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6 acculturation
extremely important because of the seasonal nature
of this industry �see also seasonality). There may
be times of the year when business is highly active,
but others when the business may become slow or
even dormant. In order to survive, businesses
subject to such seasonal swings in trade must take
into account their cash flow projections throughout
the year. The effects of seasonality on the ability of
businesses in the tourism industry to earn enough
revenue and to control their expenses so as to make
an annual profit are similarly crucial.
Finally, for any but very small organisations, the
accounting system consists of two interlocking
subsystems: financial accounting and management
accounting. The financial statements
produced by the former are concerned with the
organisation as a whole, and are produced for the
benefit of those not involved in the management of
the organisation such as shareholders. Production
of financial accounting statements is normally
annual with interim statements being produced
either six-monthly or quarterly. The annual
financial statements may be subject to auditing.
The statements produced by management accounting
are concerned with sub-units within the
organisation, some of which �profit centres) may
have separately identified revenue and expenses so
that their contribution to overall profit �profit
contribution) can be calculated, while for others
�cost centres) only the expenses are separately
identified. Management accounting statements are
produced at frequent intervals, such as monthly,
and in conjunction with budgeting are an
important part of an organisation's financial
controls. However, given the nature of the tourism
industry, many establishments are quite small and,
as such, are unlikely to involve shareholders outside
of the operators and their families.
See also: uniform system of accounting
acculturation
SIMON ARCHER, UK
Acculturation is a concept that has been closely
associated with American anthropology, but has
also been used in sociology, psychology and
elsewhere. The term gained currency in the late
nineteenth century as a way of looking at a certain
kind of culture change. Usually, it refers to the
social processes and consequent social and psychological
changes that occur when peoples of
different cultures come into contact. Along with
the concept of diffusion, which refers to a people's
acquisition of traits from another culture, it may be
contrasted with independent invention which has
been employed to indicate internally generated
sociocultural change. It should be distinguished
from assimilation, which refers to the absorption of
one group by another, and not confused with
enculturation or socialisation which are concepts
for the process whereby growing individuals
acquire the culture of their native group. British
anthropologists have used the concept of culture
contact to embrace roughly the same phenomena
as acculturation.
Although acculturation theoretically embraces
all cases of culture contact and the resulting
changes in all of the parties involved, like the
notion of development, it has mostly been
employed in first-hand studies of the impact of a
hegemonic Western culture on native cultures, as
in colonialism or neo-colonialism. Considering the
state of the world during the rise of Western
imperialism and its often profound effect on lessdeveloped
natives who were the principal subjects
of anthropological studies, it is easy to see why
terms like development or the narrower notion of
acculturation came into being. Rarely does one
encounter in the literature the term being used in
the broader sense to indicate a two-way process.
Though there have been some attempts to connect
different aspects of acculturation in a systematic
way ± as, for example, concerning the relationship
between cultural compatibilities and personal and
social conflict ± one would be hard put to claim
that acculturation, like evolution, ever has acquired
the status of a full-blown theory. It has mostly been
employed in a descriptive way.
Perhaps the most authoritative discussion of the
concept of acculturation is to be found in the
formulation of the seminar convened by the
�American) Social Science Research Council
�1954), a group made up of psychologically
sensitive anthropologists and sociologists. This
seminar, in its `exploratory formulation' envisaged
four principal facets of the phenomenon: the