Understanding Culture Shock - Essay Example

Understanding Culture Shock (ch.5) Culture shock is precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse. These signs are the thousand and one ways in which we orient ourselves to the situations of daily life: when to shake hands and what to say when we meet people, when and how to give tips, how to give orders to servants, how to make purchases, when to accept and when to refuse invitations, when to take statements seriously and when not. When an individual enters a strange culture, all or most of these familiar cues are removed. He or she is like a fish out of water. No matter how broad-minded or full of good will he may be, a series of props have been knocked from under him. This is followed by a feeling of frustration and anxiety. People react to the frustration in much the same way. First they reject the environment which causes the discomfort: "the ways of the host country are bad because they make us feel bad." In the movie, Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan) brings his new bride Ashima (Tabu) to New York (location change from book!) from Calcutta. She shrinks his sweaters in the wash, eats her breakfast cereal with peanuts and chili powder, and generally does the best she can to adapt to this cold new country. Their first son is nicknamed Gogol after Ashoke’s favorite author, a placeholder name as they wait for a “good name” to come from Ashima’s mother in India. This pet name, however, takes hold, at least until Gogol Ganguli (Kal Pen) decides in high school to change his name back to his good name - Nikhil. He grows up, becomes an architect, rebels against his parents by dating a wealthy white girl (Jacinda Barret), then falls for a Bengali girl (Zuleikha Robinson) and attempts to reconcile his two names, two identities Some of the symptoms of culture shock as seen in the movie are: excessive concern over cleanliness and the feeling that what is new and strange is "dirty." This could be in relation to drinking water, food, dishes, and bedding; fear of physical contact with attendants or servants; a feeling of helplessness and a desire for dependence on long-term residents of ones own nationality; irritation over delays and other minor frustrations out of proportion to their causes; delay and outright refusal to learn the language of the host country. Individuals differ greatly in the degree in which culture shock affects them. Although not common, there are individuals who cannot live in foreign countries. Those who have seen people go through a serious case of culture shock and on to a satisfactory adjustment can discern steps in the process. -- Intercultural-Intimate Conflict: Major Obstacles (ch.11) Intercultural miscommunication and misattributions often underscore intercultural conflict. Individuals coming from two contrastive cultural communities bring with them different value assumptions, expectations, verbal and nonverbal habits, and interaction scripts that influence the conflict process. Intercultural conflict is defined as the perceived or actual incompatibility of values, norms, processes, or goals between a minimum of two cultural parties over content, identity, relational, and procedural issues. While everyday intercultural conflicts are often based on cultural ignorance or misunderstanding, it is obvious that not all intercultural conflicts are based on miscommunication or lack of understanding. Some intercultural conflicts are based on deep-seated hatred, and centuries-old antagonism often arising from long-standing historical grievances. However, a majority of everyday conflicts that we encounter can be traced to cultural miscommunication or ignorance. In the Namesake, there were conflicts within the family as well outside the house. Some were petty fights among the teens while there were those which affected the husband and the wife. The major characteristics of intercultural conflict are the following: (1) conflict involves intercultural perceptions--perceptions are filtered through our lenses of ethnocentrism and stereotypes, and perceptions color our conflict attribution process; (2) conflict involves interaction--conflict is sustained and managed via verbal and nonverbal behaviors, and verbal and nonverbal behaviors are culture-bound concepts; (3) conflict involves interdependence--for a conflict to arise, the behavior of one or both parties must have consequences for the other, for otherwise the conflict parties can walk away from each other easily; (4) conflict involves both self-interest and mutual-interest goals--conflict is a mixed-up and incomplete jigsaw puzzle, both parties needing something from each other in order to complete the entire picture; and (5) conflict involves the protection of intergroup images--in an intercultural or intergroup conflict situation, conflict parties have to worry about protecting both individual and group-based images. -- Comparing Different Ethical Positions (ch.13) Ethical Absolutism Position This is the doctrine that there is only one eternally true and valid moral code which applies to everyone, all places, and all times. This universal moral standard is true whether or not you and I are aware of it. . A problem of moral concern is one that has the potential to help or harm people (including yourself). Such potentialities are verifiable in principle. Ethical Relativism Position This is simply the denial of ethical absolutism. More precisely, ethical relativism denies that there is a single moral standard, which applies to all people, all times, and all places. The genetic basis of ethical relativism is usually something like sociological relativism, the belief that there are many moral laws and these laws are relative to the place, times, and circumstances of a people. Both sides agree to the truth of sociological relativism because it is descriptively true. The crucial question is whether or not it ought to be true. Ethical relativism is not a platitude because the relativist is committed to the belief that one action that is right in one group is wrong in another group. (The relativist is not just saying that the action is considered right and wrong.) It is obvious that moral ideas differ from country to country and period to period. But this fact does not imply that there is not any universal moral standard. The fact does imply, however, if there is a universal moral standard then it is not followed in different cultures. Ethical Universalism Position There are ethical standards applicable to all people, based on common human nature. This is a more nuanced analysis than one that pits ethical universalism against moral relativism along a single dimension. It enables distinctions to be drawn between four broad positions: moral absolutism, moral relativism, reasoned global universalism and reasoned contextual universalism. Moral absolutism describes the position taken by those who believe in ethics as prescribed and immutable. Moral relativism contends that morality is entirely relative to time, place and culture. The position of reasoned global universalism utilizes a set of abstract ethical principles that have been developed and justified through a reasoned process. The position of reasoned contextual universalism is reached by taking morally relevant local factors into consideration in applying reasoned global universalism. -- An Intercultural Discovery Path Model (ch.13)   From Ethnocentrism to Ethnorelativism ETHNOCENTRISM STAGE I: DENIAL- People in this stage dont really believe in cultural differences; they think people who are behaving differently dont know any better. These people tend to impose their own value system on others, knowing that theyre "right "and these other people are "confused." They believe the way they behave is natural and normal and the way other people behave, if its different, is wrong and misguided Gogol feels like a perennial outsider. In his youth he tries to distance himself from his Indian roots: he does not hang out with other Indian-American students, does not think of India as home, as his parents and their friends do, but as India, like his American friends. Yet at the same time he often feels a sense of detachment, a slight sense of apartness. STAGE II: DEFENSE- These people have had an indication that their value system may not be absolute-and theyre not happy about it. Unlike people in the denial stage, those in the defense stage believe in cultural difference and have accepted the reality of it, but they are deeply threatened by it and believe that other cultures are decidedly inferior. "This may be how things are, but it is not the way things should be." They know better than to try to impose their values on others, but they view other cultures negatively and prefer to have little or no contact with those who are different. STAGE III: MINIMIZATION- People at this stage are still threatened by difference-thats why they try to minimize it-but they dont think that those who are different are inferior, misguided, or otherwise unfortunate. Rather, they believe that the differences are real but not especially deep or significant, that as different as people are, they are still more similar than dissimilar. ETHNORELATIVISM STAGE IV: ACCEPTANCE- These people accept differences as being deep and legitimate. They know other people are genuinely different from them and accept the inevitability of other value systems and behavioral norms. They still find some of these behaviors hard to deal with or accept, but they are not threatened by them nor do they judge them as wrong or bad. STAGES V & VI: ADAPTATION AND INTEGRATION- In these stages, behavior as well as attitudes changes. These people have gone from being neutral about difference to being positive. They not only accept cultural differences, but are willing and able to adjust their own behavior to conform to different norms. They are able to empathize with people from different cultures. In many ways, they become what is known as bi cultural or multi cultural, effortlessly adjusting their behavior to suit the culture of the people theyre with, "style switching," in other words. They do not give up their own or birth cultures values and beliefs, but they do integrate aspects of other cultures into it. In the integration stage, certain aspects of the other culture or cultures become a part of their identity In the end, it was apparent that the Indian family has learned to adapt to the new culture. But while their house on Pemberton Road looks like all the other houses on the street, while the Ganguli children take bologna and roast beef sandwiches to school like all their friends, the family never feels quite at home in the cozy suburb. News of their relatives in India comes through the mail or noisily by phone in the middle of the night, and there is always the sense of making do and making substitutions. Newly made Bengali friends fill in as aunts and uncles at holiday celebrations; Rice Krispies, Planters peanuts and onions are mixed together to approximate a favorite Calcutta snack. Being a foreigner, Ashima thinks is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sort REFERENCE: Stella Ting-Toomey and Leeva C. Chung, Understanding Intercultural Communication, Los Angeles, California: Roxbury Publishing, 2005. Read More