Culture Shock
Culture shock: is the disorientation that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own and believe they cannot depend on their own taken-far-granted assumptions about life. ‘When people travel to another, society. they. may not know how to respond to that setting. For example, Napoleon Chagnon (1992) described his initial shock at seeing the Yanomamo (pronounced) tribe of South America on his lirst trip in 1964.
The Yanomamo (also referred to :IS the “Yanomami”) are a tribe of about 20,000 South An’I,Crican Indians who live in the rain forest. Although Chanson traveled in a small aluminum motorboat for three days to reach these people, he was not prepared for the sight that met his eyes when hey arrived looked up and gasped to see a dozen burly, naked, sweaty. hideous men staring at us down the shafts of their drown arrows, Immense wads of green tobacco were stuck between their lower teeth and lips, making them look even more hideous. and strands of dark-green slime dripped from their nostrils-strands so long that they reached down to their pectoral muscles or drizzled down their chins and stuck to their chests and bellies. We arrived as the men were blowing ebene, a hallucinogenic drug, up their noses …. I was horrified. What kind of welcome was this for someone who had come to live with these people and learn their way of Life- 10 become friends with them? But when they recognized Barker [a guide). they put their weapons down and returned to their chanting. while keeping a nervous eye on the village entrances. (Chagnon, 1992: 12-14)
The Yanornarno nave no written language. system of numbers, or eal:ndar. They lead a nomadic lifestyle, carrying everything they own on their backs. They wear no clothes and paint their bodies; the women insert slender sticks through holes in the lower lip and through the pierced nasal septum. In other words, the Yanomam like the members of thousands of other cultures around the world live in a culture very different from that of the United States,
