher Columbus made of the continent in 1492. With the colonization of these lands, the inhabitants of them saw how their cultural heritage underwent a radical change in many aspects and perhaps one of them the change what best shows this change is that the catholic church tried to impose their beliefs on them at all costs. Currently, the existing levels of immigration and also the so-called globalization are the phenomena that are allowing the existing levels of transculturation to grow palpably. The meaning of the term has changed over the years, particularly with respect to your field of expertise. Initially, transculturation was understood as a process that developed gradually until acculturation occurred (when one culture imposed itself on another). Although transculturation can take place without conflict, the process usually generates confrontations, since the host culture suffers the imposition of traits that, until then, were alien to it. Gradually, transculturation came to be used to describe cultural changes that occur over time. In this sense, transculturation does not necessarily imply a conflict, but rather consists of a phenomenon of cultural enrichment. Specifically, we can establish that the transculturation process is divided into three phases: the partial loss of culture, the incorporation of what is foreign culture and, finally, the recomposition effort that is necessary to undertake so that the balance between the elements that compose it arose. outsiders and those who survive from what is the original culture. At a more general level, it can be said that transculturation is the adaptation of the traits of a foreign culture like your own. The transition takes place in several phases where, inevitably, certain elements of the original culture are lost. Some experts point out that the conflict occurs in the first phase of transculturation, when the foreign culture begins to impose itself on the original.
