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Culture Shock

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Submitted By mlietz
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Culture Shock
Machelle Lietz
SOC/120
July 24, 2013
Robert Bruce

Culture Shock Culture shock is the when someone visits a new place and becomes disoriented because of the culture, surroundings, and change of atmosphere. Generally culture shock happens when visiting other states or countries that are far different than the one they are used to. For most people in the world Yanomamo would be a culture shock, even for many of the people in their same country in South America. For someone to be prepared for this country the first thing would be to research everything they can about the country, starting with the culture, environment, and customs. A person should learn whether they may have any similarities and the continue researching other important factors; such as language, which could be a system of words or symbols; the type of intelligence of the people; values and beliefs, which includes customs, hierarchy, religion, freedom, and equality; finally norms such as, mores and folkways can help with interaction. The only culture shock I have had experience with in my life is moving from a smaller town to a bigger city. The bigger city has a bigger variety of people in a larger condensed area. We walked into a very nicely decorated mall with many executives and professionally dressed people and when we walked out there were homeless men and men begging for money and food. Another example I can share is a patient that explained to me how she grew up in Romania and remember how women are treated as low class and to traditionally stay home and take care of children. When driving she was pulled over by a policeman and was accused of speeding, when she knew she had not. She was offered to pay the ticket entirely in court or she could pay half right then directly to the policeman. It was customary to bribe and be corrupt when in an authority position in Romania, but in America the policeman could have lost his job. She said coming to America was easy and comfortable and she was treated so well in comparison to her home country. She said the culture shock was going back to Romania. It is valuable and important to know the culture of the place that is being visited for many reasons. One reason is to be respectful to the countries customs and beliefs. If this is not followed a person could end up offending the culture, being arrested for breaking a law, or taken advantage of because of being foreign. In the Yanomamo story Napoleon Chagnon was greeted with arrows pointed at him and had he not done the research to have a guide with him he may not have lived to share his experience. References

Macionis, J. J. (2006). Society: The basics (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

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