Content introduction

§2.3 Intercultural conflict and ways to overcome it
The essence of cultural shock is the conflict of old and new cultural norms and orientations, the old ones inherent in the individual as a representative of the society he left, and the new ones, that is, representing the society to which he arrived. Strictly speaking, cultural shock is a conflict of two cultures at the level of individual consciousness.
According to Bock, there are 4 ways to resolve this conflict:
The first method can be conditionally called ghettoization. It is realized in situations when a person arrives in another society, but tries or is forced (due to ignorance of the language, natural timidity, religion or for some other reason) to avoid any contact with another culture. In this case, he tries to create his own cultural environment – the environment of his fellow tribesmen, shutting off this environment from the influence of the foreign cultural environment.
In almost any large western city, there are more or less isolated and closed areas inhabited by representatives of other cultures. These are chinatowns or whole chinatowns, these are neighborhoods or areas where immigrants from Muslim countries, Indian neighborhoods, etc. settle. For example, in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, in the process of many decades of migration of Turkish workers and intellectual refugees, not only the Turkish diaspora, but a kind of ghetto emerged. Here, most of the residents are Turks and even the streets have a Turkish look, which is given to them by advertisements and advertisements – almost exclusively in Turkish, Turkish eateries and restaurants, Turkish baths and travel agencies, representative offices of Turkish parties and Turkish political slogans on the walls. In Kreuzberg, you can live your whole life without saying a word in German.
Similar ghettos – Armenian, Georgian – existed before the revolution in Moscow. In Toronto, such areas are so nationally specific that North American filmmakers prefer to shoot scenes in Toronto that take place in Calcutta, Bangkok or Shanghai, so vividly the inner world, traditions and culture of the inhabitants of these ghettos are expressed in the external design of their life in Canada.
The second way to resolve the conflict of cultures is assimilation, which is essentially the opposite of ghettoization. In the case of assimilation, the individual, on the contrary, completely abandons his culture and strives to fully assimilate the cultural baggage of someone else's culture necessary for life. Of course, this is not always possible. The reason for the difficulties is either the lack of plasticity of the personality of the assimilating person himself, or the resistance of the cultural environment of which he intends to become a member. Such resistance is found, for example, in some European countries (France, Germany) in relation to new emigrants from Russia and the Commonwealth countries who want to assimilate there and become normal French or Germans. Even if they successfully master the language and achieve an acceptable level of everyday competence, the environment does not accept them as their own, they are constantly "pushed out" into that environment, which, by analogy with an invisible college (the term of sociology of science) can be called an invisible ghetto – into a circle of fellow tribesmen and "co-culturists" who are forced to communicate only with each other outside of work. Of course, assimilation is not a problem for the children of such emigrants who are included in a foreign cultural environment from an early age.
The third way to resolve a cultural conflict is an intermediate one, consisting in cultural exchange and interaction. In order for the exchange to be carried out adequately, that is, benefiting and enriching both sides, benevolence and openness on both sides are needed, which, unfortunately, is extremely rare in practice, especially if the parties are initially unequal: one is autochthonous, the other is refugees or emigrants. Nevertheless, there are examples of this kind of successful cultural interaction in history: these are Huguenots who fled to Germany from the horrors of St. Bartholomew's Night, settled there and did much to bring French and German cultures closer together; these are German philosophers and scientists who left Germany after the Nazis came to power and managed to make a significant contribution to the development of science and philosophy in English-speaking countries, significantly changed the intellectual climate there and influenced the development of social life in general. In general, the results of such interaction are not always obvious at the very moment of its implementation. They become visible and weighty only after a considerable time has passed.
The fourth way is partial assimilation, when an individual sacrifices his culture in favor of a foreign cultural environment partially, that is, in some one of the spheres of life: for example, at work he is guided by the norms and requirements of a foreign cultural environment, and in the family, at leisure, in the religious sphere – by the norms of his traditional culture.
Therefore, the practice of overcoming cultural shock is perhaps the most common. Emigrants most often assimilate partially, dividing their lives into two unequal halves. As a rule, assimilation turns out to be partial either in the case when complete ghettoization is impossible, or when full assimilation is impossible for various reasons. However, it can also be a completely intentional positive result of a successful exchange about interaction.