Between the United States, Cuba and Brazil: the circulation of the concepts of acculturation, transculturation and transfiguration

Abstract

This work presents the anthropological discussion of contact and contribution
from European culture and American culture that condense the thesis of acculturation, the transculturation and transfiguration. Through the reconstruction
of the conceptual dimension and equipment involved in that discussion, the
paper attempts to clarify the innovations introduced in the study of Cuban society
these different thesis. In the first part, the thesis of acculturation made in the
thirties by American anthropologists, disciples of Franz Boas, to explain how
American cultures adopted the “civilized” culture is reconstructed. In the second
part, the paper deals with the criticisms of that argument made by the anthropologist
Fernando Ortiz in his Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar, and analyzes
the thesis of transculturation given by Ortiz in his influential explanation of the
Cuban identity. Finally, the article stops in the corrections to the thesis introduced
Ortiz anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro with his thesis of cultural transfiguration,
exposed a decade after the Cuban Revolution in Las Americas y la civilización