2.3.6—Enculturation
- Syllabus
- First assessment 2027
- Objective
- 2.3.6
- Level
- SL
Enculturation teaches the norms of the culture we grow up in
Enculturation is the usually gradual process of learning and internalising a culture's norms, practices, attitudes and rituals. Much of it becomes familiar without the person consciously deciding to be taught.
Transmission can be vertical from parents, horizontal from peers and siblings, or oblique from teachers, media, institutions and other adults. These routes shape identity and behaviour, but people can reinterpret or resist what they learn.
Basu and colleagues used interviews with adolescents and parents in Delhi and Shanghai to explore gender socialisation. The themes illustrate transmission and power, while the small, local samples cannot represent every family in either city.
Enculturation is not genetic programming and it is not identical to acculturation. Ask who transmitted the norm, through which relationship, and what evidence shows that it was internalised rather than merely performed.