CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ON RELIGIOUS CONVERSION
2.5 Acculturation Theoretical Model (John W. Berry)
"We all experience it sometimes - you walk into a mosque and every head turns slowly and blatantly to stare at you, suspicion oozing towards you.
After checking your files, you realize that they are not looking at a fellow Muslim, they are looking at a white man who has been introduced on the Asian ghetto."
(Kose 1996: 136) It was for this reason that Daoud Owen started the Association for British Muslims. It is their philosophy that it is acceptable within Islam to retain their Englishness or Britishness and still follow the basic teachings and philosophies of Islam. Most of the converts in this study did not seem to change culturally, but adopted, via the Islamic teachings, moral and ethical codes that were conducive to their changing beliefs and identity.
He indicates that acculturation can be viewed as a neutral process as change can occur in either group or both, but that it generally appears that one group is affected more than the other, thus becoming the acculturated group (1997: 7).
Individual and group variables before and during the process are important in determining how successful the acculturation process will be. Factors such as:
age, gender, the length of the process, the support base and coping strategies, the cultural distance between the place of origin and the new locality, education, the personality of the individual and societal attitudes have an effect on the psychological acculturation process of the individual or group.
Berry proposes that there are two basic strategies in acculturation: i) cultural maintenance where the individuals feel that their cultural identity is important to them and therefore strive to maintain it and ii) contact and participation, which involves deciding how much one wants to be involved in the new cultural group or whether one prefers to remain among those more like themselves (1997: 9).
Unfortunately it is not as simple as it first appears as the forces of acculturation depend on whether there is prejudice or discrimination, positive attitudes from both parties or if there is a sense of attachment or identification with the dominant culture. Further constraints such as physical features may determine the acculturation process e.g. a white woman being accepted into an Indian Muslim community.
The model suggests there are four strategies of acculturation: integration, assimilation, segregation and marginalization. How individuals acculturate depends on the assumption that they have the freedom to choose the way they wish to acculturate, but this is not necessarily the reality of the situation. Very often individuals are forced into a specific form of acculturation which can lead either to segregation or complete assimilation. Assimilation occurs when individuals do not wish to (or is forced not to) maintain their cultural identity and seek daily interaction with the other culture. Segregation on the other hand is when individuals have no wish to lose their cultural identity and do not seek interaction with the other culture. Integration is the synthesis of the first two strategies; here individuals maintain their cultural identity and integrity but also
participate in the larger framework of the other culture. This can only take place naturally if the dominant group is open to cultural diversity which allows mutual respect and understanding whereby the acculturated person's needs are provided for. Marginalization occurs when individuals have no desire to maintain their cultural identity often through enforced cultural loss, and they have no interest in interacting with the other culture for reasons of discrimination or exclusion (1997: 9). The adaptation of individuals depends largely on their response to the demands around them and can either be immediate or extended over a period of time. The shorter the period the more likely the changes will arise in conflict and be negative in nature, in comparison to a lengthier process where acculturation will be more positive and have less conflict.
Accompanying these strategies are the psychological implications of the cross- cultural behaviour that the individuals display. The outcome of acculturation, as with conversion, is highly variable depending on the social and individual
moderating factors which affect the process. They may show signs of more than one acculturating strategy depending on their age, social environment and the time in the process. For example an individual may seek cultural maintenance within the family environment but once in the workplace this may not be as important. The aim of cross-cultural psychology is to analyse the effect that the cultural changes of acculturation have on the development and behaviour of the individual. The psychological changes may be apparent in various ways. Firstly, the changes, behavioural shifts or cultural learning may initially be fairly easy to accomplish. This would necessitate the unlearning of one's own cultural habits that are no longer appropriate within the new cultural system and is usually easier for the adolescent and the young adult to achieve. But, there is the possibility of this occasionally developing into a form of culture conflict where incomplete behaviours create problems. Secondly, some people would experience serious conflict in the difficulty of changing their behaviour, culminating in what is known as 'culture shock' or 'acculturative stress', which is a source of inter-cultural problems (1997: 13). Lastly, in a situation where the changes in the cultural context exceed the person's ability to cope through
reasons such as the extent of or the rapidness of change, major psychological problems develop e.g. mental disorders such as clinical depression.
Acculturation changes could be: physical in terms of differences between the dominating society and the individual; biological such as dietary changes; social changes because of the disruption to family and friends and cultural changes which involve superficial differences in foods eaten and clothes worn to more significant changes, such as the language spoken, religious conversions and differences in value systems (1997: 17). According to Berry, women find acculturation far more difficult and he associates this with their accorded status and the differing treatment of women within the two cultural systems. He argues that if the two systems have significant differences then the new roles the women are required to adopt may bring them into conflict with their own culture as the adaptation is more difficult and a greater amount of culture shedding is expected of them.
Berry's model is significant for this dissertation as the majority of the respondents' are not only changing their religious affiliation, but are also marrying into a different cultural community which directly relates to the acculturation process described above. Therefore, not only do they have to cope with their conversion process and experience but with the acculturation implications as well.