Enculturation refer to the process of learning our own (native) culture, whereas, acculturation is the process of learning and adopting host cultural norms, values and beliefs. Learning native cultural norms and values of a particular society are essential for an individual, to function in a society.
Enculturation is anthropological term used for socialization, both terms refer to, the process of learning through social interaction. However, the term enculturation is only confined to culture. Whereas, socialization refer to each and every social interaction of an individual with other people of a society.
Since conception, baby starts interacting with his family members most of all with mother. Parents teach their children how to eat, drink, walk, play, and behave in different situations. However, parents teach all those things according to their own culture. For instance, Middle Eastern families eat food with their bare hands whereas, American families use fork and knife to eat food. So, children born and raised in Middle Eastern families are enculturate to eat food with bare hands. Whereas, American children are enculturate to eat food with fork and knife. Culture can be transmitted from one generation to another. During the process of cultural transmission, learning a culture by a new generation is called enculturation.
On the other hand, adopting foreign culture or other cultural norms and values is known as acculturation. In this new technological era people can interact with other people living thousands mile away from them. Due to social interaction through technology and with mass media people learn new values. And if people adopt those learned values of other culture and modify their own culture, it will come under the category of acculturation. Mostly, group of people acculturate because they are influenced by the dominant culture in a given society. For instance, A Pakistani boy SHAHID immigrates to America, during his first year, he wears, kurta shalwar; which is his native cultural costume but after a year, he starts wearing, t-shirts jeans, suits and tuxedos, so SHAHID acculturated; for the reason that, he adopted foreign culture.
