Acculturation and dostat

When we change countries, or systems, or practices, or workplaces, we have to become used to the new, to acculturate. Acculturation can be defined as "the process of cultural and psychological change following contact between cultural groups and their individual members……usually characterized by the members of a minority group adopting the habits, beliefs, behaviours and language patterns of the dominant group" (CERIC, 2020).

This process of acculturation has happened in Aotearoa with colonisation, with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, with education system change, when we change jobs, or when we move across IOS - Apple to Android to Windows. That is something we do in moving across the ditch: Australia is a quarter twist different to New Zealand, and those differences can take us quite by surprise! 

If my memory serves me correctly, the Russian verb "to buy", is dostat. Under communism it came to mean "to procure with great difficulty". I use that cultural shift in the dostat meaning to sum up those sneaky, hidden, cultural changes between how we do things in one place compared to another. Some things will be incredibly easy and streamlined, and others will become dostat.

When all the dostat elements have disappeared, we have acculturated :-)

Sam

References:

CERIC. (2020). Glossary of Career Development. Canadian Education and Research in Career Counselling. https://ceric.ca/glossary-of-career-development/