Cultural Diversity and The Thing Around Your Neck - Case Study Example

 Case Study Analysis: Cultural Diversity and the Thing around your Neck Part A Akunna moved to the USA as her home culture (family) had misguided perceptions about what constituted the American Dream, her expectations guided on these misconceptions that she would achieve instant wealth. Akunna’s anticipation of this was founded on this lack of misunderstanding related to cultural awareness. In reality, Akunna found that there were distinct cultural differences between her home country and the United States, especially in terms of how Americans were so presumptuous about their (incorrect) knowledge of Nigerian culture. She also found that instant wealth was not achievable and that America was quite different than what underpinned her family’s inherent knowledge of this foreign culture. She was exploited for cheap labour and the locals maintained views about Akunna founded largely on vanity-based stereotypes which emphasized the distinct ethnic differences between her and the American ideal. Locals maintained perceptions about Akunna’s heritage which showed a lack of cultural competency in which Akunna was perceived as one who engages in regular safaris and, generally, that Nigeria was a poverty-stricken state with little opportunity for quality of lifestyle. Her reactions to this were laughter and some level of amusement, with her coping strategies being emotion-focused, distancing herself from the stressor to distract herself from the negative feelings about these misconceptions (Folkman and Lazarus, 1988). This might not have been necessarily health behaviour considering it prevented more social interaction with locals. Food and received gifts served as types of metaphors by which Akunna made sense of and built cultural intelligence about America as compared to her initial expectations. These realistic conditions of local culture assisted in her cultural adjustment, which was identified as a predictor of improved cultural intelligence and adjustment (Templer, Tay and Chandrasekar, 2006). It underpinned a new perspective of American culture as being wasteful, yet apologetic for this, a type of duplicity that made Akunna see American culture as inconsistent and quite contradictory. In her relationship with the local, she found some degree of self-righteousness in her comrade and a type of indifference about managing one’s own lifestyle and personal direction. She coped with this through a type of passive avoidance of the stressor. When she described her life in her home country she was annoyed when her partner expressed an understanding of the complexity and emotional difficulty of this life. This annoyance was underpinned by a sense of closed-mindedness of her partner and a bit of egocentrism which did not provide partiality about the differences between Nigerian culture and her boyfriend. She, being pragmatic at a cultural level, was irritated by this subtle judgmental attitude underpinned by a type of false compassion. Her reaction to her partner’s relationship with his parents was founded on the genuineness of her own relationship to her parents. She seemed to feel that this familial indifference and type of bargaining in exchange for love was shocking and somewhat dreadful and that her boyfriend saw his parents, essentially, as pawns in some larger social game. In terms of their own relationship and others’ reactions, she was also emotionally disturbed that such emphasis was placed on ethnicity, such as in the situation where the Chinese waiter seemed unwilling to believe that two different ethnicities could possibly be a loving couple. This, again, seemed to show a type of stereotyping in American culture of which she was largely unfamiliar. When Akunna returns to Nigeria, she will likely be much more positive because what is culturally-logical to her will again be part of her life in a capacity much different than the United States. Her leadership capacity might be improved, with new emotional intelligence gained in America, which serves as a predictor of leadership effectiveness (Rockstuhl, 2011). Having high cultural intelligence assisted in seeing this story from an impartial viewpoint, empathising for both Akunna and the locals. The concept of the “thing around my neck” was a type of emotional chokehold related to disparate cultural dynamics which made Akunna long for Nigeria and maintain a type of distaste of the incongruity and irrationality of a wasteful and somewhat inconsiderate culture. Part B As American culture is quite similar to Australia, I did feel that many concepts about how Akunna was approached by locals was quite realistic and a fair appraisal. I personally felt that Akunna wanted open-mindedness with locals and logical thinking about embracing the quality of social relationships and valuing everyone. Instead, she found stereotypical thinking and indifference that was masked by a type of social and emotional empathy which, in reality, did not exist. I think Akunna was so shocked by these differences that she could not properly adjust and acclimate to American society and, instead, was forced to simply cope without ever actually being an integrated part of this society. This seems to have underpinned an allusion that once she returned to Nigeria, she would never be back to America because of this recurring and high culture shock never rectified emotionally or cognitively. I had always thought that acculturation, at the personal level, would be rather simplistic and that I could make such an adjustment rather easily. However, after having read the case study, the complexities of ethnocentrism and holding onto one’s personal cultural values might actually conflict proper adjustment. Part C Kim and van Dyne (2012) indicate that recurring contact with foreign culture representatives tends to decrease anxiety that another feels about how to effectively socialize and connect with the foreign culture. However, Akunna found America to be so substantially-different from her home culture and she did not achieve the type of cultural intelligence needed to be an integrated member of this foreign society. Alon and Higgins (2005) support this, suggesting that extended social interventions with foreign cultures improves cultural intelligence. Akunna, however, had substantial problems reconciling her own cultural beliefs with American culture which created intolerance for it. Akunna maintained a belief in the superiority of her native Nigerian culture and could not show flexibility in abandoning some of these principles in order to become a well-adjusted member of American society. This was somewhat of a deficiency of her own, but she attributed such deficit to the Americans themselves without taking responsibility for being biased and partial about her home culture supremacy. To illustrate this, Akunna was a bit disturbed about the exchanges that served as a framework for what constituted love in her boyfriend’s familial relationships. In Nigeria, she was close to her family members and there was considerable, collectivist respect that built strong family bonds. The notion that her boyfriend must exchange rewards and favours to get love was something totally unfamiliar to Akunna. Instead of trying to understand the rationale and dynamics for why this was acceptable family relationships in America, she allowed herself to be frustrated by it, showing a type of closed-minded attitude that made it difficult for Akunna to successfully adjust to this culture. This is a type of lack of cultural foresight and not having the inherent motivations needed to become a contributing member to the American culture. Male/female relationships were also illustrated in the early experience where Akunna was asked to comply with her uncle’s advances for engaging in sexual activity with him (Adichi, 2009) . Even though he came from Nigeria, he had been part of American culture and felt that success and prosperity would be given to Akunna if she became his bed partner. What was interesting in this situation was that this might well have been culturally acceptable norms in Nigeria, but early on in America, Akunna believed that wealth and prosperity could easily be achieved without this type of sexual reciprocation. Hence, it seemed to come as a shock to her that these values were being superimposed over the American Dream, a unique type of culture shock (Winkelman, 1994; Paige, 1993) which cultivated an immediate need to leave her uncle’s house to find independence and achieve this Dream. Women, to her uncle, now a part of American culture, believed that women must be sexually submissive if they were to achieve wealth. This was incongruent with her cultural expectations, thus creating negative coping scenarios, even though forming the initial framework of her cultural intelligence. From a different view, Earley and Peterson (2004) suggest that having limited, legitimate knowledge of another culture creates inability to adapt and interact with foreign cultures. Akunna did not attempt to understand why Americans acted the way they did, only she just allowed herself to be aggravated and confused. Livermore (2009) states that discouraged motivation to find out more about a foreign culture, and creates anxiety that impacts achieving cultural competency. This was another deficiency of Akunna herself, just believing that it was so different than in Nigerian culture that it de-motivated building legitimate cultural knowledge. Her coping built great emotional intelligence, but never fully contributed to high levels of cultural intelligence needed to be well-adjusted in this society. Her own inflexibility and motivation to pursue greater knowledge made her want to leave for Nigeria. Akunna could not reconcile such major differences between American and Nigerian culture which was enhanced by her perception of illegitimate social support from her boyfriend and such support is critical to adjust to a foreign culture (Pantelidou and Craig, 2006). She never found identity (acculturation) because of this lack of motivation to be flexible and type of cultural incompetence that this inflexibility created, a phenomenon cited by Sussman (2000) as being an influence of successful acculturation. Her lack of mindfulness, as iterated by Thomas (2006) further supported adjustment problems related to cultural intelligence. Akunna also never sought to empathize with American locals, but just used laughter and the bottling up of her emotions to cope with the annoyance and aggravation she felt about American culture. She found them to be conceited and inflexible to find out the legitimate truth about Nigerian culture, but instead held onto misconceived stereotyping about Africa and Akunna herself. She should have been more open and moderately confrontational to serve as an educator so that they could understand the dynamics of Nigerian culture and, therefore, better understand Akunna as well. She, too, did not seek to buttress her knowledge of American ideology which impacted cultural competency and her motivation to become a long-term contributor to this foreign culture. As was indicated by Kim and van Dyne, cultural intelligence and seeking more positive inter-cultural contact with foreign natives improves leadership capacity. Rather, Akunna just isolated herself from these situations and used distancing coping strategies rather than taking a leadership role of educator that would have likely facilitated better cross-cultural understanding between her and the American locals. This was apparent when the case study stated that she “smiled tightly” when there were misguided assertions made about her hair, lack of cars in Nigeria and the notion that all Africans were accustomed to eating wild animals (Adichi, p.116). Akunna, herself, seemed to exacerbate the problems of cross-cultural incompetency that did not allow her to have meaningful relationships with these Americans that had limited knowledge of African culture. Perhaps it was a product of wanting to avoid conflict and criticism (a common situation in collectivist cultures like Nigeria) that created the motivation not to be a teacher. However, Akunna had an excellent opportunity to build better cross-cultural social connections if she had been more aggressive in removing misconceptions widely held by Americans she encountered. Again, this was a lack of foresight and flexibility by Akunna. It seemed that Akunna’s cultural intelligence was not superior, even after routine and recurring interactions with American locals. She would, in the case study, notice significant differences between Nigerian cultural values and American beliefs, but could not find some method by which to adjust to these radical disparities of thought and attitude. At the same time, she seemed to grow distant from her previous life in Nigeria, which was evident in the case study when she delivered money (regularly) to her family members, but did not want them to know where she was at in the United States. It seemed that Akunna was at an indeterminate state in terms of which culture, Nigerian or American, was the most desirable and she was developing unique values that were neither African nor those based on the United States. This, too, seemed to conflict her adjustment and caused her significant emotional grief about whether to stay in America or return to Nigeria, knowing that she had changed in such a way that adjustment in Nigeria might also be difficult. The case study indicated that the thing around her neck had begun to loosen and, perhaps, if Akunna had remained in the United States for just a bit longer, she might have finally found the ability to adjust to these cultural values in the United States society. This might speak toward cultural adjustment as a transitional period, much like the stages of grief when a person loses a loved one, which must be undertaken in order to adjust even when cultural values are so dramatically different than those held by a previous culture. This opens an interesting topic for empirical research, to determine whether an individual exposed to a different culture must endure pre-set stages of adjustment and build a relevant model to explain transitional stages. Akunna seems an excellent case study example that not all acculturation situations are rapid or without multi-faceted cognitive and emotional barriers. When Akunna found out her father had died, she immediately rejected consolation efforts by her boyfriend, which might speak toward a breaking point where she could no longer tolerate American empathic talents and realized that adjustment in America would ultimately be impossible. Again, this tends to illustrate that Akunna was deficient in terms of trying to improve her cultural intelligence and maintained a predisposition for simply rejecting American values, ultimately leading to her decision to run (escape) a culture that no longer held significant value to her. Part E I learned that a foreign individual that is exposed to a different culture must be flexible in order to improve their cultural intelligence. They must not hold onto the idea that their home culture is superior and be willing to gain real understanding of what underlines why the culture behaves as they do. Fiction might be a tool for understanding issues of social narratives which are important for acculturation. Fiction utilizes contemporary dialogue between main characters to build a persona for each character that shows how they inter-relate and view social scenarios. This could form an excellent foundation for building knowledge about what underpins cultural values. My test showed that I required more intrinsic interest toward CQ, something important to guide motivation to improve one’s cultural knowledge. After reading the case study, I find that if I took the CQ test again this score would improve. I saw the trouble that Akunna faced and, therefore, am more motivated to find out about foreign cultures to avoid the complex emotional and cognitive trouble she faced. I decided that published literature on cross-cultural knowledge would help discover what drives various foreign culture mindsets to prepare me for future adaptation. References Adichi, C.N. (2009). The Thing around your Neck. London: Fourth Estate. Alon, I. & Higgins, J.M. (2005). Global Leadership Success through Emotional and Cultural Intelligences. Business Horizons, 48(6), pp.501-512. Folkman, S. & Lazarus, R. (1988). Coping as a Mediator of Emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(3), pp.466-475. Kim, Y.J. & van Dyne, L. (2012). Cultural Intelligence and International Leadership Potential: The importance of contact for members of the majority. Applied Psychology, 61(2), pp. 272-294. Livermore, D. (2009). Leading with Cultural Intelligence. New York: AMACOM Books. Paige, R.M. (1993). Education for the Intercultural Experience. Yarmouth: Intercultural Press. Pantelidou, S. & Craig, T.K.J. (2006). Culture Shock and Social Support. Social Psychiatry, 41, pp.777-781. Rockstuhl, T., et al (2011). Beyond general intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) : the role of cultural intelligence (CQ) on cross-border leadership effectiveness in a globalized world. Journal of Social Issues, 67(4) pp.825-840. Sussman, N.M. (2000). They Dynamic Nature of Cultural Identity throughout Cultural Transitions: Why home is not so sweet. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, pp.355-373. Templer, K.J., Tay, C. & Chandrasekar, N. (2006). Motivational Cultural Intelligence: Realistic Job Preview, Realistic Living Conditions Preview, and Cross-Cultural Adjustment. Group and Organization Management, 31, pp.154-173. Thomas, D.C (2006). Domain and Development of Cultural Intelligence: The importance of mindfulness. Group and Organization Management, 31(1), pp.78-99. Winkelman, M. (1994). Culture Shock and Adaptation. Journal of Counseling & Development, 73, pp.121-126. Read More