In our last section of class, we learned about culture. We focused on American culture, because that is what most in our class were familiar with. We looked at how Americans viewed our culture, and how foreigners view our culture. We learned about culture shock. Culture shock is the lack of understanding associated with being introduced to a new culture.
We all can and have likely experienced culture shock, maybe not national culture shock, but generally the discomfort associated with being introduced to a new culture. In our everyday lives we can experience culture shock when we order food from a restaurant that we’ve never been to that has a procedure to order that is different from the McDonalds that we are used to. We watched a film in class about a group of Sudanese boys that referred to themselves as the Lost Boys, and we followed their journey as they became assimilated with American culture. I could relate to their lack of understanding in many ways because as a kid, my family imigrated from Cameroon. We weren’t as shocked as the Lost Boys were because back home, we were wealthy enough to have been exposed to many aspects of western culture, so we didn’t make mistakes like confusing mayonnaise for food. One thing that my family did face when coming to the US, much like the Lost Boys, was ethnocentrism in America - the belief that American culture was better than others. I remember getting questions like “do you feel more free in the US” or is “the food better here”. To most those seem like very objective questions, but to me as a foreigner, I feel like those questions have a subtle tone of superiority. To clarify, it often comes off as though the people asking those questions believe that their country has all of the answers and that their national values are more valuable than those of others. In Singapore for instance, citizens value their restricted freedoms and see greater privilege in that as opposed to a “free America”. Not to say that either of these views are correct.
In this section we also talked about material culture and nonmaterial culture. Material culture is obviously the tangible aspects of culture, and nonmaterial is generally the ideologies associated with culture. We read an article about a foreigner's perspective on American values. This would fit under an analysis of our nonmaterial culture. After some discussion it became clear that much of what we think of ourselves is inconsistent with what outsiders think of us. This is where ingroup and outgroup biases come into play.
