"Acculturation is the process whereby a Telenovela–watching, norteño-listening and used car-driving member of a three-generation household with a prominently displayed statuette of the Virgin Mary mysteriously morphs into a Simpsons-watching, reggaeton-listening and new car-driving member of a single-generation household with a broadband connection.”
One of the most debated topics in Hispanic / Latino marketing is the topic of acculturation. First of all, no one seems to agree on what to call this phenomenon, and people have used a number of words like acculturation, assimilation, americanization, cultural appropriation, enculturation, and many others that I wouldn't know how to spell, or if they even exist.
Countless hundreds of thousands of dollars have been sacrificed at the altar of cultural understanding. Many companies, trying to capitalize on the growth of the "Latino" market, hire consultants with impressive credentials and even better looking theories. They present intelligent sounding theories like "the boomerang of retro-acculturation", and then recommend including a "Abuelita" in the spot. "Hispanics" are into the family thing, you know...
One theory, defines acculturation in very simplistic terms:
TC(FIFL)=NC*(1-TOC/TL)+FC*(TIFC/TL)
You would agree that it can be any clearer than that...
Many people buy into this theory, that argues that the longer you live in a foreign country, the more you lose your native culture as you absorb the foreign one. In other words, imagine that we can hold 100 units of culture. If we are going to add a unit of foreign culture, we have to drop one unit of of our native culture. How this happens, I've no idea... Maybe it is like:
- Honey, Santos-America is about to start
- Honey, didn't I tell you? I'm into basketball now.
This is ENCULTURATION, one of the theories out there, and it is one that just doesn't make sense. Next week (hopefully), we'll look at another theory.
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