Enculturation and Hybridization

During what's left of the break until the fall semester, I'm getting a head start by reading my cultural anthropology text, Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology (Lavenda, Robert and Emily Schultz). Chapter 4: Culture and the Individual defines enculturation as "the social process through which children come to adopt the ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving considered appropriate for adults in their culture."

As any adult now knows, our efforts to resist this process of enculturation have generally failed. The crowd always wins. We inevitably learn to cease resisting in order to get along well within the preordained institutional structure.

I am quickly learning that many people  project suspicion onto those who deviate from cultural norms (even in a city, like Madison, whose people generally embrace diversity and prosper). That said, it's great to be in a biker-friendly community and to be able to blend in amongst the overwhelming crowd and safely say that I'm not alone in seeking my niche within a hybridized culture.