What is a culture shock?

The concept of “culture shock” has been used in a variety of definitions and perspectives, so let’s start clearing up how we understand it – what it is, and what it is not.

• First of all “culture shock” is not a characteristic of a migrant, or a culturally different other. It is always relational, emerging in the connection of two or more people who have different ways of thinking about, being in the world.
• Though we call it “shock” it is not necessarily something big and dramatic. It can be quite subtle. In fact, we prefer it to be not so dramatic. For instance, episodes of severe manifest violence for us are beyond culture shock, and are probably better dealt with through other tools than a cultural analysis.

Let’s bring in the definition of Margalit Cohen-Emerique, whose approach we propose to work with.  She defines culture shock as…

“… an interaction with a person or object from a different culture, set in a specific space and time, which provokes negative or positive cognitive and affective reactions, a sensation of loss of reference points, a negative representation of oneself and feeling of lack of approval that can give rise to uneasiness and anger“ (Cohen-Emerique 2011)

How to work with culture shocks ?

Experiencing culture shocks can reinforce stereotypes and prejudice, but all such incident also has the potential to become a powerful source of learning if we don’t obey our need to close and quickly forget the situation but ponder on what may be behind it…

For the culture shock to become a source of learning, we have to open it up, carefully exploring what’s behind it, what it is that really caused it and what are the reasons for the emotional reaction it triggered.  The method we propose is based on the idea that “it takes two to tango”, that if there is a shock it is because of differences between the ways the protagonists experience or think about the world. The subjective emotional reaction of the person who experiences the shock is always indicator of what is important for her or him, it sheds light on norms, values, representations that are important.  You can follow an example of analysis in our collection of critical incidents

All in all, in culture shock we learn about the other, but also about our own culture. What’s more, exploring what are the most frequent themes of culture shock – or critical incident helps us to unveil the sensitive zones, which are cultural domains of particular importance, susceptible to become a source of tension in intercultural contact. When you scroll through our Collection of critical incidents, you’ll see that the incidents are classified under six such sensitive zones: relationship to groups, relationship to each other, relationship to authority and power, conceptions of what’s private and public, gender and professional identity.
When you open one of our incidents, you’ll discover that the analysis is organised into a strange shape. This is not by coincidence.

Icebergs and culture shocks

Icebergs are probably the favorite metaphor of intercultural trainers, and for a good reason: they capture a fundamental truth about the “nature of culture”.
Consider this: wherever you are, you are surrounded by signs of culture. Look around just now; you are probably facing a computer, sitting on a chair, within a built environment, a room, you are probably dressed in a particular way. Around you there may be decorations, books, images, souvenirs. All these items are perceptible, visible: they constitute the visible part of the iceberg above the water level. But in order to understand them fully, we have to tap on a larger baggage of values, norms and representations that give the real meaning to these cultural manifestations. These, like the hidden part of the iceberg are usually invisible to us.
In intercultural contact, misunderstandings and conflicts can emerge, because we attach different meanings and importance to the same visible element. Most of the time we’re not even aware of the hidden meanings of our own cultural references, let alone those of other cultures. We do however take our models as the standard, and assume the others behave on the same premises. But they don’t necessarily do so. A kiss on the cheek for a colleague may be the sign of politeness in one context and a sign of intrusion and harassment in another context.
In most intercultural interaction two icebergs meet: two different sets of norms and values, and sometimes they collide. It is to give visibility to this idea that we present the critical incidents by displaying the two separate icebergs of the protagonists: the person who told us about the shock episode and the person(s) who triggered it. Icebergs may give a dramatic touch to the idea of “culture shock”, but even with this metaphor we have a message of optimism: giving visibility to hidden values and norms does not make the situation worse, in fact It is a first step to work out solutions.