What were the three major points you learned through reading the assigned chapters?
What were the three major points you learned through reading the assigned chapters?
What did you not know or were not able to do before reading the assigned material? How does this make you feel?
Based on your experiences and assigned material, what will you do as an expatriate or a manager working with people from different countries in the future to make use of your learnings? For example:
Will you, in some way, behave differently? Will you do further readings? Are there things you will observe more closely or in a different way?
#Formatting Guidelines
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Double spaced, 1 inch margins.
Number all pages and follow the structured outline of the assignment.
Be organized: clearly identify all parts with section headings. Use headings to separate answers on
each question.
Grammar, spelling, sentence structure, clarity, good/appropriate use of language all contribute to good
form.
Ensure your ideas are clearly thought-out and well-written. Be as specific as possible. Support your
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Requirements:
THE ART OFCROSSINGCULTURES
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THE ART OFCROSSINGCULTURESCRAIG STORTISECOND EDITION
This edition first published by Nicholas Brealey in association with Intercul-tural Press in 2001. Reprinted in 2002.Intercultural Press, Inc.Nicholas Brealey PublishingPO Box 7003–5 Spafield StreetYarmouth, Maine 04096London EC1R 4QB, UKTel: 207-846-5168Tel: +44-207-239-0360Fax: 207-846-5181Fax: +44-207-239-0370www.interculturalpress.comwww.nbrealey-books.comFirst published by Intercultural Press in 1989© 1989, 2001 by Craig StortiDesign and production: Patty J. TopelCover design: Ken LeederAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in anymanner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, exceptin the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.ISBN 1-85788-296-2Printed in the United StatesSubstantial discounts on bulk quantities are available. For details, dis-count information, or to request a free catalogue, please contact thepublishers at the addresses given above.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataStorti, Craig.Art of crossing cultures/Craig Storti.—2nd ed.p.cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 1-85788-296-21.Culture shock.2.Intercultural communication.3.Assimilation(Sociology)I.Title.GN517.S76 2001303.48’2—dc212001024373
DedicationTo my Teachers,Mother Sayamagyi andSayagyi U Chit Tin,with deepest respectsand gratitude
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viiTable of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition……………………………………….ixForeword to the First Edition………………………………………..xiAcknowledgments……………………………………………………xiiiIntroduction……………………………………………………………xv1 Country Shock………………………………………………………..12Culture Shock……………………………………………………….253The Fallout…………………………………………………………..474The Problem Explained…………………………………………….655The Problem Solved………………………………………………..756Language Lessons…………………………………………………..977The Payoff………………………………………………………….105Appendix: Eloquent Witness……………………………………….117A Selected Reading List…………………………………………….137Bibliography…………………………………………………………..143Index…………………………………………………………………..149
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ixPreface to the Second EditionAuthors are never completely finished with their books. They mayturn in their manuscripts on the agreed-upon day, but deep downthey know if they only had more time, they could say it better.Revised editions call an author’s bluff; if you really could havesaid it better, here’s your chance.Readers will have to judge whether the first or this secondedition of The Art of Crossing Cultures says it better, but this newedition does say some things differently—and some new thingsaltogether. The conceptual framework of the original is still here,as is the model of cultural adjustment, now called “cultural effec-tiveness,” though the model itself has been modified in importantrespects. There are now 7 chapters instead of 9; chapters 5 and 6have been combined, and the last chapter, on repatriation, hasbeen dropped, having been superseded by this author’s own TheArt of Coming Home (also being issued in a revised edition) andbecause it did not seem to fit with this edition’s more singularfocus on the overseas experience.Other changes include a considerably expanded first chapteron country shock, the use of more illustrations from the world ofbusiness, and the addition of a new appendix (“Eloquent Witness”)
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURESxof quotations on the overseas experience. Finally, the chapter titleshave become decidedly more prosaic. While “The Howling of Ti-gers, The Hissing of Serpents” (old title) is certainly more evoca-tive than “Country Shock” (new title), it is not nearly as descrip-tive, as chapter titles have some obligation to be. Make no mis-take; tigers still howl and serpents still hiss in these pages, but nolonger in chapter titles.—Craig StortiWestminster, MarylandJune 2001
xiForeword to the First EditionOnce every decade in every discipline of study, a book comes alongwhich does more than inform and entertain. It enlightens. I havea hunch that The Art of Crossing Cultures will be such a book forthe intercultural field.The interesting thing about The Art of Crossing Cultures is thatit will be as enlightening to the university student in a formalintercultural communication course as it will be to the practical-minded businessperson bound for a first overseas assignment andas it will be for the seasoned intercultural specialist who is foreverlooking for theoretical material to explain the process we have allexperienced but have such difficulty putting into words.The selected quotations from literary sources are themselvesworth the price of the book. They are truly delightful, makingtheir points with clarity and charm, and adding their own addi-tional insights to those of Craig Storti.It is a pleasure to discover such a literate new writer contrib-uting to our field and to share, even for a moment, this paperpodium with him.—L. Robert KohlsSan Francisco, February 1989
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xiiiAcknowledgmentsIt has been twelve years since David Hoopes received a manuscriptout of the blue one day from a guy no one had ever heard of. Henot only read it, kindness enough, he published it. Now, there’s arisk taker. I shall always be deeply grateful. Then Bob Kohls weighedin—a guy everyone has heard of—with his generous foreword.And all the while Sandy Fowler and Fanchon Silberstein were un-commonly supportive.In Maine Judy Carl-Hendrick worked her usual editing won-ders on the first edition and has returned for a repeat perfor-mance, with none of her powers diminished. In London NicholasBrealey was good enough to see trade potential in this book andwise enough to request a couple of important changes.Toby Frank gets her own paragraph. She’s the kind of publisherevery writer dreams of: she listens to you rant and rave, heapspraise on your matchless prose (and then quietly edits it into evengreater matchlessness), and generally confirms your belief thatthe universe does indeed revolve around you.Pity the writer’s wife. She has a front row seat at every crisis ofconfidence, every occasion when the words and thoughts don’tcome anymore, every time things don’t go well. It can be tough
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURESxivwriting a book, but it’s nothing compared to living with a guywho’s writing a book. To C., as always, my deepest thanks.
xvIntroductionNow it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle theAryan brownFor the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles and he weareththe Christian down.And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the nameof the late deceased,And the epitaph drear: “A fool lies here who tried to hustlethe East.”—Rudyard KiplingIf there’s one thing nearly everyone who lives and works abroadhas to get right, it is this: they must be able to get along with thelocal people. In whatever capacity they go overseas—whether forbusiness, diplomacy, the military, as an exchange or study abroadstudent, as a development worker or civil servant—and whatevertheir goals and responsibilities, it is difficult to imagine how theycan succeed if they can’t interact effectively with people from thelocal culture. And yet a great many expatriates cannot. This bookwill explain why and what to do about it.In the era of globalization, an increasing number of companiesand organizations are sending expatriates into the field, including
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURESxvinumerous smaller companies that never previously saw the need.In a 1999 survey of 264 U.S.-based multinational corporations,more than half of the respondents (52 percent) indicated they hadincreased their number of expatriate employees in the precedingyear, and two-thirds said they expected their numbers to increaseagain by the year 2000 (Windham 1999, 8). With an ever-increas-ing number of companies earning more revenue from overseas thanfrom domestic operations, first-hand knowledge and experience offoreign markets and conditions has become essential for today’smanagers and executives. For that same reason, the career path tosenior management positions in most global companies now in-cludes at least one overseas assignment. These assignments usedto be for the adventurous and the nonconformists; now they’re derigueurfor almost anyone who aspires to a leadership role in acompany with foreign operations.The Windham International survey cited above also identifiedthe three leading causes of “assignment failure”: partner dissatis-faction, family concerns, and the inability to adapt. All three causes,and especially the inability to adapt, suggest that successfullycrossing cultures is a major challenge for most expatriates. “If leftto luck,” Robert Kohls has observed, “your chances of having areally satisfying experience living abroad would be about one inseven” (2001, 1).The costs of cross-cultural failure, for individuals and theirorganizations, have been well documented. There are personal costsand family costs; financial, professional, and emotional costs; andcosts to one’s career prospects, to one’s self-esteem, and to one’smarriage and family. (Sixty-nine percent of the expats in theWindham study were married, and 61 percent were accompaniedoverseas by their children.) The organization may pay a steep priceas well—in recruitment and selection costs, in training costs,moving costs, compromised careers, and all the costs associated
INTRODUCTIONxviiwith lost opportunities, damaged relationships, low morale, re-duced productivity, and perhaps even damage to the company ororganization’s reputation in the country or region.Nor are the costs of a failed assignment borne entirely by theindividual expat and his or her parent company or organization.Most expats occupy high profile, senior positions, where the deci-sions they make directly or indirectly affect the lives of large num-bers of people. They may start projects, initiate reforms, beginoverhauls of various procedures or systems—and then bail outand leave the local people dangling. Local people often make jobor career changes, which affect their whole family, based on ini-tiatives or changes begun by the new head of this or chief ofthat—who then departs abruptly for home. The comings and go-ings of expats touch many local lives, in ways often not appreci-ated by those who are not around when the dust settles.There are two typical endgames for expatriates who fail toeffectively cross cultures: either they go home early from theiroverseas assignment, or, more commonly, they stay on, with greatlydiminished effectiveness, often doing themselves, their families,and their organizations irreparable harm. Either way, it’s an out-come no one desires.This book explains why crossing cultures can be so difficultand how to minimize that difficulty and all the unfortunate con-sequences it leads to. After an opening chapter on country shock,the rest of the book takes the reader step by step through theprocess of encountering and learning to deal effectively with an-other culture, showing where most expats go wrong and how tokeep that from happening.This book is written primarily for expats themselves, who needto understand the experience they’re going through, but it willalso be useful to people from the local culture who work withexpatriates. Anyone working alongside, supervising, or working
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURESxviiiunder an expat is bound to benefit from understanding what it’slike for that person to live and work in that country. The peopleback home who support and manage expats can also do their jobsbetter if they understand what an expat goes through overseas.But enough prologue. Your plane has landed and even now istaxiing to the gate. In a few minutes, you’ll be clearing customsand stepping out into a whole new world.Take a deep breath. You’re about to become a foreigner.
11Country ShockI have already mentioned the prickly heat, ringworm, drygripes, putrid fevers, biles, consaca, and bloody flux, to whichhuman nature is exposed in this Climate; also the mosqui-toes, Patat and Scrapat lice, chigoes, cockroaches, ants, horse-flies, wild bees and bats, besides the thorns and briars, andthe alligators and peree in the rivers; to which if we add thehowling of tigers, the hissing of serpents, and the growlingof Four—geoud, the dry, sandy savannahs, unfordablemarshes, burning hot days, cold and damp nights, heavyrains, and short allowance, the reader may be astonishedhow any person was able to survive the trial. Notwithstand-ing this black catalogue, I solemnly declare I have omittedmany other calamities that we suffered, as I wish to avoid[exaggeration].—Captain John StedmanJourney through SurinamAll in all, [this] is a really nice place to live and work. Thepeople are friendly, the beaches are great, and the friedants are delicious.—Foreign aid worker, East Africa
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES2Before you can learn how to get along with the locals, you first haveto survive the move abroad. While our focus in this book is on howto interact effectively with people from other cultures, this is notthe only or even the first adjustment you have to make when yougo overseas. You also have to get used to the new country—the newphysical environment—to the new community, and to a new job(or, in the case of many expat spouses, to not having a job). Strictlyspeaking, these are not cultural adjustments (coming to terms withthe behavior of the host country people), but they are very muchpart of the overall context in which cultural adjustment takes place.Occurring at the same time as cultural adjustment and competingfor your attention and energy (neither of which is unlimited), theseother adjustments inevitably affect the pace, and in many casesthe outcome, of your struggle to adjust to the local culture. Theimpact of these other challenges is so direct and immediate that ifyou don’t acknowledge and address the problems they pose earlyon, the resulting stress and anxiety can overwhelm and defeat youbefore you ever really encounter the culture. In short, while dealingeffectively with what we might call these lesser adjustments maynot constitute cultural adjustment, it could determine whether youever get a chance to adjust to the people.Some good news about these adjustments is that, unlike cul-tural adjustment, most of us have gone through them before. Thetypical expatriate has moved, for example, and has some idea ofwhat’s involved in adjusting to a new physical environment and toa new community, and most people have also changed jobs beforeand are familiar with the adjustments that involves. You mightnever before have done all of these at once—you can change jobs,for example, without moving—and you have probably not donethem in an alien land, but at least you have some idea of what toexpect and some of the skills you will need to cope.
COUNTRY SHOCK3A New CountryClimateThe first adjustments you make are to the new country, starting,unavoidably, with the climate. Whether you come from a dry cli-mate and are set down in a humid one or from a cold climate andare set down in a warm one, you’re going to notice the weather.We tend to think of climate or weather more as part of the sceneryof an overseas experience, as a characteristic of the setting inwhich adjustment takes place, than as something else we have toadjust to. But climate can in fact wreak havoc on the unsuspect-ing expat: on your body, your health, your lifestyle, your pocket-book, and (sooner or later) your mind.If you’re not used to it, the heat and humidity of the tropics canbe debilitating, even demoralizing. “I’ve been in Ceylon a month,”D. H. Lawrence wrote on a visit to that country, “and nearly sweatedmyself into a shadow” (1984, 25). For the first few weeks, evenmonths, you may feel a marked loss of energy, a need for moresleep, and any number of symptoms commonly associated withdehydration, such as headaches and low-grade fevers. You mayhave to rely on round-the-clock air-conditioning, though you con-sider it unhealthy; you may have to scrap plans to walk or bicycleto work (thus leaving your spouse at home without a car); youmay have to give up tennis or jogging on your lunch hour, thengain weight because you don’t get enough exercise; or you mayhave to buy new clothes, an unexpected expense; or your skinmay break out, causing you to become depressed about your ap-pearance. “The humidity could be blamed for many things,” An-thony Burgess writes in The Long Day Wanes,“the need for a si-esta, corpulence, the use of the car for a hundred-yard journey,the mildew on the shoes, the sweatrot in the armpits of dresses,the lost bridge-rubber or tennis-set, the dislike felt for the wholecountry” (1964, 36).
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES4Nor is too cold much of an improvement on too hot. Older flatsand homes in many countries don’t come with central heating, forexample, or they may have inadequate insulation. You can heat aroom or two, perhaps (when the power is on), but you can’t heatthe entire house. You may bathe less frequently because it’s toocold, and you may catch cold more easily.Then, there’s too wet—in the form of the monsoon that occurseach year throughout much of Asia and the Pacific: two to threemonths of relentless rain, flooded, impassable streets and roads,mold sprouting on your shoes and clothes and creeping down thewalls. At least in the hot weather you can still go outside andmove about, but in the monsoon you have no desire to do so(though you don’t want to be inside either). Like excessive heatand cold, the monsoon not only makes you uncomfortable; it canmake you unhappy.Doing WithoutWherever you live overseas, the list of things “they don’t havehere” sometimes seems to have been designed with you personallyin mind. Bad enough in itself, this list normally calls into being asecond list—of the things you can’tdo here—and taken togetherthese lists can make you very unhappy and frustrated. The listsare different in different places and for different expats; it may bea favorite food, a spice you can’t cook without, replacement parts,a certain type of service, books in your native language, an appli-ance you can’t live without, or a favorite sport or pastime. Learn-ing to get by without these requires you to make scores of tinyadjustments every day, and while most people manage to copewell enough—finding substitutes or getting cherished items fromloved ones back home—the annoyance and inconvenience of do-ing without take their toll. Any veteran expat will tell you thatit’s not just the big things that get to you overseas, like not speak-
COUNTRY SHOCK5ing the language or understanding the locals, but also the count-less petty irritations that slowly wear you down. One famous storyin the lore of expatriate failure tells of the man who came homeearly from his assignment in the South Pacific because, as he putit,“The salt wouldn’t come out of the shaker.”The Loss of RoutinesIn a way, doing without is part of another, more all-encompassingissue, which we might call the loss of routines. Some observersclaim that this is really the essence of adjusting to a new country,but whether it’s the essence or not, it certainly looms large. Butwhat are routines, and why is losing them such a problem? As thiswriter has noted elsewhere: [A] routine is something you do while your mind is onsomething else, an action you have done so many times youno longer need to think about it in order to perform it. Mostroutines involve simple, uncomplicated behaviors that areeasily mastered and that are always executed in a predict-able, unchanging manner. For most people, brushing theirteeth is a routine, or, more accurately, many aspects of brush-ing one’s teeth are routine. You don’t have to be consciouslyaware of picking up your toothbrush, of opening the tube oftoothpaste, of squeezing the tube, of raising your brush toyour mouth, etc. You may give parts of this procedure fleet-ing attention, but you are probably giving conscious atten-tion to something else for most of the time it takes to brushyour teeth. And the same can be said for numerous otheractions and parts of actions you perform day in and dayout.Many routines, though not all, involve basic coping andsurvival behaviors, such as bathing, dressing, eating, goingto the bathroom, driving. More complicated behaviors canalso become routines over time; for some people, cooking
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES6certain meals can be a routine. And even some of the mostcomplicated behaviors can have routine elements. Routinesby their very nature use up very little of your mental andphysical energy, which is therefore available for higher or-der, more complicated—or brand new behaviors, which dorequire your mental and physical energy (at least until suchtime as they too are reduced, or reduced in part, to rou-tines).The lifeblood of routines is the known and the familiar.Needless to say, when you move to a new country, wherenothing is known and familiar, your routines get mightilydisrupted. Suddenly, nothing…is a routine. The loss of rou-tines means the time and energy that were available forhigher order, more sophisticated tasks now goes to basiccoping and survival functions. With the minutiae of every-day life now demanding much of your conscious attention,[these higher order functions] either get put aside or takemuch longer to accomplish…. Many routines can be easilyreestablished—the second time you brush your teeth over-seas, the action is fast becoming automatic—but others cantake longer to reconstruct.The loss of routines hits you at your core. You expect tohave to learn how to do new things overseas and even newways of doing familiar things, but you may be surprised todiscover that you have to learn to do things you normallydo without thinking. (Storti 1997, 12–13)Here’s an expat describing the excitement of reestablishing a com-mon routine, driving, his first day in England:My very first day in England I went into work just to get the[company] car. It was a stick shift. I drove a stick shiftabout fifteen years ago for about a month…. The managerwho was leaving drove me to a petrol station, filled it up forme and said, “Okay, here is your driving lesson.” So I jerked
COUNTRY SHOCK7back to the office about a mile or two away and he pro-ceeded to show me where all of the little gizmos were on thecar. He said, “Okay, you are on your own.” And there I waswith the car and no map and two hundred miles to drivethat day with a stick shift, sitting on the wrong side of thefront seat. It was a little terrifying….(Osland 1995, 38–39)The problem with routines is that until you’ve reestablished them,you can have a very low opinion of yourself. If something thissimple can be so difficult, then what am I going to do about some-thing that’sgenuinely difficult?Unfamiliar FacesAnother reality of being in a new country is not knowing anyone.For the first few weeks after your arrival, you will be interactingday in and day out, hour by hour, with people you don’t know ordon’t know very well. There’s nothing bad about this, of course—part of the adventure of being an expatriate is meeting newpeople—but it takes much more energy and effort than interact-ing with people you already know and who know you. When youare with people like this, you can relax and be yourself. Becauseyou know they know you, you don’t have to be especially carefulof what you do and say to make sure they form a positive impres-sion. With new people, however, who don’t yet have an impressionof you, you tend to be very careful of what you say and do untilyou see how they respond. Being careful like this, paying close,conscious attention to everything you say and do, takes consider-able emotional and physical effort. A few hours of interacting withrelative strangers, whether from your own or the host country,will leave you as tired as a whole day of dealing with people youalready know.A related problem is being so far away from family and friends.There’s the homesickness dimension, genuinely missing close friends
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES8and loved ones, and there’s also the matter of not having thesupport and encouragement such people offer us during difficulttimes. As you face the difficulties of those early months abroad,you need the kind of unconditional acceptance and support onlyclose friends and family members can provide; you need peoplewho will listen to your tirades about the country and the nativeswithout judging, people with whom you can fall apart withoutbeing embarrassed or worrying about what they might think. Yourspouse may be available for this purpose, of course, but he or shemay be looking to you for the same support. Whenever possible,you should plan to fall apart on different days from your spouse.Additional Issues in Developing CountriesExpatriates working in developing nations often face an extra setof “country” issues, those that their counterparts in more moderncountries don’t normally experience. The communications infra-structure, for example, is delicate in many developing countries,posing all manner of special problems in a world increasingly de-pendent on technology. The issue is not so much having the tech-nology as it is having a reliable source of electricity. Electricitysupply has always been a problem in the third-world, but it mat-tered less in a less-wired world. When the power goes out thesedays, as it does increasingly in many developing countries, theimpact is much greater. Work stops, in a word, and out come theteacups.Another chronic complaint is poor telephone service. Whilethe situation has improved somewhat in the era of cell phones andsatellite communications, any expat from a modern country wholives and works in a developing country has to adjust to consider-ably less reliable and efficient telephone service. Imagine for amoment having to actually visit, or send someone else to visit, aquarter or even a third of the local destinations you telephone or
COUNTRY SHOCK9e-mail on an average day from work or from home. (And whileyou’re at it, imagine not being able to contact at all some of themore far-flung destinations.) Without good telephone service, theamount of business you can conduct in Lahore or Harare may beonly half what you are used to—and the effort may be double. Inthe West the telephone is like a third hand; when suddenly it’samputated, you miss it.The absence of reliable communications is at least part of thereason for the expatriate’s favorite complaint about how long ittakes to get things done in developing countries. It likewise goesa long way toward explaining that other old standby about theslower pace of life in Asia or Latin America or around the shores ofthe Mediterranean. People have more time for each other, we hear;they enjoy each other’s company more. While personal relation-ships are certainly more important in many countries than in theWest, the fact is that when you can’t call, you have to go, and avisit is naturally more personal than a telephone call and alwaystakes longer. No one thinks it odd if you hang up after threeminutes, but if you leave someone’s home or office three minutesafter arriving (when you spent half an hour just to get there) youwould certainly be thought odd, or worse.Transportation is another issue in many developing countries. Ifyou can’t call and the matter can’t wait, then you have to go. Whetherthe problem is crumbling roads and bridges, old and unreliable equip-ment (stop lights, airplanes, repair and emergency vehicles), fuelshortages, or missing parts, a weak transportation infrastructurecan make getting around the country expensive, extremely time-consuming, and, in many cases, downright dangerous. It is seventy-five miles from Colombo to Galle in Sri Lanka. If you leave at 8:30A.M.for a 10 A.M. appointment, you’ll be two hours late. If you need aspare part in Pokhara (Nepal) and it has to come from Khatmandu,ninety miles away, you can take off the rest of the week.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES10“It was not like other bad roads,” Peter Fleming writes of afamous track he came across in Brazil,which incommode you with continuous and petty malice.“Look how far we can go,” they seem to say, as you crawlpainfully along them, “and still be called a road.” You hatethem the more bitterly for the knowledge that they will keepcertain bounds. They will madden you with minor obstacles,but in the end they will let you through.But with the road to Leopoldina it was not like this. Ithad no quarrel with us. It took no count of us at all. It didnot fight a sly, delaying action, raising our hopes only todash them, but always keeping them alive. It did not set outto tantalize us or gall us. It seemed, rather, preoccupiedwith its own troubles. It had never wished to be a road, andnow it cursed itself for not refusing its function before itwas too late. It lashed itself into a fury of self-reproach. Itwrithed in anguish. It was clearly a tormented thing. At anymoment, we felt, it might decide to End it All. (1985, 126)Tiresome as the above frustrations can be, surely the most incon-venient and unnerving problem expatriates often face in develop-ing countries is the near constant threat of getting sick. No otherdifficulty can be quite so unsettling or require more time andeffort to circumvent. You might reasonably assume that expatri-ate party talk in Jakarta or Casablanca would revolve around is-sues of moment, such as the declining rupiyah or forecasts of an-other year of drought, but it touches just as often on the solidityof one’s stools and how long to soak the lettuce in disinfectant.This is only natural: while you can learn to manage without aworking telephone or central heating, you can’t do anything ifyou’re confined to bed. And the combination of the unhygienicconditions common in developing countries and the pristine vul-nerability of the expatriate from the antiseptic, sterilized West
COUNTRY SHOCK11virtually guarantees that, feverish and cramp-ridden, it is to bedyou will retire more than once during those early months abroad.A related worry, of course, is the often substandard quality oflocal medical care.The worst part about being sick abroad is not what it does tothe body, but what it does to the mind. In most cases expatriatesmanage to cope with the physical discomfort, but they strugglewith the emotional and psychological effects of getting sick over-seas. Being immobilized by giardia or amoebiasis only heightensyour already elevated sense of vulnerability and helplessness, yourfeeling of not being in control. You become depressed. Your re-solve weakens. Doubt arises. Novelist Paul Scott writes of a charac-ter newly arrived in India: “Through most of his experience of therains, he was chronically and depressingly off colour. Whatever heate turned his bowels to water. In such circumstances a humanbeing goes short on courage” (1979, 245). If I hadn’t come here,you can’t help feeling, none of this would have happened.Have we mentioned insects yet? An annoyance barely noticedin more developed countries, insects can be the bane of your ex-istence in many parts of the world. Ants, mosquitoes, chiggers,cockroaches, flies, gnats, mites, leeches, spiders, bedbugs—theycome in nature’s own bounty. They get into your food, your bed,your shoes, and your clothes. They find their way into your hair,your ears, your nose, and your mouth. They can make your skinitch, burn, sting, swell, or break out. They can keep you awake atnight, make you sweat, give you a fever and the runs, or make youthrow up. They can make you very unhappy.Mary Kingsley, that intrepid Victorian traveler, had thempegged. “I should say,” she wrote,looking back calmly upon the matter, that seventy-five per-cent of West African insects sting, five percent bite, and therest are either prematurely or temporarily parasitic on the
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES12human race. And undoubtedly one of the worst things youcan do in West Africa is to take any notice of an insect. If yousee a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster anda figure of Abraxes on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the leastattention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope itwill go away—for that’s your best chance; you have none in astand-up fight with a good, thorough-going African insect.(1984, 205)It may sound a bit extreme, but many expats will find Joyce Osland’saccount of her early days in Burkino Faso not particularly far-fetched. She writes,It was a small cement-block house with no ventilation, ontop of a laterite hill…. Since we were worried the baby mightget malaria from the numerous mosquitoes, we quickly putup screens on the windows and doors, prompting our Frenchneighbors to ask, with flawless logic, “How will the flies getout?” With some difficulty we even screened the vent pipesthat…let hot air escape from the false ceiling. Even so, theinside walls of the house were too hot to touch during thedry season. The town had electricity only from 6:00 to 10:00P.M. and when the house went dark we discovered why noone else had ever screened the vent pipes…. [T]he bats wholived in the false ceiling used the vent pipes as their nightlyexit [and] came down into the house, looking for a way toget outside. They swooshed through our humble home….Nothing in Doctor Spock had prepared me for flying rodentsand I was terrified a bat would bite the baby if she rolledagainst her mosquito net…. By the time our belongings ar-rived six months later, we had a batless house. We managedto liberate our crate of household effects from customs justbefore the customs building burned down. As I stood on ourporch gazing fondly at the long awaited crate, I noticed ablack tide moving toward the door…the crate was full of
COUNTRY SHOCK13thousands of black ants, intent on taking over the house. Iemitted a ladylike shriek and ran to put the baby in a safeplace…. A passing African grabbed the hose and togetherwe repulsed the invaders. (40–41)A New CommunityAnother set of adjustments expatriates must make is to their newcommunity. The challenge here is not so much emotional or psy-chological—as it is in adjusting to the new country—but practi-cal. The issue is ignorance, not knowing anything about the com-munity, and the solution is quite straightforward: learn about it.The only problem is that there’ssomuch to learn.One of the first things you have to learn about the communityis how to find your way around—how it is laid out and wherethings are in relation to other things. The first time you drive towork or to the children’s school or to the shopping district, you’llbe quite disoriented. Not recognizing anything, you can’t tell ex-actly where you are. Do I turn left or right at that church? Is thatthe same church I went by yesterday? This is normal in a new city,but it means you’ll spend a lot longer just getting from place toplace. If you don’t speak the local language, finding your wayaround town is even more daunting, for you will be reluctant toask people and thereby trigger one of those excruciating exchangeswherein the local citizen is trying hard to be helpful and you don’tunderstand a word he or she is saying.If you live in a large city, you may have to figure out how thesubway or bus system works. Which train do I want? How do Iknow if it stops at my stop? How many of these little tokens do Ineed? Do I get on at the front of the bus or in the middle? How doI pay? What are these coins worth in the local currency? How do Iknow where to get off? Why is everyone staring at me?
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES14Once you know where things are and how to get there, youhave to understand how they work. What are the hours of theseplaces? What’s the “system” in a pharmacy, bank, post office, cin-ema, petrol station, market? How do the public telephones work?Will there be an attendant in the public lavatory whom I need totip? Do I sit down and wait for someone to come to my table (in abakery) or do I order at the counter?Driving and parking can be especially nerve-wracking the firstfew times you go out. What do the curb markings and sidewalksigns say? What do the lane markings mean? Is this a one-waystreet? Can I turn left here? What’s the speed limit? Is this the daycars with my kind of license plate are allowed in the city center?Where are the parking lots and garages and how do I pay? Is thatan entrance or an exit? Why is that guy honking at me?The first two or three weeks overseas are full of these kinds ofincidents, situations where you don’t know quite what you’re sup-posed to do but know you have to do something. You can laughthem off to a point—they’re all quite petty in the grand scheme ofthings—but most people tire quite quickly of making fools of them-selves. These incidents may make for good stories later, but they’reno fun when they’re happening. One saving grace is that thesekinds of problems aren’t difficult to solve; your second subwayride or visit to the bank goes more smoothly than the first. On theother hand, the sheer number of such incidents can quickly be-come overwhelming. If you weren’t going through scores of otheradjustments at the same time, these minor irritations might notmatter so much, but you are, so minor annoyances sometimes feellike catastrophies.A New JobFinally, there is adjusting to your new job. Apart from the culturaldifferences (which we take up in the next chapter), any new job
COUNTRY SHOCK15poses challenges. The biggest may be getting used to the changefrom being at the top of your form one moment, during your finalmonths in your previous position, to being all thumbs the next.When you change jobs, after all, you leave a familiar situation,where you were very good at what you were doing, to go to awholly unfamiliar situation, where you will initially be inept andincompetent. It’s disconcerting in the best of circumstances tocome face to face with your inadequacies, but it’s especially hardwhen you are in the habit of excelling.A new job often means new responsibilities and new skills tomaster, which will take time and effort. There will also be numer-ous procedures, regulations, and office protocols to learn, and manyof your work routines will have to be painstakingly reestablished.As a result, you will have to be satisfied, in the near future, withsmaller achievements than you may be used to. While you will oneday be able to triumph, your goal for the moment must be to cope.A new job may also mean all new colleagues, an office or divi-sion full of people you’ve never worked with before. People will betaking your measure even as you take theirs. You will have tospend several weeks carefully observing your colleagues and try-ing to take your cues from them, monitoring everything you doand say so as to make a favorable impression. Maintaining thishigh degree of self-awareness takes considerable effort and en-ergy, neither of which the typical expat has in abundance.Issues for SpousesSeveral studies have found that the most common reason expatemployees fail to function effectively on an overseas assignmentis the inability of the spouse to adjust to the new environment.This is not because spouses aren’t as good at adjusting as theworking partner; it’s because spouses, it turns out, have muchmore to adjust to. They face all the adjustments already mentioned
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES16(except to a new job) and a number of others unique to theirsituation.Let’s start with work. While some spouses find work overseas,the majority do not (Black, Gregersen, and Mendenhall 1992, 130).For those who are used to working, and especially for those withwell-established careers, being unable to work can wreak havoc ontheir personal and professional identity. Spouses who defined them-selves by and took satisfaction in their work back home may nowfeel unsure of themselves and unfulfilled. They may very well fash-ion a new identity for themselves, but it can be a slow and diffi-cult process.Meanwhile, these spouses have to figure out how to fill up aday having little or no structure. As nice as it can be to have sometime to oneself, eight hours a day is more than most people bar-gain for. “[I was always] trying to find things to do with my time,”one spouse remembers. “I spent time sewing, and I hate to sew”(Adler 1986, 232). In many countries the situation is made worseby the custom of having household help; spouses who might havebeen inclined to fill their day looking after the house, taking careof small children, and preparing meals don’t have even those out-lets. “I felt useless,” another spouse recalls. “I was a fifth wheel”(232). Spouses sick of household chores, on the other hand, won’tfind this feature of overseas life hard to get used to.Loneliness typically strikes the at-home spouse harder than itdoes the employee, especially if the at-home spouse worked be-fore going overseas. The employed spouse, after all, is surroundedall day by colleagues and co-workers, but if the at-home spousewants to interact with people, he or she has to make it happen. “Iwas very lonely,” one spouse remembers, “and my husband wasnot going through the same problems I [was]. And I felt morelonely because I couldn’t share my problems with him” (231).The at-home spouse also gets a bigger dose of culture shock
COUNTRY SHOCK17than the typical employee. In many cases the working spouse spendsthe day in an environment very reminiscent of the work environ-ment back home. Co-workers may either be compatriots or localswho speak their home country language, and the activities andrhythm of the workday are often very familiar. Even when he orshe ventures out of the workplace, it’s usually to go to another,very similar workplace to interact with people more like oneself.But the at-home spouse lives very much in the local culture, if notinside the home itself (and there too, if there are servants), thenevery time someone comes to the door (the repairman, the flowerseller) and every time the spouse goes out. Not surprisingly, expatspouses typically learn the local language faster than workingspouses.“I had the fort of the office,” one working spouse remembers.And very often I would work seven days a week, just be-cause it was comfortable. I had my desk and my stapler;and the people there…knew who I was and would take careof me…and it took a while to get out onto the street. It wasa strain on the family because I left it all to them. I left theproblems to them while I went to work. (Osland, 43)The at-home spouse also has a ringside seat from which to watchthe adjustment of the children. While working spouses are alsoinvolved in the children’s adjustment, they’re often not as close tothe drama as the primary caregiver. This is especially true whenthe working spouse is on the road a great deal, which is often thecase with expat assignments.Finally, many expat spouses have to come to terms with whatis often called the resentment issue. When all is said and done,expat families usually go overseas because of an opportunity thatbecame available for either the husband or the wife, but only rarelyfor both. While it’s almost always a mutual decision, made after
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES18carefully weighing all the pros and cons for all family members,one spouse is almost always less enthusiastic than the other andlikewise has to give up more than the other. For reasons just ex-plained, at-home spouses typically make the greater sacrifice andalso face more—and more difficult—adjustments than do employ-ees. It is not surprising, then, that spouses typically have moreoccasion to regret the decision to move abroad, which often leadsto feelings of resentment toward their partners. And then—andthis is the core of the resentment issue—they feel bad for blamingtheir partner for what was, after all, a joint decision. It’s reallynobody’s fault, and yet….Not all spouses will have all of these issues, nor is the life ofan expat spouse merely one problem after another. It can also be avery liberating, enriching, and otherwise satisfying experience.But spouses would be wise to be prepared for the good times andthe bad.ConsequencesWhat does it mean to be faced with all these adjustments? If youcould deal with them one at a time, they wouldn’t pose such aproblem, but they don’t appear one at a time, each patiently wait-ing its turn; they tend, rather, to travel in packs, ganging up on youat inopportune moments. Or if they weren’t so numerous, they mightalso be manageable; it’s not the nature of these adjustments thatmakes them so daunting, but the sheer number and variety.One thing it means is that you’re going to be tired and underthe weather a lot during your early weeks abroad. Individuallyand collectively, these adjustments demand a great deal of mentalexertion, which can leave you physically and emotionally drained.And that, in turn, leaves you an easy mark for all manner of low-grade infections, fevers, and colds. Cornelius Grove has explainedthat clinically speaking
COUNTRY SHOCK19the reason why intercultural contact—especially a completeimmersion experience—potentially results in this conditionis that the sojourner is obliged to respond not merely toisolated instances of novelty in an otherwise familiar andreasonably predictable environment, but to novelties through-out many or most of the subtle and complex patterns ofdaily life…. Usually the problem is not that a single stressorin the new environment is completely overwhelming, butrather that the body must respond to multiple stressors on aconstant basis over a period of time lasting throughout thefirst several weeks or even months of the sojourn….Stress [becomes] a problem when the neurological andendocrine systems are compelled to respond to environmen-tal novelty constantly over a long period of time. When thishappens, the neurological system, and especially the endo-crine system, can become debilitated throughoverstimulation. [Among the] consequences [are] a sharpreduction in the production of white blood cells…which inturn leads to susceptibility to various diseases and/or exac-erbation of chronic illness. Furthermore, the body becomesmore and more exhausted as energy is used constantly…tokeep the brain and sensory organs in a high state of alert-ness, and to keep the body ready for fight, flight, or adapta-tion.Physiologically speaking, culture shock is precisely thisstate of debilitation, exhaustion, and susceptibility to dis-ease. (Grove 1990, 9)Some other consequences of adjusting to so much that is new anddifferent are frustration, anger, irritability, and impatience. Andfrom time to time you may also feel threatened, vulnerable, anx-ious, incompetent, and foolish. Your self-esteem and self-confi-dence, in short, take quite a beating.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES20What Can You Do?You don’t have to take all this lying down (unless you’re sick inbed); there are things you can do about culture shock. The firstand most important is to know it’s coming; part of the shock ofcountry shock is not expecting it, which causes you to react morestrongly when you encounter it. Knowing these experiences arecoming doesn’t mean you won’t get sick or feel the heat, but aware-ness at least mutes the psychological/emotional impact. You’ll stillthrow up, but you’ll be much calmer about it.You should also remember that many of these experiences aren’tnew. This isn’t the first time you’ve adjusted to new people, a newcommunity, new job responsibilities. All this chaos may be takingplace in a very exotic location, but if you strip these adjustmentsdown to their essence, there’s not much here you haven’t tangledwith before. The scale of what you face may be novel—you maynever have had to adjust to so much all at once—but the nature ofwhat you’re doing should be familiar. You can console yourself,then, with the knowledge that you already have most of the skillsand instincts you need to prevail. You might have to apply themmore deliberately and consciously, but you don’t have to makethem up on the spot.Try to stay healthy and get plenty of rest. You can’t avoidCaptain Stedman’s“black catalogue,” the list of adjustments we’vedescribed, but you at least have control over what you eat andhow much sleep you can get. Try also to do those things you nor-mally do to unwind and relax, those things that rejuvenate youand lift your spirits.Stay in touch with family and close friends back home. It’scomforting to know that other people are concerned and care aboutyou. Especially until you make good friends abroad, you need tostay connected to people who care about you back home.Go out; see people; do things. If you’re like most people, you
COUNTRY SHOCK21may not feel like being around other people when you’re depressedor off your stride. You’re bad company, you think, and shouldn’tinflict your low spirits on others, so you don’t accept invitationsor invite people over. But this only feeds your depression, whereasbeing with and having to respond to others makes you turn yourattention away from your troubles for a bit. In the process, you’relikely to discover that other people are having at least some of thesame reactions to being overseas that you are.Don’t be too hard on yourself. We’re not talking here aboutgetting the hang of one or two new paradigms; it’s a whole newworld. And whole new worlds can take some getting used to. Soyou can be forgiven for feeling a tad overwhelmed, for wonderingwhat you’ve gotten yourself into or whether you’ve done the rightthing, and for being irritable and not much fun to be around.Expats sometimes worry that they must be going about this allwrong, that other people in their situation know something theydon’t or aren’t having the same misgivings. “If only I had….”Relax; the problem isn’t you.Meanwhile, try to keep the big picture in mind. What if it isannoying running around Jakarta because the phones are out again,or learning to live without central heating or fresh oregano? Isn’tthis what you came for—for something different, the occasionaladventure, a dash of risk and hardship? Surely you don’t pull upyour roots and take yourself and your family halfway around theworld in the hope that everything will be exactly as it is backhome. Where’s the sense of accomplishment if there are no ob-stacles to surmount? How can you learn and grow from your expe-riences if you don’t have any? “You have to be able to sustainreversals, upsets, accidents,” Philip Glazebrook writes in Journeyto Kars.Things going wrong gives you the chance to show self-reli-ance; and isn’t the assertion of self-reliance one of the chief
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES22objects of independent travel? If I’d really been separatedfrom my [bags], a couple of days of dogged ingenuity wouldhave been needed to reunite me with them, but it couldhave been done, and if I’d achieved it, I’d have felt extremelypleased with myself. (1984, 20)Lord Byron would have agreed. He once ranked life’s pursuits andconcluded that gambling, battle, and travel were the foremost.Their “particular attraction,” he noted, lay in “the agitation in-separable from their accomplishment. [They make us] feel that weexist” (Fussell 1987, 14).•••This, then, is what we have called country shock. Yet for all itsvariety and abundance, country shock is not the main event inthese pages. It will not have escaped the astute reader that wehave yet to meet a single host country person in this chapter.Strictly speaking, nothing we’ve talked about thus far comes un-der the heading of culture—the attitudes, values, and behaviorsof the local people and their response to yours. You can adjust tothe country, in other words, and to the community, and even tothe job, and still not be able to get along with the locals. And ifyou can’t get along with the locals, you will never be successful inan overseas assignment.It’s important, then, not to confuse adjusting to the countrywith adjusting to the culture. You will begin to get used to, under-stand, and function effectively in more and more of the situationswe’ve described in this chapter. In a matter of weeks, some thingsthat were very trying will gradually become second nature, andsome others that seemed impossible will look less daunting. Youwill begin to feel comfortable and competent in more situations:at home, on the job, out in the streets and shops. But you shouldnot let this growing sense of well-being and self-confidence blind
COUNTRY SHOCK23you to the true nature of your achievements. Simply because you’vefound the bakery or figured out the bus routes doesn’t mean youunderstand the culture. Getting used to curry isn’t the same asgetting used to the people who eat curry.Indeed, during the first few weeks of an overseas assignment,it’s not unusual for expats to be somewhat insulated from many ofthe realities of life in the new country. People at work understandthat you’re new and a little overwhelmed, and other expats re-member their first few weeks all too well and protect you from therougher edges of the culture until you’ve toughened up. Your or-ganization may run interference for you, handling many of thelogistical details of settling in that might otherwise defeat you. Inthese and other ways, you’re shielded from all but occasional con-tact with the local culture and could, therefore, be forgiven forthinking you’ve adjusted when in actual fact real contact, hencetrue adjustment, has yet to begin.By all means, go ahead and pat yourself on the back as youscore small triumphs, but stay alert. Country shock, for all itschallenges and frustrations, is in many ways just a sideshow; themain event—adjusting to the culture—is about to begin.
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252Culture ShockWhat strikes me the most upon the whole is the total differ-ence of manners between them and us, from the greatestobject to the least. There is not the smallest similitude inthe twenty-four hours. It is obvious in every trifle.—Horace WalpoleLettersTo succeed in an overseas assignment, expats have to interact ef-fectively with the local people. Since most of those people areforeigners, and since the expat is a foreigner to them, succeedingabroad means being able to work effectively across cultures. Andthere’s the rub: because of cultural differences—different, deeplyheld beliefs and instincts about what is natural, normal, right,and good—cross-cultural interactions are subject to all manner ofconfusion, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation. In a word,they are often unsuccessful. Cross-cultural encounters don’t al-ways go wrong, of course, any more than same-culture interac-tions always go splendidly, but, all other things being equal, theyare certainly more likely to end badly. In the remainder of thisbook, we will explain why this happens and offer guidelines forhow to prevent it.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES26Cultural ÒIncidentsÓHow do we define an unsuccessful interaction? For our purposeshere, we will consider a cross-cultural encounter to have gonewrong whenever one or more of the parties is confused, offended,frustrated, or otherwise put off by the behavior of any of theother parties. In workplace terms, a cross-cultural interaction hasgone wrong when it has in any substantial way undermined theability or the desire of one or more of the parties to continue towork together. If the expatriate manager of overseas operationsclashes repeatedly with a local, host country service provider, thatrelationship will be weakened and the service threatened. If theexpat head of accounting doesn’t get along with her team of localCPAs, that division’s performance is going to suffer. If a negotiatorthinks the other side is lying, common ground may be hard tofind. If an expat spouse feels she is harassed by men at the localbakery cafe, she may turn against the culture.By itself, no single cross-cultural “incident,” as we will callthese unsuccessful encounters, is going to sabotage an overseassojourn or compromise a business or workplace relationship. Butover time and in the aggregate, such incidents can slowly—and insome cases, quite rapidly—undermine relations between expatsand the local people to the extent that constructive, successfulinteraction is no longer possible. Expats may very well continue intheir assignments beyond this point, but they are no longer ben-efiting themselves or their organization; indeed, as we shall see inthe next chapter, they may very well be causing serious harm toboth. If expats, whether spouses or employees, are to have aneffective and positive overseas experience, then, in the lexicon ofthis book, cross-cultural incidents must be kept to a minimum.Before we consider why these incidents occur and how to pre-vent them, let’s look at some examples. This book divides cross-cultural incidents into two types: Type I are those incidents where
CULTURE SHOCK27the behavior of someone from another culture confuses, frustrates,or otherwise puts expats off. Type II are those incidents where theexpat’s behavior confuses, frustrates, or otherwise puts off some-one from another culture. In the first instance the expat is the“victim,” if you will, of the annoying behavior, and in the second,the expat is the perpetrator. In both cases, incidentally, it is theexpat who suffers the most.This distinction is, in one sense, artificial, for in fact the sameproblem or phenomenon—one person offending another person—is occurring in each type of incident; the only thing that changesis the perspective. But this distinction is important. Expats needto realize that it’s not just their reactions to the local culture (whatwe’re calling a Type I incident) that can undermine a cross-cul-tural relationship, but also the reactions of local people to theexpat’s culture (a Type II incident). You could be in a cross-cul-tural partnership, for example, where you have no complaints aboutyour partner (where there haven’t been any Type I incidents). Butyour partner, although managing to keep you quite happy, mayfrequently be put off by your behavior and want to end the rela-tionship. Culture is still getting in the way here, if only in onedirection, and this partnership cannot be considered a success. Bydefinition, relationships only work when both partners are com-fortable. To be truly effective, cross-cultural partnerships must berelatively free of both Type I and Type II incidents.Type I: Expats Reacting to the Behaviorof People from the Local CultureBut we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s look at examples of thetwo types of incidents to see what actually happens when peoplefrom different cultures meet. We begin with examples of Type I.You’re a European software engineer managing a team ofIndian programmers in charge of developing and testing an
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES28important new application. You have an imminent deadlineand have just explained to your team how to fix a new bugthat has been detected. When you ask the team if they haveunderstood your explanation, they say yes and return totheir cubicles. The next day, when you check in with them,they have made no progress whatsoever, and it turns outthey did not understand your explanation. You’ve lost twenty-four hours you can’t afford to waste and are not happy.You are the female expatriate manager of the Cairo-basedoperations of the British company you work for. The head ofaccounting, an Egyptian man, isn’t used to working under awoman. On several occasions in the last month, he hasdouble-checked instructions from you with your male deputy,another British expat, before obeying them. This is a nui-sance for your deputy, and it’s upsetting to you.“I was once called in to advise [a multinational] firmthat has operations all over the world,” Edward Hall writes.“One of the first questions they asked was, ‘How do you getGermans to keep their doors open?’ Closed doors gave [myclients] the feeling that there was a conspiratorial air aboutthe place and that they were being left out.”—Edward HallThe Hidden DimensionYou’re a professor teaching at one of the overseas campusesof the university you work for. When you give your firstexam, you notice that some students are copying from thepapers of other students, and others are referring to or copy-ing information from papers they have brought to class. Youare very upset at these instances of cheating.
CULTURE SHOCK29You’re the American in charge of your company’s operationsin Singapore. You have an extremely well-qualified deputyto whom you have delegated all responsibility for a numberof important tasks. But he seems reluctant to make even themost routine decisions, insisting on checking with you be-fore acting on any matter of importance. This is very time-consuming and frustrating for you.“One of the terms most frequently used by Americans todescribe the Japanese modus operandi,” Hall has observed,“is the word indirection. An American banker who had justspent years in Japan and made the minimum possible ac-commodation told me that what he found most frustratingand difficult was their indirection. ‘An old-style Japanese,’he complained, ‘can drive a man crazy faster than anythingI know. They talk around and around and around a pointand never do get to it.’”—Edward HallThe Hidden DimensionYou’re an expat spouse posted in France. You’re walking downthe street with a French friend one day when she meets afriend of hers, and they engage in conversation. You aresurprised and hurt when the conversation ends and you havenot been introduced to your friend’s friend.You have been negotiating with a Chinese service provideron behalf of your company. You and your counterpart havefinally agreed on terms and signed a four-year contract.Three weeks later, after you have incurred considerable start-up costs, your Chinese counterpart telephones to inform youhis department has come under new management and thecontract has to be renegotiated. You remind him there were
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES30safeguards in the original contract against such contingen-cies, but he says they cannot be enforced in his country.You’re an American expatriate working in Buenos Aires. Youhave a 10:00 A.M. appointment with the Argentinian man-ager of a local public relations firm, and it’s now 10:30. Thereceptionist tells you the person you’ve come to see is meet-ing with someone else. You wait another half an hour, dur-ing which time another person (who has the next appoint-ment?) arrives. You become increasingly frustrated until, at11:00A.M., the manager emerges from his office to greetyou. To your amazement, he neither acknowledges nor apolo-gizes for making you wait an hour. You find this behaviorextremely rude and are furious with him.You’re an Argentinian expatriate working in the United States.You’re meeting with the American sales director of one yourcompany’s local subsidiaries. Suddenly, at 10:30 A.M., sheannounces that you and she will have to continue this meet-ing later, “maybe this afternoon or tomorrow morning,”because she has another appointment at this time. You’revery surprised and upset not to be able to finish your busi-ness and to have to go to the trouble of coming back againlater.Not surprisingly, Type I incidents are the stock in trade of the besttravel writers, so we conclude our list with a few examples fromtravel literature.Nothing is more charming than southern courtesy, but some-times they really are too sympathetic by half. For in ordernot to contradict you or give you a moment’s pain by dis-puting the accuracy of your ideas, they will tell you whatyou want to hear rather than what would be of real use to
CULTURE SHOCK31you to hear. At the same time their own self-esteem will notpermit them to confess a blank ignorance; they will rathertell you something incorrect than tell you nothing at all.—Aldous HuxleyAlong the Road“I am not the type, monsieur, who feels himself superior tothe rest of humanity. Indeed, I am no better than others.But these people, these Afghans. They are not human.”“Butwhy do you say that?”“You don’t see why, monsieur? Haveyou eyes? Look at those men over there. Are they not eatingwith their hands? With their hands! It is frightful.”—Robert ByronThe Road to OxianaIndians do seem uncouth to the European. I shared the com-partment with fat Mr. Jain, a vegetarian with swollen lips ofthe kind known as sensual, mouth and teeth red-stainedfrom betel juice, who punctuated the dark hours with snoresand farts and hawkings—all Indians appear to do this. Yes-terday morning an American family was having breakfastwith their guide who, in mid-conversation, gave vent to anelaborate hawking and clearing of the passages; they re-garded their cornflakes expressionlessly.—J. G. FarrellIndian DiaryThere is nothing so vile or repugnant to nature, but you mayplead prescription for it in the customs of some nation orother. A Parisian likes mortified flesh; a native of Legiboliwill not taste his fish until it is quite putrefied; the civilizedinhabitants of Kamschatka get drunk with the urine of theirguests, whom they have already intoxicated; the Nova
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES32Zemblans make merry on train oil; the Greenlanders eat inthe same dish as their dogs; the Caffres, at the Cape of GoodHope, piss upon those whom they delight to honor, and feastupon a sheep’s intestines with their contents as the greatestdainty that can be presented.—Tobias SmollettTravels through France and ItalyThese are a few of the ways people from other cultures canfrustrate and put you off. In isolation, as noted earlier, these inci-dents have a limited impact, but when you live overseas, theydon’t occur in isolation. You are, after all, surrounded by foreign-ers (though you are the real foreigner), with whom any interac-tion has the potential of becoming a Type I incident (and, as we’llsee shortly, a Type II incident as well). When your whole day ispunctuated by these incidents, followed by another such day, andthen another, the strain of crossing cultures begins to takes itstoll. In a moment, we’ll show you how by conjuring up a typicalmorning in the life of an expat, but first some examples of Type IIincidents.Type II: Local People Reacting to ExpatsA cross-cultural encounter, by definition, is a two-way process.Even as you’re being thrown by the annoying, unaccountable be-haviors of the other person, chances are that person is also beingput off by you. Let’s look now at examples of Type II incidents.You’re an expat managing a team of software developers inthe Philippines. At a recent meeting, you’ve given the teamfeedback on their work, beginning with a few remarks onhow pleased you are in general with the quality and speedof their effort. You then spend a few more minutes mention-ing two minor areas where things could be minimally im-proved. You learn later that in the Philippines what you
CULTURE SHOCK33have done constitutes damning with faint praise and is ex-actly how many Filipino managers would let a team knowthey were quite unhappy with its work. These managers,however, would never deliver this kind of feedback in a gen-eral meeting, thereby embarrassing the team leaders in frontof their subordinates.You’re the New Delhi-based regional manager of your company’soperations in the Middle East and South Asia. On a trip backto headquarters in Europe, you have a short stopover in Ammanwhere you have scheduled a one-hour meeting with your Jor-danian colleague who is in charge of marketing and publicrelations in the Middle East. Hussein wants to catch up onpersonal and family matters, but you feel pressured to re-solve a couple of issues that have come up in the last severalmonths, so you cut off the “small talk.” You learn later thathe was upset that you had only allowed an hour for thismeeting and assumed this meant that you were angry withhim about something. Moreover, when you then cut off theobligatory chitchat that always precedes business in the MiddleEast, he decided you must be on the verge of cancelling thecontract with his company. In fact, he may now cancel thecontract first, in a pre-emptive move to save face.You’re a newly arrived American expat couple living in Lon-don. On Friday the working spouse learned that one of hisEnglish colleagues lives in the same neighborhood as you,so he wrote down the English family’s street name and housenumber. On Sunday afternoon, while you’re out for a walk,you happen by the house and decide to drop in. You learnlater that among middle- and upper-class English people it’sconsidered extremely rude to drop by someone’s house un-announced.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES34You’re a visiting British professor in a South American univer-sity. You think the role of the teacher is to help students learnhow to learn, to help them develop problem-solving skills. Youteach through case studies and other problem-posing meth-ods and ask lots of questions. To your surprise, you learn thatthe students in your class are upset and have complained tothe department chair that you’re not teaching them any-thing, not passing on your knowledge and wisdom.You’re the expat manager of your Dutch company’s affiliateoperations in Mexico City. At a weekly meeting of divisionheads (where each is accompanied by two or three supportstaff), you correct some inaccurate sales figures quoted bythe director of Sales and Marketing. You learn later that tocorrect her like this in front of her subordinates makes herlook very bad and makes you look unkind and insensitive.An articlein Crossing Cultures, a publication of the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services, recalled how amajor international blunder was successfully avoided whenNancy Reagan revised an earlier decision to bring along herWhite House china on a state visit to the People’s Republicof China in 1984. The Chinese were offended by the implica-tion that China, of all countries, might be deficient in thisregard. On the same trip, President Reagan himself fell afoulof the local culture when he offended a shopkeeper by ask-ing him to “keep the change” after paying for a small sou-venir, an insult in a country where tips are reserved forlowly servants.An expat couple has been invited to an Indian family’s homefor dinner. They arrive with a bottle of scotch for the host
CULTURE SHOCK35and flowers for his wife. At one point, the wife joins thehostess in the kitchen to ask if there’s anything she can doto help. The meal is served in the traditional style, withoututensils, and the left-handed expat husband eats with thathand. During the meal the wife, who has chosen mangojuice for her beverage, offers a sip to her husband when heasks for a taste.How has the evening gone? From the Indian point ofview, not very well. Some Indians are not allowed alcohol(Muslims and Sikhs, for example); the flowers, on the otherhand, would be appreciated in most homes (but not frangi-pani blossoms, which are only used for funerals). The coupleshould ask at the door whether it’s okay to wear shoes in thehouse, and even if it is, they should never wear them in thekitchen. But then, guests should always stay in the guestroom and not wander around the house. If it’s a Brahmin(high-caste) family, the kitchen is sacred and becomes pol-luted the moment any non-Brahmin enters (and a priestmay subsequently have to be called in to perform a purifica-tion ceremony). By asking to help (whether she enters thekitchen or not), the spouse may have insulted the family bysuggesting they don’t have any servants. On the other hand,if there are no servants, it’s appropriate to ask. Even themost nontraditional of Indians would be shocked to see some-one eating with the left hand, which is used for cleaningoneself after defecating. Finally, drinking from anotherperson’s glass or eating from their plate is considered jutho,unclean, and is never done.As in the case of Type I incidents, travel writing is a treasure troveof these kinds of faux pas, and we offer a few examples.My first shock came when I was requested, politely but firmly,by the guest-master to remove a pair of underpants then flut-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES36tering happily from the line. This, he pointed out, was a mon-astery; shirts, socks, handkerchiefs, even vests, might be driedwith propriety within its walls. But underpants were a shame-ful abomination and could on no account be permitted. Meekly,I obeyed; but worse was to come. I woke the following morn-ing at dawn…and made quietly for the wash-house. Its prin-cipal furnishing was a huge stone trough; and into this I nowclambered, covering myself from head to foot in a deep andluxurious lather. At this point the guest-master appeared.Never have I seen anyone so angry. For the second time intwelve hours I had desecrated his monastery. Having al-ready offended God and the Mother of God with the spec-tacle of my underpants, I was now compounding the sacri-lege by standing stark naked under the very roof of the GrandLavra. I was the whore of Babylon, I was Sodom andGomorrah, I was a minion of Satan sent to corrupt the HolyMountain. I was to put on my scabrous clothes at once andreturn with all speed to the foul pit whence I had come.—John Julius NorwichMount AthosI was travelling with a few of the nobles by train. Seeing“Beef” on the menu, I ordered it. The waiter said Beef wasOff, so I had something else. Later, back in Dewas, the Ma-harajah said to me, with great gentleness, “Morgan, I wantto speak to you on a very serious subject indeed. When youwere travelling with my people you asked to eat something,the name of which I cannot even mention. If the waiter hadbrought it, they would all have had to leave the table. Sothey spoke to him behind your back and told him to tell youthat it was not there. They did this because they knew youdid not intend anything wrong, and because they love you.”—E. M. ForsterThe Hill of Devi
CULTURE SHOCK37A little golden girl of seven [offered me] a coconut. “Youshall be blessed,” she murmured…. I should have returnedher blessing word for word, and after that I should havereturned the nut also, for her to take the first sip…; and atlast—when I received it back, I should have said “Blessingsand Peace” before [drinking]. All I did—woe is me!—wasto take it, swig it off, hand it back…empty, with anothercareless, “Thank you.”“Alas,” she said…in a shocked whisper, “…Is that themanners of a young chief of [the white people]?” She toldme…the sins I have confessed…. My final discourtesy hadbeen the crudest of all. In handing back the empty nut, Ihad omitted to belch aloud. “How could I know when youdid not belch…that my food was sweet to you? See, this ishow you should have done it!” She held the nut towardsme…her earnest eyes fixed on mine, and gave vent to abelch so resonant that it seemed to shake her elfin formfrom stem to stern. “That,” she finished, “is our idea ofgood manners,” and wept for the pity of it.—Arthur GrimbleA Pattern of IslandsA Typical Morning in CairoNow let’s imagine a typical morning in the life of an expatriate,illustrating the cumulative impact of Type I and Type II incidentson a typical expat. Imagine you’re Claire, the female, Cairo-basedmanager of your company’s Middle East region, and your morninggoes something like this. You enjoy a quiet breakfast in the sanc-tity of your home and then begin the drive to work. The streetsare thronged with pedestrians, choked with donkey carts, and fullof aggressive Egyptian drivers who take regular and prolonged so-lace in their car horns. You are alternately immobilized by all theconfusion and driven to fits of frightening recklessness. You’ve
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES38been told repeatedly that everyone in your position uses a driver,but you’re determined to learn how to drive in Cairo; after all,you’re going to be living here for three years and you don’t wantto always be dependent on someone else to get around.You arrive at the office entrance, where you are smartly sa-luted by Mustapha, daytime watchman and trusted factotum, whoopens your door and then proceeds to “park” your car. Mustaphadoesn’t really drive so much as he coaxes your car into its narrowparking space at the side of the building. As you walk toward theentrance, you try not to listen for the sound of metal meeting upwith stone. Your car has been scraped in this manner twice in themonth you’ve been in Cairo, and Mustapha has denied responsibil-ity both times, blaming the car.You’re served strong Egyptian coffee as soon as you settle atyour desk (you’ve asked twice for a weaker brew) and begin yourmorning as usual by going over your schedule with your assistant,Yasmina. As this meeting ends, you ask Yasmina if the data yourequested yesterday afternoon on El Ghalawi Ltd. has been pre-pared. She says yes but doesn’t offer to bring it. You remind heryou’re meeting with Khaleed El Ghalawi at 9:30 A.M. and would liketo review the information before then. You make a few phonecalls, and before you know it, it’s 9:30 and Yasmina is announcingMr. El Ghalawi. When she shows him in, you ask again about thedata, but she seems not to hear your question.Your company is looking for a new shipper to handle its importand export needs, and you are close to reaching an agreementwith El Ghalawi Ltd. The discussions and negotiations have gonewell up to now, but at the end of your meeting this morning,Khaleed suddenly raises a new issue: he wonders whether you mightfind it in your heart to create “a small place” on your payroll fortwo of his cousins. You ask about their background and then ex-plain that you don’t have any suitable openings. Khaleed seems
CULTURE SHOCK39embarrassed and immediately drops the matter.At 10:30 you walk two blocks to keep an appointment at theMinistry of Foreign Trade. You sit down to wait for the man you’vecome to see, assured by his secretary that he is due any minute,but after forty-five minutes and several more assurances, you de-cide to leave (and learn later that the man was out of town for theday and, further, knew he was going to be away at the time youoriginally pressed him for this meeting). On your way back to theoffice, you stop to buy the International Herald Tribune, which thevendorhad assured you last nighthe would have. He doesn’t (“God’swill,” he shrugs). You decide to relax with a coffee in the nearbybakery/cafe. As you try to enjoy a moment of peace and quiet,you’re approached and harassed by two insistent male customers,and you decide to retreat to the relative safety of your office. Asyou leave the cafe, you glance at your watch: 11:45. The wholeafternoon awaits you.Some mornings will be better than others, of course, but mostexpats get quite an education during the early days of an overseasposting. The problem with cultural incidents is the reactions theyprovoke in us (Type I) and in the local people (Type II) and, evenmore importantly, what those reactions lead to. Those consequencesare the subject of the next chapter, but before we discuss them weneed to review our friend’s morning and note the emotions it pro-vokes in her and in the people she encounters.Driving to work in the chaos of rush-hour Cairo, for example,can be frightening and stressful; most people would want to avoidit. But in order to avoid it, you would have to give up your dreamof not being dependent on a driver every time you wanted to gosomewhere in Egypt. So there’s no good choice, and you arrive atthe office conflicted and angry at the crazy Egyptians.Chances are the morning parking ritual with Mustapha will dolittle to improve your mood. Is it too much to ask that the guy
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES40who parks your car should know how to drive? If this happens tobe one of the days Mustapha scratches your car and, against allyour best instincts, you decide to confront him, his complete de-nial of any wrongdoing, with the facts (a crumpled fender) staringhim in the face, is bound to be deeply frustrating.The incident with Yasmina is likewise not encouraging. Youasked her yesterday to prepare the data on the shipping company,she indicated she would, and she hasn’t done it. You ask again,reminding her of the urgency, and you still don’t receive it in time.You can’t help wondering how you’re going to be able to work withher when she doesn’t do what she says she will. This is both an-noying and worrisome.The meeting with Khaleed El Ghalawi is also disturbing. Youcan’t bring yourself to hire people you don’t need (you’d probablyhave to hide the fact from headquarters), and you resent what hasevery appearance of being asked for a bribe. If this is how businessis done in this country, you doubt whether you can be effectivehere.Then there’s the abortive meeting at the Ministry of ForeignTrade and the incident with the newspaper vendor, two more ex-amples of the fact that apparently you can’t take people at theirword in this country. As someone who has always considered trustfundamental to any successful relationship, you wonder how you’regoing to manage without it . Finally, there’s the harassment at thebakery. It’s going to be a long three years if you can’t go out byyourself in public.In a rather short time, our hypothetical expatriate has gonethrough an impressive inventory of negative emotions: fear, stress,anger, confusion, frustration, annoyance, worry, resentment, doubt,and mistrust. And these incidents, don’t forget, are only part ofwhat’s happening to our expat every day; she also has to deal withall the problems described in chapter 1. It should be no surprise
CULTURE SHOCK41that as these incidents pile up, triggering reactions like those above,the typical expat begins to develop a negative attitude toward thelocal people. When that happens, when expats start to turn againstthe local culture, their chances of succeeding abroad are seriously,perhaps even fatally, undermined.The Morning RevisitedAnd that’s only half the picture. Even as you are reacting left andright to the locals (Type I incidents), they are simultaneously re-acting to you (Type II). While you might be tempted to say that’stheir problem, it’s not that simple. It is their problem in the sensethat they’re the ones getting annoyed, angry, and frustrated, butit’s also your problem if the local people start to turn against you.While they may be the ones feeling offended, you’re the one who’sgoing to suffer the consequences. In the end you can’t afford to bein Type II incidents any more than you can afford to be in Type I.If you’re wondering just which of the morning’s encounters wereType II incidents, take another look at how these events unfolded—this time from the point of view of Mustapha, Yasmina, and theothers. Mustapha’s not blind; he sees how you cringe every time youturn your car over to him. He dreads these moments even more thanyou do, though unlike you, he at least tries not to show it. Whilehe does indeed have a driver’s license, acquired fifteen years agoafter completing a rigorous six-week training and passing his driver’stest, as a poor Egyptian and father of six, he can’t afford a car andhas no friends who can. Thus, he has had almost no opportunityto drive all these years, except for the few agonizing minutes ev-ery morning when he has to park your car. On those two dreadfuloccasions when he has dented the fender, he expects to be fired.What he doesn’t expect is for you to humiliate him in front of thesmall group that has gathered by asking him if he’s responsible. Ofcourse he’s responsible; just fire him and get on with it.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES42Yasmina isn’t quite sure what to make of you. She’s trying veryhard to like you—you’re going to be her boss for the next threeyears, if she can last that long—but things aren’t off to a verygood start. Late yesterday afternoon, you asked her to pull to-gether some data on a shipping company. She was very polite, butshe assumed you weren’t serious; surely you know it takes longerthan an hour or two to gather that kind of information. She prob-ably should have told you, but she didn’t want to be disrespectfuland imply that you didn’t know what you were talking about. Thismorning, much to her surprise and embarrassment, you ask heragain for the information. She doesn’t want to be rude, so she saysyes to be polite but clearly signals the data isn’t ready by notimmediately producing it. If you can’t read these signs, what canshe do? The last straw is when you ask for the data a third time,embarrassing her in front of Mr. El Ghalawi. Yasmina sits backdown at her desk, shaking her head and wondering how you canbe so dense.Mr. Khaleed El Ghalawi is also beginning to wonder about you.Everything seemed fine until this morning when he made the stan-dard request to find a place for a couple of his cousins on yourpayroll. He’s a little surprised, in fact, that he had to bring thismatter up; after all, you’re the one who’s supposed to make theoffer, so he doesn’t have to look pushy. As a successful business-man, he’s obliged to always be looking out for the welfare of theless well-off members of his extended family, and all you have todo is stick these two guys in menial, low-paying jobs where theycan’t do any harm. He’s quite taken aback, incidentally, when youask about their qualifications; their qualifications are that they’reEl Ghalawis, and you’ve just concluded a very favorable businessdeal with the El Ghalawi family and need to show your gratitude.On to the Ministry of Trade. What was the man supposed to do,after all, when you insisted on meeting with him on a day he had
CULTURE SHOCK43to be out of town? Did you really expect him to say no? He did sayno, of course, when he told you he would have his secretary checkhis schedule and call you back. When she didn’t, that was youranswer. When you then called him back, what could he say? Heknew you would call the day before to reconfirm, so at least youwouldn’t waste your time. When he learned later that you actuallycame to his office and were surprised and upset that he wasn’tthere, he just shook his head.The news vendor doesn’t understand you either. You ask him aquestion about the future, which everybody knows is entirely inGod’s hands, and then you get upset with him when there’s nonewspaper. As for the men in the bakery/cafe; what are they sup-posed to think when a woman comes in by herself, makes eyecontact, and even smiles? Only one kind of woman ever does that.Our friend’s morning, which she herself knows hasn’t gone ter-ribly well, has in fact gone much worse than she realizes. Even asshe is beginning to develop negative feelings toward certain localpeople, they are beginning to develop similar feelings toward her.A process has now been triggered which, if allowed to continue,will greatly complicate and ultimately undermine her overseasexperience.Building a Model of Cross-Cultural InteractionIf we were to build a model of the entire process of crossing cul-tures, we now have the first two steps.We react(with anger, worry, etc.)A cultural incidentoccurs.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES44The companion model, illustrating the process of cross-culturalinteraction from the perspective of the local people (Type II inci-dents), would be quite similar:In closing, let’s restore a bit of balance to the picture of cross-cultural encounters presented in this chapter. After spending thismany pages in the company of people who aren’t having much funtogether, the reader might have concluded that all cross-culturalinteractions are doomed to failure, that they inevitably deterio-rate into an “incident,” whether of Type I or Type II. But this isnot the case. While people from different cultures do indeed havedifferent values, beliefs, and behaviors—the ultimate source of allcultural incidents—they will also share various universal valuesand beliefs, what is commonly called human nature. In other wordswhile people from different cultures are different in many respects,they are not different in all respects. When they interact, there-fore, if their encounter stays within the range of universal behav-ior (human nature), then no cultural difference will arise and therewill be no cultural misunderstanding (though there may still bepersonal misunderstanding). All intercultural interactions, by theirvery nature, have the potential to turn into cultural incidents, butnot all do. If we haven’t paid much attention to successful inter-cultural encounters, it’s only because they don’t cause problemsand don’t need fixing. And while they can to some extent mitigateA local person reacts(with anger, worry, etc.)A cultural incidentoccurs.(As we identify additional steps in the process of crossing cultures in later chapters, we will be adding to this model.)
CULTURE SHOCK45the negative feelings caused by unsuccessful encounters, they can-not prevent them.The reader should also remember that cultural differences arenot the only reason cross-cultural encounters sometimes go wrong.People from different cultures can fail to get along with each otherfor any number of reasons, of which culture is just one. If youclash with your Egyptian watchman one morning, the reason couldbe cultural or it could be that one or both of you had a bad night.This is important, for if you attribute every unpleasant encounteryou have with a foreigner to a cultural difference, you will notonly exaggerate the degree of difference between yours and thelocal culture, you will also fail to see the real explanation for whatwent wrong and thus be able to pursue appropriate solutions.
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473The FalloutThe British colony lived what appeared to be a life of blame-less monotony rolling about in small cars, drinking at theyacht club, sailing a bit, going to church, and suffering ago-nies of apprehension at the thought of not being invited toGovernment House on the Queen’s birthday. One saw themurk creeping up over Brixton as one listened to their con-versations. Malta and Gibraltar have similar colonies. Howoften they have been described and how wearisome theyare.—Lawrence DurrellBitter LemonsIntercultural encounters are at the heart of the overseas experi-ence; you can’t very well live and work abroad without cominginto contact with the local people. When these encounters go wrong,however, and turn into the cultural incidents we have been de-scribing, they become a serious threat to expatriate effectiveness.Unless this threat is met and eliminated, an expat cannot expectto have a successful overseas assignment. In this chapter, we willexamine why these cultural incidents are so dangerous, and inchapters 4 and 5 we’ll explain how to prevent them.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES48Turning Against the Local CultureThe most immediate and arguably the greatest danger in culturalincidents is that they cause expats to turn against the local people—and vice versa. As we saw in chapter 2, Type I incidents usuallyprovoke negative reactions in the sojourner (even as Type II inci-dents provoke similar reactions toward the sojourner from the lo-cal people). Expats are put off by the behavior of the locals: itdoesn’t make any sense; it’s counterproductive and inefficient; it’sirritating, offensive, and troubling. In a word, it’s wrong.Because of their behaviors, you begin to make negative judg-ments about the local people: they’re lazy and have no ambition;they have no sense of time, don’t care about deadlines, and aren’tserious about their work; they’re dishonest and can’t be trusted;they have no work ethic, in fact no ethics of any kind; they justdon’t understand. If you want something done right, you’d betterdo it yourself. It’s no wonder things don’t work in this country.Once you begin to develop attitudes like these, triggered (don’tforget) by cultural incidents, they start to color all your subse-quent interactions with the local people. You tend to see onlythose things which reinforce these attitudes and to overlook be-haviors that might give you a more balanced view. You start toexpect less and less of the local people and to look for ways towork around them. You begin devising elaborate (often costly)strategems to get things done without involving them, or evendeciding not to try certain things because you believe they won’tsucceed in these circumstances.Or, alternatively, you may try to get the local people to changesome of their ways. While this can work, it has to be done withgreat care and only after you understand why the locals behavethe way they do. But most expats who try to “change the waythings are done around here” start long before they have even arudimentary understanding of the culture; they start, in fact, as
THE FALLOUT49soon as they begin encountering behaviors they want to change.Any time you try to fix something before you understand how itworks, you will only succeed by accident, which is precisely whyso many expat schemes for adding value or improving efficiency inoverseas operations ultimately fail. When they do fail—largelybecause of your behavior, by the way, not the locals’—this onlyconfirms the already low opinion you have of the culture.Once you develop negative attitudes toward the local people,you will naturally want to limit your contact with them. After all,the emotions caused by cultural incidents—anger, fear, worry, frus-tration, to name just a few—are decidedly unpleasant; if you’relike most people, you probably don’t enjoy being in these emo-tional states and instinctively try to avoid them as much as pos-sible. Beyond that, you will likely try to avoid the circumstancesthat produce these emotions to begin with. This means avoidingor, where that’s not possible, minimizing contact with people fromthe local culture, and for the local people, it means avoiding orminimizing contact with you.Avoidance seems like it would be a tidy solution to the prob-lem of cultural incidents: if there is no contact, after all, there canbe no incident. If there’s no incident, there can be no more nega-tivity. The only difficulty, of course, is that even if it were possibleto live abroad and not encounter the locals (which it’s not), thiswouldn’t make you very effective. Another difficulty is that avoid-ing the locals, as we’ll see below, does not in fact reduce negativ-ity; in many cases, it actually increases it. In the end, the onlyreal solution to the problem of cultural incidents is to keep themfrom happening in the first place.The Foreign CommunityBefore we look at the dangers of avoidance, we should give it itsdue. While it may not propel us along the path to cultural effec-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES50tiveness, it does make sense in certain situations, especially atthe beginning of an overseas sojourn. Let’s begin by explainingwhat is meant by avoidance, or, more precisely, what actually hap-pens when expats withdraw from the local people. Quite simply, ifyou avoid or minimize contact with the locals, it means you eitherspend your time alone or, more likely, with people from your owncountry. If the root problem is the “foreignness” of the locals,then surely the antidote is to spend time with people who are notforeign. With people like yourself, after all, there will be no culturalincidents. Effectively, this means spending your time in what isusually referred to as the “expat subculture” (also known variouslyas the expat community, the foreign community, the foreign colony),a parallel culture, wherein they have achieved the rather dubiousdistinction of living abroad without ever leaving home. No matterhow avoidance begins, this is almost always where it ends.Perhaps the most famous and most extreme examples of suchcommunities were the British expat compounds in India duringthe period of the Raj. Rather than live in India, the British colonialschose to bring their world to the subcontinent, constructing un-cannily accurate copies of Wiltshire and Devon villages, completewith parade grounds, bandstands (with bands), stone churches,picket fences, gravel walkways, and even golf courses where fea-sible. There the colonials would cling tenaciously to a lifestylemore passionately British, if the truth be told, than many of themhad ever lived back home.Geoffrey Moorhouse has described the life of expat spousesinside what he calls India Brittanica.Discouraged in the first place from making real contact withIndia and lacking the will to pick up more than a smatteringof language adequate for speaking to the servants, the[spouses] became progressively more isolated…[in an] ex-patriate sub-community of their own. They were renowned
THE FALLOUT51for their attempts to reproduce English gardens…in tropicalor semi-desert conditions that turned all vegetation eitherto dust or jungle within a few months…. They waited ea-gerly for the arrival of catalogues from the big London stores,which reached India towards the end of summer…so that ifyou moved fast you might expect to order Christmas pre-sents and receive them just in time.[Their] daily routine went something like this; up at5A.M. with horse-riding till 7 A.M.; breakfast on the veran-dah, followed by a cold bath before dressing to receive visi-tors at 10 A.M.; anything up to four hours of social chat withthe visitors; lunch at 2 P.M. followed by a siesta, which mightamount to lying in bed with a book till it was time to rideagain and enjoy more social chat or a stroll near thebandstand…after nightfall a supper party, with songs roundthe pianoforte until bedtime. (1984, 94–95)Over a hundred years later, official American expats live in a verysimilar world in the heart of downtown New Delhi. The particularsmay be different, but “Americaland,” as it’s sometimes called, de-rives from the same set of needs and the same mentality, as wecan see in this 1986 Washington Post profile of life in the foreignservice community there.Officially referred to as the U.S. Embassy compound,Americaland is nearly self-sufficient, spread over three ad-jacent complexes and thirty-eight acres. It includes the em-bassy itself, the ambassador’s residence, a school, a four-bed hospital, offices, apartments, a restaurant, a movie the-ater, a swimming pool, an athletic field, a bowling alley anda barbershop. The commissary sells Kraft mayonnaise, PurinaPuppy Chow and Cheerios.“Every time I leave the compound,” says Al Friedbauer,a communications officer…I feel like I’m going into a coun-try I’ve never been to.”(27 November)
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES52For wives the American Women’s Association organizes group ex-peditions into the old city of Delhi to buy jewelry and gosightseeing. “A lot of women don’t feel comfortable going out,even shopping, alone,” says Diane Hughey, the coordinator of theembassy’s Community Liaison Office.Americaland seems to fulfill a certain need. It is a study inhow people grapple with culture shock…. Judy Hansen, wifeof a World Bank economist, remembers bursting into tearswhen she couldn’t find an open drugstore to buy medicinefor strange, itching welts that had appeared on her legs. Itwas June, 110 degrees. “I came back to the house,” sherecalls, “and said: I just want to go home. I can’t take itanymore.”If you are at all inclined to withdraw from the local culture, asanyone in the throes of country and culture shock surely is, thesecommunities provide the perfect haven. Indeed, even for expatswho are not inclined to withdraw, the lure of the expat world isalmost irresistible. In their most completely developed form, thesecommunities are the answer to every burned-out, culture-bashingexpat’s periodic prayer: living abroad without leaving home.A Safe HarborWhile expat subcultures are a decidedly mixed blessing, at theright moments and in the right dose they serve legitimate, impor-tant needs. Every expat, no matter how earnest and sincere aboutcrossing cultures, needs to get away now and then from the crazi-ness of Bangkok or New York. After another day of cultural “expe-riences”—eight or nine hours of offending and being offended bypeople, not understanding and not being understood by people,causing scenes, and otherwise making a fool of yourself, and allthe while trying very hard to be a sensitive, nonjudgmental, open-
THE FALLOUT53minded, and genuinely decent human being—who doesn’t need tounwind in a setting where everyone speaks your language, comesfrom your culture, and thinks you’re normal? This isn’t avoidingthe local culture; it’s just resting up from it.The expat colony can also be a welcome refuge for nonworkingspouses who, unlike working expats, have no ready-made struc-ture to slip into overseas or an office full of people waiting tointeract with them. They have no structure except what they cancobble together themselves, and no one waiting for them. More-over, as we noted in chapter 1, spouses typically spend much moretime in the local culture than do employees, getting a much big-ger dose of country and culture shock. Isolated, lonely, and bored,spouses find an oasis of calm and much-needed companionshipand support in the local expat subculture.There’s nothing wrong with wanting to read a newspaper fromhome, swap stories or compare notes with compatriots, or play ahome-country sport that’s not played in your overseas post. Expatsubcultures can also be a great boon at holiday time, when tradi-tions from home can be celebrated and maintained, and duringimportant rites of passage, when expats feel a special need toconnect to their own culture somehow. They also meet a numberof important needs of the teenage children of expat families.If avoidance always leads to spending more time in the expatsubculture, that is not altogether a bad thing. At certain times,under certain circumstances, the foreign subculture offers expatsa lifeline that keeps them from sinking beneath the weight of allthe foreignness around them.A Mixed BlessingBut there is also a dark side to the typical expat subculture, a sidesojourners are well advised to pay attention to. As mentioned above,life in the foreign colony is very tempting, even somewhat restor-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES54ative, especially during those first few months of country and cul-ture shock. But if the expat is not careful, what starts out inno-cently enough as an occasional retreat to “the Club” becomes ahabitual pattern of behavior that may be impossible to break. Youbegin to find yourself spending increasingly more time in the com-pany of other expats, no longer out of any particular need butsimply out of habit. Where once the expat community was a much-needed safe harbor, it quickly becomes a place to hide out fromthe local culture. And once underway, the process of withdrawaltends to accelerate, almost as if it were feeding on itself. The moreyou retreat from the culture and the people, the less you learnabout them; the less you know about them, the more uncomfort-able you feel among them; the more uncomfortable you feel amongthem, the more inclined you are to withdraw. Meanwhile, the localculture recedes further and further into the distance, taking withit your chances of becoming an effective expatriate.“We were in India,” an expat recalls in Charles Allen’sPlainTales from the Raj,we were looked after by Indian servants and we met a greatmany Indians, and some of us undoubtedly made a veryclose study of India and Indian customs, but once you steppedinside the home you were back in Cheltenham or Bath. Webrought with us in our home lives almost exact replicas ofthe sort of life that upper middleclass people lived in En-gland at that time…. You went from bungalow to bungalowand you found the same sort of furniture, the same sort ofdinner table set, the same kind of conversation. We read thesame books, mostly imported by post from England, and Ican’t really say that we took an awful lot from India. (1984,82)Another danger of overdosing on the expat community is the nega-tive, even hostile attitude many members have toward the local
THE FALLOUT55culture. There’s more than a touch of irony here: people who havethe least contact with the locals are often the most critical ofthem. There’s also a certain perverse logic at work. Even as youslip comfortably into the expatriate lifestyle, your conscience isnot altogether clear. At some level you realize what’s happening,that you have undertaken to trivialize the experience of livingabroad and perhaps even to undermine your own professional ef-fectiveness. If you are sincere in your desire to live in and come toknow another culture, or even just to succeed in your work, this isprobably a realization you’d just as soon avoid.So you look around for another, more palatable explanationfor what has happened, one that fixes the blame elsewhere. Andthere is one ready to hand: it’s not you who has withdrawn fromthe local culture; it’s the local culture that has pushed you away.You really did try, but you just don’t approve of so many of theattitudes and behaviors of the local people. For this self-deceptionto work—and there’s a lot riding on it—you have to paint theculture in as bad a light as possible, a task, incidentally, in whichyou will be enthusiastically joined by numerous other escapeesdesperately needing to justify their own withdrawal. When it comesto criticizing the local culture, there is great comfort in numbers.This is how avoiding the local people often produces greater, notless, negativity in expats.The anthropologist Kalvero Oberg, one of the first people touse the expression “culture shock,” has described “the hostile andaggressive attitude” toward the locals that many expats develop.This hostility grows out of the genuine difficulty the visitorexperiences in the process of adjustment. There is mailtrouble, school trouble, language trouble, house trouble,transportation trouble, shopping trouble, and the fact thatpeople in the host country are largely indifferent to all thesetroubles. You become aggressive, you band together with
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES56your fellow countrymen and criticize the host country, itsways and its people. This criticism is not an objective ap-praisal but a derogatory one. You talk as if your experiencesareÉcreated by the people of the host country. You takerefuge in the colony of your countrymen and its cocktailcircuit, which often becomes the fountainhead of emotion-ally charged…stereotypes. (1981, 22–23)Criticisms of the host country, “justified” or not, serve no usefulpurpose. At best they only reassure those who have withdrawnfrom the culture of the wisdom of their decision, and at theirworst they raise doubts in those who are still trying to be open-minded. They are a meal best left untouched.“My wife got invited one time to a gringa [female expats] party,”one man remembers of his experience in Mexico.That was after the day she had met someone in the localKmart who told her they have a group of twenty-four Ameri-can women who get together in one another’s house once amonth to, quote, bitch about these damn Mexicans, un-quote…. [But] it was these damn Mexicans who helped usmove in, who helped us find our way around town. And nowthat we were more or less settled, these aristocratic holier-than-thou’s show up and decide they want to be our friends.No, thank you.(Osland 1995, 55)Even those who seek only minimal contact with their compatriotsoften find themselves pulled into the expat world much more thanthey intend to be. If it is to survive, the expatriate community hasto be worked at; it is something of an illusion, after all, an artifi-cial construct, and illusions, as any actor will tell you, requireconstant attention. So there are committees and committee meet-ings, cultural events, amateur theatricals, birdwalks, tennis tour-naments, swimming, sculpture, gardening and history classes, bar-
THE FALLOUT57becues, fund drives, and, of course, charity events. Contact is thelifeblood of these communities, though the quality of the contactis not nearly as important as the frequency. The average expatri-ate, even if he or she genuinely desires contact with the localpeople, barely has the time for it. And after a while, the desiregradually dies.Aldous Huxley wrote of his voyage to Asia in the 1920s.Everyone in the ship menaces us with the prospect of a verygood time in India. A good time means going to the races,playing bridge, drinking cocktails, dancing till four in themorning, and talking about nothing. And meanwhile thebeautiful, the incredible world [we’ve come to see] awaitsour explorations, and life is short…. Heaven preserve me, insuch a world, from having a Good Time! I shall see to it thatmy time in India is as bad as I can make it. (1985, 11)In some cases the regulars in the expat community get upset whenthe “occasionals” try to cut back on or limit their involvement. To“lose” a member to the local culture threatens the solidarity ofthe community, and an artificial community such as this is noth-ing without its solidarity. “Some people refused to kowtow to allthese social things,” one expat observed about his time in Asia,“and refused to belong to the Club…. [But] you were unwise notto become a Club member if you could. If you didn’t belong…youwere an outcast, a rebel, a rather courageous rebel” (Allen, 117).Closed CircleEven for its most enthusiastic adherents, life in the expat commu-nity can sometimes be a sterile, unsatisfying proposition. In theend, there is about it the aura of missed opportunities and a fail-ure of will. More often than not what binds its members togetheris not personal affinity or mutual respect or even common inter-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES58ests but a shared reluctance to delve into the local culture andtake what comes. One expat has observed,[Outside] we spent our time watching our step and watch-ing what we said, and there was a certain relief to go amongstpeople of our own race [at the club] and let our hair down.On almost any evening you would see the clubverandah…occupied by literally hundreds of people in groupsof two, four, and upwards. They would be busily chattingamongst themselves [and] drinks would be flowing freely….Within those “basket chair circles” the conversation was saidto be trivial in the extreme. A small community continuallyre-meeting could not be very original. (119, 124)Members of the expat community don’t seek each other out somuch as they collide with each other in their common flight fromthe indigenous culture. The irony is that if they take the time tofind out, expatriates often discover they share as many values andinterests with the natives they have declined to get to know aswith the compatriots with whom they force themselves to frater-nize. Peopled with such strange bedfellows, the expatriate com-munity, at its core, is not a true community at all.“There was my life in the [British] hospital,” an expat charac-ter writes in Paul Scott’s The Jewel in the Crown, his masterpieceabout the expatriate experience in pre-World War II India,which also included the [all British] club and the boys andgirls and all the good-time stuff that wasn’t really good atall, just the easiest, the least exciting, so long as you ig-nored the fact that it was only the easiest for the least admi-rable part of your nature.After a while I began to see that the ease of companion-ship wasn’t really ease at all, because once you had got toknow each other, and had then to admit that none of you
THE FALLOUT59really had much in common except what circumstances hadforced on you, the companionship seemed forced itself. (1979,385, 404)Some CaveatsIt would be wrong to see the expat subculture as nothing morethan a collection of malcontents trying desperately to rally new-comers to their dubious cause. While there are indeed malcontentsin most foreign colonies, by and large the expat community ismade up of decent people whose only mistake is not to have trieda little harder. After all, very few expats deliberately set out toavoid the local culture and go overseas giddy at the prospect ofmeeting scores of their countrymen and spending every weekendat The Club. Avoidance is, rather, merely an instinctive, self-de-fensive reaction to unpleasant situations. So if expats do retreaton occasion into the safety of the foreign community, it’s only torecover from the excesses of country and culture shock. And ifthey go back more often and stay longer than they should, this israrely because of a conscious, calculated decision to avoid thelocal people, but merely the failure to pay enough attention tohow they spend their time. The fact that withdrawing is an uncon-scious, natural instinct does nothing to mitigate its negative con-sequences, but it does put expats in a better light. These aren’tbad people; they’re good people mixed up in a bad business.Naturally, the mere existence of the expat community doesnot guarantee that all expats will join it, or that all those who dojoin it will overindulge, but these are strong possibilities. If youdon’t deliberately choose a lifestyle when you live overseas—andmost people aren’t in the habit of monitoring their behavior thatclosely—human nature is such that you will automatically gravi-tate toward the familiar, the known, and the comfortable. In the
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES60end, few expats actually choose to live in the expat colony; theysimply end up living there because they fail to choose anythingelse. This is what makes the expat subculture so dangerous—notthat expats seek it out, but that it seeks them out.Many of these same people are the first to admit in retrospectthat they missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime. “If I have aregret,” one spouse reflected on her experience in New Delhi, “it’sthat I haven’t been able to make [Indian] friends, just to makefriends. And that’s sad. Because as much as we like India, thatwould have enhanced our appreciation of it” (Washington Post1986).The foreign colony lifestyle does not have to be an all-or-noth-ing proposition: either you stay away from the expat compoundand live entirely in the local culture, or you play in tennis tourna-ments and never speak to the natives. Many expats manage tostraddle both worlds quite nicely. This chapter has exaggeratedthe dangers of withdrawal to bring home the point. In the end,you don’t have to choose which world you want to live in; you canlive in both. But to do so, you will have to keep your wits aboutyou.Remember, finally, that not everyone is a born culture-crosser.For any number of reasons, some people who go abroad aren’t verygood at and may not even be capable of adjusting successfully toa foreign culture, and they do more harm than good if they forcethemselves to try. Moreover, those who adapt readily enough inone country may not adapt at all in another. For all of these indi-viduals, making a life for themselves in the foreign colony mayrepresent a considerable accomplishment and be the only alterna-tive to going home early. If this describes you, you need not fleethe expat subculture or feel somehow obliged to explain your be-
THE FALLOUT61havior. Even so, try to avoid the trap of criticizing the local peopleand be alert for opportunities to learn more about their culture.Adding to the ModelsWe are now in a position to add a new box to our model of culturaleffectiveness begun in chapter 2. With the addition, the processnow looks like this:Remember that avoidance, like reaction, is a two-way proposition,that the entire dynamic described in this chapter is also happen-ing in the other direction. Even as you are reacting to and tryingto avoid the local people, the locals are likewise reacting to yourbehavior and trying to minimize contact with you. And just as youswap stories about the annoying locals, locals complain about theannoying foreigners. Thus the chasm between you and the localculture widens from both sides. We need to add the avoidancecomponent to our companion model of crossing cultures (illus-trating the process from the local perspective), which now lookslike this:We react (with anger, worry, etc.).A cultural incidentoccurs.This causes us to try to avoid the local culture.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES62The frequency of expat-to-local contact is much greater than lo-cal-to-expat contact, of course, meaning the chasm widens fasterfrom the expat side. An individual expat is surrounded by thelocal culture and has numerous encounters with the local peopleevery day. The typical local person, on the other hand, probablyonly interacts with a handful of expats on a regular basis, andmost locals interact with expats only occasionally. Expats, then,are likely to experience considerably more cultural incidents dur-ing any given period than are the locals and to feel, therefore, agreater urgency to escape. In the end, from whichever directionand in whatever ways the divide widens, it’s not a positive devel-opment.Note also that your withdrawal from the local culture does notgo unremarked. Observant locals can’t help but notice if you seemto keep your distance and socialize largely with other expats. Theynote—and before long they begin to accommodate—your prefer-ences. For this reason, even as you withdraw from the locals, thelocals become less inclined to seek you out. “It would be better ifthey went to church,” an Eskimo says of the development workerswho live with the natives in Canada’s far north,even if they could not understand. It would show that theyhad some interest in what is happening in the settlement.The local person reacts (with anger, worry, etc.).A cultural incidentoccurs.This causes him or her to try to avoid contact with us.
THE FALLOUT63Perhaps some problems would not arise if the Whites both-ered to go to church with the Eskimos; maybe they wouldunderstand things better. It would make the people thinkthat the Whites belong to the settlement. (Brody 1975, 170)This, then, is where the overseas experience of many expats stalls,trapped in a kind of perpetual tension between the clear and obvi-ous need to interact with locals and a strong desire not to becauseof the unpleasantness of those very interactions. If you aspire tobe truly effective in your overseas assignments, you must breakthrough this impasse and get beyond the temptation to withdrawfrom the local culture.
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654The Problem ExplainedThe first thing an Englishman does on going abroad is tofind fault with what is French, because it is not English.—William HazlittNotes of a Journey Through France and ItalyIn chapter 3 we saw that it is possible to avoid cultural incidents,alas, at the cost of being less effective in an overseas assignment.Avoidance is thus not a true solution to the problem of such en-counters. In the final analysis, the only true solution to theseincidents is to keep them from happening in the first place, and inthis chapter we will take the first and most important step in thatprocess: we will look at what causes cultural incidents.Let’s return to one of the Type I incidents from chapter 2, thevignette of the American posted in Argentina:You’re an American expatriate working in Buenos Aires. Youhave a 10:00 A.M. appointment with the Argentinian man-ager of a local public relations firm, and it’s now 10:30. Thereceptionist tells you the person you’ve come to see is meet-ing with someone else. You wait another half an hour, dur-ing which time another person (who has the next appoint-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES66ment?) arrives. At 11:00 the manager emerges from his of-fice to greet you. To your amazement, he neither acknowl-edges nor apologizes for making you wait an hour. You findthis behavior extremely rude and are furious with him.Why is the American put off by the Argentinian’s behavior? Theshort answer is because it’s not “normal,” not what people aresupposed to do in such situations, and when people don’t do whatthey’re supposed to, other people get upset. But why is the Argen-tinian supposed to apologize for making the American wait? Be-cause that’s what an American would do in this situation. In otherwords, the American is angry because he expects the Argentinianto behave the way Americans do.The Ethnocentric ImpulseIt is precisely this belief, that other people are like us, that is thesource of most cross-cultural incidents. If we truly believe otherpeople are like us, then it’s only natural to expect them to behavethe way we do (the origin of Type I incidents) and to assume thatwe behave the way they do (the origin of Type II incidents). Lookagain at all the incidents in chapter 2. You will see that in everycase the problem is the same: the person from Culture A was ex-pecting the person from Culture B to behave like people from Cul-ture A. When that person did not, when the person in fact be-haved like people from Culture B, there was trouble.But why should this be? Why would we expect other people tobehave like us? The answer, quite simply, is because they alwayshave.That is, most of us grow up in circumstances where we aresurrounded by people from our own culture, and while we mighthave occasional contact with someone from a different culture,most of our interactions are with people like ourselves. And thereason these people are like us, of course, is that from birth we
THE PROBLEM EXPLAINED67have been carefully and deliberately raised to be like them.This is the phenomenon known as cultural conditioning whereinmembers of a particular group teach the next generation how tobehave and how to function effectively and thereby survive inthat group or culture. The adults (parents, teachers, and others)teach the code of conduct of that particular society, which stipu-lates what people should and should not do across the entire spec-trum of interpersonal interactions. Children are rewarded whenthey do the right thing and punished when they do not, and whatmakes those things right or wrong are the values and beliefs ofthat particular culture.Another word for the right and wrong behaviors we learnthrough our cultural conditioning is norms, from which we deriveour word normal. The essential fact to grasp about norms is thatthey not only make it easier to interact with other people—theymake it possible. If there were no norms, if we could not rely onpeople to always behave in certain ways in certain situations, hu-man interaction would be hopelessly unpredictable and chaotic. Ifwe could not be sure, for example, that drivers would stay on theirside of the road, always stop when required, and turn left onlyfrom the left-hand lane, we would surely hesitate to drive. “Stay-ing comfortable,” Edward Hall has written, “is largely a matter ofculture. Informal or core culture is the foundation on which inter-personal relations rest. All of the little things that people take forgrantedÉdepend on sharing informal patterns” (1984, 195).In the end, we do not merely expect other people to be like us;thanks to our cultural conditioning, we depend on it. Thus it isthat the same conditioning which can make it so difficult for us tofunction overseas is what makes it possible for us to function athome. Is it any wonder we cling to it?Because of our cultural conditioning, we not only think ouractions are normal, the way everyone behaves; we also think what
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES68we do is right, the way everyone should behave. We therefore re-gard any behavior that is different from ours as wrong. Naturally,this puts cultural incidents into a whole new light. When the lo-cals do something that causes an incident, they’re not simply be-having in a way we’re not expecting; they’re behaving in a way wedon’t approve of. Thus do values enter the cross-cultural dynamicand considerably raise the ante in cultural incidents. It’s no secretthat where values are concerned, people have very strong views,and when very strong views are in play, emotions run rampant—all the more reason, then, to get to the bottom of cultural inci-dents and learn how to prevent them.Up to the moment you go abroad or otherwise have a signifi-cant encounter with people from another culture, you have noreason or basis for believing that other people, including foreign-ers, might not behave like you—for believing that some of thenorms you’ve picked up over the years might be peculiar to yourparticular group or society. You have no idea, in short, that whatis normal to you is not also universal, that much of what youthink of as human nature is only cultural.But what happens when you encounter someone from a differ-ent culture, someone raised with different conditioning and a dif-ferent set of norms? How do you expect that person to behave? Bynow, the answer should be obvious: if you have not been raised inthat culture or have had only limited contact with that culture,then you would expect that person to behave in the only wayyou’ve ever known other people to behave: like you. That may bevery ethnocentric of you, but ethnocentrism is a fundamental factof the human condition. Hickson and Pugh have written,[W]e are all subject in our thinking, at least to some de-gree, to “ethnocentrism.” [This] is the implicit assumption,often unawares, that our culture is the best, that our way ofdoing things is normal, the right way…. We all overestimate
THE PROBLEM EXPLAINED69the importance of our country and our culture in the schemeof things. When we see something different in another cul-ture, we are liable to view it as abnormal and inferior….The development of this belief in our own culture is animportant part of our ability to function effectively in it.But it is a feature of human nature which does lead to prob-lems when we come to operate in other cultures.(1995, 253–54)Logic versus InstinctBut there’s something wrong here, isn’t there? Surely in the age ofglobalization and cross-cultural training we all know better, thatthe world is home to a great variety of people and cultures, manyof them nothing at all like us. Indeed, isn’t one of the reasons wewant to go abroad in the first place to encounter and learn aboutanother culture? How is it possible to be steeped in the notion ofcultural differences and at the same time assume everyone else isjust like us?In fact, we do know better than to expect foreigners to behavelike us. But that knowledge doesn’t make any difference. What weknow to be true (or right or best) is not always what drives ouractions. What the conscious intellect tells us—in this case, thatforeigners are surely not like us—is no match for what a lifetimeof cultural conditioning has taught us. For the notion of culturaldifferences to take deep and lasting root in our psyche, it must beconstantly reinforced over a sustained period until it is internal-ized. Until that time, it’s entirely possible—indeed, it’s inevitable—that we can cheerfully subscribe to the view that foreigners aredifferent and still be stunned the first time we see a Hindu drinkcow urine.To put all this another way, what we have actually experi-enced, what we know to be real, will always have more truth for
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES70us, more claim on our emotions, than what we’ve only read orheard about. Moreover, what we’ve experienced repeatedly willalways seem truer than what we’ve experienced only once or twice.“Of the fact that it takes all sorts to make a world I have beenaware ever since I could read,” Aldous Huxley has written,But proverbs are always platitudes until you have experi-enced the truth of them. The newly arrested thief knows thathonesty is the best policy with an intensity of convictionthat the rest of us can never experience. And to realize thatit takes all sorts to make a world one must have seen acertain number of the sorts with one’s own eyes.There is all the difference in the world between believingacademically, with the intellect, and believing personally,intimately, with the whole living self. (1985, 207)So perhaps it isn’t logical to assume other people are like us, butwe’re not operating here at the level of logic. We’re operating,rather, at the level of instinct, and logic never wins in a fair fightwith instinct. “Truth is not that which can be demonstrated bythe aid of logic,” Antoine de Saint Exupery has observed. “Letlogic wangle its own explanation of life” (1967, 187).We shouldn’t be too hard on expats, then. The fact that theyexpect the locals to behave like them is not something expats dreamup just in time to go overseas. Nor is it something they decide to door are even consciously aware of doing. It’s merely something they’vedone all their lives—in order to survive. It just happens to be some-thing that doesn’t serve them very well overseas.Imagining the OtherThe capacity of the average person to fully conceive of the “other”has always been greatly exaggerated. It is interesting in this con-text, and also quite instructive, to reflect on so-called science fic-
THE PROBLEM EXPLAINED71tion, on the people who are in the business of creating Not Us. Eventhese people, whose job it is to imagine the “other,” aren’t verysuccessful. Who doesn’t know the famous bar scene in the film StarWars, where Luke Skywalker, Obiwan Kenobe, and Chewbacca visit alocal watering hole in search of an experienced pilot. The place isteeming with a wondrous variety of extraterrestrial bad guys. Butwhen you think about it, they’re not really that extraterrestrial. Oh,they may have a second head, some additional arms, and more eyesthan you or I, but that’s just it: they have more of these attributes(or sometimes fewer) but they don’t have different attributes, some-thing instead of heads, arms and eyes. They’re just variations on atheme—humans—but not a new piece of music. Nor have the film-makers come up with anything new, anything nonhuman, for theseguys to do. They’re just doing what guys like them everywhere do,apparently even in other galaxies: knocking back a few at thelocal neighborhood hangout. Not even George Lucas and StevenSpielberg can conceive of nonhuman behavior; there are no mod-els. Most of us even conceive of animals in human terms, explain-ing their behavior exclusively in reference to our own.The science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin makes just this pointin her classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness. One of her humancharacters observes about an alien,When you meet a Gethenian, you cannot and must not dowhat a [human] naturally does, which is to cast him in therole of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corre-sponding role dependent on your expectations of the pat-terned or possible interaction between persons of the sameor opposite sex. Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interac-tion is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. Theydo not see one another as men or women. This is almostimpossible for our imagination to accept. What is the firstquestion we ask about a newborn baby? (emphasis author’s)(1977, 94)
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES72The old proverb notwithstanding, we cannot put ourselves in some-one else’s shoes. Or, more accurately, we can, but it’s still our ownfeet that we feel.A New StepWe’re now ready to add an important new step at the beginning ofour model of cross-cultural interaction, the behavior that sets thiswhole process in motion.As noted earlier, the conviction that everyone is the same is thecause of both Type I and Type II incidents. It creates Type I inci-dents because it means we are bound to get upset when the localpeople don’t behave like we do. And it creates Type II incidentsbecause it means the locals are bound to get upset when we don’tbehave like they do. The only difference between the two types isin who is doing the expecting and who is getting upset. So we canalso add a very similar new box to our companion model of theprocess of crossing cultures.Thus, a cultural incident occurs.We expect other people to behave like we do, but they don’t.We react(with anger, worry, etc.)This causes us to try to avoid the local culture.
THE PROBLEM EXPLAINED73Strictly speaking, the local people are ultimately responsible forType II incidents; the true cause of these incidents, after all, is thelocals’ belief that we will behave like they do. But our own ethno-centrism does contribute indirectly to Type II incidents, in thesense that if we believe everyone else is like us, then we mustbelieve, as a natural corollary, that we are like everyone else. Andifwe don’t find anything odd in our own behavior, then why wouldthe locals? You don’t think this all out, of course, but it doesnaturally follow from the basic ethnocentric premise. As we shallsee in the next chapter, if you can break the grip of ethnocen-trism, you can solve the riddle of both Type I and Type II inci-dents.Thus, a cultural incident occurs.The local people expect us to behave like they do, but we don’t.The local person reacts(with anger, worry, etc.)This causes him or her to try to avoid contact with us.
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755The Problem SolvedThe born traveller—the man who is without prejudices, whosets out wanting to learn rather than to criticize, who isstimulated by oddity, who recognizes that every man is hisbrother, however strange and ludicrous he may be in dressand appearance—has always been comparatively rare.—Hugh and Pauline MassinghamThe Englishman AbroadNow that we’ve identified the cause of cultural incidents—the as-sumption that other people are like us—it should be clear, at leastin a general way, how to prevent them: we have to stop makingthis erroneous assumption. How to do that is the subject of thischapter.As we begin, we need to look a bit closer at the idea that ourassumption of cultural sameness is what causes cultural incidents.If this is true, then ultimately it is not the behavior of the localpeople that causes cultural incidents but our own. The problem isnot what the local people do, but the fact that we are expectingthem to do something else. In other words, our expectation, nottheir behavior, is the real sticking point.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES76This is in fact very good news for the culture crosser. If thereverse were true, if the cause of cultural incidents was the behav-ior of the local people, then the solution would be for them tosomehow change their behavior. And that’s not going to happen.But if the problem is actually our own behavior, then there’s hope,for while we can’t very well expect the local people to changetheir behavior to conform to our expectations, we may be able tochange our expectations to conform to their behavior.The Starting PointIn general, then, the way to prevent cultural incidents is to stopassuming that other people are like us. If we didn’t expect thelocal people to behave like we do, we would no longer be criticalwhen they didn’t. If we were no longer put off by their behavior,there would be no more cultural incidents (of Type I, anyway),and if there were no more incidents, it would not be so difficult tobe culturally effective.To stop expecting other people to behave like we do is actuallya two-step process: first we have to realize that we have this ex-pectation, and second we have to start expecting the local peopleto simply be themselves.The first step, realizing we expect others to be like us, is inmany ways the most difficult, for it requires that we somehowbecome aware of behavior that is completely subconscious. In-deed, this particular expectation, as we saw in the previous chap-ter, is in fact a deep-seated survival instinct, and instincts (as wesaw in that same chapter) are notoriously difficult to get hold of.It so happens, however, that we have readily to hand a fool-proof mechanism for raising this particular instinct to the level ofconscious awareness: it is none other than that frustration, sur-prise, or anger that arises in us at the time a cultural incidentoccurs. These emotions are triggered precisely at the moment the
THE PROBLEM SOLVED77locals fail to do what we expect; thus, if we could somehow trainourselves to become aware of these emotions, then we would bythat very act be catching ourselves in the process of expecting thelocals to behave like we do. When that happens, when you seeyourself making this assumption—in complete defiance of all logicand in complete thrall to your cultural conditioning—it is deeplysobering. If you then combine awareness of this counterproduc-tive behavior with an appreciation of its damaging consequencesand with the further realization that you are responsible for thiswhole process—if you connect all these dots, you won’t thinkmuch of the resulting picture. Thus put off by your own behavior,you’re ready to do something about it.The key to this whole dynamic, as noted earlier, is to somehowbecome aware of your emotional reactions to cultural incidents.But awareness of emotional states actually runs counter to mostpeople’s experience; they are, rather, in the habit of having emo-tions, of experiencing their feelings, not taking note of them. Youare used to being subject to your emotions, but not to subjectingthose emotions to conscious observation. So awareness is a prac-tice that will have to be consciously enforced against opposingtendencies.The best way to become aware of your reactions to culturalincidents is to schedule a time during or at the end of every daywhen you deliberately try to recall moments when you were upsetor agitated by something a local person did. As you reconstructthese incidents, you will see yourself, if only after the fact, in theact of expecting other people to behave like you do. Over time andwith repeated practice, you should eventually reach the point ofsimultaneous awareness, when you will be able to observe youremotional reactions to cultural incidents as they occur. You shoulddefinitely keep this goal in mind and strive for it. But whetheryou become aware of your emotions at the time of such incidents
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES78or in retrospect, the effect is the same: the realization that it isultimatelyyour own behavior that makes you culturally ineffec-tive. When you begin to see that your cross-cultural wounds arelargely self-inflicted, you will then be motivated to take the finalstep to cultural effectiveness: to start expecting the local peopleto be themselves.Filling the Information GapAwareness, then, brings us to the brink of solving the problem ofcultural incidents. All you need now is some information aboutthe local culture. You can’t very well expect to recognize when thelocals are behaving like locals if you have no knowledge of howthe locals typically behave. You can learn about the local culturein three ways: through observing the locals in action, throughasking them about specific behaviors, and through reading aboutor taking classes in the local culture.ObservingÑNot as Easy as it Might SeemNaturally, if you’re able to observe how the local people behave inany given situation, you will then know what to expect from themin similar situations in the future. While this sounds simple enough,this kind of observation is neither as easy nor as straightforwardas it may seem. This is because it’s not possible to react to andclosely observe a situation at the same time; in fact, the formereffectively precludes the latter. It’s well known, for example, thatpeople rarely remember what happens during moments of greatemotional intensity, when they’re in danger, let’s say, or in a rage.People don’t think in such circumstances (much less observe); theysimply act out of sheer instinct. When they are asked later whatthey did, there are periods about which they can recall nothing.So it will be with you in the midst of many cultural incidents.While your emotional reactions won’t normally be as intense as
THE PROBLEM SOLVED79those mentioned above, the basic principle still applies: agitated,angry, frustrated by the unexpected and “abnormal” behavior of alocal person, you are not able to see very much of what happensafter the triggering behavior has occurred. Prevented in this man-ner from being able to observe, you not likely to take from suchincidents cultural information about what to expect next time.If we look again at the example of the American expat in BuenosAires from the last chapter, we can figure out what this man mighthave been able to see if he had not been so busy getting upset. Ifhe had seen some of these things, they would have given himimportant clues about Argentinian behavior, not enough to crackthe code of the culture, perhaps, but enough to get him thinkingdifferently.You’re an American expatriate working in Buenos Aires. Youhave a 10:00 A.M. appointment with the Argentinian man-ager of a local public relations firm, and it’s now 10:30. Thereceptionist tells you the person you’ve come to see is meet-ing with someone else. You wait another half an hour, dur-ing which time another person (who has the next appoint-ment?) arrives. At 11:00 the manager emerges from his of-fice to greet you. To your amazement, he neither acknowl-edges nor apologizes for making you wait an hour. You findthis behavior extremely rude and are furious with him.To begin with, the American might have noticed that the recep-tionist did not seem at all concerned when her boss did not emergefrom his office on time to greet his guest. He might have noticedthat she was not looking at her watch and, furthermore, that shedid not take the initiative to apologize for her boss or otherwisereassure the American that it would not be much longer. If therewas something wrong here, something the American should havebeen reacting to, surely the receptionist would have been agitated
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES80as well. Moreover, when the person with the next appointmentarrived, the appointment after the American’s, the American mightalso have noticed that this person did not seem concerned thatthe schedule was apparently backed up, that the receptionist againoffered no explanation or apology, and that the new arrival wasn’tglancing at her watch or otherwise acting inconvenienced. Finally,the American might have noticed that when the Argentinian dideventually emerge from his office, he offered no apology or expla-nation to either of the two people waiting for him.As noted above, the American misses many of these thingsbecause he is in fact too upset to see them. If observation is towork for the American, he has to first stop reacting emotionally tocultural incidents and learn to observe his reactions to them asthose reactions arise. He can then cut those emotions off and, inthe calm that follows, truly observe what’s happening around him.He will still miss some things, incidentally (see below for details),but he will at least be on his way toward more objective observa-tion.“To have your eyes widened and your organ of beliefstretched,” Philip Glazebrook has written,whilst remaining discreetly submissive, seems to me a fac-ulty the tourist ought to cultivate…. When you have sub-mitted to looking about you discreetly and to observing withas little prejudice as possible, then you are in a proper stateof mind to walk about and learn from what you see. (1984,181–82)Some Problems with SeeingObservation across cultures is notoriously difficult for another rea-son: there’s a great deal you will be unable to see, whether or notyou’re in the proper state to observe. The trouble is that you willnot be able to see anything that does not constitute meaningfulbehaviorin your own culture. You must remember in this context
THE PROBLEM SOLVED81that it is not the eyes that see but the mind. The eyes merelyconvey images to the mind, which then interprets and confersmeaning on those images it recognizes, things it has “seen” be-fore, and confers no meaning on—and therefore does not see—anything it does not recognize. In some cultures, for example,pulling on the earlobe is a gesture that warns other people thatthe person speaking cannot be trusted. If you come from such aculture, this action constitutes meaningful behavior, and you wouldbe capable of seeing it. But if you do not come from a culturewhere pulling on an earlobe has meaning, then the gesture doesn’tconstitute behavior and you wouldn’t be able to see it and, hence,learn from it. Would you understand, watching a Hindu friendarrange his bedroll, that he was trying to position himself so asnot to be pointing his feet at anyone’s head (instead of trying toget near the window or away from the door)? “He knew nothingyet well enough to see it,” C. S. Lewis writes of one of his charac-ters in Out of the Silent Planet;“[Y]ou cannot see things until youknow roughly what they are” (1965, 41–42). Edmund Taylor ob-serves,It is one of my regrets that I have not yet learned to see anIndian village or a bazaar; my eyes aren’t trained, and Icouldn’t describe one to save my life. I love them and amendlessly fascinated; but all I can make out is a wild surre-alist confusion of men and animals and many kinds of in-animate objects, arranged in completely implausible pat-terns. (1964, 67)How much of the following would you see at a tea shop alongthe trail in the Himalayas if you didn’t already know what washappening? Would you notice that your porter, from a low caste,doesn’t actually enter under the roof of the shop but sits justoutside (because low caste people aren’t allowed inside the build-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES82ing)? Would you notice that the lady handing out the tea lets youtake your cup from her hand but sets the porter’s on the ground infront of him (lest her hands touch those of a low caste person)?Would you notice that she cleans your cup herself but pours waterinto his, lets him rinse it out once and set it on the ground, thenpours more water in and rinses it out a second time herself? Wouldyou notice, handing your porter a box of matches, that he doesn’ttake them from you but cups his hands to receive them? Most ofthese actions would have no meaning for you and would thus beimperceptible. “It is a repeated finding,” Edward Stewart notes,“that perceptual responses are influenced by the individual’s ex-pectations. To an extent not usually recognized, perception re-sides in the perceiver, not in the external world” (1972, 15).Another limitation of cross-cultural observation is that you willoften misinterpret what you see. There are many behaviors thatmean something both in your own and in the local culture, but notthe same thing. Because these behaviors mean something in yourculture, you will be able to see them when they are exhibited bysomeone in the local culture, but you will most likely assign theman incorrect meaning. In India, for example, shaking one’s headfrom side to side, which means no in many Western cultures, meansyes. In the South Pacific, belching after a meal (rude in the West) ishow people express appreciation of the food. In the Middle East,men who are good friends (and nothing more) walk hand in hand inthe street. Clearly, what you “learn” from this kind of observationhas limited value and can be quite misleading.As a means of learning about another culture, of gathering theinformation that will form the basis of accurate expectations aboutthe local people, observation clearly has its limitations. By itselfthen, observation is not an entirely reliable source of cultural knowl-edge, but if it is used critically and in conjunction with the othertwo sources mentioned earlier in this chapter, talking to the locals
THE PROBLEM SOLVED83and studying about the culture, it is a perfectly respectable tech-nique for learning.Two Other Methods for Gathering InformationTalking to the local people would seem to be the surest way tolearn about their culture; when you want to know something, goto the experts. And this is by and large the case, especially if whatyou seek is the kind of information we’ve been talking about here,the specifics of what the local people will do in various situations.But if you want to know more, and especially if you want to knowwhy they act the way they do (we’ll see in a moment why this isimportant), then the local people can only get you so far. Whilethey generally know what they would do in most common situa-tions, the local people are often among the last to know why theybehave that way. After all, the people from a culture are the leastlikely to have ever observed or thought about their actions. They’vehad very little occasion to, for one thing, and no ready vantagepoint for another. Only if they have lived outside their culturewould they have had the opportunity of actually seeing it (asevery expat can attest).The third way to learn about the local culture is to study it,through reading or perhaps through a class or intercultural train-ing program. In these contexts you will learn not only how thelocals behave in various situations—and be able to adjust yourexpectations accordingly—but also why they do these things, thebasic values, beliefs, and assumptions that lie behind people’s be-havior and ultimately explain it.These, then, are the three common ways to learn about thelocal culture: observation, conversation, and study. And you needto remember that it is learning about the local culture that makespossible the final step in the process of becoming culturally effec-tive: expecting the local people to behave like themselves. In prac-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES84tice you will typically combine all three methods to educate your-self about the locals, using information from one source to verifyor complement information you have learned from another. It iswise, in fact, to check all cultural information in this manner andnot accept any one source as being definitive. Whether it’s yourown observation, the views of a local person, or information froma book or workshop, keep in mind that all sources are to somedegree subjective.Completing the ModelWe are ready now to complete the model of intercultural interac-tion we have been building over the last four chapters. Assumingyou plan to follow the advice in this chapter, we can now removethe step of cultural avoidance and adjust the graphic accordingly.The process of becoming culturally effective, from beginning toend, now looks something like the model on page 85.Models like this make a tidy, irresistible package, but they arenecessarily simplistic. These are the steps a person goes through inbecoming culturally effective, but the actual experience is some-what messier. While the general trend is certainly in the directionindicated, the process proceeds in fits and starts. It’s not likely, forexample, that one day you will be expecting your Italian accoun-tant to behave like you, and the next day, because you read some-thing somewhere, you’ll be expecting him to behave like an Italian.The actual process whereby an expat replaces incorrect, eth-nocentric expectations with culturally appropriate ones is slowand gradual. What usually happens is that as you learn variousbits about Italian culture, you gradually begin to have accurateexpectations in some situations (those you are in the most often),but you will continue to have the wrong expectations in othersituations. Moreover, if for some reason you are not in a certainsituation for an extended period, you may forget what you learned
THE PROBLEM SOLVED85and revert to ethnocentric expectations the next time you are in asimilar situation. Generally speaking, you will become more effec-tive at those cultural interactions in which you are involved re-peatedly and still be reacting to situations with which you areunfamiliar.Thus, a cultural incident occurs.We expect other people to behave like we do, but they don’t.We react (with anger, worry, etc.).And there are fewer cultural incidents.We become aware of these reactions We are thus motivated to learn about the local cultureand begin to expect the local people to behave like themselves.and realize it is our own behavior(expecting cultural sameness) that causes cultural incidents.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES86But you are now firmly on the path to cultural effectiveness.As your knowledge increases, you will experience fewer incidents.The fewer the incidents, the less inclined you will be to avoid thelocal people. The more you interact with the local people, themore your knowledge will increase.Preventing Type II IncidentsLearning about the local culture is also the solution to Type IIincidents (wherein it is your behavior that upsets the locals). Asyou learn how the local people behave in various situations, youare perforce learning how they expect other people (including you)to behave in those situations. If you know what’s expected of youand if you are willing and able to behave accordingly, then youwill no longer commit Type II incidents.As seen and experienced from the local point of view, the modelof cross-cultural interaction would now be greatly modified andlook something like this:Many expats try to keep from committing Type II errors by readingbooks on local manners and customs, studying what’s usually re-ferred to as the do’s and don’ts of the local culture (and muchcross-cultural training also includes such lists). This informationWe behave the way the local people expect.The local people expect us to behave like they do. And there are fewer cultural incidents.
THE PROBLEM SOLVED87can indeed save you from embarrassing moments and more seriousfaux pas, but it should not be the only arrow in your quiver. Listsof do’s and don’ts can’t cover all contingencies, of course, and tendto greatly oversimplify cross-cultural effectiveness. And this sim-plicity is, of course, what makes lists so appealing. By all meansconsult such books, and then go on to other sources to deepenyour understanding of underlying cultural values and beliefs.“It is appropriate,” Edward Stewart and Milton Bennett havewritten in the second edition of American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,to consider the possibility of providing Americans goingabroad, or foreigners in the United States, with a list of dosand don’ts. Why not tell Americans never to point their feetat a person in Thailand, not to pat a child on the head inLaos, always to use polite and flowery expressions in SaudiArabia, and not to expect punctuality in Guatemala? In shortit should be possible to draw up a list of behaviors rangingfrom those that are desirable to those that are taboo. Thisapproach is misleading for two major reasons.The evaluation of behavior as desirable or taboo pur-sues the elusive goal of objectivity. Behavior is concrete butambiguous: the same action may have different meaningsin different situations, so it is necessary to identify the con-text of behavior and the contingencies of action before so-journers can be armed with prescriptions for specific acts.Fulfillment of this strategy is impossible since the enumera-tion of possible events is [unlimited]. (1991, 15)You may think the local people will tell you when you have madea faux pas and imagine that this is how you will avoid committingType II incidents. But this isn’t likely. For one thing, locals willassume you understand their culture (the ethnocentric impulse)and that you are knowingly behaving badly. Even if they think
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES88you don’t understand their culture, they’re not likely to embarrassyou by pointing out that people in their country never do whatyou’ve just done (anymore than you would embarrass an expat inyour own country in this manner). It may not seem fair, but theonus of learning how to behave in the local culture falls squarelyon the guest, not on the host.ComplicationsThe solution to dealing with cultural incidents described in thesepages works in the vast majority of cases, but it does not work inall. Expecting the locals to behave the way they do does take thesting out of most cross-cultural encounters, but there are instanceswhen knowing what the locals are going to do is not enough toprevent you from reacting. In some cases, in other words, theproblem with a cultural incident is that it’s unacceptable. In theselatter cases, knowing the behavior is coming does very little toprevent an emotional reaction.The behavior of people in other cultures tends to fall intothree broad categories. There are many things the locals do thatyou admire and may even adopt for yourself, none of which, need-less to say, provoke a cultural incident. There are many other localbehaviors that are not what you would do in that situation butthat you can nevertheless learn to live with. These are the behav-iors that often lead to cultural incidents and that respond best tothe technique outlined in these pages. A key characteristic of thesebehaviors is that by and large they do not have an ethical or moraldimension at odds with your own; that is, the shock these behav-iors produce, the reason they cause an emotional reaction, is be-cause they are abnormal, not because they are immoral. While itmay be annoying for an Argentinian businessman not to apologizefor keeping an American businessman waiting, it’s certainly notunethical or immoral. And the same goes for Germans who keep
THE PROBLEM SOLVED89their doors closed, for Indian software programmers who say they’veunderstood your instructions when they have not, or for your Frenchfriend who neglects to introduce you to one of her friends on thestreet. (See the list of Type I incidents in chapter 2 for otherexamples.)The third category of local behavior can be much more trou-bling. These are behaviors that violate (or at least seem to violate)values so fundamental to your identity and sense of self-esteemthat you must reject them. Whether expected or not, these behav-iors always create a cultural incident, and usually a serious one.These behaviors will upset you from the day you arrive in the hostcountry to the day you leave, no matter how much you learn aboutthe culture in the meantime. You may get used to them and learnto expect them but you will never fail to react to them, albeit lessover time, and you will never approve of them. (Be aware, by theway, that certain of your own behaviors no doubt fall into thissame category as far as the locals are concerned.)Behavior in this third category can be further subdivided intotwo types, and it is important not to confuse them. One type isincidents that appear to violate your sense of right and wrong butthat upon further analysis do not, and the other type is incidentsthat genuinely violate your moral principles. The latter deservetheir status as intractable cultural incidents, but the former standwrongly accused. Let’s take the example of the Indian program-mers from chapter 2:You’re a European software engineer managing a team ofIndian programmers in charge of developing and testing animportant new application. You have an imminent deadlineand have just explained to your team how to fix a new bugthat has been detected. When you ask the team if they haveunderstood your explanation, they say yes and return totheir cubicles. The next day, when you check on them, they
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES90have made no progress whatsoever, and it turns out theydid not understand your explanation. You’ve lost twenty-four hours you can’t afford to lose and are not happy.At first glance it appears the Indian programmers have lied to you;they said they understood your explanation when they did not. Ifthis happens to be behavior you find unacceptable, then you won’tbe able to solve this incident simply by learning to expect Indiansto deceive you in the future. But if you take the time or otherwisehave the opportunity to learn more about this particular behavior,you may find that it’s not really lying in the Indians’ context, andtherefore not offensive after all. The first thing you might learn isthat yes can mean something very different to Indians than itdoes to you, that it is not necessarily an affirmation or indicationof agreement but merely a polite, ritualistic response to most ques-tions. You might learn further that in Indian culture to say youhave not understood an explanation reflects badly on the persondoing the explaining (that would be you) and causes him or her tolose face, especially if that person is an authority figure. Finally,you may find (as is the case with many Indians) that subordinatesare often very nervous about taking too much of a manager’s timeand will not want to ask for clarification if they haven’t under-stood something. Bosses are supposed to know this, of course, andare expected to follow up any explanations by coming by the work-station a short time later to see if people are performing as in-structed. If they are not, the boss should offer another explana-tion. But it’s not up to subordinates to ask.If your inquiries yield this kind of cultural information, youwill probably be inclined to revise your conclusion that the Indi-ans were lying to you and be able to accept this behavior the nexttime around. In this particular case, then, behavior that appearedto offend your sense of right and wrong turned out, after you had
THE PROBLEM SOLVED91acquired more cultural knowledge, not to be that offensive afterall, turned out, in other words, not to be a true cultural incident.Unacceptable BehaviorsBut cultural knowledge will not always be able to “explain away”the behavior of the local people and thereby neutralize culturalincidents. There will be some cases where even when you knowwhy the local people are behaving the way they are—when youcan see, for example, that while their behavior is offensive or shock-ing to you, it would not be so to them—even in such cases youmay still be upset and offended by their actions. These cases willnot respond to any amount of cultural explanation and will alwayscreate a Type I cultural incident.Let’s take the example of our English friend in the bakery inCairo. The reader may remember that the hapless Claire retreatedto the peace and quite of a Cairo bakery to lick her wounds after abusy morning of cultural incidents, only to become victim to onemore incident when two male customers began to harass her. Thereis, of course, an explanation for this, as Fatima Mernissi observesin the following passage from Beyond the Veil:Moslem sexuality is a territorial one, a sexuality whose regu-latory mechanisms consist primarily of a strict allocation ofspace to each sex and an elaborate ritual for resolving thecontradictions arising from the inevitable interferences be-tween spaces. Apart from the ritualized trespasses of womeninto public spaces which are, by definition, male spaces,there are no accepted patterns for interactions between un-related men and women….Women using public spaces, trespassing on the maleuniverse, are restricted to a few occasions and bound byspecific rituals such as the wearing of the veil…. The veilmeans that the woman is present in the men’s world, butinvisible; she has no right to be in the street.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES92Women in male spaces are considered provocative andoffensive. If [a woman] enters [a male space], she is upset-ting the male’s order and his peace of mind. She is actuallycommitting an act of aggression against him merely by be-ing present where she should not be.The male’s…logical response to an exhibitionisticassault…consists of pursuing the woman…pinching her ifthe occasion is propitious, eventually assaulting her verbally;all in the hope of convincing her to carry out her exhibition-istic propositioning to its implied end. (1975, 81–86)The question is not whether there’s a logic for any particular be-havior within a culture—there’salways a logic or why else wouldpeople behave that way?—but whether or not Claire can be per-suaded by that logic. She may decide the Moslem view of sexualityis quite reasonable and not react the next time she is harassed ina bakery, or, more likely, decide not to frequent bakeries alone. Orshe may decide that there is something fundamentally offensiveabout the fact that “public spaces…are by definition male spaces”and continue to find this behavior upsetting whenever she en-counters it. For Claire, this would be an example of local behaviorthat is not going to be justified by any amount of cultural infor-mation and that will accordingly continue to be a cultural inci-dent for her as long as she remains in Cairo.The problem of unacceptable behaviors applies equally to TypeII situations. Some of those same local behaviors you can’t bringyourself to accept are, of course, behaviors the local people willexpect of you. Needless to say, if you don’t approve of these thingswhen the locals do them, you’re not about to do them yourself,even if that does mean committing a Type II incident. Many expatsstruggle mightily with this issue, for they know the more theyconform to local norms, the more successful and effective theycan be in their assignments. In some cases, they don’t realize why
THE PROBLEM SOLVED93they can’t behave in a certain way, and they blame themselves forwhat they perceive as personal inadequacy. This dilemma is espe-cially acute in organizations that value and strongly encouragetheir members to be as culturally sensitive as possible.In some of these dilemmas, there’s a perfectly honorable solu-tion. You can explain to the local people that, even though youknow what’s expected of you, what’s normally done in such andsuch a situation, for “personal reasons” you are unable to comply.This allows you to demonstrate that you are a culturally sensitivesort—you’re not behaving inappropriately because you don’t knowany better—and at the same time to avoid having to engage in thebehavior that offends you. Moreover, it shifts the blame from thehost culture to you (personal reasons). The local people can easilyidentify with the concept of personal reasons—we’ve all had themin one instance or another—and forgive you for them.In the Final AnalysisIn the end, expats should not hesitate to draw the line when itcomes to certain local behaviors, to admit that there will be thingsabout the local culture that they will never be able to accept.While they should be careful not to consign behaviors to the unac-ceptable category prematurely, if they have truly understood whythe local people behave as they do in a given situation and stillcannot bring themselves to accept that behavior, then so be it.Expats should never try to force themselves to accept behaviorsthat violate their fundamental values; cultural effectiveness shouldnot—and ultimately cannot—be purchased at the expense of one’sself-respect. Expats must at times strive to transcend their cul-tural conditioning, but they must also beware of trying to altertheir personalities. If they genuinely respect the local culture,they must permit themselves to be appalled by it. “When you comeacross an alien culture,” one observer has noted, “you must not
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES94automatically respect it. You must sometimes pay it the compli-ment of hating it” (Mantel 1987, 26).The message of this book is not that you must uncriticallyembrace all local behavior no matter how strange or offensive butonly that you should not reject behaviors before you have under-stood them. In other words, always try to understand before youjudge, but once you have understood, you must judge. Otherwise,you risk compromising your own identity.This is a tricky business, as many observers have remarked.“To live in India,” the novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has observed,and be at peace, one must to a very considerable extentbecome Indian and adopt Indian attitudes, habits, beliefs,assume, if possible, an Indian personality. But how is thispossible? And even if it were possible—without cheatingoneself—would it be desirable? Should one try to becomesomething other than what one is? (1987, 21)T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia), culture-crosser extraordinaire, disap-peared into Bedouin culture, the better, he thought, to achievehis mission. And achieve it he did, but at a cost he later came toquestion.“In my case,” he wrote,the efforts for three years to live in the dress of Arabs, andto imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my En-glish self and let me look at the West and its conventionswith new eyes. They destroyed it all for me. At the sametime I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin; it was anaffectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, buthardly might he be converted to another faith…. Sometimesthese selves would converse in the void; and then madnesswas very near, as I believe it would be near the man whocould see things through the veils at once of two customs,two educations, two environments. (1939, 30)
THE PROBLEM SOLVED95Becoming culturally effective does not mean becoming a local; itmeans trying to see the world the way the locals do and trying toimagine how they see you. If you can do that, you will have doneall that’s necessary to function effectively overseas. You will stillencounter cultural incidents, though far fewer than someone whohas not made this effort, but you will have earned the right to beoffended. “The art of travel,” Freya Stark wrote, “and perhaps oflife, is to know when to give way and when not to” (1988, 183).So too the art of crossing cultures.
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976Language LessonsWhen the tower of Babel fellIt caused a lot of unnecessary Hell.Personal rapportBecame a complicated boreAnd a lot more difficult than it had been before,When the tower of Babel fell.—Noel CowardCollected LyricsOne of the greatest allies the expat has in the quest to becomeculturally adept is the ability to speak the local language. Lan-guage learning is not one of the steps in our model of culturaleffectiveness—it is not an essential skill for crossing cultures—but all other things being equal, it can be a tremendous asset.Speaking the language doesn’t guarantee you will be effectiveabroad—it’s as easy to be a bilingual boor as a monolingual one—any more than not speaking it guarantees you won’t. But of all thevariables that influence the process of crossing cultures, speakingthe local language can make the most difference, which is how itcomes to have its own brief chapter in this book.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES98Practically SpeakingSpeaking the local language works wonders on what we’ve calledcountry shock, that series of adjustments to the country, the com-munity, and the job described in chapter 1. Knowing the languageto even a limited degree doesn’t mean you won’t have the samebewildering number of things to learn about and get used to in thenew country, but imagine how much easier it will be to learn themif you can talk to and understand the local people. Nor should weforget that both the pace and stress of country shock directlyaffect how well and quickly you will adjust to the culture; any-thing that abets the former abets the latter.Knowing the language can also have a direct impact on pre-venting cultural incidents. Just by virtue of understanding what’sbeing said around you, you can better understand cross-culturalencounters. If you can speak the language, you can question amuch broader range of people about the culture, often gettingmore valuable information than you do from the educated elitesyou must rely on if you don’t know the language. Needless to say,whatever helps prevent cultural incidents, whether Type I or TypeII, virtually guarantees greater effectiveness both on and off thejob.Because language is one of the principle means through whichyou can manipulate and control your environment and therebyenjoy a sense of well-being and security, the lack of language, notsurprisingly, is one of the main reasons for feeling so helpless andvulnerable during the first few months abroad. There is the ever-present possibility that you may suddenly find yourself in situa-tions where you can’t make yourself understood, where, for wantof being able to express your needs, you leave the situation withthose needs unmet. Who hasn’t had the experience of going to ashop and leaving without getting what you wanted for lack ofbeing able to describe it or spot it on the shelf? And how much
LANGUAGE LESSONS99more serious is the issue if it is medicine you need, if you’re lost,or if there’s been an accident and you need help?Invidious ComparisonsIt’s not much fun, as Edward Gibbon recalled in his Memoirs.When I was thus suddenly cast on foreign land I found my-self deprived of the use of speech and hearing; and, duringsome weeks, incapable not only of enjoying the pleasures ofconversation, but even of asking or answering a question inthe common intercourse of life…. From a man I was againdegraded to the dependence of a schoolboy…and helplessand awkward as I have ever been. My condition seemed asdestitute of hope as it was devoid of pleasure. (Massinghamand Massingham 1984, 15)Clearly, feeling like a schoolboy does little to boost an expat’s self-esteem and self-confidence, two more casualties of being unableto speak the local language. Average, articulate adults, capable inso many other ways, who are suddenly transformed into virtualmutes, who can only nod and smile foolishly when addressed bywell-intentioned, monolingual locals, find the experience demean-ing. For all their competence, they feel—and in a sense, are—inferior to the three-year-old neighbor child who may still wet hispants but at least knows how to count to ten. It’s an open ques-tion who might fare better in a tight spot.InLiving Poor, his classic book about the Peace Corps, MoritzThomsen captures the feeling exactly:On this trip to Machala…I made my first close emotionalcontact with a national…a man of about forty with a foxylittle black moustache and quick, black buttonhole eyes. Therewas no place for him to sit on the bus, so he squatted in theaisle, put his head in my lap, and quietly passed out…. He
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES100awoke suddenly, after one particularly spectacularbump…and found himself staring into the face of a gringo.He was thunderstruck…it was obvious he loved gringos.He began to pat my head. And he began to talk. He talked atorrent of Spanish, but I could scarcely understand perfectCastilian…let alone the coastal patois…well mixed with sleepand alcohol. I couldn’t understand a word he said, not onesingle word, and I had to sit there…smiling like a dummy,surreptitiously wiping off the flecks of spit that he enthusi-astically directed at my face. The other passengers werewatching me with expressions of increasing pity as it dawnedon them, one by one, that the gringo was a half-wit. Myfriend finally realized it too and gazed at me with a baffledlook on his face…. To tell you the truth, for about threehours on that wild plunge to the coastal tropics, this wasexactly how I saw myself. (1989a, 23–24)Reeling from incidents such as these, you will want to run away,illustrating another unfortunate consequence of not knowing thelanguage: the necessity, or at least the tendency, to spend moreand more time with your compatriots in the foreign colony. Wholikes to be reminded of their ineptitude or to be compared unfa-vorably to a three-year-old? Ego bruised, your pride under siege,you crave the reassurance of the foreign community where youcan once again be the master of the situation. There’s no harmdone, of course, as long as you can sally forth once your woundshave healed, but that’s just it: it’s very tempting not to. And thenthe entire dynamic, as noted in chapter 3, becomes self-sustain-ing; not speaking the language, insecure, you retreat into the ex-patriate subculture where—is it any surprise?—your command ofthe local language does not notably improve.
LANGUAGE LESSONS101Deeper MeaningsAnother dividend of knowing the language is the insight it offersinto the culture; you can’t learn the language of a people withoutalso learning the “grammar” and “vocabulary” of their worldview.The student of Arabic, for example, learns that “God willing”(N’sha’llah) is automatically added to any statement about thefuture (just as “thanks be to God” accompanies any reference tofortunate events of the past), that many common given names—Abdullah, Abdelsalam, Abdelwahid—translate as slave (abd)ofGod, appreciating, as a consequence, the essential fatalism of Arabculture. Similarly, the student of Nepali, struggling to sort out themyriad nouns for family members—there are four words for uncle,denoting whether the man in question is the brother of one’s fa-ther or mother and whether he is older or younger than said par-ent—readily appreciates the importance of the family in Nepalisociety and may even intuit the relative insignificance of the indi-vidual. Language is not simply how people speak; it is who theyare.On a deeper level, if you can’t communicate your ideas andopinions to people, how can they know who you are? And if youcan’t understand others, how can you know them? You can stillinteract with these people—they may know a little of your lan-guage and you a little of theirs—and relate in other ways, butthese relationships must necessarily be superficial. Not truly know-ing others, not feeling you are known by them, you feel alone andisolated.“What I find trying in a country which you do not under-stand and where you cannot speak,” Freya Stark has observed, “isthat you can never be yourself. You are English, or Christian, orProtestant, or anything but your individual you…” (1988, 4).There is another kind of isolation many expats also feel. Lan-guage is the primary means of self-expression; when we don’t havelanguage, the self does not get expressed. When the self can no
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES102longer be expressed, does it still exist? There is a loneliness expatsfeel that has nothing to do with being away from family and friendsor not having friends in the new country; they feel estranged fromthemselves. “Because I speak no Portuguese,” Moritz Thomsen wroteof a trip through Brazil, “and have chosen to move through thoseparts of [Rio de Janeiro] where tourists do not go, I find after afew days of not speaking that I have begun to doubt my ownexistence” (1989b, 3).Perhaps the most compelling reason to learn the language ofanother land is the largely symbolic significance of the act of com-munication. Implicit in that act, after all, is the acknowledgmentof the humanity and worth of the other person, especially whenone is speaking in a language other than one’s own. Anyone whohas ever learned another language knows the effort involved andappreciates it, therefore, when a foreigner has gone to the troubleto learn their language. In the end, what matters is not what wesay when we speak Russian or Chinese, but what the effort tospeak Russian or Chinese says about us. “Learning a native lan-guage,” Charles Allen has observed, “was perhaps the best thingthat ever happened to people who went out to India, and thosewho failed to do so remained forever at a distance from the landand its people” (1984, 75).This is all well and good, you may be saying, but I’m only herefor two years and it will take me that long just to achieve basiccompetence, and that would only be if I had the time for languageclasses, which I don’t. This is certainly a valid point, but it over-looks the fact that you can begin to enjoy most of the benefits ofspeaking the local language long before you become proficient,almost immediately in fact. You start to feel less vulnerable, forexample, as soon as you master a few basic phrases and make yourfirst purchase or the first time you successfully ask for and under-stand directions. You start learning about the culture as soon as
LANGUAGE LESSONS103you begin your language study, and you don’t have to be fluentfor people to appreciate the effort you’re making to talk to them(especially if your native tongue is one of the “world” languages,such as English, Spanish or French). And you can always startstudying the language before you arrive overseas. In any event,when considering whether or not to study the language, remem-ber that proficiency is neither the only nor the most importantcriterion.
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1057The PayoffFather, Mother, and Me,Sister and Auntie sayAll the people like us are We,And everyone else is They.And They live over the seaWhile we live over the way,But—would you believe it?—They look upon WeAs only a sort of They!We eat pork and beefWith cow-horn-handled knives.They who gobble Their rice off a leafAre horrified out of Their lives;While They who live up a tree,Feast on grubs and clay,(Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon WeAs a simply disgusting They!We eat kitcheny food.We have doors that latch.They drink milk and bloodUnder an open thatch. We have doctors to fee.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES106They have wizards to pay.And (impudent heathen!) They look upon WeAs a quite impossible They!All good people agree,And all good people say,All nice people, like us, are WeAnd everyone else is They:But if you cross over the sea,Instead of over the way,You may end by (think of it!) looking on WeAs only a sort of They!—Rudyard Kipling“We and They”Cultural effectiveness comes at the cost of vigilance and sustainedeffort. It requires that you keep a close watch over how you spendyour time, that you resist the natural temptation to seek out thefamiliar and the comfortable, that you train yourself to monitoryour emotional states, and, finally, that you try not to judge thelocal people before you have understood them. If all this sounds atad superhuman—and parts of it do seem to fly in the face ofhuman nature—try to remember that there isn’t any real alterna-tive. If you’re going to be truly successful in an overseas assign-ment, then you have to become culturally effective. Many expatsdo not, of course, settling for being somewhat or occasionally orslightly effective—as if that cost was somehow less dear.So your task may be daunting, but as with any challenge worthtaking up, the rewards are commensurate with the effort. Justwhat those rewards are is the subject of this final chapter.Getting the Job DoneThe most obvious reward for being culturally effective is that it
THE PAYOFF107greatly increases your chances of accomplishing whatever objec-tives you had in going abroad, both for yourself and for your orga-nization. No one likes to fail, especially not in an undertaking ofthis magnitude, in which you invest months and years of yourtime and energy (and that of your family). Your company or orga-nization doesn’t want you to fail either, of course, having alsoinvested considerably in your assignment.Successful expats add great value to their organizations, notonly in discharging their responsibilities and completing their mis-sion overseas, but also in the form of greatly enhanced skills andknowledge the company can use, whether at headquarters or inother locations. In addition, successful expats are a great adver-tisement for global companies having trouble recruiting for over-seas assignments (just as early returnees are the worst kind ofpublicity). In a recent survey of 264 global corporations, two-thirdsof the respondents cited finding qualified candidates as the mostcritical challenge to their international operations (Windham 1999,24).Another advantage of being culturally aware is that the betteryou understand the local culture, the harder it is for the locals tohide behind it. The Filipino marketing director who doesn’t wantthe bother of developing a new advertising campaign can alwaysfind a cultural explanation for why the suggested new approachwon’t work. And who are you, even if you suspect a trick, to callthe Filipino’s bluff? If you have adapted, however, if you know theculture and therefore can see the director’s game, you can makeshort work of it. Indeed, if the marketing director is perceptive orknows you well, she won’t waste her time trying to fool you in thefirst place.In this context it is interesting to note that the Japanese,unlike most peoples, do not always appreciate it when a foreignerspeaks their language well. Part of the reason for this is that flu-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES108ency in the language allows the foreigner to penetrate the publicpersona the Japanese so carefully cultivate and come to know theindividual personality beneath. This in turn cancels the naturaladvantage the notoriously formal Japanese have in dealing withoutsiders, particularly Westerners, who wear their thoughts andfeelings on their sleeves. It is possible that the Japanese record ofsuccess in business is as much a function of their infamous inscru-tability as it is their way with lasers and microchips.A related advantage here is that if it is known that you knowthe culture, then any changes or improvements you need or wantto make in local operations will be taken much more seriously bythe indigenous workforce. Expats and their bosses back home arealways looking for ways to add value and improve performance. Iflocal employees know you understand the local reality and cul-ture, they will be much more likely to give your schemes a fairtrial. If they think you don’t, they’ll have little faith in your deci-sions and will spend most of their time trying to quietly distancethemselves as much as possible from the imminent failure of thelatest best practice.Put yourself in the shoes of the locals. You’re the head of pub-lic relations or new product development in New York or London.You get a new boss, from Germany, let’s say, who’s never lived inyour country, speaks very ungrammatical English, makes culturalmistakes right and left, and has never quite got the hang of pro-nouncing your name. And she proposes a bold new scheme. Whatwould yourreaction be?Being Yourself and Distinguishing theIndividual from the CultureAnother consequence of being culturally effective is the sense ofsecurity it allows you to feel. Ignorance is the breeding ground of
THE PAYOFF109fear and anxiety. Not knowing what the locals will do or how theywill react to what you do next produces a constant tension andfeeling of unease. You can never be altogether confident or com-fortable, never free of the almost palpable suspicion that what youdon’t know can indeed hurt you.On a related note, the process of coming to know the localculture frees you to relax and be yourself again. Not knowing whichof your behaviors may be culturally acceptable and which maynot, and knowing, furthermore, that your behavior reflects notonly on you but also on your organization, you may err on theside of caution in your interactions with the local people, tiptoe-ing your way through intercultural situations in a state ofsemiparalysis. You closely monitor your behavior and your speech,alert to signs that anything you’ve done might have caused of-fense. It’s the “walking-on-eggshells” syndrome, and it’s exhaust-ing. Indeed, the strain prompts many expats to limit discretionarycontact with the local people so they can recover between out-ings.Once you begin to understand the culture, however, and learnwhat is appropriate and what is not, you can release your grip onyour instincts and let your personality loose. In a word, you canrelax. The relief you feel is enormous, and the local people, notincidentally, find it much easier to be with you.The locals undergo a similar metamorphosis once you begin tounderstand their culture: that is, they too become themselves.They have been themselves all along, of course, but not to you.Until you know the local culture reasonably well, you can never besure, in your dealings with individuals, which behaviors of theirsare mandated by the culture and which are peculiar to them asindividuals. If a colleague is hurt when you fail to remember herbirthday, is it because the culture sets great store by birthdaysand personal relationships in general (and you’d better not forget
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES110those of your other colleagues either) or is it merely that Rosita isparticularly sensitive on this subject—a useful piece of informa-tion if it’s true? When you shout at a merchant who won’t takeback a defective lamp, are you being boorish by reacting to anaccepted cultural practice or is the man in fact a cheat, someonethe locals would also shout at and whom you’d be foolish to in-dulge? Until you know the culture, you can never be sure.But once you do, your experience abroad is radically trans-formed. You can now separate the individual from his or her cul-ture or, more accurately, distinguish individuals within the cul-ture. Suddenly, everyone has a distinctive personality; you like—or, rather, you are free to like—certain people and not others. Andyou understand that you must treat Horst in one manner and Klausin another. You can begin to have personal relationships with peopleor have more, or sometimes less, confidence in those relationshipsyou may already have established. And as the people you knoware revealed more clearly to you, you in turn are comfortable inrevealing more of yourself to them.Seeing the World AnewAnother great boon of becoming culturally effective is the abilityto see the world from a new perspective. As you learn about thelocal culture, and especially as you learn the beliefs and valuesbehind various local norms, you begin to see the world from thatpoint of view. This doesn’t mean you abandon your own viewpoint(though you may make some adjustments) but only that you arenow able to see the same behaviors and attitudes from more thanone perspective. You begin to understand that behavior that makesno sense to you might make perfect sense to others. And viceversa. You’re not so quick to judge anymore, or at least to judgequite so harshly. You begin to think more seriously about, even totolerate, opinions and actions you would have dismissed before.
THE PAYOFF111You give the benefit of the doubt where previously you wouldhave had no doubt whatsoever. You add to who you are. AldousHuxley wrote,So the journey is over and I am back again where I started,richer by much experience and poorer by many explodedconvictions, many perished certainties. For convictions andcertainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance. Thosewho like to feel they are always right and who attach a highimportance to their own opinions should stay at home. Whenone is travelling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spec-tacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not easily replaced.(1985, 206–07)The ability to see situations, problems, practices—the way we dothings—from multiple perspectives, from the way other people seethings, is a tremendous benefit to you and to your company whenyou go back home. Whatever the question or circumstances, youcan always see alternatives to the standard response. Thinkingoutside the box, changing paradigms, reinventing the organiza-tion—overseas, you do it every day.It is not only the specific ways expats change that are of suchbenefit to them, but also the realization that they are capable ofchanging in such significant ways. If people know they can change,that they’re survivors, then the world becomes a much less formi-dable place. Expats who bounce back again and again from thechallenges and frustrations of living overseas can be forgiven forthinking they can handle whatever life throws at them.Discovering Your Own CultureAnother benefit of learning about a foreign culture is that in theprocess we learn a great deal about our own. At home we are rarelyprompted to reflect on our cultural selves; we are too busy mani-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES112festing our behavior to examine it, and even if we were thus in-clined, what would we use as our vantage point? Once we encoun-ter another frame of reference, however, we begin to see what wenever could before. When we notice the unusual behavior of aforeigner, we are at that moment noticing our own behavior aswell. We only notice a difference (something unusual) in referenceto a norm or standard (the usual) and that norm we refer to isinvariably our own behavior. Thus it is that through daily contactwith the customs and habits of people from a foreign culture, ourattention is repeatedly focused on our own customs and habits,that in encountering another culture, we simultaneously and forthe first time encounter our own.It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the average expatri-ate, even the average tourist, returns from a stay abroad knowingmore about his or her own country than about the one just vis-ited. As T. S. Eliot wrote in a famous passage in Four Quartets,We shall not cease from exploration,And the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time. (1962, 145)Lawrence Durrell felt the same: “Journeys,” he writes, “lead us notonly outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one ofthe most rewarding forms of introspection” (1957, 15).It would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of this in-ward journey. Living abroad presents us with a unique opportunityfor self-discovery and, thereby, for self-improvement. Each of us hasin effect two personalities: an individual one that is the product ofthe particular circumstances of our lives and that accounts for howwe are different from those around us, and a cultural one that is theproduct of cultural conditioning and accounts for how we are thesame as everyone around us. And each of these personalities (or
THE PAYOFF113aspects of our personalities) is the source of wholesome and un-wholesome behavior. When we are made aware of these behaviors,we can try to cultivate the former and eradicate the latter.But while we can come to know and change our individualselves without leaving our own culture (through interacting withother individuals), we cannot come to know our cultural selveswithout the benefit of an equivalent vantage point. Thus it is thatuntil we go abroad or otherwise spend time with foreigners, thiscultural self lies beyond our awareness, directing and influencingour behavior in ways we can only guess at. “Those who go abroad,”Edmond Taylor writes, “step out of their own culture and beginto…discover how it influences personal life” (1964, xiii). Whilewe would no doubt approve of many of these influences if we wereaware of them, we might not approve of others and might want tochange them.In going overseas and encountering local culture, we are ablesee our own cultural personality in action. And only when we’veseen it can we decide whether or not we like it. “By broadeninghis conception of the forces which make up and control his life,”Edward Hall observes,the average person can never again be caught in the grip ofpatterned behavior of which he has no awareness. While itis true that culture binds human beings in many unknownways, the restraint it exercises is the groove of habit andnothing more. Man did not evolve culture as a means ofsmothering himself but as a medium in which to move, live,breathe, and discover his own uniqueness. (1990, 187)As one expat put it, much more succinctly, “I have a better idea ofhow I tick” (Osland 1995, 154).By far the greatest reward of becoming culturally effective isthe fate it saves us from. The alternative is to live and work among
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES114people we don’t understand and therefore can never entirely trust.It means living and working among people who repeatedly annoyand upset us, toward whom we become increasingly critical andnegative, and compared with whom we feel increasingly superior.It means the artificial reality and forced friendships of life in theexpatriate subculture. It is a prescription for the narrowing of ourhumanity, for our ability to be sympathetic and compassionatepeople.In another context, the anthropologist Vincent Crapanzanohas chronicled this phenomenon. If we substitute our own “with-drawing” for his “waiting,” we have a picture of the true cost ofturning away from the local culture.In the very ordinary act of waiting, particularly of waitingin fear, men and women lose what John Keats called “nega-tive capability,” the capability of so negating their identityas to be imaginatively open to the complex and never verycertain reality around them. Instead, they close off; theycreate a kind of psychological apartheid….(1986, xxii)You can only hope that when your sojourn is over and you areonce again inclined to open yourself up to others, you will stillknow how.Many expats won’t need a list like this to persuade them theyshould adjust to the local culture; they’ll do it simply because it’sthe right thing. Even so, it’s nice to know the right thing has somuch to recommend it.ConclusionThis book has been quite critical of cultural incidents to make itspoint: if you aren’t careful—if you don’tdo something about theseincidents—you can easily turn against the local culture and com-
THE PAYOFF115promise your effectiveness. Cultural incidents are a legitimate causefor concern.At the same time, there is a great deal to be said in theirdefense. If you follow the advice offered in this book, then cul-tural incidents become the motivation for learning about the localculture instead of turning against it, and in the process for learn-ing about your own culture and yourself. Moreover, dealing withthese incidents forces you to practice greater self-awareness, whichis always beneficial. In the final analysis, cultural incidents them-selves aren’t the problem; it’s how you react to them. If you reactconstructively, you will derive great benefit.It would be a mistake, meanwhile, to assume there is no ur-gency in this matter. The overseas experience profoundly trans-forms all who undergo it, whether they interact successfully withthe local culture or not. Such is the impact of the experience, onso many levels—physical, intellectual, emotional—there is nopossibility of a moderate, much less a neutral, reaction. You eitheropen yourself up to the experience and are greatly enriched by it,or you turn away—and are greatly diminished.
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117Appendix: Eloquent WitnessSome of the most penetrating insights into the art of crossingcultures have come from travel writers and writers of what wemight call expatriate fiction, novels that feature characters livingoutside their home culture and whose central theme is the experi-ence of being foreign. E. M. Forster’sA Passage to India is a classicof that genre.Observation is a writer’s stock in trade, so one might expectthat writers would subject the overseas experience to close scru-tiny. But it is the combination of penetrating observation and away with words that makes so many of their insights indelible.Indeed, perhaps they’re not any better observers than you or I are;maybe it’s just that they describe what they see so well it seemsthat they must be. Or maybe it’s just that they give what they seeand experience more thought; it’s a writer’s job, after all, not justto record experience but to tell us what it means.This book has relied repeatedly on such writers to make manyof its points and hereby offers more selections for those of youwho enjoy this sort of thing. They are arranged according to vari-ous topics covered in these pages.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES118On the various components of country shock:The strain of living and thinking in a foreign land and half-understood language, the savage food, strange clothes, andstill stranger ways, with the complete loss of privacy andquiet, and the impossibility of ever relaxing your watchfulimitation of the others for months on end, provide such anadded stress to the ordinary difficulties of dealing with theBedu, the climate, and the Turks, that this road should notbe chosen without serious thought.—T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)It is so very HOT I do not know how to write it large enough.—Emily EdenUp the CountryI’ve been in Ceylon a month and nearly sweated myself intoa shadow.—D. H. LawrenceLettersAs she made up her face, cursing the sweat that clogged thepowder, she was sick for London, coolly making up for adance in the evening, or for the ballet, or for a concert.Civilization is only possible in a temperate zone.—Anthony BurgessTime for A TigerWhen calculating our chances of obtaining health and plea-sure from a tour abroad, we must think of the nervous irri-tation involved in waiting hours past our usual meal-times,
APPENDIX119of never being sure of sleep at night—suspecting, as wemust, that just as we have dined off fellow-creatures, smallerfellow-creatures may sup off us!—Rev. E. J. HardyManners Makyth Man‘I’ve been fine lately,’ said a junior officer, holding his endup, as it were. ‘Knock on wood. I’ve had some severe—Imean, really bad times. But I figured it out. What I usuallydo is have yogurt. I drink tons of the stuff. I figure thebacteria in yogurt keeps down the bacteria in lousy food.Kind of an equalizing thing.’There was another man. He looked pale, but he said hewas bearing up. Kind of a bowel thing. Up all night. Cramps.Delhi belly. Food goes right through you. He said, ‘I had itin spades. Bacillary. Ever have bacillary? No? It knocked meflat. For six days I couldn’t do a thing. Running back andforth, practically living in the john.’Each time the subject came up, I wanted to take thespeaker by his hand-loomed shirt, and, shaking him, say,‘Now listen to me! There is absolutely nothing wrong withyour bowels!’—Paul TherouxThe Great Railway BazaarBut what is there to like? Scabby children, spitting pot-bel-lied shopkeepers, terrorists, burglars, scorpions, those blastedflying-beetles. And the noise of the radios and the eternalshouting. Are they deaf or something? Where is this glamor-ous East they talk about? It’s just a horrible sweating trav-esty of Europe.—Anthony BurgessTime For A Tiger
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES120Other losses, although not at first felt, tell heavily after aperiod: these are the want of room, of seclusion, of rest; thejading feeling of constant hurry; the privation of small luxu-ries, the loss of domestic society, and even of music and theother pleasures of imagination.—Charles DarwinThe Voyage of the BeagleThe people are not handsome, have no idea of friendly soci-ety. There is no ice or cold water, no baths or colleges, nocandles, no torches, not a single candlestick.—BaburThe Mogul Conqueror of IndiaOn culture shock; the strange things the locals do.I subsequently learnt that although the Fans will eat theirfellow friendly tribesfolk, yet they like to keep a little some-thing belonging to them as a memento. This touching traitin their character I learnt from Wiki; and though it’s to theircredit, under the circumstances, still it’s an unpleasant prac-tice when they hang the remains in the bedroom you oc-cupy.—Mary KingsleyTravels in West AfricaIf you want to know what it is to feel the ‘correct’ socialworld fizzle to nothing you should come to Australia. It is aweird place. In the established sense, it is socially nil. Happy-go-lucky, don’t-you-bother, we’re-in-Australia. But also thereseems to be no inside life of any sort: just a long lapse anddrift. A rather fascinating indifference, a physical indiffer-ence to what we call soul or spirit. It’s really a weird show….
APPENDIX121A strange effect it has on one. Often I hate it like poison,then again it fascinates me, and the spell of its indifferencegets me.—D. H. LawrenceThe Letters of D. H. LawrenceThe first month or two in class I was always saying, ‘Look atme when I talk to you,’ and the [Navajo] kids simply wouldn’tdo it. They would always look at their hands, or the black-board, or anywhere except looking me in the face. And fi-nally one of the other teachers told me it was a culturalthing. They should warn us about things like that. Odd things.It makes the children seem evasive, deceptive.—Tony HillermanThe SkinwalkersEach car we passed raised a cheer from my fellow passen-gers. I closed my eyes as, tires screeching, we took a blindcorner, swerving across into the right-hand lane. This tooraised a cheer. Did death mean nothing to them? They hadslipped beyond my imaginative reach. The driver, wedgedbetween the angle of the door and the seat, could hardly bebothered to glance at the road ahead. Frequently he wouldremove both his hands from the steering wheel, the better toemphasize some point to the fat lady sitting next to him,with whom he was deep in conversation. Out of the corner ofmy eye I caught a fleeting glimpse of a chicken plummetingpast the window. A terrific commotion ensued. We stopped,and a search party was organized. The chicken was foundalive, but stunned, and restored to its place on the roofrack.—Shiva NaipaulNorth of South
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES122On culture shock; the strange things we do:Washing my face in the morning caused much speculationat the village of Las Minas; a superior tradesman closelycross-questioned me about so singular a practice.—Charles DarwinThe Voyage of the BeagleBut our English trick of shaking hands, they look upon asthe most hoity toity impudent custom in the world and can-not reconcile it with the vestal demeanor of the English La-dies.—Catherine WilmotAn Irish Peer on the Continent [The women of the harem] pitied us European women heart-ily, that we had to go about travelling, and appearing in thestreets without being properly taken care of—that is,watched. They think us strangely neglected in being left sofree, and boast of [how closely they are watched] as a tokenof the value in which they are held.—Harriet MartineauEastern LifeThe first mosquitoes of the year appeared at Nomo Khantaraand as I killed one on my arm the lama sadly reproved me.To show me how to act in such circumstances he took asand-louse that was marching on to my rug and, handling itgently, deposited it outside the tent.—Ella MaillartForbidden Journey
APPENDIX123The fact was that Victor Crabbe, after a mere six months inthe Federation, had reached that position common amongveteran expatriates—he saw that a white skin was an ab-normality, and that the white man’s ways were fundamen-tally eccentric.—Anthony BurgessTime For A TigerBut you who are wise must know that different Nations havedifferent Conceptions of things and you will therefore nottake it amiss if our Ideas of this kind of Education happennot to be the same as yours. We have had some Experienceof it. Several of our Young People were formerly brought upat the Colleges of the Northern Provinces: they were instructedin all your Sciences; but when they came back to us theywere bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in thewoods…neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counsellors,they were totally good for nothing.We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind Offer,though we decline accepting it; and to show our gratefulSense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozenof their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instructthem in all we know, and make Men of them.—Response of the Indians of the Six Nationsto a suggestion that they send boys to anAmerican college in Pennsylvania (1744)Turning against the local culture:You are absolutely unlike the others, I assure you. You willnever be rude to my people.I’m told we all get rude after a year.—E. M. ForsterA Passage to India
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES124Do you like India? Mrs. Bristow asked me.Oh, yes, I think it’s marvelous.And what do you think of the people?I like them very much and think them most interesting.Oh, aren’t you a fibber. What was it you said the other dayabout‘awful Anglo-Indian’ chatter?’But I thought you were speaking of the Indians just now,not the Anglo-Indians.The Indians! I never think of them.Well, you said ‘the people,’ you know.I meant us people, stupid!I see. Well now, let’s start again.—J. R. AckerlyHindoo HolidayIt was not difficult for me to work up a rage at this moment.All of a sudden I felt that revulsion against an alien way oflife that anyone who travels in remote places feels fromtime to time. I longed for clean clothes, the company ofpeople who meant what they said, and did it.—Eric NewbyA Short Walk in the Hindu Kush‘Very well. I’ll go. And I shan’t be sorry either. I haven’t hada decent meal since I came here and I’ve done a thing Inever thought I should have to do in my life, I’ve drunk mycoffee without sugar and when I’ve been lucky enough toget a little piece of black bread I’ve had to eat it withoutbutter. Mrs. Harrington will never believe me when I tell herwhat I’ve gone through.—Somerset Maugham“Mr. Harrington’s Washing”
APPENDIX125I never told you, but there was a time—my second month inIndia last year—when if someone had offered me a passagehome I’d have accepted like a shot. Goodness knows I lovedbeing with you. But during that second month I had what Ican only describe as a permanent sinking heart. I hatedeverything, hated it because I was afraid of it. It was all soalien.—Paul ScottThe Day of the ScorpionOn life in the expatriate subculture:Arab Town, at any hour of the day or night, was a fascinat-ing place to us, and it was astonishing to discover how igno-rant the English colony were about it, and how uninterested.Many of them had never been there at all. Although it wasonly a few streets away, they were as vague about it asLondoners are about Limehouse. They had an idea that itsmelled and crawled with bugs, and that was enough forthem, though they showed a tolerance of my interest, re-marking that every chap has his own game; I was one ofthose writing johnnies, so of course I had to nose around abit collecting local colour; jolly interesting too for a chapwho was interested in that sort of thing; they would read allabout it in my book when that came out; meanwhile, snookerand whisky-soda for them.—Evelyn WaughLabelsThere are children, frail and moribund, who live inside plas-tic bubbles; their immune systems have not developed, andso they have to be protected from the outside world, theirair specially filtered, and their nourishment passed to themthrough special ducts, by gloved and sterile hands. Profes-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES126sional expatriates live like that…. They carry about withthem the plastic bubble of their own culture, and nothingtouches them until it has been filtered through the protec-tive membrane of prejudice, the life-support system thatforms their invisible excess baggage when they move on,from one contract to the next, to another country and an-other set of complaints.—Hilary Mantel“Last Morning in Al Hamra”Spectator24 January 1987You know what you are sent abroad for. It is of much moreconsequence to know the Mores multorum hominum thanthe Urbes. Pray continue this judicious conduct whereveryou go, especially at Paris, where instead of thirty you willfind above three hundred English herding together, and con-versing with no one French body.The life of les Milords Anglais is regularly, or if you will,irregularly this. As soon as they rise, which is very late, theybreakfast together to the utter loss of two good morninghours. Then they go by coachfuls to the Palais, the Invalides,and Notre-Dame; from thence to the English coffee-house,where they make up their tavern party for dinner. From din-ner, where they drink, they adjourn in clusters to the play,where they crowd up the stage, drest up in very fine clothes,very ill made by a Scotch or Irish tailor…. Those who do notspeak French before they go are sure to learn none there.Thus, they return home more petulant, but not more in-formed, than when they left it; and show, as they think,their improvement, by affectedly both speaking and dress-ing in broken French.—Lord ChesterfieldLetters
APPENDIX127No islands could seemingly be more different, one from theother. But to the Englishman superficially they will seem thesame. The English carry their own lives with them. Theymake no attempt to assimilate into the character of the coun-tries they occupy…. An Englishman arriving at an English-governed community knows precisely what is awaiting him.He will present his letters of introduction, and immediatelyhe will be received into the life of the community. He be-comes a part of whatever fun is going.—Alec WaughHot CountriesAdvice on adjusting to a foreign culture:The ideal traveller, in fact, is not a man who goes out toteach, but a man who goes out to learn. He is a person who,in his most censorious moments, even as he wickedly ob-serves the Italians juggling with spaghetti or listens to thetiresome yodelling of the Swiss, can look at himself andrealize that he is equally funny—that his favorite dish isfish and chips, that his grey trousers and sports coat canmake him seem inexpressibly comic to a Spaniard or anArab.—Hugh and Pauline MassinghamThe Englishman AbroadIf I had to write a decalogue for journeys, eight out of tenvirtues should be moral, and I should put first of all a tem-per as serene at the end as at the beginning of the day. Thenwould come the capacity to accept values and to judge bystandards other than our own…[and] a leisurely anduncensorious mind.—Freya StarkA Winter in Arabia
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES128A Russian invariably takes off his hat whenever he entersbeneath a roof, be it palace, cottage, or hovel; the reason forwhich is that in every apartment of every Russian housethere hangs in one corner of it, just below the ceiling, apicture of the Virgin. To omit conforming to this usage, andpaying respect to the penates of the dwelling, will not beeither wise or well-bred, for it may give offence; a man hasno business to travel in foreign countries who cannot makeup his mind to conform to their customs.—John MurrayMurray’s Handbookfor Northern EuropeIn the meantime, we’ve got to live here. We’ve got to try andmake some sort of life in this country. It’s no good fightingagainst it all the time. You’ve got to accept that this isn’tLondon, that the climate’s equatorial, that there aren’t con-certs and theatres and ballets. But there are other things.The people themselves, the little drinking shops, the incred-ible mixture of religions and cultures and languages. That’swhat we’re here for—to absorb the country. Or be absorbedby it, he said to himself.—Anthony BurgessThe Enemy in the BlanketOn being from two cultures:I can hardly explain to you the queer feeling of living, as Ido, in two places at once. One world containing books, En-gland, and all the people with whom I can exchange anidea; the other is all that I actually see and hear and speakto. The separation is as complete as between the things in apicture and the things in a room. The puzzle is that bothmove and act, and I must say my say as one of each. The
APPENDIX129result is that one world at least must think me crazy. I amjust now in a sad mess. A drover, who has grown rich withcattle dealing, wanted me to go and teach his daughter. Asthe man is a widower I astonished this world when I ac-cepted the proposal, and still more because I asked too higha price a year. Now that I have begun, the same people can’tconceive why I don’t go on and marry the man at once,which they imagine must have been my original intention.—Mary Taylorquoted in H. Bolitho and J. MulganThe Emigrants: Early Travellers to the AntipodesSitting with Hari and Aunt Shalini this time I saw how un-real my life had become because there didn’t seem to be anykind of future in front of me that I wanted and could have.Why? Holding one hand out, groping, and the other outbackwards, linked to the security of what was known andexpected. Straining like that. Pretending that the groundbetween was occupied, when all the time it wasn’t.—Paul ScottThe Jewel in the Crown‘I went a little farther,’ he said. ‘Then still a little farther—till I had gone so far that I don’t know how I’ll ever get back.’—Joseph Conrad“Heart of Darkness”It’s not necessary to like everything:There is a special problem of adjustment for the sort of peoplewho come today, who tend to be liberal in outlook and havebeen educated to be sensitive and receptive to other cul-
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES130tures. But it is not always easy to be sensitive and receptiveto India: there comes a point where you have to close up inorder to protect yourself. The place is very strong and oftenproves too strong for European nerves.—Ruth Prawer JhabvalaOut of IndiaThere were many things he found offensive but which helearned to accept because they were necessary, and equallya number of things that were unacceptable because theywere offensive without being necessary. The worst of thesewas noise. Hour by hour and day after day columns of vansand cars, loudspeakers blaring, circled the estate laying acordon of noise from which there was no escape…. MostJapanese had become resigned to this violation of their peaceand assured Boon that he would soon get used to it, but hedidn’t.—John David MorleyPictures from the Water TradeOn language:It’s a funny thing; the French call it a couteau, the Germanscall it a Messer, but we call it a knife, which is after all whatit really is.—Richard JenkynsThe Victorians and Ancient GreeceThey spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy. Foreigners al-ways spell better than they pronounce.—Mark Twain
APPENDIX131My head, still giddy from the motion of the ship, is confusedby the multiplicity of novel objects: the dress of the people,the projecting roofs and balconies of the houses, the filth ofthe streets, so strange and so disgusting to an Englishman.But what is most strange is to hear a language which con-veys to me only the melancholy reflection that I am in aland of strangers.—Robert SoutheyLettersSometime in 1906 I was walking in the heat of the daythrough the Bazaars. As I passed an Arab Cafe, in no hostil-ity to my straw hat but desiring to shine before his friends,a fellow called out in Arabic, ‘God curse your father, O En-glishman.’ I was young then and quicker tempered, and couldnot refrain from answering in his own language that I wouldalso curse his father if he were in a position to inform mewhich of his mother’s two and ninety admirers his fatherhad been. I heard footsteps behind me, and slightly pickedup the pace, angry with myself for committing the sin LordCromer would not pardon—a row with Egyptians. In a fewseconds I felt a hand on each arm. ‘My brother,’ said theoriginal humorist, ‘return and drink with us coffee and smoke(in Arabic one speaks of ‘drinking’ smoke). I did not thinkthat your worship knew Arabic, still less the correct Arabicabuse, and we would fain benefit further by your importantthoughts.’—Ronald StorrsOrientationsWe travelled in a big truck through the nation of France, onour way to Belgium, and every time we passed through alittle town, we’d see these signs—“Boulangerie,”“Patisserie,”
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES132and “Rue” this and “Rue” that and rue the day you camehere young man. When we got to our hundred and eightiethFrench village, I screamed at the top of my lungs: “The jokeis over! English, please!” I couldn’t believe a whole countrycouldn’t speak English. One third of a nation, all right, butnot a whole country.—Mel Brooksin Kenneth Tynan’sShow PeopleLiving overseas puts your own culture in perspective:Familiarity blunts astonishment. Fishes do not marvel atwater; they are too busy swimming in it. It is the same withus. We take our Western civilization for granted and findnothing intrinsically odd or incongruous in it. Before we canrealize the strangeness of our surroundings, we must delib-erately stop and think. But [overseas] moments come whenthat strangeness is fairly forced upon our notice, momentswhen an anomaly, a contradiction, an immense incongruityis suddenly illumined by a light so glaring that we cannotfail to see it.—Aldous HuxleyJesting PilateI always turn up the last page or two of a book of travels,even if I’ve only read bits of the book itself. When the trav-eller we’ve followed through remote scenes takes his latch-key from his pocket and runs up his own front steps, I wantto know what is his view of his native land, how do things athome look to him through those eyes which have seen suchevents and adventures as he has recounted? Does the dingysnugness of England irk or gladden him, when he lands atDover after months in such un-snug lands? Having crouchedwith him in the caravanserais of the East, I would like to sit
APPENDIX133beside him poking a coal fire in the waiting-room at Doverstation, till a train takes us away up to London through thelandscape of fields crowded in upon by fat trees, and watchedover by thick-towered churches, so that I can hear his com-ments upon these homely scenes.—Philip GlazebrookJourney to KarsCertain people are surprised that, having lived in a Euro-pean country more than thirty years, I never happened tospeak of it. I arrive in India, I open my eyes, and I write abook.Those who are surprised surprise me.How could one not write about a country that has metyou with an abundance of new things and in the joy ofliving afresh?And how could one write about a country where one haslived, bound down by boredom, by contradictions, by pettycares, by defeats, by the daily humdrum, and about whichone has ceased to know anything?—Henri MichauxA Barbarian in AsiaLiving overseas teaches you about yourself:But this trip, which has scarcely begun, has already changedme; not only do I see things in clearer, truer colors, butcertain aspects of my character have become magnified toan alarming degree…I detect vast capacities for impatience,resentful anger and cynicism.—Moritz ThomsenThe Saddest Pleasure
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES134For travelling, in Eothen, is as much a mental state as aphysical condition. Liberated by the East from ‘the stalecivilisation of Europe,’ Kinglake—or, rather, his first-personhero—is free to let his mind wander. With his foot in thestirrup he is in much the same reverie of free-association asa patient on an analyst’s couch. For this rich young English-man, the East itself exists primarily as an exotic stage onwhich his own character can be more vividly illuminatedthan it ever was at home.—Jonathan RabanIntroduction to EothenI felt I had done all I could with free will, and that circum-stances, the imponderables, should now take a hand. I wasgiving them every opportunity. I was in a city where I knewnot a soul, save the few I had come to know by chance. Itwas a city where the mentality, the sound of the language,the hopes and possibilities, even the appearance of the peoplein the street, were as strange as anything I might have in-vented. My choice in coming here had been deliberate: I hada plan. My own character seemed to me ill-defined; I be-lieved that this was unfortunate and unique. I thought thatif I set myself against a background into which I could notpossibly merge that some outline would present itself.—Mavis GallantIn TransitWhenever he was en route from one place to another, he wasable to look at his life with a little more objectivity thanusual. It was often on trips that he thought most clearly,and made the decisions he could not reach when he wasstationary.—Paul BowlesThe Sheltering Sky
APPENDIX135The overseas experience adds to who you are:I am often tired of myself and have a notion that by travelI can add to my personality and so change myself a little. Ido not bring back from a journey quite the same self that Itook.—Somerset MaughamThe Gentleman in the ParlourThe proper traveler…thinks it a waste to move from his ownhome if nothing happens inside him as a result. I meansomething fundamental, like a chemical change when twosubstances come into contact.—Freya StarkLettersThose paper flowers, I mean, which we used to put in ourfinger-bowls at country dinner-tables. They look like shriv-elled specks of cardboard. But in the water they begin togrow larger and to unfold themselves into unexpected pat-terns of flowers of all colours. That is how I feel—expand-ing, and taking on other tints. New problems, new influ-ences, are at work upon me. It is as if I needed altogetherfresh standards.—Norman DouglasSouth Wind
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137A Selected Reading ListFor readers who enjoy travel narratives and expatriate fiction, weoffer the following selection of classic titles.Growingby Leonard WoolfWoolf served for two years as a colonial administrator in SriLanka and came home and wrote a masterpiece. A youngman, just discovering himself, Woolf puzzles over the mean-ing of his experiences and enlightens us all in the process.The prose is as rich as the observations it records.Jesting Pilateby Aldous HuxleyIf Leonard Woolf hadn’t written Growing, Huxley would getthe nod as the master of reflective travel. In format, this isthe standard narrative of a journey—from India throughoutmuch of southeast Asia and the Pacific—but little happensthat doesn’t start Huxley thinking. And his thoughts liftthis book clean out of its genre.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES138The Raj Quartetby Paul ScottThese four novels (The Jewel in The Crown, The Towers ofSilence, The Day of the Scorpion, A Division of the Spoils)depict the British in India at the time of independence. Thecanvas is broad, but the theme is the meeting—and espe-cially the clash—of two cultures. With the exception ofForster’sA Passage to India (see below), these books comeas close to being about crossing cultures as fiction can.Journey to Karsby Philip GlazebrookGlazebrook, raised on stories of Victorian travelers to theOttoman Empire, retraces their route and tries to under-stand the attraction. Why would these men leave the com-forts of civilization at its apogee to wander the forbiddingplains of Central Asia? In pursuing the answer, Glazebrookunravels the lure of abroad.The Innocents Abroadby Mark TwainMuch of this book is standard travelogue, but enough of itis shrewd observation (usually in the form of hilarious sat-ire) to secure it a place on our list. Twain marvels at whathe sees (he travels throughout Europe and the Mediterra-nean), and we marvel at the transformation of his personafrom the untutored Yank into the preening pseudo-sophis-ticate. Skip the guidebook descriptions of Italian cathedralsand watch for Twain’s skewering of human nature.A Passage to Indiaby E. M. ForsterAdela Quested comes out from England to marry RonnyHeaslop and decides not to. The reason is India, or rather,
139how being in India changes people. In exploring this sub-ject (the same ground he covers in A Room with a View),Forster gets as close as any novelist ever has to the truth ofthe overseas experience.Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blueby Paul BowlesA collection of essays set in Sri Lanka and North Africa, thisbook confirms that Bowles is as shrewd an observer of peopleand mores in nonfiction as he is in his excellent novels (LetIt Come Down, The Sheltering Sky). As with the best travelwriters, Bowles’ experiences prompt him into reflection; hewants to understand. And we profit from listening in.Esmond In Indiaby Ruth Prawer JhabvalaEsmond (from England) is beginning to regret his marriageto an upper-class Indian. Even more, he is bored with India.As he compares India unflatteringly with the West and asShakuntala struggles to understand her increasingly distanthusband, we watch the chasm between cultures widen.Abroadby Paul FussellThis is a book about people who write travel books (it issubtitled British Literary Travel between the Wars). Fussellchronicles the careers of several of Britain’s finest travelwriters—Evelyn Waugh, D. H. Lawrence, Robert Byron—andexamines how, through their books, England reached out toa wider world after the war to end all wars. Abroad is aboutthe end of travel and the birth of tourism and how we are allpoorer as a result.A SELECTED READING LIST
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES140The Road to Oxianaby Robert ByronPaul Fussell (see above selection) considers Byron the fa-ther of the modern travel narrative, and Fussell isn’t some-one to dismiss lightly. The Road to Oxiana is a gripping, byturns hilarious and chilling, account of a 1920s journey tothe Oxus. Byron is so curious, so funny, and so smart, youhang on every word. You can’t pretend to be a serious fan oftravel literature until you’ve read Byron. After you’ve readByron, you’ll search in vain for his equal. (Not that it mat-ters; Byron is so good that those with even half his talentare still remarkable.)The Long Day Wanes(also known as The Malayan Trilogy)by Anthony BurgessThese three novellas feature colonial expatriates in BritishMalaya before Malayan independence. The characters workhard to make sense out of the polyglot culture that sur-rounds them (part Indian, part Chinese, part Malay) and tounderstand their place—if any—therein.Plain Tales from the Rajby Charles AllenAllen interviews the British who lived in—and ran—Indiaprior to its independence. They describe their lives, and whenthey’ve finished, you know more than you might want toabout expatriate subcultures.The Consul’s Fileby Paul TherouxAn American runs a remote consulate in upcountry Malay-sia. He’s not very busy, which leaves him ample time to get
141involved in the life of the town and the affairs of the club.The consul is sufficiently jaded and sufficiently naive tomake him a sharp, sympathetic observer.The Journey’s Echoby Freya StarkThis is actually a collection of excerpts from a number oftravel books by this great English traveler and travel writer.Most of her travels were in the Middle East in the first halfof the twentieth century. Page for page Stark’s books, andthis collection in particular, contain more insight into thenature of being foreign and the meaning of the overseasexperience than almost any other travel writer.The Left Hand of Darknessby Ursula K. Le Guin andOut of the Silent Planetby C. S. LewisThe action of most science fiction novels (such as these two)is triggered by the meeting of two different cultures (or“worlds” in the parlance). Le Guin and Lewis have writtensome of the classics of the genre. These two examples arevirtual case studies of adaptation; while each has its ownengaging story line, the subtext in both cases is the impor-tance, if not the necessity, of understanding and adaptingto the ways of an alien society.A SELECTED READING LIST
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143BibliographyAdler, Nancy J. 1986. International Dimensions of OrganizationalBehavior. Boston: Wadsworth.Allen, Charles. 1984. Plain Tales from the Raj. London: Futura.Bennett, Milton J., ed. 1998. Basic Concepts of InterculturalCommunication: Selected Readings. Yarmouth, ME: Inter-cultural Press.Black, J. Stewart, Hal B. Gregersen, and Mark E. Mendenhall.1992.Global Assignments: Successfully Expatriating andRepatriating International Managers. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.Brody, Hugh. 1975. The People’s Land. New York: Penguin.Burgess, Anthony. 1964. The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy.New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Carroll, Raymonde. 1990. Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Crapanzano, Vincent. 1986. Waiting: The Whites of South Africa.New York: Vintage Books.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES144de Saint Exupery, Antoine. 1967. Wind, Sand and Stars. NewYork: Harcourt, Brace & World.Durrell, Lawrence. 1957. Bitter Lemons. New York: E. P. Dutton.Eliot, T. S. 1962. “Four Quartets.”The Complete Poems and Plays,1909–1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.Fleming, Peter. 1985. Brazilian Adventure. Excerpted in A Tastefor Travel, edited by John Julius Norwich. London:Macmillan.Fussell, Paul, ed. 1987. The Norton Book of Travel. New York:W.W. Norton.Gannon, Martin J. and Associates. 1994. Understanding GlobalCultures: Metaphorical Journeys Through 17 Countries.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Gibbs, Paul. 1992. Doing Business in the European Community.London: Kogan/Page.Glazebrook, Philip. 1984. Journey to Kars. New York: Penguin.Grove, Cornelius. 1990. Orientation Handbook for Youth ExchangePrograms. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.Hall, Edward T. 1990. The Silent Language. New York: AnchorPress/Doubleday.Hall, Edward T. 1984. The Dance of Life. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.Hall, Edward T., and Mildred Reed Hall. 1990. UnderstandingCultural Differences. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.Harris, Philip R., and Robert T. Moran. 1987. Managing CulturalDifferences. Houston: Gulf Publishing.Harrison, Lawrence E., and Samuel P. Huntington, eds. 2000.Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. NewYork: Basic Books.
BIBLIOGRAPHY145Hickson, David J., ed. 1997. Exploring Management Across theWorld. London: Penguin Books.Hickson, David J., and Derek S. Pugh. 1995. Management World-wide: The Impact of Societal Culture on Organizationsaround the Globe. London: Penguin.Huxley, Aldous. 1985. Jesting Pilate. London: Triad/Paladin.Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. 1987. Out of India. New York: Simon &Schuster.Kingsley, Mary. 1984. West African Studies. Excerpted in TheEnglishman Abroad, compiled by Hugh and PaulineMassingham.Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton.Kohls, L. Robert. 2001. Survival Kit for Overseas Living: ForAmericans Planning to Live and Work Abroad. 4th ed.Yarmouth, ME: Nicholas Brealey/Intercultural Press.Lawrence, D. H. 1984. Letters. Excerpted in The EnglishmanAbroad, compiled by Hugh and Pauline Massingham.Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton.Lawrence, T. E. 1939. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. London: TheReprint Society.Le Guin, Ursula K. 1977. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York:Ace Books.Lewis, C. S. 1965. Out of the Silent Planet. New York: Macmillan.Mantel, Hilary. 1987. “Last Morning in Al Hamra.”Spectator, 24January.Marquardt, Michael J., and Dean W. Engel. 1993. Global HumanResource Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Massingham, Hugh, and Pauline Massingham. Compilers. 1984.The Englishman Abroad. Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton.
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES146Mernissi, Fatima. 1975. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics ina Modern Muslim Society. Cambridge, MA: SchenkenPublishing.Mole, John. 1995. Mind Your Manners: Managing Business Cul-tures in Europe. London: Nicholas Brealey.Moorhouse, Geoffrey. 1984. India Britannica. London: Paladin.Oberg, Kalvero. 1981. “Culture Shock and the Problem of Adjust-ing to New Cultural Environments.” As quoted in PierreCasse, Training for the Cross-Cultural Mind. Washington,DC: SIETAR.Osland, Joyce Sautters. 1995. The Adventure of Working Abroad:Hero Tales from the Global Frontier. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Scott, Paul. 1979. The Jewel in the Crown. New York: Avon.Shames, Germaine W. 1997. Transcultural Odysseys: The EvolvingGlobal Consciousness. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.Shepard, Steven. 1998. Managing Cross-Cultural Transition: AHandbook for Corporations, Employees, and Their Families.Bayside, NY: Aletheia Publications.Stark, Freya. 1988. The Journey’s Echo. New York: The EchoPress.Stewart, Edward C. 1972. American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.Stewart, Edward C. and Milton J. Bennett. 1991. AmericanCultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. 2d ed.Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.Storti, Craig. 1997. A Few Minor Adjustments. Washington, DC:Peace Corps.Taylor, Edmond. 1964. Richer by Asia. New York: Time/Life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY147Thomsen, Moritz. 1989a. Living Poor: An American’s Encounterwith Ecuador. London: Eland.———. 1989b. The Saddest Pleasure. Saint Paul, MN: GraywolfPress.Trompenaars, Fons. 1994. Riding the Waves of Culture: Under-standing Diversity in Global Business. New York: Irwin.Washington Post. 1986. 27 November.Windham International. 1999. “Global Relocation Trends 1999Survey Report.” New York: Windham International.
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149Index(including all authors quoted)Ackerly, J. R., 124adjustmentadvice on, 20–22 127–28consequences, 18, 113–14to climate, 3–4to community, 2, 13–14to country, 3–4, 22–23to job, 2, 14–15Allen, Charles, 54, 57, 58, 102, 140Americaland, 51–52anxiety, see stressArabic, 101Arabs, 94Argentina, 30, 65–66, 79avoidance, 49–63awareness, 77–78Babur, 120behavior, 88–94, 110–12Bennett, Milton, 87bicultural, 128–29
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES150Bowles, Paul, 134, 139Brazil, 10British, 47, 57Raj, 50–51Brody, Hugh 62–63Brooks, Mel, 131–32Burgess, Anthony, 3, 118, 119, 123, 128, 140Byron, Lord, 22Byron, Robert, 31, 140Chesterfield, Lord, 126China, 34Chinese, 29climate. See adjustmentcommunity. See adjustmentconditioning, cultural, 67, 77Conrad, Joseph, 129Coward, Noel, 97coping, 15country. See adjustmentcountry shock, 118–20Crapanzano, Vincent, 114culture shock, 25physiological effects, 18–19spouses and, 15–18symptoms of, 3things to do, 20–22Darwin, Charles, 120, 122de Saint Exupery, Antoine, 70depression, 11, 21developing countries, 8Douglas, Norman, 135Durrell, Lawrence, 47, 112Eden, Emily, 118Egypt, 28, 37–43, 91–92Eliot, T. S., 112England, 6–7, 33
INDEX151Eskimos, 62–63ethnocentrism, 66, 68expatriatesemployees, xvmanagers, 26subculture, 50–61, 125–27Farrell, J. G., 31Filipinos, 32–33, 107Fleming, Peter, 10Forster, E. M., 36, 123, 138–39French, 29Fussell, Paul, 22, 139Gallant, Mavis, 134Germans 28Gibbon, Edward, 99Glazebrook, Philip, 21–22, 80, 132–33, 138global companies, xv, 107globalization, xv, xvi, 69Grimble, Arthur, 37Hall, Edward, 28, 29, 67, 113Hardy, Rev. E. J., 118–119Hazlitt, William, 65Hillerman, Tony, 121Hindu 81homesickness, 7–8Huxley, Aldous, 30–31, 57, 70, 111, 132, 137illness, 10–11incidents, culturalcauses of, 66definition of 26Type I incidents, 26–32, 41, 66, 72–73, 76, 91, 120–21Type II incidents, 27, 32–37, 41, 66, 72–73, 86–87, 92, 122–23India, 27, 34–35, 36, 54, 81, 82, 94Indians, 31, 89–90, 94insects, 11–13Japanese, 29, 107–08
THE ART OF CROSSING CULTURES152Jenkyns, Richard, 130Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, 94, 129–30, 139job. See adjustmentKingsley, Mary, 11–12, 120Kipling, Rudyard, xv, 105–06Kohls, L. Robert, xi, xvilanguage learning, 97–103, 130–32Lawrence, D. H., 3, 118, 120–21Lawrence, T. E., 94, 118Le Guin, Ursula, 71, 141Lewis, C. S., 81, 141loneliness, 16, 102Maillart, Ella, 122Mantel, Hilary, 93–94, 125–26Martineau, Harriet, 122Massingham, Hugh and Pauline, 75, 127Maugham, Somerset, 124, 135Mernissi, Fatima, 91–92Mexico, 34, 56Michaux, Henri, 133Middle East, 33, 82model, cross-cultural interaction, 44, 61–62, 72, 73, 85, 86Moorhouse, Geoffrey, 50–51Morley, John David, 130Moslem sexuality, 91–92Murray, John, 128Naipaul, Shiva, 121Newby, Eric, 124norms, cultural, 67–68Norwich, John Julius, 36Oberg, Kalvero, 55–56observation 78, 80–82Osland, Joyce Sautters, 6–7, 12–13, 17, 56overseas assignmentscauses of failure, xvicosts of, xvi–xvii
INDEX153Raban, Jonathan, 134Reagan, President and Nancy, 34routines, loss of, 5–7Scott, Paul, 11, 58–59, 125, 129, 138self-awareness, 15, 115self-esteem/self-confidence, 19, 99Singapore, 29Smollett, Tobias, 31–32South American, 34South Pacific, 37, 82Southey, Robert, 131spouses, 15–18, 53, 56Star Wars, 71Stark, Freya, 95, 101, 127, 135, 141Stedman, Captain John, 1Stewart, Edward, 82, 87Storrs, Ronald, 131Storti, Craig, 5–6stress and anxiety, 2, 19, 76–77, 79, 108–09Taylor, Edmond, 113Taylor, Mary, 128–29technologyelectricity, 8telephones, 8–9Theroux, Paul, 119, 140–141Thomsen, Moritz, 99–100, 102, 133transportation, 9–10Twain, Mark, 130, 138United States, 30Walpole, Horace, 25Waugh, Alec, 127Waugh, Evelyn, 125West Africa, 11–13Wilmot, Catherine, 122Windham International, xvi, 107Woolf, Leonard, 137
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For those who have enjoyed The Art of Crossing Cultures,Intercultural Press and Nicholas Brealey Publishingprovide here the introduction to Craig StortiÕs companionvolume, The Art of Coming Home.
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THE ART OFCOMINGHOMECRAIG STORTI
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IntroductionWhen I go back I know I shall be out of it; we fellows who’vespent our lives out here always are.—Somerset MaughamThe Gentleman in the ParlourIt is a well-known fact that living and working overseas take somegetting used to. Cultural adjustment is a much-studied and in-creasingly well-understood phenomenon. Books have been writ-ten about it and people regularly attend workshops and seminarsto learn how to cope with it. In a sure sign the phenomenon hasarrived, the phrase “culture shock” has been plucked from its ori-gins in the intercultural field and is now commonly used by theman in the street to describe adjusting to any difficult or unex-pected set of circumstances.With the front end of the overseas experience so well discussedand documented, it’s surprising to find that the back end, cominghome, has received relatively little attention. After all, most ofthe people who go overseas eventually come back. Yet, few bookson readjustment are available, and training seminars on the sub-ject are still very much the exception rather than the rule—even
among those same companies and organizations that spend goodmoney preparing people to go overseas.None of this would make any difference, of course, if reentrywere as simple as most people expect—merely a matter of pickingup where you left off. But all the evidence, both anecdotal andstatistical, confirms that it is in fact a complicated and usuallydifficult experience. Indeed, most expatriates find readjusting backhome, now commonly known as reverse culture shock, more diffi-cult than adjusting overseas ever was. Consider:•In one study of American returnees, 64 percent reported “sig-nificant culture shock” upon repatriation.•In another survey, 64 percent of Dutch and 80 percent of Japa-nese expats said they found coming home more difficult thanadjusting overseas.•Only 7 percent of returning teenagers said they felt at homewith their peers in the United States.•More than 50 percent of Swedish exchange students said they“didn’t fit in” when they returned to Sweden.•Seventy-five percent of returning soldiers in one study saidthey found reentry “difficult, time-consuming, and acrimoni-ous.”•More than 50 percent of the executives in a survey of U.S.corporations said they experienced social reentry problemsupon repatriation.When you think of the number of people temporarily livingand working overseas at any one time—such as expatriate busi-ness people and their families, government and military personneland their families, exchange and study-abroad students—nearlyall of whom are eventual returnees, the case for helping peopleunderstand and deal with readjustment becomes even stronger.Using the United States as an example, at any given time nearly2.5 million Americans are in residence overseas (excluding perma-
nent residents of foreign countries), at least a quarter of whomare likely to return home each year. Other countries may haveeven higher numbers (or at least a higher percentage of their overallpopulation).The reentry arithmetic becomes even more compelling when youconsider that readjustment has been found to have a profound im-pact not only on the returnee but also on family members, col-leagues, and close friends. When you add all of the figures together,the worldwide number of people significantly affected at any onetime by the phenomenon of reentry must be in the millions.And all indications are that the number of would-be returneesis growing, especially in the private sector, as globalization be-comes a fact of business life. Over one hundred thousand U.S.companies now do business internationally, for example, and morethan twenty-five thousand of these companies operate officesabroad. Patric Oster has observed in his article, “The fast trackleads overseas,” in Business Week magazine,Globalization means more managers must make stops abroad.General Motors Corp. has 485 U.S. managers overseas, up 15percent from 1991. Gerber Products Co. is thinking of tri-pling [its] number. Likewise, Motorola Inc. [has] expandedits rank of senior executives overseas by 10 percent and plansanother 10 percent increase. “We expect it to continue toincrease as a reflection of the fact that markets are openingup overseas,” says a Motorola spokesman. (1993, 64)The case for paying attention to readjustment is supported byyet another set of numbers: the financial costs.It has been esti-mated that it costs the average company roughly the equivalent$250,000 U.S. a year in salary, benefits, and subsidies to keep anexpatriate and his or her family in an overseas assignment. Withan average overseas stay of three to four years, the investment inthe employee adds up to nearly a million dollars.
That’s all right, of course, as long as the employee stays withthe company and the investment is recouped, but the statisticshere are also not very encouraging.•Twenty-five percent of returnees leave their parent companywithin one year of coming home.•Twenty-six percent of returnees were actively looking for an-other job.•Forty-five percent of companies surveyed reported “problemswith attrition” among returnees.•Seventy-four percent of returnees did not expect to be work-ing for the same company one year later.•Two-thirds of returning professionals complained of sufferingfrom the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome upon reentry.Employees leave their organizations for many reasons, of course,and people who don’t go abroad also move on, but the most com-mon reason for returnee attrition is dissatisfaction with the posi-tion the employee is assigned upon reentry. It’s interesting tonote in this context that while two-thirds to three-quarters ofcompanies in the United States offer some kind of orientation foremployees heading abroad, only 28 percent have a repatriationprogram for returnees. This seems backwards, for surely the greaterrisk to the organization is not the expat who doesn’t work outoverseas—and is normally reabsorbed into the company backhome—but the successful expat who comes home only to becomethe frustrated returnee who then leaves the company altogether.The fact that approximately “one in four returning expatriatesleave their firm…represents a substantial financial and humancapital loss,” Stewart Black and Hal Gregersen have observed,especially if the skills, knowledge, and experience that theindividual gains are important to the firm and scarce in theinternal or external labor markets. Thus, the practical rea-sons for investigating the repatriation adjustment process
seem as compelling as those for understanding expatriatecross-cultural adjustment. (1991, 672)Behind all these numbers are people, of course, many of whomare wondering what’s happening to them. Let’s listen in for a mo-ment.It was very nice to come back and see the people and getsettled…. But all of a sudden, I went from this position ofbeing a manager [overseas] and having virtually completecontrol over what I did and what the people did who workedfor me to being just one of the people here again—having adirector sitting twenty feet away and two managers sittingeven closer to me. I was answerable to all three, after hav-ing no boss at all.—American businessmanMy job description did not even exist when I came home. Ifelt as though I had no status in the company. In fact,everybody was asking, “Hey, what are you doing here.”—Finnish expatriate executiveWhen I got back, I found I was no longer a round peg in around hole, but a square peg trying to find a hole that didn’tseem to be there at all.—New Zealand aid workerWhen I got back to my hometown in Ohio and went to work,I fell back into hanging out evenings in the neighborhoodtavern with my old buddies. After about two weeks of that Igave up the tavern. They didn’t care about the problems ofthe Indians in Peru, and I didn’t give a damn what hap-pened to the Indians in Cleveland.—American Peace Corps volunteer
People pushed and shoved you in New York subways or theytreated you as if you simply didn’t exist. I hated everyoneand everything I saw here and had to tell myself over andover again, Whoa, this is your country, it is what you arepart of.—American college studentComing back home was more difficult than going abroadbecause you expect changes when going overseas. It wasreal culture shock during repatriation. I was an alien in myhome country. Old friends had moved, had children, or justvanished. Others were interested in our experiences, but onlysort of. They simply couldn’t understand.—Finnish expatriate spouseEveryone seemed unfriendly and snobbish. It was impos-sible to break into the right cliques and make friends. Clothesmattered more than personality, and competition was tre-mendous. The activities through which I was expecting tomeet people weren’t as easy to get involved in as I’d thoughtthey would be. People did seem to go to parties every week-end, just like in the movies, but I was never invited. I knewno one and it was fairly obvious they did not want to knowme.—American teenagerI knew what I had to do. I didn’t say the ice cream wasawful, even though I said it to myself. I said to my friends,“Quito is wonderful.” They [invite] me to go to parties, butI am not enthusiastic.—Ecuadorian exchange student
We came from a lovely rural area of England to the LosAngeles area. We were in an apartment and knew no one.Our son’s bike was stolen and we had roaches. I reacted thesame way I did when I arrived in Korea: I didn’t go out andI wouldn’t let the boys out. I felt threatened.—American military spouseMy advice about coming home? Don’t.—Japanese businessmanIn this book we will consider the key issues of the phenomenon ofreentry and offer suggestions—for returnees, their family andfriends, and employers—for dealing successfully with this experi-ence. Chapter 1 examines what we might call generic reentry, themost common issues returnees face regardless of what they weredoing overseas, their role in the family, or what they will be doingupon their return. Chapter 2 explores the stages of reentry anddescribes how returnees can expect to feel as they pick their waythrough this transition. Chapter 3 looks at the return to the work-place, the issues employees face upon reentering their organiza-tion after an overseas sojourn. Chapter 4 considers the return ofspouses, young children, and teenagers—issues specific to thesethree groups (and not treated in chapter 1). And chapter 5 exam-ines four special populations: exchange students, internationalforeign aid volunteers, military personnel and their families, andmissionaries and missionary children.We realize, of course, that there are as many experiences ofreentry as there are people coming home, that every returnee couldwrite his or her own book and no two of those volumes would bealike. There is reentry after a year overseas, after two, after four.There is reentry from a country you loved and hate to leave, andfrom a country you did not enjoy and are happy to turn your back
on. There is reentry from a country radically different from yourown and from a country quite similar to home, from developedcountries and from developing countries. There is voluntary andinvoluntary reentry, expected and totally unexpected reentry, pre-mature and delayed reentry. There is reentering at age thirty, withchildren, and at age fifty-five, as grandparents. There is your firstreentry, your second, and your fourth. You may return to the samehouse you left and the same job, or you may return to a differentpart of your home country and to a different job. Or to no job atall. There is the reentry of people who were running away fromhome and of expatriates who went abroad kicking and screaming.And there are cultural differences, too; the reentry of a Japanesefamily to Japan won’t be the same as the reentry of a Germanfamily to Germany or an American family to the United States.Reentry, in short, is a deeply personal experience and a cul-tural one as well. While we have tried to select and discuss themost common concerns of most returnees in most countries, nosingle returnee will have exactly the experience we describe inthese pages, and some will have experiences that are not men-tioned here. Even so, we expect most returnees will recognize them-selves repeatedly in this volume.While returnees themselves will be the most avid readers here,loved ones, friends, employers, and colleagues of returnees willlikewise find a great deal to ponder in these pages. To the extentthat their lives are affected by what returnees go through duringreentry, family, friends, and others can only be helped by havingtheir own understanding of the experience. To the extent theymay want to help returnees through the experience—or at leastnot make it harder for them—such understanding becomes essen-tial.“I [had] two trips and two experiences [when I went] abroad,”one returnee noted. “The [overseas] trip influenced me. The [re-turn] influenced everyone around me.”
We close with a caveat: Readers of this book could be forgivenfor concluding that an overseas experience doesn’t stack up verywell against the apparent heartache of reentry, that unless one’ssojourn abroad is extraordinarily rich, it could never compensatefor the problems of coming home. But this is not at all the mes-sage here. Reentry, for all its minor and a few major annoyances,can’t begin to diminish the lustre of an expatriate experience.Indeed, it is in some ways precisely because the overseas experi-ence is so rich and stimulating that reentry becomes a problem. Inother words if you are having trouble readjusting, it’s probablybecause you had such a terrific time abroad.Moreover, simply because reentry can be frustrating, lonely,and generally unpleasant at times is not to say that it is a harmfulexperience or a negative one. After all, frustration, loneliness,and unpleasantness are very often the precursors of insight andpersonal growth. Maybe reentry doesn’t always feel good, but thenfeeling good isn’t much of a standard for measuring experience.Make no mistake about it; reentry is an experience to be reck-oned with, but when the reckoning is done and the accounts arecleared, you are likely to find that the price you paid for youroverseas sojourn was the bargain of a lifetime.
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