Borgman, D. (1993). Culture shock. S. Hamilton, MA: Center for Youth Studies.

OVERVIEW

 

Webster’s University Dictionary defines culture shock as "A condition of anxiety and confusion that can affect an individual suddenly exposed to an alien culture or milieu."

 

Culture humanizes each infant through socialization. Without culture (and there are examples of infants raised without human support), there is no indication of learned human behavior. Children raised in an attic box (by an eccentric in Ohio) or by wolves in India (Zing and Sing) acquired no social human development.

 

Culture supports human beings by simplifying the overwhelming number of choices (and responses) one must make daily in human society:

• What should I wear?
• What, where, and how do I eat?
• How do I relieve myself?
• What do I do when I am too cold or hot?
• How close do I stand and how do I speak to a man? A woman?
• How do I cough, sneeze, burp, etc.?
• How do I ask questions and respond, be sociable, make love?
• How do I relate? Buy and sell? Give and receive gifts?
• How do I say good-bye?

 

These and many other questions surround one’s daily life. Cultures simplify what would be an impossible burden by making most of these questions a subconscious cultural pattern of response. So, a person enters a restaurant, a classroom, a church or public gathering and knows rather automatically how to act. Thrown into a different culture, however, these must all be studied, conscious decisions.

 

A result of cultural conditioning is ethnocentrism. It is difficult to distinguish, of course, positive ego strengths and cultural identity from harmful self-centeredness and cultural bias. When bias for one’s own cultural values and style hinders communication and cooperation, it needs examination and change.

 

Those who study cross-cultural communication and cultural adjustment say that everyone experiences some form of culture shock in a new setting. Responses may, of course, be quite different from various types of personalities from diverse societies.

 

Those who deny or minimize the emotional adjustment to support such change may eventually experience greater problems. A variety of defense mechanisms may hide the strain of cultural adjustment, and blame can be placed outside the individual for difficulties encountered.

 

The anxiety that results from a radical change of locality is said to be universal pattern of emotional adjustment that involves four stages, which may take months or years (Kalervo, 196?).

• Honeymoon Stage. A new cultural experience may, at first, seem like a very pleasing, "neat" encounter with new places, dress, food, and ways. This can last from a week to months.

• Hostile or Aggressive Stage. The lack of familiar supports and the failure of tried and true behaviors can bring anger and bitterness—toward the host country, organization, and peoples and against the sending organization, the home country, a supervisor, authority figure, or neighbor. This is the critical stage of the process of adjustment. Here, a person either submits to the humbling experience (of being culturally wrong) and commits to learn within a very different frame of reference—or one considers leaving, begins to withdraw and isolate, or may actually break down. Withdrawal into a familial or cultural cocoon (the compound or tight social group) is the most classic response to incomplete cultural adjustment for those who cannot leave.

• Student Stage. This stage may begin with a "grin-and-bear-it" attitude. Humor is important here. As learners are able to laugh at themselves and their subtle mistakes, they are probably on the road to cultural recovery. When humor is more sarcastic and cynical, it usually indicates a fixation in the hostile stage.

• Adjustment Stage. Finally, those in a new culture learn enough of the native language and norms to enjoy the new situation. They accept a cultural relativism, a sense of the mystery of human life, and the fact that each culture has something very important to offer another. They see themselves as bridges and brokers in the dynamic tension that exists among all cultures and styles.

 

Some further consideration of symptoms that accompany failure in the second stage are in order. Agitation about noise, filth, and time commitments may be presenting symptoms. People may exhibit an almost neurotic concern about cleanliness, safety, and conformity. Paranoia and guilt are usually present along the following pattern:

• Guilt may compound self-rejection.
• Guilt may lead to rejection of or blaming on a significant other.
• Rejection of host area.
• Rejection of home area and one’s own culture.

 

Many of us, for a variety of reasons, never reach the final stage in another culture. To arrive at a stage of adjustment is to be bicultural (or polycultural). It is doubtful that anyone is ever fully bi- or multicultural.

 

Returning to home culture involves tensions often described as "reentry problems." This reaction is not properly called reverse culture shock—though it is related to how a person has adjusted to a foreign culture.