Customer Reviews

2 reviews

• Ann Göth

  They teach us many things in school, but the important topic of how to live in or with a different culture is often ignored. This is despite so many people now traveling to countries where they don’t quite know how to fit in or adapt to living there. And while most nations become more and more multicultural we need to know how and why people of different cultures act differently. Based on his year-long study of the actual adaptation experiences of exchange students living in a different culture, Leo Hitchcock presents different techniques that can help with such challenges.

• Justine Readings

  As a long-term ex-pat, just about to embark on life in my fourth ‘foreign’ home, this book appealed to me as a fascinating account of learning through a love of difference. Based on a study of personal accounts from ‘sojourners’ (students and adults hosted long-term in a foreign country) Dr Leo Hitchcock goes through, in great detail, the stages of adaptation to living in a new community. He describes the journey of modifying and reshaping long-held personal understandings, a necessary process to make sense of different cultural values. Having experienced this myself, and all its emotional ups and downs, the book really resonated with me.
  
  While it follows the learning journey of travellers, this is not a travel book - it is a detailed research-based reference book which explores complex topics such as the layers of cultural dimensions and models of intercultural sensitivity, through the theories of phenomenography and symbolic interaction.
  
  The main content, and to my mind the ‘beauty’ of the book, is in the detailed account of the adaptation process, which Hitchcock has broken into 10 key components, each explored in-depth. The book includes sections on learning to build and adapt to differences in food rituals, different orientations to time and learning to cope with the stress of the constant need to go through this adaptation process. A significant portion of the book are direct quotes from the participants - and these tell impactful stories of learning. In the words of each participant, you can hear the deep reflection on self as they describe what has stood out to them as different or significant in their everyday lives as ‘foreigners' hosted in local families. Every conversation is a comparison, so when reflecting on what each speaker has chosen to focus on and compare, and what details to ignore, the values of the different cultures are highlighted.
  
  With so many people now living in a foreign country, or having to deal with people from other cultures on a daily basis, this book is timely and relevant. The detail Hitchcock has gone into gives much food for thought. It is a book you will want to linger through, taking time to pause and reflect on your own reactions to the stories and the analysis. Readers will be able to learn more about themselves as they become fully immersed in the learning of the sojourners.
  
  

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