خلاصه ای از انتقاد و راه های بالقوه برای بهبود روانشناسی فرهنگ پذیری

The conclusion to this issue is comprised by the summary of the critical points regarding modern acculturation psychology addressed by the authors of this issue followed by the suggestions for the improvement of this branch of psychology. The emergence of cultural acculturation psychology is proposed.

Based on the reflections and opinions presented in this issue, the state of affairs in modern acculturation psychology looks pretty pessimistic: the existing approach to acculturation is epistemologically, conceptually, and methodologically unsatisfactory; it does not meet the complexity of this phenomenon and does not bring useful and practical results to immigrants’ communities. Below, I summarize the major concerns with acculturation psychology that were expressed by the authors of this issue. This summary is followed by suggestions to improve this dire situation. Some of these suggestions could be seen as potential propositions of an emerging cultural acculturation psychology. (Contributors to the critique and suggestions are acknowledged in the parentheses; if there is more than one contributor, they are listed in an alphabetical order.)

a. A definition of acculturation and terminological suggestions a.1. One possible option was suggested: “Individual acculturation (in contrast to group acculturation) is a process that is executed by an agentic individual (it is not a process that happens to an individual) after meeting and entering a cultural community that is different from the cultural community where he or she was initially socialized. Acculturation involves a deliberate, reflective, and, for the most part, comparative cognitive activity of understanding the frame of references and meanings with regard to the world, others, and self that exist in one's ‘home’ cultural community and which one has discovered in a new cultural community. This process emerges within the context of interactions, both physical and symbolic, with the members of the ‘home’ and new cultural communities. Acculturation is an open-ended, continuous process that includes progresses, relapses, and turns which make it practically impossible to predict and control. This process should be described, interpreted, and understand by the researchers” (Chirkov, current issue, footnote 1); a.2. To replace the term ‘acculturation’ with the term ‘enculturation’, meaning that acculturating individuals socialize to various cultural elements of new cultural communities and do not choose either to accept or reject ‘home’ and ‘host’ cultures (Weinreich); a.3. Acculturation can be defined as second-culture acquisition (Rudmin); a.4. The term ‘acculturative stress’ should be abandoned from acculturation psychology (Rudmin); a.5. To include concepts of ‘diaspora’, diasporic culture, and ‘diasporic identities’ into the discourse of acculturation psychology (Bhatia & Ram); b. The nature of acculturation process and its theoretical framing b.1. Acculturation is not the process where results are determined by acculturation attitudes of acculturating individuals toward different cultures, rather it is an emergent process which evolves out of the interactions of participating parties (Bhatia & Ram; Tardif-Williams & Fisher); b.2. A process of acculturation is embedded into the historical, political, economical, and social context of cultural communities among which acculturating individuals are navigating. This process is underdetermined by these conditions and by the attitudes of people involved and open-ended, and it involves a multiplicity of domains and dimensions within the lives of people, including a developmental dimension (Bhatia & Ram; Chirkov; Cresswell; Tardif-Williams & Fisher; Weinreich); b.3. Human agency – people's ability to reflect on the meanings that guide their actions and, through the reinterpretation of these meanings, to exercise their agentic power to be masters of their social actions and their lives – should be at the very core of future acculturation research (Chirkov; Weinrich); b.4. Acculturation is the process of the change of intentional states and of the meaning of the terms that acculturating individuals use to express these states (Cresswell); b.5. The dynamics of various identities of acculturating individuals should be at the core of understanding the acculturation process (Bhatia & Ram; Weinreich); b.6. A new cultural psychology of acculturation may search for its conceptual framework in the works of cultural psychologists, anthropologists, and social philosophers (Bhatia & Ram; Cresswell; Weinreich). c. Epistemological bases of future acculturation research c.1. Acculturation researchers should find their epistemological underpinning in various forms of interpretative social science, including but not limited to interpretative ethnography, phenomenology, and symbolic interactionism (Chirkov; Cresswell; Tardif-Williams & Fisher); c.2. Following the assumptions of interpretative social science, the goals of acculturation psychology should be to describe, interpret, and understand the experiences of people who cross the boundaries of different cultural communities; to understand the systems of meanings that these communities have generated, and to understand the individual meanings that they use to navigate their actions within these communities (Chirkov; Cresswell); c.3. System approach could also be a useful framework to organize future acculturation studies (Chirkov); c.4. Reflective and deliberate thinking about the systems of inquiries, methodology, conceptual frameworks, interdisciplinarity, and socio-economic and political contexts of acculturation in different countries should be the main intellectual resources of cultural acculturation psychologists (Chirkov); Researchers using psychometric approach should do so in accord with the highest standards, for example, by representative sampling of the communities about which claims will be made, by using reliable and valid measures, by using covariate control of non-acculturation variables that affect outcome, etc. (Rudmin). d. Methodological solutions d.1. Methodologically, the emerging cultural acculturation psychology should be a multidisciplinary and multi-method science (Bhatia &Ram; Chirkov; Weinreich); d.2. It should broadly use the longitudinal design to describe the unfolding process of change of acculturating individuals (Chirkov); d.3. Identity reformulation processes in acculturating individuals and issues of ethnic identity during changing socio-historical eras should be analyzed, with a view of distinguishing between people's primordial sentiments and situationalist perspectives on ethnicity (Weinreich); d.4. Cultural acculturation psychologists should use a variety of qualitative methods to interpret and understand the meanings with which acculturating individuals are dealing, including various forms of ethnography, participant observations, and other methods to analyze people's actions and interactions (Bhatia & Ram; Chirkov; Tardif-Williams & Fisher); d.5. Language and linguistic analyses should be at the core of acculturation research (Cresswell); d.6. Narrative analysis could be another prospective way to study the dynamic of immigrants’ lives (Tardif-Williams & Fisher); d.7. Acculturative motivations, learning, and changes can be conceived, measured, and sometimes studied independently of health issues (Rudmin); d.8. The use of psychometric scales to measure various aspects of acculturation should be continued. Psychometric studies should use the bilineal format. The items should sample the aspects of culture that are expected to be learned, given the specific cultural context under study. Measures of biculturalism should be computed from the bilineal measures. If the goal of the research is to describe or make inferences about a minority community or minority population, then representative random sample of those collectives should be undertaken. If a small N opportunity sample is used, then avoid generalizations about the community. The covariate control of SES, discrimination and other expected confounding variables should always be used in psychometric studies (Rudmin); d.9. Participatory action research, when members of immigrant/minorities communities initiate acculturation research and participate in producing and utilizing its results should be more broadly utilized (Chirkov); d.10. Emerging cultural acculturation psychology should rely strongly on studies in related social disciplines: anthropology, sociology, political science, history and others. Acculturation psychologists should be in a permanent dialogue with the representatives of these disciplines. It is recommended to utilize the acculturation literature examination more broadly to grasp the historical depth and interdisciplinary breadth of acculturation studies (Bhatia & Ram; Chirkov; Rudmin; Weinreich). e. Problems with the application of acculturation research e.1. Unfortunately, the authors of the current issue reflected very little on the pragmatics of acculturation research: how and in what forms the results of cultural acculturation research should be put to use by immigrants/minority groups, various immigrant-assisting organizations and society at large. It looks like the topic of applying acculturation research is waiting to be more intensively discussed. Dialogues with cross-cultural counselors, health workers, social workers in immigrant-assisting organization, teachers and other members of communities who deal with the problems of acculturating individuals should be more intensively exercised.