Look at the T. H. Eriksen's work on Mauritius. It is qualitative, but could be useful.

You could look at Cigdem Kagitcibasi's Value of Children (VOC) scales that were applied to over a dozen nations. Kagitcibasi, Cigdem (1996), Ch. V. Family and family change. In C. Kagitcibasi, Family and human development across cultures (pp. 72-97). NJ: Erlbaum. Cigdem (1997). Crossing the Bosphorus: Toward a socially relevant and culturally sensitive career in psychology. In Working at the interface of cultures (pp. 126-137). London: Routledge.

How about looking at changes in diet. In a study of Guyanese immigrants to the US, we found that the younger they were when they migrated to the US and the longer they were in the US the more their diet increased in fat and cholesteral foods (e.g., the American Diet). I think this may be a comment pattern with acculturation from a simpler to a more complext culture.

Thank you for the answers. I will look into it. I was aiming at something that could be integrated in John Berrys framework for studying acculturation.

The concept of acculturation is too problematic to be applied in research, we found among migrants in Dutch work settings. There is no such thing as migrants (partially) adapting to Dutch culture in Dutch work settings nor is there anything like non-migrants (partially) adapting to migrants' cultures in work settings, bot is there any problem in terms of acculturation. So, before trying to measure some concept, the concept itself deserves a criticail crutiny, especially whether it is relevant to the experiences of the respondents involved. That was one of the crucial omissions of Hofstede's work. We found that acculturation is not a concept that fits migrants and non-migrants in work settings, it rather qualifies an ideology that is used in Dutch media and politics to legitimize migrants' exclusion.

Hans Siebers

[email protected]

I used Sampson and Smith (1957) Scale to Measure Worldminded Attitudes, recently, to measure worldmindedness of nurses. The scale has been applied to business students, since it was developed and has good validity and reliability.

Dear all,

Nice discussion! I must disagree wit Zolt not only because of Monica's arguments, the problem with acculturation theory is much more fundamental. Zolt grounds his argument using two distinguished antropologists (Mead and Appadurai), but notice that we need to go far back in history to meet Mead and Appadurai would certainly not be happy with the use of the term acculturation. The main problem here is that contemporary anthropologists have - by and large - abandoned the concept of culture for good reasons. Their research experience tells them that there is no such thing as a bounded entity called culture, there are no such 'things' as culures existing side by side that can subsequently be compared with each other. The globalized world is not longer - if it ever was - organized into a number of cultures that can be distinguished from each other, so the processes in which e.g. migrants are involves cannot be understood in terms of moving from one culture to another. So if there is no such thing as a culture, there cannot be a process called acculturation.

Cheers,

Hans

Thanks for all the inputs. Yes, there are clear differences between how culture is understood within cross-cultural psychology and anthropology/cultural psychology. The operationalization of culture within acculturation psychology is clearly a reduction of a complex phenomenon. However, in order to retain the generalizability we need some quantitative measurement. I think the distinction between immigration-based acculturation and globalization-based acculturation (Chen, Benet-Martínez and Bond, 2008) is an advancement in the right direction as it takes into consideration that many acculturation processes involves multiple cultural elements. this could also be a way of moving away from an essentialist understanding of culture. However, there is still a need of capturing this cultural complexity through a meaningful quantitative perspective. I acknowledge the great developments that has been made within the qualitative paradigm of cultural psychologists studying acculturation (i.e. through the dialogical self theory) an my plan is to use this in my project as a complementarity to my quantitative findings.

Measures of globalization-based acculturation has often been operationalized as measuring westernization, which I find to be a wrong understanding of cultural globalization. The cultural elements involved in globalization varies in culture-specific contexts and I assume that the best measure would be adapted to the specific context. Still, I find it difficult to develop a balanced quantitative measure that captures most of the complexity characterizing cultural globalization.

I wonder if you get numerical data of acculturation by introducing something (or a set number of) "new" or different things/words/sounds/movement/color/movement phrases, etc.. to a group or area and monitor if and how long it takes for them to become used/worn/practiced/said/understood by the majority.

While at Cal Arts in the early 90's, a student put one piece of paper on a wall in busy Central Hall. It said "Meme". I believe the place was covered by the word within a few days. I cannot imagine that anyone who walked in the building during that week does not know the meaning of the word and either still uses it or or mentally refers to it at least 3 times a year.

Dear Simon,

Here is one paper that may help.

Eric.

Thank you!

Dear Simon,

A few more papers that may be helpful:

Iwabuchi (2010). De-Westernization and the governance of global cultural connectivity: a dialogical approach to East Asian media culture. Postcolonial Studies, 13(4), 403-419.

Cleveland and Laroche (2007). Acculturation to the global consumer culture: Scale development and research paradigm, Journal of Business Research, 60 (3), 249-259.

Alden et al. (2006). Consumer attitudes toward marketplace globalization: Structure, antecedents and consequences, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 23(3), 227-239.

Also, I very much agree with your view that opertionalising acculturation through globalisation as westernisation presents a number of limitations to study of cultural globalisation processes - Iwabuchi's paper above makes a number of interesting and compelling points that I think you may find relevant. I have been working for the last three years on a Consumer Multicultural Identity Scale using acculturation theory but also incorporating acculturation to cultures outside the locale through cultural globalisation processes. The scale development is finished, I am in other stages of analysis so this is still work in progress at the moment but I would welcome a discussion of the approach I am taking if this is of interest?

Have you looked at the sojourner lit? You may want to check The Psychology of Culture Shock by Ward, Bochner, & Furnam. I'm more a believer that acculturation is not always a shock, but I know they deal with international issues. I did my PhD under Ward at Victoria in Wellington, NZ, and we were dealing with globalization issues. I do think, though that there are effects that can happen just staying home- when I was on Borneo, there was a Pizza Hut at the bottom of the hostel where I stayed.

Thank you for all the useful suggestions. I also found this text applicable in relation to my work: Türken, S & Rudmin, F (2013), On Psychological Effects of Globalization: Development of a Scale of Global Identity.

What is your approach Eva? Sounds like your work is very interesting and thorough.

Jan Aart Scholte works can be inspirational .

I would like to add the conclusion I have reached through my project. A generic scale measuring responses to globalization-based acculturation has been developed by Sylvia Chen and collegues (DOI:10.1037/a0039647). This scale looks very promising and I have employed it in some of my new research. However, I chose a more culture specific approach in my Ladakh project which can be found here: Article Measuring globalization-based acculturation in Ladakh:Invest...