Resistance

Resistance is one of the primary ways that sojourners may react to adaptive demands. Resistance is defined as an unwillingness to change in response to the adaptive demands of a new cultural environment. This doesn't mean that one doesn't change, but that if one does so it is done unwillingly. The need to eat with chopsticks, take off shoes before entering a residence, learn a new subway system – these are all explicit adaptive demands. At the level of explicit adaptive demands, someone who resists an intercultural experience feels that they shouldn't need to change their behavior – or at least not very much. It may seem like too much trouble to learn to use chopsticks or 'dirty' to eat with one's fingers. The subway may be avoided because it seems 'inefficient' and less convenient than the one back home. While these behavioral demands may create problems for some sojourners, the more important demands are perceptual. Sojourners must make sense of their experience and find explanations for their physical environment, the behavior of the people, and so on. The streets may seem dirty or clean, the people loud or quiet and the sojourner attempts to interpret these things. For these interpretive demands, resistance makes a sojourner feel that they already have the criteria necessary to judge what they see and hear. One's ignorance is not recognized and one's pre-existing standards are reinforced. The streets may be 'dirty' because there's no 'civic pride' or people may talk loudly because they are 'aggressive'.