My culture is also their culture?

In my first blog, I speculated that a global culture is threatening to replace national culture as many studies approached global and national culture as two separate entities (Bird & Stevens, 2003). However, globalisation is changing the way in which scholars think of cultural change. Harrison (2006) argues for a ‘clash of cultures’, whilst others give attention to how cultures influence and learn from each other (Fang, 2012). Frame switching - moving between two or more cultures regularly - influences cultural change as people impose their own culture and learn from new cultures at the same time (Hong et al., 2000). But how do the people who frame switch regularly acculturate? Berry (1979) was one of the first psychologists to suggest that acculturation is not linear and instead that cultural orientation can be both from a culture of origin and inhabited culture concurrently. As more people migrate, theories have adapted to include the changing dynamics, however these theories are yet to be fully developed.

The Yin Yang perspective of culture suggests that opposite values found in different cultures can exist together as humans embrace paradoxes (Fang, 2012). This explains how multidimensional models of acculturation have promise in expanding knowledge about cultural-psychological differences of people with different acculturation levels (Abe-Kim, Okazaki & Goto, 2001). Berger, Safdar, Spieß, Bekk and Font’s (2018) study of Erasmus students found that students who reported confidence in their linguistic, resilience and cultural skills and had a strong sense of identity had positive acculturation to a new culture. Knowing what factors increase acculturation have implications for universities who accept international students as it displays which students are most at risk of having difficulty acculturating and what interventions would be most effective to help them. Overall, this evidence suggests that attention should be given to the idea of cul­tural paradox where values from multiple cultures coexist in one culture whilst national culture is still prevalent.

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References

Abe-Kim, J., Okazaki, S., & Goto, S. G. (2001). Unidimensional versus multidimensional approaches to the assessment of acculturation for Asian American populations. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 7(3), 232–246. https://doi.org/10.1037/1099-9809.7.3.232

Berger, R., Safdar, S., Spieß, E., Bekk, M., & Font, A. (2018). Acculturation of erasmus students: Using the multidimensional individual difference acculturation model framework. International Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12526

Berry, J. W. (1979). Research in multicultural societies: Implications of cross-cultural methods. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 10(4), 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022179104002

Bird, A., & Stevens, M. (2003). Toward an emergent global culture and the effects of globalization on obsolescing national cultures. Journal Of International Management, 9(4), 395-407.

Fang, T. (2012). Yin Yang: A New Perspective on Culture. Management & Organization Review, 8(1), 25–50. https://doi-org.proxy.library.dmu.ac.uk/10.1111/j.1740-8784.2011.00221.x

Harrison, L.E. (2006) The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hong, Y.Y., Morris, M.W., Chiu, C.Y. &Benet-Martinez, V. (2000) ‘Multicultural Minds: A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition’, American Psychologist, 55, 709–720.