Thoughts on Transculturation

Right now, I consider transculturation to indicate foreign practices or ideas being adopted by an established culture. These elements may be accepted as they are, or modified by the established culture. 

What I find interesting about the term is the way it gives agency to the changing culture. Instead of presenting the exchange of ideas like passive surrender the way assimilation does, it lets often disempowered groups choose the ways in which their culture is impacted by another. The connotation of transculturation is also interesting to me. Assimilation is generally thought of as bad, but transculturation devictimizes and implies that some good can come when one culture learns from another, on their own terms. 

The confusing part of transculturation to me is whether the term applies to relationships where a culture with more power adopts practices or ideas from a less powerful one. I feel like the prefix 'trans' implies that the exchange should be able to go both ways, but I still would like to check.

An example of transculturation is the spread of Western medicine throughout much of the world. I think this is a good use of the term transculturation because it results in benefitting people as they are instead of harming them and forcing them to change like assimilation does.