Literature Review
Anthropology is all about learning the nature of humans and their works with studying the nature and essence of humanity. Anthropology is a science that revolves around exploring different aspects of humankind such as their origins, distribution, biological characteristics, cultural and physical development, social beliefs, history, and social customs. Moreover, it also studies similarity and divergence between animals and humans. It deals with finding out the ancestors of humans that came through space and time and relates to culture, physical character, and social and environmental relations of humans with each other (Lavenda, 2010).
Culture shock
A new cultural world is always an alien for the person who steps into it for the first time. Initially he may perceive it a fascinating experience and give him a sense of awe, not knowing what he may have in life ahead. However, life is all about exploring and finding out new things and undergoing new experiences and experiments but some may prove very tougher. A person’s move to a new cultural environment that is dissimilar from his own gives him a unique experience and that is called a culture shock (Xia, p. 97). Culture shock can be due to immigration, shift between social environments, visit to a country, or simply a switch to another life. A person’s movement to a completely new and different environment of his origin brings him in a confusing state that produces certain type of anxiety. He lacks the direction, being unknown about appropriate and inappropriate, and how to survive in a new environment. A culture shock that refers to emotional and physical discomfort is actually a normal part of adjusting to a new environment and its elements that include language, food, customs, activities, and people. A culture shock is never easy to tackle with and a person undergoing it is always in trouble to get rid of it as soon as possible. A person enduring a culture shock may encounter symptoms such as headaches, loneliness, stomach aches, irritability, hopelessness, home sickness, withdrawal from activities and people, changes in temperament, insomnia, anger, a feeling of being lost, depression, feeling vulnerable, confused, unable to sort out problems, lacking confidence, catching different obsessions (Miller and El-Aidi, p. 26). These signs of culture shock may appear at dissimilar times and in different ways. Furthermore, common types of problems that a person may have to deal with also include language barrier, technology gap, information overload, generation gap, formulation dependency, skill interdependence, and boredom.
Culture shock has many phases such as honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment, and adaptation. A honeymoon stage proves romantic difference between old and new culture (Dongfeng, p. 70). For most of the people, a new culture is a fascination, as they love new pace of life, food, and the habits of locals. This stage ultimately ends just like general honeymoon period with attractive and good change. Once the first stage ends, a new one begins when a person starts to feel the differences, having anxiety. Unfavorable, offensive, and strange events give him unpleasant feelings of anger and frustration. He feels disconnected from his surroundings through food quality and accessibility, language barriers, having communication pressure too. Communication becomes a major obstacle in developing new relationships. In the case of new students who go abroad for studies, many build up extra symptoms of loneliness that brings negative impacts to their life styles. While adjusting to new cultures, they feel more pressure and anxious of how to deal with new culture and people.
However, the time passes and a person starts to adjust and learn to cope up with the situations. After some time he develops routine and gets accustomed to latest offerings by his new life, culture, and environment (Gu, pp. 37-52). Hosting place or a country feels no alien to him anymore. Things start to get normal and he becomes concerned about leading a basic living again. Adopting a positive attitude, a person accepts the culture and its ways, improving problem solving skills to deal with culture too. This means that at this phase he becomes able to overcome culture shock and reduces his negative responses and reactions to the new culture. A different environment starts to make a sense for him. As a result, life begins to get easier with anxiety, physical and emotional discomfort diminishes to an acceptable level. However, adjustment phase comes with three basic outcomes. For some people it becomes impossible to integrate and become a part of foreign culture or country. They become rejecters and isolate themselves, finding it the only way out to come back to their original culture. Nevertheless, their return also proves confusing and problematic for them. On the other hand, some people go for culture assimilation which means that they accept the new environment whole-heartedly, forgetting their original distinctiveness and identity. Others perceive it as a best solution to create a unique blend by accepting positives from new culture with keeping several of their own.
Eventually a person feels completely adaptable and enables to join comfortably and fully in the host country or environment. However, many people do not fully convert but keep their origin and traits from their prior culture and remain at bicultural stage of following same old accents and languages. However, a person is able to adapt at new changes but his life may return to culture shock or reverse culture shock. Reverse culture shock takes place when a person returns to his home or country and things start to remind or call up, taking him to his origin and producing same old effects (Furham, pp. 9-22). Reverse culture shock is generally more difficult to deal with and more surprising than the original culture shock. It comprises of two stages such as idealizations and expectations. When a person comes back home he feels different, realizing the continuity of world without him. Attaching new perceptions with old ways of life causes psychological anguish and distress and makes readjustment process more troublesome.
In order to deal with the culture shock one can adopt various ways so that he is able to keep himself away from devastating effects of culture shock. There is no doubt to say that culture shock produces stress that is hard to control but understanding it one can easily deal with it soon (Lombard, pp. 174-199). It is important that beliefs and values always conflict but often they converge very easily. It is because the person is ready to cope up with the situation by molding himself in a new environment. A person needs to cooperate with himself by doing few things. One can find out the situation that bothers, irritates, and confuses him the most. Customs and behaviors are always different and social rules may be unknown to a person in trouble. In that situation, he can take interest in knowing newer things and customs of others to get multi-cultural and come in a list of exceptional people. If he takes it positively then life gets easier. Moreover, if situation is not that important to get involved in then a person can also opt for avoiding it. In addition to that, if things are missing in new cultures that a person was used to then he can look for ways to replace them with new things or can also meet those desires by bringing himself in to something that interest him, merging new and older cultures. Developing friendships, improving language proficiency, having a good sense of humor, talking to the people, finding places that are interesting to visit, exercising, having diets that one likes are few of the solutions that can help adjusting to a new culture.
Work Cited
Dongfeng, L. I. "Culture shock and its implications for cross-cultural training and culture teaching." Cross-Cultural Communication 8.4 (2012): p. 70.
Furham, Adrian. "Culture shock." Journal of Psychology and Education 7 (2012): pp. 9-22.
Gu, Qing. "Maturity and Interculturality: Chinese students' experiences in UK higher education." European Journal of Education 44.1 (2009): pp. 37-52.
Lavenda, Robert H., and Emily Ann Schultz. Core concepts in cultural anthropology. McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Lombard, Catherine Ann. "Coping with anxiety and rebuilding identity: A psychosynthesis approach to culture shock." Counselling psychology quarterly 27.2 (2014): pp. 174-199.
Miller, Stephen H., and Nada El-Aidi. "Culture shock: Causes and symptoms." International Business Research 1.1 (2009): p. 26.
Xia, Junzi. "Analysis of impact of culture shock on individual psychology." International Journal of Psychological Studies 1.2 (2009): p. 97.
