Essay on Cultural Anthropology – Exercise

Aspects of the relationship of different cultural, ethnic and social groups not only gain their relevance, but even become more acute nowadays. This is especially true about various researches aimed at understanding the processes of ethnic identity, ethnic interaction, and mutual ethnic identity. It is possible to suppose that sometimes cultural differences may provoke misunderstanding and I’m going to explore an embarrassing moment that had a place in my life.

First of all it is necessary to identify that an embarrassing moment of my observation was connected with a culture shock. It is a true that I had the culture shock when I came to the United States five years ago and it was a strange for me to meet the new standards of life, new behavioral stereotypes and difficulties of understanding American accent.

I came to the United States full of new thoughts and dreams; I was ready to new life, but people around me were different. I was looking for new friends and new contacts but in many situations I was like a person from other planet, I was a stranger for some degree. There were many different situations, when I felt myself out of this American culture. For instance, I like pink color and in my culture it was normal to wear pink cloths despite gender, but it is taboo to wear pink cloth for a guy in this western culture and people were shocked to see a guy in pink cloth.

Observing types of food, I want to dwell on fast foods, because it was not normal for me to eat hot dogs or something like that. I was trying to eat all those foods but the taste was strange and it was not as tasty as I thought about it in my dreams.

Thus, it becomes understandable that all aspects of new environment were embarrassing for me due to many factors. In my case I had a big problem connected with the entry into a new culture, because entry into a new culture is accompanied by unpleasant feelings – losing friends and status, rejection, surprise and discomfort in the knowledge of the differences between cultures, as well as confusion in the value orientations, social and personal identity.

I have understood that culture in the broadest sense of the word – is a fact that made me an outsider when I left my house. Culture includes all beliefs and expectations, which are expressed and showed by people. Being a stranger in a foreign company, I have had many difficulties, feelings of helplessness and disorientation that were a kind of the culture shock for me.

Analyzing my own experience I have understood that the essence of the culture shock is the conflict of old and new cultural norms and orientation of old – the inherent individual as a representative of the society, which the person left, and new, that is, representing the society in which the person arrived. Strictly speaking, the culture shock – is a conflict between two cultures at the level of individual consciousness.

Overcoming all difficulties in my communication with those people I have understood that it is necessary to take personal control of own emotions and be always benevolent in spite of possible problems and discomforts. It was hard to learn a new behavior that was appropriate for a new environment, because even the food had other taste and it was not an easy to taste new dishes and communicate with people, but it was a good experience for my future life and work.

Thinking about the way how to overcome all embarrassing situations I found the way of partial assimilation. Partial assimilation is a kind of assimilation when an individual donates his culture in favor of another environment cultural part in one of the spheres of life: for example, work is guided by the norms and requirements of another environment; and at home, at leisure, in the religious sphere – the norms of own traditional culture are the main.

To sum up, I have observed the embarrassing moment that had a place in my life and analyzed all of them from the position of the culture shock. It is true that in a case of contact with another culture, we all inevitably experience the real culture shock, and only our great wish to overcome it will help to do it in fast and more effective way.