Performing culture: An exploration of the lived experience of intercultural adaptation

Intercultural Communication and Performance Studies privilege new understandings about the nature of human experience in intercultural contexts. Culture, if viewed as an ongoing performative accomplishment, constitutes and maintains identity. Intercultural immersion effects identity through the learning and enacting of new cultural behaviors and the dismissal of native cultural norms. Through the repetition of new behaviors, a new identity emerges.; This project focuses on the ways in which individuals performatively adapt to a foreign culture and effects of this experience on both personal and cultural identity. In the spirit of phenomenology, I interviewed American sojourners who lived in Japan for a minimum of three months to discuss their adaptation process. In addition, through the exploration of my own experience via autoethnography, I was able to finally understand the complexity of my own process of adapting to life in Japan. My primary research questions emerged from my experience. These include, (1) How is personal identity negotiated throughout the adaptation process? and (2) How do individuals experience adaptation performatively?; Many sojourners expressed changes in identity and the need to maintain balance in an environment in which they were clearly marked as foreign. Attempts to fit in during the initial phases of their experience led to putting on Japanese behaviors. In addition, many sojourners discovered American norms that they felt would not be suitable in Japan. Once participants realized their inability to fully assimilate, many described feelings of frustration that resulted in the acting out of resistant behaviors.; Through the use autoethnography, I was able to clearly understand how aspects of earlier experiences in my life informed my adaptation process in Japan. I discovered deeply embedded attitudes about myself and others that had a direct impact on my strong desire to fit into Japanese culture. The power of autoethnography was invaluable in helping me gain an understanding of the complexities of identity negotiation both during and after my sojourn.; It is my hope that this project will link autobiography to the study of intercultural communication in future research in order to explore how people process intercultural experiences focusing on antecedents and conditions of contact. This project reveals the more complex nature of fragmented identity and the psychological processes that are an inevitable part of intercultural adaptation.