Culture Shock

In a world with so many different countries filled with so many different people there is a lot of room for variety and differences in customs and ideas. There are so many different kinds of ideas and beliefs around the world that a lot of people do not even know about. All of these varying things would be cultures of people and societies.

            What exactly is culture? It is the ideas, beliefs, values, behaviors, and basically every other factor a person can think of put together, that a society follows. So there can be material culture, which is all of the objects in a place. For example, buildings in a city or even something as small as jewelry passed down from generation to generation. On the other side there is nonmaterial culture. This is all of the other aspects of a society like the peoples’ beliefs, ideas, and views on the world. Something that goes along with culture is a thing called “norms”. A norm is the expectation or rules of behavior that a society follows. The thing about a norm is it is all learned (Henslin, 2012, p.36). They are just things that a person picks up from the other people in their society. Throughout the world norms change along with the different cultures and people.

            A big thing that happens to a person when they grow up in a certain culture is they tend to only really know about their own culture. They do not know what else is out there and they just assume that everyone else in the world acts just like them. This, however, is definitely not the case. For example, here in the United States people generally wait in an organized line in the grocery store or any other transaction situation. In a different part of the world those organized lines do not exist. People just clump up and try to push themselves forward towards the “front” of the crowd. This is only one example but there are many different norms that change in other cultures.

 

            When a person decides to travel to another country they may experience something called culture shock. This would happen if they do not know all of the customs in this society and they may get caught off guard when introduced to this different kind of behavior that is not considered “normal” in their own society. What is really considered normal to a person? A big part of a person believing that their society is “normal” is something called ethnocentrism. This where people use their own culture and society to rate and value the cultures of others. A sociologist names William Sumner developed this concept and in the book, Sociology a Down-to-Earth approach, he stated, “One’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. (Henslin, 2012, p.37)” This is what leads people to think that other cultures have weird behaviors because they are really comparing it to their own customs and beliefs.  So what exactly is culture shock? It is when a person visits another country that has different material and nonmaterial culture and even different norms than they are used to. This new type of environment can really throw the person off and confuse them along with really surprising them.

            Culture shock can be triggered by a large amount of things. That previous example of the organized lines vs. the large unorganized crowd would be enough to really take a person by surprise. That is if they come from a place that runs off of lines and they assumed that every other country does the same actions. Another thing that can really differ is language and gestures. A change in language around the world is something that is fairly common knowledge but a change in gestures is not. A gesture is just different body language that a person can use to describe things. Something that comes to mind when the word gesture comes up is a person who talks with their hands to explain a certain topic. It is just assumed that gestures are universal and no matter where you go everyone is going to know what you mean. Well that is not true at all. For example, sticking up the middle finger here is common knowledge of an insult. In other countries the people may not even know what that means at all. All of these differences put together can make a person feel out of their element and really confuse them. Culture shock is a very uncomfortable feeling to some because they feel like they have to relearn everything just to make it in that country.

            All around the world there are so many different cultures, people, and beliefs. People who live in a certain culture tend to just assume that everyone else goes by those same beliefs, but that is not the case. There are a lot of different norms and customs everywhere you go and it can be very shocking if those are not known to you.  

Has anyone personally experienced culture shock? If so what was your experience?

Sources:

Henslin, J. M. (2012). Sociology a Down-to-Earth Approach (11th ed.).