Culture shock is not a character flaw — it is a predictable arc that almost every fieldworker travels, and it says nothing about the community you are living in. Drag along the timeline, or tap a phase, to see where the ethnographer is and what the work demands there.
Well-being over time in the field
Drag the dot, slide the scrubber, or tap a phase. The curve is Lysgaard’s U-shape (1955); turn on re-entry and it becomes the W-curve of Gullahorn & Gullahorn (1963). The timing is a rough model, not a schedule — some people crash in month one, some never fully do.
What is happening to the ethnographer
Comfort & well-being0
Local competence0
Still sees the strange0
The arc of culture shockdrag the timeline to begin
Phases
Time in the fieldarrival
Add the journey home — the second dip most fieldworkers are never warned about.