Multicultural Studies Glossary

The process of cultural and psychological change that occurs when individuals or groups from different cultures come into sustained contact, potentially leading to assimilation, integration, separation, or marginalization.

The process by which individuals or groups from a minority culture adopt the customs, values, and identity of the dominant culture, often resulting in the loss of their original cultural identity.

The practice of alternating between two or more languages, dialects, or behavioral norms depending on the social context or audience.

A scholarly framework examining how legal systems and social institutions perpetuate racial inequality, even when laws appear race-neutral, developed by legal scholars in the late 1970s and 1980s.

The branch of anthropology that studies human cultures, their beliefs, practices, social organization, and material production through methods such as ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation.

Pierre Bourdieu's concept referring to non-financial assets such as education, speech patterns, and cultural knowledge that confer social advantage and help reproduce class-based inequality.

Antonio Gramsci's theory that a dominant class maintains power by establishing its worldview as common sense through cultural institutions, securing the consent of subordinate groups.

A social arrangement in which multiple cultural groups coexist within a single society while retaining their distinct identities, traditions, and practices, with equal access to civic participation.

The principle that a culture's beliefs and practices should be understood and evaluated on their own terms rather than judged by the standards of another culture.

The dispersion of a people from their original homeland to multiple locations, typically as a result of forced migration, with communities maintaining cultural or spiritual ties to their place of origin.

W.E.B. Du Bois's concept describing the psychological experience of perceiving oneself through both one's own identity and through the lens of a society that devalues that identity.

The process by which individuals learn and internalize the norms, values, and behaviors of their own culture, typically through socialization during childhood.

The tendency to view one's own culture as the standard by which all others are measured, often assuming that one's own cultural norms are universally correct or superior.

A qualitative research method involving extended immersion in and systematic observation of a cultural group's daily life, commonly used in anthropology and multicultural studies.

Homi Bhabha's concept that cultural identities in postcolonial contexts are not pure but emerge from the negotiation and blending of colonizer and colonized cultures, creating new 'third space' identities.

Unconscious attitudes or stereotypes that influence perceptions, actions, and decisions without the individual's awareness, often measured through instruments like the Implicit Association Test.

A framework for understanding how overlapping social identities (race, gender, class, sexuality, disability) produce unique, compounded experiences of privilege or oppression. Coined by Kimberle Crenshaw.

A metaphor for a society in which diverse cultural groups blend together to form a new, homogeneous culture, often criticized for implying the erasure of minority cultural identities.

Subtle, often unintentional verbal, behavioral, or environmental slights that communicate hostile or derogatory messages to members of marginalized groups. Term popularized by Derald Wing Sue.

The ability to interact effectively and respectfully with people from diverse cultural backgrounds, encompassing cultural awareness, knowledge, communication skills, and adaptive behavior.

Edward Said's concept describing how Western academic, literary, and artistic representations constructed the 'East' as exotic, irrational, and inferior, serving to justify colonial power.

A critical intellectual and political framework examining the enduring cultural, economic, and psychological effects of European colonialism on formerly colonized peoples and societies.

The scholarly understanding that racial categories are produced through social, political, and historical processes rather than being determined by biology, and that racial boundaries shift across time and context.

Claude Steele's concept that awareness of negative stereotypes about one's group can impair performance on tasks related to those stereotypes by increasing anxiety and reducing cognitive resources.

A term used by Gayatri Spivak and postcolonial scholars to refer to populations outside the hegemonic power structure who are denied agency and voice within dominant systems of knowledge.