Premium
“It's Only Other People Who Make Me Feel Black”: Acculturation, Identity, and Agency in a Multicultural Community
Author(s) -
Howarth Caroline,
Wagner Wolfgang,
Magnusson Nicola,
Sammut Gordon
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12020
Subject(s) - acculturation , agency (philosophy) , cultural identity , sociology , identity (music) , ideology , multiculturalism , gender studies , situated , social psychology , politics , psychology , ethnic group , social science , political science , anthropology , aesthetics , pedagogy , law , philosophy , artificial intelligence , computer science , negotiation
This article explores identity work and acculturation work in the lives of British mixed‐heritage children and adults. Children, teenagers, and parents with mixed heritage participated in a community arts project that invited them to deliberate, construct, and reconstruct their cultural identities and cultural relations. We found that acculturation, cultural and raced identities, are constructed through a series of oppositional themes: cultural maintenance versus cultural contact; identity as inclusion versus identity as exclusion; institutionalized ideologies versus agency. The findings point towards an understanding of acculturation as a dynamic, situated, and multifaceted process: acculturation in movement . To investigate this, we argue that acculturation research needs to develop a more dynamic and situated approach to the study of identity, representation, and culture. The article concludes with a discussion on the need for political psychologists to develop methods attuned to the tensions and politics of acculturation that are capable of highlighting the possibilities for resistance and social change.