Across the Stream: An Ethnography of Biculturating

Abstract

This study explores cross-cultural adaptation process from an ethnographic perspective. The data come from my own experience of adapting to a new culture and place, combined with the observations from numerous other individuals, international students and emigrants going through the same process. The biculturating patterns emerged through using Wolcott’s ethnographic techniques on data gathered primarily through observations, interviewing numerous international students and immigrants, and my own experience of moving across cultures over a decade in Northern Colorado. After summarizing the previous research, explaining the method and the culture, the paper describes biculturating patterns as acculturation, biculturating, and becoming bicultural. The interpretation and conclusion of the paper is that biculturation could not be studied in model. Biculturation is the outcome from the combination of the background of the settler, the motives for crossing cultures, and the host culture environment, where the motivation is the driving wheel of the process.