Stephan
Dahl
Communications and Culture Transformation
Cultural Diversity, Globalization and Cultural Convergence
Chapter 5: Towards explaining intercultural transformation
In the attempt to explain what makes a culture a culture we have identified various distinctive concepts: such as the space and time concepts, perception, language etc. These concepts can be broadly classified as parts, processes and outcomes of three categories, or variables, that interact in 'culture'. This categorization leans towards the Trompenaars and Hempden-Turner model of culture, whereas culture is a set of three concentric circles, existing out of basic assumptions, norms and values and artifacts and products (see section 1 and: Trompenaars & Hempden Turner,1997:22).
Rather than seeing the three variables as distinctive elements, they should be seen as interacting together, and with it in a constant change. They display, to some extend, cybernetic properties: The basic assumptions influence the values and norms and those in turn influence the artifacts and products, however equally changes in the artifacts and products can change values and norms and in turn change basic assumptions. Any such process is of course primarily a process in the individual, that will then in turn influence the culture surrounding him or her, and that may lead, gradually, to a culture shift; or more precisely in a shift in the behavior of any element.
For example: while during the industrialization it was a basic assumption that the workers had virtually no right, the challenging of that assumption through the various Marxist and socialist movements have gradually shifted this basic assumption. Primarily the shift may have been encountered by only one person, who then shifted the norms and values of the workers, and with it both their basic assumptions as well as their artifacts and products: the assumption shifted to the fact that the workers have rights, and the behavior changed to claiming those rights. While in the early days of the Marxist movement this 'basic assumption' was only seen by some, namely those aligned with the communist, Marxist and socialist ideas, the forced change in behavior and values gradually shifted the basic assumption of society towards the assumption that workers have, at least some, rights. A full detailed account of such a movement would of course go far beyond the scope of this project, it can however be noted that the shift created an immense follow up in changes in society: from giving the right to vote equally to the establishment of trade unions, to legalizing of parties that were aligned with that idea, to the fact of making this commitment part, at least in some form, of most democratic constitutions. An other, major, attempt to shift basic assumptions can of course be seen in the feminist movement.
The point is, that by being exposed to new ideas or a new environment, the society culture changed significantly at all levels, resulting in a shift in culture over time. Shifts in culture can of course initiate in the own society, but are more likely to be brought in by an outside culture, with a different set of assumptions, values etc. . Shifts can of course be significant, or subtle, they can be fast or slow. Example for subtle shifts can be a shift in only one layer with little effect on the others, it can be a slight change that is in danger of going unnoticed. The significant shifts are easily determined, changing society structure as a whole while taking place, and over a relatively short period of time.
Slow shifts are those shifts that occur over a long period of time, at least relatively spoken: The feminist movement is such a slower shift, taking some hundred years and more to change the basic assumptions, the values and attitudes of society.
Fast shifts are dramatic revolutionlike developments: the end of the Third Reich was a fast shift, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe etc. The shift is abrupt, and changes society values fundamentally over a very short period of time.
This discussion of fundamental changes in an entire society is of course a dramatized view of what occurs in the individual when exposed to a society with a fundamentally different culture. However the similarities are striking. In both situations one or more individuals are exposed to 'foreign' concepts of life: a capitalist view of economy, a hierarchically structured society with deep respect for authority, a deeply individualistic society. While adaptation is not necessarily the outcome, the individual will start reflecting on the concept, and may choose to adapt parts or all of the new outlook.
The Culture Shock
Fundamental to the occurrence of such a shift is a 'culture shock'. While this is traditionally seen as a profound negative experience while encountering another culture, I would rather define it as anything that has a potential to start shifting variables in the culture system of either the individual or the society as a whole. Adler describes it as: "Culture shock is thought of as a profound learning experience that leads to a high degree of self-awareness and personal growth. Rather than being only a disease for which adaptation is the cure, culture shock is likewise at the very heart of the cross-cultural learning experience. It is an experience in self-understanding and change" (1987:29) . The culture shock can be evoked by being exposed to any other culture, as a result of being on a 'foreign' culture territory, by cultural changes in the home culture or by being exposed to fundamentally different cultural forms on the home ground. The fact where the encounter occurs, and how different the cultures are, will have a profound influence on the depth and extend of such a shock. Some argument has been centered around which shocks occur: following this line of inquiry, there are a multitude of possible shocks, such as the role shock, language shock or cultural fatigue when individuals are exposed to a 'foreign' culture. Some studies suggest a positive correlation between culture shock ad the occurrence of mental illnesses resulting from the stress experienced (Kinzie, Tran et al, 1980; Williams & Westermeyer, 1986) while other research has found that culture shock may have a positive influence on social and professional effectiveness (Ruben & Kealey, 1979).
From Shock to Self-reflection
Such a shock will cause reflection upon the individual itself, and the new ideas stemming from the new cultural environment. As Boulding (1977) remarked, the human nervous system is organized in such a way, that all patterns of behavior and perception are processed unconsciously. They only come into consciousness "where there is a deviation from the familiar". This process will inevitably provide the space for reflection upon own behavior patterns, and their underlying norms, values and so on; resulting in a conscious reflection upon their validity. This reflection can then cause the adjustment process to start. The adjustment can however not in all cases be found to correlate with the depth of the shock (Ruben & Kealey, 1979). Different schools of thought present their findings of what happens after such a shock. While the notion of some form of adaptation can be found in all of them, the way such an adaptation, and the extend, is different. Some ideas as to how the acculturation, or culture transformation occurs shall be presented at this stage:
Shock, Reflection, Adaptation
Adler (1975) describes five phases that occur in the event of a culture shock: Initially the individual is in a contact phase. The individual experiences excitement and euphoria, the new culture is seen ethnocentrically. In the second phase, the disintegration phase, the cultural differences become increasingly noticeable, marked by confusion, alienation and depression on the side of the individual. In the third phase, the individual strongly rejects the second culture. The choice is made to either regress to earlier stages or to move on to a higher level of adaptation, this phase is known as the reintegration phase. The fourth step is marked by the increase in understanding the second culture and a feeling of autonomy and competence on the side of the individual, the autonomy stage. In the final phase, the independence stage, the individual cherishes the cultural differences, has an increased self- and cultural awareness and displays creative behavior to accommodate the new culture in its own worldview.
Oberg (1960) also describes the adjustment process, over four stages: The initial 'honeymoon phase' encompasses fascination, elation and optimism on the side of the individual exposed to a foreign culture. In the second phase, the individual enters into hostility and displays emotionally stereotyped attitudes towards the host society or culture. Equally he or she seeks closer contact to fellow sojourners. The third stage is characterized by the increased language knowledge and the ability to get around in the new culture. It marks the recovery from phase two. In the final stage, the adjustment to the host culture is as complete as possible. New customs are accepted and enjoyed.
The adjustment process has been characterized in the current literature as either U or W shaped, following the argumentation that, after returning to the home culture, a sojourner will experience an other culture shock (Gullahorn and Gullahorn, 1963 ; Church, 1982) However as Kim (1996) following Church (1982) points out, some basic questions about adjustment have not been answered: "Is the order of stages invariant?" and "Must all stages be passed through or can some be skipped by some individuals?" (Kim, 1996:303).
While the discussion on the reaction to a culture shock is useful to explain possible stages that an individual or society moves through in order to show adaptation to a new environment, a stage where the environment and the individual are in 'equilibrium'. The main points are that the individual will experience a profound change in its identity. Following some form of rejection, the individual will rise to adaptation of the new culture, and learn to live with it. Some people will show a more profound adaptation than others. While it can generally be said, that most people are able to adjust, Kim points out (1996:313) that "certain individuals, although in the minority, may strongly resist such internal change."
From The Individual To The Society
Most current research has focused exclusively on experiences of sojourners, travelers and immigrants. In other words, the research is based on findings that involve direct communication and contact, in most cases direct interpersonal communication. While undoubtedly this has the highest possible impact on the individual, the research should be extended to encompass non-direct and mass communications to further reach areas where intercultural communication occurs. Kim recognizes that "many intercultural experiences occur indirectly through being exposed to messages that we read, see and hear in the mass media (including books, journals, magazines, movies, television programs and newspapers)" (1996:305).
In the previous sections of this project we have discussed a variety of intercultural encounters and phenomena: media exposure, business encounters, Internet as an interactive mass medium and cultural and structural change through political changes. These form a major part in the everyday experiences of 'ordinary' people and other cultures, and equally starts to shift cultures and may, over time lead to the same phenomena as occurring in any intercultural direct-communication. In the words of Morley and Robins: "Globalization as identity crisis".
Definitions
Following the reasoning from the previous paragraphs, intercultural communication is defined for this project as the information exchange between one person and any other source transmitting a message displaying properties of a culture different to the one of the receiver's culture. The source of such a message can be either a person, in an interpersonal communication process, or any form of mass media or other form of media. For the purpose of the project, the source of such a message can hence be a film or television program, that displays to its viewer a cultural difference. The viewing of such material is hence an intercultural communication process.
The term culture is used in the same sense as Kim, referring to "the collective life patterns shared by people in social groups such as national, racial, ethnic, socio-economic, regional, and gender groups"(1996:305). This necessarily involves that intercultural communication is also understood to take place outside its traditional domain of 'international' communication. Intercultural communication can occur between two nationals of the same country, which have for example different racial or ethnic backgrounds.
The impact of such a communication is understood to be variable. A communication impact is higher in a situation where the personal involvement of the receiver is more actively involved in the communication process. A person living in another country experiences hence a strong impact, whereas a television viewer has a relatively low impact.
The intercultural cultural transformation is understood to be the result of such an encounter, as it occurs in the person that has received such a message. This might be a very insignificant change in a single, low involvement communication situation, or a significant change in an active discussion. The transformation is seen as any shift in the artifacts and production, in the values and norms or in the basic assumptions of that person.
The individual is seen as an open system: s/he interacts actively with his/her environment, mostly through the means of communications. That is the encoding and decoding of messages exchanged with his/her environment.
The individual is further understood to be homeostatic to. That is that the person tries to maintain constant a variety of variables in the meaning structure (layers 1, 2 and 3). At the beginning of any intercultural transformation process, the individual is seen as being in equilibrium: their world view and actions are in line with their meaning structure. If through communication or other encounters the meaning structure is disturbed, in the terminology of Kim, experiences 'stress', the individual will aim to actively adapt to regain equilibrium.
If the individual is exposed to other cultural values, a reflection process starts. To various extends, the human mind starts to review, anticipate, generalize, analyze and plan, and starts an active transformation process. The individual 'grows'.
This adaptation process is dynamic, cyclic and continual, as the individual is in an continuos interchange with its environment. As the environment changes, the equilibrium of the internal meaning structure is continuously disturbed. This requires a continuos adaptation or growth process.
The stress level needs to reach a certain level before active adaptation can take place: this can be reached by either continuos exposure or radical exposure. Before such stress levels are reached, the change in the environment may be ignored or seen as irrelevant: very little adaptation or growth will take place. If a certain level is reached, the adaptation will take place. The stress level is depending on the need for adaptation imposed from the outside and the willingness to adapt from the inside of the individual.
Assumptions
Following the discussion above, we can make the following assumptions:
A person is an open system: it is in continuos interaction with its environment through output and input.
Any person possesses an internal meaning structure: composed of artifacts and products, values and norms and basic assumptions.
The internal meaning structure is inherently logical in itself and interconnected, it is, in that state, in an equilibrium.
The person aims to maintain this equilibrium: s/he is homeostatic.
If the environment of the person changes, the equilibrium gets disturbed.
Any change in the equilibrium causes stress.
If the stress reaches a certain level, the person will aim to restore the equilibrium
To regain the equilibrium, the internal meaning structure has to get modified to accommodate the changed environment.
We have discussed before that the cultural environment that the infant grows up in is the determinant of the basic personality: it is also the start from which cultural transformation takes place. Kim explains this process: "In this process, the individuals become cultural beings. Cultural attributes become a large part of their unconscious patterns of communication, particularly the cognitive patterns of categorizing and sorting information from the environment. As cultural persons, they are further conditioned by the collective ways of feeling and behaving. Humans, thus, have limited freedom in experiencing what is beyond the borders of their cultural consciousness" (idem., 1996:309). Once the 'cultural consciousness' is confronted with cultural otherness, the human is propelled into some form of reflective process, the cultural assumptions and premises are called into question: the "Stress-Adaptation-Growth" process in the words of Kim (1996).
In a direct intercultural encounter, the individual experiences inevitably difficulties in communicating: due to other cultural premises and assumptions of the other party. Whether or not the communication takes the active form of direct conversation (with its immediate feedback and propelled cybernetic adaptation process) or the form of a limited feedback conversation or exposure. The 'otherness' projected by the other party will inevitably evoke some reflection about the person's own cultural premises and assumptions. The degree of the heterogeneity of the 'other', and the context and feedback of the communication, is of course a determining factor in the need for such a reflective process: if the heterogeneity is high, and the context low, the impact of such an encounter will only call for a very limited amount of reflection. If the context is high, and diversity equally high, then the reflection process has to be more in-depth, it is challenged more significantly.
Once such cultural 'otherness' is perceived, and the individual is confronted with the need for some kind of adaptation to accommodate the 'other', the internal meaning system is disturbed. The individual is reacting with discomfort and uncertainty: the internal equilibrium is propelled into disequilibrium. Confronted with a significantly large change in the cultural environment, a large scale adaptation and growth takes place. As in the case of immigrants, who moved to an alien culture, Kim suggests: "Within the first year in a new culture, an individual may experience nearly one third of what Holmes and Rahe considered the 43 most significant life changes" (idem.,1996: 310).
The culture shock, the generic intercultural stress, is the result of such an intercultural encounter. It requires, that the individual adapts his/her behavior at least temporarily to regain equilibrium and to cope with the situation. This requires the suspension of certain behavior, and possibly norms and values and basic assumptions, and the accommodation of new behavior and adaptation of norms, values and basic assumptions to accommodate those new ways. This may, initially, meet with conscious or unconscious resistance of the individual to adapt. This causes additional stress. The adaptation, the accommodation of the new ways of thinking, perceiving and acting, causes can result, according to Kim in "temporary personality disintegration, or even 'breakdown' in some extreme cases. Intercultural stress is therefore viewed as the internal resistance of the human organism against its own cultural evolution.
To the extend that stress is said to be responsible for suffering, frustration and anxiety, it also must be credited as an impetus for learning, growth and creativity for the individual. Temporary disintegration is thus viewed as the very basis for subsequent growth in the awareness of life conditions and ways to deal with them" (1996:311).
What results out of the process of disintegration and adaptation, of stress and growth is a cyclic, forward and upward moving process in which the internal meaning structure is continuously leaping forward.
At the starting point the individual experiences stress, the internal meaning structure is disturbed. It acquires the energy for adaptation to overcome the stress experience. The individual then leaps forward to a new, adapted meaning structure. At some point, new stress may arise: the stress causes a draw back, a new disintegration and questioning of the current meaning structure. In a new leap, the individual adapts again. With the individuals growth, the society of which they form part, also grows. In the words of Kim: "Ultimately, the intercultural communication experiences of the individuals contribute to the evolution of the social systems of which they are part" (1996:311).
While learning and growing, the individual also learns to better cope with intercultural stress. Some indications are that the more stress is experienced, the more adaptation takes place (Ruben and Kealey, 1979). Through the continuos stress-adaptation-growth process, the individual learns to 'function' in the new environment: their internal meaning structure is expanded to accommodate the new environment, and the individual is able to experience what is beyond the borders of its previous cultural consciousness.
Resulting out of intercultural encounters, out of the stress, growth and adaptation is a new 'cultural conditioning' of the individual: the individual grows to become a multicultural person. This state is then characterized by the person becoming open to cultural transformation and growth, and a loosening of cultural bindings to any one particular culture. Adler (1982) describes it as:
"The identity of man [woman] is based, not on 'belongingness' which implies either owning or being owned by culture, but on a style of self-consciousness that is capable of negotiating ever new formations of reality. In this sense multicultural man [woman] is a radical departure from the kinds of identities found in both traditional and mass societies. He [She] is neither totally part of nor totally apart from his [her] culture; he [she] lives, instead, on the boundary" (1982:391).
Equally to becoming an 'intercultural' person intercultural encounters and the stress-adaptation-growth process lead to a learning progress in the individual, resulting in a broadened understanding "of human conditions and cultural differences and a view of things that are larger than any one cultural perspective" (Kim, 1996; 314). This way of viewing things will of course, in return, influence the ability to react flexible in an intercultural encounter: the intercultural person will have the flexibility to adapt to the situation, and creatively manage any intercultural stress and possible conflict. "At this stage, one achieves the maximum capacity to communicate with individuals who are significantly different in cultural backgrounds, and are able to make deliberate choices of actions in specific situations rather than simply being dictated by the normative courses of action in a given culture" (Kim, 1996; 315).
While the foregoing discussion has focused on interpersonal communication, based largely on the reasoning of Kim (1996), the situation is transferable to a variety of other intercultural encounters which are not a direct, interpersonal communication. As explained before, those encounter have a lesser impact, when taken as a single incident, however occur with great frequency in everyday life. Such a situation can be, for example, eating in foreign food. Virtually no encounter with the other culture as a whole is made, rather a single factor is displayed, and equally a single factor is possibly modified in the internal meaning system. Being confronted with 'alien' food, puts the individual equally in a situation of uncertainty, a very small version of a culture shock. While learning to how to eat the food, how it tastes and so forth, the individual is able to expand its horizon of food: it may not be cooked but still digestible, it may not be eaten with knife and fork and so on. A related 'encounter' can occur in the case of a TV show: the heroes displayed may be seen as possible role models, and as such the internal meaning structure may be modified to accommodate for possible new behavior of the hero in the individual's own behavior.
Axioms
This discussion, up to this point, can be summarized in the following axioms:
Through various means the individual is exposed to 'alien' cultures.
The means can be low in context, or high in context. Equally the cultural gap can be large or narrow.
Intercultural encounters are stressful in varying degrees, owing to the participants cultural differences, and to the amount and depth of culture involved (low- or high- context of the situation).
The stress facilitates adaptation: the higher the stress, the more adaptation is required to adapt.
Most individuals are able to adapt: some have a greater facility to accommodate otherness in their internal meaning structure than others.
The outcome of such an adaptation is a change in the internal meaning structure of that individual: an intercultural transformation.
Intercultural transformation influences, and is reflected in an increased cognitive, affective and behavioral capacity.
The increased cognitive, affective and behavioral capacity facilitates future intercultural encounters: such encounters will cause less stress, requiring less adaptation, which is easier to achieve.