1. Concept

In 1935 American anthropologists first used “acculturation” as a technical term to denote a basic shift in one or more cultures that have experienced direct and long-term contact with each other. In contrast to the diffusion of individual cultural traits over time, acculturation is a subject of strictly empirical description. It is also to be differentiated from socialization, in German sometimes called Enkulturation, and from inculturation, which, in recent Catholic missiology, has the much wid…