Culture and Identity Dynamics in The Process of Transculturation

Never before was sociocultural communication as complex as it is these days. Natural character of man represented by his sociability, on the one hand, and curiousity, which make him explore and want to see and understand what is there beyond any border, on the other hand, intertwines with the deconstruction of original physical limitations and great time-space compression of our time. This creates a major common platform (and particular platforms) where plentiful and diverse cultures and their representatives meet, communicate, confront themselves, exchange cultural values and transform. We transculture, crossing the border of our well-known system of beliefs, ideas, norms, values and ways of life. But what does it look like and what happens next, after we do so? Is the process only positive or does it have any possible negative aspects? What is its impact? For sure, two critical sociocultural variables, being in the centre of contemporary research, as well as, being vital parts of our everyday life and self-consciousness (identity and culture) will never be the same as before. The transformation of our self-portait and relations of belonging somewhere and referring to something is an inevitable and unavoidable part of the encounter with the otherness. The author of the paper studies the process of transculturation in its contexts and relations. In the centre of her attention is the impact on individual and collective identities transformations, as well as, changes in contact cultural systems. She presents their dynamics pointing out at their both converging and diverging character and looks for new organisational principles of postmodern sociocultural reality along with already existing, historically-determined ones (local, national, international and global) towards translocalism. The paper presents the process of cultural traditions' revitalization which leads to re-defining of local communities and localities and tendencies of translocalism. It also points at the inner balancing mechanism of the cultural system, which ensures that culturally decentralising processes (transculturation) and culturally centralising processes (cultural traditions revitalisation) are in mutual balance.