Preface

Summary

Doughnut stands in Indonesia offer wildly coloured doughnuts: green, red, pink and yellow. The multinational companies in search of global markets adapt their product to local taste; with lots of food coloring, they emulate the brightness of tropical spices and vegetables that accompany the traditional dish of rice. This is called glocalization. The statistics compiled by the Canadian Government invite individuals to indicate, if they want, their ethnic origin (with guarantees of privacy). The public has just been informed that in a few years, the majority of the population will be ethnically hyphenated. Instead of English and French, there will be answers like Irish-Polish and French-Chileans. Muslim immigrants in Canada have started arguing for Fridays off. In Islam, Friday is not a sabbath; the religious obligation is to attend Friday prayer which takes an hour or so of the individual's life. But Muslims having noticed that Christians and Jews cannot be forced to work on Sundays or Saturdays, they want for themselves what the Unions obtained for the others. Their militancy is proof their assimilation to Canadian ways.

These three examples are instances of what is technically called acculturation. Studies in areas where cultures come in contact have multiplied exponentially in the second half of the twentieth century. The contact is sometimes peaceful, sometimes viciously conflictual, with many intermediate possibilities. The cultures exposed to each other often have unequal powers. The religious factor often looms large. In all cases, each side is affected by the other, and countless forms of hybridation appear.