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Summary Of Craig Storti's Figuring Foreigners Out

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Reading Craig Storti’s book, Figuring Foreigners Out, gives many new insights about my trip to Puerto Rico. In his book there are four categories that he covers that I will use to analyze and reflect upon my time in Puerto Rico. The four categories he uses are concept of self, personal vs. societal responsibility, concept of time, and locus of control. To begin I will examine Storti’s topic, concept of self.
Concept of Self
In Storti’s book he defines the concept of self as a scale, individualism being one of the poles and collectivism as the other. Many people fall somewhere in between these two but there are some that are to the extreme of each. Storti defines individualist as “the smallest unit of survival is the individual (Storti, 1999, p. 25). According to Storti (1999) people identify primarily with self, and the needs of the individual are satisfied before those of the group”. The opposite pole is …show more content…

25). Storti says one’s identity is in large part a function of one’s membership and role in a group. In many ways it can be seen as whether you believe that what you do impacts the survival of yourself (individualist) or what the group does determines the survival of yourself (collectivist). When you look at the culture in the United States as a whole it is easy to see we are very individualistic. We are constantly looking out for ourselves which can be seen especially within our work environments. We constantly look for a promotion or recognition to better ourselves. We believe that if “I” ever get rich or become famous then I will help others out. I believe that I can be easy for myself to be a very individualistic person. I struggle with allowing others to help me and I tend to believe that I can do everything myself to succeed. I’m very self-dependent which for the most

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