Fernando Ortiz's Transculturation: Applied Anthropology, Acculturation, and Mestizaje

Fernando Ortiz's proposal to replace the word acculturation with transculturation in Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940) has become an iconic statement affirming the distinctiveness of Latin American anthropology. This narrative includes a deeper thread that involves Bronisław Malinowski, who praised the neologism for its counterhegemonic implications in his introduction to Contrapunteo. According to this thread of the narrative, though, Malinowski sought to suppress Ortiz's theorization by subsuming it into his school of functionalism. This article approaches the genesis of transculturation as a more complex and reciprocal process of negotiations that also included Melville Herskovits and acculturation studies. The theoretical positions of each of these anthropologists—Ortiz, Malinowski, and Herskovits—stemmed from geopolitical circumstances linked to the different colonial and postcolonial contexts in which they worked. I argue that despite their different agendas and mutual misrepresentations, transculturation became more counterhegemonic through their interactions, and suggest that this has implications for how we might think about the development of anthropological theory as arising from reflexive anthropological collaborations.