On Ethnocentrism & Culture Shock

Yesterday in class we talked about “ethnocentrism”. A big word with an unfortunate meaning. Someone who is ethnocentric “pridefully interprets reality on the basis of their monocultural assumptions. They assume that their ways are superior and thus arrogantly reject new perceptions of reality. This cultural pride may be compared with egotism. Egotism says, ‘My way is better than your way.’ Ethnocentrism says, ‘My culture is better than your culture.’” [Van Rheenen, G. (1996). Missions: Biblical foundations and contemporary strategies. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. We have been challenged this week to closely consider our American cultural values. Americans tend to think that their way is “best” and “right”. We were challenged today to think of our cultural values to be not “best” or “right” but different. Here are the American cultural values we named together as a class (in no particular order):

The American Dream
Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness
Equality
Justice
Productivity
Personal space/privacy
Democracy
Paychecks/money
Comfort
Service
Feminism/women’s rights
Tolerance
Time/schedules/punctuality
Cleanliness/sanitation
Education
Weather prediction
Being in charge/running the show
Independence
Individualism
Success
Entertainment
Efficiency
Physical Fitness
Materialism

When we move to Albania, we will live among a people who value system is vastly different from our own. Even though we’ve been there several times already, we really have NO IDEA what life will be like there. We will go through “culture shock” which has many definitions, but I like this one: “Culture Shock is an emotional and physiological state induced by moving from one culture to another. It is a slowly advancing, nearly unnoticed psychological phenomenon which affects one’s whole way of thinking about himself and others. It is stress caused by living in a cultural situation in which the cues are misleading because the learned responses are wrong for the cues or no responses have been learned at all” (Loss 1983, 57, 58).