Enculturation and Ethnocentrism: Understanding Cultural Dynamics
Enculturation and Ethnocentrism
A. Culture as a Collective and Individual Entity
Culture is a collective entity, shared and transferred. However, culture also exists uniquely within each individual, collectively forming what is understood as personality. Enculturation is the process by which individuals acquire patterns of behavior through observation and reinforcement. It should not be confused with acculturation (the process of imposing certain elements from one culture onto another). Enculturation is an internal process within a culture, reflecting the influence of the group on its individual members.
An individual is born immersed in a culture that ensures their responses and actions align with collective norms. This involves a structuring of roles and behaviors, imposed concepts accompanied by morals, punishments, and so on. The goal is for the individual to embrace this cultural way of life.
Not everyone processes the rules of enculturation in the same way. Individuals assimilate the culture within their circle, incorporating patterns of conduct with increasing strength. For a culture to function, it’s necessary that the behavior of its members is predictable, though this does not imply functional equivalence. Enculturation integrates the individual within the limits of that culture, sharing an equivalence relation with others.
In enculturation, the individual receives a code distinguishing the basic features used by their culture, its laws, and its combinatorial meaning in different contexts. The individual must decode and apply this, selecting the appropriate elements according to learned rules. This openness is crucial to processes of social change.
B. Identity, Difference, and Ethnocentrism
Everyone is educated in the strategies of their social group’s identity or survival. Established identity leads to the appearance of difference: those who *don’t* think like us. Identity strategies lead to different strategies, and ethnocentrism arises.
Individuals identify with the cultural values of a society because they have been educated in them.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to glorify and mystify endogenous cultural traits while judging the moral, social, and religious artifacts of other cultures. Ethnocentrism leads to the repudiation of different cultural forms, considering them inferior; this is called xenophobia.
Ethnocentrism has two faces:
- Viewing one’s own culture as superior.
- Viewing foreign cultures as inferior.
Ethnocentrism is inherent in all enculturation, as every society needs to ensure a high degree of consensus among its members to reproduce as a culture. Individuals considered deviant are marginalized to avoid weakening social cohesion. Ethnocentrism is universal to every social and cultural group, inherent in the social reality alongside enculturation. When the exaltation of the self takes on external forms of negation and destruction of other cultures, it is called racism, genocide, etc. As a consequence of enculturation, each individual is bound to experience ethnocentrism. Accepting those who are different provokes reflections and specific biases related to this exclusion process.
The effort to overcome ethnocentrism is the first step to avoid judging one culture as inherently superior to another. Cultural diversity is a source of richness, but we must not forget that our similarities are precious for understanding ourselves. It allows us to collaborate with others. Cultural identities must support a common project of universal values and not be limited to civic identity.