Ecocultural adjustment: revisiting acculturation through a Peace Corps sojourn

ABSTRACT

This performative autoethnography examines extant theories of cultural adjustment through an ecocultural lens. I revisit my 26-month sojourn with the US Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa, and my return to the United States in the context of sojourner acculturation, critiquing the often conventionally anthropocentric frame of cultural adjustment and reconceptualizing the process as ecocultural adjustment. Ecocultural adjustment theory calls attention to the impact of the environment on the transitioning human body and points to the profound need to reimagine the cultural adjustment process as one of both mind and body and culture and ecology.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural adjustment
• culture shock
• performative autoethnography
• emplacement
• environmental communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).