Culture Shock and Multiculturalism: Reclaiming a Useful Model from the Religious Realm
Author: Edward Dutton
Date Of Publication: Feb 2012
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3526-8
Isbn: 1-4438-3526-9
It used to be widely accepted amongst anthropologists that when they conducted fieldwork with foreign cultures they experienced something called ‘culture shock.’ This book will argue that ‘culture shock’ is a useful model for understanding an important part of human experience. However, in its most widely-known form, the stage model, ‘culture shock’ has been heavily influenced by the same anti-science, latter-day religiosity that has become so influential more broadly: Multiculturalism.

This book will examine culture shock through the model of ‘religion.’ It will show how the most well-known model of culture shock – so popular amongst business consultants, expatriates, international students and travelers – has become a means of promoting and sustaining this replacement religion which includes everything from dogmatism and fervour to conversion experience. By so doing, it will aim both to better understand culture shock and to show how it can still be useful, if divorced from its implicitly religious dimensions, to broadly scientific scholars. It will also suggest how anthropology itself might be stripped of its ideological infiltration and returned to the realm of science.

Edward Dutton is Docent (Reader) in the Anthropology of Religion at Oulu University in Finland. He has a degree in Theology from Durham University in England and a PhD in Religious Studies from Aberdeen University in Scotland. Dr Dutton’s previous works include The Finnuit: Finnish Culture and the Religion of Uniqueness (Akademiai Kiado, 2009) and Meeting Jesus at University: Rites of Passage and Student Evangelicals (Ashgate, 2008). He has also written for various newspapers and magazines including The Telegraph, the Fortean Times and the Contemporary Review.

“Dr Dutton has a deep knowledge of his field. Methodically, he is extremely thorough and aware of all possible pitfalls, always seeking a theoretical perspective from which he can analyze. In Culture Shock and Multiculturalism, his perspective, examining culture shock through the prism of religion, is surprising and he actualizes a clear scholarly problem. The book examines questions which are extremely important to all those conducting scientific work. For example, what happens to scholars who produce science outside the fashionable in-group that dominates contemporary anthropological scholarship? This book will provoke a crucial debate about the influence of postmodern scholarship in anthropology as well as providing a highly original analysis of an à la mode concept.”

– Prof. Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Åbo Akademi, Finland

“In Culture Shock and Multiculturalism, Edward Dutton develops a thoroughly plausible and mutually consistent and interlocking set of explanations and analyses to account for the ‘shocks’ and dislocations engendered by Multiculturalism. He makes a compelling case for the efficaciousness of stereotypes in human survival and even has the temerity to point out that the view that all cultures are equal and its supporting ideological infrastructure are somewhat vulnerable to scientific, empirical investigation. Truly shocking!”

– Dr Frank Ellis, Author of Political Correctness and the Theoretical Struggle

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

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