Rim Charrad
Professor Moss
Sociology, 308
29 March 2019
Culture Shock
Should one have to leave his own country to meet otherness? Our culture carries and
structures us through a complex totality consisting of a language, a system of kinship, a set way
of completing tasks, usages, and customs. “What is culture? ‘Culture is the complex of material
and intellectual values established by humankind’” (Kováts-Németh, 2016). The definition of
this culture has passed on for more than a century; each discipline emphasizing what seems to be
the most decisive to its approach. The field of family therapy crosses the cultural context in
many ways: the kinship system, the methods of communication, the sharing of roles and rituals
within families, and models of education and care.
At the same time, each family fits with its own singularity in the fabric of cultural
transmissions. They face the challenges of life by metabolizing it using their own cultural rules
and traditions. The family could therefore be considered as a crucial part in the system of
creation, protection, and preservation of culture. A reflection needs to be open here on exchanges
between different cultural systems. The term “cultural group” often refers to those who we feel
are irremediable and foreign to our conception of the world. Meanwhile, we often lose sight of
the fact that those who appear “different” also see us as “different” in relation to them. Some
families have lived in the same territory for several generations; others moved and were forced to
learn languages that were foreign to them and find new sources for food. They are considered
“migrant families”. For those who have remained in their home country, their social status has
changed over time: the rich have lost their wealth, the poor have become wealthy, the villagers
have been “mounted” to the city, farmers have become traders, artisans have become professors,
academics have produced goatherd. They have helped to build a new culture within a territory
that they had not left.
Families who change their culture within their region, as well as those who emigrate,
retain the imprint of their traditions and customs. Those who migrate carry, in addition to the
