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The A, B, Cs of Acculturation

COLLEEN WARD

Developments in communication and transportation technologies have resulted in theworld becoming an increasingly smaller place than ever before. We are truly enteringa borderless era in human history in which interactions between people of vastly di-verse cultural backgrounds are becoming as common and matter-of-fact today as theywere rare until a hundred years ago. Today, even people in seemingly faraway anddisparate lands are being thrust together with others in ways never seen before.

It is within this background of change that the cross-cultural study of the psychol-ogy of acculturation has gained importance in the past few decades. Defined in thischapter as the changes that occur as a result of continuous first-hand contact betweenindividuals of differing cultural origins, it is a topic that has enormous meaning andimplications to literally millions of people worldwide in all walks of life. It is fitting,therefore, that we end this book with this most appropriate topic.

In this chapter, Ward provides one of the most excellent and comprehensive re-views on this topic that exists. After defining acculturation, she distinguishes amongthe different types of groups of individuals that need to deal with acculturation, suchas immigrants, refugees, and sojourners. She then discusses the adaptive outcomes of acculturation, making the useful distinction between psychological and socioculturaladjustment. Indeed, this distinction is particularly useful in categorizing and under-standing the available literature on this topic.

Ward cleverly synthesizes the three major theoretical and empirical approachesthat have dominated work in the field: stress and coping, culture learning, and socialidentification. She focuses on the affective, behavioral, and cognitive (A, B, C’s) differ-ences that each perspective provides. While the reviews in each area are unique andmeaningful in their own right, it is the synthesis and integration among these viewsthat are truly noteworthy in Ward’s approach. For example, her first illustration isparticularly useful not only in helping readers to understand what aspect of accultura-tion they are reviewing, but also in helping all of us to realize that we are talkingabout the same, enormous construct—acculturation—from multiple angles.

Thus, while Ward discusses the current knowledge gleaned from the available liter-ature in each section, highlighting future avenues of research in each, perhaps hergreatest contribution in this chapter is the message of integration of emerging theory

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