Culture shock?

If someone would ask you, what makes you different from Person A or Person B, you would probably be able to come up with a list from the top of your head, without even having to think, like nationality, language, religion or even food habits or education.

In other words, the way you have been brought up is what differentiates you from the others. A sociologist defines this as culture. The way of life of people or more specifically, the human created strategies for adjusting to the environment.

For some of us, seeing different culture is the best part about traveling, where as for few other, they have a culture shock coming from place X to Y. Culture shock is the strain that people experience while traveling from one region to the other, and must reorient themselves to the ways of the new culture. And this was exactly what happened in the movie Outsourced, where an American products salesman (Todd) heads to India to because of his replacement, after his entire department is outsourced. Being unaware of the beliefs and values of India, he found himself in a very inconvenient situation. For example, in India, Cows are considered sacred and play an important role in the Hindu religion. Whereas when Todd goes to India, being ignorant, he talks about cows as a food product without realizing how sensitive a topic it was and he goes on doing the same sort of mistake, until he finally finds someone who could teach him about the Indian culture.

People’s behavior and values change from culture to culture, and that is rooted to the shortage and abundance of resources in different regions. For example, the video shows how common begging is in India. However, in Qatar it is hardly seen in public. The economic structure of the country breaks the conservation-oriented behaviors of its people.



According to Sociology, some of the most important types of non-material cultures are beliefs, values, norms, symbols and language. And some of these aspects were clearly noticeable in Culture Shock, an Al Jazeera documentary, on how African migrants find ways to deal with the European culture. These African migrants face instances of racist violence in Germany, where because of their skin color, people assign symbols. People assign offensive names.

Despite being immigrants, some of their habits perfectly match local customs, which is a case of cultural universals, which refers to things found in every culture. But sometimes people hold on to the viewpoint of ethnocentrism, because of which these African migrants are not being accepted by the social norms.

Click here to check out the documentary on Al Jazeera

Culture Shock: What is it like to live in Europe with an African identity?