Culture from the Inside Out: Travel-and Meet Yourself

Alan Cornes. Culture from the Inside Out: Travel-and Meet Yourself. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 2004, 196 pages, $24.95 softcover.

Globalization of the economy, information technology, rapid and important progress, and the opportunity to travel easily around the world have increased our contact with other cultures but not always our ability to cope with different cultures. This book has two aims: (a) to explain why some people, expatriates as well as travellers, are able to integrate easily into another culture, but others remain separate from other cultures; and, (b) to give those who need to travel and to work abroad a new approach for actively adapting to another culture. The main idea is that knowing another culture is not enough-adapting actively to that culture involves a deep psychological process.

The book plan reflects the author's main idea-"the first person you meet when you travel is yourself." Two parts, each with four chapters, are entitled "Looking in" and "Looking out," meaning that when you're trying to adapt successfully to another culture, you first must look at yourself, and afterwards, look outside yourself. One cannot disagree with the fact that other people react to the behavior you show by your attitudes and emotions. Examining your behavior will, therefore, help you to understand how other people react to you, as well as how you react to them.

Consequently, there is no general recipe that would help everyone adjust to other...