Critical psychology of acculturation: What do we study and how do we study it, when we investigate acculturation?

Author presents critical analyses of the philosophy and methodology of the current research in the psychology of acculturation. He defends three theses. First, that the dominant mode of research in the psychology of acculturation does not correspond to the essential qualities of the phenomenon under scrutiny-the acculturation process. Acculturation researchers have been trying to apply a positivistic and quantitative approach to a phenomenon that is far beyond the capacity this approach has to comprehend it. Second, that there is no culture in acculturation research and the researchers do not even have working models of culture that could guide research in this area. Third, that the complex nature of the acculturation process requires very diverse thinking about the subject, an application of various epistemological and methodological approaches, inter- and multi-disciplinarity, intellectual flexibility, and the willingness to critically analyse achieved results and obtained knowledge. Unfortunately, all these capacities and attributes are yet scarce in the discourse of the psychology of acculturation. The presentation of the arguments is structured in three sections. First, the author presents a philosophical framework suitable for analysing both the current and future models of acculturation research. Then, he reports the results of the analysis of 42 articles on acculturation which is followed by conclusions and implications derived from this analysis. In the third section, the author provides an example and formulates suggestions for future acculturation research. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.