Reverse Culture Shock

Here is a paper sent to us by Dr. Mike Leming, Professor of Sociology at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and grand poobah of the Semester in Thailand program. This paper was written by one of his students, and explores the idea of "reverse culture shock".

If you want to learn more about the Spring Semester in Thailand program, you can check out their website or email Dr. Leming for more information. He will be happy to work with you to go on this trip. If he doesn't answer immediately, he may be in the jungle somewhere, and they tend to have terrible Wi-Fi.

Here's the paper, entitled "Reverse Culture Shock: Feeling Foreign at Home." by Carolyn Vermazen. I know it's a little long, but it's worth the read.

“You can go home again… so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.”                                -Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed

            Reverse culture shock is a very valid sociological concept.  “Reverse culture shock is real, it affects every returning sojourner to some degree, and it usually goes unrecognized” (Wang 1997).  Although it may not seem to be a very scholarly sociological topic, it is very relevant and has greatly affected not only my life, but the lives of countless other “homeless” people throughout the world.

            I am not homeless in the sense that most people understand.  I have a shelter over my head, a warm bed to sleep in at night, and am provided with an abundance of food.  However, I feel very lost and exposed in the place that I am supposed to call “home.”  After one spends a significant amount of time immersed in another culture, with little contact from one’s native environment, it is never easy to find “home” again.  Never really apart of one’s host country, and yet forever changed by their experiences and new views on the world, can one ever really be a part of their native country again?

          In Sociological terms, culture shock could be defined as being thrown into anomie and forced to resocialize within a foreign culture.  When a person is stripped of everything they ever knew to be “normal” in society they are in complete anomie, and although the traveler will probably expect some differences, they can never imagine all the possible differences they may find.  Even the things most taken for granted in a home country cannot be expected to even exist in a new environment.  Simple things back home, like making one’s favorite food, may become impossible in a foreign country where the ingredients may or may not exist.  “Norms, values, and beliefs vary from culture to culture, just as language does.  These differences can often result in travelers feeling a sense of ‘culture shock’” (McIntyre 1999).  However severe and disturbing culture shock may be, it is usually not a complete surprise to travelers as they know they often expect to be faced with changes, new things, and diverse, difficult emotions.  As an added incentive, sojourners often tell themselves that no matter how disturbing the new culture is that they will always be able to return home and feel “normal” again.  Little do they know that from the very first moment that they begin to accept the new culture, they are changing and “home” as they knew it is some place they can never go again.

Throughout one’s immersion in another culture, the sojourner begins to resocialize themselves in a way that is conducive to their new living environment.  This process is also knows as “acculturation,” which means

“The adaptation by an ethnic group (or in this case an individual) of the cultural patterns of the dominant or majority group.  Such acculturation encompasses not only external cultural traits, such as dress and language, but also internal ones, such as beliefs and values” (Borgatta & Montgomery, 2000). 

In order for sojourners to survive happily in  their new environment, they must put aside their preconceived notions of culture and make themselves open to the new  culture resocialize themselves to the new environment.  “Socialization is the process by which people acquire cultural competency and through which society perpetuates the fundamental nature of existing social structures” (McIntyre, 1999).   Without even realizing what is happening to them, sojourners slowly lose parts of their old identity as they take on new roles in their new society. 

            After I graduated from high school, I spent one full year in France as a foreign exchange student.  I fully expected to experience culture shock, and I did.  The big differences, such as language, weren’t the hardest part to deal with.  It was the simple, everyday things that I took for granted in my home in Iowa that I missed.  Some of the more difficult obstacles to deal with were simple things such as toilet paper, which was all pink and in individual squares, their milk that was so pasteurized that it did not need to be kept cold and could be kept for up to four months without spoiling,  most notably the incredibly tiny cars that everyone drove at even more incredible velocity. 

            Slowly, throughout my year in France, things stopped seeming weird and I even started to forget about what I thought to be weird in the first place.  I took on new roles and wasn’t simply “the American,” but I was a classmate, a member of the chorus, a daughter, a sister, and a friend.  As I became more fluent in the French language, so did I become fluent in the French culture.  I began to laugh at jokes which would never be funny in the U.S. and I really felt “French” when I was able to tell these sorts of jokes and make French people laugh.  Personality is something one can take for granted until it is stripped away by the inability to relate to others.  Without working with the norms and values of a certain society, one cannot be a part of it and will always feel like an outsider.

            As my departure date approached, I felt good about my adaptation to France and it’s culture.  I was quite proud of my having learned a new language and my becoming “French.”  However sad I was to be leaving France and my new friends, language and culture, I was also looking forward to going home again where things were “normal.”  So as I said goodbye to my French family and boarded the plane to go home, I was filled with mixed emotions of sadness and excitement, but was looking forward to this transition being easier than the one I had made eleven months earlier when I came to France.

Probably the hardest part of reverse culture shock is that it is usually a complete surprise as one does not anticipate to feel culture shock in their native culture.  I was very much unprepared for what awaited me at the other side of the Atlantic.  “When sojourners who are returning from a culture that is generally assumed to be not very different from the home culture… reentry problems are not anticipated and will not be identified as such, and reverse culture shock may be especially severe”  (Wang 1997).  This was very much the case for me, as I had no idea the extent to which I would feel “foreign” back home.

Yes it's a recycled image, but it seemed relevant.

            
         Probably the hardest part of reverse culture shock is that it is usually a complete surprise as one does not anticipate to feel culture shock in their native culture.  “When sojourners who are returning from a culture that is generally assumed to be not very different from the home culture… reentry problems are not anticipated and will not be identified as such, and reverse culture shock may be especially severe”  (Wang 1997). 

           
        Exchange students and other international travelers all experience reverse culture shock, and is not something that can quickly be dealt with and forgotten, but rather a lengthy process in which one must continually strive to rediscover and find a place for themselves in their native culture.  Reverse culture shock goes through four stages: euphoria and enthusiasm, disillusionment and negativism, gradual adaptation, and finally they will come to a stable place of bicultural competence (White). 

My initial reaction was one of joy when feet once again touched American soil.  I was overwhelmed by getting to experience things I had missed over the couse of the previous eleven months.  I was ravished to see my family and friends again, although at the same time I was scared that they might not like the new me, or that I might not like the new them.  I was thrilled to get to to eat my old favorite foods, although they didn’t taste as good as I’d remembered.  Along with each excitement came a draw back, a fear that I was doing something wrong or the suspicion that everything had changed while I was away.  I managed to laugh at myself the first few times I made cultural mistakes, such as when I would accidentally respond to questions in French instead of in English, or when I was surprised at the enormity of the junk food selection in the grocery stores, or when people made fun of me for “looking French.”  My friends and family too, thought it was cute the first few times I was surprised by things that are blatantly American, such as my astonishment at the incredible size of vehicles in the airport parking lot, or that road signs in the US are green, not blue, or that in US culture one doesn’t ask “Ma’am, could you please tell me where the toilet is, please?”  But as these seemingly innocent violations of American culture occurred unceasingly throughout the first few weeks of my return I became very frustrated and hostile towards the American culture.  Without my knowing it, I had been completely resocialized in France and didn’t know how to act “American” anymore.

             Slowly, I forced myself to resocialize once again.  I suppressed my new habits in favor of ones that were more culturally sensitive in America.  After continually searching for phrases in English that I hadn’t used in months, they began to come to me more quickly, and I once again was able to communicate.  What made this resocialization process harder than originally “becoming French,” were the expectations of friends, family, as well as myself that I should know how to be American and it was silly of me to act differently.  Nonetheless, I did feel strange, had trouble speaking English, and often felt out of place.  Something just made more sense in French than in English and I initially rejected readapting to American culture.  I liked who I had become in France, someone who was confident, a world traveler and uniquely independent.  Overtime, I have adjusted and readapted to American culture, but I have not forgotten who I was in France.  Slowly and continually, I am going through this process of reverse culture shock, and although it’s affects are less severe than when I first returned home, I still have moments where I feel completely foreign at home.  I am hoping that with time I can finish out my goal from being a foreign exchange student, which was to not only become bilingual, but bicultural as well.

References

LeGuin, U. K.  (1974).  The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia.  New York, Harper & Row

McIntyre, L. J.  (1999).  The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology.  Mountain     

          View, CA:Mayfield Publishing Company.

Wang, M.  (1997).  Reentry and reverse culture shock.  In R.W. Brislin and K.  Cushner    

          (Eds.), Improving Intercultural Interactions: Modules for Cross-Cultural Training    

          Programs.  (Vol. 2).  (pp. 109-128).  Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage.

White, D. (1991). “So you think you’re home again: Some thoughts for exchange students 

          returning “home”.”  Unpublished article distributed through Rotary International.