Culture and Communication
The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means . . . it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.
William James (1907)

A young American writing on her reasons for traveling to Japan to live and work wrote, "I came here hoping to identify with Japanese people, their culture and customs. I thought I was instilled with Japanese values because - like many yonsai, those of the fourth generation - I grew up going to Japanese language school, offering senko at the butsudan and cleaning the house for New Year's. I couldn't have been more presumptuous."1

She concluded that being in Japan only made her feel more American and less Japanese.2 This confession points to the notion that perhaps what many initially view as culture goes far beyond the conscious level of language and custom. In fact, Barzun has pointed out that the mind is in fact the place - or one of the places - where culture has its being;3 that is, it is grounded in an unconscious developed over the life-span of an individual and the "collective memory of his milieu."4

Cultures of whatever size hold individuals together by providing, among other things, practices, association skills, and styles of communication. However, culture runs much deeper than a collection of surface skills and actions designed not to offend a neighbor, provided he is a member of your group. Far and beyond that, culture is a world perspective, a learned and shared understanding of the forces of man and nature and how the two should relate through the tumultuous mood swings of both. Thus, an appropriate definition of culture might read: Shared practices, beliefs, social systems, and communication styles that instruct the members of a definable group in the skills required to live together peacefully and enable them to accomplish life tasks within a specific environment. This definition encompasses the norms, values, and social structures that many definitions point to and emphasizes that in every culture people are taught the skills they need to, not only behave appropriately, but also to face environmental challenges and work together constructively.

If one accepts the above definition, it could be said that one of the primary functions, if not the primary function, of culture is to hold a group of human beings together in order that they may survive and progress. Human beings are, in essence, weak creatures that need each other, not only to survive in a very hostile environment, but also to stay sane in a universe that is, more often than not, unfathomable; For as Doi concluded from his work with schizophrenic patients, "man cannot lead a human kind of existence without the experience of having belonged to something or other."5

A people's culture is, in effect, a bright orange life preserver to which they cling as the events of God and Man roar and crash around them. Printed in bold, black letters on one side is "Belief & Belonging." However, on the other side of that life preserver there is also printed in small script the word "escape."

The desire to escape one's inherited culture is embedded like a sleeping mole within the need to believe and belong. In some people it remains asleep and inactive throughout their lives unnoticed and unneeded, in others it is felt and repressed due to a fear of the unknown or a conviction of rightness of their views, and still there are others who recognize and follow this desire. The irony of this is that all three types of people, through their behavior of indifference, reaction, or progression, change the world in which they live and, thus, their cultures. They do so primarily through the communication of their views concerning belief, belonging, and escape.

Communication, or perhaps more precisely negotiation, and culture appear to be intertwined with each other in a chicken and egg scenario. Without communication there would be no culture. However, without culture there would be no communication for there would be no similarities between individuals upon which to base understanding or disagreement.6 That is, culture provides the basis for communicative intent, or meaning, and Giddens tells us that intent can be discerned only when participants in a given context of interaction share forms of mutual knowledge.7 Fortunately, culture and communication exist together and through "the reaching of understanding in language" ensure the "reproduction of social life."8 Yet, and perhaps more importantly, they are also the primary catalysts for change and/or disintegration within any society.

To forestall its disintegration, a society, while constructing its social systems and subsystems must leave open a window to the "Other within the Same". In fact, Gadamer suggests that our structures, upon which we base our "lifeworld," cannot be maintained unless they are used as the basis of our openness to the world.9 This window of opportunity in any society may be the source of what Parsons & Shils describe as "a special mode of integration . . . of (a) value-orientation system and its related institutions" into a dominant value system.10 Thus, there can be institutionalized values in a society that are different or even possibly at odds with the dominant value system of that society. It is here where we may find the starting point for societal change.11 However, the question remains: what is this special mode of integration?

The Creative Sojourner
As the Spanish proverb says, "He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in traveling, a man must carry knowledge if he would bring home knowledge.
Samuel Johnson (1778)

The sojourner can be defined as someone who temporarily visits or lives somewhere with the intent of returning home someday. Simple as this definition might be, underlying it is Descartes conception of the self "as a fully separate, self-defining entity."12 That is to say, the sojourner, one who leaves his home, group, community, or nation to visit another group, community, or nation, does so as an individual. This individual will roughly possess one of the three personality types described by William Isaac Thomas: the bohemian, who has no coherent character structure; the philistine, with a rigid orientation of his life; the creative personality, who is able systematically to guide his own development.13

It is the sojourners who posses the third type of personality, the creative personality, who reach beyond the desire to survive and succeed and into the desire to experience or create something new. It is they who use that window of opportunity that leads to the "Other within the Same." That is to say, as they search for something new, creative sojourners discover the Other and bring it home. The mechanism they use to accomplish this feat can be nothing less than the adoption and adaptation of the Other's specific behaviors, norms, and values that they deem useful in their lives.

A process of self-development can be stimulated by the unfamiliarity of the new environment in which the sojourner finds himself; for within any new environment, the sojourner must learn new rules of socialization to be effective and, if successful, will increase his confidence in his individual capabilities. Conceivably this occurs in a way proposed by William Isaac Thomas and described by Joas as:

"When confronted with unfamiliar stimuli, habits break down, a state of affairs that constitutes a crisis which can be overcome only by a conscious operation ('attention') on the part of the subject, through which new habits of behavior originate."14

For the creative sojourner, especially in an intercultural setting, this thought can be applied not only to new habits of behavior but also to norms and values, because a change in one can be accompanied by a change in the other. Moreover, to succeed in an intercultural environment, the sojourner must either adopt new behaviors, norms, and values outright or adapt them to existing behaviors, norms, and values. It is within this process of adoption or adaptation that the creative sojourner changes his individual culture and produces the potential to change his home culture upon his return.

According to Fontaine those who engage in intercultural interaction are confronted with three basic challenges. Those challenges are: 1) coping with ecoshock, 2) developing strategies to effectively complete tasks in a new ecology, and 3) maintaining motivation.15 To meet these challenges and, thus, engage in successful cultural adaptation, three pertinent attitudes are required that may be found within the creative personality and described by Anderson as:

"(a) Willingness to open oneself up to new cultural influences, (b) a willingness to face obstacles head-on by the use of instrumental strategies, and (c) and perhaps most crucial of all, a resolve not to run away."16

Combine these attitudes with the idea, from Mead's theory of symbolically-mediated interaction, that "human behavior becomes oriented to the possible reactions of others"17 and you may have the formula for successful and long-lasting cultural adaptation: For it could be said that an open and determined sojourner, with increased levels of doubt and concern about the acceptability of his behavior, is more sensitive to the reactions of others and, thus, more open to the need to adapt in the first place.18 This realization is a prerequisite to the actual adaptation of the sojourner's behavior to the behavior of those with whom he interacts. Furthermore, this cultural adaptation has the potential to be long lasting; that is to say, detectable in the sojourner's behavior beyond his stay in the new environment. Anderson gives us a reason for this when she points out that adapting something entails more than making the unfamiliar familiar; it requires acceptance of that which is new.19 In fact, Anderson goes on to assert that the process of adaptation could be seen as essentially one of rebuilding personal identity in the face of environmental disturbance.20 Fundamentally, what is being described here is the "disorganization and reorganization," in the sense that Thomas used the phrase in regards to group institutions,21 of an individual human being in order to retain psychological stability.

Creative sojourners do not go "native" during this process of disorganization and reorganization; however, "they do try new things, and reflect on the events";22 that is to say, they explore and seek new experiences to ponder. Levitt believes that more contact with the host society means greater exposure to its different features, more reflection on existing practices, and a greater potential for incorporating new routines.23 She goes on to add that of the migrants she looked at in her study of social remittances, it was the purposeful innovators (creative sojourners) who joined the host-country norms with their own ideas and practices.24

Anderson states that cross-cultural adaptation, among other things, implies learning and personal development.25 In addition, she found that creative sojourners produce and create their own adaptation.26 If learning, personal development, and personal acts of creation are involved, the new behaviors, norms, and values produced by the creative sojourner's successful intercultural encounter may be of a more permanent nature than one would expect and may be at the heart of an historical mode of cultural change that is based on a process of attrition.

The Historical Process of Cultural Attrition
For impermanency is the nature of things . . . and the changes and the changers shall also be changed until there is found no place for them - and regret is vanity.
Lafcadio Hearn (1894)

The historical process of cultural attrition is driven by the creative sojourner's practice of adopting and adapting. It is a process that is directed by individuals and their interactions with one another and operated on a continuum that reaches from the individual level to the level of nations. It is characterized by attrition in the sense that it is, in fact, a painful process that can lead to the complete wearing away or destruction of a culture through the violent and nonviolent influence of other cultures. However, this attrition, this wearing away at each other, this grinding of cultures does not only destroy, it also can create something new and, perhaps, stronger.

Lafcadio Hearn upon visiting the Hinomisaki-jinga, a Shinto shrine on the Izumo coast of Japan, observed,

"In very truth there is nothing of pure Shinto here. These shrines belong to the famous period of RyobuShinto, when the ancient faith, interpenetrated and allied with Buddhism, adopted the ceremonial magnificence and the marvelous decorative art of the alien creed."27

He went on to relate, (Shinto) had appropriated and assimilated all forms of foreign thought which could aid its material manifestation or fortify its ethics . . . But Shinto, while seeming to yield, was really only borrowing strength from its rival.28

This appropriation, assimilation, and borrowing from another culture in order to strengthen ones own is the outcome of two conditions that propel the process of cultural attrition and the change it brings. The first of these is humanity's capacity for rational thought; for, it allows creative sojourners, " 'moving' in time-space, linking both action and context, and differing contexts, with one another,"29 to recognize and adapt behaviors, norms, and values in other cultures that might be useful in their quest for understanding, knowledge, and the good life.

The second condition is found within the very structures human beings establish to preserve a way of life. Those structures produce in individual human beings emotional, altruistic, and utilitarian attachments to other individuals within the community in which they are socialized. Erving Goffman called these attachments anchored relations,30 and Cohan suggests that the ramifications of such relations . . . extend to the very core of human experience.31

Combine these attachments with an idea from the theory of symbolic interactionism concerning how relationships are defined, and one can begin to see how a creative sojourner can return to his home community with changed behaviors, norms, or values and be allowed to retain them and, in so doing, transmit them to others even if they are at odds with those of the community.

The theory of symbolic inter-actionism suggests that within social relations, action does not take the form of mere translation of fixed prescriptions into deeds, but in which definitions of the relations are, rather, jointly and reciprocally proposed and established. Social relations are seen, then, not as stabilized once and for all but as open and tied to ongoing common acknowledgment.32

This indicates that social relationships are maintained through a process of negotiation such as the one described by Mead who explained that the individual takes the attitude of the other toward his own stimulus, and in taking that he finds it modified in that his response becomes a different one, and leads in turn to further change.33

In addition, this process of attrition includes, within both the first and second condition, elements of intuition and impulse which can lead to violence and/or the expulsion of the offending returnee from the group; yet, due to the emotional, altruistic, and utilitarian nature of social relations, they can also lead to tolerance, if not acceptance, of the returnees new behaviors, norms, or values. However, this second outcome is predicated on the premise that, as Nucci and Neblo put it, different people can, to varying degrees, understand different standpoints and they can adjust their moral judgments according to the understandings that develop when they do.34

It is this human characteristic, the rational ability to understand different standpoints, that allows the creative sojourner to "unlearn at least some of the norms and rules that were acquired during initial socialization"35 and change their individual worldview or culture. In fact, this change of worldview can be substantial. Anderson states that it has been observed that sojourners upon coming to terms with a strange culture experience remarkable alterations of consciousness.36 Thus, upon their return home "they are no longer pure products of their home culture."37 That is to say, the creative sojourner has changed. He is no longer what he was before he left his home communication network and upon his return he may be forced, once again, to change.

Garza-Guerrero contends that the identity building that occurs in cross-cultural adaptation can never be viewed as a final, static achievement.38 Perhaps this is because this process of cultural creativity has a progressive character and continues after the creative sojourner leaves the foreign environment and returns to the environment of his initial socialization. The W-curve hypothesis contends that when the sojourner returns home he will undergo "an initial, albeit superficial, adjustment, followed by depression with eventual reintegration."39 It is within the reintegration phase of the reentry that the creative sojourner adapts his new behaviors, norms, or values to his home community's behaviors, norms and values through the process of negotiation described by Mead.40 This is made possible only because of the emotional, altruistic, and utilitarian attachments the sojourner has with his home community and the toleration such attachments bring.

The Historical Process of Cultural Attrition, then, finds its foundation in the social attachments or "anchored relations" individuals have with each other. It is a process by which the creative personality relocates his being, physically or through technological means, into another cultural milieu, adopts and adapts behaviors (B), norms (N), or values (V) that he finds useful in living his life (that is, best practices for him as an individual), returns to his home cultural milieu, and through a process of negotiation and adaptation retains this new orientation to life and possibly transmits it to his family members and neighbors (Individual Communication Network [ICN]); thus creating, over time, the potential for greater diffusion within the larger home culture. This process is illustrated in Figure 1(Top left column).

The impact the creative sojourner's retention of new behaviors, norms, and values has on his individual communication network's culture can be limited, but it also has the potential to be far reaching. Levitt observed that social remittances could be modified and adopted, or disregarded by the creative sojourner's community.41 She also indicates that behaviors, norms, and values that were modified and adopted can be conveyed to community and national leaders (the elite idea carriers).42 This points to the potential for bottom-up change occurring in a creative sojourner's home culture through the influence of the discourses in which he engages. However, this change can only begin at the level of the creative sojourner's individual communication network. For it is only within the creative sojourner's primary communication networks, natal or otherwise, where one may find a level of toleration in one of Walzer's forms - resignation, indifference, stoical acceptance, curiosity, enthusiasm43 - that will enable a new belief, norm, or value to survive. This toleration might be termed the toleration of blood or kin. Primeval kinship, then, may be the determinate social structure upon which all social and cultural change is dependent.

Thus, it is kinship's capacity for toleration, limited as it might be, for different views spanning three or more generations that allows human beings to hold themselves together while they exist in a constant state of flux. For, within kinship groups, however they are defined, difference is not what is celebrated, but rather, it is shared interest that is emphasized.

Conclusion
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
William Shakespeare (1600)

Identities and communities, like communication and culture, are mutually dependent; one creates the other and visa versa. As individuals gain access to global travel, information and communication technologies, and a plethora of choice, they will discover new beliefs, norms, and values that appeal to them from across the globe and begin to incorporate those norms and values within their own identities. By doing so, they will begin to influence and change their own individual communication networks and, through them, their group and national cultures.

The process could be described as progress through incremental shifts of understanding and inclusion of the Other within a society's definition of its community. However, this progress is also characterized by variables whose effect at times can be harmful. That is to say, some of the changes brought on by this process of attrition will be constructive and build communities that are functional in a global environment. Others, however, will be destructive, but by their very nature will pass away as the community's people, locally, nationally, or internationally, collectively reject them. The final result of this process may be a collection of unique cultural communities across the globe that are understandable and tolerated by all; in effect, a global community.

Perhaps that is the ongoing outcome of the historical process of cultural attrition and the role of creative sojourners in it. For, they provide that element which allows the reproduction of society to produce new styles of behavior and valuation based on what individuals perceive to be the best that civilization has to offer. That is, they utilize the window to the "Other within the Same" and, thus, become catalysts of gradual, evolutionary change towards expansive communities and greater union of human culture.

Steve Sigler has a number of interests that range from live sound reinforcement to disaster management and humanitarian assistance. He has endeavored to travel and study in the hopes of learning something new. Along the way he has earned three degrees and spent time in various countries of the world including five years in Japan.

All photos courtesy of Michael Clarke. Michael is a creative sojourner of sorts. A Canadian native, he studied to be an archaeologist and anthropologist but now works as a computer programmer and freelance editor. He resides in Tokyo, Japan with his wife and son. He keeps an online diary of his life and experiences at www.hunkabutta.com

Footnotes

1. N. Kimura, "How My Grandma Miyuki Made Me Love Japan," The Honolulu Advertiser, August 6, 2000, p. B3.

2. Ibid.

3. J. Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, (New York: HarperCollins Books, 2000), p. 91.

4. Ibid.

5. T. Doi, The Anatomy of Dependence, (TMkyM: Kodansha International, 1973), p. 139.

6. J. C. Alexander, "The Centrality of the Classics," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 11-57.

7. A. Giddens, "Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and the Production of Culture," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 220.

8. Habermas in A. Honneth, "Critical Theory," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 372.

9. Gadamer in W. S. K. Cameron, "On Communicative Actors Talking Past One Another: The Gadamer-Habermas Debate," Philosophy Today, vol. 40, no. 1 (1996), p. 161.

10. T. Parsons, & E. Shils, "Values and Social Systems," in J. C. Alexander & S. Seidman, eds., Culture and Society, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p, 44.

11. Ibid.

12. R. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), p. 280.

13. W. I. Thomas in H. Joas, "Symbolic Interactionism," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 98.

14. Ibid., p. 97.

15. G. Fontaine, "Training for the Key Challenges Encountered on International Assignments in Asia and the Pacific," International Symposium on Pacific Asian Business, (1994), p. 173.

16. L. E. Anderson, "A New Look at an Old Construct: Cross-Cultural Adaptation," International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 18, no. 3, (1994), p. 313.

17. H. Joas, "Symbolic Interactionism," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 91.

18. D. Samuels, " 'These are the stories that the dogs tell': Discourses of Identity and Difference in Ethnography and Science Fiction," Cultural Anthropology, vol. 11, no. 1, (1996), p. 312.

19. L. E. Anderson, "A New Look at an Old Construct: Cross-cultural Adaptation," International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 18, no. 3, (1994), p. 297.

20. Ibid., p. 321.

21. W. I. Thomas in H. Joas, "Symbolic Interactionism," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 82-115.

22. C. H. Dodd, Dynamics of Intercultural Communication, (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1998), p. 161.

23. P. Levitt, "Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-level Forms of Cultural Diffusion," International Migration Review, vol. 32, no. 14, (1998), p. 930.

24. Ibid., p. 931.

25. L. E. Anderson, "A New Look at an Old Construct: Cross-cultural Adaptation," International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 18, no. 3, (1994), p. 303.

26. Ibid., p. 318.

27. L. Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, Co., Inc., 1976), p. 279.

28. Ibid., p. 388.

29. A. Giddens, "Structuralism, Post-structuralism and the Production of Culture," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 215.

30. E. Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. (New York; Basic Books, 1971).

31. I. J. Cohan, (1988). "Structuration Theory and Social Praxis," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 305.

32. H. Joas, "Symbolic Interactionism," in A. Giddens & J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 84.

33. G. H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist,(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 179.

34. L. Nucci & N. A. Neblo, "The Emergence of Postculturalism," Human Development, vol. 41, (1998), p. 176.

35. Spradley & Phillips in L. E. Anderson, "A New Look at an Old Construct: Cross-cultural Adaptation," International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 18, no. 3, (1994), p. 320.

36. L. E. Anderson, "A New Look at an Old Construct: Cross-cultural Adaptation," International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 18, no. 3, (1994), p. 321.

37. Ibid., p. 315.

38. Ibid., p. 314.

39. S. C. Brabant, E. Palmer, & R. Gramling, "Returning Home: An Empirical Investigation of Cross-cultural Reentry. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 14, (1990), p. 389.

40. G. H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist,(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967).

41. P. Levitt, "Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-level Forms of Cultural Diffusion," International Migration Review, vol. 32, no. 14, (1998), p. 938.

42. Ibid., p. 937.

43. M. Walzer, On Toleration, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997).

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