Cross-cultural Encounters as Performance: New Training Tools for Sojourner Adjustment.

• In Event: Beyond the home/host culture dichotomy: Alternative approaches to cross-cultural adaptation

Abstract

This paper proposes an alternative to existing traditional models used to prepare student sojourners for the study abroad experience. The phenomenon of cross-cultural adjustment, (i.e. culture shock), is explored through a lens of performance analysis. Existing literature on the subject has traditionally utilized an individualistic, linear approach to the mapping of and coping with culture shock effects. Examining sojourner experience as performance will investigate a unique dimension of cultural adjustment previously overlooked in this area. Using the CPAS Model (Valentine & Matsumoto, 2001) a cultural performance analysis model, which recognizes the improvisational aspects of culture and social performance, allows sojourners to identify the shared (collective) nature of cross-cultural encounters and provide tools for managing the stress of culture shock. Thus, this research creates a more embodied and reflexive sojourn in which the student can recognize the role they play as ethnographer/traveler in both the present encounter and the larger cultural context. Potential practical outcomes of this research include the reconceptualization of adaptation processes to more unique and identity-based lived experience, which can assist in more holistic preparation of sojourners and migrants for their transitions. Theoretically, this work creates space for linkage among intercultural, phenomenological, and performance-based perspectives on cross-cultural adjustment.

Author

• Alexis Valianos, Arizona State University