Culture Shock In America

A sudden change in one’s surroundings can result in culture shock. Culture shock refers to the anxiety and surprise a person feels when he or she is discontented with an unfamiliar setting. The majority of practices or customs are different from what a person is used to. One may experience withdrawal, homesickness, or a desire for old friends. For example, when a person goes to live in a different place with unfamiliar surroundings, they may experience culture shock. Sometimes it is the result of losing their identity. In the article “The Phases of Culture Shock”, Pamela J. Brink and Judith Saunders describe four phases of culture shock. They are: Honeymoon Phase, Disenchantment Phase, Beginning Resolution Phase, and Effective

Cultural shock is a common feeling a person experiences when transitioning into a completely different environment and living situation. Throughout the world, immigrants experience many difficulties when assimilating into a new culture.

The culture shock is about when someone arrives in a different place where the culture is not the same where he/she is from. I have difficult in the language, the food and the weather. They are too different from the culture of El Salvador. I believe I can overcome them trying to adapt myself in each of the difficulties and looking for help to my friends, my host family or someone else who can help to solve this

What Peter Berger means by the first statement, in which he links sociological discovery to culture shock minus geographical displacement, is that sociological discoveries and realizations are very often made in one 's own society. When they are made, they might come off as shocking because they are being viewed in a different light. You can go to the nearest church or park and make new discoveries with what you observe in an open state of mind.

Culture shock is the feelings of alienation, hostility, heightened ethnocentrism, sense of loss, depression and/or self doubt that may result from immersion in a new culture.

Eckermann (2010), defines culture shock as segregation of two communities, creating conflict, inequality of rights, and inhuman treatment. Due to the divide, and Aboriginals being the minor group, they lost their identities and experienced tremendous stress and anxiety due to culture shock.

Pederson (7) explains that there are stages of culture shock, which he identifies as the honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment, and adaptation. In the honeymoon phase, a person is likely to get excited about being in a new place, meeting new people, tasting new foods, and acquiring new habits. However, as time passes by, they get into a phase of negotiation, where the differences between the culture one is used to and the one they find themselves in start to become apparent. Feelings of anxiety, anger, and frustrations start to take shape as unfavorable events perceived as strange come in the way of the person 's life, especially if a person does not feel accepted in the new culture (Mukherjee 273). Loneliness may set in, and the urge to go back to the familiar culture strongly comes into play. However, as time goes by, adjustment sets in, usually within six to twelve months, and one gets accustomed to the culture and also comes up with a routine. By this phase, one knows what is expected of them, and life once again becomes ‘normal.’

Culture shock is influenced by ethnocentrism, which I will explain how it is taking one’s culture as a superior base to judge other cultures. The longer I lived in Louisiana, the concept cultural relativism began to apply to my situation when I befriended a girl that had lived in that town from birth, and it gave me a new perception on cultural differences. Culture shock is a two way street after all, they were affected by my outside presence- especially at times where they needed to forgive my adjustment of catering to their norms. The non-material culture I can list as an example would be a moral holiday celebrated highly in the south, Mardi Gras. Having parades march through my street for seven days with floats, jazz musicians, horses, and people in costumes throwing out beaded necklaces- was quite a celebration that traced back historically and

1. Culture shock- The disorientation that people experience when they come in contact with a fundamentally different culture and can no longer depend on their taken for granted assumptions about life. Pg. 35

Culture is all about an individual knowledge based on belief ,art,morals customs.Therefore culture shock occurs when people have different values and beliefs and are not tolerant of each others differences(Eckermann,Dowd,Chong,Nixon,Gray and Johnson,2006.).The separation of important people in

Long before there were grocery stores, cars or electricity, humans had the same essential survival needs that we have today – oxygen, food, water, shelter and sleep. For humans today, we can find everything we’d ever need in a store, but without the technology to make life easy, a lot of cultures around the world adopted a nomadic lifestyle. These cultures didn’t have the luxury of living in the same house or a neighborhood their entire lives, and the environments they lived in were harsh. In order to find their five basic survival needs, these nomadic cultures instead had to travel from one new location to the next in search of their next set of resources.

According to Gitterman (2001) “the term culture shock was coined to characterize severe anxiety-provoking situations experienced by those who must act under unfamiliar social norms and behavior cues (p. 661).”

In anthropology, researchers aim to understand how culture shapes our lives. One of the greatest influential factors within a culture is the food we grow, eat, and sell. Food is perhaps the most central component of our lives. Without food, there would be no life. It is crucial to consider the foods people decide to eat and how those choices are influenced by culture and community. In several places, there may not be as may options when it comes to choosing food. The choice may simply be between eating or not. And in other cultures, it is the land, traditions of the past, and current climate that affect what people select to eat.

In 2010, as my sisters-in-law and their families prepared to immigrate to the United States (U.S.), my husband and I did all we can to advise and assist them in getting ready for their long journey from Nigeria to the U.S. To our surprise, contrary to every advice we gave them, in preparation for life in the US, they started out with trying American fast foods of different kinds. Culture shock is expected for anyone who immigrates to the US, regardless of where they come from. The type(s) of help the person(s) gets on how to overcome it and their adherence, most often, determines the future outcome of life in their new country of residence.

Culture Shock has played a tremendous role in the growth of cultural ecology because it is an issue that is constantly growing all over the world. In the United States, it may not seem like things are changing involving culture shock, but it is not any different then the changes in places like Africa and China for example. It is developing equally across the world because there are now more ways to travel. So, what exactly is culture shock anyways? Well, it is known as going to a foreign or unfamiliar territory that one is not used to, so they may feel symptoms of anxiety such as nervousness or shock because the customs, actions, beliefs, etc of those people may not seem familiar to them, so one may feel ill-prepared for the changing environment. Also, for example, if one was to go to school in the U.S. but came from China, they would feel culture shock because the rules in China are not the same as rules in the U.S. and so it may make one feel uneasy about the situation because they are not use to change and maybe the move was to quick for them to adjust properly. The United States is very different from foreign areas because the culture is very different. Where have people of Africa seen movie productions, music, sports, universities, iPhones, computers, etc? The answer is not where they live but in the United States if they traveled there before. This is exactly the issue with culture shock in ecology. Culture is what people behave like, feel, and do. Shock is a symptom