In previous post I wrote about cultural iceberg and what unvisible parts does every culture have. Okay, we arrived in foreign country. What's next? Everything is so unfamiliar, it's hard to understand why everyone behave the way they behave. What do we may feel? Misunderstanding, embarrassment, awkwardness, sometimes even anger. In one word - we are in shock. Cultural shock.
Cultural shock - emotional or physical discomfort, disorientation of the individual, caused by falling into a different cultural environment, a collision with another culture, unfamiliar place.
Sometimes the concept of “cultural shock” is used to denote a general situation when a person is forced to adapt to a new order in which previously learned cultural values and behaviors do not work.
According to the American anthropologist F. Bock, there are four ways to resolve the conflict that arises during cultural shock.
The first method can be called ghettoization (from the word ghetto). It is carried out in situations where a person enters another society, but tries or is forced (due to ignorance of the language, religion or for some other reason) to avoid any contact with someone else’s culture.
The second way to resolve the conflict of cultures is assimilation. In the case of assimilation, the individual, on the contrary, completely abandons his culture and seeks to fully assimilate the cultural norms of another culture necessary for life.
The third way to resolve cultural conflict is an intermediate one consisting in cultural exchange and interaction. In order for the exchange to bring benefit and enrich both sides, openness is needed on both sides, which is unfortunately very rare in life, especially if the parties are unequal from the outset.
The fourth way is partial assimilation, when an individual sacrifices his culture in favor of the foreign cultural environment partially, that is, in some one of the spheres of life: for example, at work he is guided by the norms and requirements of another culture, and in the family, in religious life - by the norms of his traditional culture.
The consequences of cultural shock can not only be negative. According to modern researchers, culture shock is a completely normal reaction, and even an integral part of the process of adaptation to new conditions. In addition, in this case, a person not only receives information about a new culture and its norms and values, but also increases its level of cultural development, although it experiences stress.