Culture Shock: The Five Key Sociological Concepts

Culture shock refers to the trauma an individual experience when they move to a culture different from their home culture (Macionis & Linda, 2010). Following my experience with culture shock, there are five key sociological concepts and individuals have different reactions to the culture shock: either culturally relativistic or ethnocentric.

These two words, culture shock, have been part of my personal vocabulary since I was younger. When I was born, my American parents lived in England. I grew up moving from the Europe's military bases until I was 15 years old. The only regret is not being able to be fluent in the second language of the countries I moved. In an ever move, I would enter a continuous transition cycle. At first, everything seems

In my case, I mostly suffered from homesickness. Once the crisis phase is over, individuals begin to accept the differences in the host culture with that of origin and become functioning. The recovery stage results in a final adjustment stage. Its mean that individual reaches a state of acculturation.

There are five key sociological concepts portrayed in my culture shock experience (Will, 2012). Firstly, is the social structure of the surroundings. The social structure consists of Social positions, social relationships and the number of people. The cities had many people and they related well with other people. I was able to have a good social relationship as I could even join the school dance. In terms of position, the foreigners are still treated with the low position. My classmates mocked me due to my British-American English.

Secondly is the social action towards the foreign individual. People behavior base on meaningful understandings on what they so and relates to the actions that other people take (Will, 2012). In my case, the surroundings culture was not hostile since I was able to adopt and embrace the foreign