Ecocultural Adjustment: A Peace Corps Sojourn
type: CreativeWork
description: This work serves as a case study to extend, expand, and challenge the conventionally anthropocentric framing of cultural adjustment. I examine cultural adjustment through an ecocultural lens, reconceptualizing the process as ecocultural adjustment, which combines both cultural (human-centered) factors with environmental (both human-constructed and greater-than-human) elements in the process of sojourner adaptation. I utilize journal and blog entries along with my own memories through performative autoethnography to explore a 26-month sojourn with the US Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa, as well as the departure, travel, and return to the United States. Over the course of this reflective study, I explore and problematize the human-nature divide currently dominating the anthropocentric understandings of intercultural adjustment experiences. My interpretations point to the profound need to reimagine the sojourner adjustment process as one of both mind and body, of culture and negotiation of the greater-than-human world, as not simply cultural adjustment but as ecocultural adjustment.
abstract: This work serves as a case study to extend, expand, and challenge the conventionally anthropocentric framing of cultural adjustment. I examine cultural adjustment through an ecocultural lens, reconceptualizing the process as ecocultural adjustment, which combines both cultural (human-centered) factors with environmental (both human-constructed and greater-than-human) elements in the process of sojourner adaptation. I utilize journal and blog entries along with my own memories through performative autoethnography to explore a 26-month sojourn with the US Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa, as well as the departure, travel, and return to the United States. Over the course of this reflective study, I explore and problematize the human-nature divide currently dominating the anthropocentric understandings of intercultural adjustment experiences. My interpretations point to the profound need to reimagine the sojourner adjustment process as one of both mind and body, of culture and negotiation of the greater-than-human world, as not simply cultural adjustment but as ecocultural adjustment.
author: Parks, Melissa Michelle
language: English
keywords: ecocultural adjustment, ecoculture shock, ecocultural re-entry shock, cultural adjustment, culture shock, human-nature divide, cultural re-entry shock, US Peace Corps
date published: 2016-05-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:26:00Z
provider: University of New Mexico
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of New Mexico

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1928/32259