What is it about?
Cultural variability (CV) is the extent to which individuals play up/down aspects of their cultural identity from day to day. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, this paper examines how Southeast Asian American emerging adults use and experience the phenomenon of cultural variability when adapting three cultural identities: Asian, White (dominant culture), and hip hop.
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Why is it important?
Rather than being cast as passive recipients of their cultural context, emerging adults play an active role in defining, negotiating, and playing with their identities. Cultural variability for this tricultural group involved making behavioral and cognitive changes to accomplish several tasks related to identity development, including fitting in with outgroup members, educating others about Southeast Asian American culture, and defining a distinct identity apart from ingroup members.
Perspectives
With increasing globalization and cultural contact across groups, the adherence to more than one or two cultures is also increasing. I greatly enjoy writing about cultural identities that are not traditionally associated with an ethnic group and the role these identities, such as hip hop, play in the identity formation process for youth. It is clear that youth act with agency with forging a sense of self and it is important to look at both day-to-day changes (i.e., cultural variability) as well as changes over developmental time.
Jacqueline Nguyen
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: “I Kind of Have a Goal When I Do It”: The Phenomenology of Cultural Variability in Southeast Asian American Tricultural Emerging Adults, Emerging Adulthood, August 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2167696819860392.
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