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Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 447466, 2004 # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/$30.00

doi:10.1016/j.annals.2004.01.003

CULTURE CONFUSION
Intercultural Adaptation in Tourism
Petri Hottola Finnish University Network for Tourism Studies, Finland
Abstract: Exploring other places as a tourist or a short-term sojourner is a chance for pleasure and self-discovery, but also a confusing experience. Often, people refer to culture shock, a theoretical framework with its origin in the sojourner studies of the 50s. Since the publication of a 1984 contribution in Annals of Tourism Research, more eld material has surfaced pointing out the inconclusive and partly non-valid nature of the U-curve approach, especially in the context of tourism. In the present article, a new grounded theory frameworkthe dynamic model of culture confusionis proposed to overcome the existing void in the theoretical understanding of short-term transitions. Keywords: culture confusion, culture shock, intercultural adaptation, backpacking, India. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. sume : Confusion culturelle:adaptation interculturelle dans le tourisme. Lexploration Re dautres endroits comme touriste ou comme visiteur a ` court terme est une occasion de plaisir et de de couverte de soi, mais cest aussi une expe rience de routante. On parle souvent de choc culturel, un cadre the orique aux origines dans les e tudes de visiteurs des anne es 50. Depuis la publication en 1984 dun article dans Annals of Tourism Research, plus de recherches sur le terrain ont fait surface, en mettant en e vidence la nature peu concluante et en partie non valable de lapproche de la courbe U, surtout dans le contexte du tourisme. Dans le pre sent article, un nouveau cadre the orique raisonne le mode ` le dynamique de la confusion culturelle est propose pour combler le vide de la compre hension the orique des s: confusion culturelle, choc culturel, adaptation intercultransitions a ` court terme. Mots-cle turelle, voyages sac au dos, Inde. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION Tourist experience of cultural difference has recently gained growing interest (Pizam 1999; Reisinger and Turner 2003; Robinson 1999; Ward, Bochner and Furnham 2001). One interesting eld of the emerging debate is the study of intercultural adaptation, the psychological and behavioral analysis of tourists learning process in the new environment, as seen by (social) psychologists and geographers (Furnham 1984; Furnham and Bochner 1986; Hottola 1999; Pearce 1982; Pearce, Kim and Lussa 1998; Ward et al 2001). In the center of
Petri Hottola is Senior Assistant Professor at the Finnish University Network for Tourism Studies (University of Joensuu, Savonlinna campus, Finland. Email <petri.hottola@ joensuu.>), with PhD in human geography. His research interests include intercultural and international issues in tourism and the media, gender, backpacking, nature conservation, and the politics of development, with recent studies on India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and the United States.

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the analysis is the emotional aspect of tourists intercultural experience, with regrettably limited but growing empirical evidence. Studies in intercultural adaptation should not be confused with anthropological studies on host-guest interaction (Chambers 1997; Mason 1995; MacCannell 1992; Ross 1998; Smith 1989; Smith and Brent 2001; Yamashita, Kadir and Eades 1997) which focus, with few exceptions (Graburn 1989; Nash and Smith 1991; Sela nniemi 1996; van den Berghe 1994) on the experience of hosts rather than the adaptation of tourists. The related rite of passage or transition (separation-liminality-communitas-reintegration) framework of Graburn (1989, 2001) and others, although interconnected and of interesting potential for future elaboration in tourist adaptation studies, currently explores a somewhat different aspect of intercultural tourism. As a consequence of the shortage of eldwork on tourists, the theoretical discussion of intercultural adaptation remains subservient to sojourner studies, as indicated by the popularity of the U-curve of culture shock (Furnham 1984; Pearce 1982; Ward et al 2001). Four decades have passed since Kalervo Oberg (1960) presented his hypothesis as an explanation of human intercultural adaptation, built on a wide array of sojourner studies in the 50s (Adler 1975; Bochner 1982; Furnham 1984; Smalley 1963). The framework underlines the emotional U-curve from depression to recovery through the stages of euphoria, disillusionment, hostility, adaptation, and assimilation (Figure 1), with a number of names suggested to each phase by various authors (Pedersen 1995; Sue and Sue 1990). In the beginning there is the joy of arrival, which is followed by disappointment and hostilitywhen the reality sinks inand nally the recovery of adaptation and assimilation, the latter meaning that the person involved has become a member of the host culture. Today, the term culture shock is often used as an everyday language indicator of various difculties experienced while visiting foreign countries as tourists or short-term sojourners, the two overlapping (Pearce et al 1998; Wearing 2001) activities which last weeks or

Figure 1. The U-Curve of Culture Shock

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months rather than years. The U-curve has been adopted as the dominant explanation of the tourist experience of intercultural adaptation. Cultural instructions for international tourists in Internet and travel guidebooks, or more specically travel preparation guides such as the Culture Shock! series (Kolanad and Kolanad 1999), mediate the U-curve among the consumers of tourism. At the same time, academic literature on intercultural adaptation in tourism builds on culture shock (Furnham 1984; Furnham and Bochner 1986; Graburn 1989, 2001; Hofstede 2001:294296; Kaesbach 1997; Pearce 1982; Pearce et al 1998; Pedersen 1995; Reisinger and Turner 2003; Robinson 1999; van den Berghe 1994:124; Ward et al 2001; Westerhausen 2002). The concept and theory of culture shock have been intuitively appealing to many students of intercultural adaptation (Ward et al 2001:82). During the past decades, several authors have, however, noticed signicant shortcomings to the dominant approach in a number of case studies (Adler 1975; Gullahorn and Gullahorn 1963; Hofstede 2001; Hottola 1999; Kealey 1989; Lundstedt 1963; Reisinger and Turner 2003; Ward and Kennedy 1993; Ward et al 2001). As often eventually happens to popular theories, the U-curve also has been declared inconclusive and outdated. Indeed, empirical studies have never fully supported the popular U-curve hypothesis as a general explanation of adaptation to other cultures. In the context of international tourism and sojourning, it has been realized that the U-curve is but one possible course of events, and certainly not the most common one. Therefore, it is time to start looking for a more comprehensive approach that does not exclude the majority of cases. The dynamic model of culture confusion, to be discussed later, has been grounded in qualitative eldwork among Western backpackers in Bharatpur, India and Kandy, Sri Lanka (more detail in Hottola 1999), on supporting case studies, and on the existing theories of intercultural adaptation and the psychology of control. At the moment, the South Asian sample apparently is the only existing study with interest in the longitudinal and theoretical aspects of intercultural adaptation in backpacking. Backpackers are more than average exposed to the local society (Loker 1993; Riley 1988; Scheyvens 2002) and thus form an illuminating case of the tourist experience of cultural difference in international tourism. The qualitative research project attempted to understand intercultural adaptation in backpacking and to inductively create a grounded theory (Brannen 1992; Glaser and Strauss 1974; Strauss and Corbin 1994), with minimal preconceived theoretical presuppositions. As characteristic of the method, a long process of systematic gathering, triangulation, and analysis of eld material, and a spiral of testing and retesting eld hypotheses produced the theory that will be described in this article. Unless otherwise stated, all forthcoming statements and conclusions refer to the results of the grounded theory process in India and Sri Lanka.

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THE DYNAMIC MODEL OF CULTURE CONFUSION As already pointed out, the U-curve cannot be regarded as a comprehensive explanation of intercultural adaptation in tourism. First of all, it is an idealized description of reality. There are many who do not adapt and a large number of individual and situational courses of adaptation which do not agree with the hypothesis (Adler 1975; Hofstede 2001; Hottola 1999; Lundstedt 1963; Ward et al 2001). According to some surveys, only one out of ten individual cases agree with the U-curve (Kealey 1989). In Pearces (1982) study on the Australian islands of Hinchinbrook and Brampton in Queensland, tourists experienced more negative moods and health problems during the rst days of their vacation than later on, a result supported by longitudinal sojourner adaptation studies (Kealey 1989,1992:1415; Ward et al 2001). According to Westerhausen (2002:6870) the situation was very similar among backpackers in Asia. In Rajasthan and on the Sri Lankan Highlands, the vast majority of backpackers also had negative emotions in the very beginning and did not develop any substantial adaptation later on. A considerable number of people decided to return home earlier than planned, a phenomenon also noticed by Iyer (1988). Some reconsidered their travel plans by cutting the number of places to be visited, by spending more money on fast and more expensive forms of transportation, or by shortening the duration of the visit. Second, the focus on depression (shock) is a mistaken one. As Kealey (1992) and Ward and Kennedy (1993) point out, learning is more important in the general process than depression. When people travel to foreign countries, there often is neither shock nor depression, but they usually get stressed and confused while learning new things or facing unexpected difculties, even after repeated visits to the same destination. Tourists always learn something new of both the host environment and themselves, by living in the other society. An intercultural adaptation process is not merely a pathological shock which should be avoided, but as Kealey has suggested, a necessary and valuable process of learning. It is a chance to meet other people and to gain new information, and to reconsider earlier knowledge. Neither is cultural distance only a hindrance to tourism. It is also a tourist attraction, a reason to travel to other nations (Desmond 1999; McKercher and So-Ming 2001). During an intercultural learning process, people search for control as an ability to increase the predictability of their personal and interpersonal existence (Baum and Singer 1980; Burns and Buckley 1976; Friedman and Lackey 1991; Goffman 1963, 1974:32; Langer 1983). One part of this process is uncertainty and anxiety management, a popular topic of theoretical debate in sojourner adaptation studies (Gao and Gudykunst 1990; Gudykunst 1988, 2003; Hullett and Witte 2001). Being able to seek the fullment of personal goals and motives, to control the course of events involving the tourists themselves, and to predict and regulate the outside interferences which make them vulnerable in a foreign environment, is not only vital for

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psychological well-being but is also the very thing which keeps people going on as tourists or sojourners. It leads to motivated problemsolving behavior characteristic of the exploration of unknown territories. As a matter of fact, the level of actual control tourists have in everyday situations is not crucial. Following Langer (1983), it is the control as perceived by them that matters. The sense of control may be real or perceived, objective or subjective, but it is effective as long as it exists. Third, the U-curve does not agree with the motivational background of short-term exposures to new environments. A tourist normally has no motivation to assimilate, to go native. Quite often she has no strong motivation to adapt, either. The tourist is there temporarily to do her thing together with other tourists and selected hosts, more or less irrespectively of the local people, culture, and natural environment. The exposure to cultural difference is often limited and ritualized in the exible touristic bubbles created by and for her (Graburn 1989; Krippendorf 1986), and produces adaptation which is very different to the one proposed in the U-curve. Fourth, intercultural adaptation is not a steady, gradual process to be presented by a linear model. It cannot be quantitatively measured or estimated in a reliable way beforehand, although that is what many authors in intercultural psychology, such as Mumford (1998) try to do. According to the South Asian survey, there are serious setbacks, sudden signicant improvements and consequent major changes in the general course which may lead the tourist to a totally opposite direction in the middle of the process. In addition, on a daily basis, there may be considerable variation in peoples emotional stance towards cultural difference, and no clear dominance of adaptation or opposition. Therefore, the variety of human responses can not be adequately explained by a simple U-curve, a relic of modernism, which does not easily t into the postmodern paradigm and its focus on detail and variety. At the time of the formation of the U-curve approach, the idea was to create easy-to-grasp generalizations of the world, with less emphasis on variation. Later on, early postmodernism claimed everything to be unique and situational. Today, it is time to search for a more conclusive understanding of the complexity of human lifeworlds, with a dual focus on both the uniqueness of situations and general tendencies which link these cases together. Postmodernism should be about critical engagement with the modern age rather than its total replacement (Brooks 1997; Lyotard 1999; Nicholson 1990). Additionally, although culture is of primary importance in intercultural adaptation, the culture determinism implicit in the culture shock approach should be avoided by also including the ecological aspect (Adam 1995; Horigan 1988). Being a human is an embodied experience. The ecological part of the adaptation process may consist of either positive or negative features, or be relatively neutral (as it often is) when the difference between the original and the new environment is small. In South Asia, the positive and negative effects of climatic and temporal change, illnesses, and wildlife on inter-

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cultural adaptation became underlined on numerous occasions. Even more importantly, the sexed bodies of the tourists created profound variation in the ways the local societies welcomed the backpackers (Hottola 2002a, 2002b). In the light of eld material collected in India and Sri Lanka, the very existence of the shock becomes somewhat questionable. Oberg has dened culture shock as a transitory concept precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all ones familiar signs and symbols of social interaction (1960:177). In a new societal context much of peoples old knowledge is useless, if not misleading. Words, gestures, facial expressions, customs, and norms familiar to them are not there anymore, or their meaning has changed. The occurrence of serious problems is most probable when cultures in interaction are highly different, or the individual crossing the borders between two societal spaces has limited capabilities to adapt. Everything learned is, after all, colored by subjective life histories and valuesbeliefs which either dene what is right and wrong or specify general preferences in societies (Adler 1991). The term culture shock is often considered to indicate the bottom of the U-curve from initial euphoric contact to assimilation, the stage of hostility where emotions have reached their darkest point. The consequences of rising stress and frustration related to a genuine shock include acute depression, overwhelming sense of failure, anxiety, and insomnia (Adler 1991; Furnham and Bochner 1986; Weaver 1987). In the worst cases, a culture shock is manifested by voluntary isolation or abandonment. Nevertheless, contrary to suggestions that many tourists experience shock (Pearce et al 1998; Reisinger and Turner 2003), this is not the correct term in situations where no serious problems are experienced, that is, the majority of short-term exposures to the Other, nowadays the increasingly familiar other. In the globalizing world there is less and less uncontrolled exposure to cultural difference, especially when people travel within cultural regions or take part in the main stream of international tourism, which in itself is an actor of globalization (MacCannell 2001:384 386; Rojek and Urry 1997; van den Berghe 1994). People may like to call their confusion a shock because that sounds more exciting, and elicits more attention among their reference group. An American visiting France experiences confusion but hardly shock. Conventional mass tourists, the majority of tourists, rarely experience serious problems because they do not actually enter another culture (Furnham and Bochner 1986; Weaver 1987). Even if they leave their touristic metaspaces, the advancing hybridization of cultures paves the way to mutual understanding rather than conict (Burns and Holden 1995:116117), despite the continuous existence of features of culture which keep people apart (Bhabha 1994; Clifford 1992). People become confused, tired, and disoriented while abroad, but in most cases not depressed in the sense anticipated by Oberg and others. Even in India, which is often considered one of the most demanding environments to adapt to for a Westerner, many of the interviewed tourists protested against the use of such a strong word.

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Similarly, culture shock as a consequence of tourism to local societies (Loeb 1989; Pearce et al 1998) may be an overgeneralization in the world of increasing hybridity (Aramberri 2001).
Ive been to Asia before. So its not so much of a culture shock or such for me (British male). Well, people say beware the culture shock and I didnt really have any (British male, rst visit to India).

Returning to the ideas of Ward and Kennedy (1993), instead of depression more attention should be paid to critically examining adaptation or adjustment, which is a process of learning where tourists need to get repeatedly disoriented and confused in order to discover the right path along which to proceed through trial and error. The confusion arises from the realization that parts of their former knowledge are neither correct nor useful anymore. It is, after all, easier to stick to old views and habits than to adopt new ones. The wider concept of culture confusion (Hottola 1999) points to this learning process and covers the whole variety of emotions from mixed feelings during the intercultural experience to the occasional serious confusion and consequent depression called culture shock. Unlike culture shock, culture confusion focuses both on the problematic part of the adaptation process and on the frequentlysimultaneous presence of enjoyment, success, and learning. It acknowledges the reality of mixed emotions and oppositional developments instead of clearly denable stages of emotional dominances, thus including the complexity and diversity of individual tourists responses. Confusion may not be so exciting a word as shock, but certainly more accurate in the vast majority of cases in the context of intercultural adaptation. People experience confusion in the beginning, continue through their visit, and again when they return home. Culture shock may be a part of tourism, as Pearce and others (1998:349350) maintain, or it may not. Confusion is always there. Therefore, culture shock is not the correct concept for generic use in intercultural situations; it should be reserved for the situations of genuine shock. Neither should more specic problems, such as problems in communication, the language shock (Smalley 1963), or environmental shock (Furnham and Bochner 1986) be called shocks. Capable of adjusting itself to a wide variety of environments, a tourist body hardly experiences shock when it arrives in a foreign environment, especially if the destination is already inhabited, suitable for human beings. In that sense, at least, the body equals the mind (Southwick 1996). On the contrary, the body may react positively to improved ecological conditions. It would also be important to replace the word environment with ecological, because there are many different categories of environments, such as cultural and social, available which have little to do with the issue here. With ecology, the connection to nature is more straightforward. Thus, the preferred concept should be ecological adaptation (Hottola 1999: 100101,196199).

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Especially in the Third World, a tourist may also encounter a life shock. As dened by Bock (1970), this is a sudden and direct exposure to the less desirable facts of human life, from which the people in Western societies often are shielded by social security and state institutions. Aging, death, disabilities, and disease are particularly disturbing when they are rst encountered in an unfamiliar setting, but there is nothing inherently exotic about these phenomena. For those who have never encountered them, this can be a disturbing event, particularly when the tourist is a kind of contemporary pilgrim (MacCannell 1976; Urry 2002) who seeks authenticity in other times and other places away from everyday life and is initially fascinated by the everyday of the hosts, but unable to handle the reality when confronted by it.
We have been struck by the poverty of people. We didnt know anything regarding poverty. Got a taxi from the airport, into town. We hadnt experienced anything of India at all. And in the rst few minutes we were stopping at a junction and this lady knocks on the window. Virtually clawing the window. Pitiful face (British male).

Unlike environmental shock, life shock appears to be a more accurate and specic concept. As witnessed in India, it frequently involves a genuine emotional shock when experienced. But it should always be kept in mind that it is also an elitist concept which concerns mainly the well-to-do citizens of rich countries and has less meaning for the poor, suppressed majority of the world, who do neither take part in tourism nor have the chance of being shocked by the opposite, the wealth and waste of the First World.

Initial Culture Confusion In the accommodation-based sample, 110 mostly young, welltraveled and well-educated backpackers representing 15 Western nations, and with at least as many socially constructed ways to see South Asia, were interviewed and recorded on their adaptation to local conditions (interview guide, content analysis). The interviewed 53 men and 47 women preferred to stay in $46 guesthouses, and were approached at different temporal stages of their visit, ranging between two days and three months after arrival. An additional 340 backpackers were interviewed in informal discussions on related topics. Moreover, the rst 110 backpackers were asked to complete a time-space budgeting survey on their activities prior to the interview. Seven months were also spent as a participant observer in South Asia, with a background of years of independent tourism. The consequent dynamic model of culture confusion incorporates and builds on the more reliable aspects of the U-curve approach. In both frameworks, the emotional experience of cultural difference is the central feature of the process. Intercultural adaptation involves emotional and evaluative disorientation. In the culture confusion approach, the main focus is on learning and on the confusion which

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Figure 2. Initial Culture Confusion

precedes the adoption of new realities. In the very beginning, when the inux of new information is highest, people experience the initial confusion (Figure 2). According to interviews and observations conducted in India and Sri Lanka, the initial phase appears to be a matter of days rather than weeks. Later on, as the tourists already have acquired a basic knowledge of the other environment, they experience the phase of adaptation and opposition (Figure 3). Together these two form the culture confusion framework. In the context of tourism the feelings of euphoria seem most prominent at home, before departure. As Campbell (1987) suggests, postmodern hedonism is to a considerable extent based on the anticipated quality of pleasure. Few tourists travel against their will. They plan and fantasize their visit, create romantic and nostalgic illusions of the Other (McClintock 1995), build mindscapes, leaf through travel guidebooks and brochures, search the Internet, and discuss the upcoming journey with their friends. Their imagination takes them abroad while their body is still located at home. At this phase, positive expectations are high, although fears and doubts may also be lurking

Figure 3. Adaptation/Opposition

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in the background: Will the visit full my expectations? Will I stay healthy? Will my friend water my plants while I am away? Transition from the originating country to the destination country involves physical and mental hardships. In many cases, negative experiences start to diminish the euphoria already at this point. Last-minute rush causes stress. There are delays at airports. Even if everything goes reasonably well, which is often not the case in todays congested air space, the intercontinental ight itself causes considerable physical and mental stress, of which jet lag is only one dimension. Consequently, the transition successfully completed, arrival in the destination, and getting out of the cramped space of an airplane where movements have been restricted to the minimum, brings out a feeling of relief. On the other hand, leaving the uncomfortable but familiar and nurturing womb of the plane makes people vulnerable to the incalculable Other. On arrival, the reality of an average tourist or short-term sojourner is quite different from the euphoria experienced by the elite relying on high-class services, often referred to in academic literature (such as Triandis 1994). This is the period the backpackers interviewed in India and Sri Lanka considered the most difcult and stressful. Instead of the euphoria anticipated in the U-curve, they had both positive and negative experiences on arrival and felt them especially strongly at this point. The emotional dominance tends to lean toward the negative rather than the positive. An international tourist has to confront cultural and situational fears/uncertainties, not to mention changes in ecological conditions. People are friendly and welcoming, but they do not seem to understand her questions. It may not rain, but the weather is uncomfortably hot and humid, or too cold. The available food does not smell quite right, although the locals seem to enjoy it.
The rst days were actually really heavy. It was not parts which are difcult. Just its so different. Like the culture you see. The things you see. You have to absorb everything (Belgian male). When we stayed at Colombo for the rst two days, I was just sort of afraid that something could happen to me. And they would steal my money and they would... I cannot really describe it. It was just there (Swiss female).

The very rst experiences of cultural difference have an effect which may dene the direction of tourists attitudes for the rest of the visit. A few people develop either a very positive or a very negative attitude already at the start of their visit, and may stick to their rst impressions. There may not be enough time to gather a sufcient number of contradictory experiences to develop a realistic stance to the hosts and to really begin adapting to the new context. According to the South Asian eld material, this is also the phase where a true emotional shock is most likely to occur. This can occur either in the form of extreme disappointment or as an overload shock, caused by sensory overload in a situation where there is too much to learn in

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too short a time (Craik 1997), or a combination of these two and initial problems in ecological adaptation. The new environment may present a tourist an overwhelming blend of sensory images, such as sights, smells and sounds. His curious and interested tourist gaze seems to notice everything different, and authentically Other. His perceptive abilities are strained to their maximum, while his body still suffers from the fatigue of the intercontinental ight, and tries to adjust itself to a new climate and bacteria. Overload shocks themselves do not usually force tourists to return home, although they did in few cases in India. Instead, they involve periods of regression. Not infrequently, much time is spent within the accommodation during the rst few days in the new environment, with periodical short excursions to the potentially stressful public space. Being an international tourist may be a short-term experience, but it is also an intensive one. The environment to which tourists are adapting is a space constituted of known and unknown objects, and the latter must be learned fast to enable a smooth and rewarding adaptation process. Frequent checking on maps and guidebooks help in understanding the new situations encountered, not to mention creating mental maps (Golledge, Dougherty and Bell 1995; von Eckartsberg 1981). The emerging relationship, however, includes contradictory ingredients. As discovered among backpackers in South Asia, the main stream of emotional experience is a variable mixture of euphoria and disillusionment, dynamically changing ones situational context changes and she has new emotionally uplifting or disturbing experiences. The round spheres of emotional extremes in the model (Figures 2 and 3) should be seen as transparent, overlapping, and diffuse. They are in a constant movement of variable speed, both horizontal and vertical. People experience both success and failure in their learning process. Successes produce a feeling of being in control and enhance the will to seek further understanding (Friedman and Lackey 1991; Langer 1983). It is a pleasure to be a tourist. Failures have the opposite effect. Even when everything goes relatively well, being confused and learning new things causes stress and fatigue. Tourists manage the process by repeated travel between the Other public space and the secluded metaspaces of tourism. This is the escape to the metaworlds pattern, which denes much of international tourism (Hottola 1999, 2004; Westerhausen 2002:69). The concept of metaworld indicates a variety of restricted realities within the dominant reality which are used as places of rest and recovery; the pattern is implicitly included in several host-guest studies, such as Sela nniemi (1996), in which the Finnish package tourists utilized the Little Finland of Gran Canaria as their retreat. In the public space tourists are subjected to outgroup control by the local society and constantly confront new things to be learned. Within their metaworlds, the tourists themselves are in control and may relax in order to be able to return to the real world and start learning again. As people gain cumulative improvement in prediction, their

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satisfaction with themselves and the world increases. The more control tourists experience, the more they enjoy their visit; the more time they spend in public space, the less they hide in their isolated metaworlds. Successfully adapting, they may in some cases enjoy their visit enormously, establish friendships, and stay longer than originally planned. In the South Asian sample, less than ve percent of the backpackers belonged to this category. On the other hand, repeated failures may produce intensifying frustration and opposition towards cultural difference (Gudykunst 1988; Hullett and Witte 2001). The less control tourists experience, the less they enjoy their visit, and the more they keep away from the hosts. Especially when sick, they tend not to progress in their intercultural adaptation (Friedman and Lackey 1991). The physiological overload increases the existing emotional overload and negatively affects the way tourists perceive difference. In the context of backpacking in South Asia, and many other Third World destinations, illnesses are repeatedly confronted and adaptation is consequently more difcult than on average.

Adaptation/Opposition In the everyday of backpacking, the initial feelings of euphoria and disappointment soon become attached to the respective emotional stances of adaptation and opposition (Figure 3), the combination of which continue to create confusion as people either accept and/or reject new information. In the long run, the process tends to lead to a kind of an equilibrium, adaptative, or oppositional. Backpackers decide to return some day, or cannot wait to get back home; in most cases they choose something in-between because the time limit of a short-term visit does not allow their views to mature. For the majority of the adaptative backpackers, the accumulation of knowledge produces an increasing feeling of being in control. The perception people have of mastering problems, the active belief that one has a choice among responses that are differentially effective in achieving the desired outcome (Langer 1983:20), will carry people on unless something unexpected happens to break that perception. Inability to adapt may also cause serious problems after the initial encounter. A tell-tale sign of terminal inability is a tendency to get increasingly less willing to see details and variation in the new context, which is generalized to be more or less hostile. The negative perception of cultural difference often causes a defensive reaction: hostility towards the hosts and their country. In India, the negative experiences of women backpackers produced widespread generalizations about the local men (Hottola 2002a, 2002b). On the other hand, the decision not to adapt may be quite rational: after learning the values and norms of the local society, a tourist may draw an informed conclusion that he does not appreciate the values discovered. Those gradually shifting towards total opposition may develop such a strong antipathy that they can hardly deal with any interaction with culturally different people. For them, culture

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confusion has become an obstacle ruining the visit. They may shorten their vacation, isolate themselves for the time remaining, or keep a stiff upper lip and do India despite their antipathies, to name but a few possible courses of action observed. Occasionally, a genuine culture shock may occur.
She cannot handle [herself] with people and men staring at her, constantly staring. At rst, she tried to get used to it, but now she cannot handle it at all. She just ignores everybody, totally (British male, speaking for his female companion).

In the case of backpacking in India and Sri Lanka, only a small minority of backpackers developed high levels of either adaptation or opposition. Continuously changing location, they did not have enough time to get attached to any one place and really adapt to the local conditions. They managed their confusion and learned many new things, periodically nding themselves in one corner or another in the gray area between the emotional extremes, and periodically also ending in the extremes. They were capable of staying in South Asia and enjoying the contrast of cultural difference, with the help of regular escapes to their metaworlds, spaces of Western dominance. With the help of this option, a person unable to adapt, or even shifting towards a strong opposition to another culture, may be able to continue traveling for a considerable period of time (Hottola 2004). According to the grounded eld analysis, there are no gradual stages but a continuum of developments. Individual adaptation processes are vulnerable to strong outside inuences, which may radically shift the direction of developments at any time of the visit. A welldeveloped oppositional bias may change after a major positive experience. Similarly, a signicant negative experience may cut the positive adaptation short and cause strong opposition, moving people beyond the gray zone. There were cases where backpackers made genuine friendships with their hosts and became attached to the local society in a new, positive way; and others experienced serious harassment and failed to get any help from the passersby. In the former cases, the persons involved clearly moved from opposition towards adaptation. In the latter, they could end up in opposition and even return home, as was occasionally observed in India and Sri Lanka, despite their originally positive expectations. In tourism and sojourning, people establish some kind of working relationship between Us and the Others, which is best called integration. As already pointed out, the question of assimilation as a result of intercultural adaptation is rather irrelevant in the context of tourism and other short-term visits. There is an important demarcation between these situations and long-term sojourning or immigration (Kim 2001). The nature of tourism and short-term sojourning is that the periods of residence elsewhere are temporary. There are a beginning and an end. During the transition back to their own culture, the majority probably have feelings of relief and euphoria of returning home mixed with feelings of longing for their travel experi-

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ences, new friends, and tourist/sojourner status. Unlike before the arrival in the other context, euphoria does not necessarily dominate. Reverse culture confusion occurs during the readjustment period, in resemblance to the reverse culture shock, which has been supposed to occur in the U-curve approach, thereby forming a W-curve (Gullahorn and Gullahorn 1963). Some have found their place in the new culture, or metaworlds within it, during a longer than average vacation and prefer the other environment and the careless tourist life, and would consequently not like to return home. They may experience more than average reverse confusion. Those who have taken a diametrically oppositional stance towards the Other, or miss their family and friends, are euphoric and may experience little or no reverse culture confusion. For reasons implied earlier in the text, the readjustment phase is in general of lesser effect and importance in short-term transitions. Nevertheless, however limited tourists adaptation may have been, it is not uncommon that even during a short stay in a foreign country, some patterns of expectations and values do change, at least temporarily (Riley 1988; Weaver 1987). Thus, the values and norms of their original societal context may seem less appealing than before. Moreover, as Riley (1988) notes, especially in the case of deeper learning experiences (the kind backpacking or sojourning occasionally provides), it is difcult to communicate personal experiences to those who have never experienced the same. On the contrary, fellow citizens tend to be less tolerant of mistakes and less emphatic towards reverse culture confusion than the other people were (Weaver 1987). What is more, the body has to readjust itself in order to survive in the home environment. Adjusted to a warmer climate, it does not feel at home in the cool North anymore, for example. Nevertheless, both the cultural and ecological re-adaptations do normally develop fast and well in a familiar environment.

CONCLUSION In the absence of longitudinal adaptation studies among tourists, much of the intercultural adaptation theory based on empirical evidence has been adopted from sojourner studies (Ward et al 2001:80 81,127). Yet, as Ward, Bochner and Furnham point out, it is the tourists who constitute the majority of exposures to intercultural contacts in todays world. Therefore, there is a need for more theoretically inspired eld research on intercultural adaptation in tourism and theory specically based on that investigation. The present work is hoped to be one step towards that goal. The criticism presented in this article is not so much directed towards Oberg, who published an insightful anecdote which eventually made the term culture shock known to a large part of humankind, and who was apparently himself aware of the shortcomings of the hypothesis (Oberg 1960). It is directed at the continuous reproduction of the stages approach in short term adaptation studies, and

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at cross-sectional case studies which have been descriptive rather than evaluative and exploratory, and with little interest in qualitative grounded theory (Aramberri 2001; Faulkner, Pearce, Shaw and Weiler 2003; Hobson 2003; Riley and Love 2000). In order to understand the situations of tourists in foreign environments, the reactions of the people involved should be critically analyzed, and new theoretical conclusions drawn from eld material instead of depending on a clearly unreliable framework. Especially so when that theory has been created ve decades ago, prior to the current change of paradigm and in a world in some ways quite different from the present one. Moreover, the analysis of cultural difference in tourism should provide tools to improve the bottomline of the industry: the experience of the tourist (Hottola 1999; Pearce et al 1998; Reisinger and Turner 1997, 2003). There are benets from intercultural encounters, but not without problems. Tourists get confused in these situations, being unable to fully understand or explain what is happening to them. As presented in this paper, the results of the South Asian and several other studies disagree with the U-curve approach. Learning and control management are more central in the process than depression and recovery. The discourse of control may provide a more comprehensive tool to analyze intercultural adaptation in tourism than the discourse of uncertainty and anxiety management (Hottola 2004). A genuine emotional shock is not encountered in the majority of situations in international tourism and short-term sojourning. Among those taking part in these activities, there is less motivation to adapt than anticipated in the U-curve framework. Even when the motivation exists, there is not enough time to learn more than the basics. There is no guarantee of gradual adaptation and integration (not to mention assimilation) but, instead, a reality of less predictable circumstances. The dynamic model of culture confusion provides an alternative theoretical framework, which reects the complexity of empirical reality in a broadly-inclusive way, without losing the grasp of what is common to people in intercultural situations, in order to help them better understand and enjoy tourism. Although this theoretical hypothesis is grounded on qualitative eld material among backpackers in South Asia, it is necessary to test it against more empirical material, especially in the context of package tourism. There are clearly important factors such as gender and ethnic identity creating distinctive and readily identiable tendencies within the proposed framework. Such tendencies are often even more interesting than the general process. A framework such as this is, after all, just a starting point for deeper analysis, a basic premise to be established before exploring the multitude of cases. A

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Submitted 20 April 2002. Resubmitted 1 October 2003. Resubmitted 12 November 2003. Accepted 20 November 2003. Final version 24 November 2003. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Robert E. Wood