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Cultural Fusion Theory

Cultural fusion theory (CFT) describes the process that people, typically immigrants, undergo when they come in contact with a new environment and culture. CFT provides an account that differs from more prominent theories of cultural adaptation, which propose models in which immigrants gradually adapt to a new culture while leaving their old culture behind. In contrast, CFT maintains that cultural adaptation is an ongoing process that involves constant interaction between a newcomer and a "host" culture. The newcomer continuously learns and integrates new cultural knowledge into their pre-existing culture, thus adapting to a new culture but not abandoning their previous culture. In addition, newcomers' interactions with the host culture change the host culture as well so that the process is dynamic; change goes both ways. Though often described in terms of a newcomer and host culture, which suggests two "participants" in the cultural exchange, interactions between a newcomer and a host culture occur in and through a variety of channels. In other words, this is a dynamic, interactive process affecting both the newcomer and the host culture, and it takes place simultaneously in multiple domains.

Background

CFT is part of the field of intercultural communication, an area of communication studies that focuses on how people communicate across cultures whether in an international context (i.e., cultures existing in different parts of the world usually in different countries) or a domestic context (i.e., cultures that share an environment and/or a country though usually asymmetrical in terms of influence, power, and prestige). Within the field of intercultural communication, scholars have studied how people adapt to the cultures of new environments and places (see cross-cultural adaptation). The classic situation is that of an immigrant arriving in a new country and culture and how that person adjusts to their new environment and its dominant culture.

The most prominent, but by no means only, theory of cross-cultural adaptation is Young Yun Kim's integrative theory of cross-cultural adaptation. This theory provides an overarching explanation of how immigrants successfully adapt to a new country, namely through a complex process of assimilation. Kim argues that immigrants begin to learn the customs and beliefs of a new country and gradually begin to adopt these customs and beliefs. In so doing, they also either passively or actively let go of their previous culture. In this way, immigrants attempt to become like native-born people and fit into their new culture. As described, this process goes in one direction, toward assimilation.

Major Concepts of CFT

Originally proposed by Eric Mark Kramer in 1992 but researched and developed by others ever since, Cultural Fusion Theory attempts to provide a better account of cross-cultural adaptation by demonstrating that the process of adaptation is multivalent, occurring simultaneously in different dimensions and produced through a multiplicity of communicative interactions. CFT, thus, tries to set aside the dualism inherent in many theories of cross-cultural adaption. In other words, the lone immigrant entering into a new host culture is a dyadic pair that is conceptually straightforward but not reflective of the multiple interactions most people have in any given day in their social word. CFT takes into account that an immigrant may enter a new host culture that has many different cultures within it, often including immigrant enclaves that continue to practice the customs and beliefs of an immigrant's original culture. This multiplicity is part of the reason that, according to CFT, it is not only the newcomer that adapts and changes but also the host culture. Importantly, these adaptations "fuse" or integrate elements of a newcomer's previous or original culture with elements of the new culture; the newcomer, thus, undergoes an intercultural transformation that yields an intercultural identity that contains, whether comfortably or in tension, elements from both cultures.

According to Kramer and Stephen Croucher's 2017 article that provided a comprehensive account of CFT, "Cultural fusion theory: An alternative to acculturation,"

References

1. Kim, Young Yun (2017-08-22), "Cross-Cultural Adaptation", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.21, ISBN 978-0-19-022861-3, retrieved 2024-12-20
2. Kim, Y. Y. (2005). Adapting to a New Culture: An Integrative Communication Theory. In Theorizing about intercultural communication. Sage.
3. Kramer, E. (2019). Cultural Fusion: An Alternative to Assimilation. In The Routledge companion to migration, communication, and politics (pp. 96–120). Routledge.
4. ^ Croucher, Stephen M.; Kramer, Eric (2017-04-03). "Cultural fusion theory: An alternative to acculturation". Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. 10 (2): 97–114. doi:10.1080/17513057.2016.1229498. ISSN 1751-3057.
5. Kramer, Eric Mark (2019-04-26), "Cultural Fusion Theory", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.679, ISBN 978-0-19-022861-3, retrieved 2024-12-22