Cora Dubois Theory Of Culture Shock

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Introduction to the Study

Culture is defined as the way of life of a people. Culture involves the behaviour, the language, the dressing and the religion of a populace, as well as what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to a specific group of people. Culture shock; therefore, relates to the emotional tension experienced when a person moves from a culture he or she is familiar with into one that is totally unfamiliar. Solomon (1994) stated that culture shock is an emotional and psychological reaction to the confusion, ambiguity, value conflicts, and hidden clashes that occur because of fundamentally different ways of perceiving the world and interacting socially among cultures. According to Black and Gregerson (1991, p. 462), culture shock is the stress consequent upon differences in behavioural expectation and the attendant uncertainty with which an individual has to cope. Culture shock can also involve a situation in which the different frustrations experienced by an individual increases, culminating into an outburst of emotions such as

Cora DuBois (1951) is the earliest anthropologist to use the term “culture shock” while referring to the disturbing phenomena that anthropologists have to confront when they come up against different cultures. However, as Paige (1993) noted, DuBois’ fellow Columbia University anthropologist, Ruth Benedict, may have been the original source of the term. Oberg (1960) goes on to utilize and develop the term making it applicable to all individuals who go into different cultures. Oberg developed what he calls a “honeymoon-crisis -recovery- adjustment model” (p.178) and he terms culture shock an “occupational disease” (p.179) that people who go from one country to another have to